Fallout Equestria: The Isle of Hope

Chapter 1: Starwind

Flip. Skim. Flip again.

        Through the royal blue haze of magic that, too often, crept its way down into my vision from my horn, and the pale yellow incandescent glow of the bulbs above, I was turning dull page after dull page in the thousandth book of my steadily growing collection of literature that I had no interest in.

“Such is the life of us, the lowly bookworms,” my fellow arcane researchers would say.

“Worms. Is that all we are?” I often caught myself thinking out loud before burrowing deeper into some discourse on climate change that spoke of the merits of appreciating your vegetables while we still have them or a politically edited dialogue on pony superiority that was probably written in near illegible cursive by an academic, like myself, who was worming their own way through other books for information to satisfy their superiors.

“Yep,” I’d repeat to myself under my breath. “Worms.”

Honestly, I loved the work at first, with its promise of new truths unfurling on scrolls written by Twilight Sparkle herself before me, but, when one has read enough that they dream about escaping an onslaught of wild, carnivorous textbooks, one tends to start hating the monotony.

“Why do the Steel Rangers even need some of these texts? Aren’t they tough enough as is? Do they really need to know ten ways to magically enhance the taste of stew or understand the secrets of complex astronomical magic? Bah.” I often whined to the stifling library air as dust particles settled on the shelves surrounding me.

This was the last great, secret library created by Twilight Sparkle and the Ministry of Arcane Science — which she ran as an emergency repository for all of modern knowledge — during the last years before the megaspells. This was my home.

Well, this was as close to one as I could find in the last six or so years, and what I considered my room was the smallest nook within it, just off of the cozy, welcoming atrium and front desk area.

One of my piles of books answered after a few moments from across the small area of free walkway left in the room. Loudly, it began chiding “Tsk! Tsk! Starwind Solace, you ought to know by now that Roux and the rest of our Ranger friends are trying to make the world a better place with what we give them, so don’t be discour—Ah!” A scream accompanies the collapse of said pile as I magically tossed my, now finished, thousandth book atop its towering bulk.

Out of the rubble, from below a particularly boring set of novels written by one Corkscrew Brew, a small, chestnut colored mare rose up and fixed me with a burning stare that only motherhood or war can endow upon a pony from the most brilliant green eyes as I momentarily paused from book one thousand and one to greet Dulcet Tones, another researcher who happened to pass through on his way to his lab.

“Star, how can you be so lazy, talkative, and intelligent simultaneously? I wish you would at least try to put your books away properly when you finish them. You are talented as any mare I have ever met, friendly to everyone, and a great researcher, dear, but really buzz, hum, and bzzz.” Dusty Tome’s gentle voice always managed to somehow blend perfectly with the background noises of the generators, so I hardly even noticed the transition as I fell into my thoughts.

I would like to say here that, when I fell into daydreams, I let my thoughts drift to a new design for spark battery efficiency or a new spell, but, more often than not, I was too thick to pay attention to my surroundings and my mind directed me to memories. In this instance, I found myself staring at a decaying magical energy station with a smiling silver pony extending a hoof bump to me from behind scratched glass on a bent sign post as a cold wind drilled into the skin on my nose before I could cover it with the meager scarf that I requisitioned from mom’s old stuff in the closet that daddy never checked anymore.

“Big 52 snack and magic emp… empori – shop,” I struggled to say through my half frozen jaw muscles to the bundle of fabric hugging the ground behind me as we walked into the forgotten way station.

“Sis, don’t ya think Daddy wouldn’t want us out here?” The bundle that hid my little sister questioned flatly.

“Absolutely he would! He is always telling us to seek new horizons, draw conclusions on factual evidence, and be scientists in all aspects of our life because knowledge is our greatest weapon, and blah, blah, blah. Look, just take my word for it, little sis, we are gonna see something amazing today!” I stated, jittering with a mixture of cold and excitement.

I was not to be stopped! Daddy always told me that I should never leave New Commons because of some big bullies that live around our town called Riders or Raidees er, well, bad guys, whatever their names are. Anyway, I learned from Judicial and Marzipan that their father was told by a friend of the mayor who overheard a meeting with somepony that there was a thing called a “terminal” out here that is some kind of super advanced piece of technology, like our radios, which holds the secrets of ponies from years back!

Ever the precocious, curious, head in the clouds thinker, I was not willing to let the winter season, the silly words about some kind of danger, or my downer of a sister stop me as I trekked all afternoon in the snow to find this place. I had to know what this mystery would hold!

The door, rusted by time and the endless rains and snow that blanketed the northern coast year in and year out, required quite an effort as I huffed and puffed my meager kinetic magic on its handle before it simply snapped off and the door fell inward with a dull thud that was quickly absorbed by the thick cold.

“You never listen to me,” I heard my sister angrily whisper to herself in a half-hearted attempt to hide her contempt at the present situation. “I could be by the great hearth in the town hall with Marzipan playing blind stallion, deaf stallion, but noooo, I get forced to walk for miles on one of the coldest days of the year!” She emphasized the final few words with an attempted stomp that turned into her tripping on her baggy clothing, much to her chagrin.

I wasn’t one to sweat the small things like her complaining, so, instead, I trotted my way through the storefront, finding absolutely nothing that resembled what was described to me. I did, however, note the obvious that, if I were a nifty device, I would most definitely be behind the large, probably locked, door that was behind the bar with the register on it.

