The Ash

by Raging Mouse

Healing and Scarring

Chapter 15:

Healing and Scarring

Twilight opened her eyes and shuffled backwards on her haunches before she got her bearings. To her right, Fluttershy was looking around with an expression of startled confusion. Twilight looked back at the marble slab holding the creature’s body.

“Better try this quick before he gets worse again...”

She cast the spell of healing. The golden sparks struck and the creature seemed to swell, upsetting flakes of soot which fell down revealing healthy skin beneath. At least, Twilight assumed it was healthy. From what she’d seen, the creature’s own body image was mostly hairless so she assumed the creature’s fur coating was supposed to be almost non-existent. The mane hadn’t grown back very much either. Still, she sighed with relief. The creature was out of the most immediate danger. Perhaps this would please Princess Celestia.

I wouldn’t count on it, Twilight.

She ignored Libram for the moment and turned to Fluttershy, giving her a hug.

“You were amazing, Fluttershy. Thank you so much.”

“Um, it looks like he didn’t believe us. Maybe we should go back and talk to him?”

“I’ll do that eventually, but I think I’ll bring somepony along who is better at honesty.”

“Oh. Oh! Good idea. Um, in that case do you think I could return to helping the animals?”

“Yes, go right ahead.”

Twilight sat down and watched Fluttershy go.

Libram, I have a feeling you know much more about this situation than you are letting on.

Of course. That’s my job, basically. I exist outside Harmony, making me the perfect repository for knowledge that would drive a pony to darkness or insanity. Whenever you ask me a question I need to carefully consider if giving you the answer is really worth it.

Well I think something is wrong. Ponies I know are behaving strangely. Or am I wrong, Libram? Is everything as it used to be?

Well, no. You are in fact skirting dangerously close to the truth.

Well let’s say I figure this out without your help. Why would that be so bad? What would happen to me?

Harmony would turn on you.

Harmony would...?

Your friends, the Princesses, every pony you met. They would all see you as their enemy.

But... why?

Twilight. Please, let it go before it’s too late. It’s not worth it.

Well what about you then? I don’t see you as my enemy even though you have all this... knowledge.

Really, Twilight? You weren’t disgusted by me and insanely terrified to even be in my presence when we first met?

All right. You have a point. But I’m no longer afraid now. So what’s changed?

It’s because you have understood, deep down, what I am.

Well? What are you?

A captive. Your mind, Twilight Sparkle, is my prison courtyard. Harmony does not fear me, chained as thoroughly as I am.

A huff that ended with a groan forced its way out of Twilight’s lungs.

Why? Why does Harmony work like that? Just what is Harmony anyway?

Well now you are asking all the right questions. I’m coming really close to failing to protect you, and when that happens... I fear for you almost as much as I fear for myself. Ponies generally don’t survive long outside Harmony. For the last time: drop it. Drop it and just walk away. What’s coming is going to be bad enough.

What do you mean? What’s coming?

The subtle presence in her head was gone. Libram had left her. She sucked in a lungful of air through clenched teeth and held it, shutting her eyes and scrunching her muzzle into a grimace, before letting it out in an explosive exhalation.

“Fine!”

She walked to the nearby mountain ledge, hoping to talk to Marble Chalice, but the green mare was nowhere to be found. Her two assistants were present, though. They were folding the tents.

“Um... Hello? Rules and Scales was it? What are you doing?”

The two ponies nodded politely at Twilight, and the earthen mare spoke up.

“Ruler, Miss. Professor Chalice has decided to conclude her experimentation with the alien matter here on the ledge. She believes she won’t get any further answers without using the resources found at the University, and moving it all here would take too much time to set up. The matter would be gone before everything was set up and in order.”

“Oh? All right. What about the creature, though? I managed to heal it, but – wait! Where are you going?”

Both ponies in front of Twilight had looked at each other before running towards the opening in the mountain. She ran after them and found them excitedly circling the creature’s slab, just outside the magic field, discussing what they saw.

“Definitely some kind of ape, but I’ve never heard of such a hairless species.”

“We might want to wait before establishing that. Miss Sparkle’s healing spell might not regrow fur.”

“Nah, look at his head. There’s a good mane and beard there even if it’s short.”

“What’s that, Scales? His head?”

Scales gestured vaguely towards the creature’s midsection. Ruler nodded after craning her neck for a brief inspection.

“Right. It’s definitely a male.”

She turned to Twilight.

“This is very exciting, Miss Sparkle! Do you think he’ll wake up soon? Maybe we should ask Princess Celestia to remove the time stop field?”

“Um, yeah, that’s what I wanted to discuss with Professor Chalice, actually. Celestia mentioned that she doubts the creature can breathe the air here in Equestria, which means it’s probably suffocating right now. If we could rely on all our magic we might bypass that easily, but we can’t.”

“That’s a pretty smart assumption by the Princess! I wouldn’t have thought of that myself. Would be a shame to go to all that trouble only to see him fare like a fish on dry land. Lucky for him – and you – we’ve got plenty of alien air stored.”

Twilight did a double-take.

“What did you just say? You’ve got alien air stored? How did you get that?”

