Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 27: Salvage

Equestria: Project Horizons
By Somber
Chapter 27: Salvage
"Bah! Trixie is exhausted from performing feats beyond imagination. Begone with you until morning!"
The halls of 99 echoed around me with the screams of a dying stable as I lay in the center of the atrium. A thousand years seemed to pass, the wall rusting before my eyes, the bodies moldering, liquefying, black fungus spreading from their corpses as the metal pitted and corroded. Acidic water hissed and bubbled in pools that slowly ate their way through the floor and covered the walls in a caustic sheen.
Through it all I lay there. Not dead. I didn't get that blessing. I couldn't move. Didn't want to move. I simply listened to the dripping. The hissing. The groaning of stressed metal. The clatter of breaking glass or tumbling ceramics. The pressure forced the burning chemical I'd unleashed into every pore of my body like countless fiery razors. Still, I lived. I didn't deserve to die. That was for better ponies... like my friends.
I wasn't alone, though. Not alone. He was here too, with his hat and watery pale eyes. He hadn't come for me. He wouldn't take me. I'd broken, but I still wasn't gone. I just wanted to die, move into the everafter... become whatever ponies became when life was over and done with. But he wouldn't take me. My stable. My mother. My friends. But not me.
"Is this Hell?" I whispered.
"If so, does that make me the devil?" he asked in return.
There was nothing to say as the pressure built more and more. Nothing to do but wait, lie there for another thousand years. I dropped like a rag doll to the level below as the floor rotted out beneath me. And the level below that. And the next. Then, finally, I landed in the liquefied remains of Stable 99. Only the pitted feces-colored metal shell of the stable remained, the armor keeping the Wasteland out and the poison in. Submerged talismans still bubbled, still faithfully pumping out more and more of the gas.
The Dealer sat on a long jagged spur of metal resembling a severed gray wing. That vast shell groaned and creaked above me. Beneath me. Within me. From far above, a massive stable door, sealed by centuries of corrosion, gave. A hurricane wind blasted the rubble-choked tunnel beyond clear. A shriek like the screams of so long ago. The wind slackened, and died.
With one final bending, breaking, tearing cry, that armored shell gave way, and the hilltop collapsed inward as if under the hoof of an angry goddess. Finally, I thought... annihilated with a smile.

~ ~ ~

"She's waking up? Sedate her!" some mare cried distantly.
"We did! She's not responding to the Med-X!" another answered. Distant blurry lights entered my vision. And pain, but I was used to pain by now. I reached for that blur, pushing through the darkness. If I was alive, then Glory might be as well. All my friends might still be alive! I couldn't lie here and do nothing!
A wave pushed me back towards the black, but I refused to succumb. "Sweet Celestia, she's still waking up! Bluebell!"
"I already cast it again," the mare panted breathlessly, "it's not working!" I could see faces now. Bloody faces in paper masks. Unicorns. They had scalpels and little bloody scissors hovering over me. My chest and gut burned as I pulled together my focus. One unicorn's horn flashed, trying to push me back into Stable 99. I fought that urge to sleep. To dream. I'd kill them all. Teal eyes widened in shock as I stared back into them, pulling together a bullet spell as I slowly sat upright. "What is she doing? Hold her down! Get her under, now!"
"Won't... let... you..." I choked around a tube in my mouth, my horn glowing white as I readied a shot right at her head. Then hooves grabbed my shoulders and forced me back down. I saw bucks in filthy white coats stained and spotted in blood. "Glory..." I rasped around the tube. "Glory!" I shouted, then choked.
"Get a memory orb!" The unicorn mare ordered as I struggled. I felt something inside me tear, but I ignored it. It didn't matter how much I hurt now. I had to get free. I had to save my friends. "Security! Calm down! We're trying to help you."
A lie. They were Enclave. Or Sanguine. Or somepony that was going to sell me out... betray me. My horn flashed as I struggled, and one of the bucks yelped as my bullets bit into his flank. Somepony blinded me with a rag across my eyes. I fired wildly, desperately. Another sedating surge washed through me like a blanket, the lethargy blurring away the rest of my senses.
A glassy sphere was pressed to my horn but I resisted... fought. I had to get free! I had to help my friends! Glory! I had to help Glory.
"Come on you stubborn idiot!" the unicorn mare said, grinding the orb against my horn. "Let me save you!" Not me, you idiot! Help her! Her wing... sweet Goddesses, her wing...
Please...
I tried to fire another bullet, but my concentration slipped away. There was a spark... no, Glory! I had to find Glory and all my friends. "Gluh... Reeee..." I choked, feeling myself cut open and my organs exposed to the chilly air. Then my horn spasmed, and the connection was made. The world faded away.
Glory...