“How much force do you think I could throw that cash register with?” I asked openly.

“How am I supposed to know? YOU are supposed to be the genius, righ-”

“Alright, sounds like enough force to me!” With more effort than was necessary, I lobbed the mostly metal money machine at the wooden door which promptly slammed open. Sis usually got a little too long winded.

Stepping forward, observing the now cracked frame, the bundle of joy in every circumstance filled me in with some news that was only entirely embarrassing. “Did you, in your wisdom, know that you could’ve checked to see if it was unlocked? It was.”

Biting my bottom lip with anticipation while fighting the urge to magically muffle my sister’s constant commentary, I pushed past the moment and my companion to peer into the darkened office that had rested, untouched, as far as I knew, since before the megaspells! There, on a desk that had a thin film of dust sleeping on its surface, a soft green glow emerged from a monitor that held a single blinking, white rectangle awaiting its master’s commands.

Computer, meet master!

With a speed that I reserved only for the last snack cake in the meal line and specialized technology, I pushed a rubbish pile that was sitting in the chair out of the way, hopped up into the seat, and began following prompts as they flew at me from the heart of the device.

Do you have a password?

No.

New user access?

Yes, please!

The last session of this computer did not close properly. Would you like to rebuild the files from that session?

Sure? Um, I mean yes!

This pattern continued for what seemed an eternity until I gained access to three glistening, beautiful files with funny names like Journal Entry 66: The World is Going Downhill Fast, Journal Entry 120: The Snow is Green…, and one that I couldn’t access at all that was called Island of the Lost Sea.PBM.

Frustrated at this ridiculous information that was terribly boring, I turned from the desk with the swivel motion that the chair allowed me in order to announce our departure from this lackluster bust of an adventure only to find a shiny piece of metal reflecting red light from a fire I hadn’t noticed in the main room pressed to the small, light blue, throat of my sister as a drop of crimson fell to splash silently on the grimy floor at her hooves.

“Oh. Hi, I am Starwind Solace, and this is -” My naïve words were cut off by the muzzle of a black revolver which was forced into my mouth by a large earth stallion wearing a grin behind the grip of the weapon that spoke volumes of his intent.

I knew guns as well as anypony, I suppose. For instance, I knew that that gun, in particular, had a six chambered revolving loader that would fire between .22 and .45 caliber rounds, and that they were a huge pain to clean after shooting at the range. None of that knowledge really could help me, though, as I merely grinned awkwardly over the unyielding metal.

I sometimes regretted not paying much attention to the practical aspects of survival training.

“Bring ‘em to the fire. I like my meat hot!” A laughing, gravel filled jar of a voice from the main room shouted to the two stallions that proceeded to kick my hooves from under me and drag me by my tail into the heat of a circular fire pit made of the old newspapers that littered the floor.

Pulling the weapon away from me, the large one turned to face the third stallion closest to the fire. “Hm. Not much meat on these two, boss, I can’t see them lasting us very long. You get first dibs, ‘course, but you know how awful hungry the cold makes me!”

A small whimper escaped from my sister as a puddle of yellow ran from her spot next to me to the huddle of the three ponies a few paces away.

“Trust me. I can make them come around,” I whispered to her in the minuscule comfort of our distance from the ones I assumed were the Raidees, raidoos… whatever. “You know how I got Skyrocket to quit throwing rocks at us after school? Well, I figure these stallions must be just bigger versions of her, sort of, so I am sure I can smooth things out between us!”

Dusty really was right about one thing. I was a little too overly friendly sometimes.

“Excuse me, sirs?” I paused, awaiting a response.

“We could make a stake out of something here and make kebabs, surely,” the small, knife wielding unicorn hissed to his comrades between broken, jagged front teeth.

“Excuse me, sirs!” Another pause filled the space between us as they weren’t daunted.

“No! The wood in these parts is too rotted! They’d taste shitty. No doubt in my mind about it,” the boss replied quickly to the suggestion.

“EXCUSE ME!” It is hard to miss a verbose and excessively loud filly, and I was the queen of them all at that point.

“Shut up, foal!” The boss demanded as he snapped his head in my direction. “I don’t usually take the time to talk to my meals, so I will make this brief because you are one of the more annoying ponies I have had the displeasure of bringing to dinner.”

As I waited for him to continue, the light of realization caused my ears to droop as his words fell like hail over us.

“You see my associates and me? We have certain palates that can only be satisfied by a certain nuance unique to a particular type of food,” he said while chuckling, “and that, my dear little steaks, would be ponies like you two who are young, fresh, and absolutely dripping with naiveté and optimism!”

A laugh as dry as the noise made when crumping a sheet of paper rolled throughout the room, my body, and my very soul as I tasted the second bite of the terrible reality that the wasteland of the world had served up to me.

“Switchblade, come here,” the boss pony called out. “I want the usual bits first as an appetizer, and make sure you get it from the mouthy one with the dark fur.”

I could only watch his mouth move in sync with those final sounds that slowly faded from audible range as a flash of steel found its way into my line of vision. During the act, it actually didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would as I craned my head towards sharp tooth to see the white orb on the end of the knife.

My little sister reacted before I did.

