Fallout Equestria: Recovery

I was in and out of consciousness for some time. I would wake up for a few seconds and hear somepony talking. I couldn’t tell who or what about before I passed out again. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of somepony behind a curtain, but the shadow was too indistinct to tell who it was. Each time I would wake up my head felt like it was caught in a spiral and my body was burning.

When I finally came to, my head was pounding and cloudy. Looking around the room. I was in a clinic. Medical supplies laid on a table nearby and I was surrounded by a green curtain. It looked a lot like the one in the Stable, only this one had walls of slightly rusted sheet metal. How the hell did I get here?

I went to rub my eyes but I couldn't move my leg. Actually, I couldn’t even feel it. I started to panic before jolting my head to look. Thankfully it was still attached, but the sudden jerk of my head shot pain through my head from the base of my skull.. There was an IV stuck in my leg, which I assumed was responsible for the lack of feeling. I let my head fall back onto the pillow and let out a sigh of relief.

I hadn’t actually taken a look at my leg until now. I had been stripped out of my barding and got a full view of it now. The gash the robot ponies gun had given me was larger than I thought it was, it was being held shut by some stitches. The fur around it had been shaved off, the skin was a sickening green.

The door creaked open and somepony approached the curtain. Daisy grabbed it with her mouth and swung it open. She had a clipboard and pencil strapped to her side.

“Finally awake I see. You gave us all quite a scare back there.” She said with a smile.

I rubbed my head with my working leg. “Yeah... what am I doing here?”

She cocked her head. “You don’t remember hollering your flank off and passing out yesterday?”

Oh... right. “Sorry, I don't know what came over me. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

She huffed. “With a fever as high as yours was, I would have been surprised if you were. I think that, plus the stress from the bad news yesterday, was a little much for ya. You had a pretty serious infection. You really should have let someone take a look at that leg. You’re pretty lucky you didn’t lose it. Now I’m gonna ask you this again. and your answer better be ‘I’m fine’: How are you feeling?”

“Awful.”

Daisy chuckled at that. “You and your brother are stubborn as hell, you know that? You should have seen him. Yesterday, after we brought you in and treated ya, he decided to do some target practice with that revolver of his. I've never seen such a bad shot, I don’t think he ever hit a target. He refused to stop until he hit something though.”

It hurt my head to laugh. “I don’t think Deadbolt would appreciate you telling me that.” He probably also wouldn’t appreciate us being compared in any way. I looked back down at my leg. “Is it okay that I can’t feel my leg?”

She waved me off. “Don’t worry ‘bout that. I numbed it while I was working on ya. It’ll start wearing off here pretty soon. That IV should help clear up the infected skin. You should be out of here in a few hours.”

“Thanks Daisy, you guys have helped us so much.”

She just gave me a smile. “I’d say we’re about even now.”

“Yeah...” That's when I remembered something. “How’s Rose?”

“Shes doing just fine, Rivet. Took some convincing to get her out of here and to go to sleep last night. She’s been rightly worried about ya. Hold on a minute, I’ll go tell her you're awake.”

She hung the clipboard on the end of the bed and trotted out. My curiosity got the better of me. I levitated the clip over to me. Then almost immediately put it back. I couldn’t read anything Daisy had written on the thing. I guess writing with your mouth is a bit hard.

Was Rose really talking again? She hadn’t made so much as a sound in the last few days. All I could think of was how much I wanted to hear her voice again. Time seemed to move slower waiting for Daisy to come back.

I laid my head back down. It was still pounding, though I was feeling better than I had yesterday. My body wasn’t burning up anymore and my leg didn’t feel like a knife was jammed in it, though that was probably because it was numbed.

The door swung open again and Daisy returned with Rose and Deadbolt. Rose galloped up to me ahead of them.

“Thank Celestia you're alright!” The ruby mare said dashing up to the side of my bed. Her voice was better than any medicine Daisy could possibly give me. All of the stress from the last few days melted away. Rose was finally talking again, talking a lot actually. I was too busy smiling at her to pay attention though.

“Hey! are you even listening?” She snapped.

I wrapped my uninjured foreleg around her neck and hugged her.

“Um, Rivet? Are you okay?”

I let go of her. “Yeah, I'm just fine.” That drew a smile onto her face. That was another thing I had missed.

“Touching.” Deadbolt said dryly. ”Can we get serious now?”

Rose turned to him. “Deadbolt you could at least act like you were concerned for your brother.”

“He looks fine to me.” He said flatly. “We need to talk about what we’re going to do.”

Daisy stepped in. “No, no ,no. Rivet is still under my care. He needs to relax while he’s in here. There will be no stressful talk of plans until he's out. Besides Steadfast said you guys can stay here as long as you want, so there will be plenty of time to talk later.”

Deadbolt let out a groan and turned to leave.

“Did you seriously only come to make plans and not to see if your little brother was alright?” Rose asked him incredulously.

“Yes I did.” The brown unicorn didn’t even bother to turn back to answer and left.

“I can’t believe him. Its like he does care at all!” Rose complained.

I shrugged. “He does care, he just doesn’t like to show it.”

Frankly, I was surprised he even came at all. I always liked to think I could read Deadbolt, he was always angry or mean but there were levels to it, and coming in here and being rude was the “I might be upset if you had died” level. Which is about as nice as I ever got from him.

The numbness in my leg was starting to fade. Daisy decided it was time to check her work. “You had a bit of shrapnel in your leg, I had to go digging around to get it all out. I just want to make sure that everything's in check. Tell me if this hurts.” She took her pencil and pressed it against my leg.

“Ow!”