Scales gestured to the wooden crates now standing under the open sky.

“We learned the hard way not to store the alien matter in enclosed and unventilated spaces. We’d placed the first batches of it we gathered in a basement vault at the University and the air in that room turned to poison overnight. The rocks still held a lot of gases, you see, and it had seeped out. We’re very lucky only three ponies died.”

Ruler sobbed once, and Twilight guessed she had known one or more of the unfortunate ponies. Scales threw a comforting leg over Ruler’s back and hugged her before continuing his recount.

“After that a new store was hastily built in the open air, using mechanics to filter out the alien gasses and store them in tanks. At first we considered just letting the gasses burn out by blasting magic at them, but that would be too damaging to the surroundings. So that means we’ve got quite a lot of the stuff sitting around and nopony knows what to do with it, but I bet you could have some kind of room built and have it filled with that gas in order to let the creature breathe. Well, assuming it’s the right gasses.”

Twilight beamed a brilliant smile at him.

“You are absolutely right! It’s risky but it’s the best plan we have. We’ll need to construct the walls out of glass or crystal, so we can look in and he can look out. The floor needs to be alien matter, of course, to protect his hoo – his feet. And we’ll need a way to freshen the air! This needs careful planning!”

She danced a little dance of excitement and spun a pirouette. Then she settled down and stared at the two amused ponies in front of her.

“But... This is going to be expensive. How am I going to handle that?”

Ruler raised an eyebrow and peered at Twilight quizzically.

“Don’t you have Agent’s credentials, like Chalice has? That means you have the right to use all the resources of Canterlot Castle, which by extension means all of Equestria is at your disposal.”

“Oh. Oh! Oh right...”

~~~~~

Applejack opened her eyes and saw Twilight standing in front of her. She’d been so heavily asleep that it took a good while to sort out all the necessary bits involved in talking.

“Uhhh. Ummmm. Nnn. Ohhh, heyyy, Twi. Haven’t seen you in a couple of days. Or has it been a week? Anyways, what are you doing here? What have you been up to?”

No answer came. Applejack became worried, shook her head to disperse the last remnants of sleep (which had been blissfully dreamless for a change) and peered closer at the mare in front of her. Twilight’s expression bore a mixture of anxiety and pity. Then Applejack sensed she was still tethered to the cart she’d been pulling last night. Somepony had thrown a blanket over her sleeping form, but she was still lying in the middle of the castle’s lumberyard.

“Aww hayfeathers. Did I doze off right here?”

“Um, it sure looks that way, Applejack.”

Applejack sighed and lay her head down on the frozen cobblestone. She was still weary and feeling cold despite the blanket, which actually seemed to be an old carpet wrapped in a ragged burlap sack. She felt Twilight lie down by her side.

“What’s the matter? Every time you work yourself to the bone it’s because something’s preying on your mind.”

Applejack lay silent for a while before answering. There were no tears or shivers. She simply talked in a dead almost-monotone.

“I can’t sleep anymore without nightmares, unless I am really, really tired. Twilight, did you ever go to Canterlot Hospital? You didn’t? Good choice. Land sakes, that place was just horrible. The screaming and the weeping and that stench. I thought I’d seen it all when we got here to the castle past all them ponies, but it was nothing, Twilight. Nothing compared to the hospital."

"We were met by the doctors, and just looking at their faces scared me. They took us to see to the most pressing cases first, things that I wouldn’t have called a pony even if they presented me with signed testimonies from their mothers; they were so badly twisted. But our magic worked, Twilight. That’s the only reason why I don’t have nightmares during my waking hours too, I reckon. We used the Elements, and from under all that twistedness, filth and pus there would spring a pony, worse for wear but with nothing that bed rest wouldn’t fix."

"The looks on their faces were like honey to us. Both the doctors and the patients, I mean. Then the doctors asked us to help with the difficult cases. When we said yes they took us to the closed wards. The open wards, you see, had ponies who’d taken a beating on their bodies. In the closed wards were the ponies who’d been touched in the head by the ash. Twilight, they didn’t wanna be cured. Some were just shouting and cussing, kicking and biting at everypony who came close. Them we just blasted from a safe distance, and more often than not they’d collapse, taken by seizures. Some of them died even with the doctors being right there to help them. Some did calm down and apologise, but those were the lucky few."

"Rarity left after a couple of those, and I can’t find it in me to blame her. We all need to know how much we can bear before we break, and nopony should be asked to bear more. I think she wouldn’t have coped with the other patients anyways. The ones who became angry or sad that we’d cured them. There were some who kept shouting that we’d killed them, that they’d been promised a better life or something and we’d taken that away. Pinkie tried to cheer them up, but she had her fill when one pony we’d cured tried to bite her. She left, and I think she made the right choice because it didn’t any get better after that. The worst I saw was a unicorn with her horn sawed off. The doctors did that to her. Her horn had been touched by the ash, and she’d been blasting everypony she could see with blue-black fire, corrupting them as well. She called it a gift, and she wailed more when I cured her than when the doctors took her horn. At least, that’s what they told me."

"That was some hours past noon on our first day there, and already I was alone. I didn’t reckon the others would return, they’d seen too much, but I knew that if somepony didn’t do this now then we’d have more ponies to bury soon. Oh yeah, on the third day they took me to the morgue as well. They wanted to see if my magic could restore the dead so they could be listed in the hopes that somepony would recognize them and give them a proper burial. Well, it worked. I guess I’m glad about that. It also worked through the bags they had the bodies in, which spared me from having to do them one at a time. There were wooden coffins stacked like timber, Twilight. Ceiling high piles of them. The carpenters had run out of nails at some point and had reinforced the joints with glue and rope instead."

"So yeah, I did the closed wards all by myself. Pinkie and Rarity did have the stomach to take care of the open wards, even though the patients there were often in much worse shape. They worked just as much as I did, we simply parcelled the hospital wards between us and I took the worst places to spare them."

"I started having nightmares about the hospital after the first day. They got worse over the next days. Pinkie and Rarity have them too, and we get together to... to cry and talk about it. I think it helps, I do. But for now I’d just prefer not to dream, thank you very much, if it’s not too much to ask.”

Twilight was staring off in the distance, Applejack realised, vaguely in the direction of the hospital. The recount seemed to have stunned her to speechlessness. Applejack didn’t mind telling it, actually, she felt she’d probably lose her mind if she’d have to bottle up all that. She tried to stand but failed, falling to her side instead, causing the cart to creak as her harness tugged at it unevenly. This drew Twilight out of her shock, and she used her telekinesis to undo the harness and push away the wagon. Then she nuzzled Applejack behind the ear.

“Applejack, you’re burning up. You’ve worked yourself sick, and sleeping out in the cold can’t have helped.”

Twilight picked up Applejack with her magic, eliciting only a weak moan of protest from the normally headstrong mare, and deposited her on Twilight’s back. She started walking towards the castle.

“I’ll take you to Fluttershy. She’ll take good care of you.”

“Ummm, to Fluttershy you say? Really? Twilight, she’s in worse shape than I.”

This brought Twilight to a halt.

“What?! What’s happened?”

“You remember the Spinners, right?”

“Yes, Fluttershy arranged for them to use her cottage. Um. Why?”

Applejack finally mustered enough strength to show emotion, and even in her current condition she chose to display sympathy, grief not for her but for another.

“Twilight, I’m sorry. Fluttershy got another letter from them yesterday. It’s bad, Twilight. Really bad.”

“Oh no.”

