Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn

by Interloper

Rating: mature
Tags: Adventure, Sex, King Sombra, Fallout, Crystal Ponies, Crossover, Dark, Changelings, Gore, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance
Length: 217228

In the Northern Wasteland, a dying stable is the least of anypony's problems - for outside those stable doors, only darkness awaits.

For two centuries the ponies of Stable 91 slept beneath the earth, dreaming sweet dreams as the world above burned away in spellfire. But in that dark world, an ancient nightmare stirred from its slumber, awakened by the destruction of the Great War. From the ashes of the Crystal Empire it rose, spreading its waking nightmares across the wasteland's irradiated snowplains. It was only a matter of time before the ponies of Stable 91 awoke, screaming, never to see the light again. For in the Northern Wasteland, outside '91's stable door, only darkness awaits...

Warning, there are spoilers in the comments!

Rising Dawn is a non-canon spinoff of Fallout: Equestria, by Kkat.
Editors & Pre-Readers: PersonalGamer, Defiance, Starlight Nova, Dannykat, and Mystery Meat.
Special thanks to Dannykat, Alaxsxaq, and Private Dangle for helping me get the story started and planned!
Cover art by Interloper

Published 2014-01-12 02:50:06 UTC
Last updated 2017-10-31 19:03:41 UTC

Chapter 1- Cradle - Pt I

Chapter 1

Cradle

"But it was only a matter of time before their precious little world fell apart ..."

The water level was rising. Bubbling. Boiling. My skin prickled. I could feel its heat radiating against my flesh.

A rivulet of sweat ran down my face.

I peered beneath the railing over the stable’s water purifier, staring into the churning, turbulent waters below.

‘Something’s wrong.’ A tremor rumbled through the catwalks. Engineer ponies froze on their hooves. I felt the metal beneath my hooves begin to shake.

Then the catwalks - the purifier - the chamber -

My entire world began to quake.

"RED DAWN!" someone shrieked.

Hearing my name, I jerked upright and slammed my head into the railing above me. I hoofed the throbbing pain beneath my cropped, red mane, a curse at the tip of my tongue.

But my curses were lost beneath everybody’s screams.

The brown of my coat was lost in a flood of brilliant white as a blinding flash engulfed the teardrop-shaped chamber around me.

Ponies screamed for their lives. The metal shuddered beneath my hooves. The catwalks that spiraled around Stable 91’s water purifier shook violently below.

I reared upon my hinds, covering my ears with my forehooves as sirens wailed over my muffled, pounding heartbeat. Every single console in the chamber was screaming for everybody’s - anybody’s attention. It was like the whole world was about to explode – the only world that I had ever known my entire life.

My eyes darted frantically to the rumbling water purifier at the center of the chamber. I cringed as my pupils contracted to the blazing outburst of another star gone supernova.

"Why the fuck is it doing that!?" I screamed against the howling sirens as I felt something wet trickle out my ear. In the ensuing chaos, hooves clopped frantically around me. Ponies rushed to flashing consoles and terminals. Others stopped to diagnose the engorged pipes that wove into the walls around us.

But there were too many pipes, too many terminals, and not enough ponies to fix them. We weren’t prepared for something like that – we weren’t prepared for so many things to come apart at once.

Because something like that was never supposed to happen.

Everybody dropped what they were doing and swung their heads back to the purifier. My pupils shrank in horror amid the scarlet irises of my widening eyes.

The machine let out an ear piercing shriek, and every single one of the pipes in the chamber began to rumble and screech.

I doubled over as the deafening metallic scream tore through my already ringing ears. I winced, darting my eyes left and right at the swelling weave of pipes that spiraled around us.

They popped and hissed with steaming jets of vapor.

‘Goddesses. We’re all going to die.’

If we weren’t going to be cooked alive, I was sure that the entire room was going to collapse upon itself.

A familiar voice shook me back into focus, calling my name from across the chamber.

“Red! I need you!” My ears perked at the mare’s voice. I swung my head over my shoulder and saw her slamming her hooves desperately into a flashing console.

The water purifier’s console.

The machine was about to blow, and she was standing right in front of it.

“DD, get away from that thing –”

An engorged pipe erupted in front of me. I ducked. Boiling steam gushed overhead and I threw myself to the floor, knocking the air out of my lungs.

The steam cascaded over me but not around me, and I thanked the First Law of Thermodynamics for working as it should have. ‘Now, if I could just crawl under this and –‘ another pipe blew out with a shower of shrapnel and boiling steam. A blast of hot air crashed into me – and I cursed as shrapnel bit deep into my barding. Again, the entire chamber quaked.

Explosions wracked the swaying catwalk underhoof as pipes ruptured and spewed all around me.

Again. And again.

The hot air was getting hard to breath – it felt as if my lungs were boiling from the inside out. I let out a ragged gasp for air I rifled through my saddlebags, wrenched out my breather mask and slapped it onto my muzzle. I took a deep, rasping breath of heavenly cold oxygen, crawled under the scalding cloud of steam, and galloped across the catwalk.

One of the pipes in front of me began to rattle and pop.

Boiling water spurted out of it like a punctured artery.

I slipped into SATS.

My PipBuck illuminated the world around me in streaks of gridded teal. SATS saw it first.

The pipe exploded, and shrapnel screamed towards me. But the shrapnel twinkled teal – and I sidestepped away as the blast wave erupted.

But that didn’t save me from the backwash. My left hind leg nearly cleared the blast –

I was so close.

But not close enough.

The moment I felt its searing touch, I yelped as an inferno engulfed my left flank and sent my nerve endings shrieking. The boiling splash soaked through my jumpsuit and split apart the flesh of my coat. It summoned up screaming blisters that throbbed with every beat of my drumming heart.

Within seconds, my leg gave up under me. I tumbled end over end across the catwalk until the unforgiving steel grating slowed my roll to a drag like brakes on a wheel.

I’ve been burned before, but boiled? The water soaked into my bleeding, burning coat and just kept cooking. Blinded by tears, I shook my body vigorously, showering a pair of fleeing engineer ponies with cooling, bloody water.

The boiling pain began to subside, but the bleeding blisters continued to leak crimson down my cooked, throbbing flesh. My horn flickered to life, and I yanked a health potion out of my saddlebags. I pushed my mask up with a hoof and dumped its contents down my throat.

I growled through my teeth as I pulled my breather mask back down and struggled to flex my stinging limb. The healing potion’s effect was not as pronounced or as immediate as I had hoped. I half limped, half galloped my regenerating ass to a console built into a, thankfully, pipe free wall.

I tapped its screen and punched in the buttons that controlled the vents above us. I dialed the fans to maximum and groaned with relief when the huge fans above the chamber sucked the boiling air into their spinning blades.

Luckily for me, that wasn’t the end of it.

SCREEE!

Metal scraped against metal – and the chamber convulsed, heaving me to the floor. Ponies hurtled over the railing as the walkway behind me toppled over and careened into the water below. If they hadn’t been impaled by the metal beams, they’d be fine.

I hoped.

I coughed and choked as I scrambled to my hooves, pushing through the dwindling smoke and steam to the muffled voice of a screaming mare. I spotted someone’s silhouette in the smoke, and knew it was her.

"Dew Drops, what the fuck is going on!?" I shouted over the deafening klaxons.

"I-I don't know!" she screamed back, warning lights painting her blue coat with flashes of red.

I squinted through the lenses of my breather mask, and galloped towards the mare.

“You need to get clear of that thing!” I screamed over the wailing sirens. “It’s gonna blow!”

My words flew past her ears as she pounded her hooves against the console’s screen, her breaths hissing out of her rebreather. "Goddesses – no, come on – come on!"

I skidded to a halt as the rumbling shell that housed the water purifier at the center of the chamber howled with an anguished mechanical wail.

There was a blue flash. I felt it in my bones and my innards as a seismic crash ripped through the chamber, hurling me to the floor in a heap.

The arcane machine erupted with a blaze of light like a star going supernova, tearing down the fans from the ceiling and shaking the metal beneath my hooves. I watched helplessly as more catwalks and screaming ponies plummeted into the waters below.

“DEW DROPS!” I wailed, scrambling to my hooves as clouds of billowing black smoke washed over me. ‘Please be okay, Goddesses, please be okay!’

I flinched – someone tumbled down a catwalk from on high. He screamed until his screams went silent as he slammed into the railing next to me and plunged into the smoke-filled darkness.

“Holy shit!”

I galloped blindly across the walkway, thick acrid smoke rushing past me. I leaped out of the smoke – and my heart fluttered with distant relief. She was still pounding her hooves against the console. Alive, but with ragged holes and lines of scarlet now trailing down her jumpsuit.

The mare fumbled with the system’s still working controls, stabbing her hooves fruitlessly into the console’s keyboard. With a dying hum, the purifier’s high pitched mechanical whine faded to a dead silence.

Dew Drops stood there, motionless as she stared at the smoking, ruined machine.

She pushed off the console and fell to her four hooves, turning sluggishly towards me with a shell-shocked look on her face.

“Red –” she began. But the terminal’s screen flashed - its controls arcing with electricity.

“DD, get down!” I screamed, reaching out to her with a foreleg as the terminal exploded, showering her with a hail of shrapnel. She pounced – and slammed into me. I broke her fall, knocking the wind out of my chest.

We thrashed blindly against each other's limbs until I managed to bite down on her teal mane and yank her to her hooves.

“DD!”

“I’m okay – I’m okay,” she stammered as she leaned into me, panting to fill her lungs with air. The mare lifted her head, and her eyes widened through her breather mask as she stared at the destruction behind me. “Goddesses …”

We both turned. I tore off my mask, and it clattered to the floor.

I swept my gaze across the once pristine, silvery, teardrop shaped chamber. It looked like a fucking tornado blew through it. The cobweb of interlocking pipes that ran across the ceiling and the curved walls around us were ripped apart from the inside out.

I squinted through the smoke as ponies dashed across the remaining walkways, plugging steaming pipes and spraying retardant into the rampant flames – all the while the sirens continued to shriek.

One pony galloped past me. Her jumpsuit was on fire. The mare hurled herself to the catwalk and squirmed, wriggled, and rolled until her jumpsuit stopped smoking. I called out to her, and she waved a trembling hoof at me – smoking – but okay.

I gulped, swearing under my breath. ‘How the fuck did all this happen?’

"It’s gone …” I barely heard Dew Drops whisper under the whooping sirens. “IT’S GONE!”

I blinked. Then my eyes widened, unsure if I heard her right. "Gone … gone? The whole thing!?" She just stared past me, pulling off her mask, her lips moving but not a single word escaping her lips.

“DD!” I shouted over the sirens, shaking her with my hooves. She blinked, and her ears perked. “DD! Come on!” The mare shook her head and hoofed her right ear with a confused look on her face. I groaned. "Would somebody turn that shit off!"

But my pleas went unheard as ponies scrambled past us. They battered broken consoles with frantic hooves and gawked at the smoldering machine at the center of the chamber – the smoldering machine that purified our stable's water and housed our stable’s precious arcane water talisman.

I roared with a voice that nobody else could hear. With SATS fully charged, my horn glowed red and I hurled my wrench at a console at the other end of the catwalk. It banged silently against the buttons and to my surprise, the sirens shut up. "Gone? The whole system!?" I shouted as the sirens became replaced with everyone’s screams.

She at least heard me that time.

"No – worse," she croaked as she stared at the smoking machine. "The water talisman. It's ... Gone."

My ears twitched. I couldn’t have heard that right. No. Impossible. I tried gulping down the lump in my throat, but it refused to go down. It was getting hard to breath.

I looked at her, unable to accept what I was hearing. I blinked. Then I blinked again. A horrible realization dawned on me.

“Celestia – this can’t be fucking happening …” I whispered, sweat trickling down my forehead. Without the water talisman, we wouldn’t be able to use clean water. Without clean water ....

‘Everyone is going to die.’

I turned my widening eyes to Dew Drops. “H-h... how? That thing is supposed to last centuries.”

"I don't know! I tried fixing it, tried shutting it off, but the purifier’s controls went haywire and the thing blew up ..."

I let out a trembling sigh.

‘We’re doomed.’

I looked at the smoking terminal in front of me and tapped my hooves uselessly against its still flickering screen. It flashed once, stuttered, and died.

I took a deep breath, wiping away the sweat from my forehead. As evenly as I could manage, I asked, "The stable ... how long?"

"What do you mean how long –"

"How fucking long do we have until our water reserves are gone!?"

"I-I don't know yet. W-we need to tell the Overmare!" Dew Drops hooked a leg around a mare who was running towards us. “Bubbles! Get the Overmare, get help – do something!”

She nodded, and scampered off to the exit. I started towards the smoking, metal ruin, but Dew Drops waved me off and gestured to my PipBuck instead.

I shook my head and attempted, with futility, to interface with the purifier’s systems. I wasn’t surprised. No response. “Nothing … shit!”

Dew Drops stepped forward. But her hoof slipped on a puddle and she thumped her face against the catwalk. She groaned, looked at her hooves, then at me, then at her hooves.

My horn flickered to life – and she glowed with a pink magical field that pulled her to her hooves. Overmare Peach Petals stood behind her, her horn glowing as she stared wide-eyed at the ruined machine behind me.

“I ran into her just as I was about to leave,” Bubbles muttered, hoofing her forehead as she trotted over. Following closely behind them were three security ponies who gazed at the destruction around us in disbelief. The blood drained from Peach Petals’ face.

"What happened here? How ... how did all this happen?"

I looked at her and glanced over my shoulder.

"The water talisman got fried, I don't know why, and neither does Dew Drops here," I replied, chewing my lower lip as I eyed my master engineer. You'd probably be expecting that someone two years younger than you would be your apprentice and not the other way around. Well, it might as well have been, because Dew Drops was gazing at the machine’s smoking remains - slack-jawed like everyone else.

She was supposed to be an expert on arcane devices; but she had as little of a clue as to how the water purifier blew up as I did.

"Can it be fixed? Goddesses, please tell me it can!" the Peach Petals begged, trying to hide the palpable trembling in her voice. She glanced around in desperation at the engineer ponies that galloped past her. "You, and you! You and you and you ..." Wherever her hoof jerked, a scrambling pony froze. "Find some way to fix this – now!" she commanded, the Overmare in her voice returning.

I winced at what I had to say, rewording it in my head to exclude a few unneeded ‘fucks’ and a ‘shit.’ But Dew Drops stole the words right from my trembling lips.

"Ma'am, the thing's fried, we can't fix it –"

The Overmare silenced her with a seething glare.

"I don’t care!” she snapped. “You need to find something. Find something …please try to find something. Just. Try.."

"I-I … we'll try ... ma'am," Dew Drops eeped. I looked behind the Overmare and across the catwalk behind the door she came from, a small group of terrified ponies had begun to gather.

“They’re not supposed to be here,” I murmured.

The Overmare and her retinue rushed towards them. "Everybody calm down, the situation is under control. Return above floors and I will let you know personally once this ... issue has been resolved ... and I promise you, it will …" she trailed off, her voice fading away as she herded them as far from the door as she could before it slid shut.

Calm. It was hard to stay that way when the very thing that kept us alive was gone. The Overmare’s presence created an air of doomed silence. Though my ears perked at a few scattered, retching curses that someone hissed here and there, everyone wasn’t so focused on trying not to get cooked alive anymore. They were instead more focused on trying to do what the Overmare ordered them to do.

‘This is going to be a lot of work.’ I let out a trembling sigh as my entire body shook. The future looked grim. Without a water talisman, my stable’s days were numbered.

I heard hooves clop against the catwalk next to me. Dew Drops took a good look at me. She gasped when she saw my scalded, bloody hind leg, her grey eyes widening.

“Luna’s grace …”

I nodded weakly. “I can fix that,” ‘Somewhat,’ I wanted to add. The blisters had stopped bleeding at least, but the flesh was raw and stinging. I levitated two more potions from my bag and downed them one after the other before I spoke. “But the purifier … what about the purifier?”

Dew Drops shook her head, hanging it low.

"Yes. It can be fixed … of course it can be fixed. But the water talisman? It’s not even there anymore," she murmured, staring at the smoking wreck.

I closed my eyes shut and just shook my head. "How long do we have?" I asked again.

She scrolled through her PipBuck's interface, narrowed her eyes at the screen, and shrugged. "A few weeks – a month or two maybe? Depends on how fast we consume our reserves.”

An orange engineer pony with her apprentice in tow approached.

"DD we need another talisman," Amber Fields said, her short yellow mane glistening and dripping with water. She was one of the ponies who fell into the water below. I thanked the Goddesses that my friend wasn't dead. She lifted a reflective sliver of scrap metal and held it out to us in her hoof. "This is all that's left of ours."

"We need to get the others," I said, cradling my head in my hooves. "We need to find some way to ... I don't know – purify our damned water!"

The other mare's apprentice groaned, giving voice to the thoughts that were running circles in my head.

"Don't you get it? We're fucked, fucked I'm telling you! Our water’s gonna get contaminated –" A hoof struck her muzzle, cutting her off.

Amber Fields glared at her sniveling apprentice and nodded at Dew Drops. "We'll find a way ... we have to," she said hauntingly, before dragging her apprentice away with her by the tail.

I cradled my head in my hooves, trying to formulate ways we could possibly filter and purify our water. Talismans casted, multiplied, and sustained spells several fold. ‘All we’d need is a ton of gifted unicorns to … no. Maybe we could just jury-rig a filtration device using the stable’s… no, no, too inefficient.’

I hung my head, dismally. We would not be able create something with the scale to support the needs of three hundred ponies.

We didn’t have the room – the supplies, or the materials to build anything new within our stable. The stable where the last of ponykind had thrived in for nearly the last two centuries. Soon, all of that would be gone. All because of one talisman.

We were doomed. I knew that for a fact.

I felt someone wrap a leg around me and squeeze me tight. I knew it was her. Dew Drops rested her head on my shoulder as we stood there in silence, watching the broken machinery around us smoke with dreary eyes.

With a trembling hoof, she swept out of her eyes a lock of her tousled mane. “At least we’re alive …” I heard the mare whisper.

I frowned at her, saying nothing. For a moment, the stinging sensation on my leg faded away as I eyed the ragged shrapnel wounds on her blue coat. I narrowed my eyes at her, my horn glowing with a scarlet sheen. She nodded, clenching her jaw as I dug the metal fragments out of her hide.

“What you did earlier … that was stupid of you,” I began. “You could’ve had more than just shrapnel in your coat. That machine was beyond saving the moment it started tearing the chamber apart.” My brows furrowed and I clenched my jaw. “You could’ve died.”

Dew Drops sighed, bowing her head. “I needed to at least try, Red,” she replied, softly, wincing as I pulled another bloody sliver of metal out of a ragged hole in her jumpsuit. “If I didn’t give it a shot, I never would’ve known it wasn’t possible.”

I shook my head. “You know more about arcane constructs than our entire shift combined …”

“Exactly … that’s why I was there,” she insisted.

I glared into her soft eyes.

“No … DD. We can’t afford to lose you,” I whispered, my voice trembling.

Dew Drops cocked her head at me, watching me quietly as I stared at my hooves.

“We? Or you?”

I avoided her gaze, digging through her coat.

“Red …”

I pulled the last sliver of metal out of her hide. She shook herself briskly, wiping away the tears of pain in her eyes.

Dew Drops met my gaze. I just sighed and wrapped a leg around her as we gazed at the ruined metal pipes that drooped limply above us.

“We can fix this …” she whispered. “We have to ...”

The sounds of hooves clopping our way drew our attention away from the destruction around us. I saw a stallion with a gray coat and a messy brown mane stumble toward me, head hung low.

"Box Cutter!" I said, calling out his name. He looked at me wearily. "Are you alright?" He staggered closer until I could see the deep gash on his chest.

The answer had to be no.

He just smiled faintly, rocking back and forth on his hooves. I trotted up next to him and he leaned against me. His jumpsuit was dripping wet; he must have fallen in with Amber Fields and the others.

"Fine and dandy, Red," he chuckled. “Just got banged up a little bit.” Box Cutter sighed, waving me off, “Yeah, I’m good – nothing I can’t handle: applebucking mares bang harder than this.”

I smirked – then noticed the bump on his head.

"No, you're not.”

“Oh yeah?” He snorted, “You look pretty messed up yourself."

“It’s superficial.” I grimaced at my crimson hind leg. “Nothing I can’t fix with a few healing potions,” I added, painfully. Goddesses, did it sting.

“Nothing you can’t fix huh …” He sighed, shaking his head. “Can we fix … this?” he asked, looking all around him.

I glanced over at Dew Drops who was staring blankly at the water purifier. Box Cutter slumped against me when I didn’t answer.

"DD, help me get Box to the clinic … I think he has a concussion." I waved a hoof in front of his face, but Box Cutter’s eyes just stayed hazy and unfocused.

“DD?”

Her ears perked, and she nodded slowly. Dew Drops cleared her throat, and said to the ponies of Shift C, who were milling about with shell-shocked expressions, “Everypony, listen up!”

The engineering ponies turned to face her. “Start repairs on the water purifier and plug those pipes. Re-divert the pumps to the reserves; work until the next shift arrives. Until then … just … do something.”

Dew Drops levitated out a trio of health potions, giving them to Box Cutter to drink until the gash in his chest stopped bleeding somewhat. I nodded at her thankfully because Box Cutter was too out of it to do it himself.

I lifted one of his legs over my shoulder. Dew Drops cocked her head at me. “Can you give me a hoof?”

She took one look at my scalded leg and shook her head. “You aren’t carrying him with that,” she told me.

“Right …” I nodded.

“C’mere, Box Cutter,” she grunted as I lifted one of his legs over her.

He moaned as the gash on his chest scraped against her jumpsuit. “Fuck – fuck – that hurts!”

“Oh shush,” Dew Drops smiled. “I know it’ll take more than that to hurt you.”

Box Cutter laughed weakly – and cried when I finally heaved him onto her back. Dew Drops didn’t waste another second as she paced to the clinic and I limped after her. Moving that fast wasn’t going to help my leg, but I needed to see my friend through.

We left the dark, damp confines of the engineering level, its pony-sized piping and grated floor turning into gray tiles and white-washed, concrete walls.

We trotted – or at least I tried to trot through the halls, our gaits quickening as earth ponies and unicorns watched us with worried eyes. Their conversations faded to an uncertain silence when they saw the bleeding stallion on Dew Drops’ back, and the ruined hind leg that I dragged behind me. Everyone we passed stopped to stare. I just pursed my lips and tried to turn my limp into a trot.

My ears perked at the sound of wings flapping through the air.

A flock of young pegasi were trailing after us.

“We shouldn’t have come this way,” Dew Drops said softly.

I tried not to make eye contact with the others. “Why not?”

“Look at them – they’re scared.”

Just when I thought my leg was finally going to give up on me, a pegasus in security barding landed in front of us a yard away.

“DD – oh shit! Is that Box Cutter?” Lightning Twirl raced towards us. “The hell happened? I mean, I heard the explosions and everything,” she said, blowing a rogue strand of her wild white bangs out of her eyes. There was a short pause as Lightning Twirl eyed the gathering crowd of murmuring ponies around us.

I nodded. “The water–”

“The water purifier overloaded. T-they’re fixing it as we speak,” Dew Drops stammered.

“DD –”

She cleared her throat. “Box Cutter fell and well …”

“DD –”

“He’s making a bloody mess all over my jumpsuit,” she finished. Dew Drops pursed her lips at me as I frowned at her. She gave me a sideways look, her eyes darting around at the herd of ponies that were staring right at us.

“I’m still conscious you know ...” he muttered as he laid limp on her back.

“Listen,” Dew Drops began quietly, glancing over her shoulder, “Box Cutter has a concussion, I think.” Lightning Twirl’s violet eyes widened at that. “We need to get him to the clinic.”

She trotted over. “I can fly him there. I’ll use the aerial access tunnels – it’s much faster,” she offered. Dew Drops nodded at me – and I transferred him to her back. He groaned painfully when Dew Drops' jumpsuit brushed against the gash in his chest, smearing blood all over her back.

“Red … come on,” she murmured, blood dripping down her chest and pattering across the white floor beneath her.

“Sorry – shit – sorry,” I winced, trying to lift him onto her back. When I finally got him on, he hugged his forelegs around the base of her neck.

“Hold on tight or you’ll fall off,” Lightning Twirl said, unfurling her wings.

Box Cutter nodded faintly. “Yeah, yeah, that what you tell your boyfriend?” Lightning Twirl just snorted and took off, Box Cutter screaming about his head hurting.

I shook my head, exhaling a long sigh of relief as Dew Drops and I – and the ponies around us watched the two disappear into a hole in the ceiling.

“He’ll be alright,” I heard Dew Drops whisper. She gulped, looking down at the specks of blood on the floor under her hooves, and the red smeared all over her jumpsuit. The mare turned her head, and found that everyone was staring back at her. “We’ll be alright,” she said, louder.

I closed my eyes for a moment. “Yeah … alright,” I murmured, scratching my mane as everyone went back to minding their own businesses now that my bleeding friend was nowhere to be seen.

I looked over my shoulder down the hall and saw that the engineering level was far behind us. Away from all that destruction … everyone else was going back to doing their thing.

They didn’t know. It’s not like the purifier hadn’t broken down before. We always fixed it back up, and they’d always have their water running again.

But they didn’t know.

We trotted through the living quarters on the way to the clinic. Lining the walls were their wide, circle shaped doors, decorated with photos of the ponies within and their families. Fortunately, the explosions downstairs weren’t enough to shake those photos from their doors. Inside we could hear voices emanating from within, laughing without a single care in the world.

High above our heads hung poofy cloud-shaped cushions – perches for the pegasi. Farther above my head I could see the pegasi quarters. My mother lived up there. The entire pegasus tier was painted sky blue with murals of great cloud cities from before the war. Cities that probably didn’t exist anymore.

Everywhere I looked, ponies had tried to cover up the boring walls around us with murals painted by artists from generations past and present. There were rolling hills of green, and purple skies; fields of gold and shimmering blue seas. There were amber sunsets, and moons gleaming white against starry night skies that stretched across the walls as far as I could see – none of which the ponies who painted them had ever seen.

If only we could’ve just painted murals over the ruined pipes at engineering. Maybe then we all could’ve just pretended that none of it ever happened. Maybe then life would’ve just went on without our water talisman.

A herd of fillies and colts ran past us, laughing at each other in a game of tag, breaking me from my trancelike state. I tore my gaze away from the murals that I had walked past my entire life. One of the fillies slowed, staring at my now scabbing leg as she trotted past.

I felt the stinging sensation return to my flank. I cursed under my breath, and kept limping, the clinic an elevator ride away. We just had to get to the damned elevator.

I sighed as we passed by open, dome-shaped rooms where ponies lounged on couches or cushions, eating dried carrot chips while listening to live music from a cello, guitar, and violin. The soft hum of the yellow ambient lights above me calmed my nerves. I almost wanted to forget that the water talisman was broken.

None of those ponies even knew.

Maybe it was better that way. Maybe. Upstairs, you couldn’t really tell anything was wrong at all.

Down in our stable, several hundred feet underground in a bomb shelter built two centuries ago and spared from the balefire holocaust, I imagined life to be just about as comfortable as it was up on the surface before the bombs fell.

It was as if ponies had lived there since the beginning of time.

But if there hadn’t been so few of us down there, I would’ve believed that notion.

*

Chapter 1 - Cradle - Pt II

*

I looked down at Box Cutter who lay spread-eagled on the clinic bed with an ice pack wrapped around his head. Bandages mummified his chest.

Me? I suppose I was better off. After a healthy dose of a super healing potion, the scabs on my leg peeled off, and the flesh beneath my blue and yellow jumpsuit went to a very interesting shade of pink. I got bandaged up and told to not run on it, though the itching was really starting to bother me.

It turned out that Box Cutter did in fact have a concussion. I was just glad that Lightning Twirl got him to the clinic fast enough for the doc to wrap his head in ice before the swelling began.

I sighed, safe from danger and impending doom … for the moment.

A peaceful yellow glow fell upon us from the lights above. The walls around us were patterned with swarms of butterflies of alternating colors of pink and yellow – insects that were probably long extinct. The ceiling was painted to resemble an open sky with sparse clusters of poofy clouds. I imagined that laying on a hospital bed in pain was probably better when your head was in the clouds.

I hoped the other ponies inside the clinic felt the same way. All around us, the clinic's clean, sterile halls were filled to the brim with Shift C’s wounded.

Behind the pink curtains surrounding Box Cutter's bed, I heard someone groan. Nearly a dozen of the engineering ponies suffered shrapnel wounds, second degree burns, concussions, broken bones, or a lovely pick-n-mix of all of the above. I was one of them, but I got off easily. I winced at the thought of my entire body getting cooked. Thankfully … nobody died, at least.

Excluding the members of C Shift, the stable was as healthy and happy as it could be.

‘For now,’ I thought darkly.

For the two centuries since the bombs fell, my stable had lived in relative luxury. Clean water. Working toilets. Hot baths. Fresh food – if colorless apples and genetically-modified veggies counted as fresh. We had it all. I wasn't sure how long we could continue living the way we did with the water talisman broken. Water was always recycled.

That poop water in your toilet? It's what you're going to drink tomorrow morning at breakfast. Not that it'll taste like anything, it was recycled and treated. But without the talisman, that poop water was still going to be poop water when you go for a drink tomorrow no matter what you do .

"What happened?" I asked Box Cutter, who, thankfully, was still conscious. “I tried accessing the systems but they were dark by the time I had my PipBuck up.”

"Shit if I know. My console was giving me crazy readings and the entire room started shaking." He sighed. “Then the catwalk fell out from under my hooves and, well, I’m here now.”

I furrowed my brows. "What kind of readings, though?"

"The water talisman just couldn't take it anymore I guess. It overloaded. There was too much pressure in the valves and it overheated trying to compensate. It started boiling the water instead of treating it."

Behind me, Dew Drops harrumphed. "That explains the explosions. But why? It's supposed to last us centuries."

It was a question none of us could answer. It was probably a question nobody in the stable could answer. Something like that was never supposed to happen. Ever.

"There has to be another way,” Dew Drops muttered, “There just has to be …" She turned to me, hoping that I’d say the same. I just met her gaze with worried eyes before looking down at the white-tiled floor beneath my hooves. A voice in the back of my head kept telling me that we’d be drinking poop water soon enough.

A few seconds of silence hung over us until Dew Drops sighed and shook her head. "All the engineering ponies are meeting with the Overmare later at midnight. You and I will be going, Red.” She peered down at Box Cutter. “Think you can make it, Box?"

"He needs to stay in bed," the doctor's voice said behind the curtains. Stitches, the stable's local equine fixer, pushed through the pink fabrics. She levitated a pen out of her white coat and jotted down notes on a clipboard as she gave the injured earth pony on the bed a look over. "Box Cutter hit his head pretty hard. He might lapse out of consciousness and hurt himself even more if he tries doing anything strenuous." Doctor Stitches gave the stallion a serious look. "I might even need to crack his skull open to relieve the pressure building up inside, or it might blow like the purifier downstairs."

Box Cutter's eyes widened in horror. "Just pulling your leg," Stitches chuckled. I glared at her and so did Dew Drops. She had that sick sense of humor that scared the hell out of you and made you even angrier after finding out your mom wasn't really going to die from cancer. The bastard. "You do have a concussion though, so you still need to rest for a bit, maybe even for a while."

Box Cutter groaned.

"Could be worse," Dew Drops grinned. "Your head could’ve exploded."

"Quit scaring me, this shit's serious," he pouted.

Dew Drops patted his ruffled, frizzy mane reassuringly.

"You'll be fine. Take it easy. Red and I are going to grab a bite before the meeting."

I bumped hooves with Box Cutter and left the clinic, Dew Drops taking the lead. We stepped out the door and I cringed as a pair of hooves wrapped around me.

“My baby, my baby!” my mom moaned, covering me with her feathers. The white pegasus – my mother – pushed me into the door and my bad leg rubbed painfully against its frame.

“Mom – ow – please –”

“I’m so glad you’re okay! I heard the explosions and I thought you were hurt! But my little colt is A-OK!” she cried, hugging me tighter as she smooshed my muzzle into her scarlet mane.

I rolled my eyes, wincing as my mother squeezed me to death.

“Miss Morning Dawn, your little pony got a boiling steam bath … you probably shouldn’t be touching him … at all,” Dew Drops advised, suppressing a giggle.

Mom’s ears twitched and she let go of me immediately. I glanced off to the side so that she wouldn’t see the annoyed look in my face, my flesh burning where the door grazed me. I smiled painfully at her. “I’m fine, Mom.”

“Did you have dinner yet? Curfew starts in an hour,” she asked, raising a foreleg to rub my shoulder.

“DD and I were just about to go get something to eat. Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m fine, really … but the water purifier isn’t,” I said, frankly. “The water t- ” Dew Drops clapped my mouth shut with a hoof.

“The water’s going to be cold for a few days while we try to get the heater working. It blew out too when the purifier broke down. But we still have our reserves, so we should be fine for a while until we can fix them,” Dew Drops finished for me. I glared at her. “We’re going to a meeting with the Overmare later tonight. We’ll have it allllll fixed A-S-A-P,” she drawled.

“Oh ... okay,” Mom said, touching a hoof to her lower lip. “Wear your sealed barding next time you’re down at engineering,” she said to me as I nodded incessantly. “You two should go have dinner now, it’s getting late.” Mom glanced over her shoulder. “Love you, son!”

“Yes, Mom,” I said quickly, cantering to the door. I feigned a smile, relieved to finally have some distance between her, lest she smother me to death with her hugs. I trotted after Dew Drops who was already halfway down the hall.

“Love you!” I heard her call after me.

My cheeks turned scarlet and I waved goodbye, eager to catch up to my friend.

Mom didn’t leave until after I caught up with Dew Drops. The mare giggled at me. She must’ve thought that was cute. Well I’m not cute. I’m a full grown stallion! I fixed things! I’m an engineer, a repair pony, and a cynic … I’m a lot of things, but I wasn’t cute.

I let out a long sigh.

I knew that the meeting was going to be in vain. There was nothing else we could do. We didn’t have any extra talismans. Ours was built in, and was supposed to be built to last.

‘For Celestia’s sake, why now?’ I thought.

Eight generations ago my great, great, great … great whatever grandmother and grandfather fled inside our stable just as the bombs fell. It had been two hundred years since the green fires we read about in the books annihilated the earth above us. Even underground, you could still see the seismic aftershocks of the spellfire explosions above in the vicious cracks in the walls.

Two centuries of clean water had passed since then, and our talisman just so happened to decide to inconveniently break at the turn of the century. There was no going back. Its warranty was beyond expired.

‘Speaking of warranties … no.’

Stable-Tec, the Ministries – there was nothing left above ground. At least that’s what we were told. The history books told us that when the bombs fell, the earth split apart, oceans evaporated, trees disintegrated, and the world became a cold, empty crater devoid of life.

We were all that was left. Stable 91 was the only home I had ever known, and the only thing that kept us alive for so long was gone.

‘Goddesses help us all.‘

Dew Drops stopped suddenly and I bumped my head into her behind. I blinked, gasped, and took a step back. She glanced at me with a sly grin. Dew Drops swished her tail across my reddening muzzle with an elegant flourish.

“Pfft pwa –” I sputtered through her tail, my name beginning to match my likeness.

“Don’t look so down, Red,” she said as I groaned and cantered past her to the cafeteria. “We’ve lived here, our mothers lived here, and their mothers lived here. We’ll find a way, I promise.” Dew Drops bumped her flank playfully with mine and I winced.

“That hurts, you know?” I cringed as my scalded hide tingled and stung.

She just wrapped a leg around me. “C’mon, let’s get something to eat.” Dew Drops and I entered the cafeteria and found that it was surprisingly alive with chatter.

The air was tingling with a normality and an everydayness that made my mane itch. Dew Drops caught the eyes of a hoofful of ponies sitting at a table nearby when they saw her engineer jumpsuit. She gave them a hearty smile and the two of us made our way to the cafeteria line.

But before I could even lift a hoof, I felt something pull my tail. I glanced behind me and Amber Fields’ colt was peering up at me with wide eyes.

“Mister Dawn, is the water talisman broken?”

Pursing my lips, I glanced over at Dew Drops in hopes she’d answer for me. She mouthed no. I was awful with kids.

“I uh, no, it’s just …” I stammered, scratching my mane as I searched for a delicate way to word my answer without scaring him. Even for his age, he knew that the water talisman meant life, and without it, meant death. Or whatever he thought came after life. “The water purifier’s just broken,” I said, “We can fix it, don't you worry, kid!” I said, ruffling up his mane. “Go back to Amber and tell her that Box Cutter’s alright too, okay?”

“That’s what Miss Peach Petals said!” I sighed with relief when scampered off. Thank the Goddesses I didn’t make him cry.

Thank the Goddesses nobody else but me was worried. Overmare Peach Petals really knew how to keep everybody from freaking out and breaking chairs against the walls.

I heard Dew Drops chuckle. “And you say you’re horrible with foals. He’s not crying his eyes out thanks to you.”

“Yeah, well, it’s better that the kids don’t know how screwed they are,” I muttered. Dew Drops hooked her foreleg around mine and led me to the line like I was her foal.

I shrugged her off with a bothered look on my face.

“You’re so cute when you’re annoyed, Reddy,” she cooed, lifting an eyebrow at me with a smirk. “You really need to lighten up. We’re not dying any time soon.” The expression on my face persisted. She just pouted and wrinkled her brow.

“I’m two years older than you,” I pointed out for the millionth time, levitating a plate for her and then myself.

“And you’re still my apprentice,” she snapped, before craning her neck towards me so that we looked eye to eye. “And I’m telling you to lighten. Up,” I narrowed my eyes at her – but then I saw that the ponies behind us had their ears perked. Their faces went from oblivious contentment to that of fearful concern.

I sighed, grinning sheepishly. “Did I say we’re screwed? I meant we, as in Dew Drops and I, because it’ll be our shift that’ll have to fix the purifier,” I said forcefully. The ponies looked away and began murmuring to each other. “I wouldn’t want to make them shit themselves to death too soon,” I hissed, levitating up a hoofful of slightly over-steamed carrots, and a few slices of what looked to be hydroponically-grown squash onto a plate.

We took our seats next to another engineer pony from our shift. Star Glint and his marefriend, Lightning Twirl, were making cute little faces at each other.

I groaned, sticking out my tongue at them. “Yuck.”

Dew Drops watched as Star Glint gave Lightning Twirl a wet smooch.

“Aww!” Dew Drops crooned, wrapping a leg around me, pulling me close and puckering her lips.

I shrugged her off, again.

“Don’t be such a tease, DD, you’re making Red turn ... well, red,” laughed Lightning Twirl, as she swept a lock of her white mane out of her eye.

Star Glint chuckled with a devious grin.

“Yeah, how long have you two been friends? Ten? Fifteen years?”

I sighed, as Dew Drops bit her lower lip, suppressing a wide, sly grin.

“Eighteen,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the two lovers.

“Oh come on, Red, you two look GREAT together!” Lightning Twirl snickered. “Unless Red’s ... gay?”

I growled, “Gay? GAY? Me being straight or gay is the only thing fucking bothering you? Am I the only pony who’s bothered by the fact that our water talisman is broken?!” I hissed loud enough for only us to hear. I leaned over the table, glaring at Star Glint, who shrugged in response. If anyone should’ve been disturbed by what happened, it should’ve been another engineer pony like him.

Lightning Twirl stretched a feathered wing over her boyfriend.

“You need to lighten up –“

“I work down at engineering. Engineering. Keeps. Everyone. Alive. And now that the talisman’s broken, we can’t do that!” I whinnied, folding my forelegs across my chest as I sat down.

Lightning Twirl pursed her lips. “So you’re not gay?”

I sighed, levitating a carrot to my mouth. I munched on it bitterly as they waited for a response as they grinned playfully at me.

“There’s nothing wrong with … with being gay – and I’m not!” I snapped. “I’m too busy.”

And I wasn’t even exaggerating. I spent most of my free time tinkering with random bits of machinery I’d find or fixing other ponies’ broken things in my room over at B-Block.

I was B-Block’s handy pony. The red cog and wrenches crossed over my flanks reminded me of the years I spent trying to find my special talent. After failing time and time again, I finally found one, and all I was trying to do was to put it to good use.

I wasn’t really the nicest stallion people knew – but hell, I knew my way around a wrench and a screwdriver and I could fix almost – mind you, almost – anything, if given the time. Well, except for the water talisman. I had neither the tools nor the brains to do that anyways. That really bothered me. Maybe it was because an opportunity to get my hooves on something new to fix had slipped away? Fixing radios and terminals did get pretty old after the hundred-somethingth time.

Nah. Maybe it was because our water was going to be contaminated without a working talisman.

I sighed. “I can’t believe you guys aren’t worried about having poop in your water.”

Star Glint rolled his eyes, pointing at the bandages around his face.

“That explosion really got me, but I’m not letting it bring me down,” he said, “Everybody’s going to get scared if you are too. It’s best if they just knew that the purifier broke, not the talisman.”

Dew Drops rested a foreleg on my shoulder.

“So stop being worried. I keep telling you we’ll find a way but you won’t believe me.”

I opened my mouth but she cut me off, “When we work together, there’s nothing we can’t do,” Dew Drops said.

“Right,” I scoffed, levitating another carrot into my mouth. “I’m surprised how much control the Overmare has over the situation.”

“If a leader like Peach Petals tells her little ponies everything’s going to be okay, then everything’s going to be okay,” Lightning Twirl chuckled.

I thought, ‘Maybe we are going to be okay? Maybe we can figure out some way to purify the water ourselves.’

My ancestors couldn’t possibly have settled Stable 91 without knowing something like that would ever happen. Then again, for the millionth time, something like that WASN’T supposed to happen.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we aren’t going to fucking die drowning in poop water,” I said with forced enthusiasm.

“What’s with you and poop water?” Dew Drops asked, narrowing her eyes at me.

I shrugged, popping a slice of squash into my mouth. I levitated a cup of water and eyed its contents carefully before gulping it down.

“I’m going to go make sure they’ve got the pumps connected to our reserves,” I said getting up from my seat. Dew Drops wrenched me down back to my rump and I cursed under my breath as my bad leg bumped the edge of the seat.

“Don’t you dare think about going there without me. We never. Work. Alone. Besides,” she chuckled, “Just let the next shift deal with it. Let the ponies who didn’t get blown up with steam and shrapnel link the reserves.” She glanced at her PipBuck. “Their shift starts in 10 minutes anyways.”

I folded my forelegs over one another on the table and rested my head on my hooves. Dew Drops gave me a hug and I just sat there. My eyes caught Star Glint’s amused smirk, and I turned, sighed, and wrapped my legs around her.

“You should get some rest. The meeting is five hours,” Dew Drops said softly.

I got up from the table and, after waving my goodbyes, I was off to B-Block.

*

I opened the door to my room and stumbled in through the darkness. I unzipped my jumpsuit and left it strewn across the floor as I waddled over to my bed in my underwear.

I sighed, flicked my lamplight on, and rested a hoof on my blanket, about ready to go to bed.

Slinking into my mattress, I laid out my legs with extra care to not graze my hind left against something hard. I sunk my head into a pillow and stared blankly at the ceiling. I was actually glad Dew Drops stopped me before I could make my way to engineering again, because as I lay on my mattress, I realized that I was exhausted.

My room was pretty bland. I had a bed, a couch, a fridge, a closet, a bathroom, and a study table topped by stacks of books by the door.

I threw a passing glance at the swear jar sitting on my desk.

It was almost full.

Dew Drops thought it’d help cure my potty mouth. It didn’t helped much.

I sighed, and tried to close my eyes. But a nagging feeling in the back of my mind forced them back open.

I couldn’t help but stare at the shelf at the far corner of my room. It was my handy pony queue. I levitated a radio towards me from the pile and set it down at the edge of my bed, giving it a thorough look over. I needed to splice in some new wires. Looked like someone’s foal tried cutting it with scissors. I hoped they didn’t do that while it was plugged in.

I levitated it across the room back to its shelf and stretched out my legs, yawning. I scrutinized my hind leg and unraveled the bandages. The flesh under my coat was a very light shade of brown and the itching had subsided a while ago. I let out a sigh of relief.

Rolling over towards the bedside table next to me, I glanced at a picture frame of a foal, my mom, and a unicorn stallion I hardly knew. I didn’t know my dad too well.

‘You look just like him,’ my mom always told me. I had his brown coat and his red eyes. ‘We did look alike,’ I thought. My mom’s red mane and white coat were a polar contrast to my dad’s. I ran a hoof absent mindedly through my short, cropped, dark red mane. I did have her hair though.

My father died in an accident when I was just a baby.

Red Roan. That was his name.

I looked at the unicorn stallion in the picture. He looked happy, and I bet he enjoyed his job every day of his life until that pipe blew up in his face. Or so I was told. Funny, I had pipes blowing up in mine too earlier that day and nearly died myself. When I got my cutie mark and filled the horseshoes my father left behind, I never once thought that I’d ever die from doing it. I sighed, staring at the photograph. The white-coated pegasus mare – my mother – hugged me as I smiled a wide, toothless grin.

Only then did it really sink in that I could have died down there at engineering. ‘I could have died.’ I turned to the picture frame next to it and I saw a photo of myself, Dew Drops, Amber Fields, Star Glint, Lightning Twirl, and Box Cutter posing in front of a camera while holding the results of our Cutie Mark Aptitude Tests. Dew Drops was hugging me as I bumped hooves with my best friend. Amber Fields, Lightning Twirl, and Star Glint were jumping for joy behind the three of us as the camera pony snapped the picture.

My eyes focused on Dew Drops. I remembered what she was like back then. She was still the same smart, helpful, and humble pony she always was. I always admired her … and how fast she learned things. She’d glance at a manual, disassemble a radio once, put it back together, and reassemble it without looking back at the instructions. She was amazing in almost every way.

No. She was amazing in every way.

Me? It took me twenty radios before I finally memorized what piece went where and why. She taught me everything I knew. Actually, most of what I knew was a result of my apprenticeship under the younger, fully-fledged mare. I owed my specialization in electrical engineering to her.

I sighed. My mom loved her. I questioned if she loved Dew Drops more than I – ‘hah! Nah.’ But really … who wouldn’t?

Looking back now, I don’t think I would’ve gotten my cutie mark without her help either. My crusade to earn my cutie mark was one of trial and error. I spent a few years trying everything, but I didn’t enjoy any of those other ‘talents’ one bit. Drawing? I got good at it, but there wasn’t much to draw in an underground bunker. Cooking? Awful. I even tried working at the orchards, but bucking apples all day bored the hell out of me.

My mother never wanted me to work down at engineering ever since … Dad … but the satisfaction of watching a broken terminal come back to life was, to me, almost as intoxicating as the hard cider from the stable's orchards.

One day, when I was just a colt, and she, a filly, Dew Drops was replacing a light bulb in her bedside lamp. She was nice enough to show me what end went where and how I had to screw it in.

Not long after, my Mom watched me with uncertainty as I replaced a flickering lightbulb in our bathroom. From then on, I realized that fixing things was just exactly what I wanted to do. The CAT was a redundant reminder that I was going to be an engineer just like my late father.

I fixed Star Glint’s alarm clock. I fixed the sound system in Amber Fields’s quarters. I even fixed Peach Petals’ faulty terminal. All that mattered to me was being able to fix things that broke.

I’m Red Dawn, and I fix things.

If I were younger, I would've thought that I could fix anything.

My only regret was that I should have been there to lend Dew Drops a helping hoof. I was too busy wondering why the chamber's water level was receding until it was too late. Maybe if I had gotten there in time ... no. That day was been a reminder that some things were beyond fixing. That water talisman was beyond anybody’s expertise – invented by minds long dead and manufactured with arcane technology long lost.

And the rest of engineering and I had to focus on finding a solution to our stable's freshwater problem before everybody died from disease or dehydration – or both.

You couldn't really fix dead.

I rolled over in my bed and sighed as I levitated the picture closer to see the newly-formed cutie mark on young-me’s flank. It brought the slightest of smiles to my face as I laid my head back down on my pillow.

That day was probably the happiest day of my life. Well, finding out my mom didn’t have cancer was probably the happiest, actually, but that photo had to be the second happiest. My eyes stared longingly at the blue filly who hugged the brown-coated colt in the photo, and I closed my eyes.

If I died, I would’ve left all that. My mom. My friends. I thought about my mom crying as they fed my body into a cremator. I thought about my friends – Dew Drops – mourning for the pony that pushed them away every time he tried to get work done.

I could have died.

*

Chapter 1 - Cradle - Pt III

*

A hoof banged loudly against my door, yanking me from my slumber.

“Red!” I heard Dew Drops shout, “You’re going to be late!”

“Well fuck,” I hissed, throwing on my jumpsuit, dragging a comb through my mane, and rushing out the door. I ran into her and we tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

I looked into her cool gray eyes, and turned red at the warmness of her coat. I scrambled off of her, apologizing as I helped the mare to her hooves.

She just smiled at me and we hurried off to the assembly room one floor above engineering. When we got there, everyone was waiting for us. The Overmare regarded us with unnatural patience, tapping her hooves together as she stood on her hind legs against the podium.

Amber Fields lifted an eyebrow.

“You two are late,” she smirked.

“Late from a good night I hope,” Lightning Twirl grinned, giggling with her boyfriend.

My cheeks turned red once more and we took our seats before the Overmare.

About fifty other ponies – many of whom were engineers like me – were seated around us. Box Cutter, among many others of Shift C who sustained more severe injuries, were out for the count.

“I’m glad you ponies are here," she began, eyeing Dew Drops and I with a look that said ‘Get here on time next time’. I looked away, pretending I didn’t know what she was implying. “But our water talisman is broken – you all know this. I managed to keep everybody from panicking … for now. And I am thankful you ponies didn’t spread the word." The Overmare smiled thoughtfully, and added, "Very smart of you all.”

Dew Drops glared at me and I sighed, shaking my head.

“But we can’t keep the rest of the stable uninformed forever. Sooner or later ponies are going to notice the taste in their water. Our reserves have been sitting in aluminum tanks underneath the stable for centuries, and, while they may be clean, I’m sure the taste is going to get to them. But never mind that – what matters now is that we’re working on time borrowed from the ponies that lived before us.”

The ponies around me exchanged worried looks, murmuring among themselves.

“To be frank,” Peach Petals began, “No – we don’t have a replacement. That water talisman, the one we’ve had for 200 years, was the only one we had. The only one we’ve ever had.”

The murmuring died away to panicked chatter.

“So we’re going to die here?”

“What about my filly? We can’t live without fresh water!”

"How are we going to fix this?"

“Poop water,” I said, loudly. Dew Drops smacked me on the back of the head.

“Everybody please settle down. I said we would get this resolved, and with your help, we will. We must, because the lives of almost three hundred people are counting on us.” Overmare Peach Petals punched a button on the podium with her hoof, and a projector flickered at the back of the room. An anthill view of the stable’s infrastructure painted the white screen behind her.

She trotted up to the projection and tapped her hoof on the roll down screen. The picture rippled slightly at the touch of her hoof.

“Beneath the engineering level, we have a six thousand gallon water tank. Stable-Tec was far too confident in their stables’ abilities to sustain their populations. But they at least installed a contingency for us to fall back upon.” She rested her hooves upon the podium, scanning the apprehension flickered across our faces. I took shallow breaths, squirming restlessly in my seat. There was no way we could survive with that much water. Not for long.

Not for long.

“Six thousand gallons …”

I stopped squirming. Six. Thousand. Nervous murmuring whispered among us. Dew Drops and I exchanged troubled looks.

‘Impossible,’ I thought, ‘It couldn’t be. Stable-Tec couldn’t have been that incompetent to not give us a proper contingency, could they?’

Six thousand was hardly enough for all three hundred of us. It just didn't make sense.

‘Those bastards. Those fucking bastards.’

Peach Petals’ voice echoed through my ears. “It’s not a lot.”

‘No shit.’

“But it will suffice – and I will gladly take what I can get. With our water usage reduced to maximum efficiency, and drinking water rationed properly, we should be able to last up to ninety days at the bare minimum.”

I grit my teeth.

“THREE MONTHS?” a pegasus mare hollered in disbelief, flapping her wings into the air. A hoof curled around her tail and yanked her back down to her seat.

Three months.

That was ninety days. Ninety days. Put it that way, and it didn’t seem so bad. But any number that told you how long you had left to live was still a difficult number to swallow. We had three months. Three months.

I wondered how much worse it would’ve sounded if she just said that. I gulped a lump of dread down my throat. I could already feel the months ticking by like seconds on a clock.

Our days were numbered.

"Now, now, my little ponies. Ninety days should be enough time to fix this, I believe,” she said evenly, trotting back up to the podium. She pressed another button and the projector flicked to a picture of Equestria. Names of cities and foreign nations, Ponyville, Canterlot, Manehattan, Roan, the Crystal Empire – some of them I knew, but all of them meant nothing to me. She pointed to one of the regions on the map.

“We are here, south of the Crystal Empire. Stable 91 was built not too far from a city named Poneva, which is near the Crystal Borderlands. One of my great grandmares down the line was from there. She worked for Stable-Tec.”

Stable-Tec. Stable-Tec built our stable. Everything we used daily, everything around us was built by Stable-Tec. They were the reason we had survived all those years.

And those idiots were the reason why we were done for.

“Now, my great grandmare worked at a Stable-Tec facility in Poneva. There, they manufactured and distributed talismans of all sorts. The water talisman was one of many of these.”

This time, we all went silent.

“There is only one thing between us and Poneva, my little ponies,” Overmare Peach Petals said gravely, leaving the podium and stepping to the edge of the stage to meet eyes with everyone in the room.

“The Stable Door.”

It was quiet for a moment as everyone struggled to connect the dots. Me? I was struggling to figure out if that was even possible.

“You … you want to open the door?” I heard Lightning Twirl squawk, reading my mind. Everybody looked at her, and then at the Overmare.

“We’ll die if we step out that door!” one pony said.

“There’s nothing left out there!” said another.

“The balefire burned everything away!”

The history books told us that the world outside was gone. That we were the last vestige of civilization on the planet. That we were the last of ponykind.

“It is our only hope. If we open those doors, we may die. But if we remain here, we will die.” Peach Petals paused to let her words sink into our shaking heads.

Everyone fell silent once more. I didn’t know what to think – what to do. I had never seen the world outside in my life, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. The only other pony in my family who had ever been outside the stable was 200 years dead. The only life I knew was a life inside the stable.

And I couldn’t stop shaking.

Dew Drops wrapped a hoof around my trembling foreleg.

“I want to send out an expedition to Poneva. I want to know if we still have a chance.” Her expression turned grim. “I won’t force anybody to go. All I ask is that six ponies volunteer.”

My ears perked up at her words.

“I’ll go,” someone said next to me. That someone was Dew Drops. My jaw dropped as I whirled to face her with wide eyes. “I couldn’t fix the Talisman and it blew up in my hooves when I tried. I’ll go. I can help fix this mess.”

“Are you crazy?!” I hissed, loud enough for only her to hear, “You really want to go out there?” She ignored me as she stood to her hooves. Gasps filled the air.

“You said it yourself earlier, Red … I know more about arcane devices more than anybody else in our shift. If worst comes to worst, I might be able to repair any talismans we find if they’re damaged.”

I held her hoof. “DD, please don’t do this … you don’t know what’s out there!” I begged.

She looked at me and said nothing.

“Thank you, Dew Drops. I need five other ponies.”

The room went silent. Nobody had the guts. I didn’t have the guts. My own guts churned as a rivulet of sweat trickled over my brow.

“I’ll go too!” Star Glint declared, jumping to his hooves. “I’m not letting my friends walk out that door alone!”

Lightning Twirl shot up into the air with a pomf. “You eggheads aren’t going anywhere without me.”

Amber Fields stood to her four hooves.

“Me too. If they go, I go.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Amber, think about your colt! Your husband!” I blurted out. “You have a family to come back to!”

She looked hurt. “Red Dawn, you have a family too. Morning Dawn. Me. DD, Star, Twirl, and Box. If I don’t go, there won’t be any family left alive to think about.”

I turned my eyes low as shame and fear swept over me. Dizziness overcame me, and I clenched a shaking hoof around the back of somebody’s seat.

I could feel Dew Drops’ eyes upon me … boring into my hide, tearing me apart ... I shook my head furiously. What was she thinking? What the fuck was she thinking? There mere thought of leaving my home – my only home was insane. But the weight of my friends' stares threatened to crush me beneath. I couldn’t accept that Amber Fields’ was right. My home would be my grave if we couldn’t save it.

I weighed my options: stand up with my friends and die at the moment we step out that door – or wait there and die for sure.

Either way I’d be dead. Either way, they’d be dead.

My heart raced faster than I could breathe. I clenched my eyes shut so hard I felt like they were going to recede into their sockets. I couldn’t let my friends die out there. I couldn’t let Dew Drops die out there. I’d never be able to live with myself if I let her go and she never came back.

I trembled beneath their heavy stares.

My eyes clenched shut once more as I hung my head. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for us all.

I gave up a trembling sigh and stood to my hooves.

“I’ll go,” I said, standing beside her.

“Red–” Dew Drops began.

“You go, I go. We never. Work. Alone,” I told her, my voice trembling.

The auditorium doors flew open, and a bed-headed Box Cutter stumbled inside.

“Don’t you ponies go do anything without me!” he shouted, his head still wrapped in bandages. Box Cutter tripped on his own hooves, falling flat on his face as everybody watched. Lightning Twirl fluttered towards him and helped him back up.

The Overmare’s expression flickered with both pride and sadness. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“Thank you … all of you – thank you. You will be stepping out into a world none of us here have ever seen. You will be stepping out into the unknown,” her voice trembled.

“You may not return.”

An unnerving silence fell upon us all. I turned and saw Dew Drops, her jaw clenched and her eyes fixed upon the floor. I wrapped my hooves around her and squeezed her tight as I felt her head rest against mine.

“My little ponies … I would gladly come with you myself, but the stable needs me here. The stable needs you too, and you and you and you,” she said, pointing her hoof at the ponies seated around us. “Until they return, I will need all of you who remain to monitor everybody’s water usage and make sure nobody exceeds the contingent five gallon limit.

“Should the worst come … should they not return, I will impose stricter limits and weigh other … options. But for now, I want you all to encourage everybody to not max out their daily rations – so please spread the word.” Peach Petals stared into the crowd, watching the fear and apprehension that wavered upon our faces in the heavy silence.

“You are all dismissed. Goddesses help us all.”

Everybody got up from their seats. Their movements were sluggish. Some were too stunned to even stand. The six of us made our way to the door, but a leg hooked around one of mine.

A teary eyed unicorn, Sea Shammy, a mare I barely knew from another shift, approached me.

“Thank you …” she whispered.

A winged security pony named Beryl came to us. “I’m sorry nobody else had the guts to do that,” she looked ashamed.

“Someone had to do it,” Dew Drops stated softly. “I … I’m about as scared as you are.”

I chewed my lower lip, staring down at my hooves. “I don’t want to go,” I murmured, “But it’s not about that.” I looked at Dew Drops, curling a hoof around her shoulder. “It’s … it’s about what needs to be done …”

We stood at the door as ponies walked past, thanking us as they left. The Overmare was the last to approach.

“Thank you,” she said again, meeting our eyes. “We’re on a very tight schedule, so you all will have to leave for Poneva tomorrow morning. Prep your gear and pack rations to last at least a week or longer. You’ll be armed, and you’ll be ready.” Peach Petals tapped her PipBuck. “I’ll have the security ponies clear you all for armory access.”

I gulped.

“Ma’am, are you sure we'll need them?" I asked with uncertainty. Everyone got weapons training when they were younger. We learned how to disassemble them and put them back together. We even learned how to shoot them. But if what everyone believed was true … that there was nothing left to find up there …

‘Then we wouldn’t need them, right?’I asked myself, hoping I wouldn’t have to find my answer.

I just hoped to the Goddesses that we were going to be right. I wasn’t sure if I could …

Lightning Twirl caught my apprehensive gaze and read my mind. “It’s easy, just point, flip on SATS, and shoot! Besides, I’ll be here to protect you. Lightning Twirl: your local security pegasus – reporting for duty," she said, saluting.

She cocked her head at Star Glint, smirking. “He knows how to shoot too.”

“Yep.”

Peach Petals gave us an encouraging smile. “I know some of you haven’t held a gun since you were younger, but I’m sure Twirl can teach you. Get a lot of rest, and help yourselves to another dinner if you like. The armory and range will be open for you.”

She held out her hooves. We all hugged the Overmare.

“I believe in you ponies. You’ll come back … you have to.”

*

I sighted my carbine down range. Well, it was more of caved in tunnel with targets mounted on rails that ran down its length. The target was about twenty yards away from me, I estimated – well below the weapon’s maximum effective distance.

I know, I know. Laaaaame. But I needed to start somewhere, right? It had been awhile since I last used a gun, after all.

I braced the carbine against my shoulder with my magic, eyed down the iron sights, and pulled the trigger. In a flash of light and a puff of smoke, it rattled off a burst of lead that kicked up plumes of dust in the distance.

‘Balls.’

Narrowing my eyes at it, I threw on my training wheels. I watched as SATS plotted a firing solution, angles, numbers, and lines arcing across my line of sight to the target like twinkling, teal footlights. ‘Great.’ I couldn’t possibly miss this time. A teal marker materialized before me - and I lined it up with my sights.

All that in less than a second. Next to me, Dew Drops' carbine flashed once, ejecting a shell casing that sailed through the air as I pulled the trigger faster than it could fall.

The rounds perforated the center of the target, blowing a hole out the other side.

“Nice shot!” Amber Fields said through her mouth bit as she aimed her shotgun down range. She tongued the trigger and the weapon’s recoil nearly threw her off her legs. She spat it out, laughing.

“Wasn’t expecting that much kick!”

“Just plant your back legs back firmly and let your body do the moving, not your neck,” Star Glint said, trotting up to her and fixing her posture.

Box Cutter shouted wildly as he bit down his battle saddle’s mouth bit. He unloaded with both of his submachine guns and into a target not too far from the railing.

“T-h-i-sh i-sh fu-u-u-un!” he cried against the saddle’s rattling recoil.

And to my right, Dew Drops was punching holes in targets much, much farther than twenty yards out.

Ratatatat – Dew Drops cheered, pumping her hoof as the paper target fluttered to the floor in halves. I glanced at her dim PipBuck, and knew instantly that she didn’t even used SATS.

‘I’m terrible.’

Sighing, I slipped into SATS once more, sighted down range, and pulled the trigger. With short bursts, I grouped my rounds in and a few inches around the bullseye. I wasn’t that bad … with SATS, at least.

I felt Lightning Twirl land next to me.

“Good, you can shoot a piece of paper.” She interfaced with her PipBuck and the round target sunk below the range and a new one appeared. This one was in the shape of a pony. “Try now.”

I figured, this time, I’d try without SATS. But my eyes traced the target’s equine silhouette nervously. I gulped.

Ratatatat – and I missed every shot. I realized that I was breathing heavily and the strength of my magical grip was waning.

Lightning Twirl gave me a strange look as I grinned weakly and tried again, this time with SATS.

This time, I peppered the pony’s chest with burst of 10mm bullets. A gout of blood spurted into the air and the pony crumbled to the dust in a heap. ‘Wait.’

The blood drained from my face.

I ejected the magazine and leaned against the railing. The others were still firing down range. Twirl and Star were landing hits at the maximum effective distance. The rest of us were mediocre in comparison.

‘What the hell is wrong with me?’ I screamed inside my head. I slammed a fresh magazine home and yanked the charging handle back.

I focused this time, entering SATS and aiming for the pony's – no, the target’s head. The burst tore the damn thing off in a fountain of -

“SHIT! Goddesses DAMNIT!”

Everyone froze and looked at me as if I just lost my mind.

“You okay?” Star Glint asked. He looked at Lightning Twirl and she just shrugged, eyeing me strangely.

I was hyperventilating and shaking all over. It was just a paper target. Just a target. Not a pony. I blinked several times, and all I saw was its white, flat surface.

Box Cutter trotted over and bumped my shoulder with a hoof.

“Hey brony, you’re shaking …”

Star Glint bit down on the carbine that floated in front of me and pulled it away from my magical grip.

“You should sit down for a bit and rest,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. Star Glint spat the gun out onto a table. “Really, I think that’s enough. Besides, Twirl and I’ll protect you guys,” Star Glint beamed.

I didn’t say anything. I just sat on my rump in front of the railing and stared at the pony shaped target.

“What the fuck …” I muttered, scratching my mane.

I heard hooves clop behind me. I looked up and saw Dew Drops and her muzzle nuzzling my mane.

“Is my apprentice okay?” she asked softly.

I looked at my hooves, shaking my head. I peered up at her and shrugged.

“What’s up?” Amber Fields asked, trotting towards us.

“I think he’s just had enough for today,” Dew Drops said as a matter of factly, pulling me to my shaking hooves.

“You should get some rest, bud. We’re leaving pretty early tomorrow,” Amber Fields said, resting a hoof on my shoulder. I smiled at her sheepishly, nodding.

I started towards the exit but stumbled on my own hooves. Dew Drops kept me upright with a hoof as I exhaled softly.

“I’ll take him to his room. You guys have a good night, okay?” she said, hooking a leg around mine and leading me out the door.

“Take it easy, Red,” Box Cutter said as I bumped hooves with him weakly.

“Night!” Star Glint and Lightning Twirl said simultaneously.

I was silent for the rest of the walk. I didn’t know what came over me. My mind was blank and I didn’t even realized that we arrived at my door. I reached out with a hoof and missed the panel by an inch.

“I’ll do it … what’s your passcode?”

“E-G-P-R-2-9,” I said shakily.

The door opened and closed behind us as she helped me to my bed. She sat beside me as I stared at my hooves. Dew Drops glanced at my bedside table and levitated to herself the picture frames of us and my family with a warm smile.

But her smile faded away when she saw the uncertainty that haunted my expression.

“Red Dawn, what happened? Why were you shaking?” she asked, setting the frames back down on the table.

I sighed, shaking my head.

“I was shooting just fine – then Twirl had to put up that pony target. I just couldn’t do it. I got scared, and I imagined it was … another pony that I was shooting at,” I muttered, staring at the floor.

She said nothing for a few seconds as she rubbed my leg with her hoof. She always knew what to say, even when she didn’t say anything at all.

“I’m just scared,” I confessed, “I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can shoot anybody …” I rubbed my forehead with a hoof, furrowing my brow. “I shouldn’t have volunteered, I’ll just get you all killed.”

She touched my chin and tipped my head to face her. “Don’t say that. I’d rather get stuck in Tartarus with you than anybody else.”

I smiled timidly. “Really?”

“Really,” she said. I could feel her breath on my muzzle. She was really close. “I’m glad you came with us.” Her eyes fluttered away nervously. “I was really hoping you would. And you did. I honestly was having second thought until you stepped up.”

“Why would you?” I asked. “You’re smarter than me and you can shoot a gun – you’re better than me at everything,” I whinnied.

“You know that’s not true,” she glared, scolding me. “You’ve always been able to fix anything you’ve put your mind to. We always have. I told you we can do anything … anything is possible when you have your friends with you, Red. Remember that,” she said, holding one of my hooves as her soft gray eyes gazed deeply into mine. “I can’t do anything without you.”

We looked at each other in the dim light for what seemed like an eternity.

“Dew Drops …” I began, until I felt her lips press against mine. I blushed and pulled away, wide-eyed and shaking. She looked about as surprised as I did.

“I-I’m sorry, I thought …” she began, her nervous eyes darting away from me. My brows furrowed as I hesitated, biting my lower lip as she turned her head away. But my heart hurled me onward. I leaned in close and gave her my flustered reprise.

As our lips met, she sat there in bliss, relishing in our kiss. A kiss I knew we’d both been working up the courage to do for too many years.

I gave in. I finally gave in. The floodgates parted, and my brain couldn’t contain my heart any longer.

Suddenly, the purifier, my queue, my cutie mark, the water talisman – none of it mattered to me more than the mare that sat next to me.

Slowly but surely, she returned to clarity and wrapped her legs around me, pulling me close.

“I wish we had more time,” she crooned, her lips leaving mine for the briefest of moments before returning to fill the void between us. In a few hours we’d leave. Leave the warmth and safety of our stable to venture out and into the unknown, possibly never to return again. We didn’t have much time left.

Dew Drops leaned against me and I felt her warm breaths upon the nape of my neck. “I wish you’d done that sooner,” Dew Drops whispered into my ear before pressing her lips against mine. My entire body went stiff as I felt her tongue slip inside my mouth.

‘Goddesses …’

My eyes fluttered closed. My heart throbbed faster than I could breathe. The taste of her tongue … it was intoxicating. I felt like I was going to melt into her hooves and become a steaming puddle of Red Dawn fondue.

“I’m … I’m sorry … I’m just trying to be good at what my cutie mark says I’m supposed to be good at. I’m just so damn busy all the time …” I trailed off, glancing at my handy pony queue.

She touched my cheek with a hoof, turning me away from that momentary distraction before she kissed me once more. I tried to do that tongue thing. ‘Ugh.’ Dew Drops nipped playfully at my lower lip before pulling away. She smirked. “You need to practice more often.”

“Is this training day? I-I seem to be getting a lot of that right now,” I chuckled nervously, holding her close with my trembling hooves. But really, it was her holding me.

Dew Drops pursed her lips, eyeing me worriedly as she noticed the palpable trembling in my forelegs. “How’s your leg, by the way?”

“Fine, it healed pretty fa –”

She rolled on top of me and laid me out on the bed.

“U-um … DD?” I said as I trembled at the warmness of her coat. Now her breaths were really close. “Wait –” but she silenced me with a wet smooch before I could say more.

I just closed my eyes and took her tongue lashing.

I pulled away, gasping for precious air as she waited, gazing down at me patiently with her half-lidded eyes. I paused for a moment, and that moment became seconds. Lying there, I thought to myself quietly as my heart pounded inside my chest – faster than I could breathe.

It felt like my heart was going to explode. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I could do nothing but lay there …

Frozen. Petrified.

As her muzzle hung inches away from mine, I found myself peering apprehensively into her gentle, gray eyes. They were the same familiar eyes I’d known and seen my entire life, but only until then had I ever looked into them and found myself so lost … and yet so found.

My whole life I had all the time in the world to look into those eyes … but only at that moment was I able to see. And I should’ve seen it a long time ago.

Realization dawned upon my face.

Goddesses. Dew Drops … she was so beautiful … and I was so afraid. Afraid that that was the only night we were going to have.

I blinked myself back into reality when I felt her hot breaths panting against me.

I knew what she wanted. I could see it in her flushed cheeks and her longing stare.

But Goddesses … I wanted more than that. At that moment, I wanted a future that I realized I should’ve wanted a long ago.

Our heartbeats slowed as the seconds ticked by.

“Red?” she said softly.

“DD …” I murmured. She cocked her head as I brought a trembling hoof to touch her soft, velvety cheek. “Could we … slow down?”

Several long heartbeats passed as I searched her eyes, afraid of what she’d say next.

I felt her body loosen up as a tender smile slowly stretched across her lips.

“Oh, Red …” she sighed gently, nuzzling me.

I closed my eyes and kissed her.

“I love you so much, DD,” I whispered, “I … I don’t want to make this night seem like it’ll be our last.”

She lowered herself onto my chest and snuggled up against me, and I squeezed her tight. Dew Drops cupped my cheek in her hoof and turned my head so that we could see eye to eye.

“I’ll love you, Red. Always …”

]*

I ran a gentle hoof through her soft, bed-headed mane. A thin smile stretched across my lips as I watched her chest rise and fall, listening to the cadence of her soft breaths. I couldn’t believe it. I found it difficult not to stare. Lying there beside me, she was as beautiful as ever.

There was something about sleeping – vulnerable and helpless next to the mare I loved that made me love her even more.

Dew Drops squirmed, murmuring to herself in her slumber, before wrapping her forelegs around one of mine and hugging it close to her chest.

I sighed softly as I watched her sleep. I thought I loved her. No – I loved her. And I didn’t want to let her go. I didn’t want to let her leave the stable without me.

Tomorrow we would embark upon a journey into an alien world.

With her lying beside me, I pondered my life thus far.

For much of my teenaged and adult life, and until very recently, I scoffed at the thought of even finding a mate. Because if a stallion or a mare couldn’t find love in our stable and have a child, a stallion would donate, and a mare would be inseminated to bear a foal in order to maintain our stable’s population. It was dystopian, I know, but it was also rare ….

Still I always imagined I’d be alone for the rest of my life and become a nameless sperm donor for our stable, and that some mare would bear a child who would never know who its father was.

But as I lay next to her, I imagined … I dreamed … I longed for a life with her, and a family of our own. I lay there in silence, fighting the tears that threatened to well out of my eyes, trying to come to terms with the fact that there wasn’t any time left for us. For Dew Drops and I.

But Goddesses … I wanted more … I wanted a life with her … and I never wanted this night to end.

I looked away, closing my eyes. I didn’t deserve a mare like her. I was ashamed. There was never enough time – never enough time for her in my life. And I wanted to make time.

But I knew that I’d just have to make that night last. I sighed and hugged her close, her eyes fluttering open for a moment before she floated away back to her peaceful slumber, her legs still wrapped around me.

Lying there for hours with her in my hooves, I stared at the ceiling and dreamt wistfully of a life we might never have. A life I wanted so badly. I didn’t want to think about what might’ve been waiting for us outside those doors.

Blinking away my tears, I looked over her shoulder and saw the picture of myself and my parents. I needed to tell my mother that I was leaving.

I knew that she wasn’t going to be happy to hear that. In fact, I knew that Mom was probably beg me to stay. I was only comforted by the fact that when I’d leave, my mom, the mare who gave me life and raised me by herself would at least be safe.

I needed to save my stable.

I gently pulled away from Dew Drops’ forelegs. She fidgeted sleepily as I pushed a pillow in my place.

“... huhn … Dawn …” she murmured.

I felt my eyes well up with tears once more as I pulled the blanket over her and left my room. It was night time, well – night time in the stable I guess. The lights were off except for the glowing footlights that lined the floor in the halls of the living quarters.

High above me, the rooms where the pegasi slept had to be reached by a brisk climb up a tall staircase. I trotted up the steps, my clopping hooves the only sounds audible in the silence of the curfew.

I reached the top floor and a gray-coated security mare shined her flashlight in my face.

"Red Dawn?" Silver Dove, a pegasus quarter regular called out to me.

I knew it was past curfew. She did too.

"Hey ... I just wanted to visit my mom before tomorrow," I began.

She bowed her head and waved me forward with a wing.

"Go ahead," she said softly with a smile. "And good luck out there tomorrow. Stay safe, Red Dawn."

I rested a hoof on her shoulder and nodded before we parted ways. Trotting through the hall, I found myself outside Mom’s apartment.

I knocked, and a few seconds later, Mom opened the door. I just woke her up but her face lit up at the sight of me.

“Red, what are you doing up so late?” she asked, cocking her head.

“Mom … I need to talk to you,” I said with a grim look on my face.

She eyed me worriedly and motioned me to step inside.

The door closed behind us and we sat together on the couch. The same couch I played ‘fly pegasus fly’ on and banged my head on the table when I was just a colt. I didn’t have wings like she did.

It was hard to believe I was going to leave all that behind. Leave her behind.

“Your mane is all messed up,” she said trying to straighten my hair with her hooves.

I gave her a nervous grin and her eyes widened.

“Oh, I know that look … that’s the look your father used to give me when he’d done something funny.”

“That’s beside the point, Mom. I need to tell you something and you need to promise that you won’t freak out like you usually do.”

She thought for a moment, and nodded, zipping her hoof across her lips.

I told her everything. My mom just stared at me with wide eyes, her bottom lip quivering as the blood drained from her face. I told her about the water talisman breaking, and then the meeting with the Overmare, and how I volunteered with Dew Drops and the others to go help find a new one.

“Red … why … y-you step out that door and … I might never see you again!” She grasped my shoulders with both her forehooves. “I might never see my little colt ever again!”

“Mom! I’m not your little colt anymore,” I groaned. Her eyes welled up with tears as she shook her head, not wanting to accept that I’d be leaving her behind … and never coming back. To her, I’d always be her baby, and she wouldn’t – she couldn’t let me go.

“I’ll be fine, I’ll come back – I promise! We can do this … we can save our stable,” I told her as her shoulders quaked with sobs and tears streamed down her cheeks. Mom squeezed me so tight I didn’t think she’d ever let go.

A darker part of me wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to keep my promise. I … I didn’t want to leave her all alone. I gulped down my tears. I tried to swallow the cries that were clawing their way out of my throat – but the sound of my mother’s sobs wrenched open the tear ducts that I had dammed tight for too long.

I hadn’t cried since I was a foal. I guess, even then, I was still a foal. To Mom, I’d always be her little colt.

I cried out and wept into her mane like a baby. All my life she cared for me, and all my life I saw it as an annoyance, her overprotectiveness irritating me at every twist and turn.

I remembered earlier, outside the clinic, how I was so dismissive of her love for the only family she had left. So much shame. So much regret. In my life, I would have done so many things different.

It was time to make up for the words I never said enough to the only mare who deserved it more than anybody else in our stable.