“Oh you baby.” Rose laughed as Daisy pressed the pencil down again. She did the check a few times going down my leg. She was not gentle about jabbing me.

“Alrighty, everything seems fine. You have your feeling back in your leg. I’m gonna have to ask you not to run on it for a while though, might tear the stitches. I still want you to stay here until the skin clears up though.” The doctor said through her pencil as she scribbled something down on the clipboard.

“Daisy, I really am feeling fine now. I think I’d be fine to go.”

Daisy just eyed me angrily.

“Okay, I'll stay.”

I spend the next few hours in the clinic. Daisy was adamant about not letting me leave until she was sure the infection was completely gone, I didn’t blame her but I really did feel fine. She also made me promise over a dozen times that I would go see her next time I had an injury, regardless of how minor.

We made our way through the dusty roads of Marefield. From further away, most of the houses seemed almost ramshackle, but they were surprisingly sturdy if just a little rusty. The streets were as busy as they were yesterday. Ponies rushing around working and trading with each other, a few foals and fillies playing around. I hadn’t taken time to appreciate the town until now. Sure, it was dirty, rusted and outside the walls was a dry wasteland, but still, Marefield seemed almost idyllic compared to life elsewhere. It was drastically different from Stable 12, where you were either going to or coming from your job assignment.

Rose and I were making our way back to the Rest-Stop when we saw Steadfast and another Earth-pony guard talking, I couldn’t hear what it was about but Steadfast looked angry, but from the looks of it, not at the guard, more so about what they were talking about.

The guard left as we approached. “Dammit.” Steadfast said to himself, as he kicked up some dirt, unaware we were behind him.

“Something wrong?”

He looked back at us confused for a second. “Oh, Rivet, good to see your feeling better. Don’t worry about it.” There was clearly something on his mind.

“Come on Steadfast, what's bothering you? maybe we can help.” Rose asked him.

He bit his lip as he scowled. “Well, you see, we’ve been having some trouble with the caravans lately.”

“What kind of trouble?”

He shrugged. “That's the thing. We don’t rightly know. We were supposed to get one in last night but they haven't showed up yet.”

“Could it be the Organization getting back at you for hiding us?” I couldn’t help but think it might have been our fault. The pegasus had seen us yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were behind this.

The grey stallion shook his head. “I highly doubt it, this isn't the first one to disappear on us recently. Two others have gone missing in the last few months. If this keeps up ponies are gonna start looking for another way to get to the Las Pegasus area. If that happens, Marefield might be in some trouble.”

“Why don’t you send someone to check out what's happening to them?” Rose asked the charcoal-maned pony.

He sighed. “We would but we need to keep most of our guards here and I doubt anypony would be willing to volunteer to go if they didn’t have to. Most of the ponies in town never leave; they have almost no experience in the wasteland”

Then Rose did exactly what I expected her to do. She volunteered us. “We could go take a look.” Rose liked to help ponies, even if they didn’t ask for it. Usually that meant Deadbolt getting mad at me. In this case however, I would actually be glad to help too.

He shook his head again. “No, Deadbolt said that you guys are being tracked. If you guy ran into the Organization while out there I would be responsible for getting you three killed. Besides you have even less experience than the ponies who never leave town.”

“We fought our way of a Stable filled with insane raiders, escaped the Organization once already, and freed your doctor from some ponies who planned to sell her into slavery. I think we can handle ourselves.” Steadfast opened his mouth to argue, but Rose continued, “And what? Are we supposed to just wait around and hope the Organization doesn’t decide to attack the town looking for us. You guys have helped us so much, its time we started paying you guys back.” She failed to mention the facts that we barely escaped the Stable, and that they didn’t even bother to chase us after we got out. Not too mention we let the raiders who had captured Daisy too kill the other pony they had.

Steadfast opened his mouth again. Rose gave him an expression she gave me quite often back in the Stable. It was her “I'm helping regardless of what you say” look.

The guard sighed. “Fine, but I'm coming with you.”

“Didn’t you just say you needed all the guards here?”

Steadfast gave a nod. “I did, but we can spare one guard. As long as it's just me going we’ll be fine. So if we’re going, I would like to make it fast. Get ready to leave as soon a possible. I’ll meet you by the gate.”

“Alright. now we just got to convince Deadbolt to help.” I said as we trotted back to the Rest-Stop in the center of town.

When we got back to the Rest-Stop Deadbolt had taken off his Stable 12 barding and was putting it into the locker. It had been a while since I saw his wrench and bolt cutie mark. Our bardings covered most of body so a lot of the time you couldn’t see someones cutie mark.

“What are you doing?” I asked

He closed the locker. “Getting out of that damn barding. I'm sick of wearing it.”

It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I didn't have to wear mine anymore. It seemed weird to think about not having it on all the time. I looked down at mine. You could see the last few days on it. A few small holes were torn in the right foreleg, where I had taken a shotgun shell from far range, the left had the gash where the guns from the robot pony had glanced me. It had mud stains as well as some small splashes of red, not all of it was my blood either. I actually liked my barding though. It seriously needed a wash and some repairs, but I didn’t want to get rid of it. I looked at Rose. Her’s was ripped, it had been torn off her by a raider trying to have his way with her. You could see the rose cutie mark where it was torn off her legs.

“Oh, well we need to talk about something.”

He turned and raised his eyebrow.

“We’ve decided to help Steadfast with a problem he's been having. Some caravans have apparently been disappearing. We’re gonna go check out what's happening to them.” I explained

“Are you two crazy?” He didn’t share Rose's enthusiasm for helping out Marefield. “If we leave we run risk of getting captured by the Organization. I say we don’t leave the town unless completely necessary.”

