Renege

There is a burning city. Ponies flee in terror, lungs gasping for the very air that fuels the flames that devour them. Worthless wretches damned beyond redemption by their contact, their aid of those who watched from the stars. Throats slashed and bled for the noble cause of purification. Fires burning. Bodies blazing, bleeding, blight bearing.

I was on fire. Black fire. Redemption. It stung and clung and burned and churned, whispering thousands of festering lies, of immortality if only I would turn against a country I never knew, if I could just turn other people, warn of their demise from the ones who lurk beyond the stars, watching in eternity with weapons that could wipe us out in seconds if they were ever truly acknowledged.

The feeling of everything being right in the world. The feeling of everything being right even as Celestia herself was dead before my cause, her bleached skull the death of the sister of the stars, she would lead us all to death.

The only cure is death.

In the dreams I was a pony, and that was probably my only saving’s grace from them. The lack of idea that this was actually my future, or my past. The relics of the old world had already fallen a century ago, and half of another one.

I slit throats in the dreams. Ancient puzzles presented themselves, all of them whispering that all I had to do to truly be immortal, to never die was just to linger on killing off the entire civilization. Blood was spilt like puddles scattered by rain falling from the skies and eyes of so many sightless creatures.

Melodies of victory over came visions of fillies with slit throats, bleeding out, calling for parents, kin, sisters, brothers. All of them calling in an endless cacophony of whispers that echoed on the back ground of crackling flame and explosion.

Again though. It was too late. I was a pony in the dreams, the dreams filled with carnage and death and burning and redemption beyond the grave. A civilization that I knew had already eaten the fire that haunted me, that tempted me, that dreamt its own dreams, that was desperate in its own way to finally be free to wreak the havoc it had been promised.

Eyes shut.

Sleeping is hard sometimes.

And sometimes, when I closed my eyes without sleeping, I could hear them as well. The burning. The crackling. The whispers. The promises. Ebony flames descending upon wretched wastes. I could see it all and marvel at the beauty of the designs, the power that must’ve been so tempting. And I could hear it tempting and feel it tempting...

And sometimes, when I closed my eyes without sleeping, I could hear them as well. The burning. The crackling. The whispers. The promises. Ebony flames descending upon wretched wastes. I could see it all and marvel at the beauty of the designs, the power that must’ve been so tempting. And I could hear it tempting and feel it tempting...

Children torn from families and destroyed in redeeming blazes, cut down on knives of mercy, purified from the cold touch. Look at them, they aren’t real things. They are animals led by the corruption of the stars. They worship the maiden. They worship their LUNA. They worship and they frolic and they dance.

But again. Empty dreams of things that I can’t do.

Children bleeding, their legs in shambles. It would be mercy to stop the pain for them before it would even happen...

Cut the snake’s head off and the rest shall die.

“Love Love Loving pain death echoes falling around you are not people you are to be saved destroy them savior purge purify star shine death demise.”

Blood. Burning. Sun’s blacked stars preaching their ill fated carols of things dead and dying and living still throughout it. The cold sting of fire. Blades. The thunder of guns.

Drums roll on and on and on and whisper their silent siren song of what they desire and how I would be rewarded. “Kill. Eternity waits for you if only you mark out your place. The tides of time shall never falter to honor your name and songs shall be song in your honor if only you purify and save those around you.” They beat on and on with faces and places that I once knew all contorting in the joyous burning agony of bale fire stretching on as it destroyed the taint.

Tainted. Everyone was tainted and I was the only pony who could see- I’m not a pony.

Screaming faces burning in hell and I put them there to save them from somewhere worse still than anything I can imagine for them with the eyes looking on with dead intents and unsavory things and things unmeant for eyes to see and death ending itself. Death may die with strange aeons and time was passing on and on and on and on unending, pony.

Again, my only saving grace was that I was a griffon and the dream was broken again.

Echoes...

Dreams...

Some dreams, huh? Not a wonder I’m an insomniac.

Two griffins sat at the mouth of a cave that only just cleared a thick carpet of velvety white clouds. Here and there was a jagged rock, elsewhere there were singe marks and fresh blood. The distinctive fizzle of used magic energy round ash provided its distinctive cocktail of tainted air and stone.

Battle. Enclave.