A scream erupted from her body in a muted burst of agonizing muscle spasms that I could not hear but only see through my eye rotating her direction. I collapsed, noticing a slick spot on the ground below me that wasn’t there the last time I checked and which was thick enough that I could draw funny faces in its sticky red. What vision I had left had already begun to blur as an airy feeling of floating began its journey from my hooves to my ears.

This wouldn’t be so hard.

“Sure, I can fall asleep now, daddy. I am a big girl after all,” I think I said to the new stallion that had just entered the room after my head it the floor. “What pretty lights you brought tonight, daddy. I didn’t know we even had fireworks in New Commons.”

A flash of orange, heavy rhythmic vibrations from the pulsating cylinder daddy was carrying, and the steady hum of my little sister’s odd singing began lulling me to close my eyelids.

The pulse stopped, daddy walked over to me.

Why is he covered in such shiny metal plates? He looks so cool!

“Hey, shwait, you aren’t daddy,” I disappointedly murmured through the bubbles forming in the froth that had appeared around my mouth. “Well, hi, mishter. I am Shtarwinda Sholace. Can wesh be friends? You sheem really neat.”

The lights and feeling of being present faded as I found myself sliding toward the unknown.

Black.

That’s all there was after that point. There was just black and a slow, sad melody that seemed to fill the void for what could have been minutes, hours, days, months, or years to my lack of awareness until a deep, sympathetic voice began calling my name from miles away.

“Starwind?”

Eyelid fluttering open, I found that only half of my vision was present as everything came into focus.

“Yes? Hello? You called?” I managed through a pained smile.

“You will be safe now,” the deep voiced unicorn stallion in cool armor said as he lifted my head to rest a bundle of our clothes under it before continuing. “I am a steel ranger from the Baltimare Chapter, and you should be glad I happened to be on my way here.”

“Yeah, thanks, mister!” I replied weakly. "What brought you all the way out here?"

With a brief, deliberative pause, he answered. "I was sent to check an alarm that went off about some of our technology in the area."

"Oh!" I exclaimed before biting my lip in agony from an attempt at lifting myself up to get closer to the unknown stallion. "You like all of these gadgets and tech too? I love them! It is why we came out here too! Isn't that right, sis?"

I waited for a grunt in response, or, at least, some sort of spiteful acknowledgement, but I heard nothing except a small, breathy snore beside me, where I used to be able to see.

"Oh, right..." I raised a hoof to feel a small patch of cloth covering where my right eye should have been.

"I did the best I could with what little supplies I brought along," he said quietly with remorse. "I am afraid you probably won't ever see the same again."

A glance in his direction revealed that he was a strong pony, built with fortitude and resolve, and he saved me, so I was not going to let him see me be weak. Besides, crying right now might just make it hurt worse.

“I don't mind. It is better than what was going to happen, I think... and, well," I paused to stare up at the stallion. “Did you also get a chance to help out my sister? I think those guys may have cut her worse…”

I craned my neck around the top of my bundle pillow to be able to catch sight of her, but my eye only found the image of red drops falling to the floor from a shiny blade as it bit into her neck.

A spasm of muscle weakness and the throbbing of heat near my bandaged eye brought me back around quickly.

“Yes, I did. You really should be more careful, and worry less about her and more about yourself,” he said sternly. His gruff demeanor couldn’t shake my feeling of worry.

“Did you really bandage her up?” I pressed him. “I mean, properly bandaged. I worked with nurse Bubble before, and I learned a thing or two about it, so I could check for you, if you don’t feel confident in it.”

His cocked eyebrow brought a small smile to my face as he managed to look a lot like dad after I created a bit of rainbow gas in his lab with some chemicals that were lying around.

With an internal buck to my wandering thoughts to right them again, I pressed forward because she may have been sleeping with a concussion, bleeding internally, or worse!

“I don’t mean to be rude mister, but I could really use your help to look after my sister because I can’t just take your word for it,” I stated bluntly “and I am not in the best state to move, it seems.”

“You…” He chuckled lightly. “You… really are something.”

I just gave a small shrug that hurt far more than I was comfortable with.

His horn began to glow. “Look, I took care of her too, alright?”

My sister was suspended in an amber colored field above me, and, he was right, she was fine.

“You saved us both,” I whispered quietly up to him, our silver champion, as he set her back down. Our gazes met for a long while before either of us spoke.

“I don’t know what I can do to repay you for this,” I said, “but I think it earns you a spot as my new best friend, so, hold on.”

I fished around in my saddle bag that had been brought in from the office since I passed out, and I pulled out a small scrap of paper which I proceeded to write on using a pen that I floated over from the front desk.

“Here,” I said, “this is the password for the terminal in the office. It isn’t as awesome as I was hoping it would be, but it is the best I can offer as a gift for my new best friend right now.”

“You were the one who activated that terminal?” He gravely asked as his face dropped to a frown and he raised a hoof to point into the office.

“Yes, of course!” I replied proudly.

Rising to his full height upon his large, metal coated hooves to tower above me and the sleeping form of my sister that was on my blind side, my new best friend began speaking with deliberate, slowly chosen words. “My… my mandate, as decided by…” a pause wafted through as he turned his head from me to have a shudder pass through his visible body before he continued. “As decided by Elder Custard, I am required to eliminate anyone with knowledge of our MoAS security terminals and or their associated contents… I… I’m sorry.”

A tear slid down his face as he turned to face me directly again.