“So your plan is to mooch off of Marefield as long as they’ll let you?”

He sat down on one of the beds. “I never said anything about mooching off the ponies here. I'm just saying we should play it safe. If we’re going to help, we should do it around town.” he huffed.

“Steadfast said they don’t have enough guards to be able to send some out to investigate. Besides, Steadfast said he wanted to make it fast, we’ll go, see what's happening and get back before the Organization even know we’ve left Marefield.”

Deadbolt seemed to actually think about it for a moment, then said, “I don’t think it's a good idea.”

“Fine then, you can stay here. Rivet and I are going.” Rose said definitively.

He groaned. “Luna dammit. Fine, I'll help.”

Steadfast was waiting for us by the gates when we got there, he had dawned some rough looking clothes made of some thick cloth. Deadbolt had decided to only take his knife, he gave the revolver to Rose.

“Maybe you’ll actually be able to hit something with that.” Steadfast said to Rose while giving Deadbolt a wry smile.

Rose and I chuckled at that. Daisy had told me about Deadbolt’s shooting, and apparently Steadfast had seen it too. Deadbolt just glared at us.

“Thought you guys might need these.” On the ground in front of him were three saddle bags, they were made out of the same rough material as the clothes he was wearing. We each put one on. They each has a small holster for smaller weapons; I put my pistol in it. It would be nice to not have to carry it everywhere anymore.

“Alright, you guys ready to head out?” Steadfast already had his giant rifles strapped to his sides. I didn’t want to get into any kind of fight, but I did kind of want to see how those things worked.

I checked the ammo I had for my pistol. Two full magazines worth. Rose also checked how much she had for her revolver.

“Yep, lets get going.”

Steadfast gave a wave to the unicorn guards and the large gates were soon engulfed in the glow from there magics and opened. We crossed out into the wasteland and they closed behind us.

“So which way are we heading?” I asked looking at the split road. It went off in three directions North, east and west.

Steadfast pointed down the road to the north. “We’re heading up north to Trottingham. That's where the caravans come from on there way through. They stop in Marefield before heading out to the Las Pegasus area; that's where the west road goes. They usually stop in New Pegasus before making a circle around to all the smaller settlements, then head back up north. the east road there will take you to Whinneypeg.”

“What about south?” Deadbolt asked

Steadfast just shook his head slightly. “There ain’t nothing to the south. Just a giant dessert. We call it the Barrens, you won’t make it very far down there, even if you do have plenty of water. There are some seriously nasty creatures down there. Let's get going, I’d like to find the caravan before dark.”

The road seemed to stretch on forever in a straight line. The only thing blocking the view were two large mountains standing next to each other. They each had a strange spiral formation that went from top to bottom of the mountains. The area around Marefield seemed almost entirely barren. Most of the vegetation we saw amounted to some blackened trees and some old dead bushes, with the occasional tumbleweed.

Every now and then a red light would flash up on my EFS. But steadfast said it was probably just some Geckos or Rad-Hogs, and they probably wouldn’t attack us in a group like this. It still made me nervous whenever one showed up though.

We passed a large two story ruined building on the way. A large section of the building had collapsed in on itself. The sign on the top of the building was missing a few letters and read Fe_ru Te_hnol_g_es.

Discovered: Ferrum Technologies

“Oh really?” I said aloud, looking at my Pip-buck.

“What was that?” Rose asked, turning her head back to me.

“Huh? Oh, nothing.”

We walked for a few hours before deciding to take a rest. We found a small overhang and sat under it for some shade. The walking wasn’t so bad, but the heat seemed to sap the energy from me. We sat around and ate some fruit Deadbolt had bought earlier that day.

Steadfast took a large bite of his apple. “So Rivet, I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

He pointed to my Pip-Buck. “About that chip you got. You said you found it in the Stable, right?”

“Um, yeah, why?” I asked, confused.

“Well, that means it was put there by Stable-tech back before the war right?” He asked rhetorically.

I nodded. “Yeah, so what?”

“Well I was thinking, and I might have an idea where you could find out more about it.”

I paused mid-bite. “Wait, what?”

He scratched the back of his head. “I'm not one hundred percent on this, but maybe one of the old Stable-tech buildings would still have something about it. A surprising amount of those old terminals still work you know.”

“Do you know where any of the old buildings are?” If there was a chance at finding out what Y34RK was I wanted to try it.

“I know of two. One is out near New Pegasus, but I can’t suggest you guys head out that way. The Organization does most of its ‘business’ through the Las Pegasus area. That leaves the one up in Trottingham. When we get back to Marefield I can find a map and show where it is. Assuming that they haven't been taken over by raiders or are infested with some kind of creatures or simply collapsed by now I would say that those are your best bet.” He explained

He might just be right about that .If we were going to get anything it would probably be something from Stable-tech. That's probably how the Organization found out about it. Steadfast said they were going around taking any pre-war tech they could get, an old Stable-tech building would probably be full of pre-war technology.

“You can’t be serious. You're still thinking about trying to figure out what that thing is?” Deadbolt asked. “I still say you should ditch it.”

“Yes, I am. At least until I know what it is. After that we’ll just have to see.” I’m not sure why but I felt like I needed to know what was so important about it.

“I'm with Rivet,” Rose said tilting her head in my direction, “I wanna know why that thing is so important to them too.”

Steadfast looked up at the layer of clouds above us. It looked like they were starting to get darker. “Hmm, looks like it might rain.” he grimaced.

Rose gave him a concerned look. “Is that bad?”

He shrugged. “Depends. It doesn’t rain too often around here but when it does, it comes down hard. But as long as its not a lightning storm we should be fine.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I had only ever read about lightning, but it didn't sound like something I'd want to encounter. “Lightning storm?”