But this was not what caught the eye of the duo. One of the two griffons was much smaller than the other that made the pair. A mother and son. The mother, a beautiful griffon in her own right, instead pointed up to the twinkling stars. The child, looking away from a cracked and torn Enclave helmet, followed her lead.

“Mom? Can you tell me a story?” he asked. His eyes still twinkled with the faint innocence of youth.

The griffoness smiled at him, throwing a wing over him. “Which one? The fall of the ponies?”

The tinier griffin made a face. “You’ve told me that one five times, Mom.” His little growl that followed sounded more adorable than it did frightening.

“Have I gotten around to the Griffon’s side? The last day?” The smile slowly dropped from her face. A tiny gust of wind disturbed an ash pile, gem fragments glittering underneath like the stars above.

With barely withheld excitement, the tiny griffin shook his head rapidly. “Nope!”

“Melissa?” A rougher voice, like sandpaper drug on rock drifted out from the cave. The child let out a sigh. “Time to help sort out the loot.”

Melissa frowned and looked back at her child. “Garn...”

“Yes Mom...” He groaned, looking away. “You never get to tell me that story...” He looked like he had more to say. He pouted. “...Do you have to leave tomorrow?”

She nodded her head solemnly. “Yes, son. I do. I’ve got things that need to be done.”

He frowned. “But... can’t you spend time with me instead? You keep leaving...”

“Garn...” She sighed. “You’ll learn this some day. Out there, in the wastes? Sometimes, you’ll find something worth betting everything on. Some day, you’ll go through the same thing and you won’t let anything stop you.”

The little griffon blinked, then sighed. “Moooom... You’ll be back, right?”

For once, there was a tiny bit of hesitation. “Yeah. I’ll be back. Don’t worry about me if I take a while, ok?”

“Mom...?”

“I’ll be alright.”

He never got to hear that story.

Dust. Dust never changes.

The more things change the more things never do. Dust remains in the places where things tread, and dust is what lingers in the shadows of buildings cloaked in the mystique, the allure, indeed, the danger of what came before.

Dust...

Dust is all that remains of most of the world. A long time ago there was a war. A big one. I’m not really going to pretend to know the specifics of it, but it was between the ponies and the zebras. It was only 150 years or so ago, I think. I’m not really sure, right now...

Uh, at any rate, dust is at the beginning of things. It makes up the start of food and it is the end result of all the toils and troubles it takes to make the food, to bake it, to take it from unyielding fingers. Food is much like a secret in that regard. Except unlike food, you can’t just spit out secrets.

Sometimes, secrets cling to you, like dusty silhouettes on a wall. Sometimes even dust can get eaten away.

Secrets are what cling to the hearts of the weary, secrets of actions etched in dust. Sometimes, the secrets are of the day they’ll die,  and that nobody will mourn them. Some know the secret of futility, that one day all they have worked for will be just dust in thick unyielding layers.

But sometimes dust is nourishing. There are people who make their living out of it, who flounder around searching for the mysteries of the world. The curious. The explorers. The brave. The fearless.

The ones with questions and the will to search for answers.

Some call them stupid for risking what little life they have.

Some call them visionary.

Some call them bold.

Some call them heroes.

Some call them stupid.

To be honest, I was pretty sure that staring at what was more than likely the last moment of a pony before something atomized it fell under the latter category. I wasn’t entirely sure whether to scold whatever spectre might be remaining, or to ignore it and move on.

Kinda like a warning, an omen that this place had had ponies in it at one point.

Meh, sucked to be him.

My foot falls kicked up dust in thin clouds from the entrance. It tickled my nose for a few scant moments. I straightened out the map on the ground, just to make sure I was at the right creepy abandoned stable.

Blood stains dripping from the over used cliche dust?

Check.

More than half dead scavenger looted clean who had spread said blood?

Check again.

Stable numbered 70?

Checkaroo.

Bad feeling on the back of my neck, fur standing on end, shivers that told me this place was seriously bad news?

Yup. That was there. Absolutely Checktacular.

I drew my not so good prism pistol and checked it for any serious fractures. The dang thing could easily lose focus if I wasn’t careful. Or if I dropped it. Again.

I wasn’t exactly good at keeping up with weapons. I mean, keeping them repaired. Or stocked with ammo. Which explained why I only had a handful or so of gem packs in the ammo pack I had clipped under my left wing, and the shaky feeling that told me that taking the job from the shiny ponies was once again a horrible idea.