“I don’t understand, sir,” I stated truthfully. “Somepony named Custard said we couldn’t be friends? I don’t know any Custards, and I certainly don’t want to not be friends with you… So, if I have to, I guess I can give you something better than that silly, old terminal code to earn your friendship.”

I took a moment to undo the clasp of the chain that I had hidden under my scarf before I pulled out the tiny locket that I had taken along with the clothes from my mother’s things.

“Here, you can have this,” I said softly as I levitated the jewelry to the stallion. “It is a locket that belonged to my mother. It is her favorite saying that comes from some old Star lore of the pre-war days.”

“There is hope out there, little one. You just have to see through the pain and suffering of now to see it clearly, and, when you do, you’ll be able to love with the same love that gave us first breath.” His measured words flowed gently as he read the inscription on the locket.

“I can’t take this from you. It… It wouldn’t be right,” he said abruptly as he tossed the locket back into my saddle bag with his own magic before facing toward the doorway to the outside, stoic in the wind flowing through the portal still lacking the barrier that once stood so firm.

He closed his eyes, speaking a few words under his breath heatedly, as he looked poised between a cliff’s edge and a steep hill.

After this pause for consideration, he began to speak. “Starwind, you are a good pony. That is far too rare to waste in the blighted day in which we live, so, I will accept your friendship with no charge but this: If we run into each other again, you can never act like you know me, never mention this place or what happened here, and I will act as if I newly met you as well. It has to be this way, and I am sorry I could not be the friend that a decent filly like you deserves, but I know you’ll do great things if you are good enough to suffer all of this while caring more for your sister and a stranger’s friendship than even your own wellbeing."

He lost his words with a fading voice, thick with emotion before being able to finish his statement. "Thank you.”

With all of that said, the nameless steel pony trotted his way out into the snow storm that had begun to slow. My sister began to stir with the clicking of his hooves on the ground, and in the time used to turn to look at her, the outline of the stallion had all but faded into the distance outside the station.

“We need to get back to New Commons to tell daddy what happened, and to get you checked out, you stupid idiot,” my sister said in the husky voice that ought to belong to a mare twice her age, and which I had grown so used to from her. “Hey, stand up and turn to your left.”

“But I won’t be able to see you! I am having a rough time in the right eye area, in case you can’t tell by the bandage,” I dryly said as I stuck my tongue out.

“Just do it,” she replied without an ounce of humor in her tone, “I need to see something.”

I did so to satisfy her, and an audible gasp brought me spinning back around to see her running from the left of me to my right, staring at my flank.

“What is it? A bug?! Did I sit in radroach poop again? GET IT OFF!” I stammered out rapidly in one solid line of words.

“No, none of those,” she spat out in discreet annoyance. “Just look for yourself.”

I picked up a shard of a mirror that used to be pinned to the wall above the front desk and magically turned it in the air to see what the commotion was about.

Nope, not radroach poop.

What was there, however, was the symbol of maturity that I had both anticipated for years and not expected to occur in a situation like this one that turned out so poorly. On both flanks, I could see the image of a large book opening above a crystal clear ocean as stars, comets, and light pour from its pages.

I had earned my cutie mark.

I don’t remember much of what it was like to only have one eye, since that problem worked itself out over time, but that sight, that shard of glass, suspended in air by a familiar creeping aura, had managed to chisel itself into the marble of my mind.

A hoof frantically waved through the dust of that memory as the sensations faded to the past once again, and I sighed at where all of that adventurous, youthful spirit lead me in the end.

“Starwind, you never listen to a word I say, do you?”

Dusty always could hit the nail on the head.

“Sorry, Dusty, I just don’t know what goes on up here.” I tapped my head to direct the statement. “I just get lost in here sometimes.”

“Well, we need to get back to work before Scribe Logic arrives with the new second in command for their monthly inspection!” Dusty warned, as motherly as ever.

“I’d rather not,” I replied as I reached under a pyramid of books to my left to pull out a patchwork radio that I pieced together with scrap from the old offices in the complex. I flipped a switch to boost the reception of the homemade device, and began fine tuning it to pick up the talk of the day from DJ Pon3 on one of the few remaining stations available in the wasteland. The knob gets stuck a bit on the last little incremental adjustment and the sultry voice of Pon3 on the radio mixed with a vibrato of static is the best I am able to manage without more energy than I am willing to expend.

“Folks, I know we all agree that we have had our fair share of would-be-heroes in the past, but my sources in the field are giving me some fantastic news! Listen up, children, ‘cause this is fresh off of the presses. Apparently, somepony found the urge to play as a true hero, for once, and cleared out the raider nest that has been plaguing the area around Ponyville for years!”

With a sad chuckle, I began a dialogue with the radio personality in the confines of my mind as the news passes through.

“I learned by my own stupid mistakes that places like Ponyville, those raider nests in the wastes, should be avoided, regardless of how I may feel about being able to redeem those deemed lost to evil. How can anyone sane truly believe they can make an impact in the world by taking these smaller bands of ill intent head on? I mean, sure, I have always thought that everypony could be saved, that everypony deserves a chance at life and happiness, but how could someone be so headstrong as to think themselves above the reaching power of the wasteland?”

A moment passes and a small voice answered from far away, saying “you know you would do the same if you were in their situation…”

Returning to listening, the voice was still going strong.

“If you happen to run across said raider hunter, feel free to pass them along a little something for their trouble because, and this is the kicker kids, I am hearing reports that this pony may be from a stable."