“Mom –” I sobbed, stumbling over my words as tears streamed down my cheeks. “I … I love you."

She hugged me tighter and said softly, her voice trembling, “I love you too, Son … I’ve always loved you – I’ll always love you no matter what happens ...” She kissed me on the forehead. “I know you’re not a colt anymore, but a mother can only dream,” Mom chuckled, wiping her cheeks. “I’m just glad Dew Drops is coming with you. She’s a good mare and I trust that she’ll keep you safe.”

I grinned sheepishly.

Mom looked at me with her watery amber eyes. “Whatever you do … whatever happens ...” Mom’s quivering lips settled into a warm smile. “I don’t know how many clocks, radios, and terminals you’ve fixed, but what I do know is that you can fix this. Do your best, like you always have. If you don’t come back …” she trailed off, not wanting to finish.

“Whatever happens, I’ll … I’ll be proud of you, my little fixer pony,” Mom said again, choking on her teary sobs. “Your mother loves you so, so, very much.” She squeezed me tight and I laid my head against hers. “I know your father loves you too.”

“I wish he was here,” I whispered through sobs.

“He’s always been here. He’s watching us from the Everafter. He’s watched you grow and become the engineer pony I know he always wanted you to be.”

I looked my mother in the eye, my forelegs still wrapped around her.

“If I don’t come back …” I murmured, “If I don’t come back … I’ll always be here too, okay Mom?”

“Don’t say that!” she snapped, looking away. Mom pulled me close and hugged me tight, not wanting to let go. “Please … I can’t lose you too. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you both.”

She folded her wings around me protectively as if the shadows that stretched across the walls around us were going to eat her baby colt.

“I love you, Son,” she whispered.

*

It was time. We all stood in front of the door clad in dark blue security barding, battle saddles, coats, balaclavas, gas masks, oxygen tanks, and everything else we needed to survive in an irradiated, post-apocalyptic world.

I slung the carbine around my neck and checked my PipBuck again to see if I had everything. I checked and rechecked until I was satisfied that I didn’t left anything behind. I looked through my inventory and eyed two items it identified as ‘PICTURES x2'.

I smiled. They’d always be with me.

I looked back and saw my mom among the crowd of almost a hundred ponies who stood a few feet away from us six. I lifted my mask, pulled off my balaclava, and grinned at her, waving my hoof in the air. Mom cupped her mouth with a hoof and wiped away tears as she smiled back. She stood upon her hind legs so that she was a head taller than the rest of the gathering crowd.

Mom pointed at me and shouted, "That’s my colt, Red Dawn! Can you see him! That’s him! My baby colt!”

Dew Drops bumped my flank with hers and we both laughed, waving at her again as the crowd cheered at us all. Peach Petals finally filled in the entire stable on our ordeal that morning. At that moment, we had everybody’s apprehensive expectations weighing down like planets on our shoulders. There was a sort of fearful optimism in the air. And hope. But mostly fear. You could see it in everybody’s eyes.

As I pulled my balaclava over my muzzle, I was glad that they couldn’t see it in ours. At least not in mine. My mask hid away the uncertainty that lingered upon my face. I wasn’t sure if I could say the same for my friends. Yes, they were nervous. But Lightning Twirl – especially – she looked as nervous as a wing-sprinter shuffling behind the starting line.

She was leading us, after all. Lightning Twirl knew this well as she let out a long and drawn out sigh, stilling her shaking body.

She was ready.

We were ready too. No. We were as ready as we’d ever be.

The Overmare trotted over before peering up at a windowed guard post one floor above us. She nodded and the ponies inside hovered their hooves over the door’s controls. Peach Petals tapped a hoof on her PipBuck, overriding the stable door’s lock.

“Goddesses guide you all. We’ll be here waiting. I know you ponies can do it,” she said, her voice trembling as she blinked away tears. “You have to. You just have to …”

I wondered how she felt, sending six of her ponies to their possible deaths. I couldn’t have felt worse than the Overmare or my mom.

“Thank you ma’am,” Lightning Twirl said, saluting her.

Everybody had already said goodbye to their families, and, like my mom, they too were waving their final farewells as we made our way toward the door. Dew Drops was wearing a blue and white striped scarf her mother gave her. It was her mother’s favorite – a hand-me-down from her mother’s mother. It made me think of the pictures I took with me; it seemed as if we all wanted something to remember our loved ones by if we didn't get to come back.

Or didn’t come back in time.

I gulped a lump down my throat as my heart drummed against my chest. It felt like I had weights tied to my hooves. Every heavy step was a step further away from the only home I had ever known.

I gulped once more. I needed to be strong.

We needed to save them all.

A circular lock on the massive, cog-shaped door spun and sunk into its surface. Steam leaked and hissed through the cracks as it began to part, uttering a deafening metallic roar that threatened to melt me into the steel grating beneath my hooves. I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw; my heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest. I could barely breathe.

I opened my eyes and only saw another great, cog-shaped door. I choked on my panting breaths.

“What the …”

“That’s the airlock. Please step into the vestibule. Until you return, this will be the last you’ll see of the stable when that door closes behind you. Goddess speed, my little ponies,” the Overmare said. I watched her force a sob back down her throat, her chin trembling as she steeled herself and clenched her jaw tight.

I heard a grating metallic groan and the doors began to close behind us like curtains on a stage. My eyes caught sight of my mother for the last time. I couldn’t watch as a mixture of fear, pride, and sadness played across my mother’s face. She wiped away the tears that were pouring down her cheeks, as she too mustered the courage to smile ear to ear at the only family she had left.

I grinned back behind my mask, promising her with my honest eyes that I’d return.

Then the impenetrable steel door slammed shut and shut me off from the rest of the stable – and apparently the light as we stood there fidgeting on our hooves in almost complete darkness.

We waited there for what felt like hours.

Then the whole chamber began to rumble beneath our hooves. I gulped and my heart rate began to rise. I was shaking again, and I could feel butterflies fluttering inside my stomach. I wanted to hurl.

But I felt a leg wrap around me.

Dew Drops …

‘We need to be strong. We can do this. We can save our stable.’

With a hiss, my ears popped and the door before us began to part open. I raised a hoof above my muzzle, expecting to be blinded by searing beams of natural sunlight. I expected to see a land flattened by the balefire bombs that annihilated my ancestors. I even expected to be sucked out of the door and into the open stars of the space I learned about when I was just a colt.

Through the widening crack between the parting doors I saw darkness.

Only darkness.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Fixer Pony – You are obsessed with maintaining a wide variety of machines, devices, and contraptions. +5 Small Guns, +5 Repair

Chapter 2 - Into the Darkness - Pt I

Chapter 2

Into the Darkness

“It is our only hope. To open those doors, we may die. But to remain here, we WILL die.”

Darkness.

Behind us, the door slammed closed.

I had never known darkness such as that. The lights in the stable were only two blast doors behind me – and yet, as I gazed into the mouth of that black abyss, I knew that out there, they were so far away.

I flicked on my flashlight and gasped as the darkness parted.

“Goddesses … are you ponies seeing this?” Amber Fields trembled.

Bones. I saw bones. Too many to count.

Star Glint nudged a stray rib. “How many people you think died here?”

“Too many,” I heard Dew Drops murmur.

I took a step back and my hoof crunched through something brittle.

I looked down and the charred skull of a long dead pony broke like a porcelain jar around my hoof. I struggled against the urge to scream – looking elsewhere, somewhere that wasn’t littered by the bones of some dead pony.

I found no such respite.

All that remained were the shattered, howling jaws of ponies long dead. Their grinning skulls warning me to scurry back to the safety of my stable … the safety that they were never able to enjoy. Their jealous ghosts screamed at me to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the home that they had been denied.

I turned around and peered upwards at the door that loomed over me.

Hooves.

Black, hoof-shaped smears raked across its surface as far as I could reach. They … they scraped at the door with their hooves until their hooves were gored and worn to bloody stumps.

The door hadn’t been opened in two hundred years.

The door hadn’t been opened for them. I stood there, trembling in silence among their charred, frozen bones.

There they had lain… all this time.

This entire time we had never known. For our entire lives we had lived, sleeping and dreaming sweet dreams when just outside our doors was this… horror.

Hundreds of people died in that tunnel with food and safety only two doors away.

They were so close … but not close enough.

“Try not to look,” Dew Drops whispered, pushing me away from the mass grave.

But how couldn’t I? Even long dead, their bones still cried out for mercy - for some closure from the balefire annihilation that erased them from the face of Equestria.

Those people were the forgotten souls that our ancestors decided to leave behind. They were the souls we decided to leave behind. I wondered if my great grandmare knew. I wondered if she rolled around in bed at night knowing that she survived and millions did not.

I wondered if her Overmare knew that she condemned all of these people to burn.

My wandering, teary eyes came upon a charred, shattered skeleton too small to be that of a stallion or a mare.

“They had foals ...” I turned to find that the others were staring at me with shell-shocked eyes. “They had foals,” I murmured, nudging the delicate, trampled skull of a colt. Or was it a filly? I wondered how it died. I wondered if the people who crushed it beneath their feet even heard its screams.

A dying filly wailed in my thoughts.

“We need to get out of here,” I snapped, loud enough to turn heads.

Lightning Twirl started down the tunnel. “Don’t look back. We have to keep moving forward. There isn’t anything here for us to see,” she muttered, ash and dust swirling around her hooves as she trotted through the mass grave.

I flashed my light to the end of the tunnel.

‘Is that the end?’

I couldn’t tell. Only an empty stretch of abyss snaked beyond the reach of my flashlight. The dead paved a path of bone that we followed.

In the distance, the haunting moan of a frozen wind invited us onward. We heard its siren call and listened it as it promised us a water talisman and a return home to our families.

But the farther down the tunnel we walked, the colder it became. I began to shiver beneath my jumpsuit, the icy air slithering through my barding and gnawing at my flesh. My freezing, freezing flesh.

“Where’s the exit?” Box Cutter whispered, wisps of mist jetting out of his breather mask.

“We’re close, I think. Can’t you feel it getting colder?” Lightning Twirl replied, shivering as she led us through the tunnel.

I trailed behind them not wanting to see what waited for us outside, but, at the same time, pressing onward out of fear of being left behind. I feared what was outside far more than the frozen halls that stretched out before us.

Star Glint beamed his flashlight down the tunnel and we watched it pan across a partially collapsed archway.

“Thank the Goddesses,” I heard Dew Drops mutter. We trotted towards it. Our relief was short lived.

We were close enough to see the bones poking out of the rubble when we were blasted by a glacial breeze.

It felt as if we were planets away from home … because the world we emerged unto was nothing like we ever expected.

I ducked under the fallen archway and poked my head out of the tunnel. My eyes neither dilated nor contracted because the darkness didn’t give way to light.

We stepped out into the twilit snow beneath the shadow of an ashen, dead sky.

Before me was a desolate, frozen field of blackened trees that reached their grim claws to the clouds for a sun that would never come. Mountains of snow and crag fields of two hundred year old ice that would never melt smothered the lifeless earth as far as my eye could see. The wind moaned, and I shivered as a flurry of snow blew through my legs.

That was it. That was the world outside.

Our ancestors left all of that behind. For us, they left a lot of nothing behind.

‘This was it … this couldn’t be it …’ I kept telling myself. ‘This can’t be Equestria …’

As I stared across that frigid no-one’s land, I began to doubt whether there was anything left out there. Whether there was anything left for us.

For anybody.

The snowfall thickened as I took several trembling steps further into the twilight, my friends following close behind me. I peered upwards and my eyes glazed over.

The sky.

The world around me fell away from my paralyzed hooves as I stared skyward into desolate infinity. I shrunk beneath the crushing weight of the dark, nebulous clouds that loomed over us.

I tried to tear my gaze away – but vertigo overcame me.

I fell into the sky.

The earth disappeared beneath my hooves, and everything around me tumbled end over end as I dropped into the clouds.

The world turned white – and I careened muzzle first into the snow drifts. I laid there shaking uncontrollably with my mask in the snow as I swallowed the bile that gurgled in my throat. In my daze, I could hear ponies shouting after me through the ringing in my ears.

Hooves wrenched me to my knees and I gasped for air, my radmeter clicking softly. I looked up, and Box Cutter hauled me to my four hooves.

All around me, the others collapsed to the snow.

I saw Dew Drops dry heaving into the drifts.

Star Glint hoofed his mask and vomited into the ice.

Amber Fields shook her head furiously into her hooves.

For some of us, it wasn’t the vertigo that was making us sick. It was the hopelessness. The despair.

“The sky ... I never thought I'd ever see it,” Lightning Twirl murmured, her wings fluttering weakly a few feet above the snow. “This can’t be the same sky my ancestors soared.” She reached out into the dark clouds with a trembling hoof. “It can’t be … it just can’t …”

She was lied to her entire life. We all were.

The murals of the blue skies and the white clouds she admired growing up within the whitewashed halls of our stable were lies. All of them. They were all lies.

I dragged my dark eyes to the sky once more. I saw, in the distance, a black speck peering down at us from the top of a broken hill. A snow swirl blew across my eyes, and when I blinked, it was no longer there.

Then I hoofed my mask and puked into the snow.

I wanted to turn around and never look back.

Or up.

*

The sky had coagulated into a thick, impenetrable ocean of darkness. I was glad I couldn’t tell whether or not it was still there as I shined my flashlight down upon a path we decided to follow. We wandered through a forest of ancient, gangly trees, six different hoofprints trailing behind us.

For nearly four days we trekked and slogged through the snow with not a single ray of light to touch our faces. The sky had gone from a murky gray to an opaque black, and not once did the sun show itself.

In this nightmarish world there were only varying degrees of night. I stared grimly into the shadows knowing that I might never see the light of day or feel the warmth of a home ever again.

My PipBuck, every now and then, in a land I could barely see, would alert me that I had entered a new zone. How it could have possibly ever known that that particular area was known as the ‘Crystal Highway’ was beyond my understanding. There was no sign of a highway anywhere, let alone crystals. I looked down at the century old permafrost that concealed so much of the landscape.

If there was ever a highway, we wouldn’t be following it.

Our flashlights cut amber swaths through the shadows as our misty breaths reminded us that we were still alive. Exposed to the elements, our bodies began to slow and wear down while the snowfall only intensified. Around us was a forest of disintegrating stumps, uprooted trees, and half fossilized trunks. They drowned beneath the snowfall, clawing at the surface for air with gnarled, broken fingers as they suffocated beneath the shifting, white tides.

The wind moaned a haunting tune that chilled me to the very core. My soul felt like it was going to freeze over.

I shivered, not from the wind that blasted at my barding, but at the unnerving emptiness of that place.

Whatever life that had existed there once had been choked out of existence two hundred years ago. I wasn’t expecting to see anything that moved except for the hooves beneath us.

For five grueling hours, we trekked through the snow without rest. We probably walked more in the last three and a half days than we ever did in our entire lives.

We’d trudged almost endlessly through the gloom for the last few days with only a two or three hour breaks in between. The last time we remained idle for more than five hours was the day before when we found refuge inside a cave. That cave was an entire day behind us, with no form of shelter visible for miles.

Every muscle in my body ached. I wasn’t sure how much further I could go. My friends weren’t faring much better.

Amber Fields stumbled and collapsed as Lightning Twirl pushed us eastward in a direction she thought would lead us to Poneva. Box Cutter helped her to her hooves, the pegasus pony only pausing momentarily for the other two to catch up. I could hear Amber Fields’ sobs behind me as I trudged deeper into the seemingly endless snowfall.

‘We have to keep moving,’ Lightning Twirl had said. ‘We can’t stop,’ she had said.

But every hour, every minute, every second we spent exposed to the unforgiving elements, the snowfall thickened. It was getting harder and harder to see more than twenty yards ahead of us. It didn’t exactly help that my flashlight’s beam was beginning to wane through the snowflakes, warping and reflecting against the flurry of white specks that washed against my eyeholes.

Were it not for my PipBuck, I wouldn’t have known it’d been almost ninety hours since we left our stable. There wasn’t any sign of light – no hint of whether or not the sun or the moon was still hanging over us. I wondered if the balefire bombs simply knocked the planet out of its orbit around the sun. Impossible, but it was the best explanation I could think of for the seemingly endless night.

It was … unnatural.

I stumbled through the ashen drifts, my legs giving in to the stiffening fatigue that threatened to keel me over. I panted to fill my lungs with air, jets of mist hissing out of my mask’s filters as I forced my legs to keep moving. All I wanted was to just sit there and wait until my muscles stopped spasming. But out there, warm legs that weren’t moving weren’t going to stay warm for long.

A grayish magical field swirled around me and Dew Drops helped me to my hooves. I leaned against her, catching my breath. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking behind her mask and balaclava, but I hoped she didn’t think any less of me. I wasn’t sure how much trotting I had left.

“You’re fine, Red. Just catch your breath … we can make it,” she whispered.

I squeezed my eyes shut, exhaling. “Why do you sound so sure?” I wheezed, taking a few weary steps through the snow.

She trudged onward as I wrapped a leg around her and followed.

“It’s all we’ve got to hope for,” the mare said softly, “Because if we don’t …” She stopped abruptly in her tracks and I nearly slumped into the snow. Dew Drops shook her head, not wanting to finish. I met her tired gray eyes briefly before the mare turned and walked on, her scarf billowing behind us in the wind.

We had to keep moving. So we did. Three more hours passed, and still the land was as desolate as ever.

By the time we came across a reminder that life once existed there, it had become so dark that we would not have been able to see anything past our muzzles without our flashlights.

A bent, half buried sign that reflected dully in our beams spoke to us more than anything out there had ever said since we emerged.

“City of Poneva, eighty miles,” Lightning Twirl read out loud, scraping away a layer of rime with a forehoof. She tapped her PipBuck and swung her flashlight due north. “I think we’re on the right track, if my PipBuck isn’t just spouting off bullshit my way.”

“Eighty fucking miles,” I muttered.

Star Glint sighed wearily and leaned against the sign only to have it crumble into the snow with him. He shook himself of the powder that clung to his barding and sighed as the snowfall scattered more across its blue fabric. “Let’s just find the damn thing and go,” the stallion grumbled.

I sighed. “How do we even know there’s a Water Talisman out there?” We had seen nothing but ice and snow for the last eighty-six hours. At that rate, I wasn’t sure we’d find anything left, let alone Poneva city. I was hoping to see a few ruined buildings here and there, maybe a fence. But there’d been no sign of civilization until then.

“We’ve been out here for hours, and the only thing that’s changed is this fucking sign here,” I growled, nudging its bruised, melted frame.

“Just keep walking,” Lightning Twirl droned flatly, as she followed the path wherever her flashlight pointed. “We can’t waste any more time –”

“We’re probably not even heading in the right direction,” I groaned. “How the hell do our PipBucks know that this really is the Crystal Highway?” I swept my hoof across the gnarled trees. “I’m not seeing any crystals anywhere.”

“As long as we stay on the highway, we’ll follow it,” she said, evenly. But not even Lightning Twirl could hide the palpable trembling in her voice. “This highway has to lead somewhere … if we follow it, we’ll get somewhere.”

“Somewhere,” I muttered, but my voice went unheard, lost beneath the moan of the wind. The snowfall thickened around us.

Lightning Twirl stood there quietly for a moment, as the cascading snowflakes washed over her. “We need to find shelter. Soon.”

I shook my head wearily as the others started forward. I stopped for a moment to lean against a burned, disintegrating tree trunk, narrowing my eyes through the snowflakes that rushed past me.

I beamed my light lazily across the trees, not looking for anything in particular. Nothing but snowflakes and dead trees. I flashed its yellow beam skywards and saw only a canopy of gnarled, ghastly branches. A jet of mist seethed out of my mask as I swept my light back to my friends to illuminate the path before us. Their shadows played against the trees like ghosts as they staggered wearily through the snow. I shivered and trotted after them, swinging my beam from left to right as their voices and flashlights became more distant,

For a moment, as it passed between the trees, a pair of teal eyes flashed back at me. I frowned, stopping for a moment and panning it back.

It wasn’t there anymore.

My eyes darted to my Eyes Forward Sparkle – my PipBuck’s proximity based IFF indicator. No red blips. Nothing. I hurried away, not looking back.

“You guys see that?” I huffed, crunching through the snow.

They all turned to look.

“It wasn’t a sign that said, ‘Stable-Tec, this way’ was it?” Box Cutter smiled hopefully.

I shook my head. “I think I saw something,” I murmured, chewing my lower lip. “Or someone.”

Star Glint panned his flashlight across the snowswept trees. “There's nothing here but us,” he said, shining it along the path once more.

I eyed Dew Drops worriedly. She pursed her lips and held my apprehensive gaze as the wind moaned and heavy snow collected upon our shoulders.

"Alright guys …” Lightning Twirl turned wearily, a long sigh hissing out of her mask. “The snow’s getting worse out here. We need to keep moving and stop looking back -"

Someone screamed. I whirled around and saw Amber Fields fall through the crumbling earth. There was a keening shriek – then an audible thump.

“What the fuck!?” I rushed to the place where she had been standing earlier – and nearly hurled myself over the edge of a pit. I scrambled away, snow and rocks tumbling into the darkness as the earth crumbled beneath my hooves. I found my footing and peered into sinkhole. Amber Fields writhed painfully at the bottom as snowflakes showered over her.

"Goddesses!” she cried out, the wind drowning out her voice. "I - I think I twisted my hoof!"

I clenched my jaw, swinging my head left to right. I watched as the storm swallowed up the trees around us.

It was coming.

I rushed over to the pit, shined my light inside and saw the immense skeletons lying beneath Amber Fields's heaving chest. Bears. Or they used to be. I shivered when I saw that the skulls had extra pairs of jaws.

Amber Fields’ eyes widened. "What the hell are these things?" she screamed, thrashing through their contorted bones.

My horn glowed with a scarlet sheen. "We're getting you out, Amber!” But she didn’t hear a word I said as the wind shrieked into our ears.

Dew Drops bowed her head, and a red and gray glow surrounded her as we lifted her out and set her down in the snow.

"How bad is it?" Lightning Twirl shouted over the howling wind.

"She twisted her ankle!" I shouted back, holding the mare upright with my magic as she limped painfully across the snow. Snow that piled taller and taller with every second we stood idle.

Lightning Twirl shook her head furiously.

“Fuck!”

"Twirl – we can't stay out here - the snow - it's getting too thick!" Dew Drops screamed as the wind blasted across our barding.

“You don’t think I know that?”

The glow of our flashlights dwindled and waned through the snowflakes that showered over us. I couldn’t see more than six feet in front of me as the world around us faded to black and white.

Lightning Twirl was but a silhouette in the snowfall. "Stay together, we're going to make it through this!" I heard her call out to us.

The wasteland shrieked – and a gust of frozen wind crashed into us.

I watched as Lightning Twirl’s outline sunk into the darkness.

“Twirl!” I screamed – but only the blizzard screamed back. “Shit …” I glanced around. To my left, Dew Drops’ dark shape huddled close. To my right, Amber Fields lay curled up beside me.

“Twirl!”

She didn’t answer. And neither Star Glint nor Box Cutter were in sight.

“SHIT!” The snow was going to devour us whole.

“Red?” I barely heard Dew Drops say.

My ears perked.

“Red, we need to get moving!”

Amber Fields moaned. “Where? Where do we go?”

“I … I … Twirl – where’s Twirl?” Dew Drops’ head swung from left to right as she squinted into the howling darkness. “Where are the others? Where the hell are they?!”

I felt their eyes fall upon me.

“Red …” Dew Drops murmured.

I said nothing as I heard muffled screams emanating from the darkness. My ears perked. The screaming stopped.

“Red!”

“I-I don’t know … I don’t know!” I clenched my jaw as the two shivering mares stared at me in hopeless silence. They didn’t know either. “SHIT!”

All I knew was that the storm was going to bury us alive. I hooked a leg under Amber Fields’ shoulder and pulled her to her hooves. “Come on – come on!”

I held Amber Fields tight as Dew Drops wrapped a leg around me. I shivered, staring through my frost-raked eyeholes into the storm’s howling maw.

The wasteland’s icy jaws were closing around us.

I gulped – and we waded into the blizzard.

Minutes dragged by like hours as the wind threatened to drag us away. We didn’t even know where we were going. ‘Anywhere but here,’ I thought. ‘Anywhere but here …’

But we weren’t going anywhere.

The wind drove us back mercilessly with every step we took. It shrieked into our ears and slowed our trots to stumbles. I couldn’t even hear myself think. I couldn’t even see past my nose as the blizzard drowned out the world around me. It heaved crushing snow onto our backs – weighing us down – wrenching us to the earth. I lifted my hoof – and dragged it through the snow as I struggled to sink it in front of me.

Amber Fields screamed, and collapsed into the ashen drifts.

“My leg – Goddesses my leg!” Dew Drops and I huddled around her, the wind screaming past us as I glared into the snowfall.

All I could see was white.

"I-I can't see – I can't see!" Amber Fields cried, clawing at her mask. “RED!”

“I’m here!” I told her, shaking the mare. “We’re here!” She wrapped her hooves around me and Dew Drops, and screamed into the storm.

“I’m sorry … this is my fault … my leg – I-I’m so sorry!”

“NO!”” I screamed, shaking her with my hooves. “We’re not dying out here … WE’RE NOT FUCKING DYING HERE!”

“Goddesses … w-where are the others!?” Dew Drops cried once more.

My eyes darted from left to right. I couldn’t even see either of the mares whose legs were wrapped around me.

I lifted my head and called out into the blizzard. "Twirl! Star! Box!" No response. "Where the fuck are they, Goddesses DAMNIT!?”

Only the wind shrieked in reply. It blasted us into the snow. We cowered there beneath the storm, screaming our throats raw as we held onto each other for our lives. There was nowhere to go when you couldn’t see a foot in front of you.

But we had to keep moving. We had to keep moving somewhere or the wasteland was going to swallow us whole.

With a suffocated cry, I forced myself to my four hooves, yanking Dew Drops and Amber Fields back up with me. Amber Fields sobbed, her limp rocking us back and forth as we stumbled blindly through the unforgiving storm. It bore down upon us, wearing us down, weathering away our strength to go on. My muscles began to ache. My legs threatened to buckle beneath me. But Amber Fields beat me to it as her legs gave way – and she dragged us back into the snow.

"I can't, Red!" Amber Fields cried, laying there as the storm drowned out her voice. “I can’t!”

I clenched my eyes shut and roared against the blasted wind, hauling her back to her hooves.

"Hold on, Amber,” I screamed. “HOLD ON!”

I squeezed her tight – and dragged the two mares with me. I fought through the unforgiving wind as it crashed against my face, and snow heaped around my legs. I wailed for my aching muscles to keep going – to break through the blizzard – but they screamed back, pleading with me to collapse even as my mind whipped my trembling legs onward.

But every hoof I planted in front of me was heavier than the last.

Weaker and weaker. Shallower and shallower. I gasped for ragged breaths that wouldn’t fill my lungs.

“DON’T LET ME GO, RED!” Amber Fields begged, “PLEASE – DON’T LET ME GO!”

"HOLD ON – HOLD ON!" I screamed, my muscles burning - my strength dwindling…

I felt her begin to slip away.

“RED!”

I swung my head around to face her, and found her watery, bloodshot eyes.

“AMBER, DON’T –”

She lost her footing and stumbled forward –

And the wind dragged her away into the night.

Amber Fields screamed – and she was gone. She was gone.

"AMBER!" I stopped for mere seconds, looking back the way we came only for the wind to catch me in the chest like sails on a boat. The wind hurled me into the snow.

“AMBER!”

My flashlight flew from my magical grip and everything went black.

All I could see was Dew Drops’ light flashing wildly across the swirling flakes like static noise on a terminal screen. I wanted to turn back. I wanted to go back for her.

But a dark corner of my mind told me that she was gone.

Gone.

I needed to be strong. I needed to survive.

I needed … to rest …

The snow heaped on top of me. In front of me. Around me. My tears fogged up the inside of my goggles and I lost the ability to see. I lost the will to see. The wasteland’s icy grip tightened around my legs as the snow piled higher, and higher – swallowing up my hooves and trapping them beneath the shifting, black tides.

At least when you died in a stable, you had a body to cremate. But out there, I feared that we were going to be lost beneath the ashen drifts, never to be seen again. Never to see the light again.

Seconds passed by, then minutes, then what felt like hours …

My body gave up.

Only my mind, with its dwindling will to survive, forced its nervous signals to twitch my frozen limbs through the unrelenting snowfall. My heart pounded faster than I could breathe. My muscles strained and struggled to move – to fight –

My muscles went stiff, and agony shot through my legs.

I stumbled – and fell. I felt Dew Drops yank my foreleg – trying to pull me back to my hooves. But I couldn’t …

Through the dark, veiny tunnels of my eyes, I saw stars.

- thump - thump - thump - thump – thump – thump ... thump …. thump …..

Darkness began to take me. I was done fighting. I was done … Amber Fields … I let her go … I …

I let go.

My legs slackened and Dew Drops threatened to slip away from me too. But instead, I slipped away from her.

I closed my eyes – and the wind dragged me into the howling darkness.

… thump ……. thump …………… thump ………………

“…….. DAWN!”

My head slammed onto solid floor.

… thump – thump – thump -

Hooves tore my breather mask from my face and I took an agonizing gasp. Dew Drops’ blurry, bloodshot eyes stared down into mine and she wrenched me to my hooves. I felt the metallic lip of a canteen push through my lips and the familiar taste of cider rushed down my throat.

I coughed, sputtered, and collapsed back into the snow-swept concrete.

Dew Drops’ mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I tipped my glassy eyes to what had to be a ceiling over my head. But snow cascaded through holes in the roof and the walls around us. I watched faintly as three other silhouettes stumbled inside.

The cider metabolized and the black tunnels around me faded away.

“- Fields?” I heard her asking me. “Where’s Amber Fields!?”

I closed my eyes for a moment and I remembered the way her screams died away into the storm. I opened them, and saw the others staring down at me, masks off as their teary eyes bore down upon me with the weight of worlds.

“She’s gone.”

I looked away, not wanting to meet their eyes.

“She’s gone …”

I could have turned around. I could have caught her. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

She was already dead. “Goddesses …” I sobbed, “I told you, Dew Drops … I fucking told you … told you I’d get everyone killed.”

The light faded from Dew Drops’ eyes, and she shambled away with the rest.

A trembling sigh seethed out of my lips as I slumped against the blackened concrete walls of the dreary, ancient cottage.

I closed my eyes and let the darkness and my sobs choke me to a sleep I wished I would never wake from.

*

I woke to the wind as it shrieked and battered the walls around me.

“We can’t stay here for too long – we have to keep moving!” I heard Lightning Twirl shout, faintly. I rolled around, too tired to stand, too tired to think, too tired to … weep. I turned my ears away from sound of Box Cutter’s sobs, Dew Drop’s shouting, and Star Glint’s hooves pacing across the ruined concrete.

“Twirl – Amber is DEAD!” Dew Drops cried. “We’re tired, Red nearly died, and we’re going to die too if you keep pushing us!” she screamed, her voice hoarse.

Lightning Twirl groaned, the sound of hooves pounding across rough concrete crashing against my limp ears.

“I’m sorry, DD … but the longer we stay out here, the more likely this fucking wasteland’s going to kill us - just like it killed Amber!” Lightning Twirl shot back. “We’re running on borrowed time. We don’t have enough rations to last us more than two weeks! So what the fuck do you expect us to do, wait here and let the snow bury us!?”

Dew Drops sobs echoed through my ears. I curled up tighter, tucking my legs into my chest as my friends fought and argued. The wasteland was tearing us apart. It was tearing me apart.

There was a long silence, only Box Cutter’s muffled cries audible beneath the howling wind.

“Twirl …” I heard Star Glint say, “DD’s right … if we keep going like this, we’ll burn ourselves out. We’ll be weak and we’ll be worse off in the snow. We can’t survive unless we rest.”

“Star … not you too,” Lightning Twirl sobbed.

“Twirl, we need to rest,” Dew Drops begged, “This is killing us…”.

I heard Lightning Twirl’s hooves shuffle across the floor. There was a long silence as the wind moaned outside.

“Okay … okay we’ll stay here, for now … until we’ve rested up and the blizzard’s blown through. Then we’ll get a move on again.”

‘Thank the Goddesses.’

*

My bloodshot eyes fluttered open, and not to my surprise, they didn’t need to adjust. Everyone was still asleep as I wandered through the burned out ruin. The blizzard had subsided to a thin layer of snowfall that might have made for a peaceful winter night if I wasn’t standing inside the ruins of someone’s home.

The inside of the cottage was worn bare by the elements over two hundred years of unrelenting, wintry punishment. Black outlines painted the walls and floor where furniture was burned away by the balefire holocaust.

Parts of the brick house were already beginning to collapse, and some sections, like what I assumed to be its dining room, barred me entry with a fallen ceiling. Whatever belongings there that weren’t locked up looked to either have been incinerated or carried away by the wasteland’s frozen winds.

With my carbine slung over my shoulder, I trotted to a shattered, blackened window pane and stared out into the snow.

Dew Drops told me that anything was possible as long as we had our friends to help us. I imagined Amber Fields wandering through the snow alone, helpless and lost, just waiting to die - abandoned and left for dead by the ponies she thought were her friends. I turned my weary eyes low in shame and knew that her husband … her colt would never see his mother ever again.

And that I was the one to blame.

My shoulders began to quake with the force of my sobs. My body gave up, and Amber Fields died because I wasn’t strong enough.

Because I wasn’t strong enough … she was gone.

I imagined the mare stumbling through the drifts on her bad leg, her limp turning into crawls, and her crawls turning into stillness. She curled up in a vast, bleak field of snow – cold, alone, and dying – only to close her eyes and let the glacial touch of death finally take her.

I clenched my jaw and shook my head, unable to shed anymore tears. I stared outside the window, watching the snow fall.

The snow had risen several inches and nearly touched the bottom of the window, threatening to pour in through its shattered frame. I leaned against it and looked out into the gloom. I couldn’t say it was day, but it wasn’t night either. It was bright enough to see the paleness of the snow without a flashlight. It wasn’t as dark as it was … I looked at my PipBuck: four hours ago.

I scanned the lonely, twilit trees that surrounded the lonely cottage. A part of me hoped I’d see Amber Fields limping our way.

I frowned when I saw something else.

A black silhouette peeked out from behind a withering trunk, watching me from the distance. Squinting at it, I could see its teal, pupiless eyes narrowing back at me. We stared at each other for a good five seconds. I was about ready to call out after it when I felt someone nudge my shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Box Cutter asked, wearily.

I glanced over and back out the window, “I –”

It was no longer there.

“I … don’t know … I … I think I saw something.”

Box Cutter was silent for a moment.

“Amber?”

I shook my head slowly, lowering my head.

“I saw the storm take her away,” I whispered, cradling my head in my hooves. My friend leaned against me and stared out the window.

“This can’t be Equestria, Box. Nothing… nothing can survive out here. I can’t even hope that Amber’s still alive. I can’t hope that we’ll find the Water Talisman. Even if there are still any of them left, this fucking wasteland will freeze over before we can even get near them.”

I shivered and rubbed one of my forelegs with another.

Box Cutter sighed, hanging his head. “I’ll tell you one thing: this isn’t the Equestria I read about in the books – that’s for sure,” he muttered with a wheezing chuckle. “Amber … Amber was out of the game when she fell down that hole.” Box Cutter looked at me with his bloodshot eyes. It looked like he had been crying all night. I met his gaze, and he added, “No way anyone could’ve walked through a blizzard on a leg like that, Red. It wasn’t your fault …”

“I just hope she went out quick…” I trailed off. Maybe the snow buried her and she froze to death. Maybe the wind swept her off a cliff or …

I shook my head.

“I should’ve held on ... I just wasn’t strong enough, Box. I’m tired. Everything’s so sore. I’m not sure I can make the rest of the trek, and … and I think I’m seeing things now,” I breathed, letting my eyes wander off into the twilight.

He punched my shoulder with a hoof. “We have ponies waiting for us – waiting for you to come back home. If you give up, if I give up – If any of us gives up … the game’s over,” Box Cutter said, cutting his hoof through the air. “If one of us goes … the others have to keep going. Like what Twirl said, ‘just keep moving’.

“Don’t stop - don’t stop for just one moment, because if you go too …” he trailed off. Box Cutter shook his head. “There’s still five of us left, Red. As long as there’s still one of us standing, as long as there’s one pony still moving ... there’s still hope.”

“Hope …” I muttered, closing my eyes.

We leaned against each other for what felt like hours. I finally chuckled and said, “When you fell in the water and got stuck with that metal beam back home, you were grinning ear to ear like it was just a bruise.” I bumped him with a hoof. “How do you do it?”

Box Cutter snorted a jet of cloudy vapor. The stallion shivered on his hooves and he looked out the window with glassy, bloodshot eyes. “It takes more than a sauna treatment and a paper cut to kill me, Red.”

“You son of a bitch …” I muttered with a smirk. “You must’ve been born without nerve endings weren’t you,” I said, not asking. “Concussion and all, you still came to the meeting and volunteered. Didn’t even know what you were volunteering for.”

“I heard my friends. Couldn’t let ‘em join without me,” he grinned, weakly. Box Cutter sighed, hoofing his forehead. “I’m still feeling it, honestly. I get headaches every now and then, and that trek was really pushing it.”

I sighed, levitating out a canteen of stable cider. I took a swig, and passed it to him. “I never knew it'd be this bad,” he said, biting the canteen with his teeth and tipping his head back. “To think our ancestors were all about friendship and harmony and all that gooey stuff ...”

He shook his head, staring out in the ashen drifts. “They did all of this. They destroyed themselves."

I sniffled. "It’s hard to believe people actually lived out here once. I can't see anyone ever living here in a million years. I wouldn’t … fuck it. White walls are better than whiteouts, honestly.” I took another swig before passing the canteen to Box Cutter. The cider burned going down my throat, but the pain assured me that I was still alive.

"Amen to that, brony," he tipped his head and gulped. Box Cutter pulled the canteen from his lips and frowned, holding it upside down. "Least my headache's gone."

I snorted. "You should try to get some more rest. Your head might swell up and explode or something."

Box Cutter nodded, stumbling away from the window. I listened as his hoofsteps fade away into the breeze. I stood there for a few solemn moments in silence. The wind quieted down, and I heard someone sobbing nearby.

‘Dew Drops.’ Her sobs spirited me to her. I following her muffled voice to a small room that somehow held against the passage of time.

I peered into the empty doorway. In the dim glow of her PipBuck, I saw Dew Drops’ trembling silhouette lying beside the skull of some long dead pony. The shattered, half-buried skeleton lay crushed beneath a collapsed section of the cottage’s brick wall.

Dew Drops was lying across the charred, wooden floor, her quivering nose touching the skull’s pale, weathered muzzle. Her bags were scattered all around her and an empty canteen of what I assumed was cider was a hoof's length away from her anguished lips.

“DD?” I whispered.

She didn’t say a word as her shoulders convulsed with quiet sobs. The mare’s eyes were closed but beneath her eyelids, her eyes swiveled rapidly like she was in the middle of a dream.

Or a nightmare.

I laid down next to her, running a hoof through her disheveled teal mane. I couldn’t blame her. We went through a lot that day. I curled up next to her, gently nuzzling her cheek with mine. But she wouldn’t stop sobbing. I closed my eyes, resting my head against hers, her shoulders rocking against me.

I wanted to help her, somehow. Somehow, I wanted to comfort her, even though all I could give her were hugs and words.

But hugs and words couldn’t bring Amber Fields back. I forced my tears away, and watched her, helplessly.

“DD?” I began, rubbing her foreleg. The mare wouldn’t move.

On the other side of her body, closest to the wall, there was a strange blue orb a breath’s length away from her muzzle. Rivulets of tears streamed by and under it.

“The fuck is this?” I murmured, eyeing its surprisingly lustrous surface. Whatever that thing was, it miraculously survived whatever that cottage didn’t.

I reached out with my magic to pull it away from her. A red magical field swirled around it … and I felt a numbing sensation surge through my body.

My limbs slackened and the last thing I remembered before I blacked out was the skull’s sunken visage staring at me with its hollow, dead eyes.

<-=======ooO Ooo=======->

Chapter 2 - Into the Darkness - Pt II

<-=======ooO Ooo =======->

I exhaled a contented sigh, peering out the very same window Box Cutter and I had been looking out of only minutes earlier.

Only this time, I was looking through glass, and the trees outside had leaves of a very lively shade of green.

‘Impossible.’

Everything was dead a blink of an eye ago.

‘Where am I?’ I tried to say …

… but I floated a bright glass of lemonade to my mouth instead.

I swung the window open and looked out into the verdant, green yard outside. The tart, freshly squeezed juice swam down my parched throat and I smacked my lips with a satisfied “Whew!”

“Hey Flashy! How’s everything in the Empire?” I asked out loud ... in a mare’s voice.

‘Wait.’

Those weren’t my lips moving. Suspended before me was … the same blue orb that I saw earlier.

“I really hope you get this before Princess Luna ships you back to Canterlot,” I sighed ‘… no, she sighed – no, I – t-the mare? I ... I’m a mare!’

“When you get back, you are going to love what I did to our yard.” I let out a weary chuckle. “I even planted your begonias – just like the ones in Princess Cadance’s garden.”

The smell of freshly-cut turf was still in the air. I smiled out the window at what had to be an entire day’s work, admiring the lawn of lush green grass that stretched across the front yard. My smile grew wide as I followed the cobblestone path, lined by rows of pink begonias and stalks of balsams that ran from the front door, down to the white picket fence at the other end of the yard.

It was a dream. It had to be.

I tried to train my eyes down the stone path. But I couldn’t. I was frozen. Frozen in another pony’s body. Wherever she looked, I looked as well.

“Oh … and you’re going to love this.”

I grinned with pride at the newly-planted evergreen sapling that was the lawn’s centerpiece. “Yup. I did all this all by myself. Popped three babies outta me and I’m still going strong.” I yawned, my horn tingling wearily at the sight of the shovel, planted on a mound of dirt beneath its immature branches. “Yeah I’m fine … we’re doing fine here. Just fine.”

I stared at my hooves.

“Flash, I miss you …” I whispered, my ears wilting. “I really wish you were here. It’s … been really hard trying to stay focused when there’s a war going on on your doorstep. Our kids are always asking me when you’ll be home … when it’ll all be over.”

I let out a soft breath, feeling the warm, golden light of the sun shine onto my face for the first time in my … life. In her life.

My weary eyes fluttered to the clear, blue skies – and saw distant shapes soaring through the clouds.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of cloudships lately. They’re all flying south – away from Poneva. Been doing that for hours now, and I still don’t know what’s going on.” I leaned against the window, resting my chin on a hoof. “God … I hope you’re wrong. I hope it’s still safe. I hope it’s still safe in the Crystal Empire. I … I just hope you’re okay. I haven’t heard from you in weeks.”

I lowered my muzzle onto the windowsill, watching the fleets of cloudships sail across the sky.

“The kids miss you. I really miss you. We … really miss you. The kids I can manage, but I can’t keep my head on straight knowing that the front line’s getting closer every day.” My ears perked at the percussive echo of distant artillery fire.

Artillery fire. I knew exactly where I was. This was Equestria. Was. And those distant cracks were coming from the war that ended the world.

I sniffled, my voice trembling as I gazed longingly at the pink begonias outside. “We need you here, Flash. Our children need you here.” I shook my head, tears welling up in my eyes as the distant cloudships continued their flight south. “God … I don’t know how much longer I can stand this war. It’s gone on long enough, Flash – and we’ve got kids to raise for God’s sake!”

I sighed, pulled a chair behind me, and sunk into it. I eyed the lawn outside as I flicked through static and voices on the radio. On a table beside me, a radio played a gentle tune that brought a weary smile to my lips. I closed my eyes and hummed to the words as a mare sung over the radio.

“Sompony's dreaming

Dreaming a bad dream

Soon it’ll be over

Soon we’ll be waking

Waking to a summer day.”

I leaned against the window, admiring the mare’s heartwarming voice. Her words echoed through my thoughts … I played the song over and over, again and again ... ‘somepony’s dreaming … dreaming a bad dream …’

“That was Sweetie Belle’s ‘Summer Days!” another mare cheered as Sweetie Belle faded away. “Boy, do I love that song – really gets me in the mood to sit out, sip a glass of lemonade and watch the day go by! This is DJ PON3 wishing you sunny days from Maaanehatten!”

My eyes fluttered open, chuckling tiredly. I took another sip of lemonade as I rested my hindlegs on the windowsill. “Well, as you can see, Flash, I’m really trying.” I levitated the glass into the air. “Here’s to summer days, Flash!”

I closed my eyes once more and tipped the glass back into my lips.

Crash!

My eyes shot open.

The sound of laughing children yanked me to my hooves. Outside I watched as a trio of young ponies galloped after each other across the lawn. One of them, a colt, ploughed straight through a line of flower pots and sent them spilling into the cobblestone path.

My right eye twitched. “Boys!” I jumped out of my chair and raced outside, the colts and one filly tumbling over each other in the grass.

“Boys!”

I chuckled, “Ah … here comes our monsterfoals.”

I trotted outside into the afternoon sun, a cool breeze caressing my soft, brown bangs. My … pine green coat blazed a brilliant white as I stepped out into the front porch and bathed in the warmth of that great ball of fire in the sky.

I hoofed the yellow lily tucked behind my ear as I cantered toward the rampaging foals.

“Boys, please – you might hurt yourselves –”

One of the colts squeaked as his leg clipped a rose bush.

“Sunchaser!” I growled.

He froze in his tracks. “Sorry, Mom,” the pegasus colt sighed as his brother and sister trotted up to us.

I glared at him, and he bowed his head to his hooves. A weary breath sighed from my lips, and my eyes softened. “It’s not safe to be running around in the garden,” I told him, gently, touching his cheek. “There’re too many thorny bits to hurt yourself with!”

The colt glowered at his grinning siblings as I brushed his amber coat gingerly with a hoof. Sunchaser winced. I cooed softly, plucking thorns out of his hide. “There,” I said, ruffling his mane. “Let’s go inside and get you some bandages, Sunny.”

The three kids looked at me, at each other, and at me again.

The youngest of the three, a tawny pegasus filly, grinned.

She swiped a hoof at my shoulder.

“Tag, you’re it!” she nickered, and they scattered.

“H-hey – Cinnabelle! What did I just say about running in the garden!?” I moaned, facehoofing, “Flash, where are you when I need you to corral these out-of-control kids!” I said out loud, starting after them. “Get back here!” I stomped a hoof into the grass as they galloped away as fast as their little legs could take them.

I sighed.

Then a playful smile slowly crept across my lips. I sprang to my hooves and dashed after them, whirling upon Cinnabelle.

But I slowed as I caught up. The filly’s voice cracked, “You’ll never catch me!”

“Cinnabelle, you stop right this instant!” I demanded with a grin. “Just wait till your father sees this!” She veered through a garden of pony-shaped bushes. I ducked under a stray branch and pounced on the filly.

Cinnabelle squawked, flapping her little chicken wings before she ducked out of the way. My eyes widened.

Crash!

I ate a mouthful of leaves.

“Argh!” I whinnied, shaking the leaves and twigs out of my hair. "Pwa, pfft!" I plucked a stray leaf from my tongue, grinning. “You slippery little filly!” I got to my hooves and charged after her, my long emerald mane whipping behind me as I closed in. “This is what happens when you marry a soldier pony! He gives you fighter foals!”

I snapped my jaws closed and bit down on her mane, yanking the filly off her hooves. Cinnabelle dangled from my mouth, her wings beating in futility. A unicorn colt dashed past us, giggling. But my horn glowed and I yanked her older brother into the air in a field of emerald magic.

“Gotcha, Spring Fresh!” I cheered.

“Oh come on, that’s not even fair!” Spring Fresh pouted, folding his legs across his chest as he floated towards me.

“One more to go!” I said through a tuft of Cinnabelle’s blue hair.

“Mom! Put me down!” Cinabelle laughed, flapping her little wings.

“Not till I find your brother!” My eyes darted across the yard, frowning mischievously. “Now, where is he?”

I took one step forward – and the world around me flashed green.

My ears popped.

Then the cottage’s windows exploded.

I swung the kids away from the window behind us and hugged them close.

Broken glass ripped into my hide. I cried out through Cinnabelle’s mane and nearly dropped the screaming filly to the grass. With a suffocated moan, I lowered the children to my hooves and panted through the pain with teary eyes. Blood trickled down my chest as the sky darkened over us.

Just above the tree line, a plume of greenish-black clouds erupted to the skies in the distance.

“Dear God …” I murmured, watching the mushroom cloud swallow up the distant landscape with a tidal wave of spellfire. I felt Spring Fresh and Cinnabelle huddle between my legs.

Then my legs began to shake. It wasn’t fear. It was the earth.

It quaked beneath my hooves.

The ground ripped open around us.

It tore apart beneath me and my hooves slipped.

“NO!” I shoved the foals back.

Then the earth crumbled away.

“MOMMY!” Cinnabelle shrieked.

My horn glowed. Green magic enveloped me and I righted myself.

I hurled myself away from the edge and watched as the cottage rumbled and shook. A fissure ripped across the garden and tore her home in half. Its roof caved in and its walls collapsed from the inside, engulfing us in a suffocating blast of dust and debris. Billowing brown clouds surged past us as we fled from the collapsing cottage.

I swept the foals into my forelegs, and peered into their teary eyes.

“Where’s your brother?! Where’s Sunchaser?!”

“I-I don’t know!” Spring Fresh stammered, “I saw him running to the shed!”

I swung my head in its direction. My heart sunk as the shed sunk beneath a sea of smoke and embers.

I felt Spring Song tense.

“Stay close to your mother, okay!” I wheezed through the smoke, leading the foals out of the thickening black cloud and away from the shattered earth. An ocean of black smoke swept away the trees, the cottage - even the sun – silhouetting them with a dim, greenish hue.

I watched as the sun slowly faded away into the darkness and our wretched shadows melted away.

The day became as dark as night.

“Sunchaser!” I cried, but I couldn’t hear his voice.

My eyes darted all around me. A small sliver of hope burned weakly inside my heart. Maybe they could escape. Maybe there was a way out.

I saw, through the smoke and the darkened trees, a long road that stretched to the north and south. North toward the balefire. South into the distance.

We were in the middle of nowhere. I wondered if the mare knew she was going to die.

“Sunchaser!” I screamed, and I hoped to the Goddesses that he’d reply or come running out to see them.

He didn’t.

My horn sparked to life, lifting both her foals onto my back as we raced to the cottage. I screamed at her to stay outside – but she couldn’t hear me. They were going to be roasted alive in there.

I kicked down the door and looked over my shoulder. My eyes glistened with emerald light. A blinding tidal wave of spellfire annihilation that burned a swath towards us as fast as fire burned through paper.

They were going to be roasted alive out there too.

A deep rumbling resonated through my bones.

Then the world flashed around me.

The forest blew away in a flash of emerald spellfire that scoured away the grass, and the trees, and everything that lived.

The entire world burned as the mare ducked with her screaming foals under the quaking kitchen counter. Blinding balefire crashed against the cottage’s brick walls and spilled inside. Flames leaped across the floor at my hooves as I shielded the whimpering foals with my trembling body.

I blinked away the sweat that poured down my prickling, burning face. I could feel it: my coat withering away – my flesh shriveling away as the moaning spellfire crept closer and closer, threatening to devour us all alive. But even as an inferno consumed the world around her, only a mother’s will to protect her children kept that mare going. I felt Spring Song squeeze her children tighter.

I didn’t want to watch. But there was nothing else I could do as Spring Song’s teary eyes remained open.

They were going to burn. I knew it. But burning alive was the least of her worries. I turned my head to Spring Song’s foals, their tears glistening against their cheeks in the cruel emerald light.

With my magic I gathered the foals onto my back. I took a shallow breath as my muscles tensed – and I leaped over the flames.

I landed at the edge of the inferno. Most of me did. The parts that didn’t burned away with my tail as white hot blisters ripped across my hind legs. I held back the urge to scream at the gnawing, scorching heat that crashed against me. I looked up and saw that were standing in the very same room I found Dew Drops in earlier.

I lowered myself to the floor with a moan and felt the foals roll off my back.

My horn flickered with a ruddy sheen. A trap door opened up before me, and I levitated the foals into the basement’s depths below. Was there any point? I knew that she was only forestalling the inevitable. It was the only place inside and outside that hadn’t yet caught flame. Below the concrete foundation they’d be safe.

But I knew they weren’t.

My shallow gasps turned into sputters and chokes as acrid smoke wheezed into my lungs.

‘Soon,’ I thought grimly as the mare lowered Cinnabelle, then Spring Fresh into the darkness. ‘Too soon.’

“Mommy!” Cinnabelle whimpered.

I reached down to touch her cheek. “Stay down there,” I wheezed. “I’ll be back – I promise!” I stood to my hooves and felt Spring Song hesitate, her foals’ teary eyes weighing heavily upon her shoulders. I turned around, clenched my teeth, and closed the trap door behind me.

Sunchaser was still out there. I hurled myself out a window, screaming as broken glass raked against my flesh. I crashed into the scorched earth outside, shielding my eyes as I struggled to see outside. All around me the world was on fire.

At the other end of the yard, across a charred, blackened field of nothingness … the shed.

“Sunchaser …” I whispered. I wreathed my body in an envelope of green magic.

I felt my body tense.

My eyes fluttered closed. A shallow breath wheezed through my lips.

I galloped into the balefire.

My tears evaporated. My mane burned away. My nerve endings shrieked. Everything inside me convulsed in agony as the radioactive spellfire crashed against my body, cooking me alive.

Only Spring Song’s magic kept her from being utterly incinerated.

It wavered. It sparked.

Then my skin. Blisters popped. Flesh seared, closed, and tore apart once more with every tormented step I took. My body told me to die. I screamed in the silence behind her eyes, my burning flesh as real as hers. But the mare powered through it all – the fire, the flames – even after her coat burned away. Even as everything burned away.

I bucked the shed’s door down and found Sunchaser cowering underneath an overturned wheelbarrow.

He screamed.

“M-Mom?!”

“I-It’s me …” I wheezed, my voice as coarse as gravel. My blackened flesh was almost unrecognizable. “Sunny! Come on, I need to get you someplace safe!” I pleaded with him. He cried, shaking his head.

“Mom – where’s Dad?”

Tears trickled down my scorched cheeks.

“Sunny …”

“He’s dead isn’t he … we’re gonna die, aren’t we?!” Sunchaser cried, smothering his face with his hooves.

“No …” I whispered. “NO!” I levitated the trembling colt, threw him over my back, and galloped as fast as my dying body could take me.

“What about you!?” he asked, but I didn’t answer.

I wrenched open the basement door and lowered him into the darkness. I raised a hoof to follow him down and –

An avalanche slammed me into the floor. Then nothing.

Bones broke. Flesh squelched. I lost the feeling in my legs, trapped beneath the mountain of bricks that crushed me beneath.

I howled – I shrieked my throat raw in agony at the nerves that hadn't yet gone numb. The foals screamed, crying for their mother as my blood puddled around me and dribbled down the trap door and onto their horrified faces. My horn flickered and died. Dark tunnels closed in around me. Wretched breaths wheezed out of my scorched, bleeding lips.

I reached a trembling hoof across the trap door only for it to stop at the basement's edge.

“Mommy, please don’t go!” Cinnabelle cried out to her mother, reaching out to me with a foreleg not long enough to touch my own.

Blood trickled through my teeth. My eyes began to glass over.

“Stay down there … you’ll be safe ...” I sobbed, “I love you … I ….” Streaks of blood trailed down my face, mingling with my tears. “Your father and I will come back for you … I promise … don’t come out until I say it’s safe.”

The foals whimpered silently as the light faded from my eyes.

“Mommy …”

I smiled tenderly, craning my neck so that I could see them for the last time.

“It’s going to be okay. Don’t come out, it isn’t safe out here anymore,” I rasped, suffocating under the black smoke that hung above the floor. “J-just close your eyes and … go … go to sleep.” I choked on my words, tears streaming down my cheeks. “When you wake, up your Daddy and I will find you, okay?”

The three foals gazed up at me helplessly, their eyes glistening with tears. Cinnabelle struggled to reach me, fluttering her wings and, to the mare’s widening eyes, taking flight for the first time. I lowered my head and wept into the bloody floor.

“Cinnabelle… don’t look ... Spring, Sunny … take care of your sister.”

Sunchaser pulled her back down as she kicked, and screamed my name.

My hoof caught the basement door’s latch.

“Mommy, no! DON’T GO!” Spring Fresh wailed, her voice growing farther and farther away as black tendrils twisted and curled around the closing tunnels in my eyes. “NO!”

“DON’T – !”

I pulled the latch down and the door swung closed.

With a dying moan, I slumped to the floor, a puddle of my own blood pooling around me, seeping through the debris that trapped my broken limbs. I stared at death’s door, the black, veiny tendrils that curled around me giving way to a light … a light that drew me away from my ruined body and all the pain and suffering that licked at my trembling flesh.

My body clung desperately to life, but it wouldn’t stay for too much longer.

“Flash … Flash … I tried,” I said, pushing a blue orb to my face with a trembling foreleg. My horn began to glow as I poured into it all the magic I had left. “They’re safe now … I hope you made it out alive. I couldn’t save myself. I told them it’s going to be okay. I … I hope you’re okay … I love you,” I said with a grim finality that shook me to the core.

“Sompony’s sleeping …” I crooned, singing Sweetie Belle’s lullaby in a haunting tune that I would never forget. Blood trickled through my teeth as my voice wavered through the darkness that closed in around me. “Somepony’s sleeping …sleeping …through a bad dream … soon it’ll be over …

“… soon we’ll be waking … waking … way ...”

<-=======ooO Ooo=======->

My own eyes opened. I blinked away a glassy tear and Dew Drops watery eyes gazed down at me.

“You saw it too?” she asked as if she'd seen a ghost.

My eyelids fluttered closed and I nodded slowly. The sensation of my flesh being lit aflame lingered even as the wasteland wind whispered across my shivering limbs.

‘I’m alive,’ I thought.

“What ... was that? How?”

Dew Drops pushed the orb away with a hoof.

“It’s some kind of memory orb,” she replied, quietly. “Lets you experience the memories of other ponies.”

I looked at the small blue orb and wondered how it could have ever survived that long. I pushed myself upright and saw Spring Song's crushed, lonely skeleton. “That was how it ended, wasn’t it,” I said, not asking. I let out a trembling breath that turned into a cloud of misty vapor.

“How could anyone deserve … this?” she asked, tears pouring down her cheeks. “How did it ever come to this?” She shook her head, staring down at her hooves. “The foals, Red … the foals …”

Dew Drops reached for the basement door and her hoof hesitated.

Giving her a weary, somber look, I stood to my hooves and gripped the latch with my magic. My chin trembled with quaking sobs as I lifted the trapdoor open, flicked on my carbine’s flashlight, and descended into the darkness below.

Among the dusty, fallen cabinets and the ancient debris I saw what I already knew. Huddled in the shadowy corner was a trio of skeletons, their limbs tangled together in a ghastly embrace. I turned away, dropping my flashlight as burning tears welled out of my eyes.

They were just foals. Just … foals …

That was the world we left behind. We left all of that behind. All of them. We closed our doors while everyone outside burned – Cinnabelle, Spring Fresh, Sunchaser …

I heard Dew Drops’ hooves clop next to me as she trotted to the dusty corner. She let out a shallow, trembling breath.

I watched as she carefully lowered each of their small, curled up remains onto a dusty tarp that we found lying on the floor. Like a funeral procession and with our heads hung low, we carried their tattered bones into the snow.

With our spades, we dug through until we unearthed the blackened soil beneath.

*

Dew Drops and I stood solemnly over the black mounds we dredged out of the frozen earth. Her blue scarf billowed in the somber, wintry breeze. Together, we levitated a blackened gravestone and drove it into the ground among three others.

The largest of the broken headstones belonged to Spring Song. We buried her next to her foals. We gave her what I knew she would have wanted; she and her foals would never be separated ever again. I hoped that we brought them some measure of peace.

One day, I hoped, their graves would feel the warmth of a summer day.

*

We sat within an alcove by a burned out window, listening to the wind. Dew Drops’ forelegs were wrapped tightly around me as we rested our backs against the wall beneath the windowsill.

It was still dark outside. I wondered if it was like that all the time in the wasteland. If it was always night.

In the small, scorched room, I could just barely see a foot in front of my hooves. From what I could make out, the window overlooked what I thought was the remains of the cottage’s backyard. The view from there might have been beautiful once, had the world been not a dead, frozen wasteland. From the charred outlines of what looked to be small furniture, I figured that it must have been one of the foals’ rooms; it was down a hall near the master bedroom Star Glint and Lightning Twirl claimed for their own.

Other than the occasional sob and the moaning wind, the night was a rather quiet one.

“DD?” I asked, softly.

“Red?”

“Are we going to find a Water Talisman?”

She rubbed one of my forelegs tenderly.

“Yes.”

I nodded, slowly.

She turned her head to look me in the eyes. “Don’t make Amber’s death be in vain, Red,” Dew Drops whispered, “We’re not done yet.” Her words echoed hauntingly through my thoughts. “Don’t give up on our Stable.”

I exhaled a cloud of mist and hugged Dew Drops tighter. She sighed, tucking her head under my chin.

“I won’t,” I whispered, burying my muzzle in her soft mane.

“Promise me.”

I lifted my head and stared down into her gray eyes, my expression rife with grim uncertainty. I leaned in and kissed her.

“I … I promise,” I added, forcing a grim smile.

But in the darkest corner of my mind, I kept telling myself that that was a hollow promise.

*

Chapter 2 - Into the Darkness - Pt III

*

I woke to the sound of hoofsteps crunching through the snow. My eyes shot open and I darted them around me. To my left, I saw that Dew Drops was slumped against the wall, fast asleep. My horn glowed and I levitated my carbine to my hooves.

I hugged it in my forelegs, listening as the hooves crunched closer. Closer. My heart pounded in my chest.

I slowly inched my way up the wall, trembling with every second that passed. I was afraid of what I might see. Outside the window, a dark mass with a flashlight was moving across the backyard.

I shouldered my carbine and flicked its flashlight to life.

“Star Glint?” I whispered, relieved.

The stallion turned, wrinkling his brows at me.

“Don’t shoot,” he chuckled quietly, “I’m just gonna take a leak.”

“Goddesses, you scared the shit out of me.” I sighed, “Just don’t stay too long out there.”

“Yeah, I might freeze my bits off,” Star Glint snorted, before trotting off once more.

I slid back down the wall and curled up next to Dew Drops. My eyes closed once more and I went back to sleep.

*

“Where is he?!” I heard Lightning Twirl scream.

I leaped to my hooves and ripped myself from Dew Drop’s embrace. I looked outside the doorway. “What the hell is going on?”

The pegasus stormed out into the hall wide-eyed and with her battle saddle bit clenched between her teeth.

“Star Glint? Where the hell is he?” she demanded.

“He’s missing?” Box Cutter asked, rubbing his eyes as he trotted out of his room.

“Well no shit, he’s standing right here isn’t he?” Lightning Twirl snapped.

I raised a forehoof. “Twirl, slow down.”

“Slow down?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Star Glint is missing, and … and you want me to slow down?”

Dew Drops followed me outside into the hall.

“Where’d you last see him?” she asked.

Lightning Twirl glanced over her shoulder. “We were sleeping in our room and I heard him leave – said he needed to take a piss,” she breathed, pacing across the hall.

I blinked. “I saw him last night …” I began, slowly, “Saw him walking out into the backyard …”

Her eyes widened at me. “You … you let him go out by himself?!”

“I-I thought he’d be fine –”

“We just lost Amber in a blizzard, and you think that Star Glint would have been fine walking out there by himself too? Have you lost your fucking mind, Red?”

Horror flashed across my face. I stumbled backwards, stammering, “I-I told him to not stay out there too long –“

“Goddesses, Red!” I winced as she jabbed a hoof into my chest. “You got Amber killed and then you let Star trot out there on his own!”

Dew Drops slapped Lightning Twirl across the face. “How dare you say that!”

Lightning Twirl touched her reddening cheek, glaring at Dew Drops in furious silence as tears welled up in her eyes.

“It wasn’t Red’s fault … none of it was!”

My ears wilted. My heart leaped inside my chest. I blinked, struggling to clear the blurriness in my eyes as the world spun around me. I found my balance when I fixed my wide-eyed gaze upon my hooves. But I could still feel the crushing weight of everybody’s eyes upon me.

‘What have I done …’

I looked up – and Lightning Twirl shot me a hateful stare. I met her eyes … her burning, teary eyes, and I knew just what I did.

‘I got another one of my friends killed.’

“I … I-I …”

I felt Dew Drops’ hoof rest upon my shoulder.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Fighting each other won’t solve any of this,” she said, softly, “Let’s go. Let’s find him. He couldn’t have gotten far.”

I gulped and peered outside. It was still dark. I wondered how long it’d been since I last seen him.

We hefted our gear and loaded our guns. I shivered beneath my barding as I zipped my bulletproof armor closed, and slipped my balaclava and mask over my muzzle.

I watched Dew Drops pack her saddlebags. Dew Drops paused for a moment to meet my stare. She pursed her lips, reaching over to touch my foreleg. I looked down at my hooves once more as she pulled on her balaclava, then her mask, and trotted out the door.

We followed Lightning Twirl into the backyard. It was an open field of snow. I beamed my carbine’s flashlight across the drifts and saw a faint trail of hoofprints snaking through the fresh powder.

“Everybody stay close,” Lightning Twirl said, loading rounds into her battle saddle.

I hoped to the Goddesses it’d never come to that. I was shaking uncontrollably and my mane was itching. I gulped with apprehension and trailed after the ponies into the charred, withering forest.

We followed the trail up to a tree not far from the cottage, and saw that the hoof prints ended there. We studied the yellow snow that puddled around the tree with weary eyes.

Box Cutter snorted, weakly.

“Guess he wasn’t kidding when he said he had to piss.”

Lightning Twirl and Dew Drops glared at him through their goggles. “Fuck. Sorry …”

I looked around, beaming my carbine’s flashlight across the gnarled, gangly trunks that slithered out of the snow. It passed over a pony-shaped silhouette.

“W-What was that?!” I gasped – gripped my carbine tight – and galloped after it.

My friends’ voices shouted after me.

“Red! What are you doing? Get back here!” Lightning Twirl screamed.

I didn’t stop.

“Star!” My voice echoed through the hollow, black forest. “Star! Star - where are you!?”

My flashlight dashed across a tree – and a dark mass ducked into the shadows.

“You – STOP!”

I raced after it, hurling one hoof after the other. The forest blurred past me. Branches broke against my chest. I trampled the brush underhoof.

I flashed my light into the trees and wrenched apart the darkness.

But there was nothing there. Nothing but the trees’ charred husks.

I stood there, shaking as the dead trees loomed over me, my heart thrashing inside my chest. My friends were a long ways behind me, their flashlights nothing but strobe lights in the distance. But I wasn’t slowing down. ‘I did this.’

‘I did this.’

I needed to find Star Glint. I lifted a trembling hoof and –

My EFS blinked. I slashed my flashlight across the contorted branches.

Two teal orbs stared back. The same eyes that I saw stalking the cottage from behind the trees.

“You son of a bitch!” I roared, galloping after it. “Who the fuck are you?” The eyes narrowed at me, and disappeared behind a tree.

I pounded through the snow, tearing apart the tracks that thing was leaving behind. Its silhouette darted through the trees - tree after tree - and each time I shined my light, I grazed its blurry outline.

Closer. And closer.

Flash.

Its barded flank escaped me.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY FRIEND!?”

“RED!” A distant voice screamed. But I didn’t listen.

I pressed onward, chasing it into the darkness.

My flashlight flickered. I froze in my tracks. All became still. The wind. The snow. The trees.

My ears perked. All I could hear was the pounding in my temples.

An eerie silence descended upon the forest as I stood there, looking all around me, staring into the quiet, motionless trees. I swept my light across the trail of hoofprints and into the distance.

A twig snapped.

My beam caught Star Glint’s coat as he trotted through the woods – away from a massive, frozen boulder. “St-Star?” I asked, shaking. No response. I gulped a lump of apprehension down my throat and started forward. I flicked my safety off.

I followed him in a daze. I stumbled after him until he disappeared behind a tree. When I reached its blackened trunk, I found that he was … gone.

I swung my beam across the brush. Nothing. Not even tracks. It was a dead end. The tracks simply … ended.

I rubbed at my eyes with my forehooves, trying to catch my breath.

I couldn’t.

My wheezing breaths hissed out of my lips as I turned and backtracked, flashing my light warily across the snow. I followed the strange hoofprints back to my friends, and returned to that massive boulder.

I gulped, and looked down. My eyes widened at what I saw.

At that boulder, the tracks diverged. One set trailed off into the darkness behind me. To that dead end.

The other …

My magical aura glowed a deep crimson as I gripped my carbine tight.

I followed the tracks past the boulder.

My heart nearly stopped.

‘Dear Celestia.’

*

Lightning Twirl, Dew Drops, and Box Cutter huddled behind me. Nobody said a word as we looked across the snow drifts.

Blood.

There was so much blood. It trailed over rocks, stumps, and beyond the reach of our flashlights.

“Guys …” Box Cutter whispered. He didn’t have to finish his sentence as he tongued his battle saddle bit and craned his neck, chambering a round. The others did the same.

I levitated my carbine and pulled the bolt back, loading a round into its chamber. I felt like my shaking would drill me into the snow and through the earth.

Lightning Twirl stumbled through the drifts, following the blood. The blood. We saw deep canyons gouged into the snow and patches of bloody hair littering the trail. But there was still no sign of Star Glint. My filters wheezed with vapor as I panted through shallow breaths. I had never seen so much blood in my entire life. Blood.

It was … everywhere.

We followed the trail at a pace that made it seem like we’d been out there for centuries. It dragged on and on, deeper and deeper into the forest. I couldn’t even see the cottage from there. The forest thickened around us … closing in. Their dead branches clawed at my barding as we trotted further and further into the darkness.

The blood led through and … and over … and around a ruined stump. It was as if someone had tried clinging to it only to be dragged away. Lightning Twirl unfurled one of her wings in our path, and stopped in silence.

She exhaled a cloud of vapor and glanced back at us, hesitating. With a shivering exhale, Lightning Twirl pushed through the brittle foliage. The branches broke against her barding and we crushed them beneath our hooves, following her into a clearing.

There he was.

Box Cutter tore off his mask and vomited into the snow. I blinked. And blinked. And blinked again. It had to be a dream. I kept telling myself that it was a nightmare and that I was going to wake up from it.

I closed my eyes, clenching them shut.

But when I opened them, the skinless, mutilated mass was still lying in the ashen snow at my hooves.

Lightning Twirl screamed, falling to her haunches and cradling the flayed corpse’s head in her hooves. She wrenched off her mask, reared her head to the clouds and wailed into the night, her tears melting the layer of frost that had formed over the carcass’ grayish, frostbitten flesh.

She hugged Star Glint close and let out a banshee shriek that shattered the dead, unnerving silence that hung over the frozen wasteland.

“Who the fuck did this!?” Box Cutter demanded. “Who. The. FUCK!? You sick … sick fuckers! You killed my friend!”

Dew Drops just stared … frozen … tears running down her blood-drained face.

Box Cutter clamped down on his battle saddle’s bit. “Where are you!? Show yourselves!”

A twig snapped behind us.

I whirled upon my hooves and beamed my light into the foliage. An amber-coated pony approached. She staggered towards us on precarious legs. Then I saw her limp.

“Amber Fields?” I shined the light up her body and my eyes widened at what I saw. The mare was blindfolded and gagged. Her flank was red with blood and her coat was adorned with random gashes that had long stopped bleeding. Her saddle bags were bloated with round objects that poked out of the black fabric.

Amber Fields’ mouth moved but all that came out was a muffled cry.

“Amber!” Box Cutter trotted towards her.

Amber Fields shook her head, screaming at him through her gag. Streaming down her cheeks and through her blindfold were streaks of dried blood.

“Amber … thank the Goddesses you’re … what … what the fuck?” I asked, taking a few hoof steps towards her.

“Nnnph … nnnph! SNNNFF BRRRK!” she cried, sobbing through her gag as Box Cutter pulled it off. He reached for her blindfold, his hoof grazing her cheek. But she swung away from him, shaking her head furiously.

“NO!” she cried out, her chin quivering as fresh blood began to trickle through the black fabric that hid her eyes. “Get away from me!”

We didn’t.

“A-Amber …” I barely heard Lightning Twirl say over the pounding of my heart. The pegasus approached, but froze midstep as Amber Fields’ voice silenced every sound but the hearts that pounded inside our chests.

“It’s too late now … I tried to die … I’m so sorry …” the mare whispered.

Lightning Twirl opened her mouth to speak, but the blood drained from her face. She looked up from her PipBuck and screamed.

“CONTACTS ON MY EFS –”

The night lit up in a yellow flash.

A scream bearing Amber Fields’ name was wrenched from my lips as the overpressure punched the air out of my lungs. I stumbled backwards - my ears ringing - and fell into the ashen drifts as a pillar of gore blew out of the cratered soil before me. It hurled Box Cutter off his hooves like a rag-doll. He screamed – until a face-full of snow silenced his cries with a jarring crunch.

He held up both his forehooves. They were gone. Only bleeding, ruined stumps remained as he roared in agony.

Laughter erupted from the darkness.

Black forms burst out of the snow around us.

I shouldered my carbine, pointing my flashlight beyond the crater that was once been my childhood friend. The crater that was once Amber Fields.

A pony.

It … she was garbed in thick barding that would have been white had it not been stained a disgusting mixture of brown and red. My light flashed over the frostbitten flesh of her muzzle and staring back at me, behind a pair of cracked goggles, were glazed, black-veined eyes.

I watched her, frozen in place. I remembered the night at the shooting range.

It was just a target. Just a target.

It was a pony.

Dew Drops screamed … but her voice was muffled in my ears.

“Here they come! RED!”

They were ponies.

A gnarled grin stretched across her lips.

The blood drained from my face.

“WE’LL CUT YOU UP GOOD!” the pony howled madly. She galloped towards me, flailing a machete over her head.

I toggled SATS and fired. My carbine burped a burst of 10mm rounds that ripped open her chest. She let out a hysterical, giggling cry before crashing headfirst into the snow. I watched as she tried to stand to her hooves –

And hooves pulped her into the snow.

They paid her no mind as half a dozen ponies stampeded after us with rusty, warped blades clenched between their yellowed teeth.

Box Cutter dragged himself out of the snow drift with an agonized moan and bit down on his saddle bit.

The night lit up with gunfire and ecstatic squeals of delight.

A stallion hurled himself towards us, screaming - and Box Cutter’s submachine guns flashed in my eyes.

Splashes of gore erupted across his body. He reared up on his hinds, cackling with anguished glee - until a stray bullet blew his brains out the back of his head.

I gagged, the taste of vomit lingering upon my tongue.

“DO YOU WANNA SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE ON THE INSIDE!?”

A psycho stallion lunged at me with a butcher’s knife.

I leaped into SATS. In between two heartbeats, I tagged everything between the stallion’s barded neck and his frothing muzzle.

I executed my firing solution.

He caught the first bullet through the throat and stumbled, blood erupting from his neck in a splash of crimson. The bullets made their way up his face and the burst tore the damn thing off in a fountain of fractured bone and gore.

My heart nearly skipped a beat. I watched the pony’s cratered skull squelch into the pale drifts.

I just stared … my mind going blank.

‘I killed two ponies.’

“YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS!” Lightning Twirl cried, wrenching me from my trancelike state. Her wings unfurled and she launched herself into the air, lancing tracers through the charging psycho ponies.

Dew Drops screamed behind me.

A pony sunk a dull knife through her barding. The psycho tore the blade out of her and reared his head back for another stab. I cried out, and jammed my carbine into his chest.

I sunk the trigger back. Half a magazine’s worth of bullets erupted into his chest, muffin my gunfire with his squelching flesh.

His blood splattered across my mask. I gasped a shallow breath.

He gurgled out a frenzied laugh through a mouthful of blood, and slumped into the snow. I watched his legs twitch as his lifeblood pooled around him.

‘I killed him … I -’

Hooves slammed into me into the snow. I screamed - and a giggling mare leaped onto my chest.

“I bet you’re a pretty one,” she hissed, licking at my wheezing filters. She tore off my mask and balaclava with her hooves. “YOU’D LOOK BETTER WITHOUT A FACE!”

She reared upon her legs to stomp in my skull.

But a feathered blur crashed into her. Lightning Twirl and the psycho pony tumbled through the snow in a flurry of hooves and blood.

“Twirl!” I shouted after her as Dew Drops pulled me to my hooves.

Lightning Twirl shrieked and stomped her gory hooves as hard as she could into the mare’s chest. Her hooves blew snow skyward with a sickening crunch, launching herself into the air once more.

“You fuckers! Get away from me!” he screamed. The psycho ponies saw the gory stumps where his forehooves used to be, and erupted with laughter.

One mare leaped after him – only to be blown back and apart by a burst of submachine gun fire. Another knocked past the falling corpse, screaming for blood through his mask until a bullet tore it off in a shower of pink giblets.

He slumped into the snow. But they just kept coming.

