Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn

*

As soon as I was far enough from the light of their camp, I broke out into a run.

Kicking up swaths of powder behind me, I dashed into the night, my PipBuck lighting my winding way. I glanced frantically across the pale, eyeing the fading trail of blood and hoofprints.

The snowfall was burying it all away.

“Shit!”

I needed to find those guns before something horrible happened to her. I imagined them tying her down and stripping away her clothes, piece by piece …

I shook my head vigorously.

I needed those damned guns.

My heart drummed inside my chest. The world blurred around me. All I heard was Candy Cane’s voice crying out the very last words she’d said to me …

‘It’s not worth it, Red …’

The trail was becoming fainter.

‘IT’S NOT WORTH IT!’

My legs pumped faster.

‘I won’t lose you again.

‘Dew Drops …’

I winced. A terrible shiver wracked my spine.

‘Now you know how it’s like to die alone …’

Not again.

The snowfall thickened.

Not again.

The tracks were fading away.

“Not again!” I cried over the wind, galloping through the drifts even as the heavy snow continued to fall – even as the trail disappeared beneath the powder. I’d find a way – I’d find a way!

I couldn’t find my way.

“No – no – no – NO – NO!” My forehooves stabbed through the snow with every step I took – tearing through the powder, searching for a splotch of red.

A mare screamed.

“DAMNIT!”

I froze.

Her voice echoed through my ears and my thoughts. Strange emotions washed over me. One by one they crashed against my conscience like waves upon a seashore.

I grinded my teeth. Then my eyes widened.

Impatience. Irritation … abandonment?

“We are lost – again!” she moaned, her voice resonating through the caverns of my mind like my own thoughts.

“It does not matter. We will find what We came here for,” the same voice replied … to … itself?

I squinted through the snowfall. The furies’ waning tracks led down that alleyway.

I lifted a hoof – and hesitated. The last time I heard voices echo through my head like that was when I stared down the battle cannon of a zebra demon engine.

Magical fuckery was at work.

“No. There is nothing here. We are wasting our time!” she hissed. “We cannot dawdle – not when We may be needed elsewhere.”

“QUIET!” I cringed, her voice jabbing into my brain like broken glass.

“We felt it, did We not?” I heard and I thought the mare demand. “That is why We are here – that is why This One is certain that it is here. We will not return empty-hoofed.”

My hooves crunched through the wary silence as the voices paused for a moment. I hugged the charred wall, peeking my head around the corner.

Goddesses … Goddesses?

My eyes widened and I felt my legs wobble beneath me.

Their backs were turned. They couldn’t see me but … I could see them …

There they stood … three … winged unicorns, their dark green coats almost invisible in the moonless night. I eyed the great wings tucked against their sides, and the majestic, spiraling lengths of bone upon their heads.

I could think of no other word to describe them.

Goddesses … the wind seemed to calm in the presence of those … Goddesses.

So did the snowfall. It waned to an apprehensive stillness as I stared, jaw dropped and breaths shallow. Even as the wind dissipated into the frozen air, their manes – their star-speckled midnight manes billowed endlessly in an invisible breeze.

I took a step closer. My hoof crunched into gravelly snow.

One of the winged unicorns turned to me her delicate face. Strands of her celestial mane, sparkling like a starry night sky, washed across her cheek.

I exhaled a breath that I’d been keeping in as I met her gaze. I soon realized that I was staring into the charming blue eyes of a Goddess. A Goddess.

But the beauty in her stare shattered like glass.

Anger flashed across her face.

“YOU!” her voice rang out through me.

My heart leaped inside my chest. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Gasping, I stumbled backwards - tripping up on my hooves and plunging into the drifts as she scattered my thoughts with her psionic echoes.

“SHOW YOURSELF! The Goddess commands it!”

Goddess.

I scrambled to my hooves. Cursing quietly, I poked my head from around the corner.

The three winged unicorns were glaring right at me, heads bowed and ready to charge, their eyes and horns blazing with rippling spellfire.

‘Oh. Shit’.

I ducked back into cover and hoofed my face, swearing and swearing into my hoof.

“Come out. NOW!” the pony to the far left commanded in a voice that shook the snow from the rooftops.

I obeyed, slinking awkwardly out into the open, my eyes trained upon her.