“Fresh from the can!"

“She or he could probably use as much help as we can give them out there in the wasteland, so keep a watch out. That’s all for now kids. Now time for some music from –“

Click.

The radio was shut off by a very perturbed Dusty. A passing thought ran through my mind that, perhaps, Dusty only knew how to use this facial expression that seems to constantly disapprove of whatever I am doing. I laughed as she began to speak, cutting her off.

Jumping from my spot on the floor, I began to leap with faux grace and poise, striking dramatic poses at the shadows cast by the mountainous stacks of books as I played the superhero fighting off the shadowy evils of the world like that raider fighter.

I parried!

I ducked and rolled!

I bucked my hind legs out and struck down my foe!

I, with a flourish and a very lackluster landing, attempted to barrel roll my way to standing eye to eye with Dusty before falling, face first, into the concrete.

“Honestly, what am I supposed to do with you?” She said with only a hint of amusement at my childish antics. “Now, can we get back to work?”

I nodded.

“Good! Before this mess began, I came in here for something… I can’t remember what it was now though, for the life of me.” She pouted as she fell into deep thought. “OH! Yes, of course, the notes on relativistic travel through space and time from Twilight Sparkles private collection! Were you able to find that information?”

With a wave of my hoof, I responded. “Yes, I did. That old book is around the library somewhere.”

A pregnant pause filled the room, awkwardly pressing into the two of us, as two other junior researchers walked by the doorway to the main atrium, discussing the novelty of a magazine they had found called “Scientific Equestria.”

“Well?” she asked, pressing the question. “Where in the library is it? This place is huge, so I imagine you at least stuck it somewhere close?”

I shook my head. “No, I think I read it all the way through and just set it down to move on to the next book on the list…”

Putting on a shocked face, Dusty’s body tensed up for the verbal missiles she was about to volley.

“Starwind, we absolutely MUST find that book again! You know that we have deadlines to meet, and Elder Roux is not the most patient of stallions!”

“But, I…“ I attempted to start.

“Furthermore,” she continued, “you are constantly creating a mess by not looking after your own materials as you read them. You may be able to retain the information quickly as you read it, but you must follow the procedure that I created if you are to maintain a healthy relationship with the Steel Rangers.”

I scrunched up my face with a slight amount of bemusement. “Dusty, I can just rewrite them, you know that, and –“

“I worry about you, Star,” she said as she cut me off again, “I do. I see in you the greatest potential of anypony I have ever met, but you won’t make it very far if you can’t start being a little more proactive.”

“I –“

BOOM!

Cement rained from the ceiling as every one of the piles of books surrounding us fell to the ground and a large tremor shook our portion of the complex from the secondary access hatch in the side of the mountain where the library was hidden.

Our conversation now summarily executed, the two of us began running out of the small nook and into the broad, spacious chamber that made up the welcoming center for pre-war scholars. The two researchers from earlier were huddled in fear against a support beam across from the large blast door entrance, as they were taught by the safety crew instructors.

“Star, those weren’t earthquakes,” Is all Dusty could darkly say before a second ringing blast brought the statement into stark clarity in its own way.

BOOM! SLAM!

The blast door that was supposed to stop most military grade weaponry exploded inward, flattening itself against the wall, and creating a tomb of twisted metal for the poor researchers who expected safety there.

Two.

“Star, with me! Now!” Dusty shouted as she began sprinting down an adjacent corridor that headed to the offices of the upper echelon research leads.

Turning to follow her at my fastest speed, feeling the familiar sinking feeling in my stomach, I looked back over my shoulder, my eyes zeroing in on the now vacant doorway with sunlight streaming through it.

Stepping up to create a silhouette of herself, a mare, clad in silvery white armor from head to hoof that seemed to shift hue with every passing moment, stared down her nose hidden in a pointed helmet with black eyes that were more vacant and cold than any grave. A cloud of pink began to spread from within her armor and from behind her, to obscure the entirety of her form, save for those eyes, as she, with a voice that reminded me of things I dare not think of, spoke chaos into being.

“Seek.”

A chattering of teeth, a gnashing of half decayed jaws with flaking skin barely covering bone, and the familiar shuffle of rabid ghoul ponies’ hooves heralded the arrival of the mob.

Taking a turn as we reached the end of the first hallway, I lost sight of the scene, but I knew all too well what was about to occur, and I had no real means of stopping it.

“Feral ghouls,” I panted out to Dusty in our haste, “from…from Canterlot!”

We took a few flights of stairs from behind a small access door, three steps at a time, as Dusty replied.

“How could you tell? Was it the smoke? They would have remnants of Littlehorn agent active around them if they were.”

I replied, hardly keeping a stable pace with my words as I fumble for breath. “Littlehorn… yes!”

We burst through another access door, four flights up, and Dusty immediately barged into a room with a large sign above its entrance which read “Alert Station 1.” Over the intercom, as I came in behind her, I heard Dusty’s voice resounding from the hidden speakers in the walls as she pressed a hoof against the large button marked “Emergency Response Alert System.”

“This is head researcher, Dusty Tome. All staff and associated personal must vacate the facility immediately. This is a code 42. I repeat. This is a code 42, and the main entrance is no longer a viable means of escape. All staff should be prepared for engagement and keep at least twenty feet from the intruders due to biohazard exposure risks. LIttlehorn Agent protocol is in effect. Goddesses’ speed, everyone.”