“Yeah, storms get pretty bad around here. It can be pretty dangerous to travel in them. If it comes to it we’ll need to find some shelter and wait it out.” He explained. “We should get moving again. Even if it doesn’t rain, its going to be pretty dark by the time we reach The Horns.”

We all threw the rest of our food and water back into our backs and headed out. I looked up at the darkening clouds. We’ve been out of the Stable for almost five days and looking up at the sky still gave me vertigo. I pulled my eyes off the cloud layer and shook my head. “I hope it doesn’t storm.”

We still had quite a bit of walking left to do. Daisy said she didn’t want me running on my leg for a while. She never said anything about long hikes, but I still didn't put too much weight on my bad leg.

“How far do we plan on going before we head back?” Deadbolt asked.

Steadfast pointed to the twin mountains in front of us, we were getting nearer but it would still be a few hours walk to get there. “I'm willing to go just past the Horns, if we can’t see the caravan by the time we get out of the pass we’re heading back.” The gray stallion clearly didn’t want to stay out of Marefield long.

It was getting late when we reached the base of the mountains. The clouds had darkened and had become almost black. As we approached the mountains my Pip-buck popped on with another message

Discovered: The Horns.

Seriously, how did this thing know where I was before I did?

“Why are they called the Horns?” I asked Steadfast

“Well take a look at 'em. The spiral that goes around them makes ‘em look like unicorn horns.” He chuckled.

I thought about how they looked when we were in the distance. Maybe I didn’t have much an imagination , because they definitely just looked like mountains to me and not horns; But I didn’t feel like debating it.

There was a pass between the two mountains. Each side was a sheer, high cliff face of red and brown rock. The pass however was the black and gray broken up road that we had been following all day. It wasn’t very narrow; it had plenty of room for the four of us to walk side-by-side comfortably. In the middle of the pass we finally caught sight of the caravan.

There were two wagons. Both of them were toppled over, and broken apart. The ground was stained red around where the wagons were. Laying there, still attached to one of the wagons was the corpse of some creature. It had red-brown skin that was wrinkled, but more surprising than its strange, gross skin, was the fact that it had two heads. One of the necks had a large chunk taken out, responsible for a pool of blood the creature laid in. Its stomach had been torn open, something had made a meal of it. The stench coming off of it was almost enough for me to vomit. That combined with seeing its insides made it take a lot of willpower not to do so.

“Brahmin. We use ‘em to pull the wagons.” Steadfast explained as I looked at the weird creature. “Looks like something came by and found some dinner.”

“Where are all the other bodies?” Deadbolt asked in a solemn tone.

I took a look around. He was right, this was the only body here. No ponies and no other brahmin to pull the second wagon.

“That's a good question. There should have been at least a trader and two guards per wagon, not to mention one more Brahmin.” Steadfast said as he looked around. “Seven bodies don’t just disappear.”

“Hey guys, take a look at this!” Rose called from around the other side of the wagon. She was looking in a crate that had fallen off when the wagon flipped.

We all gathered and she threw the lid off. It was full of bottles and vials of some red liquid. Some had busted open on impact but there was still a few left in tact.

“Healing potions?” Steadfast seemed surprised to seem them there. He looked at them for a moment before quickly moving over to open another box. “There's ammo still in this one.”

I used my magic to open another. “This one’s full of food.” I called back to them.

Deadbolt opened another. “Clothes here.”

Steadfast furrowed his brow and bit his lip. “Who the hell attacks a caravan and doesn’t take the supplies? I don’t know anypony that dumb.”

A loud rumble shook through the sky. I nearly leapt out of my fur. “What the hell was that?” I asked looking up at the sky. I started to get dizzy as soon as I did and firmly planted my eyes back to the ground.

“Damn, that's thunder. Its going to storm soon.” He said looking up as well. “Grab whatever you can carry, we’ll need to find somewhere to hold up.”

Rose grabbed all of the healing potions that hadn’t been broken open (there was five total) along with some healing bandages and some of the clothes. Deadbolt grabbed some of the bottles of water and whatever food that didn’t appear to be rotten. I broke open another one of the crates and found some new weapons. A shotgun, but it was different than the ones I had seen so far. It had too short barrels that each only held one shot. Another pistol, again the same model as mine, it was apparently a common piece, and a large battle saddle similar to the one that Steadfast had strapped to him. I didn’t know how to work it, and it would have been too heavy to carry with us, so I left it. I topped off with some ammo for each of our weapons, including some shells for my new shotgun.

Steadfast had gone ahead to look for somewhere we could use for shelter while we searched the caravan. He came galloping back a few minutes later. The rumbling of thunder was starting to get louder and rain was starting to sprinkle down making dips in the wasteland's dusty layer. The cool drops were actually a bit of relief from the heat, at least they were until it started to pour. Then it was just cold.

“I found a cave we can wait out the storm in. It just up ahead.”

The rain was coming down harder by the second. We galloped to get to the cave that Steadfast had found.

*Boom!*

A bright flash followed closely by a deafening blast of thunder stopped me in my tracks. I nearly pissed myself. My legs didn’t want to work for a second as the thunder and lightning passed, only to be replaced with more the instant the rumbling stopped.

“Dammit Rivet, come on, you can be scared of the storm when we get something over our heads!” Deadbolt yelled.

I shook my head. “Ri-Right, sorry.”

It was pouring, we got to the cave completely soaked. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed outside, making me jump each time.

Rose let out a sigh of relief. “Thank Celestia we’re out of that.”

“Yeah.” Steadfast replied, looking farther into the cave.