I expected her to run me through –

But the winged unicorn on the right cantered towards me, towering another head over mine. I gulped as her shadow fell upon my face, my fetlocks buckling beneath me. I gazed meekly into her glowing blue eyes as I felt a cold hoof touch my cheek. Her horn flickered with a bluish sheen and my limbs tensed … frozen.

I looked up at her dark expression. Her coat – a gloomy shade of green. Her mane – made of night. I remembered the illustrations from the books I read at school. Celestia and Luna. She was neither.

They were not Goddesses. They were …

A strange tingling sensation tickled the inside of my skull.

I winced.

It fluttered and arced throughout my body – beneath my skin – through my veins – inside my gut.

Time seemed to slow as her strange magic skittered across my flesh.

She blinked, and her hoof fell away from my cheek.

“It is merely another aborigine,” she droned, evenly. “Pure.” The even-toned mare squinted at me, scrutinizing my shivering body. “I sense nothing of import within him.”

I wrinkled my nose at her. The other two just glared at back, annoyed.

“Then it means nothing to us,” the pony to the far left growled.

She stepped forward and shooed the other away.

Her hoof came to touch my cheek.

“Perhaps … We can afford to be more … invasive.” The mare chuckled madly, a malicious smile curling across her lips. Her horn exuded an ungodly glow and my skin began to crawl.

I felt my insides churn … and …

“AGH –“

“Do not waste any more of our time,” a voice rang out.

Her magic dissipated and I fell before her hooves, retching into the snow.

The mare at the center strode forward. “We must continue searching.”

“Goddesses …” I wheezed in between breaths. It … it felt like she was turning me inside out.

“Goddesses?” the winged unicorn – the mad mare grinned.

I looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, a line of spittle hanging from my chin.

“There is only one Goddess, and that is the Goddess of Unity,” she said, her words resonating a thousand times inside my head.

Unity.

“What … what are you?”

The Mad Mare tipped her chin to the sky.

“We are alicorns. We are the instruments of the Goddess.”

Alicorns. Goddess. Unity.

Night Sky’s words resurfaced to my thoughts.

‘… there are worse things than death if you come across somepony yakking about Unity …’

My eyes widened.

I took a trembling hoofstep back. I needed to get the hell out of there.

I heard the hum of crackling magic.

“Hehe … where do you think you’re going, little one?” the Mad Mare demanded, spellfire crackling across her horn.

I flinched.

“CEASE THIS NONSENSE!”

The rooftops rumbled. Icicles and debris showered over us as everything and everyone fell silent. I gulped as the three alicorns glared restlessly into each other’s eyes.

There was a low crack. A sheet of snow plopped onto the Mad Mare’s head and flattened her billowing mane. She stood there shivering, her horn exuding a fiery glow as melting slush dripped and dribbled down her wilted mane.

“He is of no use to us,” the Middle Mare said to her sister, the Mad Mare, her foreleg outstretched between us. “Leave him be, and let us be on our way.”

The Mad Mare looked away, prancing in place as she chewed on her lower lip.

She spoke in a low, trembling voice, “Where would we go, sister? Where? We may yet extract something useful from the little one. It is better than wandering this wasteland aimlessly … We are lost, sister, can you not see?”

The even-toned mare looked away, muttering, “We cannot see. No amount of augering can penetrate this darkness …”

My ears perked. I looked up at her, chills running down my spine …

The Middle Mare snorted, her eyes flickering with unnatural light.

“Then We shall search with the eyes the Goddess gave us.”

The Mad Mare threw her head back and laughed.

“Search? Just as We have been for the last four weeks?” She sighed, rolling her eyes. “The Goddess ordered us to search – We have. And We have found nothing.”

“Sister … do not be difficult,” the Middle Mare murmured. “That is because We have not been searching long enough.”

“We are lost!” the Mad Mare cried, ruffling her wings. She shot me a baleful look, and stomped her hoof into the ground. “We cannot even detect what We are searching without touching these filthy animals!”

The Middle Mare tapped her lip with a hoof, narrowing her eyes at me.

“Perhaps We might try asking the little one?”

I flinched.

“Hmph.” The Mad Mare tossed her hoof over her shoulder. “Our affairs do not concern this fool,” she scoffed at me as if I wasn’t there.

I gulped. “Ahem … well you haven’t really been trying to keep that a secret from me …” I murmured.

“What?” they gasped in unison. “You could hear us the whole time?”

I cocked my head at them.

“Of … of course I can. You’re talking out loud.”

“DAMNIT!” the Mad Mare screamed, stomping her hooves into the snow.