Dew Drops and I shouldered our carbines. We emptied our magazines into psycho ponies left and right as they charged through the brush, trying to tear our hoofless friend apart in bloody melee.

Box Cutter cursed when his battle saddle ran dry.

We covered him, firing wildly into the night – pinning them down - holding the psychos at bay as he struggled to replace his spent magazine. They laughed and screamed - frothing at the mouth, our bullets doing nothing but driving their thirst for our blood to even greater heights.

There was a lull in the firefight. The psychos hurled themselves into the snow and ducked.

I lowered my carbine. At the other end of the clearing, silhouettes rose up from the brush.

Then something white hot punched through my shoulder and out the other side. I stumbled back. My blood trickling down my chest.

Muzzle flashes erupted from behind the trees.

“Get to cover!” Lightning Twirl shrieked as she dove into the canopy.

I dropped to my chest. Bullets screamed over my head.

That was what they wanted. They cheered, rising from the snow, and advanced, machetes held high.

Dew Drops ducked behind a tree trunk, firing her carbine at anything that moved. My blood leaked into the snow where I lay, but I clenched my jaw through the pain and screamed, squeezing the trigger until my magazine ran dry. I took a brief moment to slam a fresh magazine home and load a round into the chamber.

But that was all the time they needed. They threw themselves at Box Cutter as Dew Drop’s carbine clicked empty.

Lightning Twirl swooped down from the trees, legs outstretched to pull our friend to safety. But the psychos stitched her with bullet holes. She let out an anguished wail before hurling herself into the canopy once more.

“Box! No … no!” I cried, rising to my hooves only to get clipped by a burst of rifle fire. I hurled myself back down to the snow and watched helplessly as those psychos fell upon him like snarling, hungry animals.

I shouldered my carbine – but I couldn’t get a clear shot.

It was then that I realized.

They weren’t ponies.

They were monsters.

Box Cutter howled in defiance until his defiance sank into despair. He dug his gory stumps into the snow as they dragged him away into the brush. They laughed as he kicked and flailed and screamed - uselessly - leaving behind him a glistening trail of blood until he disappeared behind that curtain of cackling darkness.

His horrifying screams echoed through the trees. His gurgling, dying screams. He begged. He pleaded for us to help him. He pleaded for mercy. But there was nothing we could do … nothing I could do to save him. Only listen.

I listened to my best friend die.

Box Cutter shrieked into the night. Then nothing.

I watched with glassy eyes as the psychos cheered, firing their guns wildly into the air. I lay there in silence, my eyes glazed over, bullets blasting holes through the snow around me.

“No …” I whimpered, tears rolling down my cheeks. “BOX! NO! GODDESSES – BOX, NO!” I heaved myself to my hooves, and slammed my carbine.

I slipped into SATS and tagged three ponies for death. Glowing markers flashed before my eyes.

Head. Chest. Legs.

The closest pony lost her head. The next spilled his innards. The last pony’s legs blew apart and she laughed, tumbling across the snow.

“Red, look out!” I heard Dew Drops scream as a pony shoved the barrel of her rifle into my face. I swatted it away with a hoof and it discharged a three round burst a breath’s length away from my left ear.

I roared through the ringing in my ears, and side stepped into another pony’s machete, slicing myself across my barrel. I cried out, tears welling in my eyes as I fired my carbine wildly in a wide arc that launched the machete pony off his hooves and only mildly frustrated the other.

She snarled through her frothing lips before her jaw tore off in a flash of yellow tracers. Hooves planted the mare into the snow as Lightning Twirl barely stuck the landing. She turned to face me, and my heart sunk at the sight of her bloody, bullet-ridden barding.

A sliver of blood trickled down her lower lip as she met my eyes.

“Go!” she told me. I opened my mouth to protest, but Lightning Twirl cut me off, “I’m sorry Red, I’m sorry for yelling at you earlier … now go! I’ll hold them back!”

“Twirl –”

“JUST FUCKING GO!”

I stood there frozen upon my hooves as she launched herself back into the air. I watched as the psycho ponies arced their gunfire to the skies.

Dew Drops and I turned and ran.

I glanced over my shoulder to see tracers spear through both her wings. She shrieked in a burst of feathers and blood.

I watched helplessly as she plummeted out of the sky and into the center of a snarling, hungry mob. My eyes widened. I couldn’t stop watching. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even hear her screams over their frenzied cheers as she disappeared beneath their falling blades.

I watched as they butchered Lightning Twirl alive.

“Twirl!” Dew Drops wailed, pounding her hooves through the snow.

“They killed her – they FUCKING KILLED HER!” I cried.

“Don’t stop for anything!” she screamed as we galloped into the woods with no direction in mind.

‘Anywhere but here!’ I screamed in my thoughts. ‘Please, Goddesses … anywhere but here …’

The snow erupted in front of us. They were waiting for us the whole time.

Dew Drops shrieked as three psycho ponies leaped toward her. She charged through the center, knocking one of the ponies to the snow and trampling him underhoof. But someone wrenched her tail back. Another wrapped her blood-slicked forelegs around Dew Drops’ throat.

My eyes widened as they wrestled her to the ground.

“DD!” I screamed, leveling my carbine and - hooves bucked it out of my magical grip. I roared and reached out to her with my hooves, only to have them swatted away. A psycho pony cackled at me through his bloody, mocking grin.

I spun around. My hind hooves careened into his ribcage. I felt his bones shatter against me. He wheezed – and I shoved him to the snow.

“R-Red!” Dew Drops choked. I swung my head to the sound of her voice.

My eyes widened as a psycho squeezed her hooves around Dew Drops’ throat.

I galloped straight into her and plunged my horn into the psycho’s chest. I ripped out of her and felt warm blood and gore splattered onto my face. The psycho loosened up to scream – and I yanked the pony off of her. I threw my hooves around Dew Drops' shoulders and pulled. She didn’t budge. Dew Drops howl clenched her jaw and screamed as the psycho behind her wrenched her back by her tail.

“LET HER GO! You mother … MOTHER FUCKERS!” I screamed, tears pouring down my cheeks.

I tore a rock from the snow and hurled it at the pony’s skull.

Crack!

He let go with a splash of blood and brains as Dew Drops dove towards me, her hooves outstretched.

I met her teary gray eyes for a single fleeting moment as our hooves touched.

Then someone bucked me in the chest.

… ‘no –’

I slipped away from her.

“NO!”

My horn flickered to life as I tumbled away, trying to catch her in my magical field and –

A hoof swiped over my horn and my aura shattered like glass. I wailed, flailing after her helplessly as my magic failed me when I needed it the most -

as I failed her when she needed me the most.

I tore the scarf from her neck instead and smashed into the snow, watching – powerless to stop them.

Another pony forced her to her haunches.

“Run, Red – RUN!” she shrieked as someone sunk a knife into her chest, and twisted it. “DON’T LOOK BACK!” she cried out to me as the sounds of her tearing flesh and her horrifying screams washed away my resolve.

They broke me. They tore me apart.

They tore her apart.

Her bloody barding. Her bloody coat. Her bloody insides.

They laughed over her dying screams, and her screams echoed through my thoughts. They stained my memories red with her gore. Her blood.

Her blood … a stain that would never wash away.

“Hahaha – HAHAHA!”

I did all I could have done.

I ran.

Hoofsteps plodded behind me. A psycho pony raced after me, laughing hysterically.

“I’LL FUCKING SKIN YOU ALIVE!”

My forehoof caught a gnarled root and I crashed head over hooves into the snow. I felt hooves plow into me, pinning me to the ground.

I didn’t have enough fight left in me.

So I whimpered. I cried. I looked up and saw Star Glint grinning back down at me.

The pony was wearing his skin.

My eyes widened as the unicorn pony drove a blade down to my stomach. I threw my hooves out in front of me and caught it an inch above my chest as the psycho stallion pushed, and pushed, and pushed.

“BLOOD! AHAHA! BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD!”

I screamed, lifting a rock from the snow. I smashed it against the pony’s skull and his magic wavered. I forced myself up, gripped the knife in my teeth and slashed it across the stallion’s throat. Flaps of Star Glint’s skin gave way to his carotid artery.

The psycho pony giggled through a mouthful of blood, arterial red spilling from the gash in his neck and onto my face. I tucked my hind legs in and bucked him off me, crying as his warm lifeblood dribbled down my cheeks and mingled with my tears.

I stumbled away, sobbed, and ran.

Bloody tears ran down my face as I wailed into the night.

I galloped into the howling darkness, gnarled, black shapes blurring past me.

I galloped until their delighted, triumphant laughter faded into the distance.

I ran, and ran, and ran.

I ran as the winds of the balefire winter crashed against me. I powered through it, not caring where I went as the snow thickened and the blizzard closed in.

I galloped wherever my legs could take me. I galloped to somewhere that wasn’t there.

I plowed through the snow that buried my hooves. I forced my way through the white out without so much of a single shit given.

And I collapsed in the storm.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Burning the Midnight Oil-- You've learned how to fight the hard way - and you learned fast. +10% XP whenever XP is earned

Chapter 3 - Dust and Echoes - Pt I

Chapter 3
Dust and Echoes

"Soon it’ll be over

Soon we’ll be waking

Waking to a summer day."

I woke up screaming.

Forelegs pinned me to the cold metal frame of a rusty hospital gurney. I thrashed against their limbs, swatting them away and kicking my legs at the shadows that loomed over me.

“Get away you, psychos! GET THE FUCK AWAY!” I howled, batting away their invading limbs.

“FUCK YOU!” I lashed out with my hindlegs. My hooves connected with someone’s face. He stumbled away from me and disappeared from the tunnels of my hazy eyes. “Leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

“Hold him still!” a mare shouted.

Hooves grabbed my forelegs. They wrenched them away from me and slammed them against the gurney. Hard.

“No … NO!”

They were going to rip me limb from limb. They were going to tear my legs from my shoulders.

I writhed like a cornered, netted animal, screaming my throat bloody and raw.

One of my hooves tore free.

“NOOO!” I wrenched a pony on top of me. We rolled off the edge of the gurney. A mare with pink eyes screamed as I sent her crashing into the cold, concrete floor.

I didn’t care. I dragged my forehooves to her throat and squeezed. She kicked under me, suffocating.

“I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

Something metal cracked against my skull. I keeled over, blacking out for a second.

“Hold him - hold him down!”

I waited for the touch of a cold blade to slice through my bare flesh. I waited for the ripping, the tearing – but they never came.

They yanked my mouth open instead.

With my limbs pinned to the ground, I could do nothing as I felt the familiar taste of health potion dribble down my lips and wash down my throat. My head was spinning too much to care who was administering it.

I held out my limbs in feeble resistance. And for good measure, they cracked me across the skull again.

My consciousness left the building before I could scream.

*

My mummified body lay shivering on an itchy cot with a mildew-stained blanket pulled up to my neck. My limbs were splayed out underneath the blanket, and one of my legs hung limply from the edge of the bed.

I was alive. But I sure as hell didn’t feel like it. The flesh under my coat was bruised black and blue. My head throbbed as if I was beaten with a metal bar.

‘Wait,’ I thought, distantly.

If I remembered correctly … I was.

I groaned, tucking in my battered legs to my chest. My weary, bloodshot eyes swiveled sluggishly around the room. A gas lamp glowed dimly on a shabby bedside table to my right, its faint light hardly illuminating the room from end to end. Around me was a patchwork of corrugated scrap metal bolted together to hold the makeshift ceiling aloft. Outside, I could hear the moaning wind as it dragged its frozen hooves across the walls, trying to penetrate the walls of that metal hovel.

My right foreleg curled weakly to my chest. I gazed at my PipBuck, struggling to find the button to toggle its brightness. My weary pupils contracted. Four days. It had been four days since I lost almost everyone I loved.

“Welcome back,” a voice said from the darkness at the furthest corner of the room.

“Dew Drops?” I murmured, hopefully.

My ears drooped when a pony with a midnight blue coat and black bangs stepped into the light. Shadows played across her hard complexion. The mare looked like she’d seen better days.

“Night Sky.” She trotted up to my cot with a striped blue scarf slung over her shoulder. Dew Drop’s scarf. The mare held a small photograph in one of her hooves. She stared at the photo for a long while, eyeing me as I lay there. Night Sky closed her eyes and sighed, placing both at the edge of the bed between my legs. “You’ve a name?”

I closed my weary eyes.

“Red … Dawn.”

She nodded thoughtfully, glancing at my PipBuck. “You’re one of them stable ponies, innit,” Night Sky said, not asking.

I levitated the blue scarf to my chest, and ran a hoof across its blood-speckled fabric as gently as I would with Dew Drops’ mane. I let out a trembling sigh, cradling my head in my hooves.

I swirled a faint magical field around the photo and floated it to my eyes in silence. Dew Drops. Box Cutter. Amber Fields. Lightning Twirl. Star Glint. I gazed out the frost-encrusted window, and into the frozen wasteland outside.

“We found you in the drifts, half dead,” I heard Night Sky say, “You looked like you’ve been through hell.”

I stared at the picture of my friends as pain flickered across my glassy eyes.

“If this is hell …” I whispered, my voice trembling.

“This isn’t hell. It’s worse,” the mare said with a cold smile. “Welcome to the wasteland, Red Dawn.”

I stared at her with wide, teary eyes. Welcome back to life. I gulped a heavy lump down my throat. My lower lip trembled in denial. It was a nightmare, and I was going to wake up from it … I set the photo down on the blanket and my shoulders began to quake with sobs.

‘Wake up … please.’

I closed my eyes, listening to the chilling winds howl away outside the patchwork walls. I opened them and I was still laying on the same scratchy cot, in the same bleak hovel. I stared longingly at Dew Drops’ striped scarf, hot tears streaming down my cheeks.

I swung my legs out of the blankets and stood to my rickety hooves.

“And where the hell do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

“They’re still out there,” I croaked, pointing out the window. I made for what looked to be the door, but Night Sky stepped into my path. “My friends –”

“Are dead.”

“No!” I stumbled to get past her but she shoved me back with a foreleg. I snarled at her, “You didn’t see them! You don’t know!”

The look she gave me insisted that she’d beg to differ. My heart sunk.

“You go out there and I’m not gonna drag your sorry arse back.”

I glared at her, and took a step forward - only to cry out as agony jolted through my chest. I fell to the wooden floor in a heap. Blood seeped out of my gray bandages and pooled all over the floor around me.

I felt Night Sky clamp her jaws on my mane, but I twisted away, curling up on the floor.

“Now you opened up that bloody cut of yours again,” she muttered, rolling me over and tugging at the bandages.

I shook her off and tucked my legs into my chest. She stood over me, staring me down with her steely blue eyes. I sobbed and blinked away fresh tears.

“Why am I alive …” I whimpered, burying my head in my hooves.

“You’re lucky,” Night Sky whispered, sitting down next to me, “Not everypony gets to die in the wasteland. My crew patched you up. Though I nearly beat your brains out …” She turned her head low, glaring at me.

“You bucked one of my mates in the gobber, and tried to choke another to death. Look at you now, walking all over the place wrapped up like that. You aren’t so soft for a stable pony, aren’t you?” The mare chuckled, “Cor … no wonder you didn’t just snuff it.”

“What the fuck … did you just say?” I breathed, rising to trembling hooves.

“What?”

“No wonder I survived … I watched my friends die … and I ran.” I chuckled darkly, baring my teeth as tears ran down my cheeks. “Maybe I didn’t want to come back. Did you think for once that maybe I didn’t want to survive?”

She held my glare and stared back, unflinching.

“You’ve not a choice to just … die, Red Dawn.”

“Bullshit!” I screamed, “I walked out into that blizzard knowing I wouldn’t be coming back. You think I want to be here?” I cried, choking on my own tears, “Do you fucking think I want to be alive in this SHITHOLE?!”

Night Sky’s gaze did not relent.

She clenched her jaw and gave me a ghastly look. “This place might be a shitehole … but it’s all we’ve got left,” she said, softly. I looked down her chest and saw flecks of blood all over her tattered, bullet-scarred barding.

It changed nothing.

“I’m leaving ... and you’re not going to stop me,” I said, close enough to her muzzle to feel her shallow breaths.

I wiped away my tears and pushed past the mare, zipping up my barding and throwing on my saddle bags. I could feel her eyes on the back of my head as I limped out the door and staggered down a flight of stairs. Two ponies sat at a bar below. I hobbled past them to the door, and they looked up from their shot glasses, eyeing me irritably.

“The hell you doin’?” one of them growled, getting off his stool.

Night Sky poked her head over the railing. “Let’em go,” she said, simply.

The stallion snorted and returned to the bar, not even pausing once to glance over his shoulder. The mare sitting next to him followed me with her pink eyes as I made my way to the door.

I stepped outside.

And the storm blindsided me. Engulfed in frozen powder, I stumbled blindly through the snow, the drifts threatening to swallow me whole. I could just barely make out the lonely lights and the ramshackle buildings across the street as I plodded across the shifting, snowy dunes.

I just kept walking, not caring where I went – my eyes only opening once to find that the town’s lonely lights were far behind me. I whimpered, collapsing to my haunches. I reached into my breast pocket, and brought to my blood-drained face the only thing I had left to remember my friends by. My dead, butchered friends.

It hurt to cry. It hurt to stare at the photo I held in my hoof. It hurt knowing that they were gone. That they were all gone.

I blinked, and the world spun around me. I let out a shuddering breath, and slumped into the snow.

Days ago I was afraid. Afraid to let go of my precious life. My life at the stable. I could have died. Back home, I could have died a scalding, boiling death. I was afraid that I was going to leave them all behind. But instead, they left me behind in that frozen hell.

I failed them. One by one, I watched them all die. I watched them all die.

And I should’ve died with them.

I didn’t want it. Night Sky and her ponies gave me a second chance I never wanted.

“Anywhere but here …” I wept, “Goddesses … anywhere but here.” I shivered and quaked as the howling frozen wind blasted against my barding.

But I didn’t care.

‘I should’ve died,’ I thought.

We were supposed to find a water talisman together. Together.

‘We should’ve died.’

I tore my spade out of my bags and started digging. I stabbed at the frozen earth again and again, tears welling out of my eyes only to freeze ragged trails across my cheeks with every chilling, agonizing second that slaved by.

My legs went numb.

But I kept digging.

My magic flickered and popped.

But I kept digging.

My brain curdled inside my skull.

But I kept digging.

My body pleaded with me to stop. Every fiber of my being pleaded with me to stop.

But I. Just. Kept. Digging.

Not caring even as my heart began to slow. Not even as the shivering stopped. Not even as the dark tunnels closed in around me. I dug, and dug, and dug –

I collapsed into the snow, writhing with every laborious breath.

‘Give up. Just give up.’

I wrenched myself to my hooves with a grim resolve and speared my spade through the frozen earth once more. I wasn’t going stop digging until I hollowed out a grave for each and every one of my friends.

I couldn’t stop.

They deserved better.

I thought of them as I dug, their memories – the burden of being alive while they were not crushing me beneath.

With one grave finished, I buried Dew Drops.

One by one, I’d bury them all.

I dredged out another grave and moved on, tearing into the earth without a single pause. For them, I plunged my shovel deep and struggled to break the dark soil.

My magic flickered. Popped. And winked out.

A light bulb exploded inside my head as my brain tore itself apart. A blinding agony shot through every nerve ending in my body. I reared up on my hinds, howling as an inferno burned inside me, my spade tumbling to the snow.

But I slaved through the torment – bit down on the shovel's handle and kept digging.

I broke the earth. But instead, the earth broke me. I stumbled to my haunches, my spade crunching once more into the snow. I wailed Dew Drops’ name into the darkness. I screamed for the storm to take me to her.

If not to her, then … anywhere.

“Goddesses – anywhere but here!” I cried – and crumbled to the snow in a tangle of writhing, blistering limbs.

I took a shuddering breath and stared grievously into the sky. My pallid flesh was covered in sores that throbbed dully in my fading consciousness. I lay there, listening to my slowing heartbeat as the wind moaned a chilling requiem fit for a funeral.

A black figure clad in thick barding entered the blurry, veiny tunnel that were my eyes. The pony helped me to my hooves, and I leaned against its shoulder.

“What’ve you done …” I heard Night Sky murmur as she stared with wide eyes at the six graves I hollowed out of the earth.

I managed a few painful steps toward the final grave I dug.

The one I dug for myself.

“I need to finish this …” I wheezed, clamping my jaws around my spade’s handle and shambling toward the half-dredged hole.

Night Sky ripped the spade out of my mouth and swung it hard into my skull. Stars exploded in my eyes. My limbs slackened. I toppled to the snow in a heap, blood trickling down my forehead.

“That’s it,” she said, tucking the spade into her bags. “I don’t know you or your mates, but I’ll tell you this much: dying’s not gonna help anypony. Everypony that’s alive has lost somepony.”

I hacked out scarlet ichor, glaring at her.

“What do you know about losing shit …” I asked, darkly, my voice trembling.

Night Sky’s eyes narrowed with icy malice. She unzipped the lower half of her barding and it fell away before me.

My heart almost stopped.

“Too much, I’m afraid,” she replied softly, shivering through clenched teeth and wiggling the stubs that used to be her wings. I eyed the scarred flesh over what was supposed to be her cutie mark, a symbol of a lightning bolt branded over her mottled flesh. She zipped on her barding and bit my mane, yanking me to my hooves.

“I’m … sorry …” I rasped weakly.

Night Sky gave me a cold stare. “There’s no giving over. You might think you’ve a choice to die, but out here, you’ve not any other choice but to live. Because there isn’t anything out here that’ll just let you curl up and snuff it – that’d be too easy.

“There’s never an easy way out. There’s no mercy for the weak, and there’s never rest for the weary ... all you do is live, and while you’re still alive, you do everything you can to stay alive.”

My eyes fluttered closed as she pushed me onto her back and hauled me back to civilization.

*

Another day passed.

I woke up in the same cot. This time, the gas lamp was shut off, and the window was shuttered closed. I didn’t want to look outside anyways. Not anymore, at least.

I shivered inside my now completely bandaged coat. Every part of me, even my ears were wrapped in wool. I rolled over, wincing at the sharp pain that jabbed into my shoulder. I shifted my left hind leg and heard the clinking of empty health potion bottles at the foot of my cot.

I could feel my blisters healing. But without a super healing potion from my stable’s clinic, my time spent bandaged up was going to be a relatively lengthy one. My scabbing flesh itched underneath, and I fought the urge to scratch.

I sighed, tucking in my legs in search of warmth. I found none. But I did find Dew Drops’ scarf lying next to me. It was one of the only things I had left to remember her by. I reached out with my magic – and liquid fire erupted inside my skull.

My magic flickered and popped.

Then nothing.

My head flopped back against my pillow.

With teary eyes, I bit my tongue and held back a scream. Seconds passed as I squeezed my eyes shut and waited until the pain subsided to a dull, persistent throb. I lay there, staring at Dew Drops’ scarf, tears rolling down my cheeks.

With a shivering foreleg, I hugged it close, running a hoof across Dew Drops’ scarf. My eyes glazed over the flecks of dried blood that peppered its soft fabric. I sighed and hugged it close, nuzzling it with a tenderness that made my heart ache.

Nothing I could do could bring her back.

I lay there thinking about them. My mom, most of all. I wondered what she would’ve thought if she learned that I gave up. That I let the wasteland win.

No. I knew that my mother’s expectations weren’t the only things that mattered. 294 stable ponies were still counting on our return … my return. Every hour, every day I wasted away out there was one day closer to the end of their rations.

I knew then that the lives of 294 other ponies hung in the balance. It didn’t make me feel any better knowing that I was the last hope for my stable. Every other pony that stepped out that door died.

I was all they had left.

I, the unfledged engineer pony who, when he was younger, didn’t know what end to screw in a lightbulb, was all they had left. There was only one way you could screw it in!

I heaved a bitter, self-deprecating laugh and stared up darkly at the ceiling.

“You’re all fucked.”

I snorted, slumping against my unfluffed pillow.

As I lay there, I knew: saving my stable was my mission, and my mission alone.

I never worked alone. Even during the afterhours at engineering, Dew Drops usually waited for me to finish whatever I was doing before we both left. Sometimes I’d find her sleeping under some piping or laying on the floor next to my busy body.

Never. Work. Alone.

The always told me that. And yet there I was ...

Alone …

I wrapped Dew Drops’ scarf around my neck.

I swore on the graves of my friends that I wouldn’t stop until I finished what they started. There was a hole in the ground next to them, waiting for me - but until I was six feet under, I swore that I wouldn’t give up. Not on them. Not on my stable.

I limped over to my bags and bit down on the lip of my last health potion, tipping my head and downing it in seconds. I sighed, feeling my flesh tingle as the potion did its work.

Didn’t feel good enough, but it’d have to do.

I pulled out my armored security barding and laid it out on the dusty wooden floor. I gazed longingly at the numbers that were stenciled onto its right shoulder pad: 91.

A long and drawn out sigh wheezed out of my lips as I stared at it for several long seconds.

‘Home,’ I thought, solemnly, ‘I’ll make it back. I have to.’

I shrugged on my barding, zipped it closed and trotted over to the door, fumbling with the doorknob. It was difficult trying to get used to walking around without my magic.

I pushed the door open, and peeked outside.

Down the hall were three more rooms. Their doors were open, so I assumed everyone was downstairs. I slowly made my way downstairs, the wooden boards beneath my hooves creaking with every step. The smell of alcohol and bitter cigarette smoke made my nose wrinkle as I poked my head over the railing. Sitting around a table and sharing drinks were Night Sky and two other ponies.

She blinked and caught me in her peripherals.

“Cor blimey,” the mare chuckled as the other ponies turned to see me. “Look who it is.”

“You better not be thinkin’ about runnin’ again, ya lil shit,” a gruff pony with an eye patch growled, tipping a shot glass to his lips. The ash-colored earth pony downed it and took a puff from a cigarette he held between his teeth. My ears perked at his drawl. Different, and much harsher than Night Sky's.

I frowned. There was a distinct bruise on his muzzle. He must have been the one I bucked in the face.

‘Good,’ I thought, ‘From the looks of him, I bet he deserved it.’

“Well come on mate, we were just talking about you,” Night Sky said with a smile.

“I bet you were,” I muttered, leaning against the railing the entire way down.

I settled down on an empty barstool among the three other surface dwellers. A mare slid to me a shot glass of vodka across the table. I looked at her nervously. I remembered her pink eyes. She was the mare I tried to strangle to death a day ago.

“No hard feelings, I hope?” I said, with a wry grin.

The unicorn snorted, nodding her head once, one pink eye hidden behind a curtain of her untamed purple mane.

“We’ve all had the urge to choke a bitch. Can’t say I haven’t done that to anypony else sitting here. Well, except you, of course,” she scoffed, staring at me with what I hoped wasn’t a promise. “Everypony calls me Sprinkles. What about you?”

I wrinkled my brow at her strange vocabulary.

“Red Dawn,” I said, nervously. I glanced around the narrow rectangular room and saw that it too was made of a mixture of wooden planks and corrugated metal. There were a few round tables stood here and there, but most didn’t have enough chairs around them to sit the number of ponies that were drinking at our table.

Inside the fireplace at the far end of the room, a stack of blackening wood glowed warmly, making the room somewhat more pleasant than the one upstairs. It might have been a tavern at some point, but given its emptiness, I figured that they must’ve taken the place for themselves.

Stenciled on the wall above the bar’s counter were the words ‘Rough Riders,’ reinforcing my previous assumption. I wondered for a moment who those ponies were and what that place was. Ever since I woke up there, I hadn’t even bothered to ask where the hell I was.

“This some kind of town?”

Sprinkles nodded. “Guess you can say that. Dusktown’s a caravan stop for travelers heading up north from New Appleloosa. Total population of forty three ponies and one griffon.” The town sounded rather quaint for a post-apocalyptic safe haven. “Every now and then we go out to escort caravans heading up north.”

I cocked an eyebrow. To me, the thought of there being more people living in that winter wasteland was shocking. “You mean … there’re others?”

They looked at me like I said something stupid. The gruff earth pony snickered, taking a long drag from his cigarette.

Night Sky just snorted. “Forgot you’re a stable pony. Aye. Sure there are. Though not everypony’s as welcoming as us here in Dusktown,” she chuckled bitterly, shaking her black bangs out of her eyes. It sounded like there was more than what she felt comfortable to talk about.

I looked out a window by the door and saw that the storm had settled down. The silhouettes of thickly-barded equine shapes milling about made being alive in this shithole a little less disheartening. I reassured myself that if there were people still alive out there, then there was still hope for finding what my stable needed.

“What with all the Red Eye and Unity bollocks, we haven’t seen too many caravans coming up here lately. The North’s got its own problems. We don’t need any of any mad southerners coming up here and making things worse,” Night Sky added, pouring herself a glass of whiskey.

“Red and Unity what?”

“Slavers and alicorns. You don’t want to be traveling on your tod. You might get chained up and put to work up north at East Eden or south by Fillydelphia. And if you’re a unicorn … well, like I told you earlier, there’re worse things than death if you come across somepony talking about Unity.”

“A-alicorns? Like … like the Goddesses?” I asked hopefully.

The unicorn stallion laughed at me in his harsh, gravelly voice.

“There ain’t no goddesses out here, boy. Celestia and Luna’ve been dead for a looong time.”

I glared at the stallion.

“Fuck off …”

He sighed, giving me a crass chuckle before puffing on his cigarette. I wanted to take that thing and shove it down his throat.

I shook my head. What I needed was something to calm my frayed nerves. I focused my horn, clenching my jaw as I tried to levitate the shot glass. I groaned at the sharp pain that shot through my skull.

“Damnit.”

“It’s called magical burnout,” Night Sky said, glancing at the shot glass that refused to budge. “You work your magic too hard, and you… well, you burn out. Can’t use your magic till you rest up.”

‘Son of a …’

“How long till I’m better?”

The mare shrugged.

“Maybe a few days? It all depends on you.” Night Sky leaned over the table. “Don’t be a fuckwit and do something daft. You should be fine in a few days, I’d imagine.” She narrowed her eyes at me and added, with a tinge of irritation, “Considering that stupid shite you pulled off last time, you probably shouldn’t even be down here walking around.”

“I don’t have time to just sit here,” I muttered.

Sprinkles cocked an eyebrow at me. “What are you doing outside of your stable anyhow?”

“Come to say hello to the ponies ya fucks left behind?” the unicorn stallion growled, baring his teeth.

I glared at the bastard. “Better down there than up here,” I muttered.

He snorted and opened his mouth, but Night Sky cut him off.

“Shut your gob,” she sighed, knocking the stallion with a hoof. “Bone Charm had it rough when he was just a lad."

The stallion snorted, giving me a look that promised a bucking.

Well he sure had a charming personality.

I held my glare as I craned my neck, biting the glass and tipping it back. The vodka burned as it washed down my throat. I let out a shivering snort as my insides warmed a little.

“What does it matter to you ponies?”

Bone Charm thumped his hooves on the table. “We didn’t save your ass for nothin’, stable colt. Nopony but you’s stupid enough to walk out into a storm like that. It’d be dandy if I knew why I had to waste twelve of our healing potions on you.” The gruff unicorn stallion snorted cigarette smoke into my muzzle.

“Then you had to walk out into the snow and try to get killed, again.”

I snapped, leaning over the table to look him in the eye. “If it were up to me I’d go back, sit behind that door, and forget about everything outside.” I folded my forelegs across my chest. “Anywhere is better than here ...”

He sneered, “Go down south, hell, go anywhere on this planet and it’s all the same.” Bone Charm chuckled. “And if you didn’t know, stables all across Equestria've been opening up and nopony’s been coming out alive. Soon, I bet your cozy little hole won’t be so different.”

I fought to keep my composure. “I don’t care about this place … I don’t care what you think about me, and most of all, I don’t care about you. I stepped outside and I knew why we never opened our doors to let anyone in – because nothing outside those doors was worth saving!”

He wore a challenging smirk, saying, “Then why don’tcha go home? Scurry back into your hole and lock us out again. I lived forty years of my life here washin’ my hooves in blood just to survive, and you waltz out of that warm stable and bitch and moan, and threaten to kill yourself just because life just got a little harder for your hooficured hooves. I’ve lost too much to have a single sliver of pity for you, boy.

“And the last thing we need is another mouth to feed. So dream your sweet dreams in that stable of yours while we scrape on by up here!”

I stood up from my stool, knocking it over. “Listen here, you son of bitch –”

Night Sky slammed her a hoof on the table.

“Quiet, ladies. You bastards get in a fight and I’ll mop your arses across the floor,” she snarled. “So what’s your story, Red Dawn?” Night Sky asked – no, she demanded. The mare cocked her head and leaned across the table.

I grinded my teeth together and sighed.

“… our Water Talisman broke,” I said bitterly. “So five other ponies and I went out to find another.”

The gruff unicorn whistled, and chuckled, “Whew! Damn was I right about that.” He puffed a ring of smoke my way. “It’s only a matter of time ...”

Sprinkles poured me another glass and slid it across the table to my hoof.

“We found you by yourself, so I guess the others that came with you are …“

She caught my grim stare and fell silent. I downed the vodka in silence as the Sprinkles fidgeted with her hooves. ‘Awkward.’

“Well if it makes you feel better, we cleaned up those furies afterward,” Night Sky said, folding her forelegs across her chest. “Us and another group teamed up and wiped ‘em out.”

“It doesn’t,” I muttered.

“Wasn’t supposed to. What matters to me is that we get paid,” Bone Charm said, knocking his hooves together.

I was starting to hate that pony.

“What are you guys anyways? Mercenaries?”

They nodded in unison.

Sprinkles replied, “Mhm. We picked up a contract to put a dent in the snow fury population around these parts. I say we fucked them up pretty good.” She smiled, somewhat. “Maybe now we’ll have more visitors around here.”

I thought for a moment, shivering at the memories of the psycho ponies erupting out of the snow. “Snow Furies ...” I sneered, “That what they’re called?” Psycho ponies frothing at the mouth flashed before my eyes.

Night Sky nodded. “Aye. Though you might hear southerners call the bastards ‘raiders,’ but they’re hardly the same. They’re called snow furies. They like burying themselves in the snow to surprise anypony that comes their way. They’re a bunch of grotty cunts that ambush caravans or traders down by the Crystal Highway and all the way down to Poneva –”

“Poneva?” I blurted out, interrupting her.

Night Sky lifted an eyebrow.

“What about it?”

I looked down at my shot glass, both my forelegs supporting me over the table. “Word is, in my stable, an old Stable-Tec facility was built there. We were heading that way to find a water talisman.”

Night Sky chuckled, “Well good luck, I mean, I don’t think there’re many people feeling charitable about their water talismans these days ...”

“It’s worth a try,” I muttered, my voice trembling. “It’s our only hope.”

She snorted. “If you say so,” she said skeptically, getting up from her chair.

“What do you know about Poneva?”

Bone Charm put out his cigar and folded his legs across his chest. “Well I’ll say that there ain’t no Ponevan that’s done me good in my lifetime.” The unicorn stallion snorted, “’Cept pay me caps.”

“I wouldn’t do you any good if I was a Ponevan,” I muttered.

“Fuck you just say?”

Sprinkles leaned over the table. “Listen, kid, Bonehead here isn’t kidding. That city's no good. They’ve got all sorts of bad ponies you don’t even want to know about.”

“You make it sound like I’ll get eaten by a dragon or something.” I scoffed, tapping my forehooves together.

They looked at me with hard eyes. Not even a chuckle. ‘Okay, that didn’t sound too good.’ Night Sky returned with a few flat slices of bread from a loaf that didn’t rise.

“What’s this talk about dragons?”

“Red Dawn here wants to go up to Poneva,” Sprinkles said, gnawing on a slice.

My eyes lit up. “Can you take me there?”

She thought for a moment, and shrugged. “If you’re planning on staying there, you’re on your own, mate. But we’re heading up that way to turn in a few contracts.”

I smiled, something I hadn’t done genuinely in what seemed like forever.

“That’s great –”

“But we’re not going there any time soon. If you want to go, you’re going to have to come with us to finish whatever contracts we’ve got left before we turn in.”

I frowned, pursing my lips. I had nowhere else to be, and I didn’t know anyone else.

“Whatever gets me to Poneva in one piece,” I said, finally, with a drawn out sigh.

Bone Charm barely suppressed a chuckle. “Wait till he sees the bloodletters and snow devils. You’ll be regretting coming up here soon enough, stable colt.”

My expression darkened.

“I already am.”

*

Chapter 3 - Dust and Echoes - Pt II

*

I followed Night Sky outside into the soft, cold breeze, my hooves sinking deep into the snow that piled up overnight. The blizzard buried everything but the buildings outside, and ponies with shovels were laboring to clear the snow off their porches.

The town was shockingly alive with pony life … although, a life I could never have related to.

For one thing, everyone out there seemed to keep mixing up ‘everypony’ with ‘everyone’.

Or maybe it was just me.

But back in Stable 91, young ponies were never assigned occupations until they received their cutie marks. There, in Dusktown, blank flanks labored with their parents, pulling plows that cleared the immense mounds of snow off the single main road that ran down the town’s midsection.

If there was one thing that was similar between Dusktown at Stable 91, it had to be their main goal: surviving. Just as we survived through the participation of every able-bodied adult pony, those surface dwellers did the same, and more.

All around us, ponies worked together to push away the result of last night’s snow storm. Within ten minutes, a wide path of flattened snow stretched from one end of the town to the next. Now that the road was clear, ponies and their wagons began backing out of their scrap metal garages to begin their travels down its length. Sleepy stores and dimly-lit residences lined the road on either side.

Next to the Rough Riders’ tavern were several shops with a variety of items for sale. We walked past each, stopping for a moment to look inside a gun store that sold boxes of ammunition that I both could and couldn’t recognize. Night Sky shopped for a bit, buying whatever she needed for her merc contracts.

We returned outside into the cold, and I spared a glance at the sky. I cringed, swallowing bile down my throat.

‘Damn. I need to stop doing that.’ But in my sickness, I did see something up there that was rather unusual.

‘Where’s all the pegasi?’ I wondered.

All I saw were earth ponies and unicorns hauling around more than their weight or levitating shovels and other small tools. There wasn’t a single sound of wings flapping in the breeze. No sign of the feather-winged ponies I lived with back at Stable 91.

It seemed as if the surface had been settled by unicorns and earth ponies and only unicorns and earth ponies since the beginning of time. I wondered: was two hundred years enough to forget about the pegasi? Were they blasted into extinction when the balefire bombs annihilated their cloud cities? There wasn’t a single pegasus in the air as Night Sky and I trotted throughout town.

I wondered, hopelessly: was Night Sky the last of her kind?

In a clearing walled off by lines of bent metal stakes was a field of headstones. We walked past it, and I stopped for a moment to watch a mare sitting in the ashen drifts next to three freshly dug graves. She sobbed and murmured incoherently, cradling her head in her hooves.

Night Sky turned to glance over her shoulder, eyeing me curiously. I turned to the mare, then back at Night Sky. She just shook her head and gestured me to follow her.

“What happened to them?” I whispered, trotting beside her.

Night Sky gazed on forward, her face stone cold.

“Zebras,” she said simply, and nothing more.

I gave her a puzzled stare. I supposed it was none of my business, and I left the pony to grieve.

The mare’s sobs faded into wind as we made our way down the town’s only road.

A few yards down the street from the Rough Riders’ tavern was a boot shaped structure that puffed out smoke from its chimney. The windows glowed with a warmth that invited me to enter. Above its door hung a flickering neon sign that glowed with the words ‘diner’. The smell of bread and … ‘What was that?’ It smelled like a steam accident at engineering. ‘Meat?’ My stomach churned with a mixture of hunger and revulsion.

I figured as long as they had something I could eat … I’d survive. So we walked inside, the warmth of a furnace and a hearth loosening my tense muscles. It felt good. It felt good feeling heat against my coat again.

At the bar, Night Sky plopped down onto a stool, and I slumped into one beside her. Down the counter were other wastelanders who eyed my PipBuck curiously.

I smiled sheepishly and waved. They just looked away, chatting among themselves.

“Not too many ponies have seen a stable-dweller before,” Night Sky said, resting her forelegs on the counter in front of us. A light bulb flickered dimly over our heads, and a pony mare with stained overalls unscrewed it with her magic and screwed another one in its place.

It shined brighter than the other hanging, bare-wired bulbs around the room and bathed me in a white glow. The spotlight was on the stable-dweller. Everyone gave me a variety of looks, ranging from curiosity to the same hatred Bone Charm showed me at the tavern.

Maybe they were more interested in the bandages that are wrapped around my muzzle. I looked like a fucking corpse. The waitress trotted behind the counter, with a stick of what looked like charcoal and a slip of paper floating in her magical grip.

Night Sky offered to buy me a bowl of … stew. Bobbing inside of it were a variety of vegetables – which I was entirely okay with, until I saw, floating visibly beneath the surface, dark chunks of boiled … meat.

I gulped and shook my head. She shrugged, ordered one for herself, some bread for me, and pushed a few bottle caps across the warm counter. That must've been their currency.

‘Strange.’

“Why are you doing this for me?” I asked her quietly as the unicorn mare slid to me three slices of bread and Night Sky a bowl of soup. Two shot glasses of what looked like vodka, and two glasses of water slid our way, too.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful …” I trailed off, biting into the surprisingly soft, yet crusty bread. “… but … why? Why didn’t you just leave me out in that blizzard?”

Night Sky lapped at her bowl and paused for a moment.

“Ponies have to stick together out here. If we don’t … well, we die.” She answered, before returning to her soup. I watched her chew on one of the chunks of red meat and swallow, much to my suppressed disgust.

“Can’t argue with that …” I brought the water to my mouth, but my PipBuck’s radmeter clicked audibly. I hesitated, and placed it back down on the counter. “But how do you ponies live like this? I was expecting less of an actual town and more of a …”

“Shitehole,” she said, taking the words from my mouth.

“That’s not what I –”

“It’s fine. I expected as much from a stable-dweller,” Night Sky said with a terse chuckle. “This town has trade routes with Poneva and a few towns down south. We trade what we scavenge or make, and buy whatever else we can't make ourselves,” she explained.

I nodded, taking another bite from the bread.

“You said you’re a mercenary. What kind of work do you do?”

She licked at her empty soup bowl and wiped her mouth with a forehoof.

“Anything. Any work we can,” she replied with some resignation.

I blinked. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

My throat was parched and I eyed the radioactive water longingly.

“You can drink that, you know?” she said, “Just pop a Rad-Away if you start feeling dizzy.”

I sighed, shaking my head as I downed its contents. She tossed me a small red capsule, and I tucked it into my bags.

“So you’d kill a pony if that’s what you were being paid to do?” I asked, quietly. “You’d kill someone if that’s what it took?”

“Aye. If that’s what it took, why not? You said you were looking for a Water Talisman. Wouldn’t you do anything to bring one back so everypony in your stable could live?”

I tensed, frowning at my hooves as they rested on the counter.

“Why? Is that what Equestria’s come to?”

“This isn’t Equestria anymore, Red Dawn,” she said, bitterly. “And I’m no trader. I’m no gangster either. I’m a mercenary because I've a choice to live or die on my terms. I don’t need protection along the roads – I've my rifle and my mates for that. I've no need to take orders from some stupid bloke because I take orders from me and myself.”

The waitress behind the counter levitated a pitcher of water to me, and I nodded thankfully as she poured me another glass. “It’s a choice to survive, then,” I said, simply, with some understanding. “To be free.”

“Quite. I’ve a choice to do what I want to do, and I do it all for caps.” She sighed, resting her cheek on a hoof. “I get to choose. And not everypony gets that choice. You and me? We’re lucky. We’re lucky we’re not slaves. We’ve still a choice – we can choose to live or keep on living. It’s why I clobbered you with that shovel. You were wasting that choice on something stupid.” I bit my lower lip at that, pain flickering across my face.

“Being alive’s all that matters. You can’t save your stable dead, Red Dawn,” she said softly, resting a hoof on my shoulder. “I’m a mercenary and I choose to live and continue doing what I need to do to keep on living.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It sounded perfectly reasonable in my head.

“You’ve a choice to live, and that means you’ve got to do what you need to do, Red Dawn. Maybe even if that means you live and some poor sod doesn’t.” She snorted, the faintest of smiles creasing her lips. “Personally, I don’t just go around taking any contract. I take ones I know matter to us ponies in Dusktown. If it means I’ve got to kill a bastard, I make sure she deserves it.”

“That’s … commendable?” I said, unsure.

“There’s no escaping it, Red Dawn.” Night Sky took another sip. “Out here, killing’s just part of living,” she said with a disturbing calmness that sent shivers down my spine.

I frowned at her, bothered by that statement. But I shook away the doubt from my mind. I pushed away my fears, because a darker part of me felt that I was just being naïve. If I was going to survive, I needed to be strong. I needed to do what needed to be done. “Whatever it takes,” I said finally.

“That’s the spirit.” She took her shot glass and held it out to me. “Cheers - to life.”

I almost tried levitating mine. I sighed, exasperated, and did the same, and our glasses clanked.

“To life.”

*

After helping her carry her supplies back to the tavern, she sent me below the floorboards to the basement to peruse their armory to arm myself for tomorrow’s contracts. Well, I guess it was an armory. It was mostly just a bunch of tables set with disassembled guns, random parts, tattered barding in need of repair, and boxes full of ammo and magazines. I wrinkled my nose at the scent of cordite and oil as I came down the stairs.

‘Whoa - what the hell is that thing!?’ I almost said that out loud.

The youngest member of the Rough Riders, a griffon, meandered around the tables, sifting through boxes of gun parts. The gray-feathered griffoness saw me come down the dim stairwell and gave me a sideways glance with her green eyes.

“You’re the pony Night Sky picked up, aren’t you?” she asked as I stared at the strange white markings on her face, instead of her eyes.

I blinked, fidgeting on my hooves, took a deep breath, and gave her a sheepish grin. “The one and only.”

The half-bird-lion thing - I mean, the griffon, walked up to me, her raptor claws clacking loudly against the wooden floor.

“What are you doing here?” She kept her distance.

I snorted. As if a bandaged up, half lucid pony was going to do anything remotely dangerous. Besides ... she was a griffon! A griffon! From the story books ... the raptors of Griffonstone!

And I was talking to one.

Trying not to stare at her lithe, alien form, and her wickedly sharp talons, I said, “I’ll be tagging along with your ... uh… your crew for a little bit.” Her brows furrowed at that. “Night Sky said you could help me pick out a gun?”

She tapped her beak with a claw and nodded.

“Uh, sure. I guess.” The griffon gestured for me to follow her and we waded through the junk to the far end of the basement. We came to a room lined with lockers. A dim light bulb flickered over a table at the center of the room. “Anything not in a locker is up for grabs.”

I blinked, eyeing all of the locked lockers. Everything was in a locker though. I walked over to the table and found a 10mm pistol lying among a heap of scrap metal and discarded parts. It’d have to do.

It was convenient too. I pulled up my PipBuck and sifted through my inventory. I found that I still had fifty three 10mm rounds stocked up. I stared wearily at the 10mm rounds in my bags, knowing how heavy the kick would be without a shoulder stock.

I really wished I still had my carbine.

I levitated the pistol – ‘balls!’

I mean, I bit down on its mouth grip and tested its weight. I wasn’t used to doing ... well … anything without my magic. It was a few pounds heavy, not too much for me to handle, I hoped. I’ve never shot a gun from my mouth before.

“Well I should be good –” I turned around and the griffon wasn’t there anymore. I waded through the rubbish and saw her leaning over a table in the main room, poking a black box. “What’s that for?”

The gray plume of feathers atop her head bobbed as she looked up. “Oh, this? Well, it was a radio at some point.”

‘A RADIO you say?’

My smile beamed as she continued. “It broke last week, and I’ve been trying to figure out why it stopped working.”

“Did you check if it’s plugged in?” I droned with a wry grin.

She caught my lame sense of humor and chuckled. “I’m no expert at electronics. All I do is clean the crew’s hardware,” she said, jutting a claw at the disassembled rifles lying about.

“Mind if I take a look?” I asked, trotting up to the table. She shrugged, and stepped away from the radio.

I gave it a look over, and opened it up with a screwdriver I picked out from my bags. I eyed the contents of the radio and saw that there was not a piece out of place.

I pulled the power cord taut and found a thin indentation over a section along its length. Probably got crushed or something.

“Heh, well, I’ve seen this before,” I said, standing on my hind legs, one foreleg on the table to hold me upright.

“Hm?”

“Looks like your radio’s going to make it,” I said, trying to sound like Dr. Stitches. “But the AC cord’s going to need a wire transplant ...” I looked at her, wrinkling my brow.

She ran a paw through her gray plume, flattened a rogue feather, and gave me a weird smile.

“That’s … great news, doctor …”

“Red Dawn,” I replied, fishing through my bags.

“My name’s Gail.” She clenched a paw into a fist and held it out to me. I looked at it for a second, hesitating. My eyes darted to hers, and I cracked a nervous smile.

I bumped her fist with a hoof.

“You’re a lot less scarier than the others, you know that?” I said with a chuckle, splitting the cord.

“Yeah, I get that a lot. I kinda stand out, ya know, with me hanging around a bunch of hardass mercs all the time,” Gail confessed, rubbing her neck. Yup. She stuck out to me like a sore hoof. Gail was different. Everyone else upstairs had that calloused look about them. She seemed sort of fresh.

“Oh … but they’re not so bad,” Gail chuckled, “They picked me up too when I was just a cub. Bone Charm raised me like I was his own.”

I cocked a brow at that. I couldn’t believe it - that bastard of a pony raised a sweet griffon like her?

“No way.”

“Yes way!" she laughed, folding her forelegs across her chest. "Though he’s kind of a dick sometimes …”

I snorted. ‘Sometimes?’

“But deep down, he's a real softy! He's always been there for me." Gail looked down at her paws. "My parents were never around as much as he was. But then again they’re not around anymore … so …”

My eyes softened. “What happened to them?” I asked gently.

“My parents were Talon mercs. Wasn’t really the best line of work to raise a kid, I guess. They died on a contract and orphaned me.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Night Sky was right about how everyone’s lost someone. If I ever lost my mom … I’m not sure what I’d do. “And now you’re a merc too?” I asked.

Gail nodded. “Yeah, yeah, ‘why follow in your parents’ footsteps when merc'ing got them killed’.” The young griffon sighed. “There’s not much to do here but merc work. Unless you want to join one of the gangs up in Poneva or become a slaver, you’re just a victim.” She shook her head, “And I’m not going to be a victim.”

Gail eyed the floor scathingly.

“I had a few run ins with slavers before the Rough Riders picked me up,” she murmured. “They chained my wings to my back and had me towing wagons around for them like some kind of pack animal.”

I fell silent and stared at my hooves. She was right. I wasn’t a merc, a gangster, or a slaver. I was a stable pony. But out there, it meant nothing to those people, especially Bone Charm. I was just a victim. I looked back down at my work and returned to it in silence.

I realized then that there were two kinds of wastelanders: survivors and victims.

And I was a victim.

I bit my lower lip so hard I almost drew blood. A few sluggish seconds passed us by in awkward quietude.

“Hmm…” Gail murmured, trying to break the ice. “I like your scarf.”

“Thanks. It’s … ah … a friend gave it to me,” I said. “She isn’t around anymore.”

Gail leaned against the table next to me. “We’ve all lost someone," she said, softly.

My eyes fluttered closed.

“I know.”

A few long minutes passed in silence as she watched me make my repairs. I noticed her eyeing the PipBuck on my foreleg.

“What’s that thing?”

“It’s a PipBuck,” I began, my tongue poking out of my lips as I focused on my work. “It’s like a terminal, but on your leg.”

“You look like you know a thing or two about arcane contraptions,” Gail said.

I chuckled, “Eh, I know my way around a wrench and a screw driver. I was an electrical engineer back at my stable.” I thought for a moment, frowning. “Still am.”

I wrinkled my nose at the stench of singed metal as I soldered in a spare wire I found at the bottom of my bags.

I finished with the cord and reassembled the radio.

“There she is, good as new,” I said, and switched it on. I cringed slightly as the radio flooded the room with deafening static.

Gail’s face lit up as she fiddled with the contraption.

“Thanks! Now we can have some music playing around here.”

The radio burped and hacked up random snippets of chatter in between its bouts of noise vomiting, and eventually picked up a channel that garnered our attention.

“- brrrfftt - now, my little ponies, it’s time for the news! Now you ponies remember when I told you ‘bout those two ponies who crawled themselves out of Stable 2 – brrrrffffffffttttttt ...”

And the signal died.

“Who was that?” I asked. My brow furrowed as I realized that Bone Charm was right about other stables opening too.

Gail groaned, twisting the tuner back and forth, trying to find the signal. “Sounded like DJ Pon-3. It’s really hard to get his signal around here.”

DJ Pon-3 … that name was familiar. The last I heard of that name, it was from a mare, and it was from a memory orb recorded 200 years ago.

“- brrrrffttttttt - gettin’ reports that one of those little ponies took out the raider nest in the heart of Ponyville ..."

My eyes widened.

‘A raider ... NEST?’ It took two merc groups to kill the furies that murdered my friends, and it took one pony to kill a nest of them?

That ... stable pony was … something.

The stallion on the radio continued, "... saved several pony captives - including the beloved – brrffttttttt - Ditzy Doo! Hey kid, tha – brrrfffffffftttttt” – and the signal broke out into static once more.

“Damn. Must be the clouds.”

“Hah - what?” I snickered. “There’s always clouds out though.”

“Yeah, but around these parts, the clouds and weather blow in from the Frozen Wastes and mix with the pegasi’s cloud cover. Makes it worse.”

I cocked an eyebrow at that. “The hell’s a cloud cover?”

“Well ever since the pegasi flew up and left everyone down on the surface for dead, they poofed up a layer of clouds to protect themselves. From us. The half dead survivors. Those feather-brained bastards ...” She shook her head. “They always say that they’re going to swoop down to the surface and save everyone. It’s been 200 years since the bombs fell and the cloud cover’s never opened up once.”

She leaned her back against the table and folded her forelegs across her chest. “Never trust a pegasus if you see one.”

“Wait, isn’t Night Sky a pegasus?”

Gail's beak dropped wide open.

“H-how’d you … never mind. Well, she’s a ‘Dashite’. She’s the kind of pegasus that got kicked out by her own kind.” She tapped her beak with a claw. “Kinda like a fallen angel, I guess.”

I pursed my lips as I remembered the stubs that used to be her wings. Dear Celestia, that was cruel. I heard from my mother that a pegasus without wings was like a unicorn without a horn. Or anyone without legs.

“Why … why’d they do that to her?”

The griffon shook her head, shrugging.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it. Never once did she tell us what happened. I don’t think I want to know – it takes a lot to get kicked out like that, I heard. Usually they just kill you … but taking off your wings …” She winced, unfurling one of hers. “Makes me mad how someone could've done that to her. If I lost mine ... I’d rather be dead … like the pegasi who were lucky enough to not get thrown down here.”

I lowered my eyes to my hooves. Wherever they were, if I was a pegasus, I wouldn’t want to come down here either.

Gail played with the radio’s tuner again, trying to pick up a signal. She sighed and gave up.

“So you said you’re tagging along with us for a bit?”

I found a holster lying on the floor and gestured to her if I could use it. Gail nodded, and I strapped it across my chest, stowing my pistol.

“Not for too long, I hope. I have a few things to do on my to-do list and I’m running out of time,” I added, with a hint of urgency. I was beginning to wonder when they were going to start their next contract.

“And what’s that?”

I sighed, hoping that I wouldn’t have to explain that to everyone I met. I watched her for a moment: she looked like someone I could trust.

“My stable’s Water Talisman broke, so I was planning on hitching a ride up to Poneva with you guys to find a replacement when your crew’s done with their contracts.” I stared at my hooves. “Six of us went out of those doors … and I’m the only one who’s still alive. I’m all they have left.”

Gail's eyes turned soft again. She lifted a paw - and hesitated. I looked up at her and said nothing as we stared at each other in silence. A tiny smile grazed her beak.

I felt her paw rest gently upon my shoulder.

She thought for a moment. “Well you’re in luck, because we’ve only got two contracts left unfinished. They’re pretty easy, I guess, so it won’t be too much of a hassle for you.”

“What kind of contracts? I mean, what are we going to do?”

The griffon made her way to another table and began reassembling a rifle she oiled up earlier.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to meet a caravan over by the old railroad station about ten miles out from here and escort them back to Dusktown. Then we’re going to lay down some good ol’wasteland justice on some pony-murdering zebra scum.”

My ears perked at that last part. I remembered the graves I saw earlier that day. The first time I ever heard about zebras was in a history book detailing their war that tore across Equestria. Images of a grisly looking pony with stripes, red eyes, and a menacing mouthful of serrated teeth came to mind when I heard that word.

I gulped. ‘They couldn’t possibly … actually look like that, right?‘

We went upstairs to the bar for some water, and found that everyone else was asleep. I pointed a hoof out the still darkened window.

“Well ... when’s tomorrow, because it seems like it's always night time to me.”

*

Chapter 3 - Dust and Echoes - Pt III

*

‘So this was morning, huh?’

I sat in the back of a wagon being pulled by some grotesque two-headed cow thing, chewing my pistol’s mouth bit. Morning, apparently, was noticeably brighter than the afternoon or the evening. Gail said something about DJ Pon-3’s channel being more coherent in the mornings when the skies cleared up somewhat.

I looked up to the clouds and winced, swallowing bile down my throat. ‘Yep, they were still there.’ I guess what made mornings in the Frozen North different was that you could see the clouds. When complete, total darkness fell upon the land, then it was night. It was still rather gloomy outside, and likewise, equally as depressing.

My breath fogged up in front of my face as I stared out into the distance. A light snowfall sprinkled us with bits of powder, and for once since I left my stable, I felt like I was going to survive out there. There hadn’t been a whiteout in twelve hours. That was good sign.

Behind us were three other wagons full of supplies and a hooffull of trader ponies that seemed about as apprehensive about traveling through the snow as I was.

Gail’s winged shape hovered over the caravan, her battle rifle scanning the distance. She flew ahead and back, calling out reports to Night Sky as she scouted out the path in the distance. The others kept an eye out for anything coming in from the sides or behind.

Sprinkles nudged me with a hoof and motioned for me to look outside the wagon.

“You see that?” she asked, pointing her hoof out into the distance.

I could barely make out what looked to be a dozen small shapes prowling through the snow.

“What are those things?” I asked, squinting.

“Those’re wolves,” Sprinkles replied, unpleasantly. “Well, they used to be. Now they’re bloodletters. Nasty little critters that hunt in packs and attack anything that moves.”

I narrowed my eyes at the creatures as they disappeared behind an exceptionally large snow drift.

“Well why aren’t they attacking us?”

“Because they’re not stupid.” She gestured to her rifle. “There’s too many guns and too few of them, anyways,” Sprinkles added as the creatures stalked within eyeshot once more.

“Eh, they’re just wolves. Can’t get any worse than that right?” I said with a chuckle.

She looked at me sternly.

“There’s also Snow Devils. Pray to your Goddesses you never see one, because they’re tough, and they don’t go down too easily. Used to be bears, I think. They’ve got claws that can rip through the armor of this wagon.” I remembered seeing those odd looking skeletons at the bottom of the den Amber Fields fell into. Then I remembered the extra pair of jaws that poked out of their mouths. I shivered.

“Okay … so, we've got mutant wolves and bears. Anything else I should know about?”

She gave me that stern look again.

The sound of gunfire in the distance stole the words from her lips. Someone whistled ahead of the caravan before Sprinkles could continue, and Gail’s winged silhouette swooped down to land in front of us as the wagons pulled to a stop.

“Furies ahead; they were in the middle of burying themselves in the snow when they saw me.”

Night Sky swore under her breath.

“How many?”

“I counted about a dozen, maybe more. They’re on their way here, now,” Gail replied, gripping her battle rifle tightly. She took to the skies once more, shouldering the weapon and scanning the drifts.

“Alright everypony, form up! Get those wagons in formation!” Night Sky called out to the others who were coaxing the two-headed bovines to their places. Within a span of twenty seconds, the four wagons formed up into a square, with each of the mercs including myself, and five trader ponies ducked under their heavy metal frames.

I crouched next to a trader unicorn with a shabby looking shotgun held in his magical grip.

“Hey,” I said, leaning against the wagon.

“Howdy.”

I looked over the wagon and didn’t see any furies. I figured that I’d wait for the others to call them out.

“You’re not from around here are you?”

“Nope,” I regarded him expectantly until he continued.

His eyes widened for a moment, and he chuckled, realizing that we were having a conversation. “I stopped by New Appaloosa for a few sales and a couple bargains. Headin’ back up to Poneva to stock up on some agristuff.”

By agristuff he probably meant food. Real food, I hoped. I cringed at the thought of the vat-grown vegetables and gene-modded apples I used to eat at my stable.

“Poneva, huh? Have you been there before?”

He nodded, “Eeyup.” Well that pony seemed to be a pony of few words.

I frowned at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Well … I’m not from here, either. Came out of a stable not too long ago,” I said, waving my PipBuck. “What’s it like?

His eyes widened at that. “Yer one of them stable fellers! I don’t suppose yer one of them ponies from Stable 2, huh?”

“What? U-uh, no. I’m not,” I said, awkwardly, remembering DJ Pon-3’s fragmented broadcast.

“Oh,” he harrumphed, sighing.

I snorted, “Hope I didn’t disappoint you too much. I’m from Stable 91.”

“Nah, there’s just all this excitement down south ‘bout somepony clearin’ the routes of raiders over by Ponyville.”

“Yeah. I heard …”

“Sorry, heard ‘stable’ and I got ahead of muhself,” he said, holding his hat to his chest. “Well anyways, I’ve been to Poneva a few times. It’s a purty nice city – if ya don’t mind all the gangs and rampaging hooligans and such.”

‘Well fuck,’ I was hoping something more on the lines of ‘jolly, helpful folk who like to organize community events’, instead. ‘But I’m in the wasteland,’ I thought, rolling my eyes, ‘How much more can I expect?’

“That’s good to know, I guess. I was planning on heading up there too.”

The unicorn nodded. “Well for a first timer, pay the toll at the gates and ya probably won’t have no problems," he added, still nodding.

Probably.

I just sighed.

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” I picked up my pistol awkwardly in my mouth, slobbering all over it like a mangy dog. The stallion frowned at me.

“Why’re ya holding it like that?”

“My horn ishn’t working right,” I said, struggling through my mouth bit.

His eyes widened as if a lightbulb just flashed over his head. He pumped his hoof into the air, grinning.

“I might just have what ya need, boy! Talk to me after we tussle with these here raiders. I might have something that can help ya.”

Before I could reply, a bullet whizzed past us and blasted skyward a plume of snow behind me.

“They’re here! Everypony, on your hooves!”

Night Sky shouldered her assault rifle, standing upon her hinds.

I chewed on my mouth bit and peeked over the wagon. My EFS blinked red. I saw them. The ponies – no, the furies poked their heads over the snow drifts.

Their deranged laughter filled the air.

The blizzard howled past my ears.

I was running. The gnarled trees blurred past me.

‘Hahahahaha - HAHAHAHAHA!’

'RUN, RED - RUN!'

...

‘No.’

I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.

I turned around and my forehooves clopped against the wagon’s steel frame. I stared out into the drifts as the snow furies rose up from the snow, their whooping cries chasing after my pulse as it pounded in my temples.

Those were the monsters that slaughtered my friends.

I wasn’t going to be a victim.

Not again.

Crack!

A shot pinged against the wagon’s hull a few inches away from my head and I ducked back down.

I closed my eyes and panted through my mouth bit. I needed to make it through that. Alive.

Gunfire erupted between both sides as Bone Charm loosed his saddle-mounted light machine gun, sending the furies diving for cover. Gail swooped overhead, lancing the furies with her battle rifle.

I looked over the wagon and saw a fury's head explode. It was like watching someone hurl a melon at a wall. Thought there wasn’t much pony left. Just chunks of wet melon splattered across the snow.

I swallowed bile down my throat.

“Dear Celestia,” I murmured.

Bone Charm’s machine gun clicked empty. A handful of the furies, brandished axes and machetes, and galloped across the snow towards us. I tensed as their unnerving, deranged laughter echoed through my ears.

The furies that stayed behind had the sense to cover them with gunfire. More shrieking bullets ricocheted off the wagon’s frame a few inches from my face. But this time, I didn’t duck. Something caught my eyes.

I narrowed them at a fury who was just watching the ensuing firefight. Without even a giggle or a curse, it just stood there. Observing. A bullet clipped my collar.

‘Fuck!’

“Here they come!” I heard Sprinkles shout.

I poked my head over again and threw on my training wheels. I marked a target and SATS plotted a firing solution.

Glowing teal markers flashed across the closest fury’s torso and legs.

I tongued the trigger.

The fury took the first few bullets to the chest. He staggered, a grin widening across his face - then my shots blew out his legs.

But he didn't stop.

The stallion clambered towards me, screaming through bloody teeth.

He wouldn’t stop.

“Celestia … how do you kill these things?”

“Shoot ‘em till they’re dead, dumbass!” Bone Charm snarled.

‘Fucking …’ I tongued the trigger. The 10mm rounds bucked in my teeth -

And I missed.

“C’mon partner, pony up!” the trader shouted, blasting apart a fury that came too close with his shotgun.

It just wasn’t the same without my magic.

My eyes caught sight of a submachine gun as it levitated around the corner. The trader saw it too. He was closest to it. The stallion turned just as the glowing, magic-wreathed weapon flashed.

I dove into him, throwing him to the snow.

Bullets kicked me in the ribs.

I wheezed as they punched the air out of my lungs. “SHI - ACK!” I crashed into the snow gasping ragged breaths.

The fury poked her grinning face out from around the corner. Then it exploded in a blast of buckshot. The familiar taste of vomit washed into my mouth.

Panting for air, and with tears in my eyes, I staggered out of cover and took aim once more.

A fury’s nose booped into mine.

“BOO!”

I screamed and felt my pistol kick in my teeth. She slumped on top of me, a demented grin still stretched across her face. I whimpered, struggling to heave her off of me when another fury rounded the corner. My tongue twitched and my shots went wide. The fury whooped, cackling as he took a wild leap, machete swinging for my throat.

I shut my eyes and flinched, waiting to feel the cold touch of steel rip across my flesh.

My eyes flew open just as Gail’s shadow swept over me.

CRACK!

The fury’s throat exploded in a splash of gore. He choked and sputtered, wrapping his hooves around the ragged hole in his neck.

I lunged at the dying fury and jammed my pistol in his mouth.

CRACK! I shook my head vigorously, snarling as the blood flicked off my muzzle. A rusty steel helmet jerked into view. The fury that was wearing it – the one that I crippled earlier - scrambled hungrily after me, brandishing a cleaver and threatening to take my kneecaps off because I apparently took his.

SATS plotted a firing solution through his skull. I watched in horror as the bullet ricocheted inside his helmet.

His head fucking exploded.

I exhaled sharply, swallowing the vomit that hiccuped into my throat.

My ears perked. Hooves plodded behind me. I whirled around just in time to get nicked by a unicorn mare’s glowing switchblade. Its icy edge painted my cheek red with my blood. I winced and side stepped. The mare galloped past me and slammed into the wagon’s frame.

“I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU MY LITTLE GELDLING!" she snarled, snapping her teeth at me as she lunged.

I spun around and flung my hindlegs back. My hooves connected with her chest, and she careened into the wagon once more. I leveled my pistol at her and yanked the trigger back.

It clicked empty.

‘Oh.’

“SHIT!”

I patted down my vest for another magazine. But she was up on her hooves before I could ram it home. “Come on – ”

The fury charged.

I clenched my eyes shut and threw my forelegs in front of me. I caught her head between my hooves. With a snarl, she threw me into the snow - and I drove her face through the powder. I stumbled away, hurling myself into the wagon’s frame and hoofing in a fresh magazine.

The mare tore her head out of the powder, spat out bloody snow and came at me again, snarling like a rabid animal.

I slipped into SATS, and the world seemed to slow around me as my PipBuck calculated math faster than she could move. I tagged her head, and for the longest of heartbeats, I somehow found myself staring into her murderous, black-veined eyes.

They were a lovely shade of blue.

‘Goddesses …’

Those were supposed to be the windows to her soul. But gnarled black veins boarded up any glimpse of the equinity within. The equinity that made a pony … a pony.

She might have been beautiful once. Her delicate white cheeks. Her soft muzzle. Her long, slender neck. But I was too distracted to give them more than a passing thought by the caked-up blood splatters that I knew couldn't have been hers.

Down the length of her coat, through her mangled trousers, I saw that her cutiemark was that of a colorful bird. I wondered, for a moment – ‘Who was she? What was she before she became … that? Was she a bird-keeper? Or maybe she had a marvelous voice?’

I gulped, struggling to queue my shots. Instead I studied her face - her cracked, bloody lips curled with an uneven, demented smile.

I wondered ... was there still a pony beneath that madness? Was there any sense – any reason for – for the carnage around me?

Those maniacs, those degenerates – those were the creatures that skinned Star Glint alive. They blew up Amber in our faces when they could have just killed her and been done with it. They hacked Twirl to pieces like a piece of meat.

They tore Dew Drops apart before my very eyes.

‘Hahahahaha - HAHAHAHAHA –’

I tagged her legs.

The bullets ripped through her and she tumbled from her useless legs into the snow at my hooves. The pale mare let out a tortured moan, thrashing her bloody limbs through the drifts.

“Stop!” I shouted, hoarsely. But she wouldn’t listen. I threw myself over her, pinning her bloodied legs to the snow. Tears streamed down the pony’s grimy cheeks.

“Why are you doing this!?”

The black veins in her sclera receded for the briefest of moments. I heard her murmur something incomprehensible.

“ANSWER ME!”

“I … I …” she whimpered. The pony grinded her teeth and clenched her eyes shut. Her face contorted into an agonizing grimace as if something was ripping her apart from the inside out.

Then her eyelids flew open.

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” she shrieked, a web of throbbing, black tendrils raking across her eyes. She drove her switchblade into me and I screamed through my mouth bit.

My pistol flashed in her eyes.

Her head flopped back into the snow. Blood and brains pooled out the hole in the back of her skull, her lifeless blue eyes gazing blankly back at me. I watched, ripping the switchblade out of me as the black veins receded once more.

“What the fuck are these things…” I murmured, touching the fury’s pale face.

I heard someone scream behind me and turned just in time to see Sprinkles get gutted by a rusty machete. He twisted it, and ripped it out of her with a brutal squelch.

I entered SATS and snapped a shot at his head. My holographic footlights stuttered - and I missed.

“Shit!” I gawked at my depleted SATS charges. I clenched my jaw, watching the fury raise the machete to cleave Sprinkles’ head off. It fell, and in the time it took for me to scream, the fury’s torso blew apart in a hail of machine gun fire.

His carcass danced with the storm of lead, ragged holes tearing across his flesh until he crumbled into the snow like a mangled ragdoll. Bone Charm, his machine gun smoking, screamed for me to duck, and I heard the stomach-churning sound of bloody meat being ripped apart behind me.

I turned and a perforated fury mare splattered next to me, nicking me with a hatchet. I cried out - stumbled back - and collapsed next to a writhing, gory Sprinkles.

“R-Red Dawn!” she spat through a mouthful of blood, clutching her chest with both her forehooves in an attempt to make the bleeding stop.

It didn’t.

The blood was draining from her face.

“My bags … health … potion …”

I bit my lower lip, hoofing through her belongings and pulling out the reddest looking health potion I could find. I tipped it into her open mouth and she gulped it down and all the blood in her throat without another word.

Being injured like that seemed like second nature to her.

I exhaled with relief as her flesh stitched together before my very eyes.

“It’s not over yet,” she growled and spat blood into the snow. Sprinkles reared up on her hinds and shouldered her assault rifle. I frowned as her rifle’s flashing muzzle rewarded her with a distant scream.

An unsettling grin stretched across her face.

I hurried away back to the trader and stumbled into him just as he was cramming his shotgun into a fury's snapping teeth. Blood splattered all over my chest.

I closed my eyes and let out a trembling breath.

“They’re feisty ‘lil shits ain’t they?” I heard him shout over the gunfire, pumping his shotgun. “Ain’t nothin’ like the raiders back at home!”

“That’s because they ain’t,” Bone Charm snarled, feeding a fresh belt into his machine gun’s chamber.

I opened my eyes when I felt something land between my hooves. It started to smoke.

I opened my mouth to scream -

But Sprinkles just snatched it up with a hoof and flung it back the way it came.

“Give a raider what she wants, and she’ll leave you alone,” she said, as a bone jarring explosion sent a cascading shower of gravel and snow over our heads. “Give a fury what she wants, and she’ll eat your face.”

“I’LL FUCKING EAT YOUR FACE!” some insane bitch screamed at us in the distance.

Bone Charm yanked his bolt back.

“You gotta kill ‘em or they won’t stop.”

I peeked over the wagon and saw a plume of gore fountain into the air – the result of Gail’s terrifyingly exceptional aim. The gunfire dwindled for a moment as the furies ducked under the snow drifts.

One fury stood up, and galloped out into the open, screaming like a mad mare. Gail flew circles over us like a hawk, waiting for the right moment to stop, shoulder her rifle, and –

CRACK!

A ragged hole exploded out the fury mare’s chest. The furies laughed as her lifeless corpse collapsed into the bloody snow.

I narrowed my eyes as another snow fury galloped into the open. I could see the yellow, broken teeth of his demented smile.

Gail’s shadow swept over him.

She took aim, and I saw his grin widen.

Furies rose up from the drifts and shouldered their rifles.

Night Sky screamed:

“Shit – SHIT - cover her! GAIL!”

Bone Charm and Sprinkles sprang to their hooves. But it was already too late.

Bullets punched through her in a burst of feathers and blood.

She spun out of the air and careened into the drifts, painting a red arc across the snow as she tried to scramble to her feet. The furies cheered madly, bursting out from behind the pale dunes and galloping after her.

I blinked and saw Lightning Twirl plummet into a mob of giggling psychopaths. I watched her disappear beneath their falling blades.

My jaw clenched.

And I leaped out of cover.

“GAIL!” I cried, galloping towards her.

She clutched her bleeding chest, wheezing ragged gasps as she tried to crawl away from those murderous animals.

For a second I wondered what the fuck I was doing as I pounded through the snow downwind a hail of gunfire.

I barely knew those mercs. I shouldn’t have cared about whether they lived or died. All that mattered was surviving so that my stable could live. I’d sacrifice all those poor, surface dwelling scum if it meant that everyone in my stable survived.

I’d sacrifice them all if it could bring my friends back.

If I died right then and there, all the hope my stable had for survival would have died with me.

But I kept going.

I wasn’t going to let Gail become a victim. Not like my friends. Not like me.

My pulse hammered inside my temples faster than I could put one hoof in front of the other. Pounding straight for me was a fury with a vicious, spiked club.

SATS flashed across my eyes. I blasted apart her chest. She collapsed - screaming past me. I didn’t even lose a single step. I galloped harder - I closed the distance.

Gail cried out as one of the ponies tried to drag her away. I swore under my breath, and snapped into SATS. My shots blew out the fury’s legs from under him. He opened his mouth to scream as I spun around and hurled my hindhooves into his face.

I overextended. Bones broke against my hooves. There was a disgusting snap as I severed his spine.

“HOLY SHIT!” Gail squawked.

That’s exactly what I thought when I fell on my ass wide-eyed and panting.

“Red Dawn - head down!” I heard Bone Charm roar.

A bullet struck me in the back, pancaking against my vest and slamming me face first into the powder. That was painfully convenient because Bone Charm laid down a wide arc of machine gun fire over my mane that sent the furies ducking for cover.

Those that didn’t were torn apart in the stream of lead, laughing in dying ecstasy. I forced myself to my hooves, sputtering through a mouthful of snow before stuffing my face with Gail’s feathers. I groaned, dragging her away from the carnage with my head bowed low as bullets shrieked over me.

Hollow bones or not, she was heavier than I thought.

Night Sky and Sprinkles leaned out of the wagons and kept the furies’ heads down when Bone Charm’s machine gun ran dry.

I was almost there - until someone tackled me into the snow.

A fury howled into my face, spraying my muzzle with fetid ropes of spittle. I tried shoving her away, but she had me pinned down as she levitated a metal apple before my eyes. She cackled, biting off the pin and releasing the lever with a metallic chink!

It began to puff smoke. Horror drained the blood from my face.

Bullets slammed into her, but she didn’t drop. The crazed mare stabbed her hooves into my throat, squeezing the life out of me, even as her blood dribbled out through her yellowed teeth and onto my face.

I choked, my eyes rolling to the back of my head as I battered her face with my hooves in vain. She didn’t relent.

Black veins began rooting their dark tendrils in the shrinking tunnels of my eyes.

“HAHAHAHAHA –”

‘No.’

Something snapped inside of me.

“I ... won’t ... be ... A VICTIM!” I screamed, and swung a foreleg into her horn. The fury yelped. Her magic flickered - and winked out.

The smoking metal apple dropped to the snow.

I heaved her over it.

There was a skull-splitting CRACK - then nothing. In a flash, the world around me exploded in a roiling plume of shrapnel and gore. The blast jarred my insides. It rattled my bones. It hurled me a foot off the ground - and I landed in the unrecognizable remains of the mare’s chest cavity.