It was dark, damp and cold. From what Steadfast had told us, I assumed we would be spending the night here. Not something I was totally thrilled about. Even the shack we stayed in our first night in the wasteland seemed more inviting than this place.

The cave stretched far back, softly glowing mushrooms barely illuminated the caves interior. I couldn’t help but be curious about exploring the rest of it.

Deadbolt pulled out some of the food he recovered from the caravan and passed it around, along with some water. “We were going to be here a while, might as well get comfy for now.”

Steadfast stood near the entrance looking out at the pouring rain and flashes of lightning. He sighed and trotted over, taking a seat next on a larger rock nearby. He unstrapped his rifles and slid his saddle off.

“Yep, no way we’re getting out of here tonight with it coming down like that.” He took a piece of fruit from Deadbolt and bit into it. “We should all try to get some sleep. We’re leaving as soon as the storm passes.”

Sleep actually sounded like a great idea. It had been a long day of walking, though I doubted I was going to get much. Between the hard, uneven, wet ground, the sound of the rain and the lightning making me jump every thirty or so seconds, I was in for a long night.

I managed to find a place that wasn’t wet to lay on, though there was a rock jabbing into my side that seemed to move with me as I tossed and turned trying to find a nice way to lay. It took a long time for me to finally fall asleep.

Something nudged me lightly, waking me up. “Rivet, wake up.” It was Steadfast, and he had his battle saddle strapped on. I glanced outside; it was still pouring and pitch black except when a bolt of lightning illuminated the sky.

“What is it?” I asked him, rubbing my head trying to wake myself up.

He held his hoof to his mouth. “Shhh, listen.”

“All I can hear is the storm.”

He shook his head. “No, listen carefully.”

I sat quiet for a few seconds. I could hear something, it was quiet, coming from farther into the cave. It was quiet, and I could barely hear it over the sound of the rain. It sounded like somepony tearing apart wet cloth.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, staring into the darkness.

“Get your pistol, I'm going to go take a look.” He said as he slowly started down into the cave.

I grabbed my saddle-bag and strapped it around me. I levitated my pistol in front of me. The glow of my magic shone lightly off the walls of the cave. Rose turned and woke up.

“Rivet?” She asked, seeing me holding the gun. “What's going on?”

Deadbolt stirred and sat up, rubbing his head as he looked over at me.

“Steadfast heard something, we’re going to go check it out.” I said, turning to catch up with Steadfast.

Rose and Deadbolt both rose from where they were sleeping and grabbed their bags, Rose drawing her revolver with her mouth, Deadbolt holding his knife with his magic. My first reaction was to tell them to wait behind, but quickly decided that arguing would achieve nothing but unnecessary noise.

We made our way through the cave, descending as we got further into it. The smell of rain was soon replaced with the smell of rotten meat. Just as the sound of rain began to fade, the strange tearing noise grew louder, soon accompanied by some light snarling. My heart raced as we caught up with Steadfast who was pressed up against the wall of the cave. He tapped the side of his face, indicating toward his eyes.

It took me a second to get what he was trying to tell me. “Oh.” I breathed and pulled up my EFS. My vision swarmed with red. I couldn’t count all of the red lights that were in the next room.

Steadfast looked worried when he saw my expression. He tentatively took a look around the corner. He quickly brought his head back around and let out a quick breath.

“What is it?” I said, trying to keep my voice as low as possible.

“Not good, I think we found what attacked the caravans. Look.” He nodded his head towards the corner

He moved over and I took his spot against the wall, slowly peering around the corner. There were small creatures in the next room. They had gross matted yellow fur, their eyes seemed to almost glow with a deep red. A muzzle filled with small sharp fangs protruded from their heads. their legs ended with paws and razor sharp claws. They resembled the dogs that were in some of the pictures back in the stable, if those dogs were also part monster and traveled in swarms

Throughout the room where the corpses of ponies, torn open and coated with blood. Each had at least two of the beasts tearing it apart, some fighting over who got to eat first. They snarled at each other before shoving their head back into the bodies of the ponies and tearing off a large chunk of meat. There was at least a dozen of the monsters in the room, there could easily be more deeper in the cave.

I turned back and let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “What the hell are those things?”

“I don’t know. We should get out of here.” Steadfast’s voice was low and serious.

“They’ll keep attack caravans if we don’t do something though.” Rose said in a hushed but forceful tone.

“And if we try to do something about we’ll get eaten alive.” Deadbolt said, turning and slowly starting to move backwards.

“Deadbolts right, we should leave. I'll come back later with a bigger team and clear them out. For now we need to get out of here.” Steadfast was just as eager as I was to get out of here.

We slowly started heading back. The ground was slicker than I thought, I tripped. I hit the ground with a loud thud, dropping my pistol which clattered as it hit and bounced on the rocks.

The cave went quiet, the tearing and snarling sounds stopped. The sound of the rain outside seemed to fade as I stared back at the bend.

Slowly one of the yellow hounds made its way around. It spotted me laying on the ground. Our eyes met. Its fangs dripped with blood and pieces of flesh from the caravan ponies. It stared back at me for what seemed like forever, then it started to growl, bearing its teeth, giving me a better sight of its razor sharp maw.

I tried to back up, but my hoof kept slipping on the wet rock. The beast began let out loud barks, starting the others doing the same.

*Boom!*

The beast was thrown back with the thunderous noise, blood spraying out like crimson ribbons.

I turned back to see Steadfast standing behind me, the barrels of his massive rifles smoking.

“Run!”

I got to my hooves and galloped as fast as I could, trying not to slip again. I scooped up my pistol with my magic as I bolted for the exit. Rose and Deadbolt were ahead of me, Steadfast following close behind.