The ground cratered inward as she blew a ring of snow and rock sky high.

‘Holy fuck.’

Her eyes blazed with fiery magic.

Half a dozen silvery arrows of burning spellfire shot into the air.

“He was spying on us earlier. He knows. He cannot be allowed to leave.”

I took a step back. There was nowhere to run.

Her horn flashed.

“Wait!” one of her sisters shouted.

I forced an eye open. And nearly unleashed my bowels.

A magical arrow was hovering less than an inch away from my face. I could feel the heat of its magical fire prickling against my muzzle.

“Have We ever thought to simply ask for help?” the Even Mare whispered. “These aborigines know more of this land than we do.”

“No!” the mad one hissed. “He mustn’t know!”

The Middle Mare glared at her, clenching her jaw. “Do We have any other ideas?” She leered at her sisters half-expectantly, waiting for an answer. She snorted when they said nothing. “No. That is what This One thought.”

I raised a hoof, slowly. Their heads slowly turned in unison. I cleared my throat, shaking uncontrollably at the spellfire arrowhead that was still hovering before my muzzle.

“Y-you’re lost?”

The three alicorns nodded.

I gulped, my eyes narrowing at the blazing projectile that was burning less than inch away from my snout.

I didn’t think a health potion could heal through whatever damage that thing could cause. My eyes trailed off to the crater beneath the middle one’s hooves.

… or whatever else those … alicorns could do to me. I glanced over my shoulder. It was a straight shot out of the alleyway, with no cover, and a trio of ponies that could smear me across the snow like a radroach. I didn’t see much of a way out. I needed to get out of there … I needed to save Candy Cane.

But those fucking alicorns were going to rip me to pieces.

I blinked. I thought about the guns those furies left behind when we killed them.

Then I stared down the length of that fiery arrowhead.

I let out a trembling breath … ‘those guns are worthless.’ A sly, impatient grin stretched across my face, sweat trickling down my forehead.

“Maybe … maybe I can help you find what you’re looking for?”

The three exchanged a myriad of looks. The Mad Mare growled and took in a breath of air - but her sister beat her to it.

“You have long walked these wastes, have you not?” the Middle Mare asked.

I gulped, nodding. “Y-yes ...”

The Even Mare chuckled softly. “Perhaps the little one might be of use to us, after all.”

“No! We cannot simply tell this fool!” the Mad Mare snarled, her arrows still hanging over me like an executioner’s axe.

“Sister … you are being … difficult again ...” her sister replied, evenly. “He may be able to show us the way.”

I nodded like my life depended on it. I nodded because Candy Cane’s life depended on it.

The Mad Mare glared at me, her jaw clenching. Seconds passed as her magical arrow blazed into my retinas like balefire. She cocked her head to the side - and a flash of light engulfed me.

I was going to die.

My eyelids slammed shut.

There was a long, fading hum.

She relented. Her magic dwindled and dissipated, and a trembling sigh of relief escaped my lips.

“Damnit.” She swung her head at her sisters. “Then make it quick. This One grows tired of dawdling.”

The Middle Mare nodded, and her sister backed off. The Even Mare stepped forward.

“Little one … have you ever came into contact with those touched by the madness?” she asked, walking towards me as I took one careful step back.

‘Touched by the madness? Madness … madness …’

‘Hahahahaha …’

“Snow furies…”

She cocked her head at that.

“If that is what they are called.”

A moment of hesitation passed. “Then yes,” I murmured in a tiny voice.

“What was that?” grunted the Mad Mare.

“Yes,” I coughed, biting my lower lip. I felt like I was going to be crushed beneath the weight of their wary stares. “Yes, I’ve seen them. I was actually attacked by a pack of them, earlier. I barely got out alive …” I trailed off, Candy Cane lingering in my thoughts. I thought carefully about what I was about to say next.

“I followed them. I know where they’re camped.”

The three alicorns peered down at me, thinking to themselves for once.

“I can … I can take you there.”

“Hmph,” the Mad Mare snorted. “You are nervous. I can sense it …” She craned her neck towards me. “You have something else on your mind.”

I gulped. And said nothing.

“This One can crush you like an insect … remember that, little one,” she whispered, her cold blue eyes staring through mine. I gazed into them. I didn’t see a Goddess.

I saw something else: a cruel hollowness, devoid of equinity, but equine in form.

I couldn’t see a soul behind those eyes.