I forced myself to my wobbly hooves and stumbled away in a hazy daze, trailing gore and viscera between my rickety legs. My hoof slipped in the mare’s steaming innards and I squelched into the bloody snow next to Gail’s writhing body.

I found one of her wings and proceeded to haul her back to the wagon. The adrenaline in my veins was abating and I could feel my jaw slackening, my legs tiring, my lungs struggling to fill with air through Gail’s feathers and my teeth. I dragged her through the blurriness of my eyes, refusing to give in, refusing to die so easily.

Those snow furies made my friends and I victims before – and I wasn’t about to let them make me one again.

With a final, exhausted cry, I heaved her behind the wagon formation and spat out a mouthful of her feathers before collapsing next to her, gasping for air. Gail’s talons raked at my barding as she writhed and kicked her legs, choking on her own blood. I didn’t even seem to notice as my head spun and I tried to blink away the shock of being blown up for the second time in the last few days. I couldn’t even make out the plume of feathers that was supposed to be on her head through the fog that clouded my eyes.

I did all I could for her. So I rolled over and heaved the contents of my stomach underneath Night Sky’s wagon.

The gunfire had died down by the time I regained the strength to sit on my haunches. When clarity did return, I found that the others were already attending to Gail’s wounds. She hacked up splotches of scarlet that melted through the snow, clawing at her ribcage in a vain attempt to slow the bleeding as her lungs filled with blood.

“H-how - how bad is it?” I sputtered in between breaths.

Sprinkles knelt next to me, resting against her assault rifle. “As long as it went through her, she should be fine.”

“Look for an exit wound,” Night Sky said to Bone Charm, jostling the wheezing griffon. He rolled her over, and Bone Charm let out a breath of relief when he saw the bloody splotch on the other side.

Flopping her onto her back, Bone Charm wrenched her mouth open and levitated a potion to her beak. Gail clenched the potion in her talons and gulped it down. She moaned, curling up into a ball and heaving her chest violently to fill her regenerating lungs.

The steel-faced stallion just stared. I met his eyes and pursed my lips as we looked at each other for too many seconds. I expected him to berate me; I probably would have too, risking my life like that.

But he nodded once, and attended to his adoptive daughter.

“You ain’t so bad,” he muttered, "Not so bad for a stable pony.”

A thin smile stretched across my lips.

I knelt next to the convulsing griffon. Gail tipped her head up to see me and smiled painfully through her bloody beak, reddish spittle dribbling down her neck.

“Thanks –” she gasped raggedly for a breath of air, “– Red… can I call you that?”

A narrow smile reached across the corners of my lips, my heart warming.

“That’s my name.”

She looked overjoyed. “I owe you one, Red,” Gail rasped, laying down flat on her back, her breaths stabilizing.

“You don’t owe me anything,” I murmured. I didn’t think I would've been able to survive that had the other mercs not jumped in. A darker corner of my mind told me I shouldn’t have risked my life for that griffon, let alone for a bastard like Bone Charm.

But the gratefulness that widened across her beak and the relief in the grizzled unicorn’s eyes trickled white paint down the narrow black walls of my conscience. I stuck my tongue out and hoofed a rogue feather out of my mouth. Then I spat out a few down feathers too.

“That was probably the closest I’ve ever had to tasting chicken,” I smirked.

Gail’s struggle to contain her laughter resulted in a fit of ragged, wet coughs.

“You’ve still got a few feathers on your back,” I said, folding my legs across my chest. “That’s all that matters.”

She just sighed, unfurled her wing and preened at her bloody spots. “I guess you’re right. You sticking around for some more?”

I looked out into the snow and around us. Dead ponies lay strewn about across the snow drifts, probably doomed to freeze where they fell. Not too far from our wagon formation, I frowned at a crater with half a pony lying in it.

“I ah …” I didn’t have enough in my stomach to hurl again. I’ve had the urge to do that too many times that day. It seemed too easy for those mercs.

I shivered. It shouldn’t have been that easy for me.

My frown turned to a glare as my eyes panned over the pale coat of the fury I tried talking to earlier. Those weren’t ponies. Those were monsters. Furies. And I wasn’t going to be another one of their victims. Not while so many lives rested on my hooves.

I figured that if I was going to survive, I couldn’t hesitate. Hesitation was going to get me killed.

I rubbed my hooves together in the snow, trying to clean the blood off my legs.

“Whatever gets me to Poneva,” I said, softly.

The sound of hooves crunching through the snow behind me made me jump. I clenched my mouth bit and almost shot the trader in the face as he approached.

“Whoa nelly, you’re a jumpy one, ain’t ya?” he said with a wry grin.

I exhaled heavily. “Sorry, thought you were one of those…” I glanced at their mangled corpses, spitting out my mouth bit “… those psychos.”

He nodded and levitated out a strange blue bottle out of his saddle bags.

“Listen here, kid, ya saved my ass earlier - and I ain’t the ungrateful bastard.”

I shook my head, waving it off with a forehoof.

“I’m sure whatever you’re paying Night Sky will cover it –“

“I never said that Night Sky mare saved my ass –” He tipped his hat at me. “I said you.”

I frowned.

“Well, I suppose it’d be rude,” I muttered, pursing my lips. The blue liquid swirled gently inside the shot glass sized bottle. “What is it?”

He pointed a forehoof at my horn, “It’s called Sparkle. Makes your magic stronger. Should boost you up good – might even bring yer magic back for a bit. Ain’t as helpful as a week of rest, but it might do ya good if ya use it in a pinch.” The unicorn floated it to me, balancing it on my nose. “But I said, use it in a pinch. This ain’t no potion ya just drink and forget.”

I scrunched my muzzle and tossed my head back, catching it in my mouth. I snorted, amused with myself. I wondered if I could live as a glorified earth pony with a horn for the rest of my life. I squinted at the bottle in between my teeth, sloshing around its contents.

‘Nah.’

“Then ... what is it?” I asked.

He leaned against the wagon, giving me a stern look. “I just told you. It might bring your magic back. For a bit. And not much longer.”

“Sure,” I said, nodding my head slowly. Craning my head over my shoulder, I dropped it in my saddle bag. “Thanks!” I said with a nervous smile.

“No problemo,” he drawled, starting back to his wagon. “I’ll leave it to ya mercs, then.” He paused. “I didn’t even get yer name, boy?”

I zipped my bag closed, and turned to trot back to the caravan’s lead wagon.

“Red Dawn," I said, glancing over my shoulder.

“Name’s Duster, and nice to meet ya, Red Dawn. Might see ya again one day after this,” he said, plodding through the powder. He glanced over his shoulder. “Might not.”

I paused for a moment.

‘Huh?’

I waved at him as we mounted up on our wagons, trying furtively to suppress the apprehensive look on my face.

*

Chapter 3 - Dust and Echoes - Pt IV

*

We dropped Duster off at Dusktown and headed further north on our wagon, this time, with Bone Charm pulling it. Goddesses, was that stallion strong … especially for a unicorn. We weren’t even following a road. Bone Charm pulled us uphill through a broken, rugged path. I couldn’t see the usual wagon lines in the snow – but the earth beneath us was heavily trodden with hoof prints.

The skies had darkened significantly since the last I saw it. I slept for most of the way, and so did Gail. The griffoness, however, was still napping.

I yawned, rubbing my eyes with my forehooves. Looking around, I noticed everyone was still armed. I wondered why we were packing so much heat, given the contract we were pursuing.

Sitting in an alcove in the wagon’s frame was a metal tube. Several rocket propelled grenades rested against it.

“What the hell is that for?”

Night Sky sat up from the wagonbed. “It’s just for diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy?” I glanced at the launcher’s carrying case, reading its label.

I snorted, “Sure. Your kevlar-plated barding really screams ‘compromise’.”

She chuckled, letting out a long, drawn out sigh. “I know you’re new to this wasteland shite, but zeds aren’t exactly the kind of blokes to just lift an ear to us ponies.”

“I’d imagine. We fought a war with them.” I sat on my hind legs, eyeing the labels stenciled on the rockets. ‘HE-I’, I read along the crimson munitions.

“Not we. We never fought them. They’re the ones still fighting us,” Night Sky muttered, closing her eyes.

“Could’ve sworn the war ended 200 years ago,” I murmured. A widening mass of snow covered pines crept closer and closer as the wagon made its way through the snow. “What exactly are we doing out here?”

Bone Charm glanced at me over his shoulder.

“They killed Lumberjack and his colts two weeks ago while they were out looking for firewood,” he muttered in his gravelly voice. “Killed ‘em … even the colts.” Bone Charm shook his head and continued, “One of the boys made it back to town, barely alive. Said that the three of them walked in on a bunch of zebra loggers and got attacked on the spot for trespassing.” Bone Charm’s tone chilled me to the bone. “We’re going to pay them a visit and find the pony murderin’ son of a bitch who done did it.”

I wrapped my forelegs around my chest.

“So the five of us are going into zebra territory with the possibility of provoking more of them ourselves?” I cocked an eyebrow. “That’s smart. You know, there’s bound to be more of them than us. And you make it sound like they won’t just hand the zebra over.”

“That’s why diplomacy’s on our side,” Night Sky chuckled grimly.

I wondered what the ‘HE-I’ stenciled onto its case meant.

Sprinkles loaded a magazine into her assault rifle and drew it across the path in front of us. “They come to our land, our Equestria, hallowed by our dead, plant their flag down, and settle it when everypony’s gone. Then, on top of that, they go around killing anypony else that so much as breathes their air.”

My jaw clenched at that. ‘Just what I needed to hear,’ I thought, ‘More pony killing monsters.

I looked out into the distance. ‘Is this what Equestria’s come to?’

I wondered if the zebras in our textbooks were true: striped, red eyed, shark-toothed killing machines. The last part, at least, seemed to match Sprinkles’ description.

“They sound no better than the snow furies,” I sneered bitterly.

Night Sky met my dark eyes. “I’d say it’s about time we taught those grotty little shites a lesson.”

She leaned against the wagon’s frame. “We ponies just want to survive out here without stepping on anyone’s feet. The bloody zeds have raided Dusktown’s shops in the past, and I’m not about to let those striped fucks make our lives harder than they already are.”

A plume of smoke drifted lazily into the sky above the pine trees in the distance. We were near.

I counted the rounds in my magazine.

“Let’s find this bastard.”

The others were silent after that, loading their weapons. I poked Gail with a forehoof and she shook herself into lucidity.

“We there yet?” she yawned, putting on her battle saddle.

Night Sky got to her hooves and peered over Bone Charm’s mane. I frowned, an incredulous look stretching across my face. I expected the same weather-beaten, corrugated masses that made up Dusktown’s buildings.

But before us was a small circle of gnarled, wooden cabins surrounding a smoldering bonfire. There wasn’t a single mote of light in those cabins. I would have thought the zebra village were dead if there weren’t equine shapes milling about outside in their tattered, inadequate clothes.

The ramshackle village was overshadowed by an icy cliff face that stretched its wind-swept boulders over their shacks, like a roof that was halfway there.

The zebras noticed our final approach. I expected a hail of bullets. Instead, they scurried inside their homes, slamming their doors shut. A zebra mare herded her foals inside her cabin, meeting my baffled stare for the briefest of moments before slamming the door closed behind her.

“Arses out,” Night Sky ordered as the wagon came to a stop just outside the village. "Let's get this over with and get paid." The mercs dismounted, Bone Charm shaking off the wagon’s harness before rummaging through the wagon.

I kept my eyes on the village, chills running down my spine at how empty and dilapidated the shoddy buildings looked. Not too far from our wagon and underneath the shadow of the cliff face, were several rows of lonely gravestones.

While everyone else was grabbing their weapons, I just stood there, unsure of what to do with myself. I turned to look at Gail, and saw that her eyes were devoid of … of anything in particular.

Everyone had this grim, glazed over look that sent shivers down my spine.

“Bonehead, I want you up on that cliff with the RPG. Gail, circle the village from the air. Both of you know what to do,” Night Sky said chillingly. She turned to face me. “Red Dawn, you and Sprinkles are with me.”

She glanced over her shoulder as a group of zebra stallions came out of the cabins, regarding us expectantly. “Bonehead, Gail, take your positions. You two –” She nodded at Sprinkles and I. “Follow my lead.”

I gulped as we slogged through the knee-deep snow. I hoped I wasn’t wrong. I hoped those zebras were feral beasts, just waiting to murder us when we turned our backs on them or looked away. They just stood there, shivering with dark looks in their eyes as they watched us approach.

We trotted up to the largest of the cabins, with an entourage of zebras waiting for us on its front porch.

“Wotcher, zeds!” Night Sky grinned, trotting up to the mob.

A middle-aged zebra stepped forward. “Not too close, pony!” he growled. The other zebras brandished underappreciated handguns and warped blades.

“Whoa there lads, we’re just here to find someone we’re looking for.” Night Sky’s foreleg twitched visibly as her hoof almost reached for her assault rifle.

The zebra in charge, I assumed, narrowed his distrustful eyes at the heavily-armed mercs.

“There were five of you when you came.”

Sprinkles gave him a shady grin. “Oh they’re still here, don’t you worry ...”

The zebras shifted uncomfortably on their hooves. A younger stallion who looked about my age shifted his gaze away from me in fear. I wasn’t even visibly armed.

“I think you zebras know why we’re here,” Night Sky began, taking a few steps towards the group. Most of them glared at her menacingly. A few of them took a step back. “One of you zed bastards killed a few ponies from Dusktown. Murdered a stallion and his two boys. I was hoping you’d tell me where I could find him?”

Zebra Leader’s jaw clenched. The others looked at him, but no one said a word.

Night Sky scoffed, “Seeing as how you zebras don’t like to mingle, I can’t think of anywhere else he might be.”

Their leader looked at his hooves, shaking his head, slowly.

“He’s here,” he said, in a quiet voice.

"Oh yeah?" she chuckled. Night Sky looked somewhat relieved, as if she took a difficult job only to have the workload halved. “We’re here to take him into custody.” Her expression blackened. “He’s coming with us.”

The zebras exchanged grim-faced looks as their leader shook his head.

“He did nothing wrong, and he is not going with you ponies.”

My eyes caught a black shape at the top of the cliff, a long tube like weapon hovering in the air beside it. A winged silhouette circled above us like a carrion bird.

“I don’t think you quite understand,” Night Sky began, evenly. “I didn’t ask.”

The aged stallion stomped his hoof in the snow, the stallions behind him jeering at us in their alien tongues. “And I said no! He didn’t attack them.” He narrowed his eyes at us. “He was carrying home firewood when those thieves threatened to steal them!”

I shifted on my hooves.

“That isn’t the story I heard,” I said out loud. The zebras looked at me with distant hope in their eyes. Night Sky and Sprinkles just glared at me.

“Remember that these aren’t your trees, zebra," Sprinkles shot him a baleful look that spelled out murder. “That firewood didn’t belong to him.”

“Fuck you ponies!” a stallion shouted, stabbing his shotgun into the air. “Leave us alone!”

Another jutted a foreleg at us accusingly. “You take, and take - you leave nothing for us!”

“These trees, this land – it belongs to neither of us,” Zebra Leader said, sweeping his foreleg across the trees. “We cannot survive this winter without fire. These trees keep us alive - and you can’t deprive of us of what isn’t yours.”

Night Sky grew impatient. “I don’t give a shite about your trees – I want that zed, and I want him now!” she snarled, baring her teeth.

“No,” he told her, evenly. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. Go back to your Dusktown and be happy that nobody else had to die. Leave us alone, and do not come back.”

“Night Sky …” I murmured, noticing the foals staring at me through the windows.

She shook her head, smirking. “I’m no goody horseshoes, zebra. I’m a mercenary, and I’m getting my caps either way.” Night Sky snorted, craning forward her neck and smiling wickedly. She said, in a low voice, "Don't make us take him from you.”

The zebra stallion did not take that kindly.

“You … you would kill us?” he began, his voice trembling. The zebras crowded around him, baring their teeth. “Don’t be foolish, pony!”

To my shock, my eyes widened as the zebras stood up on their hinds and walked toward us – something I’ve never seen a pony do for more than a few seconds – aiming at us with the weapons curled between their hooves.

I gulped.

“You ponies wouldn’t dare!” a stallion snarled, brandishing a rusty axe as he strode towards us on his two hindlegs.

I took a step back.

“They are outnumbered – we kill them now!”

“Oo – patayin natin sila!” said another agreeably, glaring at us.

Zebra Leader held out his forehooves and held his kin back. “Hindi! No one else needs to die.” He turned to us, pleadingly. “Don’t do this, ponies, it isn’t worth it! Think of our foals!”

“I’m going to ask one more time," Night Sky said, nonchalantly. She hoofed her assault rifle, undaunted by the zebras who each now stood an entire head taller than us. Sprinkles did the same. “Give us the damned zed, and we’ll be on our way.”

My breaths were shallow and far in between as they stared gravely at one another, murmuring in their alien tongues. Just when I thought it was going to end in a bloodbath, a young stallion pushed past the zebras.

“It was me,” a mare’s trembling voice murmured. I narrowed my eyes at her. ‘Her?’

Her zebra kin shouted at her, trying to pull her back.

“Grasya!” the elder stallion yanked her away from us.

The young mare shrugged him off, standing at the edge of the porch.

Goddesses.

She didn’t look older than fifteen or sixteen.

“Just take me with you and don’t hurt anyone else … please. Let’s stop this madness.”

The zebra leader gawked. “No, you are not going anywhere!” he shouted, stepping in front of the zebra. He held her close. “You know what they will do to you!”

Night Sky grew impatient. Her voice trembled with mounting frustration. “Hand her over, now, and we’ll be out of your mane,” she ordered. Sprinkles looked like she was fighting the urge to pull the trigger.

“Look around you, you ponies! See our village – see our poverty! Have you no shame, living in your Dusktown while we freeze to death in the snow?” he snapped. “Too many of us died this winter, and if we lose any more … when the Tempest comes … our village will surely die! We have too many tools and not enough zebras to use them.” He wrenched Grasya away with a forehoof. “You’re taking from beggars, can’t you see?”

Night Sky and Sprinkles looked at each other in exasperation. They didn’t care.

“Leave our village – leave, and don’t come back!” the zebra growled.

The mercs chambered rounds into their rifles.

One of the zebra stallions racked his shotgun’s slider.

“NO!” Zebra Leader shouted to the others as they started forward. “Huwag mo silang patulan!” But his words did nothing to calm them. “This is what they want! Don’t give it to them!”

The zebra shouldered his shotgun.

Zebra leader flung his forehooves in front of him. “NO -”

Night Sky tipped her head to the side.

CRACK!

My heart skipped a beat.

The zebra’s head exploded in a shower of bone and gore.

Warm chunks splattered across my face.

An explosion ripped through the hut behind them, and I watched as the night turned to day. The jarring shockwave blasted apart its walls and tore down its ceiling, hurling zebras off their hooves. Grasya’s eyes widened at me in horror. I watched as she disappeared beneath the collapsing debris.

I opened my mouth to scream – and Night Sky and Sprinkles sunk their triggers back.

The zebra with the shotgun convulsed – screaming, ragged, bloody holes exploding across his entire body. He took a bleeding step forward before his chest blew out in a splash of gore, Gail’s black form sweeping over us.

“Stop!” I shrieked over the gunfire, blood streaming down my face as the zebras collapsed into the melting, crimson snow. “STOP!”

But they didn’t.

Zebras stumbled out of the flames. Their coats sloughed off and their manes burned away with every step they took, collapsing to the snow to smolder and smoke like discarded, overcooked heaps of meat. Those who made it out in time before the fires could engulf them galloped away from the inferno to safety.

But Night Sky swung her rifle wide to meet them. She mowed them down. Every single one of them.

The mercs cut them down with short, controlled, well-placed bursts.

It was target practice.

It was a massacre.

I covered my ears with my hooves and sank into the snow, shrieking my throat raw. But my voice and hooves alone couldn’t drown out their horrifying, agonizing screams as everyone burned and died around me.

Everyone. Burned. Butchered.

All the while, explosions ripped across the village. Some tried to flee, only to be crushed beneath the rubble – or gunned down as they fled. Others simply ceased to exist as Bone Charm sent rocket after rocket shrieking into the village.

And another, and another.

CRACK!

Another zebra to feed the flames.

Something broke apart inside of me. The world around me seemed to quake as a scream fought its way to my throat.

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!?” I wailed, tackling Night Sky to the ground.

“Get the fuck off me, Red Dawn!” she screamed, bucking me off of her.

“You killed them!” I howled, galloping after her with my horn bowed forward. “YOU FUCKING KILLED THEM –”

She sidestepped and held out a foreleg – and I slammed muzzle-first into the snow. I rose to my haunches. And stayed that way. Wicked firelight danced across my blood-drained face.

A cabin exploded to my left, showering my huddled form with gravel and debris. Small shapes scrambled out of it as its roof began to collapse.

The mercs turned to face them.

My heart nearly skipped a beat.

‘No.’

Night Sky lifted a hoof.

And the foals scrambled away, shrieking into the night. One of the fillies stopped outside the porch as her brothers and sisters fled into the darkness.

The gunfire stopped. Heads turned. We watched in suffocating silence as a zebra mare, charred from head to toe, stumbled out of the cabin.

Her eyelids were fused shut. And yet she knew when she heard her daughter’s voice.

She fell to her haunches beside to her, saying not a single word as the filly wrapped her little legs around her mother’s charred trembling body. She wept, burying her muzzle into her mother’s blackened, flaking coat. I watched as the mare with the burned out eyes slowly drew her daughter close and squeezed her tight, her shoulders rocking with agonizing sobs.

The filly threw her head back and let out an anguished wail that shook me to the core. She hugged her mother close. Her mother … butchered and cooked like a piece of meat.

She screamed until she screamed her throat raw. She screamed until her mother’s trembling legs stilled. Until her mother’s limp body slumped into snow.

Dead.

Another zebra to feed the flames.

All around me, the hellish inferno devoured the town, painting my coat white with its cruel glow. I stared into the flames with watery eyes and the flames stared back, the dying shrieks of zebras echoing distantly in my ears.

The flames told me that I was wrong.

Night Sky told me that I had to be willing to do anything I could to survive … but not like that! Goddesses, not like that! Those zebras – they had sons and daughters and husbands and wives – those mercs – those monsters were no better than the snow furies that slaughtered my friends!

How could I have just stood there and watched!? I watched as those monsters slaughtered everyone, and even then, my hooves were drenched with their blood.

I knew then that there was something monstrous about people who did nothing. People who did nothing as evil carried out its work.

I … could have done something. But I didn’t.

I just... watched.

‘… you’ve got to do what you need to do, Red Dawn,’ Night Sky’s voice echoed in my thoughts. ‘Maybe even if that means you live and some poor sod doesn’t …’

‘Whatever it takes…’ I heard myself say.

I clamped down on my pistol’s mouth bit and leveled it at Night Sky, toggling SATS. ‘I won’t be like her!’ I screamed inside of me, ‘I won’t let the wasteland turn me into a monster!’

Night Sky’s weapon flashed sluggishly as glowing teal crosshairs coalesced before my eyes. I watched. The world seemed to slow … and so did the zebra on the other end of Night Sky’s assault rifle. Tracers speared through her body as she tipped forward, threatening to topple into the drifts.

I mashed all my SATS charges and tagged Night Sky’s fucking head until they were spent, my tears glistening in the fiery glow.

My firing solution was true. But my conscience was not. My body tensed, and I hesitated. I simply couldn’t do it.

It was no use. I’d join the zebras if I did.

I let go.

I let go, and watched the zebra tumble end over end into the snow in a heap, leaving a ragged trail of blood behind her. Blood pooled around her, her legs twitching uncontrollably as she perished. Then nothing.

It was over.

We were done.

And so were the zebras.

Only the moaning of crumbling, burning wood remained. I stood there, unable to move, unable to rationalize what those ponies did.

I fell to my haunches, my crooked shadow billowing across the snow. Bathed in the cruel firelight, my conscience cried out in purgatory.

Gail crunched her paws into the snow behind me. The shadow of her winged form engulfed mine.

“Ready for Poneva, Red?” she asked, cheerily.

I crawled across the snow to the zebra mare that Night Sky gunned down. She was still breathing, taking ragged, shallow breaths as she teetered on the edge of life and death. I knelt over her, cradling the mare’s head in my hooves.

“I’m … I’m sorry ...” I whispered, holding her gently as she sputtered and choked. She pawed desperately at my cheek with a hoof, smearing her blood across my face. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know they’d do this … I’m not a monster … I’m not like them … please …”

I felt her hoof grasp my collar, her grip withering away as the seconds beat by with the waning pulse of her dying heart. We locked gazes for the briefest of moments.

Then the mare gurgled through a mouthful of blood. Her fluttering brown eyes met mine before they blinked for the last time. They stared back, lifeless and blank as I held her limp corpse.

Dead.

I hung my head low, trembling uncontrollably.

“What’ve you done … what’ve you done Gail? What’ve you people done …”

She didn’t answer me, her white feathers glowing a fiery orange.

“Was it worth it? Was it worth the fucking caps?”

She looked at her feet.

“You’re right … you’re no victim, Gail,” I said to her, my voice faltering. The griffon came to me, resting her claws on my shoulder. I shook her off, standing to my hooves.

“You’re a monster.”

She turned her head away from me, gazing into the flames. "I … I ..." her voice trailed off into silence.

I left her, trudging away from the funeral pyre.

Goddesses. I believed in them. I believed that they were right, that anything was worth doing to survive ... even if it meant that people died and I lived.

‘Was this what it took?’ I asked myself. ‘Was this going to be my life?’

I didn't know anymore.

But Night Sky was right about one thing: I couldn't escape it. That wasn't going to be the end of it. I realized then that if the wasteland didn’t kill me, it was going to kill my soul.

I followed them that far.

And that was as far as I was going to go.

‘Anywhere but here. Goddesses … anywhere but here.’

Footnote: Level up.
New Perk: Rapid Reload – All of your weapon reloads are 25% faster than normal.

Chapter 4 - Bad Pony - Pt I

Chapter 4
Bad Pony

“If that’s what it took, why not? You said you were looking for a Water Talisman. Wouldn’t you do anything to bring one back so everypony in your stable would live?”

Even in the distance, I could still see their village burning. Behind me, it was a dimly glowing ember in a sea of shifting snow. Their screams permeated my thoughts. Night Sky’s words blackened my conscience. It wasn’t right. They murdered those zebras, and they’d do it again if they could.

At the end of the day they’d get their caps.

I trudged through the fetlock deep snow, and at the end of the day, my hooves were still be empty. They did what I could not and could never have. They were doers. They were survivors.

And I was still a victim.

I made the choice of walking away from my only safe means of travel to Poneva.

I chose to be a good pony – at the cost of my stable. Every hour, every day spent out there was another day sheared off my stable’s lifespan. I wasted my time – I wasted their time! I threw out the window the time I spent with those mercs, all because I chose to have a conscience. All because I chose not be a monster.

All because I chose to be a good pony.

A darker part of my soul reasoned with me. I should have stayed with those mercs. I probably would’ve been in Poneva by then. I’d have a water talisman in my hooves and I’d be able to return to my stable, close those doors behind me, and forget about everything outside.

I threw my head back and screamed in frustration, stomping my hooves into the snow. I would have sacrificed those zebras a hundred times over if it meant my stable lived! Those surface dwelling scum shouldn’t have meant anything to me!

There was nothing left on the surface to save.

There was a reason why we never opened our doors … and the wasteland was it.

My stable … my stable was my world, and my world was my stable. I didn’t belong outside. My bloodshot eyes absorbed my surroundings: there was nothing but the chilling breeze as it blew powder over the pale dunes all around me. I was in the middle of nowhere.

Again.

All because I chose to be a good pony. The first ponies I met slaughtered my friends. The next group slaughtered an entire village of zebras. Was there anything that made those two groups different? What use was there being good if everyone I saw, everyone I met … wasn’t? It’d be a disadvantage. It’d make me weak.

It’d make me a dead pony.

For a moment, at Dusktown, I had hope. Hope that the darkness that wouldn’t leave that land didn’t blackened the hearts of everyone. I knew then as I plodded across the ashen drifts, that there were monsters in all of us.

There was a monster inside of Gail.

I knew that there was one in me too.

For hours that felt like days, I slogged through the snow as the faint twilight of day became darker and darker like light waning through the crack of a closing door. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, and in the distance – watching me were a dozen hunched over silhouettes, stalking through the falling darkness.

Bloodletters.

I tried counting them, but the wind that swept across the drifts distorted their dark, canine shapes with gusts of powdery snow. They blinked red on my EFS at least two or three at a time, before fading away from my range of detection. They followed me, close enough to see me, but not close enough for me to see them.

It didn’t take sapience to know that there was one of me, and a hell of a lot more of them.

I didn’t know what to expect – I didn’t want to know what those creatures could do. I gulped. I needed to find shelter, or someplace I could wall off or hide in.

If that could even stop them.

The pace of my hoofsteps quickened.

I looked behind me once more. Their shapes bobbed and slunk in the distance … following me.

I approached a steep incline and slid carefully down a massive hill of snow until I felt my hooves sink into the powder. My momentum pushed my hooves deeper – until they clopped dully against solid stone. My PipBuck told me that I entered a different zone. The Crystal Highway.

‘Thank Celestia,’ I thought.

At least I was getting somewhere. I glanced over my shoulder and didn’t see a single bloodletter behind me. But just because I couldn’t see them, didn’t mean they couldn’t see me.

‘Oh fuck.’

My eyes darted across the snow, scrutinizing the jagged cliffs that loomed over me. I was standing in a wide crack in the earth. For miles behind me, and miles ahead me, the canyon stretched onward. Winding through it was an eight lane highway that ran off in both directions.

I glared at the hill over my shoulder. It was too steep to climb back up.

There was no way out. All that was left was a lonely highway that hopefully led me to Poneva. So I started walking.

I glanced around, my PipBuck’s teal glow illuminating the graveyard of overturned, melted autowagons before me. Their blackened, twisted metal frames were like skeletons, littering the snow by the hundreds for miles upon miles – far beyond what my eyes could see.

And yet I could still walk among them, through them, around them. I would’ve thought that the highways would be packed bumper to bumper as everyone fled from the falling bombs. Spring Song knew. She and her family knew that the balefire would come … and yet they didn’t try to run.

Those ponies and their autowagons didn’t try, either. It was as if they didn’t even known what was coming.

I absorbed with my bloodshot eyes the vast expanse of melted wagon frames, and the shattered lane dividers, and the fractured bones that poked out of the blackened debris. I tried to imagine a different world. I tried to imagine what the world looked like before the world burned.

Around me flashed lanes of bustling autowagons, rumbling up and down the asphalt roads – a normal business day in Equestria, just like in the books.

Life had been going on as usual.

Life had been going on as usual when the balefire ended all life.

I blinked, and all I saw was a grim reminder of the wartime past. With nowhere to go but forward and back, I slogged onward through the snow-buried highway, passing under the pitch black shadows of fallen bridges and the tattered cliffs that hung over me.

Lightning Twirl’s words echoed in my head, ‘Follow the highway, and you’ll get somewhere.’

That somewhere, I prayed, was Poneva.

I trudged onward, following a long wagon-sized path that was bulldozed through the steel graveyard. It looked like a stampede plowed through the lanes, knocking aside and crushing the twisted metal skeletons against the shoulders to make room for traveling wastelanders.

But the snow there looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages. The powder was fresh.

The only trail I could see was the trail I was leaving behind me.

By chance I came across a wagon that was flipped over so that one set of its blackened wheel spokes was pointing skywards. I lowered myself to my chest and peeked underneath it through the gutter between its hull and the snow that buried it. With grim curiosity, I waved my PipBuck at its mouth and caught a flash of white.

I started digging. I dredged the hole deeper into the gutter, sweeping the freezing powder away until I could see inside the pitch black interior of the overturned wagon. The light of my PipBuck’s screen parted the darkness like curtains on a stage.

Skeletons. Four of them.

Some of the bones were too small to belong to that of a full grown mare or stallion.

My expression went grim as I stared into the wagon’s charred contents. There was not a single piece of luggage in sight. They didn’t know. Goddesses, how didn’t they know?

I gulped down a heavy lump in my throat as I stared at a small, half-buried shape in the snow. It was a foal.

‘Mommy …’ whispered a tiny voice from the shattered, grinning skull that peered up at me.

‘NOOO!’

I leaped to my hooves and banged my head against the wagon bed. My PipBuck flashed. Shadows loomed over me.

I shrieked – squeezed my eyes shut, and scrambled out of the darkness, my PipBuck’s beam flashing against their broken bones, painting their dying, anguished shadows against the wagon’s innards. I wrenched myself out of the darkness, gasping frantically for my breath as I kicked my hind legs away from that cold metal coffin.

I stared into the darkness with wide eyes, the screams of Spring Song’s foals slowly fading away into the breeze. I sat there as the wind wept a solemn song, my heavy breaths hissing through my lips with wisps of white vapor. Many shuddering seconds passed before I finally made my way back to the wagon and, with my forehooves, swept them over the gutter, filling it with snow.

I left the wagon behind me. I didn’t look back.

Once more I began the long walk down the lonely highway, into the darkness as the snowfall thickened. I stopped every now and then to pan my PipBuck’s teal light across the frigid snow swirls. Even inside the thick fabrics of my barding, I was cold – but inside, I was even colder. Desperation was all that was keeping me going. That road would take me to whatever end awaited me. I just knew it.

If waiting for me there wasn’t the salvation my stable needed, I didn’t know if a life outside was worth living. The dead called out to me to join them. The memories of Spring Song and her foals still haunted me even after I buried them. I knew they weren’t real. They were long dead. But I couldn’t stop shaking.

I was soft, like putty, and the wasteland was leaving its marks.

The night was now pitch black. It felt like I had been walking for hours, alone, when a yellow light shined upon my flank. It engulfed me in its glow, painting my shadow against the drifts.

I turned wearily, my right foreleg held over my eyes, shielding them from the glare. My pupils contracted as a large black mass with a strobe light trained upon me approached. Its rumbling engine was getting closer. I gulped a heavy lump down my throat as I stood my ground, unsure what to expect. As the autowagon closed in, several silhouetted equine heads bobbed in my direction.

The black mass stopped. I waited for their maniacal cackles, for a hail of bullets, hell, maybe even a rocket propelled grenade. Instead, eight ponies hopped over the wagon’s sideboards, the vehicle’s light still trained on me.

I reached out with a trembling foreleg and flashed them with my PipBbuck’s beam. Eight hooded ponies in thick snow barding trotted toward me. Held in their mouths or hooves, or floating next to them were an assortment of automatic weapons. To my grim relief, they weren’t furies. But for some reason, I didn’t really feel very relieved.

A stallion with a machine pistol trotted up to me, my apprehension reflecting dully in his battered black goggles. I didn’t dare to make any sudden movements.

“Lookit what we got here,” he said as I shielded my eyes with a foreleg. “Where’re you headed, boy?” the unicorn stallion drawled.

I gulped, taking a step back, narrowing my eyes at them.

“What does it matter to you?”

The sound of someone yanking his weapon’s charging handle pushed me another step back.

“Just wonderin’. Not that many ponies go this way up to Poneva on hoof. In fact, not that many ponies go up this way to Poneva at all, let alone by themselves.”

I snorted. So that road did lead to Poneva after all. “Well, no shit,” I murmured. “If you knew already, why’d you ask?”

The stallion glanced over at the others.

“Thought that since we was headin’ that same way, you might like to hitch a ride with us,” he said, reaching out with a foreleg. He grinned under his hood.

I shook my head, backing away carefully. “I won’t be going anywhere with anybody …” Every hoofstep I took back, they took another forward. “I can make it there myself.”

“Come on, boy. It’s dangerous out here, bloodletters and haunters and furies and such. It ain’t safe out here on your own.”

“No,” I said, firmly. I made it that far by myself, and I was intending on keeping it that way. Alive, alone, and away from those ponies, whoever they were.

I turned and started to trot the other way.

His grin widened as he shook his head.

“Hold on, wait a sec!” he said, throwing a hoof around my shoulder. I glanced over – and he was so close. So close that I could see the scratches in his goggles.

“Stay the fuck back!” I growled, shoving him away from me.

“Hey – hey – hey!” He smiled, standing on his hind legs and holding his forelegs in the air. “I was just gonna say that you remind me of somepony.”

I clenched my jaw. I didn’t have time for bullshit.

“Oh really?”

He nodded at me, nickering, “Yeah, yeah, you ponies know this guy too, right?” He fell on all fours and turned to the others.

They nodded, creeping towards me.

“Mhm, I’ve seen him around,” said a mare as she unslung a battle rifle from her back.

The ponies leveled their guns at me.

“Yeah, he’s that one slave.”

My eyes widened. “N-no …” I stammered, “I’m not a slave!”

They all laughed at me, the other stallion approaching me with a long metal chain.

“You are now,” he said with a wide grin.

I froze. My mouth opened and closed with words I couldn’t find the courage to say. My eyes flicked to the holster that was slung across my chest.

“No,” I said, backing away. “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” I pleaded with them; I didn’t want any more blood on my hooves.

The mare laughed, “Hurt!? Hahaha – you’re surrounded, colt.”

In my mind I begged them to leave. I begged Celestia to make them go away. I didn’t want to kill. Again.

I eyed my holster.

The unicorn pony chuckled, taking a menacing step toward me. “Don’t even think about it,” said the stallion, levitating his machine pistol to my head. “You’re coming with us whether you like it or not.”

My lungs ached. Then I realized that I was holding my breath.

I closed my eyes for a moment, and when they fluttered open, I exhaled, slowly. They couldn’t stop me. I wasn’t going to let anybody stop me.

“Fuck. You.”

I leaped into SATS.

CRACK – CRACK – CRACK!

The stallion’s goggles exploded inward. The pony with the shackles dropped dead before he could even scream. My third, aimed at the mare with the battle rifle flew wide.

‘Shit.’

“You son of a bitch!” she snarled. My eyes widened as they slung their weapons.

They wanted me alive.

I tongued my mouth bit, my pistol discharging the last of its magazine as a stallion wrenched it out of my teeth. In a whinnying frenzy, he spun around and bucked me in the chest, punching the air out of my lungs. I staggered to my hooves – and the mare careened into me from the side, slamming me into the powder. Hard.

I screamed, ramming a hoof into her throat. She threw her head back for a moment, choking for air before I threw a haymaker into her nose, peppering my muzzle with her blood.

I blinked away the scarlet and snarled like a cornered animal.

“FUCK YOU!” I cried out as I bucked her off of me. I heaved myself away, kicking up snow beneath me as I scrambled for my fallen pistol – a breath away from my hooves.

‘– won’t – be – a victim –’

Someone kicked it away.

“NO!” And a hoof slammed into my face.

I tried to rise to my hooves, only to be grabbed by the shoulders and hurled back into the snow. I screamed and flailed as the stallion and the mare pinned me to the ground on my chest, my forehooves held behind my back.

“NO – GET THE FUCK OFF!”

I looked up and a mare with blue goggles rushed toward me, a carbine levitating beside her. She looked down, clenching her teeth.

“Sugar Rum, do it!” the stallion screamed. Her lips pursed. And she slammed the buttstock of her carbine into my skull.

Stars exploded in my eyes. Blackness overtook my senses.

That lull in consciousness was all the time they needed. With a dull clank, I felt the cold touch of frozen metal trap both my fetlocks.

I laid there in a heap, beaten and overpowered. There was nothing I could do.

“No …” I whimpered, as they rolled me over on my back, a chain tugging against my forelegs. ‘This can’t be happening …’ A rivulet of blood trickled down my forehead and over my brow as they dragged me back to their wagon.

In that moment, I lost everything. Dew Drops’ scarf, my family pictures – everything in my bags - my holster and my gun. I lost the only thing worth living for in that wasteland. I lost what Night Sky and her crew washed their hooves in blood to keep.

“You did us a favor,” the mare with the battle rifle said into my ear. I looked up into the wagon bed and half a dozen weary eyes peered back down at me between the metal bars of a steel cage. “Now the cut’s split between the six of us.”

I was fucked. Fucked. All because I decided to keep my dignity and walk away from those mercs. My only safe passage to Poneva.

Everyone in Stable 91 was going to die, and it was all my fault.

I was Red Dawn. I was a victim.

‘Now I’m a slave.’

*

Chapter 4 - Bad Pony - Pt II

*

I stared down at my hooves as I sat in the back of a rumbling trailer.

I was getting to Poneva after all.

In shackles.

I sat on my haunches, chained to an overfilled, cramped cage with six shivering, miserable ponies like me trapped within. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to imagine myself like one of them.

They didn’t either.

It had been hours since I was taken. We rumbled down that long stretch of highway at a steady pace, as fast as their makeshift, jury-rigged autowagon could take us.

This, sadly, was yet another thing that Night Sky was right about. Slavers. I should’ve stayed with them. Ponies like me didn’t last too long out there, I came to realize. It’s why my friends didn’t last long. It’s why I wasn’t going to last long if I didn’t make it out of there soon.

As bleak as my situation looked, the only thing running circles around my head was – ‘how the hell was I going to get out of this?’ I lived to see my friends die, and walked away from certain death three times so far. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

It was my choice to pick up where my friends left off when the fucking wasteland stole them away from me. I could’ve chosen to tell Night Sky to fuck herself and just crawled into that grave I dug for myself. But I didn’t. If even that choice was taken away from me, I was already dead. Night Sky told me I didn’t get to choose the easy way out.

But if I was going to die, I was going to die saving my stable. Not for those ponies. Not for those fucking slavers.

I looked up and Sugar Rum, the mare that beat my skull in with her carbine, was watching me behind her blue goggles.

I shot her a baleful look that promised death. Sugar Rum held my burning gaze for a few heartbeats. She wasn’t smiling, but I wanted to tear her fucking face and her stupid goggles right off. With a snort of icy air, she turned away, panning her flashlight across the road.

I grinded my teeth together and eyeballed the autowagon’s backseat where they threw my bags. I narrowed them at the black shape of my holster.

My hooves wriggled helplessly against my shackles.

“Think we can sell any of them to Red Eye?” one of them asked, sitting inside the autowagon with a hoof resting casually on one of its steering levers.

The mare sitting next to him with the battle rifle just chuckled.

“Nah. Red Eye needs backbreakers. Not these poor little shits,” she scoffed, glancing over her shoulder and meeting my eyes.

I just glared at her.

“The plantations’ll take ‘em. East Eden’ll take any of ‘em. Hell, I think we can even make a comfort horse outta that one girl back there.”

My eyes finally wandered through the steel bars. I shouldn’t have looked. What I saw made my blood boil. The ponies within were battered and bruised. Some had black eyes. Others had bumps on their heads or patches of coat missing. One of the mares had a bloody, blackened behind. She was lying on the wagon floor with glassy eyes, not staring at anything in particular.

“Sunny Days would love her.” She hefted her battle rifle, leaning over her car seat at the other slavers. “I know we did.”

The fuckers just burst out laughing.

I clenched my teeth, glaring at the slavers with eyes that promised murder. One of them saw me and just kept laughing. They didn’t give two shits about what I thought of them as they drove the wagon through the debris-littered highway. But they were still shitheads. I wanted to see them burn for what they were doing to us.

I pinned my ears back, shaking my head as their boisterous laughter made my heart race. They just kept laughing at that poor mare. Laughing at the mare who was lying at the bottom of cage, broken and ravaged.

All but one of them.

“Come on Sugar Rum, I saw you looking at her pretty little flank!” Rifle Mare chuckled, grinning from ear to ear. “We all know you’re a filly-fooler!”

Sugar Rum kept staring over the sideboards at the jagged cliffs.

I kept staring into the cage. I couldn’t look away. Those ponies … they …

Each had a collar wrapped around their necks – wired collars that blinked with a pulsating red light. My expression darkened as one of the ponies met my eyes.

“What the hell are those things?” I murmured.

“Bomb collars,” said a mare with bandages around her chest.

My eyes widened. Horror flashed across my face.

“Goddesses … w-what did they do to you all?”

For several heartbeats, nopony answered. An earth pony in tattered snow barding pushed past the others, limping to the cage’s bars. “Took me while my daughter and I were scavenging for food,” he answered, faintly.

My jaw clenched. His filly was nowhere to be seen. “Your daughter …”

He looked at his hooves, then back at me with swollen, bloodshot eyes. He blinked furiously, shaking his head as they welled with tears. “They took me … and left her behind.”

I brought my trembling hooves to my face, my heart aching inside my chest.

“Why …” I asked. It was a question that didn’t need an answer. A question that couldn’t have had a real answer.

But they answered it anyways.

“Didn’t ya hear? East Eden can never have enough slaves,” another stallion croaked. He was missing several patches of coat. Curved scars lacerated his bare flesh.

I looked at him with grim curiosity. “What the fuck is an East Eden?”

The mare with bandages wrapped around her chest crawled to the metal bars. “They’re a plantation in Poneva. They need slaves to plow and harvest their fields.”

“They’re going to put us to work and work us to death,” growled the earth pony.

The mangy stallion shook his head. “That ain’t true. I heard they feed ya and put a roof over your head.”

“Bullshit!” the earth pony hissed. “They don’t give a fuck about any of us! Look at what they did to her!” He pointed a forehoof at the mare with the bloody flank. “And those bastards left my filly for dead!”

“Better than bein’ dead …” the mangy pony murmured.

My ears perked and my body went stiff.

“Three meals a day, and a bed to sleep in. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

My jaw dropped in horror as the mare slowly nodded in agreement. “Better than what I ever get … I scavenged everyday for something to eat before these slavers found me. Sometimes I’d go a few days or a week without something in my belly.”

A unicorn with a broken horn in the back of the cage turned his eyes low. “I’d do anything … anything for a bite. Just … something to eat,” he added, “I’m so hungry.”

The mare and the mangy pony nodded together, their wilted ears drooping pathetically.

“They’ll take care of us …” the mare whispered. “We’ll live. We’ll live …”

I stared at them with wide, bloodshot eyes. “What …?”

They all turned to look at me.

“WHAT!?” They cowered behind the bars with bleak, desperate eyes. “How are you okay with this!?”

None of the ponies said anything. Not even the earth pony. They were as beaten and hopeless as the frozen wasteland.

“You can’t be fucking serious?”

“You’re a stable pony,” the hornless unicorn began, eying my PipBuck. “You don’t know what it’s like out here … you don’t know …”

I closed my eyes, shaking my head furiously as he continued.

“You’re lucky if you eat once a day. You’re a king if you eat twice.”

“No. No … no – no.” I glared at the pathetic little pony. “This?” I said, pointing a forehoof at the mare with the bloodied flank. “This isn’t right. And nobody should be fucking okay with it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said a mare.

My ears jerked towards its source, and I slowly turned my head to face her. Sugar Rum was staring at me behind her blue goggles.

I trembled, a sneer tearing across my lips.

“It … doesn’t … matter?”

“East Eden’s better than out here,” Sugar Rum began. “Better than being dead.”

I started towards her – but my chains yanked me back. “You piece of shit … nothing out here is better than being dead.” I glared out into the distance. “I learned that the hard way when I left my stable … but you fuckers, you slaver pieces of trash make this world shittier than it already is.”

I stood to my hooves, pulling my chains as far as I could until I could see my ragged reflection in her goggles.

I whispered in a low voice, loud enough for her fucking ears to hear, “How do you live with yourself …”

Her goggles gave away nothing of the pony beneath.

Several long seconds passed until Sugar Rum finally replied, her voice trembling.

“It’s a business … you get paid … and when you get paid, you can put food on the table. If I don’t do this, my family will starve.”

“IT’S NOT WORTH IT!” I snapped. I remembered Night Sky – Gail – the village of burning zebras. I screamed into her face as if they were standing there before me. “It' s not fucking worth it! But you fuckers, you sick FUCKERS – that’s all it is to you, isn’t it!?” Sugar Rum turned her head away from me and stared off into the distance. My voice lowered as I craned my neck towards her.

“It’s just for the caps, isn’t it?” I grinned, mockingly. I glanced at the poor mare with the ruined flank, then back at Sugar Rum. “Look at me.”

She didn’t.

“LOOK AT ME!”

Her goggles turned shakily towards me like an unoiled machine.

I pointed at the glassy-eyed mare at the bottom of the cage. “You see that? Is that what you do? Is that … that work … worth it? How’d you like it if somepony did that to you?”

The slaves were as speechless as the slavers. I didn’t think they’d seen anyone mouth off to a slaver like that before. Sugar Rum looked at her hooves, and muttered something incomprehensible.

“What?” I said, slowly, “What the fuck did you just say?”

“I-I … I …” she stammered, choking on her own words. Sugar Rum sniffled, bowing her head for one dark moment. Her blue goggles turned to face me, and I saw the hatred in my own reflection. “I … don’t care. I-I don’t care.” She stared off into the distance. “I don’t fucking care …”

I closed my eyes and hung my head.

She didn’t care. She didn’t. Fucking. Care.

I collapsed upon my haunches in silence as the wind howled around me. No hope. There was no hope for those ponies. No hope for the wasteland. If only the balefire had just done the right thing and killed them all.

“Hey …” someone whispered. I looked up and into the cage. The ponies huddled within parted aside. The ravaged mare was looking straight … through me. “Thank you … you’re right: this isn’t okay,” she said, distantly, “But there’s nothing … nothing you can do now.

“There’s nothing any of us can do now …”

I looked down at my hooves. Maybe she was right. I wasn’t getting out alive. Neither of us were.

My chains were cold, cold steel. No amount of pulling, yanking, or bitching was going to save me now.

From the darkness, several octaves higher than the moan of the wind howled a creature that sounded nothing like anything I had ever heard. Sugar Rum straightened out, levitating her carbine over the wagon’s sideboard, her ears perked.

I heard it again, a blood-curdling, unnatural howl that shook my resolve. It roared from the darkness like a demon hound screaming out from the gates of hell. I pressed my back as close to the trailer’s sideboards as I could, the slaves inside the cage huddling together in fear. Fear. I thought I knew what it felt like to have fear.

I swung my head in every direction, trying to find the source of that hellish howling. But another creature roared with it. And another. And another. From the darkness they howled in unison – from every direction. With each quaking second that passed, another joined the nightmarish cacophony.

Then I saw them. Goddesses. There were so many of them.

Rising up from the ridgeline’s jagged cliffs were a dozen black shapes in all. Each hunched silhouette was as large as a third of the wagon’s frame. Each hunched silhouette was twice as large as a full grown stallion.

One of the slavers jumped to his hooves, a machine pistol in his mouth.

“BLOODLETTERS!”

“STEP ON IT!” Rifle Mare ordered, banging her hoof against the wagon’s sideboard. “We need to get the fuck away from those things!”

The driver nodded, and punched his hindhoof into the pedal. The wagon’s engine moaned as we accelerated.

But that resistance – that unwillingness to sit there and die set the creatures off. The prey was escaping.

And they needed to feed.

With a deafening roar, a bloodletter bounded deftly down the slope and hurled itself towards us, claws outstretched.

But it crashed into the drifts in an explosion of gravel and snow. The autowagon groaned onward as fast as a horse could gallop. It was behind us now. But there came echoing through my ears a mad howl. The bloodletter blew through the snow shower – loping explosively toward us. Faster than us. It wasn’t done with us yet.

I saw its coat – as white as snow. It was closing in, now. I could see its hungry, soulless eyes. I watched it as it snapped its yellowed teeth and snarled through its frothing mouth.

Seconds crawled by as the accelerating autowagon screamed into my ears. Then the beast threw its head back. It unleashed a bestial shriek that drowned out our engine’s feeble cries.

Somepony thrusted a rifle barrel over my shoulder.

“PUT ‘EM DOWN! DON’T LET ‘EM GET CLOSE!”

I ducked as everyone scrambled to take aim.

Gunfire lit up the night.

Chunks of the bloodletter’s flesh blew off its body as the battle rifle’s high caliber rounds tore into it. It yelped, faltered – snarled and didn’t lose a single step as more of the immense, white beasts leaped into the fray. I covered my ringing ears with my hooves and watched helplessly as their wolf-like silhouettes bounded down the hills from every side.

We were being surrounded.

One of the slavers beamed our path with the autowagon’s strobe light.

There was a flash of white – and I screamed as one of the bloodletters flung itself in front of our wagon. It squealed, and all I heard was a sickening crunch as the wagon flipped over – end over end – hurling away screaming ponies left and right -

The wagon crashed into the snow and the world around me exploded in a flash of violet magical fire.

The impact catapulted me violently into the air as the wagon smashed into a snow drift, throwing up showers of ashen powder. I thrashed my limbs through the air, the wind howling past my ears as I screamed for my life – and the chain around my fetlocks yanked me back down to the earth in a blur of flailing limbs.

I careened into the autowagon’s shattered frame, my forehead smashing through a ruined plank of wood. I stumbled to my hooves in a daze, blood running down my face.

All around me, ponies screamed. Only this time, it wasn’t a village burning.

Littering the snow were the broken remains of the slavers’ autowagon. The magically-powered engine was burning. And so was the driver. His motionless body, charred from the head to hoof smoked gruesomely in the wind.

Most of the others fared better, as the rest of them scrambled desperately to their hooves. One of the stallions burst through the debris, limping out into the open in the violet firelight. He looked at me. And I looked at him.

Then a bloodletter smashed into him.

It snapped its jaws around his throat and hurled him into the powder with a splash of arterial red. He didn’t even get a chance to scream.

I scrambled away. Screaming. Screaming as the creature tore into him, ripping from his ruined, mangled carcass a mouthful of bloody pony meat.

“Goddesses – oh my Celestia – Luna’s fucking grace!” I screamed as another bloodletter joined it and fought the other for the pony’s meaty limbs. There came a third, but it stopped, realizing that there wasn’t enough meat for the three of them.

A low growl rumbled inside its throat.

It saw me. It saw me. The bloodletter cocked its head and found the smell of my fear tantalizing.

It bared its wickedly sharp teeth and bounded toward me screaming for my bloody flesh. I turned and galloped away – but the chain yanked me back to the ground.

The bloodletter pounced. I felt its paws crash into me. It punched the air from my lungs and drove me deep into the snow, pinning me beneath it with the bulging, rippling muscles of its forelegs. I whimpered helplessly as I felt its claws dug into my barding.

It dropped its jaw, howled into my face, and snapped its teeth towards my throat.

I held out my hooves – and my chains shattered between its teeth. My eyes widened at my forehooves – free. But not for long. The beast snarled – spat out the broken links and dove back into me. I hurled my hooves into its throat and held it back with all the strength I had left … whimpering helplessly as I poured into my legs all the hope and desperation the wasteland hadn’t taken from me yet.

Its yellow teeth snapped a breath’s length away from my muzzle. Its black-veined eyes glared into mine.

It was too strong. I was just biding my time.

I was going to die.

It roared into my face, spraying my muzzle with ropes of thick, disgusting spittle. I smelled its breath. A breath that reeked with the stench of a vomit and rotting flesh. I could see chunks of ragged meat poking out between its teeth.

Pony meat.

I screamed.

With a nightmarish screech, the bloodletter threw its head back. The flesh of its muzzle throbbed. Swelled. Popped. Its lower jaw snapped wide open – torn and distended as its howls escalated into deafening, ear piercing shrieks.

Then its head began to twitch. It widened. And widened.

And its head ripped open.

It exploded outward – only its head didn’t come apart. With a gurgling hiss, a long, writhing proboscis erupted out from the fleshy hole that was its throat between its four dripping, quivering mandibles.

“HOLY SHIT – WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS THING!?”

The bloodletter rumbled a throaty growl, its fleshy gray proboscis widening to reveal rows upon rows of serrated teeth. It, about as long as my outstretched foreleg, snaked into the air as I held back the rest of its body with my faltering strength.

I bared my teeth and screamed helplessly into its snapping mandibles, trying to wrestle the beast off me. But my muscles were burning. It was getting closer. It was too strong.

And I was too weak.

I stared into its soulless, insatiable eyes. A web of black veins bulged and throbbed around its sclera. It pushed. And pushed. And pushed.

My legs wobbled, and ached.

I faltered.

In a heartbeat, my limbs slackened. It fell upon me.

I shrieked as blood splashed onto my face and onto my chest. It tore into me, ripping me open. I lay there screaming – bleeding out.

But the blood wasn’t mine.

The mutant abomination let out a dying shriek and slumped on top of me with a dozen ragged holes pouring blackish blood out of its head and throat. I wrestled it away with a faint groan, and saw Sugar Rum’s carbine smoking.

She lowered her weapon and flung my belongings at me. I looked at her, painted in thick, steaming blood. Sugar Rum nodded once, levitated her gun, and continued firing. Two of the remaining slavers galloped towards her, unleashing their automatic weapons upon the bloodletters as they stalked toward us.

I slipped on my holster, threw on my saddlebags, and wrapped Dew Drops' scarf around my neck. Somepony screamed behind me, and I whirled on my hooves.

‘Goddesses … no.’

Three bloodletters circled the cage, snarling … biding their time knowing that their prey was lying helplessly upon a silver platter before them. All they had to do was pounce.

The ponies huddled together inside. Trapped. They were but a single corpulent breath away from a gruesome end.

“HELP! SOMEPONY HELP US!” the bandaged mare begged.

“GET US OUT OF HERE!”

“The cage!” I pointed a hoof at the ponies that were cowering within. “We need to help them!”

The slavers looked the other way. Sugar Rum galloped towards me.

“The key – find the key!” she screamed.

I panned my PipBuck’s light across the snow and spotted something shiny. I kicked my legs towards it - and a howling bloodletter landed in front of me.

It thrashed through the drifts.

I watched as the key disappeared beneath the shifting snow.

I lost it.

I lost.

“NOOO!” I cried as I yanked the trigger back. It crashed into to the snow and slid to my hooves in a trail of gore.

Dead.

Like the slaves.

I turned my head and saw the bad go to worse. The ponies screamed as a bloodletter wrapped its jaws around one of the metal bars and yanked. The cage slammed into the snow on its side, pinning the creature beneath and hurling the ponies on top of it. They landed against the bars in a shrieking heap, and the bloodletter’s head split open, snaking its writhing proboscis through the bars.

It ripped into the mangy pony’s throat.

The veiny proboscis tore off a huge chunk of flesh – stripping flesh from bone, and he collapsed against the metal bars at the other end of the cage. Within seconds, the bloodletters outside tore him apart through the bars in a gory frenzy of snapping teeth. He screamed in silence, his throat shredded to the bone as they broke his legs and ripped them off through the bars.

I shook my head vigorously, a cold sweat pouring down my face as the sounds of bones breaking, of flesh tearing – of their gurgling cries for help yanked me underwater. I drowned in their agony, lowering myself to the snow and cradling my head in my hooves, closing my eyes and wishing there was something I could do. Something.

I tried to do something. I tried to help them. I tried to shoot those monsters. I stood to my hooves and yanked the trigger back. My bullets plunged deep, but did nothing as the beasts shrugged them off, unfazed in their enraged, mindless state.

“Dear Celestia … SOMEBODY HELP THEM!” I pleaded in desperation.

“Fuck ‘em,” the slaver mare with the battle rifle shouted back.

I froze.

“WHAT?!”

“FUCK ‘EM! Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

“YOU MOTHER FUCKERS!” I roared, swinging my pistol to face them. Then I heard the ravaged mare inside the cage scream. I turned. My eyes widened as the bloodletters tried to pull her through the bars. They couldn’t. They tore her head off instead, lapping at the fountain of blood that splashed all over their white coats.

As I stood there watching, the slavers turned and galloped away.

Everyone except Sugar Rum. We stood there and watched. We watched the feast.

The bloodletters tore into those defenseless morsels, devouring them alive – their shrieks dying beneath the beasts’ nightmarish howls. Whoever hadn’t already died pleaded for death as limbs tore, bones broke, and entrails spilled. The earth pony fell to the bottom of the cage, clutching his eviscerated innards as proboscides fought against his gory forelegs in an effort to yank away his intestines.

I started towards them, and paused.

It was no use. They were already dead. The beasts snarled and barked as they fed. I listened to the squelching of shredded pony meat. The disgusting pops of disarticulated bones. The gurgling cries of the dying ponies as the bloodletters devoured them alive.

I heard everything. Listened to everything as their screams echoed in my thoughts, clawing at the white walls of my conscience – staining them red … cracking the walls with every vicious, hungry snap.

I reared my head to the sky, yanked at my mane with my hooves, and screamed for Luna’s grace.

Everyone I tried to help slipped away from my hooves. Everyone.

With a whooping screech, one of the beasts leaped towards us. It pounced upon Sugar Rum, clawing through her throat with its razor sharp talons in one fell sweep. She stumbled backwards upon her hinds, her forelegs wrapped around her throat, blood spurting through her hooves.

I said nothing, numb as SATS guided rounds through the bloodletters head until my magazine clicked empty. Sugar Rum collapsed into the snow, her lifeblood melting through the powder around her.

I fell to my haunches beside her, and held out my hooves. She just swatted them away, shaking her head.

“You …” I whispered.

“Sorry – I’m sorry ... the shit I've done ... the ponies I've killed ... you’re right … not worth it,” she choked, blood running down her lips. She hoofed one of her chest pockets, and pulled out a frayed slip of paper, holding it out to me with a bloody hoof. It was an aged photograph of a golden yellow pony, a mare with braided blonde locks, and two pale coated twins.

“Take it … please …” she rasped. I slipped it into one of my vest pockets, nodding gravely. Sugar Rum lifted her blue goggles and pulled off her hood, revealing the golden-coated pony underneath. She gazed up at me with her watery blue eyes as the light within them began to fade.

“The slaves …” I began.

“I’ll take care of them …” Sugar Rum croaked. She levitated a small tube, and flipped it open. A detonator. “Go. If you find my daughters … my sister … tell them I-I … I went out … a good pony.”

I nodded. Shell shocked. I touched her cheek with a forehoof as tears welled up in my eyes.

I stood to my hooves and started forward … but I hesitated, glancing over my shoulder. Sugar Rum sat up, firing her carbine into the night.

I turned and kept going, no longer wanting to look back as I chased after the two remaining slavers. They hadn’t gotten far. I saw, splattered across the snow, a stallion, his carcass nearly pulled apart into two, and his viscera spilled across the melting drifts. Around him were two dead bloodletters, their cratered heads painting the snow red.

The other mare was on the ground, wrestling with one of the beasts.

“Help!” she begged as its proboscis chomped down on her shoulder and tore out a chunk of meat.

My horn glowed. My pistol lifted into the air. But I hesitated.

A part of me just wanted to keep running. I watched as she struggled, entranced. I felt it again. The darkest corners of my mind whispering to me. Telling me to run.

‘Why …’ I thought. ‘Why should I help you?

The night lit up for a brief moment with a resonating crack, silencing the dying screams behind me. Then a single gunshot echoed into the night.

My ears rang as I clenched my eyes shut.

‘Why …’

Only the bloodletters remained. I exhaled a shaky breath and opened my eyes.

SATS fixed me a firing solution. Bullets plunged into its coat, tumbling through its chest and exploding out the other side. It paused to scream, and the mare bucked it off her.

She scrambled to her hooves and broke off into a full on gallop, bloody hoofprints trailing behind her.

“C’mon, c’mon!” she shouted. I followed.

The road disappeared behind us as we scrambled up a steep hill of broken asphalt. We approached an ancient recharging station, with an aged, blackened sign that vaguely read ‘Mane 7-Eleven’. Not too far behind us, the bloodletters closed in.

Rifle Mare bucked open the door and we charged in, not caring what might be lying in wait within. I slammed the door behind us and scrambled inside. The mare pushed a half-disintegrated shelf in front of it, bits of blackened miscellanea spilling from its shelves as we heaved it into place.

For good measure, we heaved against the door two more – but even then, we were only delaying the inevitable. Outside, our horrible deaths awaited us. We were going to be eaten alive by those mutant abominations. The door rattled and quaked, the wooden barrier threatening to snap. It splintered and tore open, and the enraged, black-veined eye of a snarling bloodletter glared back at us.

“Shit! These things are fucking strong!” the mare screamed, backing away from the barricades. The door bucked inward once more with a jarring slam, and one of the shelves fell over in a heap of shattered wood and metal, kicking up a shower of ash from the floor.

The slaver turned to look at me, levitating a pistol from her holster.

“If we make it out of this, I’ll let you go.”

My expression darkened. We were going to die, and that was what she was thinking. To her, I was still just another slave. She left them behind for dead – for bait so she could escape, and didn’t give a single shit.

And I knew that she would do it again – to me … just … to save … her skin.

She … she cared only about herself. I stared at her with a disturbing calmness that would have frightened me if I was looking in a mirror. I shivered once beneath my barding.

Then nothing.

In that moment, the bestial roars outside, my heaving chest, my pounding temples – they all faded away into a grim silence.

Cold black paint trickled down the pockmarked walls of my conscience. I let the floodgates part.

I decided that only one of us was going to make it out alive.

I learn from my mistakes. I don’t make the same mistakes twice. And you know what?

Good things happen to bad ponies.

“W-why are you looking at me like that?”

I slipped into SATS.

Her knees snapped beneath her like wooden planks with satisfying, wet cracks.

She let out a horrifying scream as her pistol discharged into my kevlar vest.

I felt nothing.

I watched with an icy stare as she crumbled to the floor.

“Y-you SON OF A BITCH!” she wailed as I spun around and ran the other way. One of the shelves went down in a deafening crash of splintered wood. She crawled across the floor with her useless forelegs and leaned against the final barricade, holding it against the door for her dear life. Outside, the monsters rammed their bodies against the door behind her.

“NO! Don’t!”

I galloped away from her. I didn’t lose a single step.

“DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!”

She was sobbing now.

“PLEASE!”

I didn’t look back. The doors smashed open and their carnal, bestial roars echoed behind me. They tore into her, the sounds of her flesh tearing – her bones breaking … they crashed against my ears like waves on a seashore as the bloodletters ripped her apart.

Limb. From. Limb.

I bucked down the backdoor and galloped out into the snow, the mare’s frantic, gurgling screams dying away behind me. My hooves pounded into the drifts, kicking up showers of powder as I ran for my life.

My life.

I ran until the Mane 7-Eleven disappeared behind me in a under a blanket of thick snowfall. For what seemed like hours, I galloped on until my legs gave out beneath me and I collapsed into the snow. Out of breath, I wheezed for air, filling my lungs with biting cold oxygen that reminded me that I … I was still alive.

I struggled to my hooves and looked up. A sign. I beamed it with my PipBuck’s teal glow.

Welcome to the City of Poneva.

Population 5,390,000.

I stared up at the sign in disbelief, my breaths coming in and out as coughs. I held out my forelegs and hugged the sign’s metal posts, gasping for breath. I wheezed, fell to my haunches and threw up acid, because I had nothing left to heave. I slumped to the drifts, curled up into a ball, writhing as my stomach churned and my head spun.

I inhaled deeply and exhaled, my trembling breath slowly dissipating into the frozen darkness.

A wide grin slowly stretched across my face.

“Ha … ha …” I breathed. “Hahaha ... hahahaha ...” I closed my eyes, threw my head back and laughed. I whooped with maddening hilarity until my cackles turned to chuckles, and my chuckles turned into cries.

I choked on my trembling sobs as warm, fresh tears welled out of my weary eyes. I wept into my hooves, my tears mingling with the dried crimson that splattered my face, turning red, and seething down my cheeks in dark rivulets.

I sat on my haunches in the snow, staring off into the distance, my heart racing, my lungs heaving, and my body shuddering.

The huge, towering skyscrapers of Poneva rose up above the dim suburbs and into the clouds, lights and distant signs twinkling into the night as far as the eye could see.

‘I made it, Dew Drops, I made it.’

‘I’m alive. I won.’

That was all that mattered.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Mare Killer - In combat, you do +10% damage against female opponents. Outside of combat, you'll sometimes have access to unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex.

Author's Note

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Chapter 5 - One With None - Pt I

Chapter 5
One With None

“Not that many ponies go this way up to Poneva on hoof. In fact, not that many ponies go up this way to Poneva at all, let alone by themselves.”

In solemn quietude, I followed a battered wagon, Dew Drops’ blood-speckled scarf billowing behind me in the chilling breeze.

Across the broken, half-buried road, the wind blew gusts of swirling snowflakes that clung loosely to the soiled fabrics of my battered barding. Beneath my vest’s kevlar plates, my bruised, livid flesh ached, sending sharp stabs of pain through my chest with every trembling breath I took.

I was exhausted. There wasn’t a single muscle in my body that wasn’t sore. Every step was a step made with aching exertion.

I glanced over my shoulder, and saw far-flung groups of ponies trotting distantly behind me, having merged back into the Crystal Highway from another road that bypassed the canyon I nearly died in several hours ago.

That other road must’ve been the one Night Sky and the others would’ve taken. The route I would’ve taken with them.

I sighed. It didn’t matter anymore.

Several miles away in the distance, Poneva’s tattered skyscrapers, towers that may have been taller once, loomed over the fallen city like tombstones, somber reminders of a better age. An age thrown away by the same ponies that preached their damned friendship across Equestria.

I looked around at the cold indifferent faces that passed by as wagons and ponies trotted past me. Where was that friendship now?

I certainly had none of it left. Nobody left.

I exhaled a trembling breath, and willed my legs to keep moving. I was almost there. I could already see the city walls and make out the pony-shaped silhouettes standing upon its ramparts.

Well, ‘walls’ was the closest word I could think of to describe what encircled the city. Erected between the city’s roads were immense, patchwork, junk-made obstructions that blocked off open roads between Poneva’s high rises, and barricaded intact buildings. Silhouettes hobbled across ramparts of junk and ladders that hung over the streets between the boarded up derelicts.

What with the terrors that lurked outside in the wilderness, it wasn’t too surprising that they decided to just build a huge wall to keep the monsters out.

Somehow, I was convinced that behind those walls, life was somewhat safer than life out there, despite what Duster told me. Hooligans and gangsters or not, I preferred to be shot at by other people, not eaten alive by some mutant abomination from hell.

My heart fluttered with distant hope. ‘Maybe,’ I thought, ‘Just maybe, I’ll survive this.’

All around me, the ruins became denser as I approached the city walls.

The blackened rubble and dilapidated metal skeletons that lined the streets were all that remained of the city’s surrounding suburbs and countryside. Off in the great distance beyond Poneva’s walls stretched only ruin.

As remote as Spring Song’s woodland cottage was, even it was not far enough to escape the infernal hellfire that scoured the earth. I wasn’t sure if it was possible for balefire to reach as far as it did. Poneva city rose up around me for hundreds of miles. It sent shivers down my spine thinking that one single bomb… one bomb could’ve destroyed so much. There had to be more than one …

It was hard to believe. But so was everything else I had seen so far in that frozen hell of a wasteland.

I sighed, glancing around me.

Snaking along the road that lead to the city gates was a thinning trail of shivering ponies. I paused for a moment and glanced over my shoulder. Behind me and around me, and at a cautious distance trotted ponies from all walks of life. Traders and their wagons full of machinery, medicines, canned foods, and the occasional firearms rattled past me. I shared the road with the infrequent slaver wagon which I met with a burning glare that turned away heads – slaver and slave alike.

I bared my teeth through an amused grin as a slaver with an assault rifle eyed me up and down and trotted to the other side of the wagon bed.

If it wasn’t the hatred in my eyes that was leaving them with their tails tucked between their legs, I wasn’t sure what was. I sure as hell didn’t scare Sugar Rum’s crew much when they tried to take me. I wondered what made things so different that time?

A wagon full of wayward travelers peered down at me from behind the sideboards of their rickety contraption, and shot me strange, ghastly looks. I narrowed my eyes at them and they looked away or busied themselves with invisible doodads in lame attempts to lose my attention.

One mare, as she led her pack animals through the snow, took one look at me and mouthed ‘holy shit’, before quickening her pace.

‘Why the hell is everybody looking at me like that?!’ I thought, ‘Did I step in shit or something?’

Those ponies looked like they just saw a ghost.

I grumbled irritably as I plodded through the snow, their awkward stares tearing at my already frayed nerves. A wagon groaned past me to my right. A colt wearing a hat too big for his head ogled me with wide eyes.

I gave him the friendliest, most innocent grin I could muster. But my smile capsized when he let out a terrified squeak and ducked underneath the wagon’s sideboard.

"You little shit …" I grumbled.

I caught someone staring at me in my peripherals. I spun around and jabbed a hoof at him.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?”

He swatted my foreleg away and pelted me with bottlecaps. “S-shit, just take my damn caps and leave me alone!” he cried, galloping away from me in horror.

“Yeah, fuck you too,” I muttered, a hoofful of caps now resting in the snow before me. “These are mine now.” I stooped over as ponies continued to avoid me, gathering up the caps in my hooves while mumbling obscenities.

I exhaled a shuddering, exasperated breath of mist and stopped for a moment to rub my weary eyes.

My hooves came away from my face encrusted with brittle crumbs of dried blood. I glared at my trembling hooves with grim, dark eyes. Down my chest, I saw that I was painted with it. Blood. Everywhere. My barding was a canvas of dark red splatters, grisly bits of hardened gore, and vicious bullet holes that perforated my chest.

If they knew that my barding was bulletproof, they might not have thought that I was some kind nightmarish zombie pony.

Hell, even my mane sported splotches of contrasting dark reds.

‘Yay. Highlights.’

It made my stomach churn. I wasn't sure what blood was mine, or who it belonged to. All I knew was that some of them were stains that couldn’t be washed away.

I remembered that mare I murdered. How she begged. Sobbed. Cried.

I remembered how easy it was to just walk away.

In my mind I tried to rationalize it. I tried to justify it – I kept telling myself that I never would have survived that massacre had I not done what I did.

Bait.

That was how I used her. She was bait. But she was a slaver, a shitty excuse for a pony. She was a bad pony, and bad ponies needed to get what was coming to them.

But then I wondered: what did that make me? Maybe she too had a family, a family who was wondering where she was and if she’d ever return home to put food on the table.

Like Sugar Rum.

I clenched my eyes closed and cradled my head in my weary hooves. The doubt slowly faded away as my mind reclined into chilling tranquility.

She was a slaver. Maybe she deserved to die.

I sighed a trembling, misty breath and watched it dissipate into the frigid breeze. I turned my gaze to my hooves, avoiding everyone’s frightened eyes … and kept walking.

In my weary state, I couldn’t risk attracting too much attention. I couldn’t risk getting into another fight. I could feel it … feel it in the throbs that clenched inside my skull. I was hungry and exhausted. My blood sugar was low and I was running even lower on ammunition – not that I needed to put a bullet in somebody, then and there.

My impeccable fashion sense was keeping most of them away from me, anyways.

I keyed my PipBuck’s inventory and scrolled through the belongings I logged in my saddlebags. Aside from my tools, which included my spade, twelve 10mm rounds and one health potion were all I had left.

I wasn’t even sure if I even had any fight left in me.

I didn’t want to fight unless I really had to. I was still a glorified earth pony with a horn for fuck’s sake. I needed to rest.

But most of all, I still had a promise to keep.

I couldn’t let Dew Drops down – I couldn't let my stable down.

A mile later and several minutes spent trying not to look at anybody in the eye passed, and Poneva’s corrugated walls and decrepit skyscrapers began to tower over me. I felt like I reached the gates to salvation. I was so close. So close, that I could feel the weight of a water talisman resting upon my hooves. I held up my right forehoof and gazed at it longingly, my leg shaking uncontrollably as it hung in the air, empty.

As I approached Poneva’s gates, I walked alongside a lonely wagon. It was noticeably different from the rest of the jury-rigged or built-from-scratch wagons that rumbled around me. It looked to have been a work of impeccable craftsmanship. Once.

The dark purple paint that covered its metal panels were stripped away in many places, scored by blades and gunfire. The low hum of a fusion core engine within reminded me that it wasn’t just some jury-rigged wreck.

I looked inside the wagon and what I saw startled the ever-living shit out of me.

“What the hell …” I murmured, as a black-coated pony met my stare. I gave him a wide-eyed look over and saw that he was a pegasus … except instead of feathered wings tucked at his sides, black leathery bat wings were folded behind him.

He stared through me with blank, shell-shocked eyes, his muzzle resting upon his hooves as he leaned out of the wagon to watch the snow drifts and ruins pass by. If the pony was in any way repulsed by my appearance, he wasn’t going to tell me. The callousness of his gaze sent shivers down my spine.

I turned my head low and chanced a glance at the pony’s face once more. He, like the other ponies inside the wagon had piercing, vividly-colored eyes, bat wings, and fuzzy, elongated ears that dwarfed my own.

The bat ponies looked worn to the bone, like they’d been through the depths of hell and back – but not without hell leaving upon them its marks. Many of them sported vicious scars that stretched down their muzzles to disappear beneath their frayed barding.

I didn’t want to imagine what sort of monster could have hurt them that way. Some wounds looked to be deliberately shaped, as if they were tortured, toyed with, or made to suffer at the hooves or talons of some laughing, insidious creature.

I wanted to relate their scars to snow furies … but from my experience, they were more of a force of nature than they were calculating torturers.

Inside of their battered wagon, the weary souls huddled together in silence as it rumbled along the road. Seeing people like that really made me question if I truly understood what suffering meant.

I slowed my trot to a walk and trailed behind them as they neared the gates. I spotted ponies standing on the side of the road. The bat ponies slowed as the others took notice. They trotted towards the wagon as it approached.