We could hear the sounds of those things barking and howling, they weren't getting any further away. I turned back to see five of them already on us.

I turned and slid into SATS, even with the time slowing effects of the targeting spell they were approaching quick.

*Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang*

I managed to down one of them with the first shot. the second one hitting one in the leg, causing it to fall and trip the one behind it. The third shot missed, the fourth hitting home and blasting throw another one's skull.

By the time everything sped back up there was already more coming around the corner. The one in front pounced for Steadfast.

*Bang*

The dog-like creature flipped in the air with a loud yelp. I turned to and found Rose with her revolver in her mouth. She gave me a nod and I turned back and kept firing.

Steadfast unloaded with his rifles.

*Boom, Boom, Boom*

Each shot felled its target, he was a master with those rifles, hitting each one squarely between the eyes. But for each one he dropped another one swarmed out around it.

Another one leapt out of the pack. Deadbolt’s knife ripped across its neck, blood gushed from the wound at an alarming rate and it fell almost instantly.

Rose fired until her revolver clicked. She was a surprisingly good shot, she managed to hit with almost every shot.

“Move!” Steadfast shouted over the gunfire and barking.

The dog-like creatures seemed to be endless. The cave must have been packed with them.

I swung around and galloped again, switching my pistol out for the shotgun as I did. I only had two shots at a time with this but the spray would hit a lot more often then I could with the pistol.

I let Steadfast get in front of me and I fired blindly backwards. I heard one of the hounds yelp as I unloaded the first two shots. I peered back as I slammed the next two shells into the gun. The hounds were getting closer; we weren’t going to be able to outrun them.

We burst out of the cave into the pouring rain. The hounds closing in on us. One of them caught me, biting into my leg with tremendous force.

“ARG!” I screamed as I hit the ground. It jumped on top of me and went for my neck.

*Schlink!* Deadbolts knife cleaved through the hounds neck, covering me with blood. It fell, giving off a sickening gurgle as its blood bubbled from its mouth.

The wolves had almost gotten to me. The roaring of Steadfasts guns filled the air as he unloaded more rounds into the swarm of beasts.

*Boom, Boom, Boom*

I scrambled to my hooves, my leg hurt like hell, but the adrenaline gave me the energy to run on it, but not fast enough. My foreleg started to hurt again, I could feel the stitches starting to tear open again as I ran.

*Bang, Bang*

I let off a second volley as I darted away from the hounds.

I got behind Steadfast and pulled out the pistol again. I quickly reloading and joined him in firing into the oncoming mass.

Deadbolt stood in front of me swinging his knife at anything that got close. Another hound darted under his swing, grabbing onto his leg and pulling him down.

“Fuck!” He screamed as he brought the knife down on the beasts head. He pulled it out with a disgusting *Thrunk*.

More of the monsters were on him before he could get another swing out. Two pounced on him knocking him over.

*Bang,Bang* Two shots flew by me. Rose, downed one of the hounds clawing and biting at Deadbolt.

*Boom* Steadfast’s massive rifles blew the other away.

My vision started to blur. What the hell? I had to fight to keep my vision clear.

“Steadfast...” It was suddenly getting hard to stand, I was lightheaded and my pistol somehow felt too heavy to levitate.

“Rivet!” I could hear Steadfast yell as my legs gave out. I could barely make out Deadbolt crawling backwards and the glow of his knife cutting down some of the beasts as they lunged at him.

A massive arc of lightning ripped through the sky. The boom of thunder shook the ground. The barking of the hounds stopped.

The hounds looked nervously to the sky. Steadfast never stopped shooting. He dropped the hounds with amazing speed, while they were distracted, putting some distance between us and the remaining beasts.

They turned back to us, seeing their numbers dropping fast. Another crack of lighting and roar of thunder swept the skies. The beast turned and ran. Steadfast managed to take out a few more by the time they got back into the cave.

He spun around. “Rose! Get those potions out your bag!” Steadfasts voice was distant.

Rose passed him a potion and he told her to get one for Deadbolt. He put the bottle to my lips. Instantly I felt the cooling sensation of the potion. The bleeding bite mark in my leg and the reopened stitches began to close quickly.

My vision was gone, Steadfast was sitting right above me but I all I could see was a blur. He was shouting but I couldn’t make out the words. My body was going numb and I felt a weight pressing my chest. I had had never been as scared as I was in that moment. I wasn’t just dieing; my senses were being torn from me one at a time. Slowly my vision faded further, a black tunnel replacing the indistinct blurs in front of me. I'm not sure exactly when I lost consciousness.

I was asleep but I didn’t have any dreams. All around me was black; I was alone. There was no noise, no light. The pressure on my chest made it difficult to breathe, but I couldn’t feel anything. I was just floating in the darkness, unable to do anything. I called out for somepony, anypony, There was no response. there was nothing but the impenetrable darkness around me. I don’t know why, but I was scared. Scared to be alone, scared of this place. In the Stable I was almost always alone, except for Rose. I had always had her, ever since we were little. Now there was no one. I was alone in the darkness. I floated there, in the darkness, for what seemed like an eternity.

The darkness seemed to press in on me. The longer I was here the more the darkness terrified me. Murmurs starting coming from the darkness, indistinguishable words far in the distance. Just faint enough to here.

“Hello? Is somepony there?”

There was a pinching sensation in my neck. It was a sharp pressure, not outright painful, but uncomfortable. The murmurs grew louder, the voices sounded closer. I could start to pick out some of the words.

“What the hell?” I said rubbing my neck.