Only the Goddesses had both wings and horns. But they were no Goddesses.

The alicorn raised her chin to the sky, looking down upon the helpless little pony cowering beneath her. She lifted a hoof. I held my breath.

“Take us to them. The Goddess commands it.” She stomped her hoof into the snow with a dull crack. My eyes widened. The concrete underneath her shattered.

“Deviate from your course, and your death will be a slow and excruciating one.”

A cloud of foggy air wheezed out of my lips as the other alicorns nodded in agreement.

“Right.” I turned back the way I came, my legs trembling beneath me. I took a step forward – tripped on my own hooves and crashed into the snow.

I scrambled to my hooves, coughing twice, and eyeballing my PipBuck and the X that was twinkling over my map.

“Right. Of course. Follow me,” I said, cantering down the alley. I heard footsteps crunching behind me.

I couldn’t believe it.

Those guns were worthless. It didn’t take a genius to know those three made an energy caster look like a flashlight.

And I was leading that derailed train ride right into a camp of snow furies.

An impish smirk creased my lips. I was going to make those furies pay.

I shook my head vigorously, and quickened my pace.

“Hurry. Please.”

The alicorns followed in suit.

“If he tries anything foolish, I will impale him,” the Mad Mare growled as they trotted after me.

A terrified grin creased across my lips.

“You really like to think out loud, don’t you?”

An air of quietude fell upon us.

“It is a habit,” the Even Mare said, softly. “We do not always speak out loud.”

“Then why are you now?”

She hesitated. Her voice became quieter.

“We cannot hear each other … not over the screaming.”

I stopped in my tracks, and gave them a nervous glance.

“The screaming?”

The Mad Mare growled, “Keep moving, whelp.”

I did as she commanded, troubled to the bone.

“There is something here … an interference.” She winced, pain flickered across her face. “It hinders our farsight with an impenetrable darkness. Our augering cannot detect them unless they are standing right before us.”

I chuckled, “That’s why you need me, then, huh?”

The Mad Mare shot me a look that spelled out death.

“Watch your tone, little one. You are not in control, here.”

I fell silent. So it seemed. But they would help me, whether they knew it or not.

There was yet another long silence as we crunched through the snow.

“I long to hear the Goddess’ voice again,” the Middle Mare whispered. “There is no Unity here. There can never be.”

*

The torchlight of their fucked up little camp peeked just over the debris-strewn ridgeline. The wind was quiet, and the snow was as light as I had ever seen it since I first stepped outside into that tartartus.

There was nothing in the wind to drown out the horrifying screams that emanated from their camp.

“They’re here,” I whispered to the three alicorns who crept up behind me.

“Goddess,” the Even Mare winced, hoofing her temple. “I can feel them. The mad ones. The darkness is strong here.”

Her words resonated through my thoughts. The darkness.

Someone let out a mortal, bloody wail. Dozens of delighted cheers followed.

I hurried up the ridge, debris cascading down the hill behind me. I peered over a chunk of melted concrete and watched the horror unfold before my eyes.

Inside of a wide circle of jeering snow furies, there was a pony, his hindlegs twisted and broken. He clawed through the snow – dragging his useless legs behind him and away from an advancing snow fury mare. He cried out in desperation as the fury’s hoof steps came crunched closer.

“No – no please! NO!”

The fury just laughed.

She plunged the machete through his back.

Thwack.

He screamed – until his screams were cut short.

She yanked it out of him and swung it into neck. The blade wasn’t sharp enough. So instead, it crunched deep into his spine.

His legs spasmed once. Then nothing.

He was dead.

But the fury tore it out of him and just … kept slashing.

The crowd exploded with roaring cheers. The fury mare lifted her gory machete triumphantly into the air. It wasn’t much of a triumph if they couldn’t fight back.

But it didn’t matter.

They just left the pony’s mutilated corpse where it lay. With the rest. With the others that they’d slaughtered for their sick entertainment.

At least seven other ponies and their entrails lay strewn about the killing floor. It was hard to tell how many they’d actually butchered.

There were too many limbs to piece together.

Too many limbs … too many limbs ...

Panic fluttered inside my heart.

My eyes searched frantically for what my heart didn’t want it to see. I scanned the dead.

A leg.

A leg with a gory red coat.

Hacked up and disarticulated.

Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. Stars flashed in my eyes - and I doubled over, my heart convulsing with torturous throbs.