We came closer, and I saw that they were wearing matching barding.

Those ponies – with not a single mare among them, were garbed with an assortment of reddish headwear or barding, from scarlet bandannas wrapped around their muzzles, to do-rags tied around their cropped manes. Others simply wore barding that was of a shade relative to the color red.

‘How cute,’ I thought, darkly.

Unlike all of the ponies around me, they were all armed. Armed with guns that looked newer and better maintained than the weathered, and in some cases, tattered clothes on their backs.

One of the red ponies galloped back to the herd of unruly stallions with a bag of jingling caps. They erupted with boisterous laughter and shoved each other around, trying to get their teeth on that pony’s coins.

The pony stumbled away, spilling his caps before getting into a full on brawl with another. He bucked the pony away from him and swept up his booty, stuffing it into his saddlebag.

‘What fucking idiots,’ I thought. Those guards were far from conventional. Though I wasn’t even sure if the professional tone the word ‘guard’ had with it could even apply to that rabble. When I thought of a guard, I thought of Lightning Twirl in her well-pressed uniform and snugly-fitted kevlar vest.

But those ponies? Bullies – thugs – scum would’ve been even more appropriate.

I remembered what Duster said to me at the caravan: pay the toll, and you probably won’t have any problems. Probably.

One of them, visibly irritated by his empty hooves, turned his glare to the wagon of bat ponies and drew his shotgun, a devious grin stretching across his face. I stepped off the road and slunk back into the darkness. I couldn’t afford to get myself dragged in another massacre.

I had been doing a lot of that since I left home.

I pulled off Dew Drops’ scarf and slipped it gingerly into my bags. Its white stripes would give me away if someone shined a light on me – and I couldn’t risk that. Not in my current state. I lowered myself into the snow, shivering against its icy touch as I slid one hoof in front of the other.

My brown coat and dark blue barding melted into the night as I stalked through the snow and ruin beneath the shadow of Poneva city. I crawled, as quiet as the shallow breaths that slithered out through my cracked lips.

I paused, lying prone behind a broken retaining wall and peaking over the debris-littered snow drifts. Letting out a trembling breath, I scrutinized the red-garbed ponies that approached the wagon with narrowed eyes. They crowded around it like radroaches swarming a fallen morsel.

“Hey!” one of them shouted, raising a hoof to the wagon. “Pay up, or get the fuck out!”

I watched quietly, holding my breath as a bat pony mare dismounted and dug through her pockets. A hoofful of jingling caps fell into the hoof of a glaring red pony.

The toll collector glanced at his hoof, and snorted. He stood there, eyed the mare up and down, shook the sack of caps, and held her stare.

My eyes widened as he threw it to the snow.

The bat pony’s jaw dropped. “What!?”

He leaned in, baring his teeth. “You’re a hundred caps short, bitch!”

“I-I thought the toll was twenty-five caps!" she stammered in her strange, foreign accent. Her winged kin peeked over the sideboard, chattering with one another in hushed voices.

“The toll’s whatever the fuck I say it is, you bat-winged freak.” I glared at him as he stood on his hinds and folded his legs across his chest. “Now pay the fuck up.”

“Those are all the caps we have left …” she murmured.

He just threw his head back and laughed in the mare's face.

“We gonna have problems, bat girl?” the stallion growled, shoving her into the wagon’s sideboard. She grunted as the vehicle shook against her.

I clenched my jaw.

“Please ... all we want is to find shelter from the Tempest!” she pleaded, cupping her forehooves together. "We can’t survive out here … please – keep the caps – just let us go!"

The collector snorted as his cronies approached, “So ... you bat pony freaks think you can short change the Blood Brothers?” The gang of red ponies swarmed together, crooked bats, rusty pipes, and firearms in tow. They laughed, hefting their weapons and snorting madly – hungry for a fight. “Alright boys – show ‘em what happens to people who fuck with the Blood Brothers!” the stallion cried as the mob of barking red ponies surrounded the wagon.

Mares screamed inside as the reds prodded the ponies within with the ends of their weapons as if they were a gaggle of exotic zoo animals. The bat ponies huddled together and batted them away, frantically.

The guards that mounted the ramparts swung their floodlights to bathe the growing commotion in glaring, white light. The line of travelers behind them backed away, keeping a considerable distance between themselves and the firefight that was sure to erupt at any moment.

Perfect.

Fuck their tolls. Fuck those ponies. Fuck them and their stupid, red outfits.

It was the perfect opportunity to slip away unseen. I closed my eyes and listened as the cursing became shoving and the shoving became swinging. Bats and pipes banged heavily against the wagon’s sideboards as they threw punches and shoved each other away.

Perfect.

I crawled through the charred, concrete ruins.

I imagined myself crawling through the pipes at engineering … crawling beneath the steam clouds on the day my life made a turn for the worst. Head down, eyes forward. Head down, eyes forward. I was going to make it.

I stuck to the darkness like a shadow stuck to a body.

A voice cried out into the night. I froze.

“You fucking freaks!”

I peered through a crack in a retaining wall and saw a red crunch into the snow. The bat ponies hissed as the stallion’s brothers hauled him away, kicking and cursing.

His brothers reached for their guns – and a bat pony stallion rose up from behind the sideboards.

The reds stumbled upon their hooves. Some took a step back. Clenched between the bat pony’s teeth was a strange, bladed pistol that glowed with a dull green hue.

“Stay back! I mean it!”

CRACK!

Ponies screamed. I almost jumped out of my skin.

“Yeah – haha, stay down, fuckers!” a red shouted, his assault rifle smoking in the breeze as the bat ponies ducked for cover.

I shook my head. Things were falling through their hooves too quickly for my own comfort. My window of opportunity was closing. Fast. For some reason I found myself hoping they didn’t take the easy route and just shoot those ponies dead.

I could only hope that they’d take their sweet time. Distracted.

I lurched forward, not wanting to linger, crawling through the snow beneath a charred windowsill. I reached out with a foreleg and felt my barding tear.

Pain shot through my legs as stalagmites of icy, melted glass stabbed through my unarmored hind legs. I clenched my jaw, stifling a curse.

My ears perked. Hoofsteps plodded towards me. I curled up as close to the wall as I could, cringing as glass dug deep into the livid flesh beneath my coat. Half a foot of concrete away on the other side, two blood brothers propped up their bleeding comrade against the windowsill.

One of the reds snickered, “That little fuckface gotchu good, didn’t he?”

The other spat blood into the snow. “Fuck off – them ponies got some crazy zebra-jitsu bullshit!”

“They ain’t zebras, dumbass – they’re just bat ponies.”

“Well, no fuckin’ shit, asshole. But that prick hoofed my face twice before I could even count once!”

‘Idiots …’ I mouthed as I glared down the line of ruined suburbs. Twenty yards. I was about twenty yards away from the gates. A carpet of inviting darkness coaxed me onward. I shook my head, grinding my teeth as the ponies outside continued berating each other.

That damned glass and those stupid shitheads were going to get me killed.

“Alright – alright everypony! Settle down!" the collector shouted over the rabid reds. His brothers ignored him, cheering over the screaming bat ponies as they shook the wagon from side to side. “I said settle down!”

They didn’t.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” He blasted the snow at their hooves with buckshot.

They got the message and backed off, lowering their weapons and muttering things about the collector’s mother. In the relative silence, I narrowed my eyes through a crack that ran down the wall, trying to see past a pair of hooves.

“Ain't got the caps, eh?" A sick grin stretched across his face as he ran a hoof down the mare's neck. “Tell ya what: you find something else to pay me with and I’ll let y’all in.” She winced, craning her neck away from him as he chuckled softly. "I always did wanna know what batd pussy tasted like." He reached a hoof into her barding’s collar below her chin, and parted it slightly.

She swatted away his foreleg, cursing him in her foreign tongue as the stallion’s brothers cheered him on.

“Take it off, batbitch!” I heard one of the reds outside the windowsill shout.

I reached out with a foreleg and pulled myself forward.

Glass shattered beneath me. I clenched my eyes closed and swore under my breath as chunks of broken glass stabbed into my barding.

“The fuck was that?” one of the blood brothers hissed, leaning over the windowsill. I dug my back as far into the charred concrete as I possibly could like a startled radroach.

“Come on, lil filly, just one kiss!” The mare threw her forelegs in front of her and shrieked as he slammed her into the sideboards and planted rough kisses against her neck.

“GET OFF ME!” she shrieked – and shrill cries erupted into the night. The mare’s kin shot out of the wagon and into the air, beating their wings frantically. They barked at each other in their strange language as the blood brothers whooped and cursed.

There was going to be blood. And I needed to get out of there – fast –

“Ey Rocky, hoof me your flashlight. Thinkin’ maybe I heard somethin’ back here.”

A black pipe levitated over the window.

Goddesses. No.

My heart nearly skipped a beat. ‘Fuck!’

I swore under my breath and dragged myself forward.

CRACK!

‘Shit!’ I threw a glance over my shoulder.

Somepony outside screamed. Then silence. I peered out of a crack in the wall.

The toll collector was lying in a heap, a glowing spike of superheated metal jutting out between his eyes.

Everyone fell silent as the stench of burnt hair and cauterized flesh dissipated into the breeze. A bat pony snarled, beating his wings and baring his canines with that glowing pistol clenched between his teeth.

“You bat pony FREAKS!” someone roared.

And all the gunfire in the world erupted into the night.

The flashlight plummeted into the darkness, cracking against my ribcage as the brothers galloped off. I exhaled a jet of air as I bit my tongue and drew blood.

That was my chance. I paused, and peeked my head over the rubble as the brothers pumped lead into the wagon’s frame. I watched the bat ponies duck below, the wagon’s paint and hull chipping away with every spark, with every flash – with every bullet that blasted into its thick frame.

Horror flashed across my face. I wanted to help them somehow. Somehow. But if I did, if I rose up from the rubble, guns blazing, I knew that there wasn’t a single damned way in the world I’d make it out of there alive.

There I was, again … watching helplessly as more ponies died.

But they were as helpless as I was.

I was horrified to know, that if I had to choose …

I’d choose me.

And I chose to get the hell out of there … while I still could.

Snow kicked up behind me. I darted across the rubble, ducking into the darkness of some derelict ruin. Gunfire flashed through the shattered windowpanes and painted my shadow against the ruin’s bare walls. The world blurred past me as every throbbing fiber of my being, every sore muscle, every hypoglycemic blood vessel in my body focused on reaching the gate.

Alive.

I heaved myself over a collapsed doorway.

I didn’t even notice the blood brother that was loitering outside.

My eyes widened as I blundered into him and tackled him into the snow. We wrestled around in the darkness as he screamed for help.

“Get the fuck off me!” the young stallion cried out, trying to draw his pistol.

I swatted it out of his hooves, the weapon landing a foot away in the rubble.

“Stop!” I hissed at him as I bashed him across the skull with a forehoof, silencing his cries. “Be quiet – I don’t want to kill you!”

He bucked me off his chest – clawing at the snow in desperation – trying to hoof his fallen pistol with a dazed look in his eyes.

I growled and threw myself on top of him. If he didn’t stop screaming, he was going to get me killed.

He was going to get me killed.

“You – mother – fucker!” I snarled as I dropped my hooves onto his face again and again, my mind reeling as fresh blood peppered my muzzle.

“H-help!” The pony shielded his battered face with trembling hooves.

In my peripherals I caught sight of the bat pony wagon – surrounded by half a dozen bloodied corpses. The bat ponies within unloaded with everything they had with terrifyingly pinpoint accuracy, cutting down any red that they saw.

That momentary segue was all he needed. Hooves slammed into my gut, summoning bile to my throat. Without a moment to spare, he wrestled me to the powder and trampled me beneath his hooves as he leaped to all fours.

Whipping his mane back, he screamed over the gunfire, “H-help! Runner! We got a –”

I bowed my head and galloped straight at him.

My horn plunged into his gut.

I wrenched my head away and ripped out of him in a splash of bloody gore. He stumbled backwards onto his hinds, whimpering helplessly with wide eyes, stunned – stunned as he clutched the ragged hole in his stomach.

He gasped for air and dropped his jaw. I knew what he was going to do next.

I didn’t even give him a chance to scream.

Not again.

I tackled him to the snow. The stallion writhed beneath me, knocking his pistol away into the darkness.

I felt my hooves wrap around his throat.

“Shut up … shut up ...” I hissed into his muzzle. He batted at me with his faltering forelegs, unable to scream as he gasped and choked. “SHUT. UP.”

I squeezed. I squeezed, and squeezed. Tighter, and tighter. His hooves pawed and flailed at my muzzle as I crushed his windpipe and cold sweat ran down my face.

My muscles tensed. My forelegs trembled. My heart quaked faster than I could breathe – but I didn’t stop.

Stars flashed in my eyes. A dull ringing invaded my senses. All I could hear was my quaking heartbeat and my frantic breaths. Dark veiny tunnels closed in around me, my face contorting into an anguished grimace as my lucidity plunged into the darkness … drowning like a ship sinking beneath the waves of a frozen sea.

I lost myself in his terrified eyes, the eyes of a pony who knew he was going to die. I gazed at the reflection that stared back, its teeth bared, its coat bathed in blood, and its darkened face sneering madly.

I felt nothing. I thought nothing. The stallion moved his mouth but I couldn’t hear a thing. Not. A single. Thing.

It only made me squeeze harder.

“I … won’t … be … a victim …” I heard someone whisper, distantly.

Muzzle flashes illuminated the darkening windows of his bulging eyes as his life ticked away with every suffocating second that dragged by. My hooves dug deep, tearing into the flesh of his throat. He wept a rivulet of blood that streamed down his cheek … down my hoof as I squeezed … and squeezed … and squeezed.

“You can’t stop me. Not this close. No one can stop me, now …”

It was over as fast as it began.

It was over before my brain even registered it.

Through the dark, veiny tunnels of my eyes, I gazed back at his bleeding, agonized stare. I collapsed onto my haunches over his lifeless corpse, peering down at my trembling hooves in horror. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stumbled to my ungainly legs, taking shuddering gasps for air that did nothing to slow the pounding in my chest.

I bowed my head and saw in the darkness, beneath my hooves …

A pony.

There was a hole in his chest. There were bruises around his throat. There was a puddle of blood pooling around his still, unmoving corpse.

I almost wanted to scream.

But instead I cried. I sobbed hysterically, staring at my bloody hooves as I realized that …

That I did that ... I did that.

I murdered another pony.

I shook my head furiously, trying to clear my mind as I stumbled through the snow in a daze. I didn’t want to look back. I should’ve kept going. I should’ve kept galloping towards the gates while I still could. But I didn’t. All I could see was that stallion lying dead in the snow.

Dead.

Far away, in another world nearby, the gunfire and screams were nothing but muffled bass drops beneath the ringing in my ears. There was a distant crash – and a bang. I turned and with my glassy eyes, I saw blood brothers stumbling away, rubbing their eyes, or cradling their heads. Some simply lay in the snow, dead.

In the confusion, I watched as the wagon puller leaped over the sideboards and yanked the wagon into the air.

I followed their wagon into the sky and into the darkness with my blank stare.

They made it.

But I needed to make it, too.

I snapped out of it, shoving to the back of my mind everything that scraped against my thoughts like hooves on chalkboard. I tore my eyes from the dark clouds. And ran.

No one could stop me. I galloped out of the darkness and across the final stretch as the blood brothers screamed at the dissipating fireworks display in frustration.

By the time they returned to their posts, frustrated and with empty hooves, I was already gone – melted away into the darkness.

I wiped away a single tear as I followed the shadows to salvation.

*

I stood at the center of a snowy intersection.

Ponies, clad in tattered, dirty barding trotted past me and around me like a stream parting around a stone. Their eyes, turned low, paid no attention to the filthy, shivering stallion that stood among them. Because I, to them, was nothing but another poor pony – like everyone else in those dark slums.

I gazed across the street with my bloodshot eyes, taking in my gloomy surroundings. They glistened dully in the ruddy red and yellow lights that flickered weakly in the snowfall.

Jutting out of the dirty snow were small, smoke-wreathed eateries – stalls and shanties that stank with the bitter, stomach turning stench of burned meat and over-steamed cabbages. All around me were hovels and gnarled concrete ruins that reeked with more than just the stench of vomit and alcohol, sporting flickering neon signs that barely clung to life, spelling out ‘liquor’ or ‘grub’.

I turned my head high and reality skewed inward as if the entire world was collapsing upon itself. I trembled uncontrollably beneath my blood-caked barding as the colossal, concrete ruins of the old city loomed over me, threatening to crush me underneath.

Distant gunshots, echoing shrieks, and pleasured moans coalesced into an uncomfortable ambience that scratched and scraped at my thinning sanity. There were too many people. Too many voices. Too many in one place.

My head was going to explode.

Whereas night outside Poneva's walls was silent, eerie, and haunting, night in Poneva was a claustrophobic mess of flashing lights and revolting sounds that made me physically ill.

Poneva was an alien world. But I was the alien. Any semblance of normality that my heart once held dear – warmth, comfort, safety – all of it was swept away, suffocated and trampled beneath the cold, grimy hooves of the underworld ponies that trotted past me. Poneva was the final nail in the coffin, a coffin that I felt powerless to escape.

I felt like I was going to be buried alive.

I took a step forward, and my hoof crunched through glass. The shards broke around my hoof, scattering dozens of jagged fragments across the dirty snow. For a haunting, dislocated second, I caught my reflections – warped and distorted across the broken glass.

My chin trembled at the disheveled wreck of my former self – my mane grizzled, my coat darker in some places with filth and dried perspiration. And the blood. Oh Goddesses, the blood … it was everywhere, all over me, staining my barding, my flesh …

… my soul.

I stared at my reflections, my chin quivering as I tried to swallow my tears.

‘That can't be me,’ I thought, ‘That ... that thing ... that monster can't be me. It just can't. I'm Red Dawn. Apprentice engineer. Shift C. Serial code F03RD82996. Stable 91.'

The monster glared back. A mad grin stretched across his lips.

‘I'm Red Dawn,’ I kept telling myself, ‘Apprentice engineer. Shift C …’

But he knew. His bloodshot eyes told me that I was wrong. Everything was so wrong.

‘I'm Red Dawn. Apprentice engineer. Shift... Shift C. Serial code... F... 0... 3...’

My reflections. My bloody barding. Those furies. Zebras. Slavers. Slaves. That blood brother. They all mocked me in silence.

"NO!" I hissed through clenched teeth, stomping the glass shards until the ghosts broke apart and died. "Not me..." A forehoof ran against Dew Drops' scarf as hot tears streamed down my cheeks. "You're not me..."

*

Chapter 5 - One With None - Pt II

*

My stomach grumbled.

I eyed longingly at a flickering neon sign that said ‘diner’, before flames crept up the wall beneath it. Blinking for the last time, the sign popped and exploded in a dull flash. My eyes fluttered closed as the acrid stench of smoke filled my nostrils. I cupped a hoof over my mouth as I relived a memory that had been branded into my conscience not too long ago.

Zebras or not, it was all the same. I could still hear them screaming.

The diner’s walls crackled and moaned, fires raging within. Wooden beams snapped and collapsed, feeding the flames as the fire slowly consumed every inch of the restaurant. Outside, ponies dragged out charred crates of miscellanea, aluminum cans tumbling about. One pony just stood among the throng, staring quietly as the building burned. She must’ve owned the place. Or, used to.

She watched as those ponies fought among each other for the canned food that spilled onto the snow.

The frenzied ponies, clad in grimy, tattered barding, fell upon an opened crate of foodstuffs, tearing into it like wild animals and spilling its canned innards into the snow. Even if they were hers, there wasn’t much she could do to stop them. Nobody else bothered to stop them anyways, as they broke into the crates and scurried off with whatever hadn’t already been burned to ash.

I kept telling myself that Poneva was probably one of the last bastions of civilization in the Northern Wasteland.

But the looters just kept looting. That was what was left of civilization – and that shithole of a city was the biggest concentration of it.

Not far from the burning building, ponies in collared, jet black businesswear watched the shop burn as they clanked glass bottles and took long drinks.

One of them took a rag, stuffed it in one of the bottles, and lobbed it through one of the shop’s broken windows. The splash fed the fires within, and the inferno exploded outward, spilling out of the windows like a cup running over. The looters yelped like frightened little dogs, scurrying away. One of them rolled around in the snow, his clothes trailing smoke.

The black-clad ponies trotted over to the quiet mare. One of them bucked her in the chest, and she collapsed face down into the drifts. The pony donned her wide-brimmed fedora and spat into the snow; the others did the same, and left her there without another word.

They heaved a soot-covered safe into the back of a wagon before the ponies departed, their job done and their treasures stowed away. The mare didn’t turn to see them leave. She just buried her face in the snow, her shoulders rocking with muffled sobs.

The fire’s cruel glow made my mind numb. My hooves were even number as they plodded through the fetlock-deep powder. The looters had left with their treasures by then, leaving the mare to lay there alone and abandoned with nothing left. I glanced at her, and saw that she hadn’t moved an inch.

Sighing softly, I stopped at one of the near-empty crates, staring at its spilled innards. Aluminum cans were scattered across the snow, leaking a brownish, half-solid slurry. I dipped a hoof into a puddle of pasty brown sludge, brought it to my nose, and hesitated.

It looked like poop water to me.

I clenched my jaw, and took a whiff. Nope. Beans. Old, ancient, botulism-riddled pre-war beans.

I shook my head as my stomach groaned achingly for food … for something … something that wasn’t just snow. I was getting desperate. I’d nearly passed out earlier, and a steady, pulsating headache impaled my brain with rail spikes every time a hoof made contact with the ground beneath me. But as Night Sky said, there could be no rest – not even for the weary.

To keep going would kill me. But to sit there and wait for my horn to flicker back or wait for my insides to stop churning meant another day crossed off of 91’s life span.

I opened my saddlebags and dumped inside the few cans that hadn’t been trampled over. For a moment, I hesitated as my languid gaze crawled down my vest.

My barding was still covered in blood.

With a heavy heart, I clamped my teeth around the brim of a squashed can, shaking out as much of its contents as I could, and stumbled towards the flame.

Skirting the fire’s edge made my skin prickle. Sweat began to trickle down my face as I approached a wooden beam that fell into the snow outside, its surface blackened and smoldering with hungry flames.

I sat beside it, scooping up some snow with my can, before nudging it in the fire. I watched the snow melt with a disturbing calmness in my eyes.

I kept telling myself that I wasn’t a murderer, but the gory shell that covered my shivering flesh said otherwise. I needed to wash it off. I wanted to wash it off before the blood settled and stained even deeper than the clothes on my back.

I killed that blood brother. Gored him with my horn and choked him to death with my bare hooves.

If that was what Night Sky meant by doing whatever it took to save the folks back home, then my life wasn’t the only thing I feared to lose. I remembered it in shattered shards of icy memories: his face as I blundered into him, the pain I felt when he bucked me in the chest … my horn dripping with his blood … my hooves tightening around his throat …

The rest was lost to blackness and hysteria.

‘Out here,’ Night Sky’s voice whispered inside my thoughts, ‘Killing is just another part of living …’

My heart shuddered with disgust. I gulped down the lump in my throat, shoved it away into the furthest corners of my mind, slammed the door shut, and locked it behind me.

I rubbed at my temples with my hooves, letting out a long, drawn out sigh. I fished the can out of the flames with a long piece of cardboard. It spilled across the snow. I nudged the can with the tip of my hoof until it stood upright, too hot to hold in my hooves. I waited for it to cool.

I stood to my hooves and hesitated. I could feel eyes on the back of my head. I glanced over my shoulder.

The mare was sitting there on her haunches, staring right at me. She might have been watching me that entire time as I picked through what few there was left of her store. Her livelihood. The job that put food on her table.

I just stared back. For a while, neither of us said anything. I didn’t have much left to say. And she didn’t have much left.

I shook my head and retreated back into the darkness with my can of half-melted slurry. Climbing atop cold shanties, mounds of frozen detritus, and discarded scraps, I found a place where I could be alone. Away from the burning shop, away from that mare, there was a shed that sat atop an abandoned building overlooking the shanty town below. I inched my rump onto the cold sheet metal beneath me in an attempt to ease the strain on my sore muscles. Trembling jets of wispy mist hissed through my lips as I finally lowered myself to the floor. With a long, drawn out sigh, I shrugged off my saddlebags.

I placed the can of slush between my forelegs and narrowed my eyes at it with all the focus I could muster. Nothing – except for the riveting flash of agony that speared through my skull. I fell forward onto my forehooves, dry-heaving into the metal. When the pain subsided, I winced as warm tears welled out of my eyes.

A foreleg came to my muzzle to wipe away them away, but instead, they came away red with blood.

I grumbled quietly and fetched the can with a hoof, pouring its contents down my vest. The slurry ran lazily down my body. With my other hoof, I scrubbed away as much of my bloody shell as I could. The breeze raked against my wet barding, and my body convulsed with violent shivers. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to see any of it. All that blood.

When I finished, my clothes were lacerated with darker shades of blue where the blood settled in. I at least managed to clean most of it off my kevlar plates.

It’d have to do.

I huddled in the back of the shed, wet and shivering, and gazed out into the ashen snowfall. From up there I could see a bright light glowing distantly through Poneva’s crumbling skyline.

Actually, it didn’t really seem so far. I could see its amber glow poking through the skeletal skyscrapers and around their rough, weather-beaten corners. Sitting in filth and darkness, I realized that the light was just over horizon. Light meant life. Light meant machines. Light meant technology – maybe even a water talisman … maybe even a warm place to spend the night.

I needed to get there.

Not all of Poneva was razed to the ground when the bombs fell. The light told me so. Some survived. Stable-Tec had to be one of them.

I needed to find out what that light was. I needed to find Stable-Tec. But first … I needed to eat.

Reaching into my bags, I pulled out a bruised can of beans. I brought it to my lips and clamped my teeth down on the lid’s tab, and pulled. With a dull plop, the lid tore off and the smell of old beans wafted into my nostrils. I tipped the can into my mouth and the frigid, chunky sludge dribbled onto my tongue.

I chewed and swallowed, too tired to worry about the unwholesome taste of expired slime slithering down my throat. Within minutes, I downed its entire contents, my stomach’s whining abated … for the time being. Exhausted, and with my belly finally full, I laid down, yawning as I rested my chin upon my hooves.

I thought that maybe I’d rest for a bit … just a few minutes with my eyes closed …

‘No!’ I couldn’t rest. I couldn’t waste anymore fucking time!

But … I was just so tired. My aching body begged me to sit down and rest, pleading with me to take a break.

‘Just a few minutes,’ I told myself.

I yawned once more. ‘Just a few …’

My eyes fluttered closed. I lay there, my exhaustion slowly reclining into a livid slumber. Lying there beneath the waning light of consciousness, I tried to imagine a place that wasn’t … there. Anywhere but there. The wintry wasteland slowly faded away … it faded away as I remade Spring Song’s world in my vision, letting my weary mind escape into a place far … far … far away.

Fields of verdant, green grass rippling in a gentle breeze. The protective gaze of an amber sun. The endless expanse of a blue, cloudless sky.

I felt considerably warmer, even as the cold breeze whispered down my neck. It whispered … it faded …

The murals … I remembered murals painted across B-Block’s walls, the awe-inspiring landscapes of a world that once was beautiful. Beautiful. It was just beautiful.

Lost … I found myself lost in an undulating sea of grass. I gazed out into the distance, following the gentle curves of the rolling green hills that swept across the earth as far as I could see.

I raised my head to the bottomless blue sky and sighed softly. There, I bathed in the warmth of a guardian sun that caressed my cheeks with its golden sunshine.

I could see the sky – and not a single dark cloud hung over the earth to ruin that perfect day.

Perfect. There was not a single thing in sight that could ruin the perfect world around me.

Not a single thing.

Hooves plodded behind me. My bright eyes gravitated to the mare I loved.

Dew Drops ran into me at a full gallop, and I took her into my forelegs, spinning through the grass as she buried her muzzle in my chest. We fell on our hooves and I was taken aback by the beauty of the mare that stood before me. The sun illuminated her gentle face and her eyes reflected brilliantly like diamond jewels, encapsulating me in their tender gaze.

Dew Drops giggled once, brushed her teal mane out of her eyes, and gave me a long kiss, wrapping her forelegs around me and hugging me tight as if she hadn’t seen me in ages. It might as well have been, because I returned the favor tenfold, pausing only for a moment to take a shallow breath of air, before parting her lips with my tongue once more.

I took Dew Drops’ hoof as we trotted through the grass, the tall stalks of grass parting before us as we giggled, loving each other … and loving the world around us.

We entered a clearing. There, a picnic basket on a red-checkered blanket was waiting for us. We enjoyed our lunch of hay sandwiches and carrot juice and laid down on the soft, cool grass, watching fluffy white clouds float by.

I rolled over beside her, and our lips met as the sun began to set, a line of magnificent, amber light parting down our muzzles as the moon took to the skies and bathed us in its pale moonlight. Crickets chirped, and buzzing yellow fireflies zipped over the grass.

She rolled me over onto my back, whispering that she loved me as she nibbled playfully on my ear and I planted kisses upon her neck.

“… hahahaha …”

My ears perked. The midnight blue skies shuddered as if a hoof clopped against the glass behind it. Dew Drops’ expression flickered as I reached her jawline. With her panting breaths hot against my muzzle, I silenced her euphoric gasps with a kiss, caressing her tongue with mine.

In the distance, barely audible beneath the crickets’ chirping, a faint voice whispered …

“Hahahahahaha …”

The world shimmered around me.

I sighed, closing my eyes as I waited for the crickets to resume their chirping. I didn’t care. I let the distant laughter pass unheard through my ears as she lied down on her back. I lowered myself over her, touching her scarlet cheek with a trembling forehoof. I gazed dreamily into her tender gray eyes … her voice whispering to me softly … inviting me onward.

“DD … I –”

A sharp twinge shot through my skull.

“Hahahahaha …” Closer. Hooves plodded through the grass. Cold sweat trickled down my face.

I shook my head vigorously, telling myself that I couldn’t let anything get through … ‘I couldn’t let anything ruin this …

‘Not a single thing … not a single thing … could ruin … this …’

“Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …”

Nearer. Hooves crunched through the brush in the closing distance.

I took a deep breath and tried to focus. My eyes fell upon Dew Drops’ face, her expression unchanged as she waited for me to say the words I needed to say.

I didn’t want that night to end. I loved her so much. There were only three words … three words that I needed to say … but they continued to escape me as the hoofsteps crunched ever closer.

Her lips moved … asking me something. What was wrong … the voices. The crickets stopped chirping. The wind stopped blowing.

What was wrong … her lips moved, but all I could hear was the laughter in the distance … their psychotic … mindless laughter.

“DD … I-I …” My vision unfocused – blurring. I whimpered, blinking furiously as my vision flashed with splashes of red.

A voice whispered from the brush …

“We’ll cut you up good …”

“No …” I whispered as my shoulders rocked with sobs. Dew Drops was still beneath my heaving chest, her startled eyes staring through me, her jaw dropped as she saw something behind me that I couldn’t. Something that I didn’t want to see.

All around me the grass withered and died. Black clouds drowned out the moon. Icy veins broke apart the earth.

A thousand pounding hooves trampled through the snow. Closer.

“I’ll fucking skin you alive …”

Closer. Their laughter quaked the earth beneath me like voices screaming behind a window.

“Hahahahaha – HAHAHAHAHA!

“NO! DD, I –“

“I’LL FUCKING SKIN YOU ALIVE!”

I blinked.

My heart skipped a beat. A ragged gasp tore out of my lips.

Dew Drops was lying beneath me, her head tipped slightly to the side.

Blood was pooling out of her shredded throat. I cradled her head as I peered into her glassy eyes. They stared back. Staring into nothingness. Wide, inert, lifeless dead eyes, the light within them gone … gone, gone, GONE –

… gone.

“DD? … DD! DD!” I shook her frantically with my blood-caked hooves. “N-no NO!” I screamed as the frozen earth quaked beneath us and insane laughter filled the air.

“DEW DROPS, PLEASE! GODDESES, NO – SAY SOMETHING!”

“HAHAHAHAHA – HAHAHAHAHA!”

My bloodshot eyes shot open – and my paradise shattered like glass. My hooves fell away from under me, into the darkness – into the wasteland.

Hoofsteps thundered behind me, and I swung my head over my shoulder.

My saddlebags were gone. An equine shadow bounded away from me across the rooftops as I swept my foreleg over the floor where they used to be.

My eyes darted over my shoulders frantically, batting at my neck –

‘Her scarf – Dew Drops’ scarf!’

Gone.

“STOP!” I screamed with burning, teary eyes as I galloped after him. We raced across the shanty town’s rickety, scrap-metal rooftops, forty feet of frozen air between us and the slums below.

All it took was one wrong step. I swore that it wasn’t going to be me.

He scrambled to a stop, several feet before a ledge.

“You’ll pay for this …” I growled.

The pony looked over his shoulder and I met his eyes with a look that promised murder. He inched back. Forward. And took a giant, running leap.

My jaw dropped. ‘Son of a bitch!’

I skidded to a stop inches from the ledge, and saw him roll across a rickety canopy that cratered beneath him. He stumbled to his hooves, shooting me a desperate glance as I took a hoofstep back and hurled myself over the edge.

“GIVE THEM BACK!”

My fall crushed the sheet metal beneath me.

Three words. Three words were all I needed to say.

“G-give them back …” I whimpered as I heaved myself back to my hooves.

But they weren’t enough. That pony just kept running.

I hounded after him into a third-story alleyway, the skyscrapers’ orange lights flashing across my eyes between the shanties. Ponies dove out of the way, spilling over carts full of scavenged materials and refuse that clattered behind us in our wake.

He jumped over a cart sitting in the middle of the alley, and I plowed through it. He ran around a herd of loiterers, and I blundered through them.

Nothing could stop me. Nothing could take her away from me … again.

A mare sifting through a cart of bent cans screamed as the pony narrowly sidestepped past her. I shoved her aside, spilling her tin treasures across the snowy, weather-beaten deck. It didn’t matter. All I cared to see was that stallion galloping away from me.

I blinked. Snow furies dragged Dew Drops into the darkness. I winced as their laughter echoed inside my thoughts.

It only made my legs pump faster.

We reached the end of the narrow alleyway, my hindlegs kicking up showers of dirty snow. The pony ducked through a shanty’s door and kicked it shut behind him. I flung it open and charged through the doorway, a family of huddled ponies screaming past me as the pony hurled himself out the back door and I barreled through it.

“STOP! NOW!”

“No!” I was close enough to see his tattered barding and his scratchy, brown mane. “I need this!”

Another ledge blurred closer. That pony knew Poneva better than I did. He vaulted across a gap between two rooftops, landing on the other side with a slight stumble before recovering fast enough to take another leap. He was getting away.

I leaped, bounded, and flailed, swearing under my rasping breaths as chunks of dirty snow and black ice plummeted away from my hooves – four stories to the bottom. Sheet metal pounded rapidly beneath my hooves – until my eyes widened at what I saw in the closing distance. I slowed as we approached a dead end. A dead end for the both of us.

All that was left was another rooftop – twenty feet away, across a ravine that fell into the darkness below. But he didn’t stop.

The pony screamed his voice hoarse.

And he took the leap.

‘Dear Celestia,’ I mouthed as he throttled across the gap, forelegs outstretched, hindlegs kicking through the air with my saddlebags trailing behind him. He was going to fall. He was going to splatter across the streets below … and take Dew Drops ... my friends ... Mom and Dad ... everyone I loved away from me.

The sheet metal cut his screams short. He slammed into the rooftop, skidding violently across the frozen metal before landing in a heap.

There was a pause in my madness.

During the time that passed as I approached the precipice, I saw myself splatter across the pavement in twelve different ways. I saw the world spinning end over end as I tumbled to my gruesome death – pancaked across the asphalt like a squashed radroach.

‘I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. Goddesses – I’M GONNA DIE –‘

My hooves left the sheet metal beneath me.

Flying.

I was flying – soaring through the air like a pegasus pony. The weathered metal rooftop at the other end of the gap seemed close enough to touch as time slowed and my entire existence became devoted to reaching it.

Snow furies cackled their maniacal cries, their snarling, psychotic cacophony echoing distantly in my ears …

“Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …”

‘Not again,’ I thought, ‘You can’t take them away from me.

‘I’ll save them. I’ll save them all.’

I held out my forelegs, letting the chilling breeze carry me upon my flapping wings. I caught the frozen winds beneath my feathers and sailed across the gap. Nothing could stop me –

Except gravity.

My imagination swam – reality violating my senses as I looked down, and the world below me stretched on into infinity. A maw of frozen metal parted beneath my thrashing hooves, threatening to swallow me whole.

Falling.

I was falling – careening over the edge, flailing my legs, and screaming at the top of my lungs. The world raced by me like a fleeting memory – the ledge at the other end of the gap far beyond my reach.

I wasn’t going to make it.

I threw out my forelegs, stretching them out as far as I could, my joints screaming frantically at me that that was as far as my forelegs could go. But it wasn’t far enough.

The weather beaten ledge was less than half a hoof’s length away.

And I missed.

A mortal, ear splitting shriek erupted from my lips.

“FFFFFUUUUU –"

My face careened into the sheet metal wall.

Stars exploded in my eyes and my vision swam away from the light of clarity, my ears ringing like a tolling bell. My hooves scrambled blindly for purchase, but I skidded down the wall, plummeting back to the earth.

CRACK!

I felt the ligaments in my right fetlock shred like paper. My hoof caught itself between two rimy layers of twisted rebar and I broke my own fall with a violent snap.

“CELESTIA!” I hissed.

White hot agony shot through my veins – my fetlock shrieked in torment.

With an anguished grunt, I forced - I willed my left foreleg to reach higher. Higher. I found a ledge, and I clung to the deformed rebar for my life.

The rooftop, past a series of twisted metal beams and sheared steel, was nearly a foreleg’s length above me. Its ledge reflected dully in my teary eyes as I reached out with my swelling right hoof. My nerves cried out in pain as I jammed my throbbing hoof into a gap within the twisted, steel face. I kicked, and kicked – I kicked my hindlegs inward – trying to get a grip. My legs flailed and pawed at the frozen metal, my hooves scraping away layers of frost as my left forehoof came to meet my right.

I reached out with my left once more and faltered. The muscles in my right leg screamed, locking up - wavering through the storm of agony that throbbed through my veins.

But then I heard her. Dew Drops’ screams echoed distantly in my ears.

“NOOO!”

I threw my right hoof over the rooftop’s edge, then my left – my right – my left – and, with a kick and an anguished howl, I heaved myself onto the weather beaten deck.

I stood to my hooves. My pupils contracted. An immense skyscraper loomed over us, lighting me ablaze with amber light. I wheezed and took a step forward. There he was: at the other end of the rooftop, the stallion’s form was silhouetted against the skyscraper's fiery glow.

He wasn’t getting away.

The skyscraper gave light to the hatred that burned in my eyes as I locked gazes with the pony who took everything away from me. Once more, I found myself staring into the eyes of a pony who knew he was going to die.

He backed away, his jaw dropped as he stammered in horror and disbelief. He took one step back, and I took another forward. A rivulet of blood trickled down my forehead as I shambled after him, my horn bowed forward.

“Holy shit …” the pony murmured.

I growled, craned my neck and yanked my pistol from its holster.

“You’ll … pay for this …” I growled, limping towards him. “No … more … running ...”

Behind him was a seven story drop into the frozen depths of Poneva’s underworld.

But he didn’t seem to understand that I was right.

The pony shrugged off my saddlebags, my belongings clanking dully against the shanty’s roof.

“A-alright! Alright! Th-there, j-just ...”

He took another terrified step back.

One step too far.

“… just leave me alone – AH!”

My eyes widened. The stallion slipped.

He fell over the edge, screaming as gravity dragged him to his gruesome end. I raced after him, my fetlock aching as I reached the ledge and peered downward.

And there he was: hanging from a single hoof, his tattered barding billowing in the wind.

I gazed down at him ... and my heartbeat slowed. I felt it again. The calm. The quietude. The silence before the headsmare’s axe.

The pony stared back up at me in desperation. I felt my mouthbit loosen between my teeth. I watched his eyes, as tears welled up from inside of them. I watched. And I listened. His bloodshot eyes told me a tale of a poor pony scraping through the filth, day by day, taking whatever food he could scavenge or steal.

The pony’s weak, trembling limbs told me that chase burned what little energy he had left. The bones that poked out of his emaciated body spoke of days gone by on an empty stomach.

His hoof looked like it would give out any second.

But I just stared ... a chilling calmness in my eyes. His mouth moved soundlessly, but all I could hear was the sound of his head exploding like a melon as he splattered against the pavement. I came to realize that his life hung not at the edge of that steel rooftop, but from my own hoof.

I blinked once, and a snow fury stared back at me. The black veins in his demented eyes bulged as he screamed in utter silence.

His laughter echoed through my ears. His psychotic, mindless laughter.

The blood of my friends stained his coat and the ragged fabrics that were wrapped around his trembling flesh. He took them from me. And he would never ever take them away from me again.

I watched in slow motion as his hoof slipped, his frantic eyes widening for the last time. Madness and death ran their chilling hooves down my spine and I shivered beneath my coat.

'No,' I thought.

No one else needs to die.'

I leaped forward and caught his outstretched foreleg between my hooves, crying out weakly as my sprained fetlock jolted my nerves. He weighed less than I thought he did. With an agonized moan, I pulled him up and yanked the pony back over, heaving him onto the roof at my hooves. The stallion fell to his gasping chest, his limbs splayed out at his sides as he wheezed for air.

Tucking my pistol into its holster, I watched in silence as he stood upon his rickety legs.

“Gods … y-you saved my life …” he murmured weakly, meeting my glassy stare. “You saved me …” he repeated, looking down at his hooves as tears streamed down his grimy cheeks. “Why?”

It was a question I didn’t answer.

“I’m … I’m sorry …” he began, “I-I saw you walk from that place with those cans … I needed them so bad. I needed them ..."

I stared at the poor pony for what seemed like an eternity.

Then I limped to my bags, wrenched them open – and rolled out three cans of pre-war beans, the only food I had left. They tapped against his hooves as he wiped his eyes. He nearly collapsed to his haunches. His eyes darted to mine, his mouth moving, but not a single word escaping his quivering lips.

“Take them,” I exhaled simply, my voice hoarse.

He gawked at the cans at his hooves once more in disbelief.

A painful smile barely grazed my lips. “Go ahead. You need them more than I do.”

The pony’s head bobbed up and down, repeating my words in his head. Until it registered that I wasn’t going to shoot him, he nodded once more, fetched the cans in his hooves, and tucked them into his clothes.

“Thank you,” he whispered softly, his eyes not leaving mine once as he bowed his head and slunk away.

But my eyes didn’t follow. His hoofsteps dissipated into the wind, and I was alone on those windswept rooftops once more. I limped to my bags and fell to my haunches, exhaling laboriously as my sprained fetlock sent a torrent of burning agony through my leg.

I parted my saddlebag’s flaps and fetched a health potion. It was the last one I had. I popped its cap and gulped it down, sighing softly. I could feel my torn ligaments stitching back together with every beat of my heart. I dipped a hoof into my bags and pulled out Dew Drops’ scarf, hanging it from my neck as I pulled out the two frayed photographs within.

I stared at them for what seemed like an eternity, my mind numb and my expression blank. I stared in chilling silence as the wind moaned a somber tune, my friends' cheerful laughter echoing distantly beneath its lonely breeze.

I could discern each and every single one of their voices in the wind before their laughter melted away, drowning into the howling darkness.

My hooves began to shake. I clenched my jaw and pursed my lips. A tear trickled down my cheek as I tried to keep a straight face, tried to suck them back in. But my shoulders rocked with sobs I couldn’t contain any longer.

I hung my head quietly, my face darkening and my tears glistening in the orange light.

It was just in my head. All of it was.

As I stared down at my friends, their faces frozen in time, I relished in the life I lived with those ponies, cherishing their memories, the sweet and the bitter, the hilarious and the disappointing, the successes and the failures.

I had their photographs, I had her scarf … and yet I didn’t feel any different. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save her. I failed them all.

But a voice in the back of my head told that I had failed them from the very start.

Ever since I got my cutie mark, I neglected my friends to develop my skills, putting off the hours we could have spent together to tinker, to fix, to learn ... to be alone – and now I had what I fucking wanted.

I took them for granted – most of all, I took her for granted. And I wasted everything. They died without knowing how much I appreciated their friendship. Dew Drops died with so much love to give. And I didn’t deserve a single second of it.

I didn’t even get to tell Dew Drops that I loved her … one last time.

Three simple words that I could’ve … should’ve told her a long time ago. But that time was long gone.

They were torn away from me – out of me, leaving wounds that I tried so hard to wrench shut. The simple thought of them made my heart bleed. Again, my wounds were open, and I was bleeding out once more as my tears poured down my face.

I shook my head in denial, shaking away the tears that welled out of my bloodshot eyes. I gazed glassy-eyed at my family picture, saw my mother’s face and thought, ‘Would she be proud of me if she saw me now?’

Would she be proud to know of the things I did to reach Poneva? The ponies I killed? All those snow furies I cut down without giving a single shit? What about all the friends I lost … what if she knew that I wasn’t strong enough to save them? That I wasn’t strong enough to save the mare that I loved?

I dropped their pictures into my bags and curled up into a ball, burying my muzzle in Dew Drops’ scarf.

That dream I had of her … it felt so real. Her coat, her flesh, the taste of her tongue – it felt. So. Real. That awakening, that rude perversion of reality into my weary imagination was a violent one. It stole her away from me, and I chased after her.

I almost ended up killing someone. Again.

And still, the mare of my life was dead. I watched them tear her apart, just like I watched those zebras, and those slaves and did nothing.

I was fucking useless.

Dew Drops told me that with my friends, we could accomplish anything. But they were gone.

Gone.

Without them, without her, I was nothing. I was only one. And I had none. All of it was too much. I wasn’t strong. I was a fucking weakling who’d only survived that long by luck alone – lucky that other, stronger people had killed and died to get me that far.

I hated it – hated myself for being so pathetic, for being such a little bitch.

I hated everything around me. The wasteland, the snow, the city, the snow, the people that lived in it, and oh – the fucking GODDESSES-DAMNED SNOW!

I sobbed, my eyes heavy and swollen.

There comes a point when you run out of tears to shed. I reached that point.

I just lay there in somber quietude.

I rolled onto my back and stared up into the dark skies, too tired to weep. In silence, with only the wind and the distant Ponevan ambience whispering in my ears, I peered up into the black clouds that hung above the frozen earth, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw a light.

A small dot, a hole, opened up in the sky, and out poured a weak beam of yellow light that encapsulated me in its radiance. Even though I had never seen it before in person until then, I knew exactly what it was. It was unlike the orange artificial glow that washed over me ...

It was pure. Unadulterated. Sunlight.

And just like that, it was gone, as fast as it came. If I was right, the sun was still there – just beyond the cloud layer. Just beyond the darkness.

I saw it … and I knew. It was still there.

Celestia and Luna had raised and lowered the sun and the moon for thousands of years. I wanted to believe that they too were still there. But after what I had seen so far, it hurt to think that maybe Bone Charm was right. That they were dead – and so was all the good and all the hope in the world.

But I wanted to believe … in something. I wanted to believe that there was still hope.

I remembered the look on that stallion’s face when I pulled him back up. I saved his life, in more ways than one. I made the wasteland a slightly better place when I gave him those cans.

Maybe … maybe that was why the sky opened up.

Maybe that was why the sun was still there. Because there was still hope. Still goodness in the world. Somewhere. Somewhere … in … me.

Somewhere in the wasteland, there was hope.

Just like the sun, it might've be hard to see, but it was there, hidden behind all that darkness. And for the most miniscule of moments, I saw it through the clouds, and the darkness, and the madness.

It was still there.

I read once in a silly foal’s book, that the night was always darkest before dawn. It was clichéd, I know, but the darkness around me had to mean something, it just had to – because it was pretty fucking dark.

My head rolled across my shoulder and onto the chilling sheet metal, my darkened face turning to the light. I forced myself to my haunches and gazed up at the Ponevan skyline, and at what few skyscrapers there were that still glowed with light.

Ever since I had climbed up there, I had never even taken the time to simply pause and look around me. I was so focused on getting my bags back, that I never noticed what was staring at me in front of my face the entire time.

The closest skyscraper, towering over me with its amber radiance, caught my eye. And so did the immense neon letters that hung from its titanic, concrete edifice:

World Tree.

But beneath the refurbished neon lights, I saw something else. Something that I had seen stenciled onto almost everything I had, growing up. It was written in raised concrete, just barely visible beneath the World Tree tower's glow:

Stable-Tec.

I stood to my four hooves, the skyscraper’s lights painting my shadow across the rooftops, and my mane, my tail, and Dew Drops’ scarf billowing in the wind. I wiped a hoof across my face, and sniffled, the tower’s radiance burning like firelight in my widening, teary eyes.

I remembered what I had asked Dew Drops, the night before she died.

‘Are we going to find a Water Talisman?’

The answer to that question was less than a mile away.

I reached out with a hoof.

It hung before me, empty. But perhaps not for long.

Hope. It was so far. It was so far … far beyond my reach. But in that moment, as I gazed onward into the light, I felt it. For the briefest of moments, I thought that maybe … just maybe …

… I might just be able to go home.

My eyes fluttered closed as hung my head.

I never really believed in hope. That might’ve been why I couldn’t see it.

All my life I simply did things and waited for the consequences or the results. Then, I knew, that all the hope my friends had … the hope that Dew Drops held in her heart culminated to this.

She was always right. She was smarter than I was, and even in death …

Dew Drops was still right.

We would find a way …

And I found it.

Footnote: Level 4
XP: 1050/1700

Chapter 6 - Six Thousand - Pt I

Chapter 6
Six Thousand

“Somewhere in this wasteland, there was hope.”

My heart pounded inside my chest. I lost sight of the tower as I crawled out of that dreary, slummy shanty town, its light disappearing behind Poneva’s broken skyscrapers. I clambered over a mound of frozen debris, my hooves scrambling for purchase. Chunks of rubbish fell away from my flailing limbs as I struggled to catch a glimpse of the skyscraper’s amber glow once more.

“Come on, come on!” I muttered, throwing a hoof over the concrete mountain that was blocking my path. With a heave and a grunt, I yanked myself up and over and a shaft of orange light painted a smile across my face. There it was.

I stood upon my four legs atop the hill of snow and rubble, Dew Drops' scarf billowing behind me in the breeze. “Finally!” I gasped, grinning madly at the brightest light I had ever seen in the wasteland. I stared up at it, mouth open with awe. The last I had seen it, I was seven stories above the earth. But from down there … I felt even smaller as I basked in its radiant glow like a curious, buzzing insect.

Never before had I seen something so bright. Never before had I seen anything so immense. I raised my head to the sky, trying to see the tower’s peak. I couldn’t. It might as well have been holding the sky aloft –

My head tipped forward.

“Son of a –”

I toppled over, tumbling end over end down the snowy embankment.

"BIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH -"

I punched a twelve inch deep outline into the snow, wincing at the dull pain in my ribs. I pushed myself to my haunches and found myself staring blankly into the headlights of an oncoming wagon.

My eyes widened as its lantern's glow hurtled closer and closer.

I was sitting in a damned intersection.

“Fuck!” I hissed, leaping out of the way as the wagon puller barreled past me.

I turned my head into oncoming traffic and my ears drooped.

"Fuck."

Headlights flashed in my eyes. Snow showered over me as I hurled myself away from another wagon.

I landed on my hooves. And sunk. It didn’t even take a single heartbeat for another wagon to come plowing towards me. I tore my hooves out of the snow and sidestepped – feeling the rush of its frame slice through the air next to my cheek.

"FUCK!" I wheezed as I thrashed my legs desperately through the fetlock deep snow.

A horn blared at me, its groaning honk blaring closer and closer.

“YOU STUPID SHIT!” somebody shrieked as I cursed and leaped out of the way, my swear jar getting heavier by the second.

'Wow - I'm getting pretty good at this!' I thought, a wild grin stretching across my face as more headlights flashed across my face.

Then a wagon ran into my flank.

It clipped me like a bad haircut, hurling me off my hooves and slamming me into a guard rail. A mare screamed as the wagon careened into the railing and the sound of a box of nails crashing against a concrete wall erupted into my ears.

Then nothing. Just the sounds of ponies power-walking away and wagons rumbling past.

Not a single pony stopped to see if the wagon puller or myself was okay. I wasn’t surprised. I lifted myself off the ground and limped across the snowy sidewalk with the wind knocked out of me as ponies hurried away.

A pair of yellow hindlegs wiggled and bucked through the snow, but the rest of the pony that they were attached to remained to be seen. I cocked a brow at the rusty assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols that were strewn across the snow-swept sidewalk.

I reached for the pony’s legs and hesitated when I saw the strange shape spray-painted against the wagon’s sideboard: a pair of angel wings sprouting out of a downward arrow. A plume of snow showered my muzzle as the pony kicked her legs once more.

“I’m going to regret this,” I muttered as I yanked her out of the drift. One second later, and I was panicking and she was on top of me with her pistol jammed inside my mouth.

“YOU! YOU FUCKING STUPID SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FUCKING DOING RUNNING THROUGH THE TRAFFIC LIKE THAT – YOU DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS FODDER FUCKER!”

It was rather difficult to reply with the barrel of a firearm lodged between my teeth. “I’m … shar …” I struggled, trying desperately to formulate a response that hopefully wouldn’t get me killed.

She parted the amber hair that fell over her bright orange eyes as she craned her neck and glared into my own. For a second I thought she was going to paint the snow pink with my brains, until she snorted a jet of mist and loosened up. Her brows flattened with exasperation and she yanked the pistol out of my mouth.

“Grrr … you’re helping me clean this up.” I sat up on my aching haunches and rubbed my lower jaw, wincing. “Fodder fucker …” the mare added as she trotted to the fallen weapons. She swung her head at me as I sat there, trying to pull my shit together.

“WELL?!”

“Sorry. Sorry about your wagon.” I scrambled across the snow to clamp my teeth around a horribly maintained assault rifle. I tossed the rifle back into the wagon like a piece of trash with a dull clank. They might as well have been. Those things would’ve blown up in your face if you tried shooting them.

Another rusty piece of scrap metal clanked in the back of the wagon. I stooped over and snatched up another rifle with my mouth. I was about to drop the weapon into the wagon bed when I saw that winged emblem again.

“Whash dat?” I asked through my teeth.

“None of your fucking business, just –”

She turned to look at me and narrowed her eyes at the way I slobbered all over the rifle in my mouth. “You fucking retarded or something?”

I spat the rifle into the wagon, groaning, “Look, I’m sorry about all this, but can you please stop calling me names?”

She groaned. “I mean, your horn, why’re you not using your magic?”

“Uh – well, my horn’s –”

She waved me off, tossing the last rifle into the back of the wagon.

“Whatever, I don’t really give a shit,” the earth pony snorted as she threw on her harness. The mare lifted a hoof but hesitated for a moment.

She glanced over her shoulder at the salty face I wore, and sighed a cloud of gray mist. “Sorry about that, I can be pretty rotten sometimes. Just running a little late on my uh ...” The mare looked at the rusty firearms in the back of her wagon. “My business. Next time, don’t run through the fucking street like a … fodder fucker. Might get yourself killed.”

“Yeah, thanks for caring,” I muttered as she returned to the road, not looking back. My haunches stung where her wagon ran into me, but, needless to say, I was closer to the Stable-Tec tower than I was several minutes ago.

I was just thankful she wasn’t like one of those assholes at the gates. Didn’t look like one, but… she nearly killed me.

I shook my head vigorously. I couldn't die. Not that close. I couldn’t let my excitement get a hold of me again. Earlier, I was overcome by the possibility of going home. Even after, my legs were still shaking. Even standing in the streets once more, I could still feel the warmth of the tower’s orange light upon my face.

No amount of thumbs could help me get a grip over myself. Not with the possibility of going home just a stroll down the road. I gulped, and started walking.

As I approached, the great stature of the Stable-Tec tower became more apparent; though it was not by far the tallest, it was undoubtedly the brightest. Unlike the dilapidated, dimly lit apartment buildings and skyscrapers around me, the Stable-Tec tower – or the World Tree tower, was the brightest light in the city as far as I could see.

It was a glowing lighthouse in an ocean of darkness – and it wasn’t a surprise: it was built by Stable-Tec. Looking at it was like traveling back in time 200 years. The tower looked virtually untouched by the balefire, apparently subject only to the passage of time as the centuries dragged by.

It was a titan of concrete and riveted metal, raised high above the street upon a tremendous estrade, and accessible only by a flight of wide stairs that narrowed the closer you got to the top.

I stared in awe, my legs trotting onward as if with minds of their own.

“Watch where you’re going!” some stallion grunted as I bumped into him. I didn’t even apologize. I was too busy admiring that beautiful tower.

The ponies who trotted past me paid no attention to it, as if such a marvel of engineering was just another slab of concrete in the snow. To them, it probably was – but for me? For a stable dweller who has seen nothing but white walls and poop water pipes his entire life? That tower was the most magnificent thing I had seen since I stepped a hoof out into the wasteland. And it was probably one of the last of its kind, one of the last reminders of a time when Equestria was great.

I cantered up a flight of narrow stairs that led to the bridge an entire story above me, and found myself standing before the tower and all its glory.

Weaving through the wagon and hoof traffic that slogged through the ashen streets, I finally arrived at the tower’s front door. I panned my gaze up the icy concrete steps that led me to the collapsed remains of an ancient revolving door, minus the revolving part.

I took a step forward, but hesitated. There was nobody outside. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw that nobody - but me - was walking up to the tower either.

I shrugged. It was my only way in. Gulping a lump down my throat, I tried to muster the most confident face I could as I walked up the steps. As my hooves clopped against the top of the stairs, I peered through the revolving door, and my heart nearly skipped a beat.

The lobby was dilapidated. Abandoned. Black outlines of furniture were all that remained of whatever had once furnished that empty lobby. I looked down, and shifted my hooves.

A layer of ashen dust had settled upon the the floor inside. It looked like nobody had been in there in centuries. I might as well have been the first to step inside since the bombs fell, because the floor and the walls and the ceiling all still had that blackened, charred look – just like everything else in the city.

That empty lobby belied the radiance of the tower above. The warm glow of civilization was nowhere to be found.

I bit my lower lip so hard I almost drew blood.

The balefire had blown through the windows and obliterated everything inside. There wasn't a single sign that anything had ever occupied that burned out lobby.

It looked just about as dead as the rest of the wasteland.

A sick feeling churned in my gut. 'This can’t be possible,' I thought.

There were lights just outside.

I paced back and forth, fruitlessly checking and rechecking the bare, balefire-blasted walls around me.

Nothing. There was fucking nothing.

I punched a hoof into the floor.

"Goddesses - damnit! This is a fucking joke! You’ve gotta be kidding me – you’ve gotta be fucking –”

I bit my tongue and sighed, lowering myself to my haunches and running a trembling hoof through my mane. It didn't make sense. The lights outside said someone was home, but the lobby told me that no one’s been home in centuries.

"Son of a bitch ..."

I tapped my forehooves together anxiously, my eyes darting to the walls around me. I let out a ragged breath and stood to my hooves.

Everything that led directly into the rest of the building was missing. No doors. No stairs. No elevators ...

No sign that anything had ever existed.

A light bulb flashed in my eyes.

'Nothing ... just like it should be,' I thought.

Walking to a bare wall, I reached into my saddlebags and drew my spade. I narrowed my eyes at the wall's icy surface as I scraped at it inquisitively, chipping off a chunk of frost. Beneath it, I uncovered a bulkhead of blackened steel.

I should’ve known. The people who built that place were the same people who built my stable. The entire ground level floor was contained – isolated from the rest of the tower.

Just like it should be.

Feverish curiosity possessed my limbs as I ran my hooves frantically across the walls, shuffling along the charred concrete floor on my hind legs. I remembered that even my stable's doors had controls to open it from the outside.

If the tower was built in the same way, then there had to be a way in - a control panel, a secret button - something! My hoof ran over a bump in the frost, and I exhaled sharply. It was a small, cylindrical piece of metal.

I pressed my face against it, peering inside - wondering if it was some sort of eye hole - or maybe a camera?

I cocked an eyebrow, tapping it with a forehoof.

It flashed red.

"Yow!" I cried, leaping away and rubbed my now blinded right eye.

“You are trespassing on private property," said a mare, her voice echoing from the ceiling. "Leave the premises immediately, or we will be forced to remove you."

The sound of machinery whirring to life behind me made the hairs on my coat stand on end. I swung my head frantically over both my shoulders and my heart nearly skipped a beat. A dozen turreted weapons folded out of the ceiling behind me. Their rotating energy casters exuded a magical, violet glow.

I cleared my throat, trying not to flinch. "W-what the hell are you doing with those?"

"Leave immediately, or we will be forced to remove you," the mare repeated. My eyes crept to the floor. I gulped at the sight of the gray dust beneath my hooves.

It wasn't dust.

“No, no - this can't be happening!” I planted my forehooves against the wall. "Listen – please – I–I really need your help -"

"Everyone needs help,” she said, cutting me off. “If you need food, you’ll find our agents at the Old Bank District.” The mare paused for a moment, thinking. The energy cannons glowed even brighter. “Leave the premises, immediately, while you still can."

I shook my head and supplicated myself before that red light with my forehooves outstretched. “No ... no - no – I-I can’t do that!” I stammered. “You don’t understand – I came all this way from –”

A shrill, mechanical whine emanated from behind me.

"No ..." I murmured as the blood drained from my face.

“This is your last warning.”

My breaths came in and out as frantic gasps

“Wait - please! Don’t do this –”

The energy turrets' rotating barrels screamed to life.

“Three,” droned the mare's voice as a violet glare engulfed the lobby.

“N-no! You have to listen to me!" I cried.

“Two.”

Magic arced violently across the turrets' accelerating barrels.

“Please!” I begged, sparing one final glance over my shoulder.

“One.”

Violet light flashed in my eyes.

“STOP!”

The turrets decelerated to a groaning halt, and a rivulet of cold sweat ran down my face. I closed my eyes and bowed my head as the lobby darkened in the heavy silence that followed.

“Please …" I whispered, my voice trembling, "My stable … our water talisman's broken. Our purifier got destroyed ... we need help, or we're all going to die."

The red light flickered yellow.

“Let him in,” said a different voice – a stallion.

There was a long, hesitant pause.

“Sir?” the mare asked, dubiously.

The stallion’s voice crackled over the comms. “Take a step back, please – away from the camera so I can see you,” he asked … or was that an order? He must’ve seen the anxiety in my eyes. I looked like I was going to drill a hole into the floor with my shaking.

“It’s okay … you’ll be alright. We won’t hurt you,” he said softly in a voice a parent would use to comfort a frightened child.

I blinked, trying to quiet my gasping breaths. He was talking to me. I obeyed with a terrified look on my face, my pale face glowing dimly in the violet light.

An eternity of quaking heartbeats passed – and the stallion’s voice crackled over the speakers once more.

“Let him in.”

“Sir, I don't think ...”

“Let him in.”

The yellow light blinked.

“... yes sir.”

I gulped a lump down my throat, my eyes darting back and forth as the turrets retracted into the ceiling and the light flickered green.

The wall of ice before me rumbled and cracked. I took a cautious step back, as layers of ancient frost broke away and the machinery on the other side groaned to life. A grating, mechanical shriek echoed through the empty room and a chunk of ice almost eight feet wide crumbled apart before me.

Out pushed forward an immense, yet familiar cog-shaped door. A grinding metallic shriek quaked the floor beneath my hooves as the cog spun 360 degrees and retracted back into the wall with a resounding thunder clap.

Then the door began to part open.

Billowing clouds of pale mist seethed out of the widening divide before me. I held a hoof over my eyes as a white strobe light flickered blindingly through the clearing fog.

I took another step back, wiping away a bead of cold sweat.

‘This is it.’

A gray mare stepped forward into the light, and said, “Let’s go, stable colt. Mister Sterling would like to speak with you.”

*

My eyelids fluttered as I entered into the glare of the harsh white light. I quickly adjusted to the same color of pale fluorescent lights that had illuminated the hallways of Stable 91 my entire life, and possibly the last 200 years.

Flanked by two security ponies and the mare whose voice nearly condemned me to death, I trotted into a flickering vestibule that didn’t look like it had been used in centuries. It probably hadn’t, as my hooves kicked up poofy clouds of dust that mingled with the mist lingering around my legs.

It was dust that time. I was sure of it. At least I hoped.

One of the security ponies sneezed, sniffling. “Haven’t been through here in ages,” she muttered.

I cringed wondering if she just snorted somebody’s remains.

A grating metallic groan echoed behind me as the cog rolled back into place with a floor-quaking slam, sealing that place off from the outside once more. Inside, it was utterly silent except for the hoofsteps that clopped in our gaits.

If it wasn’t for that Mister Sterling, I would have been another speck of dust swirling around outside that door. I let out a long and drawn out sigh. My legs were still wobbling beneath me. And it didn’t help that I could feel them staring at me. The two security mares that flanked me exchanged sideways glances, murmuring about how I looked like somebody they knew.

I tried not to look, but I caught one of my escorts staring at me and she quickly turned the other away, focusing upon the door at the far end of the hall. I gulped. I realized that I was still gasping for air.

The gray mare at point stopped in front of me, and took a good look at my face. She glanced at the other two ponies, then back at me, inquisitively.

I nearly shrunk beneath her stare. The earth pony mare was half a foot taller than me.

“What’s your name, kid?” she half-asked, half-demanded in a gruff voice.

I took a deep breath, running a shaky hoof through my dirty mane. “My name’s Red Dawn. I’m from Stable 91.”

She nodded to herself, snorting, “You don't look so good, kid.”

“You nearly incinerated me!” I snapped.

She met my eyes with a hard stare.

“If it wasn’t for that PipBuck of yours, I would’ve thought you were a God-damned snow fury or something,” she growled, eyeing the stains on my underclothes and the bullet ridden, blade-scored, wasteland shit-on kevlar armor that clung to my chest.

“Hell, if it wasn’t for Mister Sterling’s generosity, I probably would’ve dusted you anyways.” My muscles tensed as she leaned in close so that we could see eye to eye. “Let me be straightforward with you, Red Dawn: if you try anything, and I mean anything stupid, we’ll mop the floor with you."

She cocked her head at me.

"Are we clear?”

My eyes narrowed at the holstered energy pistol that was slung around her neck. I took a deep breath, clenched my jaw and nodded.

“Crystal Empire clear,” I muttered, bitterly.

“Good boy. And If you really are from Stable 91, then it’d be a real shame if you got atomized after coming all this way. God knows the shit-heap you climbed over to get here.”

I felt the urge to say something I’d regret, but I held my tongue. She didn’t even know half of it.

“Both of us can agree on that,” I muttered instead.

She tipped her chin up and held out a hoof, saying, “Before we go on inside, I’ll need you to give me all your bags, guns, knives, explosives – anything that you’re carrying. I’ll need to search your bags, too.”

My entire body went stiff.

"My ... bags ..." I whispered.

The mare snorted. “What's wrong, kid? You act like I'm gonna strip you down or something."

“Maybe he ain't so proud 'bout what you'll find down there,” one of the security mares drawled, bumping the other on the shoulder as they laughed. My face went redder than my mane.

“Relax, kid. It’s standard procedure for visitors here at the World Tree Company. Just need to make sure you aren’t gonna try and die a martyr, or something,” she said, resting a hoof on her energy pistol.

I groaned, rolling my eyes, “Do I look like I have bombs on me?”

She shrugged, holding out her hoof once more. “Let's find out.”

I glanced at the ponies on either side of me, and saw that they had their hooves planted on their holsters too.

'My bags ...'

I reached over, hesitating as my hoof hovered over the straps. I gulped a heavy lump down my throat. I nearly killed myself trying to get them back ... hell, I nearly killed someone else.

I shook my head, closing my eyes.

“Alright,” I whispered.

I sat down, shrugged off my bags, and lowered them to the floor between my forelegs. I parted theirs flaps and froze. My friends. Their frayed photographs caught my eyes and pain flickered across my face.

The gray mare saw the ghosts that haunted my bloodshot stare.

Her hoof lowered and so did her tone. “You’ll get them back,” she said softly, in a voice I didn’t think she had.

A moment passed and I nodded, slowly. I stared down at the floor and pushed my bags away from me before hoofing over my pistol, barrel down. My muscles tensed as I felt hooves pat me down from head to hoof. Afterwards, the two other security mares proceeded to reach inside my saddlebags, poking through my belongings.

I cringed – hard – as one of the mares commented on how cute I looked in my foal picture.

“Excellent. Then we shouldn’t have any problems. Mister Sterling never has any visitors ... well, any visitors that aren't threatening to hang his head over the ramparts outside, at least. If he thought you were a threat, he wouldn't have stuck his neck out for you like that.” She snorted. "Don't look like you got it in you, anyways."

I glared at her.

She paused for a moment, then jabbed a hoof at me, lowering her voice. “But don’t think for a single moment I’ll let you off easy. Get in, get what you need, and get out.”

I growled, “Are you like this to everybody? Or do you just really like me?”

She narrowed her eyes at me so hard that I felt like she was going to crush me between her eyebrows.

“I hope to God that nopony else saw you walk in, because I don’t want anyone else thinking they’ll get special treatment,” the mare sneered.

I sighed, “If I’m some kind of threat, then why’d you guys let me in?”

“Wasn’t me. Wouldn’t have let you in even if you were being chased by a swarm of haunters.” She waved a hoof, dismissively. “Mister Sterling crawled out of a stable like you did; he probably felt bad for you or something.”

I cocked an eyebrow at that. I wondered how many stables existed in the north. 91 couldn’t have been the only one.

She nodded to the ponies that flanked me, and they seemed to ease up a bit. “By the way, I’m Dapple Gray, Chief of Security here at the World Tree Company, and I’m in charge of keeping this slice of sanity safe.” She turned to hoof a control panel.

“Safe from what?” I asked, half expecting her to say ‘you’.

Her foreleg hovered over the door’s controls, a half smile creasing her lips.

“Why, from everyone else, of course.” Dapple Gray tapped the panel in front of her and the door rumbled and shook, its internal mechanisms sliding and rolling into place.

“You’ll see why.”

The door swung open and a glaring white flash engulfed me. I gasped as I stepped into the light, shielding my eyes, inhaling only to have my brain go haywire at the aromatic, alien scents that flooded into my nostrils.

My eyes widened and my pupils dilated. It smelled ... edible. It smelled ... good. More than good.

It smelled fucking orgasmic.

My entire body quivered with electrifying euphoria as an orgy of mouth-watering scents rutted my virgin senses. Dapple Gray led us across the mezzanine to a veranda overlooking the stories below.

But I wasn’t exactly following her at that point. Instead, the scents spirited me over to the railing where they happened to be standing, the fruity fragrances intensifying the closer my nose came to the stone balustrade.

One level down, lab-coated and jump-suited ponies led formations of tracked robots that towed behind them dozens of carts filled to the brim with ….

'Dear Celestia.'

Fruits and vegetables.

My senses practically jizzed all over themselves.

Containers as wide as two ponies with their legs outstretched and as tall as a stallion on his hinds overflowed with mouthwatering hauls of golden apples, and succulent oranges, and bright red tomatoes, and 'Goddesses,' I thought, 'Are those strawberries?!' Among them were even more exotic fruits I thought I’d never see with my own eyes.

The names of many of those decadent morsels were lost to me. Some had names that were right on the tip of my tongue – and good Goddess, did I wish that they actually were.

They were supposed to be extinct.

But I was wrong. Goddesses, was I wrong.

My escorts snickered at the wide-eyed, slack jawed expression I dribbled with. I uttered the only words I could put together.

“Bwa-hahhh … unnf …” A thin line of drool trickled down my lower lip and I shook my head vigorously, wiping it dry as I blinked my eyes back into focus.

“W-what is this place?” I whinnied as I realized that the tower’s floors extended far beyond what I could see above me and deep into the earth – thousands of feet below.

Alternating tiers of mezzanines, bridges, and floors descended into the tower's depths, flickering with flashing yellow lights as swarms of robot cart pullers hustled across. Other balconies were illuminated by fluorescent beams where employees lounged on their lunch breaks.

“Is this a factory? Farm? Robot factory? Robot farm factory?”

Dapple Gray puffed up her chest and swept a forehoof across the floors below, saying, “This right here – this is the heart of all innovation in Poneva - the North’s breadbasket - Chancellor Puddinghead’s winter stash - the Garden of Eden.

“We’ve got seed stores to last an entire nation the size of Roan for years, and so much pre-war tech just sitting here that everypony wants a slice of the pie. If it wasn’t for Mister Sterling, we wouldn’t have known how to grow or use any of it.

“The folks back at Stable-Tec left us a going away gift when the world ended, but it was Mister Sterling who opened it for us.”

“That’s incredible. I-I’ve never seen so much fresh food - so many robots - so much of … of everything,” I droned on breathlessly as I stalked a crate of breathtakingly yellow banan… 'bananas? And … are those pineapples? What the hell are those spiky things?' I wondered.

There were too many questions to ask. The little hamster that scurried around in circles inside my skull was struggling to decide on whether to ask them - or to drool after a crate of strawberries that sat on the floor invitingly, alone and with nobody around to eat them.

A robot lifted it into a trailer and lugged it away.

"Don't go ..." I whined. The three mares sighed.

"Ahem." I licked my lips before asking, “What don’t you grow here?”

Dapple Gray just shrugged casually, vaguely amused at my blabbering.

“I’m just here for security. King Egghead and his team of eggheads upstairs do all the research. Well, resurrecting, as Mister Sterling likes to call it,” she chuckled. “They’re bringing back all sorts of good stuff from the old world up there.”

Dapple Gray patted down her uniform, tipping her chin back slightly as she gazed down upon the massive, clanking procession of labor bots below. “We ship food throughout the North, and as far South as New Appaloosa. We’re the third largest source of food in all of the Northern Wastes. Hell, probably in all of Equestria.”

“You-wh-huhh?! Third. LARGEST?” I gasped. “This place is HUGE!”

I stared off into the flashing distance, unable to even fathom the scale of their yields.

Dapple Gray snorted. “We’ve got stiff competition,” she said, biting her lower lip and resting a hoof on her energy pistol. “Big competition, rather.”

She cocked her head at me when she noticed that I wasn't listening, too busy panting – drooling – and wagging my tail at a crate of golden yellow apples with wide, puppy eyes.

Dapple Gray coughed. I blinked, and looked around.

"Oh," I murmured, realizing that they were still there.

"Anyways ..." she continued, "We've got big competition, and those bastards really don’t like competition.”

I peeled my focus from the cornucopia of mouthgasms and caught the sternness in her eyes.

“When the other plantations want something, they fight for it - and maintaining a monopoly on food in the wasteland is apparently something worth dying for to them. They want to put us out of business, even if it means destroying one of the only good things left in this wasteland.” The mare pushed herself off the parapet and nodded to my escorts.

I cocked my head at her. “What good would that be?”

“Food, Red Dawn. Unlike in your cozy little stable, there isn’t enough of it in the wasteland. Even with the three plantations, maybe even including what few sorry tiddlywiddly slivers of land there are left in Equestria that can sprout healthy crops, it’s still just barely enough.

“Now you know why we can’t just let anypony in. Now you know why we can’t have our doors wide open. We can’t risk losing … all … this,” she trailed off, leaning over the edge. “For all I could’ve known, you were one of them, trying to get inside.”

“What? Did my bloodied up barding give it away?” I scoffed with a sly grin.

She chuckled, folding her legs across her chest. “Don’t give me any ideas. I might just find a reason to buck you out the door.”

I just rolled my eyes and shook my head.

“I can’t risk letting anypony ruin what Sterling’s started. Can’t let all of his work go up in flames,” she vowed, her neck straightening even further than what I thought was equinely possible.

I cracked a thin smile at that. I thought I detected a hint of admiration in her voice.

“You sound like you’re very fond of this 'Mister Sterling',” I scoffed.

“And you ask too many God-damned questions,” Dapple Gray snapped suddenly, as the two guard ponies exchanged smirks. “We’ve dillydallied enough. The big egghead’s probably wondering if I ended up roasting his esteemed guest with laser fire, or something.”

We stepped into an elevator and Dapple Gray tapped its flashing buttons, our destination gleaming the brightest. The elevator rumbled once and began to ascend with a whirring lurch.

I watched quietly as the floors dinged by, hoping that, after all I heard, Mister Sterling was just as generous as Dapple Gray.

*

Chapter 6 - Six Thousand - Pt II

*

The elevator dinged and the doors parted open. Dapple Gray led me across the hall to the only room on the 91st floor: the penthouse suite. We walked past rows of hanging picture frames of what had to be notable members of the Stable-Tec corporation.

I paused for a moment to look at a picture of three mares, one with a yellow coat, another orange, and the third white, holding each other’s hooves up high before a cheering audience. Behind them, a projector casted an image of a newly built Stable door, labeled with only the number ‘1’.

'Stable-Tec – On a Crusade to build a better tomorrow,' said the plaque beneath it. It took me a moment to recognize just who those mares were … I had seen them before in the textbooks at school. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle – the founders of Stable-Tec. How could I forget the very ponies that designed all the stables in Equestria?