The voices stopped as quickly as the had come. The silence took over again. It felt worse this time, somehow even more oppressive. I felt the weight on my chest grow heavier. For a moment I thought there was somepony here to get me out of the blackness. Another eternity passed with nothing.

It felt like the darkness had started to weigh down on me. It was getting harder to breath.

“Heart... hold... down...” The voices came back, louder than before. They sounded scared and echoed around me. The words were clouded and seemed to come from all around me. They kept growing louder and louder.

There was a pounding on my chest. It felt like somepony was kicking me. The pounding was rhythmic, each one knocking the breath out of me. Another pinch in my neck, this one more violent, like I was getting stabbed. The pounding continued.

“Come...hold...Rivet...”

The voices sounded urgent. The pounding in my chest was feeling heavier by the second.

“You...die...”

My eyes shot open and I gasped for air, coughing with each intake. My chest hurt. I could feel somepony lift my head up. My vision cleared, Daisy was leaning above me, holding me up. She looked tired, and was soaked with rain water. The yellow mare smiled at me as my body calmed down. Feeling returned to my body, which made me realize the aching pain in every inch of my body. It still somehow felt better than the darkness, but it was barely tolerable.

I turned my head to try to get a bearing on where I was. I could see the cliff faces of the pass between the horns. Above me was some kind of wooden structure, I was under one of the wagons. How the hell did I get here? It was still raining. I could see Rose looking down at me, she was covered in mud and looked like she could pass out any second. Deadbolt was laying next to me, almost completely still other than the rising and falling of his chest.

I tried to talk, but my throat was dry and I couldn’t get the words out. Daisy put a bottle of water to lips and I drank greedily. A little too greedily, I started to choke and cough again. Each cough sent a shot of pain through my chest. I tried to sit up but my body wouldn’t respond.

“You know, Rivet.” Daisy said, pulling the bottle away from me. “Most ponies like to take time between visiting the doctor.”

I tried to laugh but my chest didn’t like when I did that. I struggled to speak, but I managed to ask, “What are you doing here?”

“Rose brought me here. She came bursting into the clinic last night. I could barely understand her, she was talking so fast. She said you and Deadbolt got bit by something and passed out. I grabbed as much supplies as I could carry and we galloped here as fast as we could.” The white maned pony looked exhausted. I remembered it taking all day to get here; had she ran the whole way? Rose had gone all the way to Marefield and back. How long was I out?

I glanced back to Deadbolt. “What about Deadbolt?”

“Don’t worry about him, the anti-venom I gave him is working. I almost didn’t have enough for the both of you.”

Rose helped me sit up. “I was worried we had lost you for a minute.”

Breathing was still hard, each deep breath I took hurt my chest. “My chest hurts”

.“Your heart had stopped.” Daisy’s voice was anxious. “Not for long, but we nearly lost you, Rivet. The anti-venom had started to make its way through your system but the poison must have already taken a heavy toll on you.”

I rubbed my neck, and winced when I felt the spot Daisy had jammed a needle into it. Looking around again, I noticed I Steadfast wasn’t under the wagon with us. “Where’s Steadfast?”

“He’s trying to fix the other wagon, I doubt your gonna be able to walk for a little bit. The poison did a number on your nervous system. You’ll be fine, but its going to take a while for you to get back full motor control. You should try to get some rest until we’re ready to move you two.”

Sleeping was really not something I wanted to do. After being in that darkness, I just wanted to be near other ponies. It was a feeling I had never had before. But I was tired, incredibly tired. I wasn’t even the one who had to run all night to save my ass. I guess dieing takes a lot out of you.

“Thanks Daisy...”

She shook her head. “Don’t be thanking me. Rose is the one who brought me here. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t have known you guys were in trouble.”

I turn my head to look at Rose. She was already asleep. She must have been exhausted. Now that she knew Deadbolt and I would be fine she finally dozed off.

Daisy nudged me. “She’s kinda cute when she’s asleep huh?”

“Yeah.” I answered before I thought. I looked over at Daisy, I could already feel the blush of embarrassment on my cheeks. “I mean...um...a...It just...ah.” The more I stammered the worse my face heated up, so I shut up.

She just gave me a sly look. “Alright, I’m gonna go help Steadfast with the wagon. You get some rest.”

I wanted to try and shift around to get a bit more comfortable, not like that was very likely with the wet ground and my achy body, which was still far from responsive. Despite my discomfort, I did manage to fall asleep. It seemed unfair to make Daisy and Steadfast do all the work, but I doubt I would be much help to them right now.

Steadfast and Rose loaded us into the back of the wagon. It was a humiliating process. Neither Deadbolt or I could stand on our own, let alone climb into the carts. Rose’s grip slipped when they lowered me down; my head hit the cart with a thud.

“Ow!” I tried to sound as annoyed as possible.

“Whoops! Sorry Rivet.”

For once I was on the same wavelength with my brother. All he did was complain as he was lifted in. His stubbornness in trying to get in himself only ended up embarrassing himself. He had almost managed to lift the top half of himself in but quickly slid out and landed face first in the mud.

“Ya’know if you two were a little more careful, maybe you wouldn’t need to be lifted into a wagon in the first place.” Daisy teased from the side as the others hopped off the wagon.

“Hey, I'm not the one who tripped and alerted a horde of poisonous dogs.” Deadbolt yelled at her, while glaring at me.

“What? The rocks were slipperier than I thought. And how was I supposed to know they were poisonous?” It was an accident, one that almost got us killed, but still an accident.

He rolled his eyes and looked the other way.

“Alright, you guys ready to head back to Marefield?” Steadfast had strapped himself into the harness that the Brahmin would normally be in, ready to pull the wagon back to town.

“Yep, they’re good to go.” Daisy said and we started moving.