I beat a hoof across my chest. My breaths came in and out shallow gasps. I peered over the rubble and stared at the grisly limb. I just stared, unable to breathe as the tremors within my heart threatened to tear me apart from the inside out.

“N-no …” I choked.

Hooves crunched behind me.

“It is time.”

Pomf. A blast of cold air crashed against my numbing flesh.

Three winged forms took to the sky.

Three voices, speaking in unison, shattered my thoughts and dragged me back into clarity.

“PREPARE TO BE UTTERLY DESTROYED.”

The snow furies jeered, and scattered. They thrust their guns into the air.

And the gunfire turned the night into day.

There was a blinding flash in the sky. A bubble of shimmering blue energy enveloped the three alicorns, sparking and whining with every bullet that dashed uselessly against it.

I cupped my hooves over my ears, the rattling – the grating – the deafening gunfire drowning out everything except the voices that cackled hilariously inside my head. I screamed - and screamed - but I couldn’t hear my voice.

‘HAHAHAHAHA – HAHAHAAHA!’

…

Everything went numb.

In the tunnels of my eyes … the world faded to black and white.

A dull ringing resonated through the deafening silence.

I heard Candy Cane’s voice.

‘You couldn’t save me.’

Icy black paint trickled down the cracked, pockmarked walls around me.

‘You can’t save anyone.’

I doubled over as a palpitation shot stars through my eyes.

‘You can’t save anyone. Not even our stable.’

‘HAHAHAHAHA –’

“NOOO!”

The world blurred past me. Around the camp. Atop the ridge. A fury with a battle rifle.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

My spade clattered to the rocks.

Furies cowered behind cover. Their flank was exposed. I stared down the gun. Crosshairs hovered over a fury’s chest.

CRACK.

SATS whined for more.

CRACK.

Someone galloped into my crosshairs.

CRACK.

A fury mare crawled away –

CRACK.

One more.

CRACK.

One more.

CRACK

More …

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

The plaster frayed and split.

A fury galloped to a cage, shadows writhing within. SATS shrieked.

But a white flash sheared him in half.

A ragged breath wheezed out of my lips. Blazing arrows of fiery magic rained down from the sky.

Explosions erupted across the camp. Charred limbs sailed through the air. Craters were blown out of the earth.

An inferno engulfed the camp.

I stared into the burning spellfire. And the spellfire stared back.

Their maniacal laughter howled over the sounds of crackling, charred flesh and splattering limbs until their voices shrieked agonizingly into oblivion.

All became quiet.

I looked down upon the obliterated, fiery craters … the cooked, smoldering carcasses... the charred limbs that littered the snow. Some bodies were whole. Bleeding from ragged holes in their chests.

The smoking, magic-wreathed battle rifle was still braced against my shoulder.

I watched in silence until the last of their screams died out underneath the crackling, spellfire flames.

I sighed.

And my magic winked out … relieving me of the crushing weight of my battle rifle. It clattered to the rubble at my hooves, kicking up a small plume of snow that speckled my sleeves.

I didn’t even feel it.

I felt … numb.

All was quiet. No more laughter. No more insane, demented laughter. It was quiet.

I leaned against a rock and touched a trembling hoof to my tear-frosted face … and realized that I’d been crying the whole time.

But as I gazed down the ridge and saw the snow furies splayed out across the snow …

A cruel grin wavered across my lips.

“Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …” My shoulders trembled with sobs as I stared at their smoking corpses. I watched them cook before my eyes …

… and … and it almost felt … good.

It almost felt … right.

“You can’t hurt anyone anymore,” I whispered, clenching my eyes shut as ragged, weary breaths hissed out of my lips.

They got what they deserved.

Amid the smoke, six pairs of green hooves crunched in the ashen drifts. I watched as the alicorns wandered through the camp, picking through the remains. They levitated the corpses, some still relatively whole where deliberately-placed arrows had shorn off and cauterized limbs. Others simply dragged entrails out of the dead, weaving them through the air and scrutinizing them with their soulless blue eyes.

At the center of the camp, my eyes caught a few black shadows shifting behind the icy steel bars of a cage. Two halves of a snow fury lay before it.

I stared at the cage for a long while. There were still ponies inside. I slung the battle rifle over my shoulder and staggered down the ridge.

My hooves felt like someone else’s as they plodded across the cratered snow. As I approached, the silhouettes shifted once more. I flicked my PipBuck’s light on.