I looked closer, craning my neck.

Dapple Gray cleared her throat, and I snapped out of it, cantering up the hall to catch up with them. With me in tow, we arrived at Mister Sterling's executive suite. As I watched Dapple Gray approach the door, I found that my heart was drumming against my chest. I felt a little sweaty, too. I trembled – not from fear, but from sheer anticipation.

I took a deep breath as the mare knocked on Mister Sterling’s door. Seconds passed, and a thin line of sweat trickled down the side of my face.

The door opened and a tawny unicorn stallion stepped out into the hall to meet us. He saw me first, catching my uneasy stare. His eyes flickered with perplexity as they turned to see me. One of his eyes was red. The other glowed with a soft green light, a long scar running down his brow over his eye.

Quickly composing himself, the stallion, older than his one good eye showed, creased his lips with a curt smile, opening the door wider. The faint sound of whining mechanical servos whirred beneath his shabby white lab coat as his slender frame stepped out into the hall.

“Sterling, sir,” Dapple Gray said, straightening her spine.

He brushed her shoulder with a forehoof and her posture wavered, somewhat.

“Thanks, Gray.”

He turned his weathered face to me, seized by a peculiar warmth I never thought I’d ever see in the frozen wasteland. “Hmm,” he murmured, studying me as he tapped a hoof to his chin.

“I’m the guy who runs this place," he said with a smile, scratching at his short white mane, "But people call me Mister Sterling.” He held out a hoof to me. I flinched as if he was drawing a knife. It was just a simple hoof-shake. But no one out there had ever been that kind to me until then.

His polite smile widened, but it only gripped my heart with hesitation. “What about you, my boy? What’s your name?” At least he didn’t call me colt, or kid - like everybody fucking else. He seemed like a nice guy … but …

I took his hoof, cautiously, and shook it. “My name’s Red Dawn,” I replied, unable to remove my eyes from the unnerving pair of multicolored orbs that were holding my stare. “I’m from Stable-”

“91,” he said suddenly, plucking the words right out of my mouth. I stood there with my lips parted open, confounded. “I never thought I’d see the day when those doors would open,” Mister Sterling intoned. One of my hooves came to scratch at the number painted on my right shoulder pad. It was muddled with a dark red stain that I forgot to clean off.

“I never thought I’d see the day …” he trailed off wistfully.

My hooves shifted uneasily beneath me.

“Uhh … have we met?” I asked, sheepishly.

He thought for a moment, even though I knew the answer to my own question.

“We will soon, I suppose.” The aging pony held the door open for me, and motioned me inside. “Well, come on in. We’ve got something to talk about, don’t we?”

Suspicion stifled the movement in my legs. I found it hard to trust a pony who knew more about where I was from than anyone else in the entire wasteland.

I glanced at Dapple Gray, who was giving me that stern ‘I’ll break you if you try anything’ look again. Nodding slowly, I stepped inside his office as Mister Sterling leaned out the door to have a few words with Miss Gray.

While they spoke, I glanced around his penthouse office, curiously. Soft yellow light casted shadows against the ancient, graying walls and the dark hardwood floor.

Potted plants, filing cabinets, and tables stacked with glowing terminals and flickering monitors furnished Mister Sterling's personal suite. A staircase led to a wide mezzanine with a couch, drawers, closet, and a bed that must’ve been there since the bombs fell.

Hanging from the walls were pictures of ponies in pre-war garb. One was of a pair of stallions tipping their hats to the newly built Stable-Tec tower – nearly the same as it was when I saw it outside.

Looking past the half-mooned desk at the center of the office, I peered through a wide, panoramic view of the dim, flickering city below. I trotted toward the window and placed a hoof against the glass.

It struck me that Poneva was much much bigger, once. City lights – indicative of life – grew sparser and farther in between the further I stared out into the distance. Beyond a gloomy graveyard of skeletal high rises, I saw only an opaque curtain of night.

The heart of darkness. The heart of Poneva city. Out there, there was only darkness. The city limits had shrunk severely ever since the bombs fell, but where there was light, there was life. Even so, it was shocking to see so much of it in one small place. It was nothing but a horseshoe shaped glow that faded away into the black distance.

I wondered how many people lived out there.

The office’s door closed, and I heard hooves clopping towards me against the hardwood floor. “Six thousand souls,” the old pony said. I heard him before I saw him. Whirring mechanical servos sighed as he came to a stop beside me.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw the stallion looking out the window, too. “Six. Thousand. That’s how many people call this city their home.” He turned to me, asking, “You don’t see those numbers anywhere else in the wasteland do you, my boy?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I replied, simply, running a hoof through my messy mane. “I haven’t been out and about for too long.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have been able to tell you were new to the Northern Wasteland,” he said. “You look like you’ve seen it all.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, and sighed.

“I’ve seen enough."

I saw his gaze gravitate to meet my reflection’s gloomy eyes.

“And still, enough won’t ever be enough until you’ve finished what you came out here to do.”

My ears perked, and I met his weary gaze.

“You did mention that something happened to your stable? Your … water talisman?”

I let out a shallow breath, nodding. Mister Sterling turned and leaned his back against the window, folding his legs across his chest. “Stable 91,” he trailed off, touching his chin. “You're a long walk from home, Red Dawn.”

I snorted, the light in my eyes darkening as a humorless smile creased my lips. “I spent most of it running, not walking, Mister Sterling.”

He broke his gaze, turning his head away from me to stare out the window and into the dark city.

“I know how rough of a place the wasteland can be for a stable pony …” he trailed off, looking at his hooves.

A PipBuck with a dim teal screen encased his left foreleg.

“So you are from a stable?”

He nodded as I frowned at the way he was avoiding my eyes. “You remind me of myself when I left mine.” He lifted his a metal foreleg, its servomechanisms humming as he laid eyes upon his prosthetic hoof.

“Alone. Bloodied. Searching for something,” he trailed off.

“That why you tugged on Dapple Gray’s leash?” I smirked.

The stallion went silent for several heartbeats.

His servomotors yawned as he shuffled on his hooves. “I knew 91 would open its doors one day. But … I wasn’t expecting this. I wasn’t expecting you to be the only one."

Mister Sterling studied my face as my ears wilted like dying flowers. I could hear my nightmares rattling behind the closed doors of my mind once more.

He finally looked me in the eyes.

“What happened … how bad was it?”

I clenched my jaw, leaning against the window. “Not too bad. Yet. Our water purifier had a meltdown and it took our water talisman with it.”

His gaze wavered for a moment as he glanced off to the side, his mouth open in silence. “That’s why you’re here,” he said, not asking.

I nodded.

“Then you couldn’t have possibly left alone …” He blinked and went silent. I looked at my hooves and his eyes softened. “Oh … no … I’m so sorry.” Mister Sterling said in the gentlest of tones, “They were your friends, weren’t they, my boy?”

My jaw clenched as I let his question sink into my heart. I hesitated, breaths refusing to enter my lips.

“Six of us. We came out here looking for a new water talisman.” I muttered, “I’m the only pony who made it this far. I’m the only one left.” I looked up and Mister Sterling was thinking quietly once more.

I remembered – vividly – the shattered fragments of scrap metal that had remained of our talisman. The pipes shrieked. They exploded over my head like gunfire. I clenched my eyes shut. I remembered the way Amber Fields died. Remembered Lightning Twirl falling out of the sky. Remembered the chain of explosions that silenced those screaming slaves.

They were but flashes in my eyes.

I could hear them again. The snow furies. Fresh in my mind like blood that wouldn’t dry out. I cupped my mouth with a hoof, gasping quietly as Dew Drops' screams and their laughter faded away.

Mister Sterling caught the ghosts that haunted my dark eyes. I tensed as he laid a hoof onto my shoulder, nodding slowly, and telling me, without words, to take all the time I needed.

I looked away, staring at the floor beneath the gentle weight of his hoof. I closed my eyes for a moment, loosening up, the pony’s hoof still resting upon my shoulder. I opened my mouth to continue, but I clung to the words that hung from the tip of my tongue, inhaling sharply.

“We’ve all lost someone,” he said, echoing Gail’s words. Night Sky’s words. “I … believed that I’d lost everything I loved when I stepped out that stable door.” He squeezed my shoulder with a hoof. “But you, my boy, still have everything to lose.”

“I want to go home,” I murmured, thinking of Mom’s warm smile, and her loving, feathery hugs. “Though I’m not quite sure if I can anytime soon.” I bowed my head, my mane falling before my eyes.

He remained silent, nodding to himself in the somber quietude that followed. “And you’re hoping that I can give you what you came here for?”

I stared at him, trying to read his face. Trying to gauge his reaction at what I’d say next. He already knew.

“Come on,” he said, finally, trotting away from the window. “I’d like to show you something. Maybe I can raise your spirits a bit, my boy. And please, just call me ‘Sterling’.”

I hesitated as he started toward the door. He paused, glancing at me over his shoulder as he waited. I exhaled a breath I realized I’d been holding, and trailed after him as we exited his office to take another elevator ride several floors down the tower.

With an audible ding, the doors parted open and my nose crinkled at the same overwhelming scents that I smelled earlier. Only this time, they were far more intense. And I saw why.

Sterling beamed with pride.

"Welcome to the Hanging Gardens of Poneva, Red Dawn."

My eyes widened.

Towering above me, upon dozens of tiers of hydroponic gardens were trees, hanging vines, and green stalks – their fruits hanging proudly from their thick branches or blooming from their lush tendrils.

Networks of irrigation piping wove through the brush, trickling sparkling freshwater directly into their submerged roots. I followed Sterling down a hanging walkway between groves of apple trees.

Unlike the ones at 91, those apples were a mouthwatering shade of yellow, the same ones I was admiring on the first floor. Sterling looked over his shoulder and saw the curiousness in my eyes and decided to humor me. Brushing past a labor bot that was inspecting the arcane machinery around us, he picked an apple from a branch and floated it towards me.

I looked at him, unsure as he placed it in my open hoof.

“Go ahead: have at it,” he said, smiling.

With an audible crunch and a spray of delicious apple juice, I took a bite and swallowed. My retinas dilated to saucers as liquid heaven made sweet, sweet love to my taste buds and dribbled down my chin. 'Good Goddesses …'

It was as if Luna just squirted inside my mouth.

'So that's what she tastes like,' I thought.

Sterling chuckled as I took another bite, and another, and another. Before I knew it, the apple was gone, and I was puppy eyeing the ravaged core that rested upon my hoof.

He chuckled, “You got a little something on your lip."

I licked my lips ravenously and wiped away a stray apple chunk.

“Wow, this is fucking amazing!” I gasped. Sterling’s smile only widened.

I blinked and I cleared my throat, my cheeks reddening. “Sorry, I mean, they’re just … so … guh-hooooood.” A labor bot rolled before me and plucked the apple core from my outstretched hoof.

Sterling snickered, dismissing my outburst with a wave of a hoof. “That’s exactly what I thought when I had my first.” He sighed, looking up at the hydroponic gardens that hung above us. “They’re called ‘Golden Delicious Apples’,” he told me as my stomach grumbled. He picked two more, one for me and the other for himself. He tossed me one and I caught it between my teeth, its juices trickling down my lip.

“I think they’re my favorite,” I said, relishing in the sweet aftertaste that lingered on my tongue.

“They’re my favorite too. Heh, and Goddesses, whoever named them that named them right.” The old pony chuckled, plunging his teeth into the golden orb that floated in his levitation spell. I stopped chewing for a moment when he said Goddesses. That was the first time I’d heard someone other than me say that word out there.

“At 10 caps per pound, these are the cheapest apples in all of Poneva. Ponies scramble for these when my agents cart them out into the markets.” He took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Six thousand souls.” Sterling waved a hoof above him at the gardens that stretched up to the ceiling. “All this? Everything you see here? It still isn’t enough for everyone.”

I looked all around me, eyeing up and down at the hydroponic … plantation around me. “How is that ... possible?” I murmured.

Sterling led me down the catwalk, nodding at a pair of lab ponies that trotted past us. “Tell me, Red Dawn, what was your job at Stable 91 before you left?” the old pony asked.

“I was … I’m an electrical engineer.” I was going to say an apprentice engineer … but … “Yep. Electrical engineer,” I added.

He chuckled, “Well, you're not an arcane engineer ... but still, you must know a thing or two about water talismans, right?”

I thought for a moment, a sly grin barely grazing my lips. “Of course,” I replied. Thankfully, that wasn’t a complete lie. I knew a thing or two; I just didn’t know everything there was to know about them like Dew Drops did. She was the arcane engineer, after all.

“What can you tell me about them?” he asked.

I gave him the textbook definition. “Water talismans use purification spells to produce freshwater.”

I crunched into my apple, chewing victoriously.

He nodded as we trotted across the catwalk. “Indeed. The water talisman is an intricate lattice matrix of quasicrystalline superconductors that, when introduced to an expurgation spell, focus and replicate it exponentially, generating an arcano-distillation field to thaumaturgically purify a liquid or aqueous substance for consumption.”

I stopped chewing. Sterling turned to my muddled expression, my mouth open so wide that he could see the half-chewed chunks drooling from my lower lip. I gulped, smiling sheepishly. That was a mouthful.

Sterling laughed. “Well, of course any stable engineer would know that!” he added as I stared at him blankly. “Don’t worry, I had to learn that too when I was an engineer at my stable.”

That bastard was testing me.

“Yes, of course,” I murmured. The pony snickered as we trotted along the catwalk.

“I was able to learn more about those talismans when I arrived here. This facility was one of the premier R&D centers for agricultural research in Equestria back in the day. Many of the botanical, biological, and arcanomechanical technologies used to grow and sustain plant life were developed here.”

What with the immense gardens and groves that towered over us, I wasn’t surprised.

We stopped at the center of the room overlooking a massive cylindrical machine that seemed to stretch up and down from and into the floors above and below us.

“Holy hell,” I muttered, unable to fathom the amount of work it must have taken to put the whole machine together.

It was gargantuan. It would take a several minute long trot to navigate around its entire circumference and a long elevator ride to get to the machine’s base. Pipes, branching out of the metal trunk, formed a vast network of piping that fed the hydroponic gardens.

“Any idea what this beauty is, Red Dawn?”

I touched a hoof to my chin. “It reminds me of the water purifier back home.”

“That’s because it is. This facility was used to research and develop new strains of fruits and vegetables that could be grown without conventional farming techniques.” He nodded to himself, saying, “You might know of a few, like the white apples grown in your stable - like in many standard configuration stables throughout Equestria. But they needed something to provide water for all their plants,” he said, marveling at the beauty of the arcane engineering before us. “It only made sense that the first water talismans were created and used here.

“During the war, Stable-Tec, with help from the Ministry of Arcane Science, researched the applications for advanced Crystal Imperial superconductor gems, which was the standard in the Empire at the time –”

“The Ministry of ... ?”

Sterling chuckled, folding his forelegs over his chest as he leaned against the railing. “You didn’t pay much attention in your Equestrian History class did you, my boy?”

“U-uh, sure I did. It’s just been so long.” I never thought I’d have to hear about the Ministries again after I graduated. I hated Equestrian history - but I passed that class. Passed, not aced - like I did with the rest of my classes.

They’re the ones who blew up the world, anyways.

Fuck'em.

Sterling cocked an eyebrow at me as I brooded, silently.

“Well the M.A.S did just what their name suggested," he continued, "They researched and developed new magical spells. They’re the ones who invented the mass expurgation spell, or the purification spells used in conjunction with water talismans.”

I nodded slowly. Again. “I knew that.”

“Unlike the flawed, reverse-engineered zebra talismans that Equestria used in mass-produced talisman designs, water talismans were built by unicorn scientists for quality over quantity, using imperial gems that were guaranteed to increase their efficiency and output ten-fold.

“Here, they developed the very talismans used in every single stable in Equestria, field testing them through their hydroponic agriculture research.”

My eyes lit up. “I-if they made them here, then you must have enough talismans to last hundreds of years!”

“Well,” he began, tapping his hooves together. I noticed that he wasn’t looking at me anymore. Again. “Water talismans were made in labs, not factories. They were constructed by hoof in batches, tested, and shipped, before another batch was given the green light to begin assembling.”

He paused, severity hardening his features. My ears drooped, my enthusiasm slowly dying away.

“The last batch of twenty never left its testing phase when the balefire came.” He averted his gaze to the water purifier. “That batch is currently being tested as we speak.”

I rubbed my forehead with a hoof, exhaling a breath I just realized I was holding in. “Wait, what? They’re being tested?” I scratched my mane incessantly, grinding my teeth. "Can't you stop the test? You don’t need twenty water talismans to feed this plantation, do you?” I gulped a lump down my throat as my heart fluttered with apprehension.

Sterling bit his lower lip. “This water purifier was built to test several water talismans simultaneously. Take one out ... and the machine ends its testing phase.” He looked at me with a grave expression. “It was already on when I first came here.”

I clenched my jaw, hoofing my face. “Well what’s that supposed to mean?” I whinnied.

Still unable to hold my apprehensive stare, he continued, “Many of the systems were offline and irreparable when we converted this facility into a hydroponics plantation. End the testing phase, and the purifier may not be able to run another test –”

“Please!” I snapped, suddenly, stomping my hoof. “Can you help my stable or not?”

The weary old pony bowed his head to his hooves.

“I’m sorry Red Dawn ... if I stop the test, the plantation will fall apart.” He chewed his lower lip, and shook his head. “No. I can’t help you.”

'No,' I thought as my legs wobbled beneath me and my head started to spin. 'No, no ...

'No.'

“WHAT!?" I screamed, trembling as my heart quaked inside my throat. “You … you can’t?”

He shook his head. “No,” the old pony said firmly, once more.

'No. No? NO!' I collapsed against the railing, hanging my head over the edge as rivulets of sweat burned against my forehead.

Something shattered inside of me.

“Everyone in my stable is going to die …” I murmured desolately, staring into space with vacant eyes. “Everyone in my stable is GOING TO FUCKING DIE!”

Sterling took a step towards me.

“I’m sorry Red Dawn … I really want to help you –”

“BUT YOU CAN’T! YOU WON’T!” I shrieked, bowing my head as if ready to charge, “Your fucking plantation is worth more than other people’s lives!”

“Red Dawn –”

“YOU'RE ALL THE SAME! I SHOULD’VE KNOWN YOU WERE IN IT FOR THE CAPS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE – ”

“BE QUIET!” he roared.

I fell on my haunches, gasping for breath, my eyes widened to watery saucers.

“Six thousand souls, Red Dawn,” he said, his voice trembling. “Six thousand – and all this … all this isn’t enough. Our yields are hardly enough to feed less than a thousand ponies. But it’s all we have. We’re the only source of large-scale free labor in all of Equestria.

“We’re a clean business. A fair business. We pay our employees. We sell modestly. The other plantations – they don’t! They enslave ponies to work in their fields. They fund gangs and pay mercenaries to fight their wars and do their dirty work, and guess who’s caught in the crossfire?”

I closed my eyes, shaking my head.

“Us. You and I. The mom and pop's store down the street. The orphanage around the corner. Everyone who lives in Poneva is either a tool waiting to be used or fodder for their goons!” The weary old pony sat before me, looking me in the eyes.

“But so long as everyone can eat their food, so long as everyone can do their drugs, people will just looking the other way while they kill, and rape, and steal!

“Cut our production, and people will keep putting caps into funding more crime, more extortion, and more slavery in the north – in Equestria."

He held my shoulder, and I peered into his eyes. They flickered with sadness as he squeezed me gently with his hoof. But he blinked, and the severity returned to his stare. “People are trying to fight them. We are, too, in the ways we can. We’re trying to win this city back. But if we let them win … the entire north will become their playground.”

I shook my head, whimpering as I refused to believe it ... to believe that he was right. My stable would have to die so that six thousand would live. Six. Thousand.

My heart screamed that the 194 ponies back at home meant more to me than anything or anyone else in the world. Sterling – Gail – Night Sky – they could all go to hell with those six thousand for all I cared!

“I really want to help you,” he said, softly, “I know what it’s like to lose everything. To leave everyone you love behind ... But there’s more at stake here than just ... one ... stable. I’m trying to make this city … maybe even this wasteland a better place.” He pleaded with me, “You have to understand …”

I didn’t say anything as I lowered my head to my hooves. I couldn't … I just couldn't .... I just gave up.

I slammed my hooves into the floor as I rose to my fours.

“I wasted my time coming here. Wasted everyone’s time.”

I thought that maybe I’d just find someplace to die in the wilderness. Maybe I’d just run into a bunch of snow furies and get flayed alive. I didn’t care anymore.

I turned, and walked away.

“Red Dawn, wait -”

I kept walking.

“RED DAWN, STOP THIS INSTANT!” he shouted, and I froze. “Don’t walk away from me when I'm talking to you, my boy.”

“I’M NOT YOUR ‘BOY’!" I screamed, tears welling out of my eyes, "AND I’VE GOT NOTHING ELSE TO SAY TO YOU!”

Sterling clenched his jaw, pain flickering across his face. But he didn’t stop.

“Well I do,” he said firmly. “I can still help you!”

“Why?!” I snapped, glaring at him. “Why do you shake my hoof, just to push me away!? Why do you care about me? My stable?!”

Sterling's ears drooped as he looked at me with sad, weary eyes. “Because I was a stable pony - just like you,” he told me. “Because I lived in a stable … just like yours. Three hundred lives are still lives to save … what would I be if I simply chose one or the other? If I can help other ponies, I’ll do everything I can to try.”

“There’s no point …" I muttered. "I’ll find another way – I-I’ll search the entire wasteland if I have to!”

The old pony snorted, chuckling darkly. “You’d be wasting your time. No one would give up a water talisman as easy as I would.”

“As if I haven’t wasted my time already!” I screamed, baring my teeth. “It’s over, Sterling …”

Sterling grabbed both my shoulders, and shook me. Hard. “It’s. Not. Over! If I can replace those water talismans with something else … something ... better, you can have them all.”

I shrugged him off and sneered, “Oh yeah? With what?”

“The other plantations purge their water with old world machines – maybe even magic that no one else has ever heard of or seen. If we win … if the World Tree somehow took their land, those machines - that magic, we’d have enough food to feed the entire city, all six thousand souls … the settlements outside … maybe even the entire north.”

“Somehow …” I muttered, burying my head in my hooves. “SOMEHOW?” You’re betting my stable’s life on a … on a ‘SOMEHOW’?”

“If we beat them … I’ll be able to give you more water talismans than you’ll ever need – enough to last you hundreds of hundreds of years.”

My eyes widened. “I-is that a promise? Hahaha!” I chuckled mockingly, a cruel, bitter grin stretching across my lips. “Dapple Gray told me how much bigger they are, how much more dangerous they are, and you want to steal from them?

“You’re either dreaming too big or you’re fucking insane, Sterling!” I screamed.

I paced back and forth restlessly, sweat trickling down my forehead. “I’m running out of time. They’re running out of time,” I said, trying to lower my voice. I couldn't.

“I don’t need your hypothetical BULLSHIT! I need solutions – now!”

The old pony stared back at me in silence.

My eyes fluttered closed and I hung my head. He reached out, and I flinched, batting away his hoof as he tried to keep me from shaking. “I’m sorry Sterling …” I sobbed, seeing the pain in his eyes, “But how … HOW CAN I SAVE THEM!?”

I held my breath, trying to keep myself from coming apart. But I couldn’t. I let out a quaking sob. I let out another. Another failure. Defeated. Again. I leaned over the railing, strands of my disheveled mane falling over my eyes.

“What the fuck am I going to do now?” I whimpered softly, cringing at the intangible agony - the despair that writhed inside of me. I went there thinking I’d find hope. Thinking I’d find salvation.

I didn’t find shit.

“How … Sterling,” I began, my voice trembling and uneven, “How can I choose them over the ponies I love? My mom … my stable… I can’t … I-I just can’t! If you can’t help me now … then ... then it’s already over.

“I promised them that I’d find a talisman. Please … I can’t choose … I can’t betray the dead ..." I sniffled. "Six thousand ponies … shit! If letting my stable die is right, then I don’t know what right is!”

He closed his eyes and I turned mine away. We stood there in silence as the water purifier hummed in the somber silence.

Sterling's voice gently parted the curtains between us.

“If you won’t do it for us, do it for your stable. Your … family. Do it ... because there’s no other way.”

I covered my eyes with a hoof, shaking my head vigorously.

“BULLSHIT! There … there has to be another way!” I cried as he watched me in silence.

“M-maybe I could look for one of those dead stables … take theirs.”

“If looters haven’t already,” Sterling murmured, plucking the words right out of my thoughts.

“Fuck! Maybe m-maybe … maybe I could go south, find someone,” I babbled, “Someone … someone …”

He just stared at me, saying nothing even as I fought to shrug off the thoughts that screamed exactly what he wanted to tell me. I couldn’t bring myself to accept that he was right ... that there was no other way ... that I had to bet my mother’s life on someone’s dream.

I would move entire mountains to save her – to save them all! If there was even the slightest chance, I’d wrench the earth apart to find one! If there was even a chance …

But what would I be if I turned away from my only chance – even if it was the smallest one there was … the only chance there was left to save Mom, to save my home …

My heart was tearing itself apart - torn between two worlds, a nightmare, and the other, the only world I’d ever known.

I whimpered, cradling my head in my hooves. The old pony was right. There was no other way. A tear slaved down my cheek.

“How can I trust that you won’t just fuck me over? How can I trust you won’t just fuck my stable over?”

The pony gave me a hard stare.

“I can’t make you trust me, my boy. But I’ll be damned if I can’t make you trust that you’d be doing the right thing.”

“The right thing,” I chuckled, shaking my head.

It was the only thing I could do.

And I’d do anything – anything – to save my stable.

“My hooves are tied,” I whispered, uttering a curse beneath my breath as I shook my head, slowly. “But I can’t go home empty-hoofed. If I can't, I might as well just die ...” I turned to him my pathetic gaze, my eyes watery and bloodshot. “How?” I asked, finally, “How can we stop the plantations?”

“The resistance,” he answered. “We’re not alone. No one ever is. The Orphanage, the Fallen Angels – we’re all working against the slavers. But they’re the ones on the front lines, the ones who do the real work.”

“The what? The Orphanage … the Fallen Angels?” That emblem I saw on that orange mare’s wagon started to make sense. “How … how can I help? How would I help? I’m just one pony.”

Sterling grinned. “You don’t look like the type to sit around in a lab and do what we do here,” he said, as I fidgeted on my hooves. “Find them. Join them. I don’t know where, but that’s what you need to do.”

I hesitated for a moment, narrowing my eyes at him. “Why the hell don’t you know where to find them? I thought you worked with them?”

He shook his head. “The Orphanage keeps their safe houses a secret to protect themselves from everyone else. They’re afraid of snitches and moles stabbing them in the back.” Sterling gestured me to follow him as we made our way back to the elevator.

“I … I would’ve thought the city would be more supportive of them,” I murmured.

But I knew that Poneva was a brutal, uncaring place. Only the strong survived. Everyone else was a victim.

“They’re just … afraid,” Sterling said, softly. “Say or do anything that makes the plantations tick, and they’ll find you. Make you pay." He snorted, "They’ll even pay you to change teams.”

The elevator dinged from floor to floor.

I chewed on my lower lip, uncertain. “What if they don’t even need me?” I asked, quietly, staring at my hooves. I wasn’t a fighter. I was pathetic. All I had done so far since I left home was run.

So I wondered: what use could I be to them?

Sterling shook his head at me. “There’s too few of us and too many of them. No, they need everyone and all the help they can get,” he said as we reached the ninety-first floor. “But we have what it takes to win. The plantations built for themselves a time bomb waiting to explode. Sooner or later ponies are going to get sick of them. All we need to do is push the right buttons.”

“I’ll still need to find them,” I murmured. I blinked, and groaned, hoofing my face. “What about the Angels? Do you at least know where the hell they are?”

I followed him to his desk where he took a seat in a chair behind it. He gestured for me to take one too. “I don’t deal too much with the Angels – all I know is that they’re ... somehow on our side, too. They’re very clandestine. They’re aggressive. Standoffish. Dangerous. The Orphanage calls them terrorists. Me? They’re just another part of the resistance.”

“I ran into one today,” I began, running a hoof through my mane. “Ran her wagon off the road …”

“You’re lucky she didn’t kill you, my boy.”

“She almost did.”

The old pony chuckled, darkly. “You’re better off looking for Salacity’s Orphanage. We give them portions of our yields to support their relief missions throughout the North. They’re good ponies, Red Dawn. The kind that just want to make this wasteland a better place.”

“Where would I start?”

“Ask around Old Town. There’s bound to be someone who knows, there. Check the inns, bars – places ponies frequent. The wasteland’s a very small place.”

My hooves came to my face, rubbing the bags beneath my tired eyes. Soon, I thought, if the wasteland kept it up for me, I’d be looking too old for my age just like Sterling.

“Do you really think they can be stopped?" I stared at my hooves. "This ‘resistance’ sounds pretty … dislocated.”

Sterling folded his legs across his chest.

“We can do it,” he told me. “I’ve dedicated my entire life to this place, to these people … I’m in too deep to think otherwise now, my boy.” The old pony looked away for a moment.

“The Orphanage and the Angels might not agree on some things – on how to deal with the plantations, but their goals remain the same." A warm smiled stretched across his cheeks. "That, at least, is worth fighting for.”

I chuckled softly. He really did believe that. I wasn’t sure if I could ... but seeing that the look on his weary face … hope. He had hope. In a place like that, hope was for dreamers ... and Sterling was one of them.

But out there, I knew ... I knew that dreams were better than reality … better than that nightmare … more so if someone could make them become a reality. If there was hope for the wasteland, then it lied within ponies like Sterling.

I sighed, rubbing at my weary eyes. “Then I’d better damn well start looking. Soon,” I said, finally, narrowing my eyes out the windows.

“It won’t be easy, Red Dawn.”

“It’s the only way,” I muttered. “But I want to know what I’m getting myself into. What about the plantations?”

He rested his hooves upon the table in front of me, leaning toward me. “The East Eden Company’s led by Winter Blossom. She and I … we were business partners once. Didn’t like the way I ran things, so she went ahead and started her own. She attracted the Blood Brothers gang and hired her own private mercenary army. She’s charming. Vindictive. A savvy businessmare.”

“Her own fucking army?” I blurted out. “What the hell am I getting myself into …”

“Then there’s the Sunny Days Company. Alder Blaze runs the drug business in Poneva with the Silver Horseshoe Society and the Palomino mafia; he likes a good smoke. Likes it a lot. More than other ponies. Get in his way, and he’ll smoke you too.”

He stared at me the way my mom did when I told her I was going to leave the stable. “You need to be careful out there.”

I cocked my head. “You seem to care a lot about a pony you just met.”

Sterling lowered his eyes to his desk.

“I was just like you when I was younger. No one gave a shit about the lone stable-dweller.

“I found out the hard way that the closest thing to being cared for was to care for someone else,” he said, his smile bittersweet. “You made it this far. The least I could do is lend a hoof to a pony who went through hell to get here. Otherwise, your journey would’ve been for nothing. And I know what it’s like to be in vain.”

I stared at him quietly, my ears drooping. “I … thank you," I whispered. "When those turrets opened up on me, I thought I was doomed. Thought my stable was doomed. You saved my life.”

Sterling gave me another faint smile and looked down at his hooves. “You … remind me of someone I used to know. He was a lot like you. A hard-headed kid. A good kid.”

My bloodshot eyes softened. “What happened to him?”

Sterling stared down at his forehooves.

“I left him behind when I left my stable.”

A long silence hung over us as he sat there. A part of me waited for him to say more. He didn’t.

Sterling just sighed, resting his muzzle on his hooves. “Us stable ponies have to stick together. We’re a dying breed out here in the wasteland. Not too many stables have been opening their doors … those that do … those that do haven’t always been coming out alive.”

“How’d you know?" I asked, "About Stable 91, I mean?”

The stallion paused for a moment, meeting my eyes before replying, “My terminal’s connected to Stable-Tec’s monitoring network. This facility was used to keep track of progress on the north’s stable construction projects. I know everything from project specs, equipment, population size, which ones are currently online … which ones aren’t, and so on, and so forth.”

“Fair enough,” I said, peering into his multicolored eyes. A few moments passed by in silence until he looked away. “Time isn’t on my side, Sterling. I need to go. Now.” I said finally, standing up from my chair. “I don’t have time to just sit around.”

“Indeed. Before you go, I’ll radio Dapple Gray to pack you some supplies. Fresh food – fruits, a few potions.”

I nodded quietly. I needed all the help I could get - all the help he was willing to give. The pony trotted to the door, holding his PipBuck to his muzzle. “Wait here while I ring her up.”

Several minutes later, Dapple Gray and the same security ponies that escorted me earlier were outside the door, and Sterling was chatting with her outside. She didn’t sound too happy. Something about packing lunches for stupid kids. I rolled my eyes – but in the process, I caught sight of the terminal sitting on his desk.

I hesitated. Sterling seemed to know a lot about the stables in the region. He seemed to know a lot about 91. I clenched my jaw as I eyeballed his terminal. A part of me didn’t want to do it, but the other wanted to know more about that peculiar pony.

I wondered, 'How did he know I was from 91? How did he know so much?'

My hooves found themselves upon the terminal’s keyboard. He’d left it on. I scrolled through its contents, glancing over the monitor every now and then as I clacked away on the keyboard.

I craned my neck, keeping one eye on the door and another on the screen.

Clack.

'There we go,' I thought.

REGIONAL ARCHIVES

Stable 91.

Stable 95.

Stable 98.

Stable 103.

Stable 105.

Stable #$%$

S$@!& #^&&

*$@^ & #$%

I pursed my lips as I entered the very first entry, noting the gibberish at the bottom of the screen.

< Stable 91. >

Stable 91 Goal Summary

Narrowing my eyes curiously, I clacked a hoof on the keyboard.

ACCESS DENIED.

'Damnit.' I frowned, wondering what it meant by ‘goal’. For what other purpose was my stable built besides keeping everyone alive when the bombs fell? It was a fallout bunker, not a lab experiment.

My eyes took a furtive glance over the terminal’s screen, and Sterling was still chatting away outside. I didn’t have time to linger.

I decided I’d check out the next entry. Clack. Snippits of information, and some more gibberish flashed before my eyes.

I gulped and kept scrolling down.

Stable 91

Starting Construction Date...

#$%#$#@#$

E%$#$% Const%&$##%$ %ate..

##*&%@#%#

Maximum N#$#ber of Occu&ants...

300

#$%@@$% Control Sys#$#

#$%#@#

Pri#$@ P%w#r Supply...

Ge##ral Arc%$#%s Spark Gene%#tor

#eco%##%y @#we# S$%%&#...

%$#$

N%# St#$&#%# Equi%$&#t...

#ou%d &qu%&$%nt (item%&$ in $#&o #3%##46-2A)

Musical%^#$$#&*@#$&^$*&#&*^$^#&**29

#(&$^&((#*$&^^&#&))(*#$&8-012*(*^#^$*

St&tus …

I scrolled down to the bottom and entered the final entry. I needed to know how he knew.

Clack. The screen flashed and I glowered at it, swearing under my breath.

****ERROR****

File Corruption Detected.

Please Reinstall Operating System Software.

I stared at the monitor, perplexed. I returned to my seat and reclined in the chair, pondering curiously the tawny pony whose head was still outside the door.

He lied.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Educated - You gain two more skill points every time you advance in level.

Chapter 7 - Pony Feathers - Pt I

Chapter 7
Pony Feathers

“I can’t make you trust me. But I’ll be damned if I can’t make you trust that you’d be doing the right thing.”

I never did get used to the cold.

Shivering briskly, I pulled closed the worn black peacoat that I found in a dumpster, buttoning it over the kevlar plates of my security barding.

The black fabric and the cuffs around my fetlocks were worn and frayed from use. I was impartial to … looting. I wondered if that was the right word. Or was it scavenging? Whatever it was, there was a bullet hole through the fabric over my heart.

Whoever that peacoat belonged to last wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

With my back against a wall, I looked across the flea market, ponies trotting from stall to stall, canned food, and other goods clanking inside their bags or held in their mouths. Shivering, I brought to my mouth an apple that Dapple Gray had packed for me, and took a chunk out of it, letting the juices calm my frayed nerves. I had been awfully restless since my meeting with Sterling at the World Tree.

I shook my head, telling myself that I shouldn’t have had my expectations so high. I should’ve learned my lesson the moment I stepped out into the wasteland – no, when I first stepped out that door. I expected too much of the wasteland. I had been wrong about everything so far.

Everything.

I realized that if I had my pistol on me, I would have pulled it on that pony.

But how stupid would that have been?

Fucking stupid. But I tended to be full of stupid whenever I got desperate, or whenever I put my mind to something. I remembered Gail, and how I galloped through a hail of bullets just to save her feathered ass. I was desperate to save the one person I could have called a friend. And at that moment, desperation was as overwhelming of a feeling as the chilling bite of the frozen wind.

In desperation, I had taken risks. My friends and I, even the overmare took risks coming out there in search of a talisman. They were desperate. So was I. But where did those risks take me? Back to square one with a few brushes with death. Saving Gail from those furies was a risk … but I kept asking myself: was she worth risking my life for?

No. Not those monsters.

But I wondered: were those six thousand Ponevans - the six thousand that Sterling was trying so hard to save - worth risking my life for? As I walked those icy streets among those damned ponies, I got my answer.

Little. By. Little.

For the last two and a half days, I had spent most of my time searching for the Orphanage and the Fallen Angels. I didn’t have much luck.

‘Please don’t say that out loud. Palominos might hear you ...’

‘Are you trying to get us killed?’

‘How do you wanna leave? Door, or window?’

Those ponies couldn’t tell an apple from an orange, because apparently to them, ‘door’ meant ‘window’, and ‘Orphanage’ meant ‘death-sentence’. And I couldn’t find the resistance unless someone at least kicked me in the right direction.

Just not out of a window.

But nobody wanted to help. Nobody. Not one person wanted to talk about the resistance. The resistance that was apparently trying to save their sorry asses. They were afraid of the Palomino thought police kicking down their doors for saying the ‘O’ word. The name of the beast – the plantations’ and their lackeys’ – the Palominos’ worst arch enemy: the Orphanage.

So there I was, watching ponies walk by with my back pressed against a cold concrete wall, munching on an apple. I figured that eavesdropping – or rather, observing people from a safe distance was better than asking them in person.

It’s not like anybody noticed me anyways. Hunched in the corner there I looked like any other wasteland hobo. All I was missing were the bugs crawling under my skin and the crack baby I never had.

Most people were too busy not giving damn about anybody but themselves to see the disheveled wreck eyeballing them from the corner.

“Five caps,” said a pony, clopping her hoof against a stall counter.

The mare behind the counter swept the cans of cram away. “I said ten! This ain’t a damn charity, lady!”

“Come on! Seven caps, then? My foal’s gotta eat!”

She groaned. “And I gotta make money, okay? Eight caps, or no crammy cram at all.”

“Damnit. Fine, here.” The sound of caps jingling and cans tumbling into a bag made me sigh.

She was right. It wasn't a charity. There wasn’t a single damned charity in that city, because nobody was willing to give any of their shits. My ears twitched in another direction, and I found myself unable to give a shit, either.

“H-h-hey brony, h-hook me up, ‘k-kay?” I watched a frail, maneless pony barter for his goodies.

A pony in a trench coat leaned in towards the chemhead as he trembled uncontrollably, scratching at his mangy coat like a flea-ridden animal.

“Geeze, that’s the fourth time this week. You can’t get enough of this shit, can you?”

“GOD – FUCK – SHIT!” he screamed, slamming a hoof into the snow. “D-don’t tell me h-how to live my f-f-fuckin’ life!” He got up in the pony’s face. “I-I-I-I need my FUCKING DASH!”

The other rolled his eyes, shrugged, and opened up his coat, levitating out a syringe.

“Sure, just keep the caps coming – and try not to kill yourself. Gonna need more of those.”

My ears drooped as I shook my head and sighed out a jet of mist. I took another bite out of my apple, chewed, and swallowed.

Those were the people Sterling wanted to save.

So far that day, I’d seen a lot of stupid shit. The highlights of that particular Tuesday included: a drunken bum fight between at least a dozen crossfaded hobos, a mugging that involved a pregnant mare and her groceries, a godlike pickpocketing spree at the marketplace (which was actually pretty cool) – oh – and I even walked in on some stallion giving somebody head in a not so private alley.

A dark chuckle seethed out of my lips. 'Welcome to Poneva city,' I thought.

Those were the people Sterling wanted to save.

I believed that there was a reason why they hadn’t progressed beyond anything but a megaspell-blasted Stone Age: because they simply didn't give a shit.

I slid down the wall to my haunches, sighing. I wondered, 'What if these people didn’t even want to be saved? What if they weren’t even worth saving?'

So I sat there, the unnerving Ponevan ambience raking against my frayed nerves, wondering if it was a waste of my time. Wondering if I was going to end up empty-hoofed once more.

But it was the only chance I had left. Sterling expected me to believe that saving those scumbags was the right thing. Then he lied to me about my stable. It wasn’t a about whether or not he could be trusted. It was about the tiny little sliver of hope that still remained for me.

The tiny little sliver of hope for my stable.

I would’ve believed anything he said at that point – because it was all I had left to believe in.

But what did that make me? A sheep?

No. It made me a very, very, very, desperate sheep.

A sheep that just wanted to go home.

Scanning the market languidly once more, I spied a pair of ponies in winter coats not too far from where I was sitting. They looked to be arguing as one of them, a mare in a peacoat stood there quietly while the other shouted at her. The mare shook her head, taking off her fedora to scratch at her mane in frustration as he kept mouthing off.

Then she snapped. The mare shoved the stallion to the snow in a shower of powder. He slowly rose to his hooves as the mare continued to berate him – all the while I was trying to hear what she was saying.

I couldn't.

That fucking chemhead to my right kept blabbering about how good dash felt when he stuffed it down his asshole.

“KEEYEAAARGH! Just a pump to the rump, as I like to say. F-f-flooows better that way, - hehe - i-i-if ya know what I'm sayin’ …”

“Nah. All I do is sell this shit,” said the dealer. He snorted, giving the ragged chemhead who scratched at his coat incessantly a grinning look over. “Not even once.”

I growled, frustrated, my ears twitching as I tried to hone in on what that mare with the fedora was screaming about.

Then another mare’s voice pierced the night.

“DARKNESS!”

'What the hell –' I cringed, pinning my ears.

I fumbled with my apple as the mare, her voice keen and serrated like broken glass wracked my vulnerable ear drums. She screamed hysterically into the night, “I have seen the face of the abyss and it comes to swallow us all in DARKNESS!”

I swung my head to face a gathering herd of ponies at the center of the flea market. I sighed in exasperation.

'This better be good,' I thought.

The mare’s keening shrieks pierced the night once more. “The darkness hungers for your souls! It will consume you from within and without!” She reared upon her hinds and bellowed, “It comes! It comes, and you are all doomed to drown beneath the COMING DARKNESS!”

I stuffed the half-eaten apple into my bags and trotted over, pushing past the crowd to get a glimpse of the ragged, dark-eyed pony that stood upon a tattered podium of crates and rubbish.

“Oh, not this shit again,” somebody whined, shaking his head.

“What’s going on?” I asked no one in particular.

One pony stood up on her hinds and lobbed a dirty snowball at the mare. "Shut up, you crazy bitch!”

The crazed mare shook the dirty snow from her face, unfazed. “FOOLS! Can’t you feel it?” She reached out and smacked a pony upside her face.

“Can’t you see it!?” she cackled, swinging her hooves around her and up into the ashen sky. The mare gazed into the crowd and for the briefest of seconds, her eyes stared into mine … and through them. Then she smiled at me, as if she’d seen me before, as if she knew something I did not.

A glacial chill skittered down my spine.

“Yes … can’t you see the black paint trickling down the walls all around you?” She was still looking at me. “It is already here … just outside … waiting for you to let it in. And soon, it will come. It will come and the darkness will know you!”

In my peripherals, I noticed a pair of hazy teal orbs watching us from the darkness. No. Not watching us. Watching the mare. I had seen those eyes before. The forest outside Spring Song’s cottage.

My focus shifted when a pony next to me snorted, shaking his head. “Che palle ... this is a fucking joke.”

“Forget about it! I’ve seen that pony around town, scaring everypony with her ghost stories.”

To my left, some mare squeaked, "I don't know, I've been through the inner city lately, and somethin's been riling up all the freaks out there." She glanced at everybody around her and shivered. "Even the blast shadows ..."

I looked at her, confused. I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Yeah, I barely made it back here alive on my last prospecting job,” said a mare in mangled barding. “Something’s making them tick; it’s never been this bad.” The vicious tears across the fabric of her coat and the limp on her left hind leg made me wonder …

To my right, "Them mutants and furies've always been riled up! Hell, just us bein’ here riles’em up. Nuthin's changed!"

The mangled mare glared at him. “Have you been outside the city lately?”

The doomsayer wore a disturbing grin across her face, unsurprised as the mob argued among themselves. I could tell that that bickering was what she was expecting.

“Don’t you mooks know?” some stallion scoffed. “The world ended two hundred years ago!”

The crazed mare just cackled hysterically, as if their words were simply the shallowest, most hilarious things she had ever heard.

“This world won’t end again. Only reborn in DARKNESS!" She jabbed a hoof at the crowd, swinging it to and fro. "You larcenists – hedonists – adulterers – you will be paid in the wickedness you have wrought! This entire city will!"

Hooves wrapped around her from behind, trying to pull her off her podium.

“That’s enough out of you …” a mare growled.

“Get your filthy hooves off me!” She bucked her off the soapbox, standing upon her hinds. The crazed mare cried out into the night, “This city, and all the cities after it will be the first example – suffering the vengeance of ETERNAL DARKNESS!

“DARKNESS IS COMING, YOU FOOLS! Soon you shall bear witness to the darkness inside your hearts - MADE MANIFEST!”

The mare wrapped her hooves around the Doomsayer's throat. "Shut your piehole! You’re scaring ponies away, see? You don't wanna bring the cafones here to calm things down, do ya?"

That choked their jeers away. Everyone fell silent.

Not too far from the crowd, at the other end of the market, black clad figures in fedoras were watching us from the distance.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that some of the unamused stall owners had their legs folded across their chests. Others tapped their hooves impatiently against their stall counters, irritated.

On one of the larger stalls, more like a giant mobile store, I saw the words 'Sunny Days Company' stenciled onto a flapping plastic banner. The yellow, smiley-faced sun that was their logo didn’t quite agree with the ponies that stood behind the counter. One of the vendors was speaking with a black-hatted gangster. His fedora tipped up and the pony underneath stared right at us, annoyed.

The vendors weren’t making money. They didn’t like that. Not one bit.

A pony in a gray wintercoat pushed past the mob and stood before us. The crowd took a step back. He was the stallion I was eavesdropping on earlier. The one who got his ass kicked by that Palomino.

"Hey you clowns – beat it! All o'ya, scram!" he shouted.

The pony glanced at the gangsters assembled near the Sunny Days stall. “The mob ain’t got time for chit-chat. So beat it, before you bring them over here and they shut you all up, ya dig?"

An air of panic swept through the crowd. Heads turned to him - then to the Palominos who were staring them down from across the empty, empty stalls. “Forget about it … I’m outta here,” a pony croaked, and everyone scattered, leaving me standing awkwardly and by myself at the center of the market.

“Yeah, that’s it, buy your cram,” the pony in the gray wintercoat said. A mare eeped as he shoved her away. “Less talking, more shopping! Go on, get outta here!

“And you,” he glared at the doomsayer, jabbing a hoof at her. “Beat it!”

The doomsayer just smiled at him. And in the corner of my eye, I felt her eyes fall upon me. I squirmed beneath her stare. Then she gave me a knowing smile.

She left, finally, stopping for a moment, and sparing me one last glance before slinking into an alleyway and back into the shadows from where she came. I gulped. I wasn’t even sure what scared me the most, that ‘darkness’, or the fact that that mare had looked at me.

At least it was quiet again. I could hone in on the sounds that I actually wanted to hear. With his back turned to me, I spied on the pony in the gray wintercoat as he glared at that dark alleyway for several long seconds. My ears perked and swiveled in his direction.

There was no way in hell I was going to follow that mare. But him … I was curious.

A jet of a mist snorted out of his nose. He shook his head, lifted a hoof and started walking away. He paused, and spared another glance over his shoulder.

She was gone.

The stallion cocked his head slightly at the gangsters who were beginning to take their leave, any threats to their business resolved and dispersed.

He looked around, did a double take over his shoulders, and sighed.

A few seconds passed. All was clear, for now. For him. He quickly left the scene. I followed, weaving through the reassembled crowds of shoppers, trying to keep my eyes on him as he pushed past nervous looking ponies.

He stopped and peered over his shoulder. I looked away, whistling as I dug absent-mindedly through my saddlebags. By the time I felt his eyes leave my direction, he was almost gone, and I struggled to maintain my distance. He sped up with every moment that passed.

I wondered what he was hiding. He didn’t want any of those Palominos near there. Who wouldn’t? But unlike the rest of the cowards around me, he was trying to keep them away - and anything that could bring them running.

He might’ve been with the resistance.

Several times he paused feverishly to see who was behind him. Several times I pretended to be doing anything but following him. While casually eyeing a stall-owner’s canned wares, I watched in my peripherals as he turned a corner, disappearing into an alleyway.

'What is with these fucking people and alleyways?' I groaned inside my head.

I pursed my lips, hurrying after him. Taking a shallow breath, I crept along the wall and peeked around it where I saw the stallion standing before three others. They all shuffled upon their hooves, nervously.

“I want you to keep those saps from bringing more trouble our way, ya dig?” he said to them. “Barely made that herd leave … we can’t risk attracting any more of Avelign’s toy-ponies to come back here and see if we already got her -”

A mare cleared her throat. “U-uh … Grifter, about that …” she began, nervously.

There was a slight pause.

“We couldn’t find her. She moves too damn fast!” said a stallion too thin for his outfit.

The one named Grifter growled, “She’s just one damn pony!”

“I nicked her wiff muh heater though, but she’s a slippery filly!” whined a big, dumb looking stallion.

Grifter’s eyes widened. “You - you did what!? I thought I told you boneheads to keep your bullets off of her! I want her alive, damnit!”

“But I-I was aimin’ fer her leg –”

“It doesn’t matter where you were aiming you moron! Boy, if you killed her … oh damn, it’ll hurt me more than I’m gonna hurt you!” Grifter groaned, facehoofing, “Did she drop the caps at least?”

The three shook their heads. “I ... I think she still has it," said the mare.

“Pony feathers! At this rate I won’t have the caps to pay Avelign after what happened last night!”

There was a tense pause. Then the thin stallion snickered, nudging the mare playfully. The dumb looking one just stood there, confused.

“You – what!? Shut your cocktrap, will ya, Twiggy!?” Grifter fumed. “If we don’t pay her what we owe, she’ll make us all disappear - for good, ya dig?!”

The dumb stallion raised his hoof, nervously. “M-maybe we can go lookin’ fer her again?”

Grifter just covered his face with a hoof.

“Shit! She’s probably long gone by now … damn … you know, sometimes I wonder if you morons are even on my side, since you do the complete opposite of everything I tell you to do!” Grifter shook his head. “Probably why she got away, too,” he growled, grinding his teeth. "Probably why you couldn't find her ..." The stallion looked over both his shoulders, before whispering, “I bet she had help from the orphans!”

My ears perked. 'Did he just say ...

'THE ‘O’ WORD?'

Big Stupid’s eyes widened. “Orphans!?” he gasped, grimacing as he shuffled on his hooves like he had to pee.

“Shush, stupid!” the mare hissed, clapping a hoof over his mouth. “You don’t want the boys outside to hear you saying that - or you’ll end up like Pomo from last Tuesday!”

The skinny one, Twiggy, sighed, “Oh come on, Dahlia, we don’t even know if it was them for sure. Might’ve even been those crazy Angel fuckers doing it.”

Grifter shook his head. “The mob’s been cleaning up the streets lately … but that Pomo was a wild one. Maybe she was cheating on the mob ...”

“Well, at least Dawdleshoes over here’d never cheat on ya,” said Twiggy, pointing at the dumb one. “He’s too fuckin’ stupid.”

The mare named Dahlia sighed, “And why in Equestria wouldn’t we be on your side? It’s our heads on the block too.”

“Because Pomo wasn’t the first!” Grifter snapped. “I heard Dolce’s been shooting up her own boys … something’s killing 'em from the inside … and there’s no way in hell I’m getting between those crazies and that heap o’dirty laundry.”

“I heard about the rumors,” Twiggy whispered. "Those orphans got strings to pull all over this place. But all that? All that killing and burning - that can’t be them …”

“Forget about it ...” Dahlia began quietly, dabbing her hoof in the snow. “The orphans don’t kill people like that … they don’t do ‘killing’. At least, not like that."

Grifter tapped his chin, apprehensively. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s not like them. But something fishy’s been going on around here, and after hearing that crazy bitch and her ‘darkness,’ I don’t know who or what’s behind -”

His eyes darted over his shoulder and met mine.

'Oh.'

I ducked back into the shadows.

“Come outta there – slowly!” he shouted.

The sound of them chambering guns made me flinch.

I poked my head out from around the corner.

“What the hell are you doing, kid?” Grifter demanded, inching towards me with the others in tow.

“Uh-uh …” I stammered.

'Think, damnit, think!' I didn’t know what to say, and I knew that whatever I was going to say next was either going to buy me a bullet or buy me some time.

An awkward smile curled across my lips.

“I-I saw you talking with a Palomino earlier – was wondering what all the commotion was about.”

He chuckled nervously as I took gratification in the fear that flashed in his eyes. It worked. “The fu … big whoop – w-what's it to ya? Did they set you up for this?”

“Not enough to get me shot, I promise – and no,” I answered forcefully as I eyed Grifter’s armed ponies. “But from what I’ve learned, the Palominos are so primal that they only snap at loud noises.” I chuckled nervously at the gun barrels that were aimed at my chest.

“Saw you shouting at one earlier and she went apeshit and pounced … so I’m surprised she didn’t come back for seconds after all that monkeying around that happened out there, earlier.”

They just stared. Tough crowd.

“Praymaul?” asked big stupid Dawdleshoes.

“He means like brutish, dummy,” Dahlia hissed. "Hah, kinda like you."

Grifter glared at me. “How do ya you wanna die, kiddo? Fast or slow?”

“I don't know ... but it seems like saying the ‘O’ word would kill me faster than you guys could. Heard it’s a trigger word for something awful.” I jabbed a hoof at him. “And you guys have been talking a lot about it."

Grifter lowered his voice. “Orphanage?” He blinked, biting his lower lip.

Not too far from us, the ponies that had only just begun to resume their usual activities were starting to back away again, avoiding that alleyway like a bad smell.

“You oughta not talk so loudly, kid, or you might bring more of my good friends this way. Something I’d really like to avoid,” he trailed off, darting his eyes over my mane to see if those gangsters were anywhere.

“Hey, you ponies said it – not me,” I said, smiling crookedly.

“How’s about I shut him up, boss?” asked stupid Dawdleshoes. I frowned at him.

Grifter held up a hoof. “I don’t want to start another fuss and attract anymore of those boys, so don’t go aiming for the leg again, ya moron.”

“Listen, I wasn’t spying on you or anything,” I confessed with a chuckle, trying to laugh my nervousness away with their guns jammed in my face. “Honest,” I added. “You just look like someone who can help me …”

“Really? Kid, I got better things to do than foalsit some sap like you.” He turned and motioned to his lackeys. “Alright boys, back to work –”

“Wait - please. I need help,” I insisted, “You guys don’t have much of a problem talking about your rumors, but everybody else starts choking up whenever I mention the Orphanage. Why’s that?”

The pony snorted a jet of mist as the others exchanged glares. I could taste the bitterness in his voice as he groaned. “They’re just a bunch of rats, kid. Nopony likes 'em.”

Inhaling softly, I muttered, rolling my eyes, “Well, I can’t really dislike people I know nothing about.”

He glanced around, anxiously. “Shut up, will ya? Quit yakking about things that’ll get ya killed, ya dig?” He chuckled, shaking his head as he turned his back on me and started walking away again.

“No – no, go ahead, just not anywhere near me or my business, okay?”

I sighed. “Oh come on!”

He shot me an irritated look over his shoulder. “Forget about it – I’m not ‘coming on’!”

Twiggy snickered, beating his hoof at Dahlia like he was beating someone off.

Grifter snapped, “You two shut it! And you!” he growled, jabbing a hoof at me, “All they do is make the plantations tick. And if you don’t pipe down, those peacoats are gonna come on over here thinking you’re one of those damn rats,” he said, nodding to the three behind him who started a few steps toward me. “And since you won’t quit talking to me, they’re gonna stick me in the icebox with you too!"

I facehoofed.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that same old shit today,” I growled. “And frankly, I don’t give a fuck. If you can’t tell me anything about them, then please, for the love of Celestia, point me to someone who can!”

The stallion stepped up to my muzzle, our faces mere breaths apart.

“How about I point you to a meat-grinder, kid?” he growled.

I gulped.

His voice was but a whisper. “You don’t wanna be in the know about the Orphanage, kiddo …” The pony’s eyes darted back and forth as he spoke. “The reason why people don’t like talking about 'em is because the Palominos have been yanking out weeds around these parts, and anypony they think is sleeping with the Orphanage gets wasted - and I’m not dunking my hooves in that mess.”

“Forget about it!” Twiggy and Dahlia both agreed.

The stupid one looked a few minutes late.

“Forget about what?”

Grifter just rolled his eyes. “Shutup. All I’m trying to do is keep my black-hatted compari from thrashing around, ya dig? Usually ends up with a few dozen ponies in bags. Usually in little bags, and it’s really bad for business. Bad for my business,” he said, glancing over his shoulders at the flickering lights at the other end of the alleyway.

“You were watching me earlier, huh? Well you saw just that, only I was lucky to walk away without missing a hoof or two.”

I let out a long and drawn out sigh.

“It’s hard to make good bank when they’re carving up the place looking for weeds to rip out all the time, ya dig!? And I’m not letting somepony help them ruin me even more!”

I smirked. “You really must be swimming in the deep end if you’re in trouble with those guys.”

He shook his head furiously, fear sweeping across his face. “No – no – no – no! You can’t say that out here … not with them watching … or listening …. me and my boys got nothing to do with the Orphanage. My sitch got nothing to do with those damn rats. I don’t want to lose my job, okay?” The pony looked over both his shoulders, hoping no one heard me. He muttered, his voice barely audible, “I damn well just about did, earlier.”

“Then why do you have beef with those gangsters?”

He shook his head with a sour chuckle. “Listen kid, it’s none of your business. And, right now, I really got worse things to deal with right now than play a twenty questions with some crumby tough guy. So beat it – before my boys beat you off!”

Grifter’s eyes widened. “Fuck!”

Twiggy burst out laughing. “HAHA - OW!” he cried as Grifter slammed a hoof into his face.

A wry grin forced its way across my cheeks. “Worse things, huh? Then you can take care of this Palomino problem of yours yourself right, tough guy?” I scoffed, “Your ‘boys’ couldn’t even take care of one pony.”

Grifter clenched his jaw and the laughing stopped.

He craned his neck toward me, and I felt the air in front of my face heat up like a furnace. A snort of hot air burned against my muzzle and I trembled inside my barding as sweat beaded up on my forehead.

I then noticed the gun tucked away beneath his winter coat.

'Shit.'

His foreleg crept up his chest, the pistol mere inches away from his reach. I gulped and watched his hoof inch ever closer.

He bumped my shoulder instead.

“Well I gotta hoof it to ya – you are one big-balled palooka,” the pony laughed at me as I fought with my own pulse. He wrapped a hoof around me and yanked me close, laughing at me. I laughed back at him. Nervously. “Level with me, kid. You offering to help me or something, or did they send you here to watch me squirm?”

I glanced over my shoulder, noticing that ponies were watching me. “They? I’m not a gangster. I’m a merc from New Apploosa,” I lied. “I’m just looking for answers.”

He cocked an eyebrow and released me. I almost tripped up on my own hooves.

I exhaled, realizing that I was holding my breath. “Maybe … I can help you help me?” I said, forcing a smile.

“Now why would I want help from some nobody like you?” he and his boys chuckled.

“Because this nobody has the balls to talk about the Orphanage in public the way I am right now,” I snapped, “So do you think I really give a shit if the Palominos try to stop me?”

He snorted, nodding with an amused grin stretching across his cheeks.

"If you're looking for answers, then you're talking to the wrong ponies, kiddo ..."

I took a step towards him. “No. I am. You seem to be willing to talk more about the Orphanage than anyone else in this Goddesses-damned town is willing to say - I don’t know why, and I don’t care.” I took a deep breath. “I need to find them. And frankly, between this Palomino problem, those moles, and these missing caps of yours, I’d say you’ve got your hooves full.”

The time that ticked by as he thought to himself in silence chipped at my already thin patience. Grifter nodded slowly, looking me up and down with a shifty look in his eyes. He stomped a hoof into the ground, an uneven grin widening across his face.

“You three, leave me with this palooka. You know what to do.”

It took a moment, but his boys nodded, slipping their weapons into their coats before starting down the alley, out the way I came. I kept one eye on my EFS and the other on the pony standing before me.

Grifter simply gestured for me to follow him.

He led me back into the market, walking down a row of glowing stalls, the warmth and light of smoking cooking pots warming my flesh slightly and the smell of burned meat wafting into my nostrils once more.

“Say, what’s your name, kid?”

“Red Dawn.”

“Yeah? And I’m Grifter,” he said, finally and formally introducing himself to me with an unceremonious bow. “So whaddya want with the Orphanage, kid? Got a bone to pick with ‘em? They steal your sweetroll?”

“I have my reasons,” I said, simply.

“Forget about it! Hell, everypony’s got a bone to pick with the Orphanage, nowadays. The Palominos aren’t an exception.” He nodded to himself, thoughtfully. “Yeah … you’re right. I do know a bit about the Orphanage. ” He walked up to a stall and plucked a bottle of Sparkle-Cola off the counter, dumping caps into somebody’s wary hooves.

The stall owner’s bodyguard gave me a sideways look.

He led me away from the market, and into another quiet alleyway. “I’ve dealt with those rats before. I used to work for them, actually. I was a courier. Ran supplies up and down their hideouts – but I left, because, ya know, I couldn’t go anywhere without getting shot.”

I nearly jumped when he swung the bottle into the wall, shattering it with a crash. A magical field wrapped around the soda pop popsicle, picking the orange shape clean of glass. He licked at the frozen treat before smiling curtly. “But you know, if you wanna die so bad, I’m not stopping you. But you gotta help me first, kid, because I won’t see the end of this day if I can’t get my friends outta my mane.”

“It looked pretty bad.”

He sighed, shaking his head. “You don’t even know half of it, kid.” He paused, grinning to himself. “I owe my friends a sum of caps ... kinda like everyone else in this town. If I don’t get it to them by the end of today, I get to disappear, ya dig?”

“Disappear?” I asked, uneasily.

“It’s kinda like being dead.” I looked at him blankly. “Because it is.”

“Oh. Well fuck.”

He chuckled dryly, giving the popsicle an apprehensive lick. “Exactly, kid.”

“If it gets those fuckers out of your mane, then I’ll give you a hoof. But you need to help me, too.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. There was a peculiar look brooding in his eyes.

“Of course, I’m no welcher … especially to ponies who give me a hoof. You get me out of this mess, I’ll point you in the right direction.”

“Finally,” I breathed, “If it gets me what I need.”

The pony thought for a moment, nodding to himself as he gnawed on the frozen soda. “Some sorry bastard took my dues and now I can’t pay up.”

I frowned, almost feeling sorry for him. Out there, caps bought a lot of things. Life was one of them.

“What do I need to do?” I asked, darkly.

“I’ve got half of my morons out here in the market, making sure no idiot pisses off anymore of Alder’s stallponies, and the other half making sure nopony messes things up over at my joint.” He shook his head, swearing under his breath. “And half really isn’t that much. Which is why I need you doing what my boys are too stupid to do."

He stomped a hoof into the snow. “All I need you to do is to get me my damn caps back. I was just about to pay my dues, and this damn broad comes right ahead and swipes my money right from under my nose!”

The pony craned his neck towards me and glared, growling through his teeth. “Find her. Bring her back. Alive. And with the money, otherwise I’m dead, and so are all my boys.”

My expression darkened. I remembered how that Palomino had tossed him around like a rag doll. Only the worst was in store for him if he didn’t get his money back.

The burning shop and the black-suited ponies came to mind. I was well aware of what they were willing to do to teach a pony a lesson.

I really didn’t want to see another burning building.

“I’ll do it,” I said, sternly, my jaw clenching. “Where can I find this pony?”

“She’s a unicorn. Red coat, red and white mane. Like a candy cane – hell, that’s her name: Candy Cane. She ain’t so sweet like one, though. Candy Cane’s a double-crossing whore … she’ll stab you in the back if she gets the chance, ya dig?”

I snorted, “Sounds like a real piece of work.”

“Forget about it!”

“Wha … why?”

Grifter just sighed. “It’s a saying, kid. Like - ‘I agree’.”

“But you’ve used it to disagree, I think …”

“Yeah - it means that too.”

“I … I still don’t …”

He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, she robbed one of my customers while she was paying up at my place, and ran off with my caps. Without that payment of hers, Avelign’ll make me pay extra – double – maybe even triple of her cut – and I can’t afford that.” He cringed, rubbing his foreleg anxiously. “Maybe even extra-extra.

“Last pony who saw Candy Cane was her. She might be able to point you to where that bitch ran off to.” The stallion took out a scrap of paper and a pencil, and scribbled down on it some notes, before hoofing it to me.

They were directions, with an address at the bottom.

“My morons were having issues with catching her. But you don’t look like a moron ... so you might just have a crack at getting her before my peacoated friends get me.”

“Thanks.”

“No, thank you, kid,” the pony said, with a grin. “I need that money before it gets too dark, so meet me back here when you find her. I’ll be here, waiting on the chopping block.”

“I’m on it,” I said, turning the other way, my eyes still on the note.

Grifter's voice echoed behind me. “You might just be the one who can save me and my boys from becoming fertilizer at Sunny Days.”

*

Chapter 7 - Pony Feathers - Pt II

*

I walked up the steps wearily, the thought of getting punted out of a window again muttering to me in the back of my head. Lifting my PipBuck to my face, I eyed my EFS. Two people inside.

After doing a double take over both my shoulders, I brought a hoof to the door and knocked twice, steeling myself for a buck to the face or a gun to my mouth. But neither of those came. I checked the piece of paper and glanced down the block of ramshackle homes.

Each house was a ruined hand-me-down from the past, their breached ceilings and crumbling walls patched up with metal plates or nailed shut with planks of warped wood. There wasn’t a splotch of color anywhere – just like the rest of the city. And the wasteland.

On my way there, I nearly lost myself in that lonely maze of dilapidated dwellings. There, the sounds indicative of life were drowned out by the wind, moaning through the gnarled steelworks that rose up above me. Something was suffocating the liveliness of that place, and I just couldn’t put a hoof on it.

I had seen it in the marketplace – the fear in everyone’s eyes when a certain word was said or a certain name was mentioned. There, in that quiet neighborhood, it was everywhere.

I pressed my ear against the door, my face darkening as the light bulb that hung above it flickered and died for a moment. I heard something. Cocking my head, I peered into the lacerated glass of the eyehole just above my muzzle.

“Oh shit …” I heard someone whisper.

I pursed my lips and knocked again.

Hooves clopped against the door on the other side and a mare squeaked, “H-hello?”

“Hi, I’m looking for …” I glanced at the note I held in my hoof. “Daintybelle? Are you Daintybelle?”

There was a long pause. “Y-yes, yes that’s me. What do you want?” the mare asked in a trembling voice.

I cocked an eyebrow as I spoke.

“I need to talk to you,” I said, tucking the note into my chest pocket.

Another anxiety ridden pause. “Right now,” I added with a sigh.

Hooves scrambled behind the door, and a second later, it creaked open, and two terrified eyes stared back at me.

“Who’s that?” I heard a stallion shout from the other end of the house. The mare glanced over her shoulder, closing the door slightly.

“N-nopony important, dear!” She gulped, muttering, “I hope …” Daintybelle poked her muzzle out the door, her eyes darting back and forth as she checked and double-checked that I was alone.

I looked over my shoulder absent-mindedly and saw nobody. She caught sight of the pistol holstered around my chest, biting her lower lip.

The mare gave me a sheepish once over as a heavy breeze blew our way, my black peacoat and DD’s scarf flapping in the wind. “W-why are you here? D-did I do something wrong?” she stammered.

“I just need to ask you some questions,” I replied, watching her every feverish move.

She gulped, looking a little pale as she nodded slowly. The mare pulled her winter coat closed and stepped out the door, shutting it quietly it behind her.

“Listen … if this is about earlier …” she whispered, biting her lower lip as she glanced over her shoulder at the door. “I was going to pay – I swear! I’d never swindle anypony … never, ever – ever.” She looked up at me, shaking. “Please, you gotta believe me!”

She acted like it wasn’t the first time we’d met – or at least the first time she’d ever been in a situation like that.

“Wait, what –”

“Come on …” she whined. “Please, I swear to God I’m telling you the truth! I-I’ll pay double this week, if that’s what you want,” she pleaded with me.

The wind ruffled my peacoat, and the light bulb above us flickered once more. I opened my mouth to reply, but she beat me to it.

“I’ll … I’ll … I’ll do anything,” she whimpered, turning slightly and lifting her tail. “Just don’t make me disappear!”

My eyes widened at that.

“No – you got me all wrong!” I rested a gentle hoof upon her shoulder consolingly in an effort to calm the trembling mare. “I’m not one of them.” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “I’m a merc. All I want is my caps and the faster you can help me, the faster I’ll be out of your mane,” I said, trying to sound like Night Sky. A lopsided smile stretched across my lips. “I’m not here to make you … uh … disappear.”

The blood returned to her face, and she sighed with relief, leaning against the door.

“Oh thank God … I thought you were one of them, and ...” She shook her head, still tense. “Never mind. What … what do you need?”

“I just need help finding the pony who mugged you.” Her expression flickered for a moment. Then she nodded. “Do you know a pony named Candy Cane?”

She froze, her ears perked. The mare was wary of the sound of hooves shuffling behind the door. I watched her eyes dart frantically to her side as she pulled her hood over her head.

“No, I don’t,” she replied, nodding her head at me.

I lifted a brow, regarding her with uncertainty. Then my eyes forward sparkle blinked with a blue dot.

Someone was listening to us. Her husband.

I expected her to turn around, open the door, and reassure him that she wasn’t in danger. But she led me away from the doorsteps so that we faced the street. That conversation was apparently supposed to be between only us, and us only. She probably didn’t want him to worry.

I gave her a sideways look as the mare’s eyes darted to the door … again … before continuing.

Daintybelle's voice was barely audible over the wind.

“S-shit -” she hissed. “I thought ...” Daintybelle feigned composure, asking, “You’re with Grifter, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

The mare pursed her lips, and nodded back, slowly, as if the answer to my question physically pained her. I cocked an eyebrow as she whispered so that only the two of us could hear, “Yes, I do. She … st-stabbed me last night.”

I eyed, gloomily, the dried splotch of crimson that had stained deep into her winter coat. “She tried to kill me … she … she tried to kill me.

“Then she took my caps and ran off with them before I could pay him. Pay Grifter. I was going to pay … but she had a knife! Said she’d cut me if I didn't hoof them over! But … but she cut me anyways ...” Daintybelle shook her head, shaking uncontrollably. She repeated, “I was going to pay … I swear. I told you … I was going to pay. But she cut me … You … believe me right?”

I sighed with growing impatience.

“Yes. Now do you know where I can find her? Did you see where she ran off to?”

She nodded, uneasily.

“Y-yes … s-she went out a window. She’s fast, you see? I saw her heading to the Old Factory District, I think ...”

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“You think?”

She nearly jumped.

“No … I-I know.”

Nodding to myself, I asked, “I don’t come here often. I’m sort of new to this city … came here from down south. Where’s the Old Factory District?”

Daintybelle’s eyes darted away from me once more.

“J-just follow the main road east of the brothel – the Sultry Scullion – and you’ll get there,” she whispered in a voice I barely heard. “I go there often. Down the road I mean, it’s by the market.”

The door behind us cracked open, and a stallion peeked outside. Daintybelle didn't turn.

The stallion asked, “Is he …?”

“No. No he’s not.” Daintybelle replied, keeping her eyes trained on me. “He’s helping me with … what happened yesterday.”

Her husband’s apprehension allayed somewhat as he slowly holstered his pistol in his coat.

“Those fucking Palominos … why can’t they just piss off?” he grunted, stomping a hoof in the snow.

“Palominos?” I cocked my head at Daintybelle. “Wait … this Candy Cane mare’s a Palomino?” Her husband looked like he’d never heard that name before.

Daintybelle blinked twice.

“Y-yes. She works for them ..."

I glared at the snow.

“Candy Cane, eh?” her husband muttered, “Damn Palominos … how’re we supposed to pay them their damn tax if they already took the money we owe?!” He shook his head. “After nearly killing my wife here, one of their boys came around here earlier, wondering why we were late this week. I fuckin’ wonder why …”

Daintybelle dabbed her hoof nervously in the snow.

I narrowed my eyes at him and growled through my teeth, “Tax?”

Her husband grumbled bitterly, “Protection money. We pay them so they don’t run us out. So the Blood Brothers or the Pikes don’t run us out … and take our things.” He chuckled, grimly, “As if there’s anything left to take from us anyways … we don’t got much around here. Not anymore ...”

I uttered a dark chuckle, rolling my eyes.

“Why even steal from ponies you’re already taking from?”

“Hmph.” Her husband folded his legs across his chest. “They’re a real hooffull of shit, that’s why!”

“I don’t understand why you ponies don’t just kick them out,” I said, “You don’t have to deal with their shit …”

“If it was that easy …” the stallion began, trailing off. He shook his head. “If it wasn’t for them keeping East Eden’s hounds outta this part of the city, I wouldn’t even pay them a single cap. But this isn’t the first time they’ve tried taking more than what we owe …” He turned to Daintybelle. “I’m thinkin’ that Candy Cane mare that mugged you was the same pony that tried wringing us out last week, too.”

Daintybelle hesitated, nodding quickly as she stared at her hooves in silence.

“Is ... is she going to be okay?” I asked.

Daintybelle trembled uncontrollably as her husband wrapped a leg around her. I watched curiously as her shivering refused to abate.

She was mortified.

He looked at his wife with soft eyes, rubbing her shoulder with a hoof. She just shied away from his gaze.

“Daintybelle’s still shaken up after what happened yesterday. She nearly bled out.” The mare hung her head in turmoil.

I stared with dark eyes, shaking my head at the bloody hole in her coat.

"Fucking Palominos ..." her husband began, "Someone oughtta teach those thugs a lesson."

Daintybelle's eyes widened.

“You shouldn’t say that out loud –”

“NO! I’m tired of this! God-damned tired!” Daintybelle wrapped her hooves around him, but he shrugged her off. “I swear I WON’T let those bastards HURT YOU AGAIN!”

“HEY!” I shouted abruptly, and the two fell silent. “I’ll find this mare. I’ll find her. I’ll make her pay,” I said, as I unholstered my pistol, checking its safety.

Daintybelle’s husband gave me a cold hard stare before nodding.

“Thanks … and good luck. I’d keep that heater hot if I were you … those Palominos like to play dirty.”

I nodded at him, but my jaw clenched as I remembered Grifter’s orders.

'I needed her alive.'

Daintybelle watched me as I left, following me with anxious eyes.

She cupped a hoof over her mouth and turned away.

I barely heard her voice whisper beneath the wind.

“They like to play dirty alright …”

*

I walked along a well-trodden, frozen road, cracked and broken by centuries of ice and countless hooves. Rising ominously before me was the immense, confusing sprawl that was the old industrial district. The titanic, blocky metal faces of ancient manufactories, once the lifeblood of Poneva's industry, were now as dry and inert as the ponies that were probably buried right beneath me.

But where there were once busy sidewalks and wagon-clogged streets, there were only weary wastelanders and scrap metal shops. Those shops, built around heaping piles of scrap and possibly useful junk, bought and sold scavenged parts and scavenged machines. Doodads of all kinds of doods and dads were on sale at every corner.

Naturally, with people being attracted to shiny things, other shops would spring up nearby too. A few eateries, thrift shops, gun shops, a blacksmith, and even a potion shop were built into the remnants of factory buildings that hadn’t collapsed. While more densely packed than the market I was at earlier, that place was far more pleasant. We were certainly farther away from the Palominos’ turf, and I couldn’t see any black hats anywhere.

Shivering briskly, I joined the ponies that wandered the swap-meet, glancing every now and then at a shiny part that caught my attention or some piece of machinery that I had never seen before. Everybody’s attention seemed to be drawn elsewhere, however.

‘Lucky me,’ I thought.

‘She was just here.’

A pair of ponies were scrutinizing with grim curiosity a trail of blood that had frozen into the tracks of some wounded pony. The trail was erratic and suggestive of a painful limp. Some of them weren’t even hoofprints. Every now and then there was an imprint of a shape vaguely reminiscent of a pony punched into the snow. Big dumb Dawdleshoes had shot her in the leg after all, it seemed.

