Rescue Process (6) (Patreon)

Days passed in the camp. Lincoln was only vaguely aware of the passage of time, blurring together from the blaring bells in the morning to the whole-body fatigue in the evening.

It didn’t take her long to break down and eat the food, however strange it felt. Night was right about one thing: hay didn’t taste as bad as Lincoln expected it would. Whether it was because she was hungry enough not to care about the taste, or her new body was affecting her judgment—either way, she stopped caring much after the third day. 

Some things were harder to forget about, of course. Working in the sorting room each day, separating at night to clean up with the “mares,” more painful reminders of what else she’d lost in her transformation.

At least she wasn’t left alone to cope with the other details. What little time she had to talk with the other captives revealed a significant majority were fellow prisoners from Earth. They all had the same challenges—losing their hands, their clothes, and the common comforts of everyday life.

“When I get back, I’m gonna take the longest, hottest shower in the world,” Shauna said, during a quiet conversation on the sorting line. So long as the ponies weren’t slowing things down, few dogs cared much if they were talking. But some did, so knowing who might be listening was critically important.

That day, none bothered.

“Want to feel it on my skin again. Instead of this stuff.” Shauna flexed her wings, scattering dust from the feathers. 

“Not a shower—hot bath,” Zoe said. “Bath bomb, candles, glass of chilled wine, and the trashiest show on TV.”

“Do you think we’ll change all the way back?” asked a timid voice from the other side. Ethan. He was also a pegasus, a little lean and bony from the awful conditions underground. Some of those feathers had lost their color, or just fallen out completely. Lincoln had no idea how to judge pony ages, but she guessed his voice to be an early high schooler.

“No reason to think otherwise,” Shauna said. She fell silent for another minute, as they shifted through another load of ore. That day Lincoln’s job was much easier, just pushing aside anything that wasn’t metallic from her row and dumping the rest into a collecting bin.

“If people can change into ponies, they can change back. You won’t have green hair when you go back to school.”

He nodded. Maybe that was enough for Shauna, but Lincoln was standing right next to him. She’d learned to recognize that dissatisfied wing-shake from her own body. Ethan wasn’t happy about something but didn’t want to say so.

Lincoln kept her voice down, not quite a whisper—some others would hear. But it wasn’t like she was trying to keep secrets from anyone. “You don’t wanna change back?”

Ethan looked up, meeting her eyes. His tail curled around his back leg, and he didn’t say anything at first. “I do. I wanna go home, see my family, be human again. Just not... everything.”

Lincoln wasn’t exactly sure what gave her the courage to keep talking. She had considerable insight into what Ethan might mean, even if everyone around her wouldn’t. No reason for them to suspect it was even possible, after all.

“Were you not a guy before?”

Ethan’s wings went stiff. His limbs froze on the controls, and he nearly missed the next block of ore rolling towards them. Lincoln reached over with one wing, shoving him until he moved. 

He didn’t answer right away—not until the load was past, and no one else was watching. “Not all the way. I don’t wanna give that up.”

He met Lincoln’s eyes again, expression furious. “Go ahead, say it.”

She looked away, pretending to be very, very interested in the sorting machine. “I hope we get out of here. Maybe you can find out.”

He relaxed, wings slumping back into position. “Yeah. First things first. There are worse things than being a horse.”

Lincoln barely said another word through the rest of the shift. She should’ve been thrilled—someone else knew exactly what she was going through! She wasn’t some unique freak. If it happened to her and Ethan, it probably meant others had suffered it too.

She couldn’t brush it off that easily, not when Ethan spoke with such confidence and relief. He wanted this. So, what was wrong with her?

[hr]

That night went more or less the same as it always did. Awful food, freezing water, then some time spent in the secret cavern with the dozen other ponies preparing for their eventual escape. 

Not everyone wanted to help with the escape—plenty were like Night, too confident in their eventual rescue, or else too terrified of the consequences to do anything. 

Not all the formerly human prisoners gathered in that cavern, but everyone who did show up had human names. 

“Sent out the last shipment tonight,” Shauna was saying, pacing nervously next to the shelf of makeshift weapons. “Not sure how many dogs. A ton.”

“Why don’t they bring ponies to pull the carts?” Thomas asked. “Some of us are stronger than they are. The... earth ponies.”

“Must not want the others to realize they keep ponies as slaves,” Winston said. “If the princesses are half as strong as the locals think, they wouldn’t want to attract attention. They can’t rescue who they can’t find.”

“Doesn’t matter the reason. This is the best chance we’re gonna get.” That got their attention. Everyone in the little cavern stopped what they were doing to watch, anticipation thick in the air. Fear too—it was one thing to talk about an escape, but something completely different to try and do it.

“Tonight?” Lincoln asked. “Right now?”

Shauna laughed. “Not after a workday. Everyone’s exhausted. Besides—we’d have to get the gate open. But if we wait until tomorrow—everyone gets to sleep, and they’ll get it open for us.”