Four dirty faces stared back at me. Among them I caught a flash of red and white.

“Cane … CANE!”

My hooves clanged against the bars as a pony pushed past the others, Candy Cane’s face bathed in my PipBuck’s ruddy glow.

“Red …” I heard her say.

I levitated the battle rifle, and the ponies inside took a terrified step back. But Candy Cane didn’t move an inch, watching me with teary eyes.

Crack.

The cage’s shattered lock crunched to the snow. I wreathed the door with my scarlet magic and swung it open. The other ponies didn’t even say a word as they made a mad dash out and into the night.

Candy Cane just stood there, dried blood smeared down one side of her face. I stumbled forward and threw my legs around her.

“Cane – I-I thought I lost you … again.”

She nodded, her mane brushing against my face.

“I know,” she whispered as I felt her legs wrap around me.

Hooves crunched behind us as an alicorn dragged away a gory torso.

Candy Cane watched as she trotted past us, fear and uncertainty flashing across her face. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“How … how did you …”

“I helped them help us,” I told her.

Candy Cane shook her head, slowly. “You shouldn’t have come back for me. Those alicorns could’ve … those furies ...” Candy Cane pulled away, gazing into my swollen, bloodshot eyes. “You … you could’ve died …”

“It was worth it,” I told her, “You … you’re …” I gulped, looking away. “When I saw those furies killing the others … I … I … I-I thought I was going to lose you too.”

I hugged her once more as a ragged sigh escaped my lips. Candy Cane nodded furiously with tears in her eyes and squeezed me tight.

“I wasn’t going to let them take you away from me again …” I murmured in a voice only I could hear, letting the howling winds take me behind the darkness of my eyelids.

An agonized moan shattered the ghosts in my head.

I swung my head around and saw her.

Her.

A hornless mare writhed in the snow, one of her hindlegs nothing but a cauterized stub of cooked meat.

“You …” I started towards her, but felt Candy Cane’s hoof grab my shoulder.

“Red, wait –”

“YOU STAY OUT OF THIS!” I screamed, shrugging her off as I pounded towards the writhing fury.

She recognized me as I approached, panting in desperation as she tried to drag herself away.

I shouldered my battle rifle.

“No – no! Please!” she begged, crawling to her haunches and holding out her hooves. “Please … don’t kill me – p-please don’t kill me!”

I stared in silence as she wept, her tears streaming down her bloody cheeks. She sobbed helplessly, peering up at me with her wide, teary eyes. “I-I don’t wanna die … I-I need help … you don’t understand … I-I need help.”

I tried to look away. I tried not to look. But my eyes gravitated to hers … I watched as a web of black veins palpated in the white of her sclera. With every pulse a shadow grew – and receded, dimming the light of her pink irises with every sickly throb.

“I need help … I … I - AGH!” she cried out, clawing at her face with her hooves. “HELP ME!” she begged, blood running down her cheeks. “Please - HELP ME! I DON’T WANNA DIE!”

I just stared with empty eyes, her words passing through one ear and out the other.

“I DON’T WANNA DIE! I-I …. please … haha… HAHAHAHA- ARGH!” The mare doubled over, her hooves tearing at her bloody face. “I-I NEED HELP! I NEED – haha … HAHAHAHAHA! AHHHHAHA –”

CRACK.

Her teary eyes widened to saucers. Her hooves shot up to her throat. The mare sputtered and choked.

Arterial crimson pumped through her quivering hooves and poured down her chest.

“Ack … ack ...” She peered up at me with her glistening pink eyes. Her mouth moved, but not a single word seeped out of her lips. Only blood. Tears cut clean streams down her cheeks, revealing the purple coat beneath.

The mare coughed once, splattering the snow with blood.

She lost the strength in her legs … and collapsed, her bloodied hooves painting a red arc across the snow as I listened to her muffled, suffocating cries.

“Uh … ack …” A spurt of lifeblood welled out of the ragged hole in her throat with every beat of her dying heart. She lay there … screaming in silence … her head jerking back and forth in silent agony as she bled out into the snow.

I watched her limbs spasm into stillness … I watched her writhe and squirm … I watched until the puddle around her stopped growing.

My head spared a glance over my shoulder, my face darkened by the shadow of the flickering spellfire flames.

A voice spoke in a soft, even tone.

“Next time … you let me pull the trigger.”