One such imprint lied just outside of the potion shop’s door.

I trotted up to the pair of onlookers. My ears perked.

“What happened here?” I asked, eyeing the pony-shaped crater.

“No idea,” replied a mare, who dipped her hoof in the bloody slush. “But it’s been here for a few hours now. It’s frozen solid.”

I tapped my chin with a hoof. “Do you know anybody who might’ve seen whoever did this?”

A stallion pointed a hoof at the door to my left, a meticulously hoofpainted sign that said, in a vaguely understandable language … ‘la … booteele … magic’ … rocking gently in the breeze. “We’re right outside Madame Mistelle’s shop. She probably saw what happened,” he said, shrugging.

Thanking them, I trotted past the two, and pushed open the potion shop’s door. As I soon stepped inside, I was struck in the face by an atmosphere entirely different from the one outside.

It was warm in there.

I blinked several times as I took in the room around me. I hadn’t felt warmth against my coat ever since I left my stable.

At the far end of the shop, there was a fireplace … without firewood. Magical firelight danced across my face as I walked past a series of shelves stocked full of colorful potions and strange concoctions that didn’t really look safe to drink.

A heavily-accented, robotic voice droned behind me.

“Greetings, sir, bienvenue à La Bouteille Magique.”

“HOLY SHIT!” I gasped, backing away from the floating, four-armed robot. My flank bumped into a shelf and a potion tumbled to the floor. In a blur of chrome limbs, the robot lashed out at me –

and caught the potion an inch above the floor.

“Do be careful, sir, you quite nearly bruised your hindquarters,” its flanged, synthesized voice said politely. The hovering robot’s frighteningly long two-pronged arm replaced the potion back on the shelf before retracting back into its metallic shell.

“I-I-I’m …” the word ‘sorry’ was lost on my lips as an alabaster mask ambled into view.

“I do apologize, Monsieur Melanger can be rather inconspicuous at times,” said a mare’s voice. Her ornate mask fascinated me as well as the strange accent that complimented her startlingly pleasant voice. “He tends to catch ponies unawares – with good intentions, I assure you,” the mare added in the silkiest of voices.

A unicorn mare in a faded, yet elegant dress foxtrotted down the aisle towards me, bowing her head at me and lifting her dress with a curtsy. “I am Madame Mistelle. Welcome to the Bouteille Magique, where you may purchase from a vast selection of potions to your fancy!” The rosy lips over where her own lips should’ve been smiled with genuine hospitality. Though it was impossible to tell what face she really wore beneath that mask.

I stared at her for a moment, bewildered by the masked mare.

“I … uh …” I cleared my throat, trying not to make uncomfortable faces at her strange, ornate mask. “Do you own this store?”

“Own, no. But I do preside over the exchanges that occur here, so perhaps it would be appropriate to say yes,” she cooed, her soft, long brown mane bobbing gently upon her shoulder. “I do not think I have seen you here, before. I often watch the ponies outside during my breaks, but I have not seen your face.”

‘Well I can’t see yours,’ I wanted to say as I stood there rubbing my leg uncomfortably.

“Why is it that you look so anxious?” she asked, reading the lines on my forehead.

I watched the green eyes that glistened behind her eyeholes nervously. “Sorry, I’m just … no offense, but why are you wearing that mask?”

Her head cocked slightly at me as if I had just said the strangest thing ever. Then the unicorn gasped, and went stiff.

She dabbed at her chin, rather … adorably. “Oh! This mask?” She ran a hoof against its pale surface, uttering a soft, ladylike chuckle. “I sometimes forget that I am wearing it. Forgive me if I startled you; most ponies who see me are used to my peoples’ anonymity. It is merely a tradition in my culture to wear one when around others.”

‘A tradition?’ I wondered. I didn’t know it was tradition anywhere in Equestria to wear masks like that. I’d never seen that in any of our books either – but then again, I never did pay much attention to Equestrian history …

I cleared my throat, straightening out the discomfort in my face.

“You’re not from here?” I asked.

“Hmm,” she began, “Well, I was born an Equestrian but raised a Rôānian. My family was originally from the nation of Roan, but they have lived here since before the Great War.” My eyes widened at that.

Nowhere in my life had I even heard about a nation called Roan. Nor did I know that there were other nations on this continent besides Equestria and the Crystal Empire.

It struck me just how limited and hoof-picked our history books were. “Roanian?” I played with the word on my tongue. “Where I come from, all we ever knew was Equestria. I’m sort of new here,” I began, lifting up my right forehoof. She saw my PipBuck and nodded, thoughtfully. “My name is Red Dawn.”

She probably smiled behind her mask. “Ah! A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Red Dawn!” Madame Mistelle purred, curtseying once more. “I assumed you were somepony else. I confess: I was actually shocked by your lack of knowledge. You wear the coat of a Palomino soldier - what they call a ‘made pony’, but you do not strike me as one.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

She muttered, the sting in her words belying her mask’s polite expression, “You do not carry yourself like a deceitful rogue.” She cupped a hoof around her mask’s lips, giggling softly. “You are far too polite to belong to such a clan of traitorous brutes.”

Madame Mistelle let out a couth sigh.

“Alors,” she purred, her civility returning, “How is it that I can help you, Red Dawn?”

I stared at her … face … the only thing visible beneath it all were her green eyes.

I couldn’t get my mind off that mask of hers. It was like her voice was trying to match the face she wore. Or maybe that face was trying to match her voice. Hell, it creeped me out speaking to an inanimate expression that grinned at me even when her tone implied that she wasn’t. For all I knew there could have been a mutant beast beneath that mask.

Or a stallion.

I shivered, blinking away the images in my head. “I was wondering if you knew anything about the blood outside your store?”

“Mais bien sûr … there was a remarkable amount of commotion outside, not too long ago,” she replied in her charmingly foreign accent.

My ears perked. ‘May ben, what?’

Madame Mistelle uttered a couth whinny. “A pony came through here while I was holding the door open for Monsieur Melanger as he carried in today’s shipment of reagents. She was fleeing somepony and – oh goodness, and I saw the blood! My, she was injured! I offered her a health potion to which she generously accepted before returning to her course!”

Celestia, was she wordy.

I pursed my lips, trying to hide my exasperation.

“You saw her? What did she look like?”

She touched her chin, pondering for a moment. “She was a unicorn, with the most sumptuous mane of red and white, and a coat of maroon, like a bottle of fine rosé de pomme. Pretty she was, but I had not the chance to ask her from whom she was running. She was in quite a hurry.”

“I’d imagine so …” I muttered.

“Excusez-moi?”

I cleared my throat, smiling sheepishly. “Oh, nothing. I was just going to ask if you saw where she ran off to?”

Madame Mistelle nodded, murmuring to herself as she recalled. “Indeed, I did.” She cocked her head so that her voluminous brown mane bobbed in front of one of her eyeholes. “Are you a friend of hers?”

“No,” I growled, “She mugged a pony earlier today and nearly killed her. I can’t let her get away with that.”

The tone of Madame Mistelle’s voice belied the smile upon her face. “Did she now?” the mare murmured softly. She shifted on her hooves in what I perceived to be thought. “She was indeed fleeing from something.” Madame Mistelle swept her delicate mane to the other side of her face as she turned to Monsieur Melanger. “Apportez-moi mon monteau, s’il vous plait.”

“Très bien, Madame," the robot droned before returning with a coat slung across one of its long, spindly arms.

“Merci. Please follow me,” she said to me, buttoning up her winter coat before starting for the door. “So you are a mercenary?”

I thought for a moment, but shook my head. “No. I’d just hate to see her ruin someone’s life over a bag of caps.”

“How noble of you.”

“It’s just the …” I almost said, ‘the right thing to do’. I frowned at that. “It’s just that bad ponies need to get what’s coming to them.”

Madame Mistelle uttered a terse chuckle.

“Were it so easy, my friend. But the fine line between good and bad is rather blurred,” she intoned, her voice almost a whisper. My ears perked curiously, as she enveloped the doorknob with a green magical field. “Most ponies do not trust my kind. They think we are all … ‘bad ponies’ … the Silver Horseshoes usually keep to their own. But I am an exception, I suppose.”

I froze.

I remembered Sterling mentioning the ‘Silver Horseshoes’ to me a few days earlier. I also remembered them being mentioned in the same breath he mentioned the Sunny Days Company.

My muscles twitched slightly as I decided against reaching for my holster.

She worked for the plantations. The same one the Palominos murdered for.

But she was … helping me?

I shuffled nervously upon my hooves, my brows furrowed.

“So you’re a … uh … Silver Horseshoe, huh?”

The unicorn glanced over her shoulder. “Yes …” Madame Mistelle replied, rather drably. “To foster better relations with our Equestrian peers, I’ve volunteered to preside over this shop.”

I wasn’t sure how much more my brows could scrunch together. I wondered what kind of strain there was between her kind and ours that made mending it so necessary. But so long as that robot didn’t impale me, any hostilities she might have held for me – having Equestrian blood and all, were either well hidden behind her mask or virtually non-existent.

It really was as if she was trying to be the ‘good pony’ her kind apparently wasn’t.

We trotted outside, Madame Mistelle’s magic lifting her dress delicately above the snow. A few yards down, she stopped and pointed a hoof. Stretching off and into the distance was a labyrinth of blocky, rusted over buildings and blackened smokestacks.

“I followed her here, fearing that she would collapse from exhaustion. She did instead keep running.” She lifted a hoof at the broken asphalt trail that led into darkness. “Down this road I saw her disappear, amongst the abandoned General Arcanics factory complex. Such are buildings with many places to hide; I would be utterly shocked had she not taken refuge in one such location.”

There weren’t many lights down there.

‘Great.’ My eyes glazed over the immensity of the factories beyond. “She could be in any one of those, huh?”

Madame Mistelle turned slowly to me with her ever-smiling visage. “She may be. I hope I was able to help.”

I shrugged off a shiver that ran down my spine as I eyed her mask. For all I knew she could have been sneering at me as if I was about to walk into an ambush.

I stared at her for a moment, trying to discern her body language. But she stood entirely still. Madame Mistelle was virtually unreadable. I wondered if she was leading me to a trap.

The polite smile on her mask told me otherwise.

I smiled back. “Yes, thank you.”

"Tout le plaisir est pour moi,” she cooed, politely.

I didn’t have idea what that meant, so I just gave her another sheepish smile and started down the road.

I paused and looked over my shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting a Silver Horseshoe to help … anybody. I’ve been told that you guys work for Sunny Days?”

Again, she was silent. “Some of us do,” Madame Mistelle replied. The mare waved me goodbye.

“Alors, au revoir – et bonne chance – good luck, friend.”

I nodded, trotting down the broken road.

“Dis! Red Dawn!” I turned as she waved a hoof at me once more. “Do be careful, now. The Silver Horseshoes have yet to reclaim all of the industrial district’s manufactories.” She glanced at Monsieur Melanger. “Not all of their security systems perished when the megaspells came.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks again.”

I snorted, gazing into the cradle of Poneva's industry. The balefire hadn’t left much alive when it came. Even a long ways away from ground zero, Spring Song’s cottage was still destroyed.

How much worse could it have been in the city I assumed that the zebras were actually targeting? Almost everything around me that hadn’t been renovated or jury-rigged was a burned-out husk.

How bad could it be?

*

Chapter 7 - Pony Feathers - Pt III

*

The smell of combusted cloth and ozone permeated the air.

“Bad! Bad – very bad!” I screamed as a violet bolt of magical energy screamed over my shoulder. The temperature outside and in was supposed to be below zero.

And yet everything around me was melting into molten slag.

The security-bots were getting closer.

Energy cannons shrieked behind me, their blinding muzzle flashes illuminating the factory like an epileptic light show. Energy bolts punched smoking, melting holes into the walls and floor as I made a mad dash for cover.

I heaved myself over a blackened, unopened crate - and landed in someone’s crumbling skeleton. The blackened bones shattered beneath my weight. I would’ve screamed if I wasn’t already panicking from the lasers bolts showering over me.

One beam flashed across the top of my head, splitting the ends of my red mane.

“AHH – hot, hot, hot! FUCK!” I patted out the small fire that was beginning to burn my scalp. With my hair smoking and the floor on either side of the crate a molten slag, I started to think that there wasn’t going be a way out of that mess.

“Damnit!” I hissed, as their lasers burned through the air, “Don’t those things ever overheat!?”

“DIE, ZEBRA SCUM,” a robot droned as its energy casters whirred and screeched a barrage of violet bolts of crackling magic.

In an instant, the world around me flashed. The crate atomized behind me and I fell flat on my back, hooves in the air into a pile of glowing, incinerated matter.

The laserfire stopped.

I rose to shaky hooves, looked up, and saw half a dozen tracked robots with smoking energy cannons rolling towards me. Upon the robots' heads were … what I hoped weren’t pony brains, spinal cord and all, contained within cylindrical glass cases.

I clenched my mouth bit and eyed my horrifyingly low ammo count. I’d found out earlier that those damned tin cans were unfazed by body shots. SATS was my only ticket out of that soup sandwich.

I couldn’t shoot them where it hurt without my training wheels.

Thankfully, whoever designed those robobastards didn’t put too much thought into protecting their only weak point: their brains – or installing a functional IFF.

‘How clichéd,’ I thought.

A flanged, metallic voice droned from the smoke and darkness.

"Confirm: E.K.I.A?"

I stepped out into the open. “H-hey there, you guys,” I called out to them, my mane still smoking. I lifted a shaky hoof, beaming them with my PipBuck’s glow as the boiling heat beneath me began to dissipate. “I-I’m actually a pony, not a zebra, so if you could please just –”

"Negative. Tango is still active. BURN STRIPED SCUM." A curse slipped out of my lips as their weapons screamed to life.

The touch of white hot death seared past my left flank as I dove for cover behind a forklift. It sparked and melted away, bearing the brunt of the magical onslaught. At the rate it was withering away I knew that it wasn’t going to hold for long. Now with my ass smoking too, I double-timed it for the closest door I could find. The tin cans raced after me. They were gaining on me – fast. I could hear the roar of their engines scream closer and closer.

The world lit up with streaks of teal as I slipped into SATS mid-gallop.

“You will not escape, zebra intruder –”

"I'M NOT A FUCKING ZEBRA, GODDESSES DAMNIT!"

My pistol kicked in my mouth, and its brain case exploded in a shower of gray matter. It stuttered and went limp – only to be plowed out of the way by the rest as they revved after me, lasers flashing.

But no matter how many I put down, another came screaming to take its place. That factory was crawling with them, and as laser bolts flashed across the factory floor, the number of shadows that lurched across the walls reminded me of how wrong I was before I’d arrived.

It was bad. Real bad.

One violet beam flashed on high, and the shadow of a tracked tin can painted itself briefly against the floor in my path. I nearly stopped in my tracks – only to find that it wasn’t in front of me.

It was above me.

The shrieking uproar of metal being sheared in half pierced my ears. I jerked my head upwards and saw the shuddering catwalk that hung precariously over me.

A raving robobrain raced across it.

“Z-Z-ZEBRA – ZEBRAZEEEEEBBRAAAAA –”

“Fuck.”

The robot fell first.

It careened into the floor in front of me, still screaming. In a dull explosion of shattered limbs and liquefied brains, it perished. Slimy gray matter splattered onto my face and metal fragmentation nicked my bare flesh.

Then the air suddenly felt a few thousand tons heavier.

I heaved myself out of the way just as the catwalk careened into the floor behind me, quaking the earth beneath my hooves. A massive plume of debris erupted into the ceiling, blinding my eyes and every howling death robot around me.

A painful groan rasped out of my lips. I lay there spread-eagled and coughing beneath the smoke, blood streaming down my face. Pulling back my splayed limbs, I tried to sit up - but something yanked me back down to the floor. I jerked my head back, ready to deplete my SATS charges into whatever robo shit for brains had clamped down on my tail.

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t a robot.

My tail ... my tail …

It was trapped beneath the catwalk.

“Fuh … fuh … f-f-f ...”

“VISUAL REESTABLISHED. ENGAGING.”

The catwalk blocked their path. So they just started melting through it.

I pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Sweat poured down my face and chilled instantly in the freezing air. I could see the flashing violet glows getting closer and closer through the dust and darkness.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, OH FUCK – THIS!”

I cried out, tucked in my legs, and bucked as hard as I could against the catwalk behind me.

I didn’t even realize I was screaming as I ripped – tore – and shredded myself free.

I didn’t have to look to know that my tail was gone.

My ass was on fire.

I tossed a few hundred bits into my swear jar as just about every swear word in the books howled through my teeth.

I screamed my throat raw and galloped to the first door I could find. A sign above labeled it ‘Maintenance’. It didn’t matter where I went. I slammed into the door and wrenched it open, tumbling inside as my hind legs slammed it closed.

I glanced up with stars in my eyes, and found that I wasn’t alone.

“– no, come on – come on!” I heard someone hiss.

I saw the streaks in her curly mane first. They were red and white … like a candy cane.

“Candy Cane?” I breathed, eyes widening.

She was in the process of jamming a hairpin into a door’s lock and feeling for its innards with a screwdriver when she swung her head around to see me.

“Oh no.”

With a violent twist, she forced the lock and bucked it open.

“STOP!” I scrambled to my hooves and nearly slipped upon an empty potion bottle as I bounded after her and out the door.

“Get away from me!” the mare screamed, her horn flashing silver. A shelf packed with maintenance supplies crashed to the floor at my hooves. I leaped over it – and a lightbulb exploded against my skull. I blinked away flecks of blood, clenching my jaw and galloping after her as she yanked down light fixtures in my path.

Glass shattered beneath my hooves as I shrugged off bulb after bulb. The hall was getting shorter.

She turned a corner and stopped, her back against a wall. I could see the defiance etched upon her face.

“You won’t get away with this!” I screamed, and lunged after her, hooves outstretched.

But she threw herself out of the way at the very last moment and my face greeted the concrete wall with an audible thump. Stars exploded in my eyes and I barely noticed the blur that was her tail as she pounded her hooves farther and farther away.

Candy Cane found the door at the other end of the hall, her magic glowing around a screwdriver as she picked at the lock with a bobby pin. I struggled to get to my hooves, but collapsed once more in my daze.

That was all the time she needed. Candy Cane shoved the door open, glancing over her shoulder before disappearing outside. I shook the stars from my eyes and hobbled after her.

“Fucking …” I murmured, rounding the corner only to see her halfway down a flight of stairs leading to the factory floor.

Too bad I needed her alive.

My eyes followed her across the factory floor. I let out an irritated groan. Stretching out into the factory’s depths was a network – no, a mess of assembly lines and conveyor belts. And she was going to disappear inside of it.

I bounded down the steps after her, skipping four at a time – nearly smashing my skull in as I slipped and rolled down the last five. By the time I was up again, the mare was already twenty yards away from me, galloping as fast as she could across the factory floor.

“INTRUDERS DETECTED,” dozens of synthesized voices shrieked in unison. “ENGAGING DEFENSIVE PROTOCOLS – WEAPONS FREE.” Red lights flashed, and from the metal alcoves in the walls rolled out more robobrains.

They revved after us, their twin-linked energy casters glowing like demon eyes in the darkness.

I groaned, “You’ve gotta be SHITTING me!”

A robobrain veered into my path, blocking any view I had of Candy Cane. My muscles tensed and my eyes clenched shut.

I slammed my body into its metal frame, its arms flailing, energy weapons flashing. I felt the skin on my face prickle and burn as its energy casters hissed and erupted with violet spellfire on either side of my cheeks.

With a defiant scream, I jammed my pistol into its brain case and yanked the trigger back.

CRACK!

Gray matter and reeking fluids dribbled down my face. I heaved the robot away from me, and found that Candy Cane was even further away. I was losing her fast.

To my surprise, she leaped onto the conveyor belt, unassembled parts and debris scattering to the floor in her wake. I pounded after her, tossing aside everything in my path. With the automated machines blocking the robots’ line of fire, their computers couldn’t plot any firing solutions.

Good for the both of us. Until the lights on the machines flickered to life and the conveyor belt began to move.

My eyes widened as I saw the gray shimmer around her horn fade away.

“ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY!?”

She shouted back, “You’re crazy for following me here!”

The darkness gave way as the factory sprang to life, my eyes blinded for a moment as the lights overhead drowned us out with a flickering white glare.

Then I saw it. I wished that she had just kept the lights off.

A massive, chomping maw of steel devoured the unassembled parts before us and pancaking them into different shapes.

I was about to get butchered by an oversized cookie-cutter.

I watched as Candy Cane dove into its groaning maw. Then it slammed closed.

“Luna’s fucking grace!”

It opened once more and all that came out were more metal parts.

I stood there frozen on my hooves – but the conveyor belt just kept rolling.

‘Oh no.’

“FUCK. EVERYTHING.”

I closed my eyes, threw my hooves in front of me, and dove forward. Utter darkness fell over me. Metal pounded against metal, and a shrill ringing screeched into my ears.

Then the machine opened once more and I was outside – the stub that was my tail just barely an inch away from being caught between its teeth.

Candy Cane glanced over her shoulder, her eyes widening. I suppose she thought that that should’ve killed me.

I glared at her as she galloped away.

A rivulet of sweat trickled over my brow.

“Are you fucking serious …” I murmured.

And she leaped off the conveyor belt.

Nearly half a story below, she landed, scrambling onto another. I made another jump, and barely stuck my landing beside a cylindrical case about the size of a stallion’s torso.

Coming in fast was a machine that bolted onto the cases the metal parts that had been shaped from earlier. I saw Candy Cane duck into one of the tin cans as six different machines impaled the shell to oblivion.

My stomach ached as I imagined one of those bolts driving into my chest. I swore under my breath. My metal coffin awaited me. I crawled inside and cringed. The machines roared as they screwed and tunneled and bled out my eardrums with their bolt drivers. Now completely and utterly deaf, I heard nothing but the ringing in my ears as I hurled the tin can off of me and sent my hooves pounding across the conveyor belt in the shrill silence.

With the mare leading the way, she cleared the path for me as she tossed aside metal shells in her path. But a machine that was supposed to tip the cylinders upright scooped her up from behind and dumped her onto her face.

“Fuck -”

Cold metal slammed into my face. The machine scooped me up off my thrashing hooves and dumped me back down onto the conveyor belt. I panicked - and slipped off the edge.

Screaming, I hung from the conveyor belt twenty feet above the factory floor for my dear life with a single hoof as it dragged me along the line at a full on gallop. I threw my left hoof high and found purchase, wrenching myself up and over.

I stood there – eyes widening, seconds away from another automated death trap. The machine roared closer. It shoved parts off the assembly line as its other half sparked and shuddered.

I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hooves.

The machine slammed into me, hurling me off the assembly line to fall to my death. But a swinging mechanical claw broke my fall. Then another conveyer belt. And another machine. I tumbled through the air in free fall and slammed onto the floor on my back, my body beaten, bruised, and aching. I cursed under my trembling gasps, wondering if I’d broken anything.

I lay there questioning how I was still alive.

A painful moan gathered my attention elsewhere as I rose to my hooves. Candy Cane had landed a stone’s throw away from me.

“Give up!” I panted, ejecting my pistol’s mostly spent magazine and tucking it into my pocket.

Candy Cane scrambled to her hooves, and half limped, half ran away.

“JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!” she cried.

I loaded my last magazine and entered SATS.

I tagged her legs ... but my firing solution was taking too long to calculate. She was fast. Too fast. If I missed and struck her chest, she’d die. Then I’d never find the Orphanage. I threw off my training wheels and snarled after her.

We neared a wide, shattered window pane that lined the entirety of the wall on that side of the factory. She’d do anything to escape. I wasn’t surprised when she hurled herself into the window pane and sent it crashing into the snow outside.

Without so much of a pause, I leaped after her, rolling down a heaping mound of snow that had nearly buried the concrete wall behind me.

The mare punched a deep outline into the drifts, the powder breaking most of her fall. My flailing limbs threw up showers of snow as I struggled to rise to my aching four legs. But she beat me to it. Growling in frustration, I lunged after her, trying to chomp down on her tail, but she lashed out with her hind legs and blinded me with a hail of ashen snow.

I sputtered, spitting the powder out of my mouth and shaking it off my muzzle.

She was already on her hooves, and limping away from me.

I snarled, “It's over Candy Cane!”

I slogged after her in the knee-deep snow, my PipBuck’s light flashing across the drifts. Her heavy, panicked gasps and my irritated murmuring were the only sounds among those abandoned lines of storage containers.

She knew the end was near.

Candy Cane finally collapsed, wheezing for air to fill her lungs – but that didn’t stop her. She crawled. She crawled away from me, her tail disappearing around a corner.

I made the turn and watched as she dragged herself across the snow ... in vain. A stack of crates, piled high above our heads made the alleyway between the storage containers on either side of me a dead end.

Candy Cane threw herself against the wall behind her. She peered up at me as I approached, my pistol drawn.

“Please … let me go,” she begged, tears welling up in her eyes. Her eyes. I locked my burning gaze with hers and stared into her watery grays. Her steel gray eyes.

All my anger dissipated like an evanescent dream.

I froze, with another mare’s name upon my lips. Shivers ran down my spine as she spoke.

“Don’t make me go back … please … don’t make me go back … just tell Grifter and his Palominos I’m dead,” Candy Cane sobbed pathetically, tears streaming down her rosy cheeks. A lock of her curly red and white mane fell over one of her eyes as she hung her head, weeping silently. “I’m dead … tell them I’m dead …”

“Wha … what are you talking about?” I uttered, trembling on my hooves.

She looked up at me in desperation with defeated, teary eyes. The mare parted her mane with a shaking hoof.

Around her neck was a collar. It blinked red with every second that dragged by.

‘Dear Celestia.’

“You … you’re a slave,” I whispered, the hairs on my coat standing on end.

“If you want the money … please … just take it … take it and let me go!” she begged through trembling lips, reaching into her jacket.

A sack of jingling caps landed in front of me.

I could only stare, frozen upon my hooves as Candy Cane’s shoulders rocked with miserable sobs. She wept into her hooves, shaking her head and wiping them away only for more to stream hopelessly down her cheeks.

Doubt ran circles around my head. My right eye twitched as I struggled to stay aloft on my own four hooves.

Candy Cane's trembling voice broke my heart like glass.

“Don’t make me go back … I-I don’t want to go back!” she begged between her quaking sobs. “I don’t want to go back anymore … No more - PLEASE! Don’t make me go back there! They’ll hurt me … again and again!”

I lowered a trembling hoof to the snow and picked up the sack of caps. Candy Cane went silent. I looked up and saw her staring at me with her teary, anguished eyes. Her steel gray eyes.

A second passed as I lost myself in her hauntingly familiar gaze, entranced.

Distraught. Disturbed. I clenched my eyes shut as my stomach churned and my head spun.

Then a shrill cry shattered my rapturous state.

“I WON’T LET YOU TAKE ME BACK, YOU FUCKING CAFONE PIECE OF SHIT!”

Candy Cane hurled herself at me, a knife enveloped in her magical grip.

I slipped into SATS.

My hindhooves bucked into her chest.

Candy Cane slammed into the wall of crates behind her before crashing into the snow in a writhing heap.

“NO!” she wailed as I threw myself on top of her, pinning her flailing limbs into the snow.

“NO – NO – NO!”

The mare shrieked with everything she had left.

“NOOOOO!”

Candy Cane thrashed beneath me, screaming like a frenzied, cornered animal until she screamed her throat raw and her muscles burned out. Nearly a minute passed, her heavy gasps for air barely audible over the howling wind.

She let her head roll across her shoulders, laying her cheek in the snow. The buttons on her winter coat was torn loose, revealing beneath me the ribs of her heaving, naked chest.

“Just … just do it …” she rasped in between breaths. “Just do it …” Candy Cane clenched her eyes shut and whimpered softly … shivering ... unable to shed anymore tears in her weary, pathetic state. She just lied there, pinned to the snow beneath my hooves. She didn’t resist. She didn’t utter a single word ...

… not a single word as she parted her hindlegs beneath me.

A horrified gasp escaped my lips.

I lifted my hooves off of her slender, trembling legs. She was broken. And I was afraid that I’d broken her too. I touched one of her forelegs, her leg too thin to fill her entire sleeve, one too many sizes big for her. One was bloodied and bandaged tightly where Dawdleshoes had shot her. Even now unhindered by my weight, she could do nothing but lie there.

Defeated.

I stared down at the sobbing mare with wide eyes. The bomb collar continued to blink. Every flashing pulse was a quaking flashback to my meeting with Sugar Rum’s crew.

Slavers. Slavers. Slavers.

She was a slave.

“What are you?” I still asked, unable to believe the thoughts that screamed at me inside my head. I closed my eyes, covering my face with a hoof.

There was only silence. I opened them, and Candy Cane was still sobbing quietly, snow clinging to her disheveled red and white mane.

“I … I’m a pony … I’m a pony … not a fucking … slut. Not a … whore. Not a slave. I’m a pony. I’m a fucking pony …” she wept, her voice trembling.

I blinked away the tears in my eyes as her cries echoed through my ears. All that time I was chasing … a victim. A victim. It tore me apart knowing that I would have murdered her if I wasn’t trying to take her alive.

I was after the wrong pony. I was helping the wrong pony.

Grifter was a slaver. A Palomino. A liar … a manipulative scumbag sack of pony garbage!

And to think I was going to exchange information for another pony’s life! Candy Cane’s life ...

I touched her face with a hoof, gently rolling her head to face me. Candy Cane’s eyelids fluttered open.

“I’m … I’m not one of them,” I told her. “I won’t hurt you.”

She closed them once more. “You’re lying … you don’t know how many times I’ve heard that … how many times they’ve hurt me anyways. You don’t know … you’re lying …”

“NO!” I shouted, suddenly. She shuddered beneath me, her bloodshot eyes widening. “I’m not a fucking Palomino … they lied to me. Grifter. Lied to me. He said you mugged – mugged his customer! Daintybelle said you stabbed her – tried to kill her! I ... I thought you were one of them!” I cried, my chin quivering as my blood began to boil.

“He fucking lied to me, told me that if I brought you back, he’d help me … I … I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not like them. I’m not a monster.” I looked into her eyes, pleadingly. “Please believe me … I won’t hurt you.”

She sniffled, wiping away the frost that had formed upon her cheeks. I collapsed to my haunches, my head hung as I stared blankly at the ashen snow.

All of it … everything Grifter told me was bullshit … it was all fucking pony feathers. As I sat there in turmoil, Candy Cane’s voice pulled me back into the light.

“I … I believe you …”

The mare sat down in front of me, staring at the snow under her hooves with desolate eyes.

“What’s your name … I mean you already know mine,” she asked.

“Red Dawn … my name’s Red Dawn. I’m sorry, Candy Cane … I-I didn’t know. Goddesses damnit … I didn’t know.”

She nodded, quietly, running a hoof through the snow.

“Daintybelle … you spoke with Daintybelle, didn’t you?”

I looked up at her and nodded.

“She was a regular customer at the Sultry Scullion … she really liked me,” Candy Cane began, distantly. “Daintybelle always chose me … she has a husband you know? Says that I … I can make her feel better than her husband can. She … she really liked me. She’d always pay extra to … to … ” she looked away, shaking her head as she teetered on the edge of breaking down into tears once more.

I cradled my head in my hooves. “That … two-faced whore … she lied to me.”

“I got tired of it …” Candy Cane sighed softly, her voice hoarse. “I got tired of all of it … so I decided I’d leave. I stabbed her … took her caps … and ran …”

She looked up at me with uncertain, watery gray eyes. “So … now what? What … what are you going to do to me?”

I said nothing as my blood boiled in my veins. My head spun so fast that I wanted to puke. I stared at her bomb collar, watching it blink with every burning second that ticked by. A shallow breath escaped my lips, and I hung my head, trembling with rage.

I’d already made up my mind before the thought even came to my head.

“I’m going to bust you out of there.” I looked her in the eyes. “For good.”

Candy Cane snorted, shaking her head hopelessly. “What makes you think you can? I’ve escaped so many times but they've always been able to find me ...”

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve escaped at all, because you still have your collar on,” I growled, quietly. Candy Cane looked at her hooves. “I know what those things can do …”

“They’d never pop me," she whispered, "They’d never just throw me away like that … not while I can still ...” She shook her head, vigorously. “That’s why they’ve always brought me back.”

I fell silent, hatred seething within me.

“I’m going to get that collar off of you,” I said, softly, barely containing my rage.

“How?”

“There’s a detonator. Grifter has to have one. If there’s a detonator, he can make it pop. If there’s a detonator, I can make it go dark.” I slammed a hoof in the snow. “I just have to take it from him …”

Candy Cane shook her head. “You’d never get that close … his guards, they’ll put you down before you can even get close to him.”

I held up my right foreleg. “I have a PipBuck. I can drop all of them at once with its targeting system.” I clenched my eyes shut, shaking my head. “… I’ll make this right …

“I’ll make them pay.”

I brooded in silence as she sat there, wiping her weary eyes for what seemed like hours.

“You … you’d do this for me?” Candy Cane shook her head, wistfully. “You don’t even know me … I-I don’t even know you.”

“Has anyone ever tried to help you escape?” I asked.

No answer.

“Anyone?”

Still nothing.

“Then believe me … I’ll help you … because no one else will.”

Candy Cane stared at me in silence. All I could hear were her sobs as she began to weep.

“You’d do this for me? Y-you really would?” she cried, distantly.

I hung my head in solemn quietude. Those zebra villagers … I let them die. I watched as those mercs slaughtered them all. Those ponies that Sugar Rum’s crew enslaved … I let them die. I watched as those blood letters slaughtered them all.

I wasn’t going to let Candy Cane be another person that I could’ve – should’ve saved.

“Yes. But you have to trust me … we would need to go back.”

Her eyes widened.

“No …” she whispered, clenching her eyes shut.

I held her shoulder with a hoof. “I’ll need to get close to him.”

“No … no please …”

“Candy Cane …” I touched the collar around her neck, its red light flashing in my eyes. “It’s the only way to get that collar off of you. Even if you run, even if you leave the city … you’ll never be able to get away. As long as you have the thing around your neck, you’ll never escape.”

She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Okay … okay … I want to be a pony, Red Dawn … I want to be a pony.”

Candy Cane sat there as I rubbed her shuddering shoulders. I closed her winter coat, and she hugged the fabrics close to her chest.

“You already are. You just have a bomb collar around your neck.”

*

I led Candy Cane through the market, the Sultry Scullion not too far away, its colorful, flickering neon signs only adding fuel to my fire.

There he was. The liar. The Palomino. The grifter.

“I have her,” I said, approaching the stallion and his three henchponies.

“Ah, there’s the big-balled palooka! Look at him – how’d a small pony like that wrangle that wild mustang when a big boy like you couldn’t?” He chuckled, grinning at dumbass Dawdleshoes. “Heh, maybe I might just hire this colt and put you on mop-duty?”

Twiggy and Dahlia laughed, and the idiot stallion grumbled something incomprehensible. It didn’t matter. All I was doing was planning ways to put bullets through their heads.

Grifter cocked his head at me. “Why the long face, kid?”

“I … I went through a lot of shit to get her back,” I muttered through my teeth as I twitched the stub that was my tail. My eyes narrowed at him. “Don’t forget about our agreement.”

He laughed, and so did his henchponies.

“Forget about it! I told you – I’m no welcher … I help ponies who help me, ya dig?” He reached into his chest-pocket, and held out a slip of paper to me. “Saw that PipBuck of yours, so I figured you could make use of coordinates better than directions.”

I took the piece of paper and stared at it. Now I had what I was looking for. I glanced over my shoulder at Candy Cane who was staring at her hooves in quietude.

“Well? Hoof her to me. And the caps, too.”

I looked at Candy Cane and she looked at me. I nodded, and she began to walk toward them. So far so good.

I reached for my chest pocket, tucking away the note in my left, and grazing the pocket on the right. Just above my pistol’s holster. I gulped.

Six dark shapes trotted down the aisle of vendors. Their black hats hid their eyes.

My heart sank.

Grifter turned and the same mare who’d wailed on him when I first met him had returned.

“So what’s it gonna be, Grifter? You got the caps or no?”

My heart started to beat faster than I could breathe.

Candy Cane saw the fear in my eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. I got ‘em, Dolce. Hold your fuckin’ horses.”

Grifter donned his fedora and held out a hoof.

“I need those caps, Red Dawn.”

SATS illuminated the world around me. I glanced at my charges … then I glanced at their heads. Ten of them. There were ten of them, one of me, and six rounds in my magazine.

I was going to take a risk. For Candy Cane. I thought of Gail. I thought of how I galloped headfirst into that hail of bullets just to save her. But it wasn’t my own efforts that had saved Gail’s life. It wasn’t luck that had kept me from dying.

I didn’t have ponies like Night Sky, Bone Charm, or Sprinkles to cover my sorry ass.

There, my strength was laughable. There, luck wasn’t on my side. Neither were any ponies.

But I promised Candy Cane that I would … I … I promised Dew Drops that I would save our Stable. I couldn’t do that dead. I bit my lower lip so hard that I drew blood. Even if I did put Grifter and his guards down, I wouldn’t have had enough bullets to drop the rest. It would end in a bloodbath, with my blood mingling with the rest.

I was screwed … no … Candy Cane was screwed. And I was going to screw her over. 'No … no … no … Goddesses ...' I shook uncontrollably, screaming inside my head, 'There were only supposed to be four of them, damnit!' I glanced at the firing solutions in my queue.

A rivulet of sweat trickled down my face.

Grifter and his dogs were instant kills. A shot through the head for each … but the rest ... I eyed the automatic weapons slung around their necks.

I gulped. It would be suicide.

Candy Cane was gazing at me expectantly. Expecting I’d pop into SATS and slaughter them all. Expecting I’d free her like I said I would.

In the past, I had taken risks ... to save Gail, a griffon I hardly knew. There I was again was as the past repeated itself – this time to save a mare I hardly knew.

But saving Candy Cane wasn’t a risk … it was a death sentence. Not like that. Not with so many of them.

I left the quietude of my thoughts. As my hoof dipped into my right pocket and yanked out a sack of caps, I met Candy Cane’s stare.

"I'm sorry ..." I whispered.

The bag plummeted into Grifter’s outstretched hoof. I watched as Candy Cane’s steel gray eyes widened. Her jaw dropped as all her hope shattered and fell away from her hooves. Something within me broke too when I heard her voice.

“Red … Red Dawn?” she whimpered.

Grifter looked overjoyed. “Thanks, kid, heh. You just about saved my hide,” he grinned.

I stared at my hooves.

“Red Dawn … what … what are you doing?”

My jaw clenched as I looked away, unable to say a word. Unable to look her in the eye.

“… you … you said you’d …”

I clenched my eyes shut. “I’m sorry.”

“No … no! You promised! YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD!” she wailed, “YOU FUCKING LIAR! YOU’RE ALL THE SAME! YOU’RE ALL THE SAME, YOU SON OF A –”

“Oh shut your cocktrap, ya fuckin’ broad,” Grifter growled, hoofing her collar’s detonator.

He punched one of its buttons. Candy Cane fell to the snow, screaming in agony as violent electricity arced across her body.

Her flashing silhouette reflected dimly in my eyes as I stood there, uselessly.

“YOU – LIED – TO ME!” Candy Cane wailed.

Grifter turned, hoofed the black-hatted mare behind him the caps, and flipped the off switch. Candy Cane lay limp in the snow, her clothes smoking.

“Alright! Haul her fine ass back to the Scullion. She’s going back to work as soon as tomorrow comes.”

“No …” I murmured as the Palominos started away from me. “Damnit …” My hoof trembled as I curled it around my pistol’s holster. “Goddesses damnit …”

I stared grimly at the snow as my hoof slid back into the ashen drifts. The darkest corners of my mind told me that it was going to be okay.

I had what I wanted anyways.

I shook my head vigorously, damning the voices that reassured me in my thoughts.

I promised Dew Drops that I’d save our stable. But I wondered: how the hell could I save the 294 ponies in my stable if I couldn’t even save just one pony?

I kept telling myself that that wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

'I’ll find a way to make this right,' I promised her.

But Candy Cane would have to wait. And so would Grifter.

I turned, and I walked the other way.

Footnote: Level 5
XP: 1270/2500

Chapter 8 - The Out-and-Out - Pt I

Chapter 8
The Out-and-Out

“I found out the hard way that the closest thing to being cared for was to care for someone else.”

“You couldn’t save me.”

She glared through me, my muddled reflection glistening in her chilling, gray eyes. The agony in her words bled me out more than the bullet holes across my chest. I lay at her hooves, my life blood pooling across the snow.

“YOU COULDN’T SAVE ME!” she wailed as a blizzard engulfed us both.

I held out a hoof to her but she swatted it away. “I’m sorry … DD … I …”

“Failed. You sorry little fuck up … you failed us all. You ran … I saw you run. You let us all die.”

“Dew Drops …”

“YOU LET US ALL DIE!”

The blood drained from my face. “DD… w-why? I tried … please …”

She craned her neck to the bloodied, shivering heap at her hooves.

Dew Drops murmured, her voice trembling, “You tried … you tried …” A cruel grin stretched across her bloody lips. “Just like how you tried helping those slaves… or how you just stood there and let those all those zebras die.”

I froze, my heart skipping a beat as her words sank deep into my heart like a frozen blade driving into my chest. I could do nothing but whimper and sob as the agonized screams of zebras, and ponies, and my friends coalesced into Dew Drops’ gravelly voice.

“You ran.”

I shook my head as if my life depended on it. “N-no – please, it wasn’t like that … I … I … I didn’t …”

Her chilling breath choked away my words, like a bed of icy needles pressing against my throat. I could smell the stench of spilled innards and rotting death about her.

The dead mare whispered into my ear, “You’re a coward … a fucking coward.”

“I’m sorry … Dew Drops … I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “If I had another chance … I’d … I’d …”

“Fail. Again.” She reared up on her hinds and dropped her hooves onto my face. I cried out weakly as they slammed into my muzzle – “Again! AGAIN! AND AGAIN!” Blood trickled down my forehead and out of my nose, freezing against my bruised, shivering flesh and staining my coat black.

I struggled to my hooves, gasping a raspy breath only to collapse pathetically into the snow before her.

“Dew Drops … why … why are you doing this to me? This isn’t like you … stop … please … I … I love you…”

She levitated an icy, warped machete, lifting the blade over my shivering form.

“Dew Drops – please! I love you –”

“No,"she whispered, “You failed. You couldn’t even save the ponies you cared about. You couldn’t save me. You can’t save anyone. Not even our stable.” The grin she wore upon her ghastly, corpulent face squeezed the air from my lungs.

“Heh…” she chuckled as I let out a pathetic sob. “You can’t even save yourself.”

“No …”

She swung the machete into my neck.

“NO!”

I flung my hooves in front of me, gasping for my breath as sweat froze against my forehead. I lay there for what felt like hours, rocking back and forth in silence.

I opened my eyes … finally, truly awake.

I was still curled up beneath the corrugated roof that stretched over my head. Three stories above the slums below, I watched the snowflakes seethe past me.

Still shaking, I gathered my bags and hugged them close, nuzzling Dew Drops’ scarf.

Tears welled up in my half-closed eyes as I tried to still my trembling body.

Minutes passed, my wheezing breaths barely visible in the darkness of my shelter.

Every setback was a fuck up in my book. Every pony … every zebra I had been helpless to save so far was a fuck up.

I didn’t want Candy Cane to be another bullet on that list.

*

My muzzle, a barely perceptible outline against a curtain of darkness, tipped slightly as I saw a pony leave the brothel. A stallion.

If I ever found out that he touched Candy Cane in any sort of way I swore to the Goddesses that I’d remember him and that I’d find him. Not too far from the Sultry Scullion I lay in wait. For most of that day I had been there, crunching on an apple or two as I watched ponies leave and enter the brothel.

I hid among the remains of a collapsed building, wedged deep between its rubble like another chunk of debris. I shifted a little bit, stretching my hind legs slightly.

I glanced at the screen and the clock told me that it was 0100.

Another hour passed by, and the stream of ponies dwindled until nobody entered or left at all. Only a changing of the guard. I’d watched the guard change every three hours for nine hours. I switched on my PipBuck’s light, smothering the glow with my left hoof.

Two of the guards I saw outside were ponies I’d seen before.

My eyes darted to the entrance. Dahlia shooed away Dawdleshoes and leaned against the front doors, lighting a cigarette. I watched as the large stallion shuffled back inside.

There were six guards. Grifter told me yesterday that he had half of his boys outside with him and the other half at the brothel. I just hoped his math was right.

I wanted to wait there for another hour and see who they’d swap out next, but Goddesses, my legs were aching. It felt like they were going to atrophy. But my stupid legs were the least of my worries.

Candy Cane.

Not a single minute had passed when she hadn’t crossed my mind. I didn’t want to imagine the things they’d done to her … or the things she’d been forced to do in the confines of that filthy place. My jaw clenched as I let my chin rest against the frozen concrete beneath me.

I exhaled a trembling sigh. There was some intangible thing about her that bothered me. And the more I thought about it, the more horrifyingly absorbed in it I became. Steel gray. Her eyes were the color of frozen steel. It sent shivers down my spine as I remembered vividly the last time I saw those eyes.

They weren’t the first pair of teary grays that had widened at me in desperation.

When I first met her gaze ... I thought that I had seen a ghost staring back at me.

I stuffed my face with a hooffull of chilling powder, jolting myself back to reality.

I’d had enough of sitting around.

My muzzle broke the stagnant pool of darkness that had settled over me. I stuck to the shadows, gliding my flank across the cold pockmarked wall as I inched along the edge of a fallen office building. I stalked the perimeter of the brothel, out of sight and as quiet as a radroach.

There was a back door around the building. It was only a matter of sneaking in unnoticed.

The flesh on my face prickled as I bounded past a burning trashcan, my shadow dancing against the walls around me in the firelight.

I neared a small, empty lot behind the brothel, walled off with metal panels and lit with the flickering glow of more burning trashcans. As I approached, I glanced at my PipBuck, keeping track of the blips that blinked on my EFS. At least seven inside. Several dozen more outside, somewhere in another building or milling about in the snow. But for now, I was alone as I approached the empty lot.

My EFS blinked as something began trotting my way.

I stopped in my tracks and ducked behind an overturned dumpster as a stallion, one of Grifter’s henchponies, trotted by. Curled against his body with one of his hooves was a bag of garbage. He walked past my huddled form, yawning as he stood on his hinds and tried to dump it into an open dumpster a few feet away from me.

The bag slipped from his hooves and tumbled to the snow, scattering filthy rubbish across the snow.

“Blech…” he sneered, hoofing a used condom off his chest as he gathered the trash and used toys into his hooves and tossed them into the dumpster.

The stallion picked up one half of a purple … dildo … rolling it around in his hooves.

“How the fuck do you even break one of these things?” he muttered, gagging as he tossed the broken phallus into the trash. Rolling my eyes, I thought about sneaking past him while his back was turned.

I eyed the machine pistol slung around his neck and shook my head. I didn’t want to risk getting caught. As I stared, a blankness settled upon my gaze. I thought for a moment, ‘Maybe I could just kill him.’

Then I blinked, frowning at myself as I shook my head once more. I bit my lower lip as he began to whistle a tune that was barely audible beneath the pounding in my temples.

I pressed my back harder against the wall. A quiet breath exhaled from my lips as I closed my eyes and waited for his hoofsteps to disappear. The sound of a gate closing and a door slamming behind the fence followed soon afterward.

Slipping out of cover, I followed his tracks, my shadow sweeping across the wall’s corrugated metal panels. I came to the gate and found that there wasn’t a knob, a latch, or anything to open it with. Frowning, I pressed my forehooves against it and pushed.

It rattled, but didn’t budge.

“Son of a …” I glanced over my shoulder, squinting through the glares of the burning trashcans. The coast was still clear.

The gate must’ve been locked from the other side. There had to be another way. But as I searched the wall’s perimeter, I found everything short of a way inside. I tried climbing over, but barbed wire and broken glass blocked my path.

Back again at square one, I tried heaving the gate open again.

“Come on …” I murmured, trying to force it open with my hind legs. Sucking in a breath of air, I heaved and pushed and heaved and pushed - but the thing simply refused to open.

I groaned, panting for my breath and I slid to my haunches, leaning against the door. I lowered my irritated eyes upon my PipBuck, bringing my right leg to my face. Another hoof came to toggle the device’s brightness, but something else reflected against its glossy screen. Something flashed in my eyes.

I turned to my left and caught a shaft of light glimmering through a small crack in the wall.

I rose to my hooves and studied the opening, about two inches in length and an inch in breadth. I brought an eye into the light, peering inside through a layer of rusty chicken wire.

That was my way in.

I glared at the brothel’s backdoor, lit by a flickering gas lamp that reflected brightly in my eyes.

I shifted my gaze and saw to my left the latch that opened the gate from the inside. I muttered irritably to myself, wishing that my horn was working. If only I had my magic, I could’ve easily gripped the latch and opened it from the other side …

'My magic …'

My eyes fluttered to my bags and a lightbulb flickered to life inside my head. I lowered myself to the snow and opened my saddlebags. Beneath a hooffull of apples and a few health potions, I found a peculiar bottle of sparkling purple liquid resting at the bottom.

‘Sparkling … sparkling … sparkling …’ I repeated inside my thoughts.

I lifted the vial of Sparkle to my muzzle and narrowed my eyes at the drug as I sloshed it around inside its bottle. If it wasn’t for its faint violet glow, I might’ve mistook it for a sample of some lab-borne energy drink from back home, or a bottle of grape juice if I’d ever seen one.

It certainly looked … tasty. I peered into the hole above me and watched as the slender stallion poked his head outside. He blew out the lamp and plunged me back into the darkness. I sat there with my back to the wall, holding the bottle of sparkle close to my chest.

I had no idea what terrible side effects that drug carried with it. But I knew one thing: I needed to get through that damned gate.

I yanked out the cork with a pop and emptied the sparkling vial into my mouth, gulping it down to the last drop. I sat down and waited, a fruity aftertaste lingering upon my tongue. Too many long seconds dragged by, and I narrowed my eyes at my horn in irritation.

I waited for a shimmer, an arc of electricity – something.

Nothing.

“What the hell!?” I hissed, stomping a hoof into the snow.

Lightning erupted inside of me like a spark battery going haywire.

It surged through me, shocking me from the inside out as every nerve ending in my body ignited with electrifying agony. I doubled over, wheezing and choking through clenched teeth as I fought the inferno burning up inside of me. I writhed and convulsed, digging canyons into the snow with my trembling hooves.

Then everything flashed white.

My eyelids flew open and a chunk of snow tore itself out of the drifts, enwreathed within my magical grip. I blinked, and the snowball flung itself away from me and into the darkness. Far away, I heard glass breaking and a mare scream.

“Well fuck …” I trailed off, a wide grin stretching across my face.

I rose confidently to my hooves and peered through the chicken-wired crack in the wall, squinting my eyes into the darkness. I could see the latch.

For unicorns, that’s all it took.

Sparks of magic arced across my horn as it gave off a crimson glow.

Clack.

The gate swung open.

‘Back in the game,’ I thought as I drew my pistol without raising a single hoof. With my weapon hovering close, I shut the gate closed and trotted to the backdoor, testing the door knob.

Without resistance, the door parted open. Closing it quietly behind me, I slunk inside and into a narrow, dirty corridor. I wrinkled my nose at the scent of cigarette smoke, sweat, and a long, rough night.

The brothel was barely lit. A hoofful of flickering light bulbs overhead vomited ruddy beams of yellow light onto my chilled flesh. Creeping through the hall, I noticed that the walls were plastered with posters of scantily-clad mares in very exposing positions.

One poster depicted ... a mare inserting a … Goddesses … I hadn’t even known that ponies could put things in that hole. The poster said in huge bold print, ‘PLOT DEVICE’; at the bottom, it screamed, ‘WATCH FOR THE PLOT!’

I pursed my lips and tried not to look as I began to sense an uncomfortably warm sensation growing between my legs. I shook my head vigorously. That place was filthy, abominable, and terrifyingly unsettling.

Pornographic material was unheard of at ’91.

I followed the corridor further into the brothel and found myself behind a stage, curtains and all. Long metal poles stretched up and into the ceiling. Flickering strobe lights lined the floor and hung over stage, hanging from the rafters.

I poked my head through the curtains and out into the room, spotting a few dozen tables, benches, and a bar stocked with bottles of colorful drinks at the other end of the room. In the flickering rainbow glow of dim, neon lights, the three ponies lounged at the bar, pouring each other drinks and puffing on smokes.

“So, read any good books lately, Twiggy?” one of them yawned.

“Eh. I did finish Dark Edge 2,” I overhead him say. Twiggy glanced over at the corridor and I ducked back into the shadows. “Bad guy wins, world goes to shit and everyone dies - the main character goes to the moon and dies again for the ninth time, but this time he somehow comes back as an immortal Star God or some shit.”

His friend narrowed his eyes at him.

“Then he fucks the only other Star Goddess in the universe that everyone worshipped in the first story, and they live happily ever after. Except for the rest of the world which is still shit, because the bad guy still won.”

The other stallion blinked three times.

“That sounds fucking retarded.”

Twiggy sighed, reclining in his chair and tipping his head back.

“Forget about it.”

I pressed my back against the wall as they chattered sleepily, hoping they’d stay distracted by their boredom for a little longer. I bit my lower lip, counting to myself the ponies I’d seen so far. Six. There were six plus Grifter. He only had three with him when he was staked out at the market. He had said that was only half.

I prayed that his math was right.

Down the hall to my left were private rooms where countless debaucherous deeds beyond my virgin imagination had been committed.

I came upon room after room after room – all of them, thankfully empty. Reaching its end, I found a door that led into a different section of the brothel.

More rooms. I trotted up to each, reading the names that were stenciled upon each door. Stellar. Buns. Iris. Nine others.

I pressed an ear against a door, and I heard someone snoring softly on the other side. The entire hall surprised me somewhat; the dormitories inside were slightly warmer than the rest of the brothel. It was a nice sunny day in there in comparison to the frozen hell outside.

They had a roof over their heads, and a bed to sleep on, and a warm place to escape the blizzard. They even had armed guards. I remembered what that one mangy pony had said when I was being hauled off to Poneva in chains, not too long ago.

‘They’re going to put us to work and work us to death.’ the earth stallion had said.

‘That ain’t true,’ replied the mangy pony, ‘I heard they feed you and put a roof over your head…’

A trembling sigh seethed out of my lips. I knew how horrible the wasteland could be. The blizzards. The snow. The monsters outside. I could still hear the bloodletters howling inside my head.

Maybe he was right. Maybe a life in there … maybe it was truly a life better than a life outside. I could relate. I lived in a stable my entire life, sheltered from all the shit that was festering and curdling outside 91’s door. I wanted to live in one again. I wanted to go home.

But I stared at the posters that plastered the walls.

These mares were getting fucked one way or another.

‘No. Never. Not like this, I thought in grim silence. They had everything they needed, more than what most ponies could say they had out there – but for what?

To those slavers, those mares weren’t even people. Just tools. And once they were broken, well … I remembered what happened when Sugar Rum flipped the switch. I remembered the sounds their skulls made when they popped.

My blood began to boil as I listened to Buns’ soft breaths behind her locked door. The Scullion needed to burn – all four of its filthy walls – burned to the ground. I wanted to see balefire wipe it all away.

No longer wary of my hoofsteps, I found myself at one end of the hall to the next, searching for Candy Cane’s name. Then I found it. Eyeing the name ‘Candy’ stenciled upon the door, I pressed my ear against it and listened, carefully.

Nothing. She wasn’t inside. I clenched my jaw and wondered where else she could’ve been.

Lying in a ditch with a hole in her head. Or without a head at all, her collar detonated.

I shook my head even harder that time. ‘No. No, they wouldn’t do that,’ I reassured myself.

I hoped to Celestia they didn’t … I hoped to the Goddesses that I wasn't too late. I gulped down the dreadful taste of another failure, bitter upon my tongue. Sweat beaded up on my forehead as my skin prickled with shivering apprehension. I thought for a moment, switching my pistol’s safety on and off as the seconds ticked by.

I needed to find her.

I pushed onward, stalking the brothel’s halls as I left the dormitories behind me. I inched the door closed and left its aura of chained comfort. Outside in the hall, the unforgettable wasteland chill returned to rake at my flesh.

Trotting down the dim corridor, I saw that there were two doors, one to my right, and another at the other end of the hall. The slit beneath the door to my right glowed with a dim light. A shadow passed over it for a second as someone milled about inside.

I ducked into the shadows instinctively, holding my breath. But no one came trotting outside. Exhaling thankfully, I hugged the wall, peering around the corner once more.

It was just me, my gun, and the darkness.

I slunk to the right and leaned against the door’s frame, listening to whomever was moving around inside.

“- 435, 436, 437,” I heard Grifter count. There was a short pause. “Uhh ... uhh... Fuck! Lost count.”

I played with my pistol’s safety.

Off. On. Off. On. Off. On … I sighed. Off.

Not yet. I glanced over my shoulder and trotted to the door at the end of the hall. I pressed my ear against it and listened. Nothing. I wrapped a magical field around the door’s knob, and turned it slowly. It clicked, and I pulled it open.

The chamber was pitch-black; I could barely see an inch in front of me. But I could feel the northern wasteland air. I might as well have been standing outside, because I was shivering once more beneath my security barding and my peacoat.

Glancing around, I saw to my right, a barred, yet open window that welcomed in the glacial winds like eager house guests. My ears perked as I listened.

Someone sniffled.

My PipBuck beamed a shaft of teal light before me, parting the darkness.

A mare held a hoof to her face to shield herself from the glare.

“Candy Cane?” I breathed, trotting up to the bars between us.

She squinted through the light. “Red … Dawn?” The mare’s eyes widened and her mouth opened to speak, but her words were lost upon her lips. She ran a hoof through her curly red and white mane, blinking her eyes vigorously as if I wasn’t really there.

“I … you … you came back,” she whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear. “You came back for me … I thought …”

“I left you behind? No. I promised you I’d bust you out – for good,” I told the shivering mare. “What are you doing in this place?”

She smiled weakly, her face pale. “I was thinking about asking you the same thing.”

I panned my PipBuck’s light across the room, and saw only cold, bare tile and steel bars. Glaring at the frozen concrete that surrounded us, I concluded that that was her punishment for escaping: to sit in a frozen, bare chamber, exposed to the elements with nothing but the skin on her back.

“I’m getting you out of here, Candy Cane,” I told her, trotting up to her lonely cell.

A moment passed as she sat there freezing to death, her pale, miserable flesh shivering beneath her frost encrusted coat as if she was going to bore a hole into the floor.

I really wanted to hug her.

I stared at my hooves, and whispered, “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it earlier … I didn’t know there’d be more of them -”

“It’s … okay. You’re here now. I wouldn’t want anypony throwing their life away for me again.” Candy Cane wrapped her hooves around the cold steel bars between us. “It … it means a lot to me,” she said, looking me in the eye as she smiled faintly. The mare pursed her lips, wrinkling her brows. “How, exactly are you going to get me out of here?”

I thought for a moment, frowning.

“I didn’t think I’d actually get this far…” I confessed, scratching my mane.

Candy Cane chuckled softly, leaning against the bars. She tapped her chin, thinking until before her eyes darted to mine. She pointed at my bags. “Do you have a screwdriver? Any hairpins? Anything thin or pointy I can use?”

I stared at her for a moment, wondering what she’d need those for. Then it struck me. I remembered her picking locks at the factory yesterday. My eyes narrowed at the lock on the cell’s door.

She wanted to pick it.

Nodding quickly, I levitated out everything I had carried with me since I left ‘91. The first thing I yanked out was a screwdriver. ‘I’m an engineer, of course I have a screwdriver,’ I thought. ‘As for the other thing ...’

I rifled through my tools. Screws, bolts, lug-nuts, wires, a soldering iron, several types of wrenches, ratchets, screwdrivers, pliers -

My hooves came away, empty. I fixed an irritated glare at the lock as I sat there with a screwdriver floating in front of me.

Candy Cane bit her lower lip, thinking. Her head swung in every direction, searchingly. Then something caught her eye. She pointed a hoof at a cabinet at the furthest corner of the chamber. "There ... pry a nail out of it; I have an idea."

Cocking an eyebrow, I did as she asked, hurrying upon my hooves. I studied the poorly built cabinet - an amalgamation of charred wood and scavenged materials. I spotted a rusty nail head and stabbed at it with my screwdriver.

I struggled for a moment, trying to get the tool's head beneath the nail's. Prying for purchase, I forced the nail out of the wood a little less than half an inch. It was buried deep. My levitation magic wasn't strong enough to tear it off outright.

I eyed it hesitantly, figuring I could pull it out myself. I sighed. That thing was a tetanus shot waiting to happen. I leaned forward and clenched the rusty finishing nail between my teeth. I wrenched my head back and ripped it out of the cabinet in a plume of splinters and shattered wood.

I spat out the rusted sliver of metal and hurried back to Candy Cane’s cell, levitating to her both the screwdriver and the nail. I watched the mare get to work.

Her eyes lit up with renewed hope as she bent the nail’s tip into a rough, L shape. The mare was certainly in her element.

She poked her muzzle between the bars and floated out her newly-fashioned torque wrench, working it into the lock as she turned it carefully with the screwdriver curled in her hoof.

Clank.

I watched her with amazement as the bars swung open, a thin smirk stretching across her pale lips. Impressive.

She looked like she was struggling to hold back a triumphant grin as she floated back my screwdriver and tucked the wrench inside her mane. Then there was a long pause. She stared at me in silence, her eyes welling up with tears.

“I-I really didn’t think you’d come back for me.”

I said nothing as I drew my pistol, checking the rounds in its magazine. All I could do was give her a quiet smile.

“Now … now what?” Candy Cane asked faintly.

I shrugged off my peacoat and wrapped it around her. Her gray eyes widened at me as I held her forelegs and gently guided them into the open sleeves. My hoof lingered upon her shoulder as she stared into my eyes. She was so cold.

I blinked when I realized I was staring back. Averting my gaze, I buttoned the peacoat across her chest.

"Thank you ..." she whispered.

I sighed, rubbing at my weary eyes. “Don't thank me yet." I started towards the door, "We still need to deal with Grifter."

I noticed that she still hadn't budged an inch as I swirled my magic around the doorknob.

“What are you doing?”

There was another long pause.

"Why … why me?” she whispered, finally.

I fixed my gaze upon the door.

“I can’t save them all.”

She cocked her head at me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“We’re wasting time …” I began softly, pressing my ear against the door to listen for movement outside. Nothing. I sighed, as she remained where she stood.

There was an uneasy silence between us. I wanted to answer her, but I honestly didn’t know why I was actually there … why I was risking my life to save that pony.

I didn’t need her. I didn’t need to come back for her. I could’ve just walked away. I had what I wanted, anyways. But … why?

Maybe it was because I wanted to spite Grifter for what he did. Maybe it was because I wanted to spell out a big ‘fuck you’ to the Palominos. Maybe it was because it was the right thing to do.

When I woke up in Dusktown, I would’ve traded the entire wasteland just to get my friends back. Standing there in that dark, cold room, I told myself that I still would’ve done the same.

But I knew that the world didn’t work like that.

Sterling’s voice echoed in my thoughts.

‘The closest thing to being cared for was to care for someone else.’

I grinded my teeth, frustrated with myself and annoyed at her for standing there with that pitiful look on her face.

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “I don’t know ...”

“I’m not the only mare here…” she whispered.

“Candy Cane, believe me, I’m aware.”

“There are others who’ve been here longer than I have.” Candy Cane sniffled, hanging her head. “I don’t deserve this.”

I glared at her restlessly.

“You don’t have a choice … I don’t. Save yourself or no one at all,” I said over my shoulder before glancing at my EFS.

The mare hung her head, her curly mane falling before one of her eyes. “I wish I could take the others with me,” she whispered.

Dew Drops’ bloody face flashed before my eyes. I shook them away, vigorously, growling, “What’s the point in thinking about saving them if you can’t even save yourself?”

Candy Cane hung her head and sobbed, injured by my words.

I exhaled softly, turning slowly to face her.

“Candy Cane … they’re your friends … aren’t they?”

“Some of the only friends I have left,” she whispered.

“Well you can’t save them if you’re still in chains.” She just shook her head and stared at the floor as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Candy Cane?”

Silence.

“Candy Cane …” I curled a hoof around her shoulder, squeezing her gently. I thought for a moment. “When you and four others are in separate cages, and only you have the tools to pick their locks, who do you free first?”

The mare shut her eyes and bit her lower lip, shaking her head. Candy Cane thought for a moment, her brows furrowing.

“I’d … I’d have to free my ... myself,” she murmured. “I would need to pick my own lock before I could get to the others.”

I forced a smile. “Exactly.”

The mare stared at her hooves, her shoulders rocking with silent sobs.

“Candy Cane …” I murmured. I was giving her another chance at life – like Night Sky did to me. And there was no way in hell that I was going to let her waste it … not for Iris, not for Buns, not for anyone else.

“We’re running out of time, here … why don’t you just save them too when you have the power to actually do that?”

Candy Cane sighed.

“You’re right … you’re right Red Dawn.” She lifted her head, parting her mane with a hoof. A lonely spark of determination flashed behind her eyes. “I … I will.”

I started towards the door once more. “We need that detonator, or else all of this is just a waste of time.”

She followed closely without saying another word as we left the chamber. I checked my EFS, and found that no one had left their rooms. I checked and rechecked my pistol as we waited on either side of Grifter’s door.

“What’s the plan?” she whispered.

“I’ll pull my gun on him – make him give me the detonator.”

Candy Cane nodded, uneasily. “What happens after that?”

“Then we run.”

She smirked as if I had just made a dumb joke.

“They’ll be on us as soon as the first shot’s fired.”

I rolled my eyes. “Then we run faster?” She looked at me, her eyebrow raised. “Well, you got a better plan?”

Candy Cane nodded, “This building wasn’t a brothel before the war,” she began. “It was a motel. There’s a patio right outside Grifter’s office. That’ll be our way out.”

“Alright … let’s do this.”

I turned the doorknob, and it swung open with a drawling creak.

Chapter 8 - The Out-and-Out - Pt II

Grifter was sitting at a desk, counting caps as we stepped inside.

He looked up, frowning.

The stallion saw me first. “What the fuck are you doing here!?” he demanded. Then his eyes darted to Candy Cane. “And what’re you doing with her?”

I nodded at Candy Cane as she closed the door behind us and locked it. She levitated the door’s security bar into place with a clank.

“Give me the detonator, and we’ll go quietly,” I said evenly, my horn glowing with a crimson sheen as I jabbed my pistol at him.

“The detonator …” he trailed off, tapping his hooves together absent-mindedly as he stared off into space.

I snapped, “Don’t play dumb, Grifter, you son of a bitch. I know you have one for her collar.”

He folded his legs across his chest.

“Why? Whaddya want with the girl?”

“It doesn’t matter to you.”

“Believe me kid, it does, because she’s mine, not yours.” Grifter folded his legs across his chest. “You’re with East Eden aren’t you?” he asked. I didn’t answer. “Hmm … you’re not a Blood Brother. Too competent. But you are stupid.” Grifter sighed, straightening his back as he sat on his stool. “You must be a Pike then, right? You gotta mix of stupid and competent,” he added, clopping his forehooves together.

“I’m the pony with the fucking gun,” I said, baring my teeth at the bastard.

“Heh, you really are a big-balled palooka.” He leaned over his desk, staring down the barrel of my pistol. “Do you know who you’re fucking with?” Grifter glared at me. “Do you know who you’re fucking with?”

I snorted, “Frankly, I don’t give a shit.”

Grifter just laughed. “Kid, you better! You fuck with me, then you fuck with the Palominos. You fuck with the Palominos, then you fuck with Avilign Crème. You fuck with Avilign Crème …” he chuckled to himself, nodding. “She’ll fuck you up bad, ya dig?”

I glanced at Candy Cane who was behind still me, standing by the door.

“Unlike everyone else in this shithole of a city, I’m not afraid of you.” I bared my teeth as I stared gunfire into his eyes. “And I’m not afraid of the Palominos.”

Candy Cane’s eyes widened.

Grifter laughed as if that was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard, banging his hooves on his desk. “You’re not afraid of the Palominos? Even I’m afraid of them!” He gave me a menacing grin. “You know you’re gonna die, right? You’re spelling out your own death sentence, ya dig?”

“I’ll fucking blow your brains out …” I said, my voice trembling.

He threw his head back and laughed.

"Listen, I know you don't got it in ya, kid."

Grifter just sighed, lifted his hoof and slowly tipped my gun to the floor. I just clenched my teeth as he spoke.

"Hehe ... kid ... this is about earlier, isn’t it?” He nodded at Candy Cane. “That bitch wouldn’t stop screaming about you after we brought her back. Had to lock her up to quiet her down.”

I grinded my teeth together. “You lied to me.”

He shrugged. “Me? A liar? Forget about it. I never lied – she did mug Daintybelle, you know? I only told you what you needed to know.”

“Give me the fucking detonator!”

The stallion folded his legs across his chest, cocking his head at Candy Cane. “No no no. How about you tell me what the fuck you want with that whore?”

I jabbed my pistol at his face.

“I’m breaking that pony out of this shithole.”

He tapped his chin, thinking. “If you’re not a Blood Brother, a Pike, or with East Eden …” he clapped his hooves together. “That’s it! You probably got a taste of that fine broad! You wanna break her outta here so you can have her for yourself – ain’t that right?”

My magical grip tightened, but I said nothing.

“Nah, you don’t want her. You don’t want Candy.”

She clenched her jaw, glaring at him. Grifter chuckled, resting his chin on a hoof. “She doesn’t like that name, ‘Candy’. That’s because they like to call her ‘Candy Cunt’.”

Grifter leaned forward, looking me in the eye.

“You wanna know why?”

My magical aura deepened to a blood red.

“Because her cunt’s like a candy store – all the boys and girls wanna come inside.”

Candy Cane’s sniffled, tears welling up in her eyes as she started to shake all over. My heart pounded inside my chest, pumping boiling blood through my veins.

“You know how many stallions – no, mares she’s slept with? Do you really want to help a filthy slut like that?” He cocked his head at me, grinning.

I shook my head, his voice slowly fading away as every sound in the room became nothing but muffled voices behind a hazy glass window.

I let out a shallow breath.

Grifter smirked, reclining in his seat. “You lay one hoof on that whore, and your leg’ll practically melt off.”

I lunged at him, dragging him over his desk.

“I’m done hearing you talk, GRIFTER!” I screamed, and whipped my pistol across his head. Hard. He yelped as I shoved him back into his chair, only for him to tip it over and crash head over hooves into the hard, concrete floor.

He pulled himself back up, leaning against the desk.

“Alright, alright, I’ll hoof it to ya – hold your fuckin’ horses! You could’ve just asked nicely …”

Grifter reached into his desk, rubbing his head as he opened a drawer and held the small black tube in his hoof.

“Now hoof it the fuck over,” I snarled, jamming the pistol in his face.

He smirked. Then his horn glowed.

“What the fuck are you –”

Something heavy crashed into the back of my skull. Stars exploded in my eyes as shattered porcelain tumbled away from my mane. I fell forward, my eyes rolling to the back of my head, slamming my face first onto his desk before collapsing to the floor in a heap.

“RED DAWN!” Candy Cane screamed.

Grifter flipped the switch.

Lightning arced across her body as she screamed in agony, thousands of volts of electricity shocking her into submission. The smell of singed flesh and burnt hair wrenched me back to clarity as I scrambled to my hooves. My horn flickered to life and my pistol slid shakily toward me.

Grifter was on me in a matter of seconds.

A hoof connected with my horn as he slammed my head back into the floor with a jarring thwak! Darkness threatened to take me. Far off in the distance I heard my pistol clatter back onto the floor.

Then I felt his hooves crash into my face – again and again – every blow sapping the clarity from my eyes. I glared through a lens of hellish red as blood streamed down my face and bathed my world in blood.

I lashed out with my hooves and punched him in the throat. He rasped, his eyes widening.

I didn’t give him another second. I roared, threw myself over onto my chest and bucked my hind hooves into his ribs. I felt my hoof connect with bone and he cried out, hurdling away from me. There was a CRASH and his screams were cut short as he careened into a bookcase in an explosion of splintered shrapnel and tumbling books.

I struggled to my hooves, stars flashing in my eyes – and collapsed once more, reaching out with a hoof to snatch my pistol off the floor. My scarlet aura wavered, but Grifter dove into me. The world blurred away as he hurled another hoof into my skull. My magic winked out and I collapsed to his hooves.

Someone banged on the door.

“Hey boss, what the fuck’s going on in there!?” I heard Dahlia shout over Candy Cane’s screaming.

Grifter stumbled to the door, detonator held in his magical grip as I forced my eyes open and rose to a knee.

“Some sorry mother fucker –”

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!” I screamed, bowing my head at him.

I charged.

His eyes widened as my horn punched into his chest, my momentum ramming him into the wall by the door with a sickening crunch. I ripped out of him in a splash of gore and threw myself into him before he could scream, tackling him to the floor in a snarling frenzy.

Grifter’s magic flickered and died away, and the detonator rolled across the concrete.

My horn flashed in his eyes as I yanked a chair off the floor and swung it towards his writing body. He rolled away at the last minute – and it exploded into a million pieces.

“You fuck!” I snarled, planting a hoof into his chest and levitating a wooden leg over my head. He shielded his face as I hurled a vicious swing.

Thwak!

Thwak!

Thwak!

His jaw dropped as he screamed for help – but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in my ears as I sent the leg crashing into him again, and again, and again – until it broke across his body with a distant CRACK.

My eyes darted to the splintered wooden stake held before me.

“We’re coming in there, boss!” a stallion screamed behind the door as it began to rattle and buck.

Grinning through bloody teeth, I flipped it splintered side down, the broken leg’s grisly spikes dripping with blood.

“I’m not afraid of you, or your Palominos, you piece of shit!”

I didn’t even give a single fuck as the door’s frame began to rattle and shake. I lifted the wooden stake into the air to plunge it into Grifter’s pounding heart.

A devious grin stretched his bloody lips. His hindleg crashed between mine. I yelped, crying out Celestia’s name as he shoved me off of him. I stumbled upon my hooves for one single agonizing moment – and he ran into me head on.

Grifter slammed me into a wall and –

I lapsed out of consciousness. I blinked, and blinked again, and all I could see in the stars that were flashing in my eyes was Grifter. I tried to fight him.

But the world was spinning. Blood spilled down my face. My vision blurred in and out before my hooves as I fought helplessly against his. He had me pinned.

I felt a cold blade press against my throat.

“I’m gonna make you beg, punk.”

I spat blood into his face.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

He held me up against the wall by the scruff of my neck and yelled into my face,

“I’M GONNA MAKE YOU BEG, YA HEAR ME? YOU’RE DEAD YOU FUCKING MOOK, YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD!"

"HEY!”

We both turned. Over his shoulder, I saw Candy Cane, her mane hanging before her eyes, and my pistol and its magazine enveloped in her silvery magic.

“You …” Candy Cane murmured. She swept her mane out of her face, her cold, steel gray eyes gleaming with icy malice at the monster whose hooves had made her suffer for far too long.

“I’m not afraid of you either …” I heard her slam the pistol’s magazine back home with an audible click. “Not anymore.”

He snorted, laughing, “You wouldn’t … you’re just a fucking slut with a loud mouth.” He reached into his pocket with a hoof. His eyes widened.

“Where is it …?”

Candy Cane floated out the detonator with a triumphant smirk. She leveled the pistol at Grifter as he swore under his breath.

“You fucking whore …”

Candy Cane fell silent.

“No … I’m the pony with the fucking gun.”

CRACK!

Grifter cried out, and we both slid to the floor.

“BOSS! WHAT THE FUCK!” someone screamed behind the door.

“Red Dawn!” Candy Cane galloped to my aching body and yanked me to my hooves. “We need to run – now!”

Grifter writhed on the floor in a growing pool of blood. I trampled him underhoof as I eyed the sack of caps sitting on his desk. I clenched my jaw and swiped it away with a hoof. I turned to leave, but not before sparing him a passing glance.

“Why don’t you finish him off?”

Candy Cane glared at the bleeding bastard, saying nothing.

The door exploded inward and the security bolt banged loudly against the floor.

“Shit! They fucking shot him!” Dahlia screamed as she and five other ponies dashed into the room, a submachine gun floating beside her.

Dawdleshoes pushed past her and reared up on his hinds.

“KIIILLL ‘EEEMMM!”

“Now we run!” I cried out as they took aim. Candy Cane yanked me by the foreleg and dragged me to the other side of the room, slamming open the patio door.

The ponies opened fire.

And out into a snowstorm we galloped.

The staccato bursts of automatic weapons fire flashed dully through the stormy night as we galloped against the blizzard’s blinding winds. Candy Cane ran, and I followed. I couldn’t see more than a dozen feet in front of me. But I didn’t stop – not for a single second as bullets shrieked past us.

I could feel them tearing apart the snow around my hooves.

“WHERE ARE WE GOING!?” I shouted over the winds that whipped past my face.

“Just follow me!”