~~~~~

Dearest Fluttershy,

I do not know how to tell you this, or even if I should. I feel you should be spared, since I am hearing so much good about you and your friends from our new neighbours, but at the same time I feel it would be wrong to hide things from you after you’ve so graciously given your house to us for an undetermined time period. I could see it in your eyes when we talked that you are a very gentle and sensitive pony, and everything around us in this cottage confirms this. So please, believe me when I say: We are grateful to you. We don’t blame you for any of this.

We had such wonderful snowfall the night before last. Big, beautiful flakes that glittered in the lamplight from the windows. Next morning the landscape was like a hearths’ warming postcard. We’ve never seen winter like this before, as Gallopwoods lay in warmer lands close to the desert. Naturally enough the children were wild with excitement. They had such a great and merry time. Even Silk, our eldest, laughed for the first time since we had to leave our home. With hearths’ warming imminent the school is closed, so we let them play in the snow under Silk’s watchful eye while we went into town to shop food and presents.

We were interrupted a couple hours later when Tale, our second oldest, called our names outside the shops. We didn’t understand him, but we rushed home. We found our youngest two inside the house, surrounded by the animals and Silk, who was hysterical. They had been eating the snow, pretending it was icecream. I don’t know how the animals knew what was going on. We pieced together later that that bunny of yours, Angel, tried to stop them, but his attempts were misinterpreted by Silk as being rude, so she’d chased him away. She couldn’t know that the snow had contained ash from the mountain.

They’re dead. Our two youngest foals are dead before they even got their cutiemarks. We took them to the hospital, of course, but there was nothing the doctors could do.

Silk took it hard. I think she blames herself, even though it wasn’t her fault in any way. She just couldn’t have known. She’s run away, I think out of some fear that we’d blame her as well. We don’t. We just want her here with us.

If you could spread the word that ponies should keep an eye out for her then we’d be grateful. She’s a unicorn, as you might remember, with a tan coat and rust red with a streak of pearl white on her mane and tail. We think she left clad in yellow boots and a scarf with white and red checkers.

If you see her, please tell her that we love her dearly and that we miss her.

Forever in your debt,

Flax & Dewdrop

Comments

[suggested123]

That dam note.

[Gypsy]

ooooooooh shiiiiiiit...DAT note.

lol don't you just hate when people die stupidly? gets me reeeeal agitated

[OutrageousOstrich]

Was it just me, or did Ruler and Scales come across as pretty casual about this whole thing?
I guess that might be intentional, but I don't really see why.

[Destructorspace]

I think that multi-paragraph quotes generally include the beginning quotation mark.

But holy shit this is an interesting read. I go!