Steel rangers with death cannons pointed at me be damned, it was always better to bet on the death you knew than the one you didn’t.

Even if...

Oh screw it.

I gave up trying to psyche myself out of the stable ahead and squeezed myself past the massive gear face etched in loving detail with all the old world charm of a toaster getting blasted by shotgun shells. Hated toasters.

Right before my eyes I saw the exact other thing I hated. Raiders. Strewn out with hot burns searing through various parts of them. Not that I hated the dead part of them, but the raider part of them. You know, I liked them dead, so maybe I should be a fan of raiders strewn apart by various weapon fire.

Meh. I’d worry about it later.

I made my way to the charred bodies of ponies and ignored their cutie marks which probably consisted of someone being raped and covered in barbed wire while also being on fire. Ponies had weird cutie marks sometimes. Like this one I saw of-

Getting off topic again, my apologies. Right, right.

There was a cruel smell to the air. Magic burns. There were a few piles of ash, rendered bits of raider. None of them matched the profile I was after, one in a mask that reeked someone with entirely too much paint with them. Just dead bodies. Lingering billowing smoke trails leading up from the lead raider, a brown unicorn caught my eye and I nimbly danced my way over to there without a sound.

And then the stable door shut behind me with such a racket that I jumped a good five feet in the air and almost slammed my skull into the ceiling.

“Dammit Mel.” I swore. At myself. Happens sometimes, I guess.

Oh yeah. My name is Melany. Cool, huh? I’m also a griffon, if you didn’t catch that with all of the description. Female, too, if it matters.

Turning to look at my own escape, there was a chilling moment when I realized the interface console to control the door was far too rusted and degraded through to actually use.

“Oh fuck me.” The stable door might as well have been a few tons for all the effort I could’ve put to opening it. I kicked it, just to sure and swore some more. It helped a little.

Turning back to the hallway on the other side of the pile of dead bodies and ominous still smoking corpses, I swore under my breath again and went to sneaking about like the bodies were actually landmines and not just totally sick. They might’ve been raiders but somethings are just wrong.

Everyone knows you cook pony over a fire, not with magic! It ruins the flavor.

I got blood on my talons for the effort. I cursed my lack of foresight over not bringing anything resembling a towel. Blood sucks. It leaves a trail if you step in it an-

I stopped my internal monologue and stared blankly down at what was probably the one thing I didn't expect to find in the stable; a blood soaked teddy bear.

...

I followed a set of bloody tiny hoof prints over to the underside of a desk. A piece of wood was placed over it, still spattered with blood. Crimson. I lifted it up.

A pair of tiny eyes glazed in the grasp of death stared back at me. His wounds were minor, he had bled to death, slowly. He didn't even have a cutie mark yet.

...

I cleared my stomach away from the bodies. The colt I had looked at had been riddled by a few bullets, quite unlike the laser burns of the others.

In my daze and my confused disgust, I wandered past the safe zone I had explored so far, and a sudden alarm sounded, shaking me out of my haze. "...Shit." I muttered, scanning the halls.

There was nothing in the hallways. Just endless reaches of metal, bit of rust here and there. Few vaguely suspicious looking posters advertising robotics or something. The alarm was high pitched, like whining, or hissing. I focused, and heard the squeal of many wheels.

Robots. It would explain the magic burns. Not the colt, though. That was done by someone. Personally. Probably even the guy I was after.

With my luck, I wouldn’t even get a chance to take a shot at him.

Actually, with my luck, I was probably going to trip and fall flat on my face. For a prospector, I wasn’t really the luckiest soul out there. Any good explorer of the old world will tell you that sometimes luck fails, I guess.

I turned around as stealthily as I could, wishing I had had the foresight to at least get a cloak or something. Bright orange isn’t exactly the best camouflage, let me tell you.

I turned around and got my first glance at what I was dealing with. A few phosphorescent eyes were dimming with the decay of decades, there was motor oil smears where the treads and wheels of the roboponies had passed. Roboponies. Not exactly a common sight, and not what I was expecting as far as Stable security went. They looked to be in even worse shape than I had seen them before, though the chassis of them in of itself looked newer, polished. An odd phenomenon, for sure. Their brains looked properly juiced up, no sign of any real misfiring on their part. Not a clue on why they were so dead set on hunting me down.