With that done, Dusty magically released the microphone, typed a few quick lines of code into the small terminal nearby, and directed me to a panel in the wall that was painted a very obvious red for reinforcement of the nature of its content.

“Here, take this. You have had some experience in firearms training, so I know you can handle it,” Dusty said as she levitated a 9mm pistol and two full magazines into the bag that I had strapped to my right side.

I nod, hiding my shaking limbs as best I could as we returned to the hallway to follow our own level’s escape route that was helpfully marked in fluorescent green on the wall.  As we rounded the corner, taking a left to head towards a service lift that would bring us to the surface, the double doors on its face opened to reveal two of the ghouls with teeth barred in anticipation.

I froze.

Without a second passing, Dusty pulled out her own pistol and pumped three rounds into the eye sockets of each, downing them both as their pink smoke began to fill the small hallway on its journey towards us. I cringed at the sight, my heart hurting, but not from physical strain.

“We can’t take this route,” Dusty quickly stated. “We will have to head to level three to try that.”

I began to question why as the two ghouls started to find their way to their hooves as a mixture of pink light and the smoke seemed to stitch the holes in their heads back together.

We sprinted down a flight of stairs, and into a mirror image of the hallways in the floor above, where we just were. Running into three ponies from a branch of the project I had never met before, we, again, started following the directions provided by the guide arrows in an attempt to catch the lift on this floor.

Dusty furiously began punching the call button with the upward facing icon, punctuating each strike with a curse under her breath. The doors to the lift opened, as she reached a point that made it seem as if she would resort to prying them open, only to catch a brief glimpse of sparks, the passing call of squealing metal, and the blood curdling screams of the three ponies who had entered the cage before us facing their demise as the metal box descended to crash into the inevitable bottom.

Five.

Dusty took three steps back, her eyes clenched as she repeated three silent words under her breath.

“That… that was our only way out,” she said, a bit dumbfounded. “When I alerted the rest of the complex, I sealed off all auxiliary access from this cell of the facility to the others to prevent the attackers from infiltrating the rest of the areas easily and… that was our only way.”

I knew as well as she that the Ministry of Arcane Science’s library was just one of the many “cells” that made up this facility in a honeycomb pattern that took up most of the interior of the mountain, and this meant that there were only as many exits into the other cells as I could count on my hooves. During emergencies, each cell leader was supposed to access the security station for their section and quarantine themselves in order to cut losses, leaving only one viable means of safe escape through an underground short distance tram line that ran to a small station hidden beneath a nearby sewer hub. Each cell had one exception to this rule, however, and I feared that we would have no other choice than to head toward it.

Finding my soul pealing from the heat of the fire we had found ourselves in, I swallowed, took a breath, and replied. “You know there is one other way, but it may require a bit of thinking and courage on our part.”

She looked deep into me, seeing beyond the purple and white of my eyes, and said “right.”

In a blur of motion and sore muscles from the effort, we made it down the flights of stairs, quietly, secretly, and without any altercations with the intent to get out of this place together.

“Okay, Star, what do you see?” Dusty asked as I peered around the bend of a hallway that came out into the atrium across from my book filled nook.

“There are three ghouls and the mare that came inside with them,” I responded in a whisper. “They are just standing there, in the area in front of the hatch, as if they are waiting for something.

As the last word left my mouth, a band of ten ponies began sprinting from the long corridor we had escaped into earlier, making a straight line to the late afternoon daylight as a couple of them took poorly aimed potshots at the four intruders to act as an obvious covering maneuver that was probably read about in some military history book.

Worms.

This tactic seemed to work as the ghouls backed up in hesitation, but within half of a second, the group was being torn to shreds by sharp teeth, and crushing hooves.

Poor, poor worms are all we are to hungry birds.

Their torn bodies began to bubble in places as they died, screaming. The pink smoke from the pores of the ghouls kissed parts of their bodies and I saw legs melt and fuse with concrete and steel, necks bend and ooze together with the torsos of their deformed counterparts, and eyes full of life turn into puddles on the ground.

Fifteen.

Resisting the urge to vomit right then and there, I covered my mouth with my left hoof as I couldn’t tear my eyes from the action unfolding. The ghouls, backing off after all the noises had died away, let the mare in the armor through to stand at the edge of the mass of bodies as she hummed a tune I could hardly make out, but that felt so oddly familiar. Golden flecks of light began to rise from the puddles of ponies, forming a ball above the mare’s head, as her gaze rose to meet the sight. Then, as fast as the light had formed, it was gone, absorbed or dissipated or something by the mare who slowly just turned and walked back into the position she had vacated seconds prior to stare at the wall with her three cohorts.

I began to grow weak in the hooves as I found it harder and harder to resist the itch clawing its way up from inside my body, and I felt my balance start to give way as I tipped forward, my vision growing slightly blurry with the pull of gravity.

Puddles. They… they were once ponies!

Dusty pulled me back by my mane as my limbs gave way and I landed, sprawled out, on the hard ground. Speaking gently through my muted ears as I touched a hoof to my face to feel the wet, she was still making that face.

A ringing in my ears signals reality’s return as I sat up, breathing for the first time in what felt like decades, and calming down with every beat of my heart.

“They melted,” I repeated to her far too loud in my urgency.  “They melted and she sucked some gold stuff out of them. They melted, Dusty!”