Lincoln retreated towards Thomas. She couldn’t use a crossbow like him, couldn’t hold and aim it with her wings. Any dog who wanted could pick her up and break her in half. “What’s the plan?”

“Not very complicated.” Shauna lifted something from under the makeshift table—a tightly wrapped scroll.

She spread it onto the desk between them, flattening it out with her wings. “We’re three levels down. Best we can tell, there are three locked gates between us and the surface. First one is on our camp. Then there’s this one that goes to the mine. After that, there’s just the one blocking the exit to surface level.”

“What about the cave that brought us here?” Lincoln asked. “Won’t we have to come back here to go home? Maybe we should go there instead.”

“We don’t know how it works,” Zoe said. “Even if we can get it to let us across, it would still be here. The locals would be trapped, and anyone else who falls through that hole after us.”

“Agreed.” Shauna tapped the map again. “Everything the locals say about their country suggests they’re strong, and they don’t stand for letting their citizens get abused. If we lead them here, they can take care of the dogs. However going home works, presumably they can figure that out too. I’d like to have my body back when we go through, as exciting as these wings are.”

Shauna went over the map in detail, explaining each potential roadblock and the various contingencies they had planned. They had several backups in mind, other routes they could try if the dogs cornered them, or some locks were harder to force than others.

“There’s one last thing to stress here,” Shauna said, as soon as all the weapons were dispersed, and everyone knew their part in the plan.

“This is a war. Some of us will get hurt. We might even die. If we don’t, they will. From the first shot, this is all or nothing. If we surrender once we start, we never get this chance again. If any of you aren’t willing to fight, now’s the time to say so.”

A few ponies shifted nervously, sharing frightened glances with their friends. Would anyone back out now? Was anyone too afraid to fight?

Thomas hefted the crossbow in front of him. Up close, the motion resembled a pair of arms, though of course there were none. Just a faint glow on the edge where fingers would’ve been. “Lin and I aren’t going to be their slaves another day. We’re not asking for their permission, we’re going home.”

She took one step closer to him. He sounded so confident, so brave—braver than she could ever be on her own. She didn’t mind borrowing a little of his courage.

“Well said.” Winston patted his shoulder with one hoof. “We got this. Would be nice if the natives helped too, though. We’re breaking them out.”

“Not a word to any of them,” Shauna said, blocking the exit with her wing. “Seriously. I know at least one pony who might warn the dogs what we’re planning. Better for nobody to get hurt. Leave the weapons in here but come straight in when I wake you. Quiet as you can. Everyone.”

“Or we lose. We get tortured some more,” Lincoln muttered. “They take our weapons and watch us like hawks going forward.”

“Exactly. Hopefully they decide to join in once the fighting starts. If not—at least they’ll stay out of the way.”

They broke after that, trickling back out of the little cavern. Lincoln slunk off with Thomas, crawling into their makeshift shelter.

A few weeks of sharing it had resulted in an equilibrium of sorts, with Lincoln sleeping off in one corner, and Thomas in the center with most of the sheets. Something about her pegasus feathers did a far better job of keeping her warm through the night, so she didn’t mind.

Besides, no matter how far apart she went when they turned out the lights, she always tended to be closer to him by morning. More of those horse instincts getting in the way of things. 

Without a word exchanged between them, they’d just decided not to get awkward about it. Personal dignity could wait for after they were out of this place, and back in their own bodies.

“You really mean all that?” she whispered, when the lights were out and everyone else was in their shelters. Most nights were quiet, with only a few words exchanged before bed. Tonight, anticipation trumped tiredness. “You never seemed like much of a fighter.”

He rolled over, opening one eye. “No one ever locked me in a cell and made me pull a cart before. If they’re going to give me a reason, I’ll oblige. You won’t?”

“I... of course I will. I just won’t be as useful as you. Since I’m..." She lifted one leg weakly, then set it back down again. “Not big enough to make a difference. Too bad the magical cave stuck wings on me instead of a horn.”

 She wasn’t sure Thomas was still listening. He didn’t say anything for a long time, so long that Lincoln wondered if he’d already fallen asleep.

“Sorry I was so hard on you. About... getting us stuck here. You were just trying to go see some cool cave. No one could expect this. There’s no such thing as magic portals or changing into stuff.”

Lincoln sniffed. Her face turned hot, and something wet streaked down her cheek. Obviously, she didn’t blame herself, how could she know climbing through a cave would bring them here?

But hearing him say it...

She wiped her face against the dirty blankets. “Yeah? I’m... g-glad. I promise never to invite you to anything again. When we get back home, you can delete my number if you want, and forget this ever happened.”

He patted her shoulder with one leg. “Let’s just focus on making it that far, okay? We have to live through tomorrow.”

“Hopefully by escaping,” she said. “Making it to Equestria, like Shauna said.”

“Hopefully. But one way or another, I’m not letting them throw me back here.”