Rose and Daisy walked behind the wagon while Steadfast pulled.

Deadbolt sighed. “Well, as long as we’re here we might as well finally talk about what our plan is.”

“I already know what the plan is. We’re heading up to Trottingham as soon as we can.” Steadfast said we might be able to find some information about Y34RK in the old Stable-Tech building up there. I planned to at least check it out.

“Oh really? Is that the plan? What happens when those ponies in the robot suits show up again?” Deadbolt was clearly against anything that had to do with the data chip in my Pip-Buck. “I still say get rid of the damn thing, Rivet.”

“I told you, I'm finding out what it is first. Besides, if they are tracking us by our security tags , they’re going to find us regardless of if we have the chip or not. What happens when they do find us and we don’t have it? They’ll kill us on the spot, Deadbolt, at least if we have it we might be able to negotiate.” I was getting sick of Deadbolt. He refused to think of alternatives. I need to find out what Y34RK is. Maybe then we could figure out what the best thing to do with it was.

“I'm just trying to make sure we don’t get ourselves killed. We need to think this through before we go out into the wasteland alone again.” Deadbolt, looking out for “our” safety, I called bullshit.

“You’ve never given a shit about what happened to anyone but yourself. Least of all me, your own brother!”

He glared at me, I think if either of us could move this might have turned into a hoof-fight. “You know what Rivet? You're right, I didn’t fucking care when we were in the Stable. In fact, I didn’t want anything to do with you. But things have changed now, we’re not in the Stable and we have ponies looking for us that want nothing more than to gun us down for that damn chip! I don’t like you, Rivet, but I’m stuck with you, so I would appreciate it if you would not get me killed.”

“Will you two stop arguing!” Rose snapped, turning both our heads in her direction. “All you two do is argue. Just make up your minds. Are we just going to hide out until they give up on us? I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, Deadbolt. Going to Trottingham will give them a chance at us though, Rivet, but so did coming out here in the first place. I want to find out what the chip is too okay? But DeadBolt’s right; we need to be careful. We’re going to Trottingham, but we need to be ready just in case. Now, stop arguing like little foals!”

Deadbolt and I glanced at each other, then back to Rose. She was staring us down, angry. She was right, all we did was argue. Back in the Stable we would get into shouting matches all the time and out here I didn’t see that changing. We both mumbled something along the lines of “Yes, ma’am” and turned away like scolded foals. She may have been on my side but she was still yelling at me as much as Deadbolt. If not a little more.

“None of that's gonna matter until you guys can walk again. Frankly, I'm not sure how long that's going to take. I’ve seen poisons like that take anywhere from a day or two, to a few months to get full mobility back. So any plans to leave are on hold until you’re back on your hooves.” Daisy was right. I was starting to be able to move a bit more easily but I had no idea how long it would be before we could leave.

Steadfast thought it would be best if we didn’t stop for a break. It was getting dark and the rain had mostly cleared before we started the trip back. It was still sprinkling but it wasn’t bitterly cold and miserable anymore. We ate on the way. It was aggravating how much effort it took to lift my hoof to my mouth to eat, even more so to sit up in the wagon. I had to have Rose help me sit up and opted to use magic to hold my food, the concentration game me a headache but it was still easier.

The trip back took significantly longer than the original trip had. Deadbolt and I rode mostly in silence; neither one of us wanted to talk to the other right now. Daisy and Rose kept chatting between themselves for most of the trip and Steadfast would occasionally toss back a joke about whatever they were talking about. I tried not to listen; I wanted to be somewhere other than next to my brother, though, I guess neither us would be nearly paralysed if it wasn’t for me. Hell, he wouldn’t be here if I didn’t push him to come with us.

“Sorry.” I mumbled.

“What?” Either he didn’t hear me, or me apologizing was a shock to him.

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault we’re out here. It’s my fault you came with us and it’s my fault we’re in this sorry state. If I had been paying a little more attention neither of us would have been bitten by those things.”

He was silent. I think he was trying to tell whether or not I was being sincere. He gave me a nod and a grunt that was basically a thank you.

Marefield was a welcome sight. The glow of lights in the streets and windows greeted us as we neared the town. It reminded me of the first time I had seen the town a few days ago.

The gates opened with the familiar glow of the unicorn guards that worked the night shift. Daisy decided to take the wagon from Steadfast; he was the only one who hadn’t gotten any sleep and was getting ready to fall over by the time we cleared the gates.

Stepping out of the wagon was a feat that I wasn’t sure I could handle. Falling out of the wagon is one I accomplished as gracefully as a hammer falling off a toolbelt. That was the easy part, now I just had to make it into the Rest-Stop, walk over to the bed, and climb into that bed without embarrassing myself further. That didn’t exactly happen.

What ended up happening was Deadbolt and I being practically dragged to bed. I could feel the effects of the poison wearing off but it was gradual at best, and standing on my own accord was hard enough, let alone walking. Deadbolt was faring better than me; he could at least take a step on his own every minute or two.

Daisy and Rose helped us into the beds and put our bags into the lockers.

“You guys are doing a lot better than I thought. I bet you’ll be good to go in a day or two. I'll come by and check on you in the morning.”

Two days was too long for me. We finally had a destination and I was eager to get going. There wasn’t much I would be able to do about it though. I tried to go to sleep that night but between with all my thoughts swimming in my head, wanting to leave, thinking about the Organization and what they wanted with the chip, and remembering the darkness that I had been trapped in, I wasn’t getting any sleep any time soon.

Footnote :Level-up: New Perk added: Poison Resistance Rank 1: You are now 15% less susceptible to natural poisons and animal toxins.