“Gold stuff?” She replied. “I saw no such thing, but, Star, we must –“ She quieted me with a fetlock held up and her ears cocked to the atrium.

Click. Click. Click.

A flash of orange and the rhythms of a shiny pony, coated in blood played in my periphery.

Behind us, I also heard a heavy breathing that sounded like multiple creatures sucking in water in an attempt to not drown.

Click. Gasp. Click. Gasp. Click.

“Okay, Star, look at me,” Dusty’s voice was razor sharp and full of some kind of emotion that escaped my understanding. She pulled out a small box with a single button and a microphone attached to its top from her saddlebag. “If I don’t make it out of here, I want you to take this recording to my daughter in Sweetwater Vista. She has to know that I didn’t leave her alone in this world.”

I nodded, wondering, dumbly, how she managed to make a recording during all of this.

“But, Dusty, how can you expect me to make it out of here without you?” I asked, losing heart. “Even if I knew a way out that you didn’t, why would I just leave you here? I never would…”

Dusty pulled her pistol, using her impeccable aim to put down, at least for the time being, the small group of ghouls behind us before she took a moment to reload.

“You read Twilight’s notes,” she intensely said while mentally squeezing the trigger of her magically lofted gun. “I was never kidding when I said that you were the brightest and best pony I have ever met, and I know that you probably learned her magic for teleportation on your first read of the spell book.”

She was cut off by the visual connection of the wicked looking mare approaching the gap to our only means of escape.

We began running toward the armored mare as Dusty took down two of the three ghouls flanking the black eyed mare while the third hid since her shielding seemed to resist every bullet without so much as a scratch. Attempting to duck out of the way of a raised, spike covered hoof that came before a blindingly fast charge to beat us to the door, Dusty quickly cut left to stop herself from running head first into the blades. Having noticed this, I followed suit with a wider roll out of the way, careening into the wall in the process.

We were cornered.

The ghouls, having healed and returned to their master, circled around and pressed us into the sharp meeting of the two walls. Dusty, limping from damage I had not noticed until now on the flank that must have just scraped the tips of the deadly hooves of the mare, struggled to remain standing as her wounds begin to fester before my eyes, revealing flesh and bone and the lifeblood underneath. Despite this, Dusty’s accuracy was dead on as she burned through round after round, magazine after magazine until the firing pin clicked an empty response to her urging.

The little chestnut mare with the greenest eyes I had ever known turned to me with an expression I truly had never seen on her face before.

“You know,” she weakly managed after magically pressing the single button on the recorder that I had forgotten I had left aloft in my aura, “I don’t ever regret my life choice. I made damn good ones. Sure, there were pitfalls and pain, but I never regretted anything because I have her, I have my happy ending, my sweet little filly.”

Dusty turned to throw her pistol at an approaching ghoul with such force that it sounded an audible crunch before she raised a barrier of a few feet in any direction around us made up of her magic’s bright yellow light.

Turning back, her shield already flashing under the strain, she continued.

“When you hear this, little one, know that Mommy will always be with you. No matter how far away you or I may be divided.” She paused to squeeze her eyes tightly closed as a layer of overcharge appeared around her horn and she pushed through her weary state.

I couldn’t help but stand stock still as Dusty Tome uttered words that never should have belonged to me. “I love you… I…” A groan escaped her lips and she fell to the floor before elevating herself up on one hoof to speak into the hovering microphone. “I will always love you, and you must always try to be the best you can be, better than whatever this tough world will try to twist you into. I know you will have a bright future, and…”

A breath.

“And you will be fantastic.”

Tapping the button with my hoof, I slid the device back into my bag as Dusty took another long look at me. Regret is not what I saw, no. She may have regretted not seeing her filly grow up or regretted not being there for her as long as she possibly could have, but I think she actually just felt sorry for me having to carry such a burden.

Her eyes fluttered once, twice, and on the third closure Dusty Tome’s eyes stayed shut, never to give that motherly look again.  Inside my soul, I feel a fissure form, small and shallow, but vitally present.

Sixteen.

In an instant, her shield failed and my eyes were fixed on my last friend, awaiting the hooves of the ghouls who would most certainly be making me a puddle on the ground soon.

A voice, louder than any I had ever heard, but as gentle as a whisper made me kneel in pain. This voice was hard and sharp and I felt it scraping at my mind as if it were a direct feed into my head from her mouth. I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying as it was a word too powerful and dangerous for my already fractured mind to comprehend at the moment, but as I peered up at the endless void in her pupils, beckoning me to submit, surrounded by the pressing pink haze that was obscuring the marbled columns, inlaid gold, and fragrant, aging books of the place I had called my home for the past six years, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of longing. Longing not for salvation, not for this place to persist as it was, but for Dusty and every one of those sixteen ponies I saw pass away today to return, to live the lives they, at one time, had ahead of them.

In the din I heard a small call above the noise and activity as the pink and the brown and the silvery white began to blend into one, my doom closing in, nearer and nearer.

“Hope and take a leap of faith!”

Whether it was insanity or something far stranger, I can’t know, but those words, formed in the last moments of opportunity gave me the strength to stand, and with one last look at Dusty and a tear sliding onto her still form, I leapt.