Candy Cane gulped, saying nothing, her face pale as she stared at the pony who laid motionless at my hooves.

I heard the sounds of feathers flapping against the wind, and an alicorn crunched into the snow before me. A shimmering field of blue magic swirled around the mare’s remains, lifting her into the air.

With a sickening squelch, her flesh tore apart before my eyes as the alicorn split her open.

Steaming entrails spilled to the snow.

I heard Candy Cane gag – and throw up her guts.

“You’re welcome …” I muttered, turning from the winged mare.

I stopped beside Candy Cane’s shoulder, staring off into the distance behind her as she panted for breath.

“We’d better look around. See if there’s anything we can use,” I said, quietly.

She just stared at me … until I turned to meet her eyes. Then she doubled over and heaved another throatful.

I spent the next ten minutes picking through their remains, scrounging ammunition from the dead. An assortment of 10mm and 9mm ammunition. A hoofful of 7.62 for the battle rifle I found. A few grenades. My spade.

I reached over my shoulder and unzipped my saddlebags. I paused for a moment and watched as my hoof hovered over the opened flaps. Trembling. I gulped. And yanked the flaps open.

I stuffed them all inside.

Twenty minutes passed, and I stood at the center of the camp. A numbing silence hung over the two of us as the alicorns continued their dissections and Candy Cane picked through whatever was left.

She was wary of those ponies, whirling around upon her hooves every time one of the alicorns passed by. They spared neither of us a thought, concentrated on their own work. One even tugged a corpse away from Candy Cane’s hooves as she was feeling through its vest - only to eviscerate it shamelessly before her.

Candy Cane looked sick, hurrying away from the steaming mess that poured into the snow. She saw me standing at the center of the camp.

She stopped in her tracks.

The mare stood between the alicorn and I, her ears tucked behind her head. She looked over her shoulder, watching the alicorn disarticulate joints and fracture bones … then she turned and looked at me. Candy Cane ran a trembling hoof through her mane, shaking uncontrollably.

She muttered something I couldn’t hear. Candy Cane sniffled and trotted over, her bags jingling with her loot.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, gently.

Candy Cane gave me a troubled look, her brows furrowed and her lips pursed.

“No.” She started forward and stopped, glancing over her shoulder. “Are you?”

There was a long pause as the wind kicked up again, whispering its hollow, haunting song.

“No.”

*

We walked together in silence. Numb.

The rest of the journey was a quiet one. Through empty streets, through winding corners, and then through the remains of a ruined skyscraper we squeezed. Into the rubble we plunged, slipping through tight corridors or disappearing into the ruin’s labyrinthian depths.

Deep inside the ruin’s interior, we found ourselves at an impasse. Candy Cane’s gait slowed as she peered down and into the darkness of a cave-in half a level below us. She levitated her light orb down into the fissure.

Just snow and rubble. Gauging the fall, she nodded, and we both hopped down and into a lonely vestibule. Our hooves sunk through the snow and crunched into a layer of rubble a foot below us. I looked up, and saw the dead wasteland sky poking through a gaping hole in the ceiling two stories overhead.

Candy Cane squeezed through a tight alleyway, grunting softly. I watched her tail disappear out the other side, and I hurried after her, not wanting to be left behind. I pushed through, and stumbled out into the snow – out into the wasteland once more. I looked around us and was somewhat amazed, panning my PipBuck’s beam across the drifts.

Two hundred years ago, when the balefire missile struck, the highrise that once stood tall on that plot of land had fallen over on its side, piling high a mountain range of heaping rubble. We stood high above the earth, staring down a valley of snowcapped ruins almost forty feet tall. Buried beneath the snow, the powdery slopes looked almost natural.

We walked warily down its length for nearly half an hour until Candy Cane stopped. She levitated the map before her, and scanned it carefully, glancing around the place. Candy Cane panned her eyes up the base of a snow-swept mountain of rubble.

A dead end.

I curled my shoulders uncomfortably, the weight of my battle rifle suddenly heavier.

“We’re here,” Candy Cane whispered.

We waded through the knee high powder, seemingly undisturbed and layered pristinely over the rubble beneath.

As we approached, Candy Cane saw something I could not. She pointed a hoof at a seemingly arbitrary mountain face.

“There.” She tucked the map into her peacoat and led me forward. As we approached, I found a corridor that had been carved into the rubble.

‘Finally. We made it.’