I took out the magical energy pistol that I had taken so much care to not shatter on the ground and ducked behind a dead model of a Robopony. Couple of bullet holes blasted through the glass canopy, brain juice everywhere, pretty disgusting. Showed me that my quarry, BrokenMask was probably still around here, with plenty of ammo if I was lucky. If not, well... I’d always heard that laser burns were the more painless way to go.

“SURRENDER IN THE NAME OF STABLE 67, INTRUDER!” Huh. Synthesized voice? Nice touch.

I poked my head out of cover just long enough to send a few magical energy waves at them. Their metal armor kinda... dispersed it more than I had hoped, but I did get a lucky shot off on one the last hits and fried the brains of one. There was an awkward silence when all of the bots turned to look at their fallen compatriot. I actually felt slightly guilty, right up until hot magic rays scorched at the bot I was ducking behind.

Thanks to nothing but luck, which was something I wasn’t entirely used to having, their downed companion was just as good at deflecting fire as they were. I pulled out the internals of the bot and stashed them inside of my bag as more of a reflex than anything else. Good old fashioned scrap metal was ridiculously useful in a pinch. Couple of bolts this place and here, wish I had a pipbuck to help keep up with this stuff...

Right, back on track. A blob of green eldritch horror goo, Magiplasma whizzing by before a lucky shot melted the bot I was using for cover. In another second I was diving behind the corner of the hall way.

Again, I was full of luck. Not what I was used to, but still, welcome. The corner of the hallway almost immediately switched to a door that led to yet another hallway with even more doors. I pressed myself against the wall and held my breath as an almost literal stampede of wheeled and treaded roboponies surged by. It was like something out of an old holotape, with them just barely missing me in their odd incompetence.

They were all close enough that I could touch them. They were domed, to be sure. I took in the site of their domed heads, brains almost poking out and kept right on watching their mockery of the equine form. Ugh. It was something out of someone else’s nightmares, to be sure, with their chrome skeletal forms armed to the teeth with the various built in weapons.

If anything, I was so out gunned, out numbered and otherwise out done that there was hardly a reason to even begin to bother myself with how likely it was that I was to be double crossed if I emerged from the stable, though that did worry a distressingly large part of me.

More importantly, as I checked my ammo again as more of a reflex than anything else, I realized I didn’t even have half as many shots as robo ponies. The very next second, I dove into a small room, a residential room, with a bed and drawers, then behind that bed as a robo pony rolled by with eerie quiet. As with... most moments... my luck was that of a dying cat stepping on caltrops.

I hit my head on something long, hard, and splintering, and barely avoided swearing loud enough to wake the dead, much less that of the robo pony patrol that was near.

Baseball bat.

I paused for a moment, feeling up behind my head and avoiding the lump that was forming. I had hit a baseball bat.

Glass dome.

Baseball bat.

Don’t play ball near the windows...

I picked up the baseball bat with a near face splitting glasglow grin. Ponies hadn’t played baseball in a good long time, and neither had griffons, but here, here I was going to have a good ol’ time playing some hard ball.

I hefted the baseball bat experimentally. Things were going to-

“ATTENTION STABLE 70. A ROGUE ENTITY, POSSIBLY A SOLDIER FROM THE SURFACE HAS INVADED. SHE IS BELIEVED TO BE A RUTHLESS SLAYER OF INNOCENTS. CAUTION IS ADVISED. I repeat, a rogue entity has invaded the stable and has penetrated our defences.”

Wow. Little ol’ me? Declared a soldier?

Those were my thoughts, right before I heard a distant explosion. Either they were incompetent at living...

Or someone else was in here with me.

Probably my quarry.

Damn. And all I wanted to do was lay low for a bit.

Fucking Talonto Ponies.

Level up, Melany! Level 2 reached.

Traits picked!

Insomniac: Due to your... curiousity... You can go up to three days without taking sleep penalties. However, after three days, you take sleep penalties at three times the normal rate.

Curious: You have a habit of being rather... cattish. You know, you put your beak into everything. It pays off, most of the time. You get 15% more stuff when you examine and explore.

Perk obtained!

Magically Attuned! You can use magic. Naw, just kidding, you’re not a unicorn sillly! You are attuned to using magical energy weapons! You’ve gained +10 to your skill.