In a flash of magical energy and disorienting color, I felt air whoosh by my head as I fell a few feet and landed on my rump with a sharp creaking from the wood floor below me. My eyes, having not yet adjusted to the fact that it was twilight outside and that there were no lights on in this place, wherever I was, forced me to feel blindly around until I found a candle resting on what I assumed was a simple shelf mounted on the wall. Using a fire spark spell I typically reserved for campfire starting or cooking food, I exerted a little too much force and accidently set a nearby tapestry ablaze.

I scrambled for the closest source of water which, by chance, rested nearby in a cistern on top of a small pillar in the middle of a raised stage. I tossed the water to quickly put out the tapestry, sighing with the sudden expenditure of energy after the day’s stresses. In the corner of my eye, reflecting the light of the small candle, I spotted a flash of emerald and turned on the spot.

“Dusty!?” The room was empty, and my query was met with silence.

“Of course, it couldn’t be her. You just saw her die,” the fissure in my soul reminded me mockingly.

Staggering, weak and lightheaded, toward the reflecting green, I found that it was merely a piece of green colored glass hidden behind a long sheet which had been hastily draped over this particular part of the wall. Something eerie and reminiscent of my past stirred within me, and I couldn’t help but pull off the covering, allowing the fading sunlight to flow through.

A flashing image of a weeping purple stallion with deep blue coat, a small black filly, and a brief chill caused my breath to catch in my throat as I realized where I was. The filly, standing directly in front of me was crying too, saying “Daddy! Daddy, where is momma? Where!?” I felt my own mouth forming those words as she said them before I blinked and the scene had vanished along with my sense of security.

Miles from New Commons, my old home, stood an old, abandoned church which had survived the test of wars, time, and nature, despite all their best efforts to bring it down. This church was dedicated to the worship of the Stars as directed by an ancient Zebra sect who taught that the Stars were the creators of all things, and that the stars were both our greatest benefactors and our greatest enemies. Essentially, the belief in the kind of religious hoodoo that I had never really found practical, rational, or necessary to anypony because it tended to lead to crusades masked in the guise of religious charity. Prior to the megaspells wiping out anyone who could stop such a thing, the government of Equestria shut this place down on suspicion that the Followers of the Star Maiden, as they were called, were “striped, zebra colluders” or some such thing. Despite this, the building, and its famous stained glass depicting the Star Maiden, remained, and it had been home to a few organizations, families, and refugees in times of trouble on more than one occasion since.

“Where else can I go now?” I asked to the unmoving, regally posed image in the glass above me. “You have seen me at nearly all the lowest points of my life somehow, so I can’t say I am surprised to have come up with this place as the destination for my spell.  It seems only fucking fitting.”

I felt my blood began to boil as the rage of pent up frustrations started pulsing from my heart.

“All of the ponies I’ve come to know, befriend, and love have come and gone in death or just the passing of time, but you, you ridiculous, misleading icon of my failures, remain!” I frantically shouted while pointing an accusing hoof.

“You may have once been the symbol of peace, of goodness, and of unity, as those deluded, passed on ponies thought, but, now, just look at you! All you are is a simple reflection of me: cold, alone, and worn at your edges!”

I paused, falling to sit on my haunches, tired, and I let my emotions crest and fall as they flowed out of me from their hidden reservoir.

“They said you created our souls to make us creatures of virtue, but I cannot believe that now,” I whispered in the crescendo of feelings that my long past had orchestrated.  “How can I? How can anypony have a soul anymore on this wreck of a planet? HOW!?”

“Well, duh, silly, they just keep up a happy attitude and take the time to enjoy a good laugh,” a soprano, bell of a voice said from the darkness.

“Wait, wha –“

A bouncing, dark colored mare who giggled as we tumbled into a padded pew a few feet away with my head striking the blunt wooden corner of the seat, cut me off.

“Who… are you?” I asked in a daze as my vision began to blur, and I reached up with a hoof to feel a sticky spot near my right ear.

“Oopsie!” The mare said from beside me. “I think I surprised her a little too well, Papa!”

The charcoal mare and a shotgun toting, green, aging stallion leaned over me, speaking gibberish and making gestures at myself and each other. I spoke inwardly to myself that they were taking this way too seriously, and they should relax on this sweet concrete bed, like I was.

“Speaking of which,” I said aloud, “I just want to take a nap, so forget my questions. I’ll just ask again tomor –“

Sleep never comes easy when you’re broken hearted, but it does somehow manage to become a very simple task when you have a serious concussion.

Footnote:

Character Selected: Starwind Solace

S.P.E.C.I.A.L: Strength – 3 Perception – 5 Endurance – 5 Charisma – 7 Intelligence – 8 Agility – 4 Luck – 5

Level 1 –

You are an egghead, so your Science skill is already at 75! However, you did not earn enough experience to level up. Sorry about that, but you ran from battle… On the positive side, due to your powerful studying abilities you’ve gained the power to teleport from some of Twilight Sparkle’s Notes! This spell has a pretty long recharge time though, so be careful and teleport somewhere safe!

Author’s Note:

Thanks to KKat for the fantastic work of fanfiction that allows everyone who aspires to develop the universe more to do so with ridiculously good source material.

Thanks also to Somber for FoE: Project Horizons which is wickedly good in its own right and adds tons of depth to the FoE universe.

Thanks also to Cirrus and Wr3nch for their great editing and keeping me grounded to my story!

Cheers, everyone, and be sure to check out the original Fallout Equestria on EQD or FIMFiction and all associated work!