We walked up to the door. Its outline was padded with thick fabrics to muffle whatever noise was inside. ‘This was it.’ I glanced at Candy Cane once, and she nodded. I raised a hoof to knock.

But my hoof froze in midair. In my peripherals, I saw that Candy Cane’s eyes were fixated upon the doorway

The door was cracked open.

We exchanged worried looks. I drew my pistol, and she, her submachine gun.

I craned my neck, listening. I tried to gulp down the lump in my throat.

But there was nothing but a dead silence.

All I could hear was the pounding inside my chest. I pressed a hoof against the door, and pushed.

It creaked, lurching open.

Then came the smell. In the stale, lifeless air, my nose curled at the stench of rot. Of a slaughter. I flicked my PipBuck’s light on and parted the morbid darkness.

Candy Cane’s weapon clattered to her hooves.

Splayed out across the floor, hooves outstretched to exit was a mare, her face frozen in agony. A vicious black spike impaled her skull to the floor, and a pool of icy gore and brains were puddled around her head.

Maggots wormed inside my guts.

I swallowed the bile in my throat.

And Candy Cane screamed.

Bullet holes and black spikes perforated the walls around us. Spent shell casings and discarded weapons littered the floor.

All. Around us.

Bodies. Everywhere. Butchered like animals.

Impaled against the walls. Dismembered and eviscerated.

Every corpse was carved up. Sculpted. Each was a canvas painted with bloodletting wounds. Most were shallow and deliberate. Few were deep. They wore tortured looks on their peeling, mutilated faces, their weapons mere inches away from their gory hooves.

They had died fighting.

But it didn’t look like much of a fight.

Their deaths had not been quick.

We inched past overturned tables and chairs. More littered the floor among the broken furniture. Some were still seated – slumped in their chairs around bloody tables with their throats slashed open – their bodies carved like meat, and their eyes gouged out.

Through a dormitory we walked. Some died where they laid in their beds, their throats slit … and their eyes gouged out. Others lay out in the hall, hacked to death the moment they left their rooms.

All of them. All of them with their eyes. Gouged. Out.

I followed the carnage, my legs quaking like they were going to buckle beneath me. I glanced at the floor. Someone had been dragged down the hall, the frozen trail of blood disappearing beneath a bullet ridden door frame. I pushed it open and deadpanned the slaughter within.

At its furthest corner, there was a pile of bodies. Bullet holes and spikes riddled their remains and the wall behind them.

They were gunned down where the stood.

Or cowered. Or begged.

It didn’t matter. They were all dead. Everyone inside was dead.

At the center of the room were several bodies … their features unrecognizable. Ponies. Used to be. Desecrated and ruined. Gutted like slaughterhouse meat. Flayed. Pinned against the furniture. Flanks in the air. Humiliated. Spread-eagled. Cut apart with their limbs nailed onto the tables with vicious metal spikes.

Every single one of them bore the same scar. The same bloody scar etched into their ruined faces.

Their eyes were gouged out. Their eyes were gouged out.

Goddesses. Their eyes were gouged out.

I waited for the world to shatter around me.

I waited for the demented laughter and the balefire to shock me back into consciousness. ‘This was just another fucked up nightmare.’

But I blinked, and I blinked, and I blinked …

My heart heaved with a quaking throb.

Then I threw up my guts. I stumbled to the other end of the room and collapsed, strings of vomit and drool hanging from my chin.

I whined and wheezed for breath, looking up, dragging my eyes up the wall to see … to see … I doubled over and heaved some more.

I felt Candy Cane fall to her haunches beside me, her head bobbing back and forth. She panted with shallow breaths – staring sightlessly with her dilated eyes at the horror that painted the wall red before us.

“U-ugh …”

She crumbled to the floor.

I sat there. Staring up at the wall. The bloody wall, and the gory trails that dribbled down its cracked, pockmarked surface.

‘Snow furies …’ I blinked. ‘No.’ It couldn’t be.

Candy Cane had seen the worst of them.

But she had never seen that.

Hanging before us ... crucified against the bloodied wall ... was a pony … was … her belly split open and her entrails dangling over the blood-caked floor.

I wanted to scream.

But it wouldn’t have mattered. I couldn’t hear myself think over the deafening words that were scrawled across the wall before my eyes.

Written above her head, smeared in her blood and chunks of frozen gore …

DARKNESS IS COMING

Footnote: Level up.
New Perk: White Death – Accuracy in SATS with firearms increased by 25%