“DON’T LET ‘EM GET AWAY!” I heard Dahlia scream in the distance.

I threw my head over my shoulder, and saw that their flashing gunfire wasn’t too far behind. Thankfully it was impossible to see clearly through the howling snowfall. I could barely make out the silhouettes that galloped after us.

They were spraying. I was praying.

But I didn’t pray hard enough.

Something tore into me.

Fire engulfed my insides as a bullet punched a ragged hole through my flesh. My kevlar plates, barding, and flesh parted before it as lava erupted into my chest cavity. I curled up in reflex and crashed into the snow, sending up a plume of bloody powder.

My screams left my lips and it seemed as if they would never stop coming. Neither would the blood. I cried out Candy Cane’s name, but my voice was lost beneath the wind as she disappeared in the blizzard.

“Candy Cane!” I wheezed, blood streaming down my lip. I struggled to my hooves – and a bullet punched out of my right foreleg in a burst of gore and torn fabric.

I screamed.

She was going to leave me behind. I lifted a hoof, trying to crawl away as bullets shredded the snow around me.

She was going to leave me behind.

I couldn’t blame her. She was free. It was all that should’ve mattered to her.

And I was going to pay for it. I wondered once more why I even came back for her.

And still I couldn’t find an answer.

'You idiot,' I screamed inside my head as tears of agony welled up in my eyes. 'Now they’re all going to die.'

I whimpered and swept a foreleg across the snow as I tried to pull myself to my four hooves, only to paint the snow red with an arc of blood. I clenched my stomach with a gory hoof, hacking up blood onto the frozen earth. ‘Get ... up ...’ I begged myself.

"Red Dawn, get up – get up!"

Someone wrenched me to my hooves. Candy Cane curled a hoof around my left foreleg and pulled. Hard. I slung a leg over her shoulder as she dragged me through the drifts, trailing blood through the snow behind us. My eyes darted back and forth, blurry, ruined buildings falling away from us as we raced down an abandoned street.

Candy Cane’s voice echoed distantly through my ears.

"Come on! Don't stop for anything!" a ghost screamed as black tunnels closed in around me.

‘Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …’

I could hear them screaming. I could hear her screaming.

“ … RED DAWN!”

"Dew Drops?" I murmured through a mouthful of blood.

"Almost there!"

I squinted through the writhing shadows in my eyes as the echoes faded away, my face pale and my nerves shrieking at me with every throb of my still pounding heart.

There was a lull in the storm and my eyes widened as the road fell away into the darkness twenty yards in front of us.

“W-where’s the road!?” I wheezed, the leg that I had wrapped around her chest beginning to slip.

She didn’t answer.

I felt a bullet clip my shoulder.

“Candy Cane – WHERE’S THE ROAD!?”

“There is no road! We’re going to need to jump!”

‘Jump?’

“I asked you this before – and I’ll ask you again,” I rasped weakly, as the end of the road drew near. “But … ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY!?”

“Trust me – we’ll be okay!” I heard her shout back.

“Candy Cane!”

“You have to trust me!”

I glared through the snowflakes that whipped past my face. ‘Goddesses. No.’ Countless feet below us, I could see only darkness.

“CANDY CANE!”

“JUMP!”

The road flew away from our hooves – and we tumbled into the howling darkness.

I screamed, but all I could hear was the wind whipping past our faces as we hurtled into the abyss. Seconds felt like hours. I was falling. And falling. And –

I dive-bombed into the drifts, my momentum driving me through the snow, smothering my screams inside the shifting black tides.

I dug with all the energy I had left, fighting to break the surface even as the snow vowed to bury me alive. My muscles were burning out, and every second I spent lucid was another second spent in agony as my warmth and my lifeblood leaked out of my chest with every frantic beat of my draining heart.

My forehoof broke the surface. Then the another. With a gurgling groan, I pulled myself free and flopped onto the frozen, black dunes. Gasping weakly, I tapped my PipBuck once, and bathed the snow around me in teal light.

Candy Cane burst out of the snow next to me, gasping for breath. She scrambled to ungainly hooves and shook herself vigorously, showering me with snow.

“Where the fuck did they go?!” a voice echoed over the streets on high.

“Turn that light off!” Candy Cane hissed, flinging herself onto my PipBuck. It was attached to the leg they shot. I bit my tongue to suppress a moan as she wrestled my bleeding limb into the drifts.

“They fuckin’ jumped!” I heard Twiggy gasp.

A thin smile creased my bloody lips. As my emptying veins starved my brain of oxygenated blood - blood that was pooling around me, a veiny tunnel of blackness closed in, sapping the clarity from my eyes.

“Seriously?” Dahlia said, distantly, “They fucking insane?”

“Doesn’t matter … they’re dead.” Someone kicked a rock down into the darkness. I felt it kick up a plume of snow next to me. “Nobody could’ve survived that. Fuck ‘em, anyways. Slippery bastards.”

My legs slackened as Candy Cane peered upwards.

“Candy … Candy Cane …” I gurgled through a mouthful of blood.

She turned and her eyes widened.

“Red Dawn – you’re bleeding!”

“Yeah … it’s kinda what happens … when you get s-shot.”

The mare rolled me over on my back and grimaced at the hole in my chest.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she hissed.

I felt her heave me onto my side.

“Too … busy … trying ... to keep up.”

She clenched her jaw.

“No exit wound,” she murmured gravely, chewing her bottom lip. Her eyes darted worriedly across my pale features. “I’ll need to extract the bullet.”

I slurred, in my fading consciousness, “Ex … extract? W-what?”

“Your saddlebags – I need pliers, tweezers – scissors – something!” She dragged them out of the snow and rifled frantically through them. But that wasn't my tool bag she was rifling through. Unable to speak through the blood that was filling my mouth, I reached out for my tools, parting its flaps as I levitated out a –

My head exploded from the inside out.

The horn atop my skull flashed with violent magical sparks before going dark as a million stars went supernova behind the darkness of my eyelids.

I cried out, my eyes rolling to the back of my head and fell limp in the snow, blood trickling out of my nose.

“Red Dawn!” I heard Candy Cane scream over the howling storm, shaking me desperately.

‘It’s called Sparkle. Makes your magic stronger,’ I heard Grifter say, ‘Should boost you up good; might even bring your magic back for a bit …

‘For a bit.’

‘For … a … bit …’ I thought, distantly.

My body screamed for darkness to take it.

I heard a voice echo faintly in my decaying consciousness.

“Red … to extract … bullet …”

I blinked my eyes furiously in an attempt to return to clarity. But I felt something cold enter the hole in my chest, fishing around my innards – worming its way into my gut.

The last thing that I remembered was a muffled scream as it thrummed inside my chest.

Then darkness washed over me.

*

Chapter 8 - The Out-and-Out - Pt III

*

I gasped for breath as my eyes fluttered open to find a pony sitting beside me, her head hanging over my chest. She opened her eyes and smiled languidly, her thick, curly, candy cane mane billowing in the wind.

Her hooves held my left foreleg over my chest so that we both could share the light of my PipBuck.

I regarded her with dull surprise. She had the detonator. She could’ve just disabled her collar and left me there.

“You’re … you’re still here,” I whispered, blinking away the grogginess in my eyes to see her.

Her smile widened somewhat. “I thought I’d see you through.”

I groaned, a dull pain pervading my hazy senses. My stomach felt … tight, as I tried to expand my lungs for air. I glanced down my gory chest and found that Dew Drops’ scarf – bloodied and worn, was wrapped tightly around me.

My eyes widened.

“I had to use your scarf to stop the bleeding. There was just so … much … blood. We’re lucky you didn’t bleed out on me,” she told me, touching my chest gingerly.

‘DD’s scarf …’ I brushed it with a hoof as gently I would with Dew Drops’ mane.

“I’m sorry … I might’ve ruined it.”

I shook my head. “It’s … it’s fine,” I lied. It was the only thing I had left to remember her by. And now it was ruined.

My head shook once more, with grim finality. It had stopped the bleeding. We had nothing but the clothes on our backs, and Candy Cane was proving to be an extremely resourceful mare … making a tourniquet out of the only article of clothing she could afford to remove without either of us freezing to death.

I hid the sullen look in my eyes as I asked, “What … what did you do to me?” I twitched my hind leg, eyeing the gaping hole in my barding. It felt whole, and less … bullet-ridden.

Candy Cane pointed at my stomach. “Punctured digestive tract. Severe hemoptysis and internal hemorrhaging inside your chest cavity. You also had a hole in your right leg. You’re lucky that one went through. You’re even luckier that neither of the bullets struck any vital organs or arteries." She rubbed her gore encrusted hooves through the snow. "I had to dig a little bit to pull out the one in your chest. I needed to extract it before I could administer any potions,” she began, eyeing DD’s blood soaked scarf.

“I hope you don’t mind … but I had to look through your bags for health potions. I didn’t have any on me, otherwise. No magic could’ve healed around that bullet, either way.” Candy Cane levitated out a frighteningly large, blood caked 5.56 round. The mare smiled somewhat as she held the bullet in her magical grip. “Want to keep it as a souvenir?”

I snorted out a jet of mist, vaguely amused as I let my head roll into the powder.

“Nah … I’m good.”

Sterling was right about me needing those apples and potions after all. I lifted my head and cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Where’d you learn to do all that?”

Candy Cane stared at the ashen snow for a moment. “It’s certainly been a while … but I was a nurse before … all this.”

“Thank you, so much,” I breathed, weakly.

“I learned a lot from my father,” she said, chuckling, “I guess you should thank him instead.”

I snorted, laying back down in the snow.

“I would if I met him.”

Candy Cane fell silent as the grin faded away from her face. She looked at me gravely, and then at her hooves.

“Oh … I’m sorry.”

“He taught me a thing or two about battlefield surgery,” she began, as if I hadn’t said anything. “I hope you don’t get an infection, though. I had neither the means nor the time to sterilize your pliers before I could use them.”

“It’s fine … I’m alive … for now. That’s all that matters.”

I peered upward. The rooftops of ancient buildings poked out of the snow beneath us like broken headstones. We were sitting inside of a massive sinkhole, no doubt caused by the balefire bomb's quaking aftershocks.

Candy Cane caught my upward gaze.

“How the hell are we still alive?” I murmured.

Candy Cane sighed, “We’re lucky to have been caught in that storm.”

”Lucky?”

She stuck a hoof through the snow. “If you dig far enough, say ten-fifteen yards, you’ll hit concrete. It’s better than falling face first into solid stone, really.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered. I hadn’t known you could call being stuck in a snowstorm ‘lucky’ until then.

“Glad I was right, though,” she nodded to herself, hanging her head as she closed her eyes. Candy Cane looked about ready to collapse. She wasn't the only one. I don't think I'd ever been skull-tapped that many times in a single day. Despite the ever-present pain that was throbbing inside my skull, the dull twinges inside my chest cavity, and the lightheadedness of blood loss, I was still somehow able to stand.

With stars in my eyes, I rose to my four hooves, crunching through the now unyielding snow drifts. She heard my shuffling and turned her head to see me.

“What are you doing?” she asked as I reached for the detonator.

I squinted at it carefully, glancing at her before tapping a button on its surface. Her collar whined – and went dark, the pulsing red light on its shell fading to black.

She realized she was holding her breath, and let out a trembling sigh.

“Thank you …” she began, but stopped when she saw me fishing through my saddlebags. “Now … now what are you doing?” Candy Cane asked.

I retrieved a wire cutter and a screwdriver, and started toward her.

“Red Dawn, what are you going to do with those?”

“I’m taking that thing off your neck.”

She held out her a hoof in between us, shaking her head.

“I-I’m fine with it around my neck … it can’t explode anymore.”

“Candy Cane –”

“Red Dawn, please, you’ve done enough … I don’t want to risk tripping the explosive,” she said quickly, backing away from me.

I looked at her pleadingly.

“Candy Cane … do you really want to keep that thing around your neck? It might not be able to detonate remotely, but that bomb is still hot.” I took another step toward her, and she took another back. “Whenever you look in a mirror, do you really want to see that fucking thing?”

She froze, trembling, her chin quivering as she stared, teary-eyed into the snow. Candy Cane’s hoof crept up her neck to touch the collar that was still wrapped tightly around her throat. It was a mark.

But it wasn’t permanent. “I was an engineer at my stable … I still am.”

“I-I don’t suppose you know anything about bomb disposal?”

I sighed. “No … though I’d imagine it’s like cutting a machine’s power supply so that it can’t work anymore.”

She shook her head furiously. “No ... no! It’s not the same! If you cut the collar’s power supply, it activates its failsafe and pops anyway!” Candy Cane shook me pleadingly with horror in her eyes. "I've seen it happen so many times ..." she cried. “Red Dawn, I think I can live with it … it's like it's not even there!"

“That’s because you’re used to being a slave. You might be free now, but you’re still in chains!” I glared at her, and she glared at me. “Besides, you have a fucking bomb tied around your neck for fuck’s sake … isn’t that enough to make you want to have it removed?”

She cut canyons into the snow with her hoof, shaking her head incessantly.

“CandyCane ... you told me to trust you earlier. And I did, and we survived because you had a hunch that there was powder down here.” I tucked the tools into my chest pocket and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Now you have to trust me.” I thought for a moment. “I can fix this …”

I always have. I was the Goddesses-damned fixer pony for Celestia’s sake.

Candy Cane gazed at me hopelessly with her uncertain, bloodshot eyes.

“You’re sure?”

I nodded. “I can do it.”

“You’re 100% positive?”

I clenched my jaw. “I can do it.”

Candy Cane chewed on her lower lip, staring at her hooves.

“I can do it ... but only if you trust me.”

She looked up and stared into my eyes, her entire body trembling.

“Okay,” she breathed, “Okay … but be careful.” Her horn glowed with a silvery sheen and a hovering orb of white light materialized over her head.

I nodded, but didn’t say another word as I curled a hoof around my screwdriver and slowly loosened the collar’s screws. Delicately, I used the tool to pull apart the collar’s casing.

I peered into its innards and spotted a black wire within. I inched the shell apart, watching as the wire straightened out.

As it straightened out. As it straightened –

‘Fuck!’

I let go just a millisecond before I pulled it taut. I could hear her whimpering faintly over the pounding in my temples.

I gulped. That was the trigger. The tripwire that detonates the bomb.

This time, with one hoof, I parted the collar’s case with my screwdriver as my wire cutter slowly descended into the wiry crack. I squinted through the shadows, positioning my right forehoof slightly so that Candy Cane’s magelight could shine through.

What I saw made me gulp.

That … wasn’t the tripwire.

Or maybe it was. I didn’t know, because there were three other wires. Black wires. And they weren’t color coded – and all four of them were tie-wrapped together.

One of them was the tripwire. The other three belonged to the circuit.

It was insane.

I wondered what shit for brains of an electrician completes a circuit without indicating which wire was positive, negative, or ground. They’re supposed to be color-coded.

Normally, when you wire a circuit incorrectly and the relay is connected to a light bulb, you get shocked.

But with that collar … you’d lose a hoof. Or both.

Or a head.

There was no way in hell it was assembled by hoof. Nobody could’ve been dumb enough to wire a circuit like that. Not without mixing up the negative with the positive and walking away without a few missing limbs.

I thought for a moment.

I realized that the device couldn’t have been utilizing a direct circuit, because it’d detonate if the circuit was severed. There had to have been some kind of mechanism inside that pulled the tripwire anyways if the circuit went dark.

‘Shit.’

I wondered how much worse it could get. I shook my head. The last time I entertained that possibility, I got mobbed by a horde of robot sentries. I shook my head even harder and sighed.

All I needed to do was cut the wire that wasn't part of the circuit.

I needed to geld that tripwire.

With another gulp, I lowered my wire cutter into her collar, biting my lower lip as I scrutinized the black wires.

I pounded into my mind again and again the fact that if I severed the circuit manually, I’d do the dirty deed myself.

'Boom.'

I clenched my jaw so tightly I nearly popped it out of its socket.

I lowered the wire cutter inside.

My eyes darted back and forth between the four wires.

I chose one wire among the cluster of black death-sentences – wire Alpha, and followed it deep into the collar’s shell. A curse hissed between my teeth as I exhaled frustratingly. It and the other three, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta looped around the circumference of the collar as one single coil of black wires. But what mattered to me was where they ended.

The cluster of wires terminated beyond my line of sight. I shuffled on my hooves, trying to get a better look, and found that the cluster separated at the collar’s radius. My teeth grinded together as I cursed the manufacturer of that death device once more.

Bravo and Delta were split in such a way that they formed a confusing black knot with Alpha and Charlie, further obscured by the shell’s uneven shape.

“Red … Dawn?” Candy Cane whispered.

I ignored her as I tried to focus, studying the loose knot of wires – trying to figure out which wire was which. In the wasteland's eternal night, it was near impossible to tell which wire went where. Black wires inside of a black shell weren’t exactly the easiest to differentiate even with Candy Cane’s magelight.

I closed the collar and retrieved another screwdriver from my tool bag. This time, holding it open, I used a screwdriver held in my left hoof to play with the knot, prodding it in an attempt to separate them enough for me to tell which one was which.

After several minutes of checking, rechecking, and poking, I found that Charlie was connected to the inside of the collar, while the others separated and looped around the collar’s circumference.

It had to be the tripwire.

My eyes marked Charlie for a gelding.

I replaced my left screwdriver with a wire cutter and slowly descended upon Charlie, my tongue poking between my lips as I tried to concentrate. One wrong move could bend the casing in two – pull the cluster taut, and splatter me in Candy Cane’s brains. One wrong snip could paint me red just as easily as the latter.

I hesitated – inched toward it – hesitated and inched some more. I paused, my confidence bobbing up and down like a ship sailing a turbulent sea as I tried to think it through, as I tried to reassure myself that that was the one, that that was the –

“Red Dawn?”

I jerked away from her.

“SHIT!”

I looked down. The wires. My hoof. It trembled as my screwdriver held the collar open for my eyes to see the wire that was pulled taut within.

It was Charlie.

A thin line of sweat streamed down my forehead. I let out a breath I realized I was holding in. I could feel Candy Cane's anxious gaze upon me.

The wire was bent upwards, half of its length nearly yanked out of the shell itself.

‘Dear Celestia.’

“Fuck. I-it’s fine,” I stammered, sweating like I was staring down the barrel of a gun. “I can do this … just hold still, and let me focus.”

I glared at the collar, Candy Cane’s light orb beaming down the crack. My eyebrow cocked at what I saw. With Charlie yanked out of place, I saw the other three with renewed clarity in Candy Cane’s magelight.

“Alpha, Bravo, Delta…” I whispered, prodding them with my wire cutter. ‘Which one, damnit?’ I screamed inside my head, ‘Which one!? “Alpha, Bravo, Delta…”

“Red Dawn …”

“Candy Cane, please – shut up for fuck’s sake!” I snapped, silencing her before she could say more. I gulped and tried to still my shaking hooves.

I shifted my right foreleg. 'There'. All four terminated in the same general area, curling downwards and into the device. But with Charlie out of the way, I could easily see what exactly they were connected to without all four’s shadows getting in my way.

Beneath the wires were two shapes – a large cube, and a smaller cube: the smaller one was what I presumed to be the wire separator.

The wires looped through it, separating them individually. Only the pony who designed it knew which face separated what – the positive, the negative, the ground, or the tripwire. A wire – strung through the fifth face connected the separator to the larger cube, which I concluded was the bomb itself.

“What the fuck,” I murmured.

I checked and rechecked, tracing the coil from one radius to the next. My eyes scrutinized the collar’s entire circumference. There was no fifth wire. There couldn’t be one.

That meant that the fifth was either Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, or Delta – strung through the separator and connected to the bomb to serve as the mechanical detonator … the trip wire.

There was only one way to find out.

Replacing my wire cutter with a pair of pliers, I sighted wire Delta. I glanced at Candy Cane, eyeing me nervously as she shivered inside her peacoat. A layer of frost had formed over her forehead where sweat had beaded up and solidified in the frozen air. Her hooves shifted beneath her as she fiddled with a chunk of ice in an effort to keep her mind off of being decapitated.

“Alright … let’s do this.”

I clamped down on Delta.

Streams of sweat traced lines of clean brown coat across my grime-encrusted face. I glanced at Candy Cane once more. She was watching me kill her. I closed my eyes.

And pulled.

Candy Cane squeaked, whimpering as she felt her collar jerk slightly.

Nothing. The wire that connected the separator to the bomb didn’t move an inch. I gulped. I pulled Charlie earlier. So that left two of them. My pliers hovered between Bravo and Alpha.

I wiped away the sweat from my face with my sleeve so that it wouldn’t freeze. The last thing I needed was to shiver from not just apprehension, but from the cold, too.

I watched Candy Cane as she clenched her teeth and trembled upon her hooves.

Tears were runnning down her cheeks. She knew that she could die at any moment. It'd have been a lie if I'd told her she was going to be okay.

It was a fifty-fifty chance I’d pull the wrong one. But those were the best odds I’d ever had since coming out there. They were the only odds I had left to take.

I clamped my pliers around Alpha.

“Red Dawn!” she cried out.

I yanked the wire taut.

Her screams echoed out into the city.

I would have screamed too if I hadn’t realized that Alpha belonged to the circuit.

Candy Cane stared at me, trembling uncontrollably.

There was only one wire left.

I took a deep breath and curled a hoof around my wire cutter, lowering it into her collar. I held my breath, my hoof trembling uncontrollably as the two blades wrapped their edges around the final wire.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want Candy Cane’s skull fragments ripping into my eye sockets. My mouth clapped shut … I didn’t want her brains splashing into my mouth, either. I imagined her head exploding, splattering me with gore and gray matter as doubt began to scrape incessantly at my thoughts.

I took a deep breath and held it in.

I curled the wire cutter closed.

Snip.

CRACK!

I screamed.

And nothing. Nothing. My heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. I waited as my racing heartbeat slowed to a trot. I opened my eyes, and Candy Cane's terrified gray eyes widened to saucers.

I looked down at her hoof and saw that she had crushed the chunk of ice beneath her.

She slowly turned to face me, her trembling threatening to drill herself into the snow.

“W-what d-did you do?” she stammered, breathlessly.

I said nothing as I took my screwdriver and undid the collars screws, wrenching it apart, dismantling it, undoing the mark of her slavery.

It crunched uselessly into the snow.

We stood there next to each other for what seemed like hours as Candy Cane fought with her brain to process what just happened. Her eyes darted back and forth between me and the bomb collar that lay at our hooves, dumbfounded.

She exhaled suddenly, rubbing her eyes vigorously with her hooves, clearing away whatever hallucination inducing grogginess she thought was plaguing her clarity. Then her hoof slowly crawled up her chest, reaching for her neck. Her hoof stopped just below her throat – as if her collar was still there.

Candy Cane touched with delicate disbelief the matted indentation that had been trapped beneath her bomb collar. She rubbed at her flattened coat, her breathing intensifying as she struggled to grasp that it wasn’t there anymore.

That her chains were broken.

“I’m ... free …” she whispered, rubbing a hoof against her gnarled hide. “I’m finally free …” Candy Cane turned to me, slowly, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. “You did it,” she murmured. “You … you really did it.

“YOU DID IT!” she screamed, running into me with the force of a charging stallion. Candy Cane hugged me, squeezing her legs tight around my chest as she wept into my coat.

“I … I did it …” I murmured as I lifted a leg and wrapped it around her too. An ecstatic grin slowly stretched across my face.

Candy Cane pulled away, her face and my neck soaked with her tears as she held my shoulders with both her hooves. “Thank you so much … thank you – thank you – thank you!” she cried, “You saved my life … freed me from that horrible place and my collar … I’m finally free … I’m finally … FREE!”

She yanked me close and hugged me some more. The tighter she squeezed, the harder it became to suppress the warm, victorious laughter that fought its way through my lips. I stared off into the ashen clouds, praying for a sign. Praying for the Goddesses to tell me that I had finally done good.

“Thank the Goddesses that’s over with."

I wrapped my other leg around her and hugged her tight.

“Thank you … so much,” Candy Cane whispered, her tears glistening in the silvery magelight. “I never thought I’d ever be…” She paused, growing fond of the word she hadn't used to describe herself in years. “I never thought I’d ever be free … again. Again … it’s been five years. Five. Years. I-I never thought …”

She looked away, shaking her head. The mare brushed her matted coat, trying to fluff it up to no avail.

Candy Cane gazed at me with teary eyes. “I’ll never forget … I’ll never forget what you did for me, either … thank you, again.” She hung her head silently and dabbed at the snow with her hoof. “I wish there was some way I could repay you, because my words can never be enough.”

I lifted her head up with a hoof. “Don’t even mention it. Seriously.” I smiled, chuckling, “You’re free now. That’s all that matters.”

The mare swept her mane out of her eyes, wiping her face vigorously with her sleeve.

“Is it though?” she murmured, with uncertainty.

I said nothing, wondering the same thing as she touched her neck gingerly like she had never seen her own coat before.

“Now what?” I asked, quietly. “Now what will you do?”

Candy Cane looked at her hooves, thinking.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t know. Most of my friends and family are either dead or in slavery. Most of them probably think … I’m dead …” Candy Cane sniffled, strands of her mane falling before her eyes. “I don’t know … I don’t know what I’ll do, Red Dawn.”

We stood there, a bleak silence hanging over us as she stared at the ashen drifts with empty eyes. I thought for a moment, tapping my chin.

“Maybe … maybe you can come with me?” I said.

She cocked her head at me.

“Come with you?”

I nodded, saying, “I can barely survive out here on my own.” I stared off into the sky, watching the gray clouds hang over the frozen earth. “It’s a harsh world out here. It’s even worse trying to survive out here alone.”

I pulled Dew Drops’ scarf from my chest, flecks of dried blood fluttering to the snow. Pursing my lips, I wrapped it around my neck, solemnly.

“My stable lost its water talisman a while ago. So my friends and I came out here to find a replacement … without it my stable will die,” I told her.

Candy Cane nodded, knowingly.

“What happened to them?” she asked, her gaze softening.

“This scarf … it’s all I have to remember my friend by. She … she was taken by snow furies. So were the others. We were ambushed, and butchered because we weren’t ready for what was outside those doors.

“Ever since then it’s just been me, and my gun, and this scarf against the entire wasteland.” I uttered a grim chuckle, “It seems like that, at least. I barely hoofed it to Poneva alive.”

“I’m so sorry about your friends …” she whispered, staring down at her hooves, “And your scarf …”

I shook my head. “She would’ve wanted me to actually stay alive to finish what they started, anyways. I have you to thank for that.” I thought for a moment, running my hoof through my mane. “You seem to know a lot about this city – this wasteland. Maybe you can help me?”

“How?”

“I ran into Grifter while looking for the Orphanage. He promised that if I helped him, he’d give me the location of one of their hideouts. He gave me this.”

I eyed the coordinates he gave me, opened up my PipBuck’s map, and pointed at a map marker.

The mare’s expression turned grim. “No … no you don’t want to go there.” She poked my PipBuck’s screen with a hoof. “That’s a metro tunnel overrun with feral ghouls.”

“Feral … what?”

She shook her head. “You would’ve walked there to your death. They would’ve ripped you to pieces.”

“Son of a bitch …” I was a loose end. That cafone bastard tried to kill me.

Candy Cane cocked an eyebrow.

“What … what do you want with the Orphanage?”

“When I arrived here, I found a water talisman … well not exactly. I spoke with the head pony at the World Tree.”

Her eyes widened at that.

“You met Sterling? He never lets anyone inside the World Tree.”

I nodded. “He’s been working with the resistance to take down the other plantations. He wants his hooves on their tech; apparently they can purify water without water talismans.”

Candy Cane frowned, adding, “It’s always been a mystery how they can yield so many crops without the equipment the World Tree has.”

I paused for a breath, and continued. “Sterling says that if he had their technology, he wouldn’t need water talismans anymore. But that’d mean that the plantations would need to lose them, first. And if they did, he’d be able to spare me one or two or thirty of his water talismans.” A hopeful fire burned in my eyes. “He could give me enough talismans to keep my stable going for centuries.”

“Would he really just give up all his water talismans?” Candy Cane asked. “Those things are as rare as moonrocks.”

My expression turned grim. “It’s the only chance I have left. Without this talisman, everyone in my stable is going die. For all it's worth, I’d do anything … anything to save them all.

“I figured I’d join the resistance. Sterling said they always need hooves to keep the movement running. They’re the ones fighting the damned plantations, after all.”

I sighed, wearily.

“My stable doesn’t have much time. I’ve been around the city. No one gives a shit about the plantations. No one wants to do shit about them,” I spat. “At this rate, hell will freeze over twice and my stable will be rotting a mile below the earth. I can’t sit around on my hooves and waste my time – waste my stable’s time, waiting for the city to roll over.” I pursed my lips, and stared at her with a grim resolve.

“I want to join them. I want to join the Orphanage … and … and help them do … something.”

“The Orphanage, huh?” she whispered, intrigued. “And you want me to help you find them, then?”

I gave her a gloomy chuckle.

“I don’t want your help … I need your help. I can’t do this alone.” I looked at her hopefully as the harsh wasteland wind buffeted our disheveled manes. “If we join the resistance, we’ll be able to save all your friends at the Scullion. We’d be able to save them all.”

Candy Cane’s eyes glistened with distance hope.

“If I join you, you need to promise me … promise me that we’ll save them too.”

Something powerful ignited behind her eyes as she clenched her jaw and glared balefire into the snow.

My eyes widened as a different mare growled, mist jetting out between her bared teeth, “Promise me … that we’ll put an end to the Palominos. If we die, I want to die doing the right thing. Now that I’m free, I won’t stand by and watch them force anymore people into slavery.

“I want to tear them down, Red Dawn. After everything they’ve done to me … I-I … I …” she shook her head, tears welling out of her eyes. She sniffled. “No … I won’t be like them.” Candy Cane stomped her hoof into the snow and bowed her head.

She looked up at me, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I want to help people. Can we do that?”

I lowered my eyes to my hooves, a long breath whispering out of my lips.

Help people. Help the people of the wasteland. The same people who turned me away when I was trying to look for the only source of good in that wintry shithole.

Most people didn’t even care about the plantations. Many couldn’t give a damn if the guy next to them was dragged away into a ditch and shot in the head. They were content with that life so long as they could keep on living.

But Candy Cane was different; I wanted to admire her. I wanted to admire her heart. She had the kind of heart that got people killed. It was a heart like that that nearly got me killed. Good things never happen to good ponies.

And yet there she was, still standing. Maybe not for long. But there she was …

The difference between Candy Cane and I was that the resistance was just a means to an end. Everything I did was for my stable. But because of that little diversion with slavery, I’d risked the lives of nearly three hundred ponies for just this one mare.

If I died, all hope for my stable would have been lost. I wondered once more … why?

Why? My heart rationalized that it was simply the right thing to do. But my brain wondered, ‘What kind of stupid fucking logic was that?’

I could’ve died.

Again.

But it didn’t matter to her. She was free. She could've done anything she wanted … but she wanted only this: to help people, people that didn’t even want her help.

She had hope that the wasteland could turn around, even if she was the only person doing the turning. She was the hope nobody wanted.

I saw it in Sterling, and now I was seeing that in her.

I held out a hoof.

“We will,” I said, finally. “We will … I promise. Even if it kills us.”

Candy Cane took my hoof and shook it, a determined smile stretching across her lips.

“Thanks, Red Dawn.” She thought for a moment, pursing her lips. “I … don’t know where to find the Orphanage,” she confessed, hesitantly. “But I do know this city. I’ve escaped from the Scullion so many times that I’ve had the time to explore almost every nook and cranny in the outer city, and some parts of the inner city. All I need is a point in the right direction and I can take you there,” she said, smiling hopefully.

“I know somepony who was actually in the Orphanage,” Candy Cane chuckled. My brows furrowed as I cursed Grifter’s name under my breath. “She runs an inn in Old Town. She can probably tell us how to find them.” The mare noticed the dark circles around my bloodshot eyes. “Maybe she’ll even give us a place to stay for a bit.”

I really needed a break. Not a nap, not a few hours of shut eye. No. I needed to rest.

“You know her?” I asked, wobbling on my hooves.

She reached out with a hoof and held me still.

“She and her family took me in once ...” Candy Cane nodded to herself, smiling. “She’s a good mare.”

‘Finally,’ I thought. I was finally I was getting somewhere.

“That sounds like a plan.” I sighed, rubbing my eyes. “Much better than asking random people on the street, that’s for sure,” I muttered, bitterly.

I looked around us, panning my PipBuck’s light across the shifting white dunes. We were in a massive sink hole.

“Well … first of all, how do we get out of here?”

Candy Cane peered up and into the city above us, her eyes darting back and forth, searchingly. She lifted a hoof and pointed at the rooftops that poked out of the snow. Rooftops that were high and close enough to jump in between.

‘Oh Goddesses,’ I moaned inside my head.

Candy Cane smiled.

“I have an idea.”

Footnote: Level up.
New Perk: Guerilla Pony - Your sneak attack criticals with revolvers, pistols, carbines, and submachine guns (whether guns or magical energy weapons) all inflict an additional 20% damage.

Author's Note

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Chapter 9 - A Cold Hearth - Pt I

Chapter 9
A Cold Hearth

“I could’ve just walked away. I had what I wanted, anyways. ”

I half limped, half stumbled through the snow, trying to blink away the stars in my eyes as Candy Cane led me up a lonely street.

For hours she navigated the streets for me, turning corners or leading me through dark, dimly lit underpasses that tunneled through the collapsed city. Every twist and every turn were detours she steered through with absolute confidence. It became apparent to me that she had been through that place countless times.

She led, and I followed closely in silence. I wasn’t exactly the kind of pony who reveled in small talk, so much of the walk up till then had been a quiet one. It seemed like she wasn't, either. Candy Cane would spare me a few curious, furtive glances every now and then, but besides that, no one said a word.

We were still just two strangers.

Our pace was beginning to slow, however, all thanks to my exhausted state. A wheezing breath erupted from my lips, and I stopped for a moment, falling to my haunches, too tired to continue onward.

Candy Cane heard the hoofsteps behind her stop, and swung her head around to see me lying there in the snow. She knelt next to me, and I heard her speak for the first time in nearly an hour.

“What’s wrong?” she said, her voice nearly a whisper.

“Just ah … heh …” I chuckled, face-hoofing tiresomely. “I’m just feeling a little under the weather, right now.” She gave me a worried, yet exasperated look. My bitter sarcasm was lost on her. Being hurt in any sort of way didn’t seem like a laughing matter to her. But it took a certain level of clarity to act like my usual self.

It felt good to know I wasn’t actually comatose.

She regarded my long, weary face with soft eyes. “That detour we took out of that sinkhole was rough …” she sighed, dabbing a hoof in the snow.

'My, she was a mind reader,' I thought.

After that stunt we pulled off to heave ourselves out of that hole in the ground … Goddesses. I never knew I could rock-climb.

“No-no, it helped get whatever blood I have left in me flowing,” I said, grinning at her as I lay at her hooves. My muscles ached and my eyes begged me to shut them closed. I nearly passed out in that sinkhole. I felt like passing out right then and there.

It was difficult to do anything after getting my ass beat in a brawl, getting shot twice, and getting my head torn apart by yet another magical burnout.

“We can’t stick around for too long,” Candy Cane said quickly and quietly, double-taking over both her shoulders. “This part of town belongs to the cafones.”

“Lovely,” I crooned, staring blankly at the snow. A yawn parted my cracked lips, and I winced as I inhaled a breath too large for my lungs.

I looked up, groggily. “Didn’t you hear them, earlier? They think we’re dead.”

She crossed her right foreleg over her left. “I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“Okay … but let me just lie here for a bit,” I groaned, the snow biting deep into my livid flesh.

'Sleep. I sleep here now.'

“Red Dawn, you shouldn’t be lying there …”

Her words passed through deaf ears as I lowered my chin into the pale. I clenched my eyes shut and shuddered violently. “Damn that’s cold.” My eyes fluttered open at the mare’s hooves. “It’s alright,” I murmured faintly as I shivered in the snow. “The cold reminds me that I’m still alive.”

She knelt beside me and laid a hoof on my forehead, muttering to herself. Her hoof was icy cold against the boiling surface of my flesh, and I shivered at her touch. The look she gave me suggested that whatever she saw was not good.

“What’s the diagnosis, doc?” I chattered through my teeth.

“High fever. Likely caused by your magical burnout.”

She pursed her lips, conjuring a glowing orb of light. Candy Cane cupped a hoof over one of my eyes and levitated the orb in front of the other. My eyelid twitched sluggishly, closing slightly, but my retina didn’t dilate.

A flat “Ohhhh …” seethed out of her lips.

At least when she found something bad she didn't berate you like Doctor Stitches did. Because what she saw in my twitching eyeball didn't seem too good either.

She exchanged hooves and tested the other. Candy Cane looked at me and clenched her jaw.

I groaned, “Isn’t it just wonderful being a glorified earth pony with a horn?”

“You just need to rest. Sleep it off. Just not here, Red Dawn.”

I sighed, letting my head roll back into the snow.

“Can … can you still walk?"

I shook my head free from the drifts, cringing as that only worsened my headache. "Sure,” I winced. “I can do you a few squats if you want, doc.”

“I’m a nurse, Red Dawn,” she said, somewhat annoyed by my pain induced quips.

With a foreleg and a swirl of her gray magic, the mare pulled me back to my aching hooves. We stood there in the snow in silence as she probably wondered what in the Goddesses’ names was she going to do with me. I was deadweight at that point.

She hung her head and let out a long, drawn out sigh. The irritation faded from her face as her eyes softened once more. Candy Cane touched my shoulder with a tender hoof, before pointing down the street. “Come on, we’re almost there,” she whispered. “I’m sure you’d prefer a mattress to a gutter full of snow?”

I squinted around me. I was standing in a gutter. I shifted my weight and felt trash and frozen filth crunch beneath me.

I sighed, smiled faintly, and peered into the mare’s gentle, gray eyes.

“Whatever puts me to sleep the fastest, I guess. That is, if hypothermia doesn’t get me first.” She frowned at that, but motioned me to follow her with a swish of her swirly red and white tail.

As we plodded through the snow-swept streets, the uncomfortable silence between us was beginning to settle in again. But that was alright, I was too tired to care in the first place. But Candy Cane’s gait slowed so that we were walking shoulder to shoulder.

“How long have you been out here?” she asked suddenly, glancing at me.

I thought for a moment. I wasn’t even sure … at that point it'd felt like I'd been wandering that wintry wasteland for months – no – years now. The bags under my eyes and my grime encrusted … everything … made me feel as if I had been away from home for an eternity.

In the stable, there had never been a day when I hadn’t had a shower, or three full meals a day, or nine hours of undisturbed sleep. It felt like an eternity since I had lived in the comforts of Stable 91.

I stared longingly at the snow that crunched beneath my hooves.

“Too long.”

Candy Cane hesitated, looking away for a moment. She parted her mane as it bobbed in front of one of her eyes. “You … you look like you’ve been through so much in such little time.”

I caught her looking at me expectantly in my peripherals as I stared onward and into the dimly lit street. “Ponies died, and I lived.” I gulped down the lump in my throat. “That’s all …” I muttered with grim uncertainty.

The mare turned her troubled gaze away from me and we slogged through the shifting drifts in silence. Candy Cane’s pace began to quicken, and so did mine.

Nearly ten long minutes later, she stopped in her tracks and we found ourselves standing before our final destination. The inn, I supposed.

“Is this the place?” I asked Candy Cane.

She nodded as I trotted up to the door. The inn was a quaint, cozy-looking two story building with windows that glowed with giddy, dancing firelight.

At least that’s what I imagined it may have looked like two centuries ago. A creaking metal sign hung over the door. Etched into it was ‘The Warmhearth Inn’.

Didn't look too warm to me.

As I walked up the icy, blackened steps, I peered curiously through the boarded up windows that swatted away any suggestion that there was life behind that door. I raised a hoof to its thick, battered wooden surface, and knocked.

A few seconds passed, and the only sounds that we heard were the distant wagons and the sound of hooves crunching through snow behind us. The only light that shined upon my face was a dim, flickering light bulb that was begging to be put out of its misery.

I felt the cold touch of snowflakes whisper across the back of my neck. Things were freezing up again. The wind sighed, moaned, and snow began to fall once more.

I didn’t want to be outside anymore.

Glancing over my shoulder, I mouthed to Candy Cane, if she was a hundred percent certain we were at the right place. The mare nodded.

So I knocked again.

This time, a speakeasy door slid open and two navy blue eyes narrowed back at me. I opened my mouth to speak, but the pony cut me off.

“We’re closed,” a mare told me, before the speakeasy door slid shut.

My face turned sour. I lifted a hoof to the door and knocked again. The speakeasy door opened once more.

“Hey! I said we’re closed, okay? So scram!” the mare shouted through the speakeasy door before slamming it shut.

I sighed, glancing over my shoulder at Candy Cane.

“Well isn’t she a ray of sunshine,” I muttered.

Candy Cane sighed, before she took my place and knocked.

“Goddesses – I said we’re closed –” a mare hissed, but her voice was lost on her lips.

She saw the mare standing next to me first.

“Candy Cane ..?”

*

I shifted on my stool, a rickety, neglected old thing that creaked underneath me, like the floor underhoof. A fine layer of dust had settled upon the lonely bar I sat behind. Resting my legs upon the counter, I kicked up a small cloud of dust that roused from my cracked lips a sneeze.

Behind it on a long rack were rime encrusted bottles by the dozens. Most were empty. There wasn’t a single drink in that place that could relieve even the most lightweight of drinkers in the inn’s deplorable state.

Sniffling, I heard hooves clop upon the creaking wooden boards behind me. The innkeeper passed by a cold hearth – lonely and unlit as she made her way, sluggishly, to the bar. Candy Cane, who sat next to me, rubbed her hooves together briskly for warmth, glancing wishfully at the empty fireplace.

Even inside, it was still cold. The bite of the northern wind was trying desperately to penetrate the walls of that place. It scratched again the boarded up windows like an animal begging to be let inside.

The innkeeper trotted past me, but not before shooting a careful gaze my way. The mare regarded me – the stranger – with apprehension, noticing the gun holstered around my chest. My presence was making her edgy. I probably should’ve stowed my gun away.

“I’m really sorry you have to see me like this, Cane,” the mare began, still keeping an eye on me. “Sorry to see my place like this. A lot’s changed since I saw you last … the last time they took you, I …” she paused, pursing her lips. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

Candy Cane smiled. “It’s been too long, Summer Smiles.”

Summer Smiles sighed as she closed her eyes, and hugged her, squeezing her tight. Letting go, the mare turned her eyes to the floorboards.

“Heh, well I don’t smile so much anymore.” Summer Smiles sighed, brushing her blonde braids with a hoof. “The inn’s been closed for nearly a month now. The cafones’ve been stepping up their game, and making us lose ours.” She shook her head before resting it upon a hoof. “It’s gotten so bad that my sister and I have been living from bottlecap to bottlecap.”

“What happened to your savings?” Candy Cane asked.

Summer Smiles glared at the bar’s counter-top. “It’s … we’re … the cafones upped their prot taxes. I’ve been using it to pay them. Though, most of it was used up when my sister lost her job and had to find a new one.”

“That’s awful … why do they keep doing that?”

Summer Smiles snorted, shaking her head. “They don’t need a reason to, they just do.” She spat, “Bastards … all of them.” The mare noticed the bitter look upon my face as they spoke of the gangster menace.

Those Palominos were sucking the life out of that town.

The two sighed. Candy Cane looked all around her at the unkempt walls, her gaze falling upon the dusty staircase that led upstairs.

"How are the girls? Your sister?" Candy Cane asked.

Summer Smiles hesitated for a moment, no doubt watching me in her peripherals. With one eye on Candy Cane, and another on me, she leaned forward and rested her hooves on the counter.

"Doodle and Hops have gotten bigger since you last saw them,” Summer Smiles said, proudly. She chuckled. “To me, it's like they haven't grown older at all. Same Doodle, same Hops.”

Candy Cane’s tired eyes flickered with cheer. "What about Hops? Her ... legs?"

Summer Smiles shook her head. "She was born that way, Cane. There's no healing genetics."

Candy Cane clenched her jaw, her ears drooping.

Summer Smiles looked at her hooves. "You disappeared for two years. Doodle and Hops always wondered where their Auntie Candy Cane went. I could never bring myself to tell them what happened to you ..." the mare said, softly. "I really never thought I'd see you again."

Candy Cane sat there in silence.

"They'll be glad to see you, Cane," she added, touching her hoof. Candy Cane salvaged a smile out of that. It felt a little warmer in there seeing her face light up like that.

"What about your sister?"

She glanced at the door. "She hasn't been around, lately. Went off on an assignment ... she's still out there. I don't know where, though." Her brows furrowed with impatience. "If she doesn't come back soon, I won't have any more caps left to put food on the table. And I can't leave the inn to find work ... not if it means leaving Doodle and Hops behind."

“It just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?” Candy Cane murmured.

Summer Smiles blew a puff of dust off the counter, sighing. “You think you’d get used to it, living like this.” Her gaze found its way to meet me. “You never do.” Summer Smiles made her way behind the bar, and tapped her hoof on the counter. “I’d get you two a couple of drinks, but …” she looked over her shoulder, sparing the empty racks a dismal glance.

“It’s okay. At least we’re out of the snow,” she said, softly.

"Out of the snow ... huh." Summer Smiles looked at Candy Cane strangely. "How'd you get out this time?"

"I had some help," Candy Cane said, smiling faintly.

Summer Smiles blinked, cocking her head at me. “Really? I’ve been wondering: who’s this stallion you brought into my home?”

“Of course you have, you’ve been watching him like a hawk since we got here,” Candy Cane chuckled.

Summer Smiles shifted nervously on her hooves. It’s not like she wasn’t making it obvious.

Candy Cane grinned. “Relax, Summer. He’s not going to bite your leg off.”

She scowled back. “Oh you know stallions … they’re good at biting, and leaving marks. Just look at my sister: two foals and a stallion nowhere to be found.”

I laughed nervously as Candy Cane hung her head. Summer Smiles wasn’t the only pony in the room that has had a problem with stallions. Candy Cane – more so than anyone else I currently knew.

“My name’s Red Dawn."

“Red Dawn ...” Summer Smiles nodded, studying the arcanomechanical device wrapped around my foreleg. "You’re from a stable, Red Dawn?"

"Yes ma’am," I nodded, stifling a yawn as I tapped my PipBuck with a hoof.

The mare cocked an eyebrow, perplexed.

"Heh, there are very few ponies around the wasteland with those things around their legs." Her voice turned sour. "I can imagine why," she added quietly, glaring at her disheveled, pitiful surroundings.

She imagined right. Beneath the earth, stable ponies slept in their stables while ponies like Summer Smiles and Candy Cane remained trapped outside, helpless and cold. I thought back, sifting through generations of Dawns and Roans, thankful that my great, great – great something grandparents had been chosen to live in Stable 91.

It began to occur to me, that despite the terrible things I'd seen so far, no one was luckier than stable-dwellers like me. We had lived in a stable for most of our lives while the world outside went to shit. I sighed. Better there than the wasteland, of course.

Summer Smiles asked, "So what's a stable-pony like you doing out here, anyways?"

"Just wanted some fresh air, I guess," I said, dryly.

She snorted, vaguely amused. "Are you one of those ponies from Stable 2? The one everypony keeps hearing about on the radio?"

That was the second time someone's asked me that.

"Uhh ... no. I'm from Stable 91, about sixty or seventy miles out from Poneva, I think."

"That's a pity ... Stable 2's the only stable I've heard of that hasn't let out anything but dust and skeletons." The mare folded her legs across her chest, looking sure of herself. “Something bad must’ve pushed you out.”

I nodded with a dry chuckle. "I've been told that a lot. We're going to be like the others soon enough, I think. Our water talisman broke. Now we've got two months to live. Well they, really. I ... we ... my friends and I - we left Stable 91 to find another."

Summer Smiles glanced at Candy Cane. There were only two of us, and only one of us had a PipBuck around our legs.

"Your ... friends?" she said, softly.

"They're dead now.”

The mare blinked, expecting me to say more. I didn't. All she got was an exhausted stare that pleaded to be put to sleep.

I hadn't told anyone what had happened that night. What had happened to my friends - how Star Glint was skinned alive ... how Amber Fields was blown to pieces ...

How they tore Dew Drops apart before my eyes.

The pain in my head, the anguish in my thoughts – they raked and scraped against the inside my skull, screaming for escape. So I grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and stuffed them back into the closet where they belonged.

A grim silence hung over the three of us as I sat there, unmoving.

Summer Smiles studied my weary eyes, and the grime that covered my face, and the blood that caked my chest. Candy Cane was about as bloodied as I was. But most of it was mine.

"You ... you two both look like you've been through hell."

I scoffed bitterly, hanging my head, "I guess that's one way of putting it."

“Well if you’re on this mission of yours, then what’re you doing with Candy Cane?”

She and I exchanged uncertain looks.

Summer Smiles’ eyes narrowed at me when I didn’t answer. “How'd you meet her?” she asked, warily. “It’s not everyday somepony walks in with somepony like Candy Cane."

I felt the weight of Candy Cane’s stare upon me. She parted her peacoat's collar, folding it down flat so that Summer Smiles could see the matted, red coat beneath.

Her eyes widened.

"Your collar – i-its – it’s gone?"

Candy Cane smiled ecstatically.

"He saved me, Summer ... he freed me from the Scullion ... and he took the collar right off."

Summer Smiles’ eyes widened. “He … Goddesses …” she leaned over the counter, reaching out with a hoof to touch the matted indentation where her collar used to be. She rubbed the patch of fur, tenderly, stricken with disbelief. “How? You removed – you did that?”

I nodded, slowly. “It wasn’t easy," I said with a sigh.

“How’d you do it? I-I mean, how’d you make it past the cafones?” she stammered, breathlessly.

Candy Cane rubbed her bloody hooves together, tipping her head at me.

“We nearly died,” I told her. “Well, I nearly died. Those Palo … those cafones wouldn’t let up.” I explained how I snuck into the Scullion, then our confrontation with Grifter, and our flight from the brothel. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. When I got to that part about the sinkhole, she just about lost it there.

“You’re crazy.”

I chuckled at Candy Cane. “That’s exactly what I told her.”

Candy Cane looked away, smiling faintly.

“Though it’s because of her I’m still alive.” I pointed a hoof to my blood-caked chest as Candy Cane fixed her unassuming gaze to the floorboards beneath her. “One of those cafones got me. Candy Cane pulled the bullet right out."

I could vaguely remember the touch of cold steel worming around inside my gut.

“Barely,” Candy Cane said sheepishly, still staring at her hooves. “You almost bled out.” She played with her curls absent mindedly, frowning as she said, “I’m out of practice. It's been too long since I've had a patient, let alone somepony as wounded as you.”

I chuckled dryly, my grim expression belying the cheeriness in my voice. “We’ll be traveling together soon, so I’m sure you’ll get a lot of practice.”

Candy Cane chuckled dryly. “Then there’s going to be lots of roof hopping to do if you’re going to be traveling with me,” she smirked.

I wheezed out a nervous laugh.

“So, you two are traveling together?”

We turned to each other simultaneously.

“Yes … I promised I would,” she said, her gaze still upon me.

The other mare frowned at her. “I would’ve imagined you’d want to settle down after … you know?” Summer Smiles said, gingerly.

Candy Cane thought for a moment, laying her forelegs on the counter and resting her chin upon them. “Sure, I’m free. But what about the others? My friends? I left them behind, Summer. I don’t deserve to be free any more than the other mares at the Scullion.

“I have nothing else to do with my life, anyways ...” Candy Cane turned to me once more, saying, “Red Dawn wants to join the resistance. He wants to help us … and I want to help him save everypony else I left behind.”

Summer Smiles shifted uncomfortably on her hooves.

"I thought he was looking for a water talisman?"

I nodded. "I still am. And I found one ... or several. Well … not exactly."

I told her about my meeting with Sterling Sprocket and the promise he made me. She was about as surprised as Candy Cane was when I told her about my meeting with the World Tree’s head pony, and our deal.

And how the only way I could make it happen was to join the resistance.

Summer Smiles clenched her jaw, the idea of such a thing making her antsy.

“I want in. I can't just sit around and do nothing while my stable dies."

Candy Cane spoke up. “So do I. That's why we're traveling together. We need to find them."

Summer Smiles cleared her throat, scoffing. "The ... the Orphanage?" she asked, as if she didn’t hear that right.

Candy Cane narrowed her eyes at her, knowingly.

“We need your help.”

Summer Smiles’ eyes darted over to mine as a wave of realization washed over her face.

“So that’s why you brought him here …” she murmured. “You … you told this pony? He knows?”

“Yes –”

The mare leaned over the counter towards Candy Cane. “I really don’t appreciate that, Cane. They wouldn’t appreciate that. You know this …”

“I-”

“What were you thinking!?” She lowered her voice and glanced at the windows. “If word gets out that I was with the Orphanage, they’ll kill us all! And the fillies! I thought I could trust you!”

"You still can!" Candy Cane pleaded with her. “If he was with them I wouldn’t be sitting here with you right now. If he was with East Eden, he would’ve hauled me over to their place.” Candy Cane glared at her. “I wouldn't have agreed to help him if I didn't think that he was a good pony, Summer.”

My heart fluttered at that. If only she knew the things that I did to get there … that mare I left for dead. I shot her in the knees and left her to die – and that blood brother I murdered with my bare hooves ... I murdered him. Both of them.

I looked at my hooves. The agony that lurked behind the closed doors of my mind was trying to claw its way out again.

A darker part of me told me that Candy Cane was just a stepping stone to saving my stable. That darker part of me told me that I needed her help; she would get me to where I needed to be … and that was it.

But I pushed it away, disgusted with its incessant murmuring.

Slowly but surely, my mind descended once more into a somber quietude.

I told myself twice and steeled myself for acceptance.

I wasn't a good pony. I was just a homesick pony with a home to save.

Summer Smiles caught the apprehension that haunted my eyes, and smirked. She wasn’t buying Candy Cane’s 'bluff' about me. I wasn’t either.

“I know he saved your life and all, and you might think you owe him something, but … you’d trust that pony with your life?” She asked, as if I wasn’t there. “Our lives? You might’ve just endangered my entire family –”

Candy Cane cut her off, “He went through hell to save me – he nearly died.” She looked away. “He did all of that for me … and he doesn’t even know why.” She turned to me but I avoided her gaze. “He was willing to help a complete stranger … there aren’t that many ponies like that around anymore,” Candy Cane said softly. “You know that. You’ve seen it.”

Summer Smiles nodded, slowly, her gaze still fixated upon me.

“I do,” she murmured. “I have …”

Silence hung over us as she tapped her hooves nervously on the counter. She eyed me hesitantly.

“I’ll … I’ll think about it, okay? If they find out … and they take me … I don’t know, Cane. Doodle and Hops won’t have anypony to care for them.”

“But … what … what about your sister? They're her fillies, after all.”

Summer Smiles shook her head.

“She hasn’t come back from her job yet,” she murmured, distantly. “Soon, my savings will run dry and nopony will be able to feed them anymore. She was the one paying the bills after all …” Summer Smiles stared past us at the door. It seemed like she had been doing everyday ever since her sister had left. “Sugar Rum’s been gone for almost two weeks now.”

I froze. Sugar Rum. Sugar Rum. Sugar …

'Goddesses.'

I remembered her. The screams, the sounds of flesh tearing. Then the pop. The simultaneous pop of half a dozen bomb collars.

And then there was a crack.

And she was gone. The mare, the mare that stayed behind to put down those tortured slaves left behind those three: her sister, and her two daughters.

'Why …' I asked myself, 'Why didn’t I recognize Summer Smiles until now?'

“Red Dawn?” I heard Candy Cane ask as the blood drained from my face. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“I …”

I inched off my stool, trembling, and stumbled to the door where I had left my bags. I lowered my head inside of them, searching for Sugar Rum’s family photo. The one she gave me as she bled out into the snow.

I returned to the bar, my eyes unable to leave that haunting photograph. I turned my distant gaze to Summer Smiles and her eyes darted to mine – then to the frayed, blood-caked photograph I held in my hoof.

“W-what’s that?” she asked … but she already knew.

I stared at the four ponies – the family whose smiling faces were frozen in time. Sugar Rum was sitting next to her sister, Summer Smiles, a blonde, blue coated mare, as she wrapped her forelegs around her two pale-coated daughters. Lowering it, I saw that Summer Smiles was standing alone.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

I said nothing as I gave her the photograph.

The mare stared at it desolately, her hoof trembling before her muzzle. She blinked and blinked, unable to look away. Unmoving, her eyes drowned silently beneath the horror that drained the blood from her face. They saw every speck of blood, every splatter of dried crimson that sullied the aged photograph.

The photograph of her sister. Her family.

A trembling hoof touched her sister’s frozen smile, her eyes darting to the door, and back, to the door, and back.

Summer Smiles finally met my numb gaze, her eyes widening and her chin quivering.

“Why … w-why d-do you have this?” she croaked, her voice faltering.

I looked at the floorboards, and she knew. Goddesses, she knew. I opened my mouth once more, but couldn’t find the strength to say the words I needed to say.

She slammed a hoof into the counter.

"WHY DO YOU HAVE THIS!?”

I hung my head, shaking it as beads of cold sweat formed upon my forehead. Again and again, I heard the resounding gunshot that took Sugar Rums’ life.

CRACK ...

“Sugar … my … my sister …” Summer Smiles lowered her quaking hooves, clenching her eyes shut as she held onto the counter for her dear life. “Goddesses, please …”

Candy Cane sat there unmoving, mouth open but unable to give voice to the horror that was fighting its way to her lips. She looked at me with teary eyes, unwilling to accept what she was hearing. “You don’t mean she’s …”

I just nodded my head.

The mare froze. She froze as if she were staring into the headlights of an oncoming wagon – staring through me, through the door – searchingly. Searching for the sister she refused to believe was lost.

Then it hit her. It struck her. Mangled her. Tore her apart.

“No …” she whispered, her shoulders quaking. She stumbled backward into the empty bottles behind her, running her trembling hooves through her mane as she stared upward into nothingness. “No … no, no, no, no …” Summer Smiles lowered herself to the counter. “Why …” she cried.

“WHY!? Her foals – Goddesses, what about her foals!” Summer Smiles clenched her eyes shut, trying to suck back in the tears that refused to stop pouring. But it was in vain. “She can’t be … dead … my – my sister … my only sister. She’s … dead …”

I hung my head low, her sobs echoing through my ears and shaking me to the core. It had happened so suddenly. One second, Sugar Rum was next to me – and the next she was curled up in a pool of her own blood. The bloodletters … the wasteland, it stole her from her daughters – her sister – just like how it stole from me almost everyone I loved.

The sound of a filly’s voice broke me from my rapturous state.

“Auntie? What’s wrong?” a girl asked. I turned and, looking down at us from the top of the stairs at the other side of the room was a filly, her coat an alabaster white.

'Goddesses. No.'

Summer Smiles struggled to compose herself. She couldn’t tell them. Not now. The mare wiped her bloodshot eyes vigorously, her breaths coming in and out as broken sobs.

“Doodle – go back to your room,” she told the filly, struggling to abate the trembling in her voice.

The filly looked at us, terrified. Another pair of eyes peered over her shoulder, and I found that another pony was clinging to her sister’s back.

“Who … who are they?” the other asked in the same voice.

Summer Smiles croaked, “Hops …”

“Auntie –”

“GO BACK TO YOUR ROOM, NOW!” she screamed, and the twins scrambled back upstairs.

Summer Smiles slammed a hoof on the counter once more as her anguished grimace ran wet with fresh tears.

“Damnit … I shouldn’t have done that. The last thing they needed to hear was that … Their mother’s dead, for Celestia’s sake. I need to be strong ...”

Candy Cane clenched her jaw and tried to swallow tears of her own as Summer Smiles threw her legs around her and cried into her mane. She pulled her close and squeezed her tight, weeping until their cries died away into shuddering sobs.

I looked away, unable to watch.

“What happened to her?” Summer Smiles choked. “How … how did she … how did she go?”

I eyed Candy Cane and hesitated. Sugar Rum was a slaver. I wasn’t sure what she’d think if she knew Sugar Rum was a slaver … she never would’ve befriended those ponies if she’d known.

But I relented. Summer Smiles deserved to know, whether or not Candy Cane liked what she was going to hear.

“She and her crew … they … they picked me up. Chained me to the back of their wagon with the other slaves …”

Candy Cane slowly turned her teary gaze towards me, her embrace loosening for a moment as her ears perked, unsure if she heard me right. She nearly let go and dropped Summer Smiles' head onto the counter.

“As we were heading up to Poneva, we were ambushed by bloodletters. They … they butchered everyone.” I bit my lower lip, shaking my head. “Sugar Rum stayed behind with the slaves. She gave me that photo … she wanted me to tell you that she went out a … a good pony.”

A ragged sob forced its way through Summer Smiles’ lips, and she broke down into tears once more, burying her face into Candy Cane’s chest.

“A good pony?” she whimpered, as Candy Cane squeezed her gently and ran a tender hoof through her mane. But she made no attempt to hide the horror of betrayal that was creeping across her face even as her friend wept into her hooves.

I nodded, solemnly. “The other slavers ran away. They left the slaves to die in their cage. The bastards left them to the bloodletters so that they could escape.” Their horrifying, blood curdling cries echoed distantly inside my thoughts. I cupped a hoof around my mouth.

“A bloodletter got her …” I remembered her throat, the grisly scene replaying itself over and over in my head as I touched Sugar Rum’s pale, bloody cheek.

“She was dying. She stayed behind with the slaves as those monsters tore them apart, and … and she put them out of their misery.” I finally met Summer Smiles’ bloodshot eyes, struggling to hold her gaze as I forced myself to continue. “Then Sugar Rum did herself out … before the bloodletters could.”

Summer Smiles whimpered into Candy Cane’s peacoat as she brushed her mane with a shaky, uncertain hoof.

“Summer … I didn’t know Sugar was … a slaver,” Candy Cane murmured, her voice trembling.

With a shuddering sob, the mare pulled away from her, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you … please - please please ... you have to understand ... We needed the caps – we needed to feed our family!” Summer Smiles sniffled pitifully as she rubbed her eyes with her hooves. “She was a good pony … a good pony until the end, Candy Cane. She never liked her job ... she hated it! But it was all we had ... it was all we could do.”

Candy Cane exhaled a breath she had been holding in. She shook her head, her curly mane tumbling over her teary eyes. The mare wasn't sure what to think, and for several long seconds, she sat there unmoving as Summer Smiles stared at her pleadingly. To my surprise, she took Summer Smiles’ hoof in hers and squeezed it tight.

“I … I know she was,” Candy Cane whispered, her voice trembling. “She was the pony who found me half dead in the snow when I first escaped.”

I lowered my eyes to the floor. She had been standing right next to me. I had tried to save so many people that day. But I didn’t. I couldn't.

“I’m sorry … I should’ve seen that animal coming,” I began, but Summer Smiles cut me off.

“But she chained you to a wagon!” She looked away, ashamed.

I shook my head.

“It wasn’t like that. I knew she was different … she wasn’t like the others. When they captured me … she .... she didn’t look like she could do it ...

“She killed a bloodletter that was going to eat me alive. I owe her my life.”

Tears began to well up in my eyes, but I fought them off, steeling myself as I clenched my jaw, tight.

Summer Smiles struggled to wipe her cheeks dry, her tears refusing to wane. “It’s … I’m just glad somepony was able to tell me. Usually ponies just disappear here, and nopony ever hears from them again. For the last two weeks I thought she was going to be one of those ponies … lost, and nobody knowing how she died.”

The mare found the strength to reach over the counter and touch my hoof. “Thank you … for telling me. At least now I know how she went out. About what she did right.”

But utter hopelessness returned to her voice, and her eyes turned low. “Without her, we won’t be able to pay our dues. We lived off of her paychecks …” She cradled her head in her hooves. “And nobody comes here anymore, not with those Palominos sweeping up the streets.”

Summer Smiles sat hunched over the counter, her eyes bloodshot with tears. “I don’t know what I’m going to do … the foals … Goddesses, the foals.”

Hooves banged against the door behind us.

We shot to our hooves as Summer Smiles turned pale and stared, wide-eyed at the front door. We watched it in an uneasy silence as the seconds began to tick by.

Then knocks came again, as assertively and insistently as the last.

Summer Smiles staggered to the door, wiping her eyes furiously with the sleeve of her winter coat. She sniffled once, glanced over her shoulder, and told us to get out of sight. So we hid behind the counter as the door creaked opened.

I peered around the counter, my brown coat barely discernable in the darkness behind the counter.

'Son of a bitch.'

Black hats.

*

Chapter 9 - A Cold Hearth - Pt II

*

“Nice to see you again, Summer Smiles!” a mare greeted whimsically, tipping her hat.

Summer Smiles glared at her, cracking the door open wide enough for me to see the mare’s face. The two gangsters behind her craned their necks over her shoulder, trying to get a good look at Summer Smiles.

One of them whistled. He liked what he saw.

Summer Smiles bit her lower lip, folding her collar against her neck to hide the blue of her coat. The two cafones snickered at each other as she closed the door slightly.

My hoof crawled up my chest to rest upon my pistol’s holster. But Candy Cane’s hoof beat mine to it. She shook her head at me and I swore under my breath.

Peering over the bar, I saw the Palomino mare cock her head at Summer Smiles.

“Why the long face, Summer Smiles?”

One of the stallions stepped forward and said grinned. “I can give her something to smile about!”

“Pipe down, will ya?” the mare hissed, shooting them a murderous look. They cleared their throats and eyed the floor.

‘Pigs,’ I thought.

She smiled politely once more as they fell silent. “Sorry, they’re new. Unblooded, sorry little young’uns.”

Summer Smiles scowled at them, growling, “It doesn’t matter to you, Dulce.” She planted one hoof on the door and stretched out a foreleg to the doorstop.

Dulce laughed warmly, “Forget about it - of course it doesn’t!” She craned her neck, peering into the inn. But Summer Smiles tip-toed on her hind hooves, leaning in front of the opening, and blocking her view inside.

Giving up, the mare cleared her throat, smirking as she straightened her neck and brushed down her peacoat. “Eh, well, I think you know why we’re here.”

They exchanged brief stares before the mare chimed in once more.

“We gonna have a staring contest here, Summer Smiles? I didn’t come here to play games.”

“No … you didn’t, did you?” Summer Smiles tipped her head at the automatic weapons slung around their chests.

Dulce gawked at her own submachine gun as if she had just realized it was there. “Oh my, this little thing?” she chuckled, prodding it with a hoof.

Summer Smiles glared at her.

“I’m the only pony between you and my fillies.”

She snorted, “The only thing between us and your fillies – no – this inn of yours, are the caps you owe us.” Dulce leaned against the railing outside the door, her accomplices wearing crooked grins.

“Oh, it’s pretty cold out here,” she said frigidly, giving her a hard stare. “We might just step inside for a bit, maybe warm ourselves up by the fire - ya know, maybe check out those caps of yours.”

Summer Smiles gulped as the mare planted a hoof on her submachine gun.

“Because I know you have ‘em.”

The mare cracked a dangerous smile.

“So whaddya say, Summer Smiles?”

I gulped. Candy Cane bit her lower lip.

“T-that won’t be necessary.”

“I hope so,” the mare replied, sparing her submachine gun a glance. “I hate scaring little kids. It’s just such a shitty thing to do, wouldn’t you agree?”

She glanced over her shoulder at her boys.

“Forget about it!” they both laughed.

Summer Smiles’ eyes darted back and forth as she tapped at the doorframe frantically.

“Can … can you just give me a break? Just this once? I’m never late on my payments … I … I’ll get you the money next week.”

Dulce shook her head, pursing her lips contritely.

“Girl, you know I can’t do that,” she whinnied.

The muscles beneath my barding tensed as I saw her glance back inside.

“I …” Summer Smiles gulped, pushing more of the door between her and the Palominos outside. There was a loud thump as the mare outside planted a hoof on the door’s surface and stopped her short.

“I think we need to go inside … maybe say hello to the family,” she growled. “Whaddya say, boys?” The two stallions grinned and shivered briskly.

The mare threw her head over her shoulder and nodded to herself.

“Last chance, Summer Smiles.”

A silent second passed. So the mare tried pushing the door open. But Summer Smiles leaned her weight against it.

“Oh, Summer Smiles …” Dulce sighed as she glanced at her boys. The two stallions grinned at her beneath the shadowy brims of her black hats.

My hoof jumped for my holster. So did Candy Cane.

“Red – ” I shook her free. “Red Dawn!” she hissed as I drew my pistol.

Candy Cane looked me in the eye.

“They’re going to hurt her!” I growled – but she clapped a hoof over my mouth.

“Don’t,” she spelled out for me. “Red Dawn – don’t!” But I wrenched away from her, gun in hoof.

Candy Cane clenched her jaw. I glared back. I said nothing as I stared at my pistol’s safety and Summer Smiles pleaded for them to leave.

“Please … I don’t have much left,” she begged. “How am I going to feed my fillies?”

“Not our problem,” Dulce snorted.

“You have to understand!”

“Oh, I understand Crystal Empire clear, Summer - and you do too!” The mare jabbed a hoof at her. “You owe us, and you’re gonna pay us!”

“I can’t … I-I can’t!”

Dulce shook her head. “I know you have a bag up there somewhere, Summer. I saw it that last time we were here.”

Summer Smiles was shaking all over.

“There isn’t much left!”

“Oh? Then we’ll take whatever you got,” the mare hissed. “You’re a neighborly mare, aren’tcha? You’ll help us anyway you can, am I right?”

“No!” Summer Smiles tried closing the door shut.

But the mare outside threw herself against it.

“Think of your girls, Summer,” she hissed, “You don’t want them seeing what happens to ponies who don’t pay what they owe?”

“Just leave us alone!” she cried, struggling to force the door closed.

“We keep this place safe, Summer!” Dulce growled, heaving her shoulder into the door, “Maybe your girls won’t be so safe sleeping in their beds tonight!”

The Palomino thumped her hoof against the door, trying to force it open. But the door wouldn’t budge. Summer Smiles wouldn't budge.

“Don’t make this hard on yourself, Summer Smiles!”

“Please!”

“Quit fucking around!” she screamed back.

Summer Smiles moaned as she heaved the door closed. She was so close. But the two stallions outside stepped forward.

The door crashed open, hurling Summer Smiles into the floorboards.

My ears pinned themselves to the sides of my head. I sprung to my hooves -

But Candy Cane forced me back down.

“They’ll kill us all!” she hissed at me.

“Fuck!”

Summer Smiles screamed as she slammed into the floor.

I grinded my teeth and peered around the bar, my headache returning as my temples hammering inside my skull. I glared at the three black hats that stood in the doorway. Dulce looked down at Summer Smiles, shaking her head.

She snorted, leaning against the doorway with a foreleg.

“You’re makin’ this real hard for yourself, Summer.”

Summer Smiles moaned pathetically and rolled onto her back, a thin rivulet of blood trickling down her brow.

Dulce tipped her black hat over her eyes, and chuckled.

She glanced over her shoulder, sighing, one eye gleaming beneath the shadow of her fedora.

“Come on, boys. It’s cold outside.”

“WAIT!”

My heart leaped inside my throat.

“WAIT!” Summer Smiles shrieked. She scrambled to her hooves. “Wait here. I have the caps … please just wait. Here.”

Dulce glared at her.

“You have five minutes.”

Summer Smiles said nothing as she pushed the door closed.

“FIVE MINUTES!”

She stood there for a moment, trembling upon her hooves.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Hooves slowly clopped across the floorboards as Summer Smiles made her way upstairs. She stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking back at us in turmoil, cornered as if there was a gun to her head. There would be one soon if she didn’t deliver. Another fraction of her savings was going to be spent paying those bastards the money she didn’t owe them.

I pressed my back against the bar, clenching my jaw as I heard her hoofsteps fade away upstairs. My eyes flicked to Candy Cane’s, and she followed my movements warily as I brought my PipBuck to my muzzle.

Grifter’s voice echoed in my thoughts.

'… 435, 436, 437 … Uhh ... uhh... Fuck! Lost count …'

I’d lost count of what I had in my bags as well, Grifter.

I sifted through my inventory. Not too long ago I trampled Grifter beneath me and stole from him a sack of caps. There had to be hundreds in there. My PipBuck confirmed my suspicions. Nine hundred and twenty caps. I had nine hundred and twenty caps logged in my inventory.

Why I snatched it off his desk, I didn’t know; it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe it was to spite him? To tell the Palominos that that money wasn’t theirs? That they were a bunch of thieving parasites?

My eyes slowly left my PipBuck’s screen, firm and resolute.

It didn’t matter now. They stole that money.

And now it was time to give it back.

Candy Cane’s jaw dropped, speechless as I bit my teeth around the bag’s neck and yanked it out of my bags. Words were lost on her lips as I held it in the air before me. She had never seen so many caps at once.

“How – where … how much?” she murmured with wide eyes.

I shrugged, jingling the caps inside.

“Enough.”

Summer Smiles hoofed it step by painful step downstairs, a bag of caps jingling between her teeth. Fresh tears were streaming down her rosy cheeks as she made her way down the steps, each creak in the floorboards like a stake driving into her gut.

That must’ve been some of the last of her savings.

I knew what she was thinking. 'How were those two fillies going to eat?'

I waved a hoof at her as she reached the bottom, and motioned for her to come closer. She trotted toward us, uneasily. Then I held out to her the bag of caps.

The mare stopped in her tracks, her small pouch dangling precariously from her mouth. Summer Smiles gasped.

Her bag tumbled to the floor and erupted in a shower of bottlecaps.

“What’s going on in there?” Dulce demanded as she swung the door open with a hoof. The freezing winter breeze blew past her, showering the floorboards with fresh powder and welcoming in the wasteland wind.

Summer Smiles appeared oblivious to the winter storm that was blowing into her home. It didn't matter. Not at that very moment.

“What …”

I held my leg out farther. “Take it.”

Her eyes darted to my hooves, then mine, clenching her jaw. Summer Smiles' mouth said no, but her bloodshot eyes said yes. She needed it. For her sister's orphaned children.

“Summer Smiles!”

She swung her head to the door, broken from her trance like state.

“I’m gettin’ real angry!”

Summer Smiles wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sniffled. “S-sorry. I … I just dropped my bag. Give me a minute.”

She knelt down beside me, biting the heavy bag, gingerly. Her teary gaze met mine, and she hesitated, narrowing them at the spoils that she clenched between her teeth. I cracked a faint smile, and nodded.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

I looked her in the eyes.

“You need it more than I do.”

She pursed her lips, looking like she was going to break down into tears once more.

I didn't need shit like that to get what my stable needed. I didn't have to pay taxes, and I didn’t have kids to feed. I was adamant that she take it.

I sighed when she didn’t. The damn bag was starting to get heavy.

"Go on," I said, softly, with a sheepish smile.

For the first time since we'd arrived, I saw it in her eyes. A sliver of hope flickered behind the windows to her soul. Something inside of her pushed her onward. She needed it. Her sister's ... her foals needed it.

She took it from my open hoof.

Summer Smiles rose to her fours, trotted to the door, and gave the sack of caps to the Palominos outside. There came an astonished gasp as Dulce seized her spoils and shook, her ears perking at the sound of the glorious jingling – music to her ears.

“This … this is … a lot," Dulce gawked. She cleared her throat, composing herself. The mare glanced at Summer Smiles as she shuffled nervously on her hooves. “Give us a few minutes. We’ll count this up for ya. We ain’t a bunch of welchers,” she grinned courteously, hoofing the bag to her subordinates. Her eyes never once left Summer Smiles’ apprehensive face. “One hundred caps, boys.”

I was expecting the cafones to take the whole damn bag and scurry off with it.

But they didn’t. A few minutes passed as the Palominos counted their money. When the deed was done, they unceremoniously dumped Summer Smiles' dues into a saddlebag. Dulce smiled courteously before hoofing her back the sack of caps, one hundred caps lighter.

“There ya go,” she said graciously, tipping her hat at her, and turning around to take her leave. "I'm glad we didn't have to do something neither of us would’ve liked." The looks on her subordinates' faces begged to differ; they looked to be itching for a firefight.

Or for a taste of Summer Smiles.

“Like … likewise,” she choked, sweat freezing across her forehead.

The mare held the bag in her hoof, frozen, and unable to speak. She looked on, distantly, as the Palominos started down the steps.

“You be a good girl, now,” the mare called over her shoulder as Summer Smiles pivoted around sluggishly and shoved the door closed with a rear hoof. The inn was colder now, and a pile of hoof-trodden snow lay before the door.

But there was a different kind of warmth melting the ice between us all.

The two mares stared at me in silence. I caught Candy Cane’s gaze, and saw that she was wearing that same look she’d worn when I dismantled her bomb collar.

“Thank you, Red Dawn,” Summer Smiles began, making her way to the bar, still shaking. "Now they'll leave my family alone for a bit." She laid the bag of caps down on the counter and pushed it towards me.

I shook my head, and slid it back, much to her surprise.

“It’s yours now,” I insisted. She just stood there. So I nudged it toward her with a hoof when she didn’t budge. “I … I think you need it more than I do.”

She parted the bag’s lips, and peered inside. It was a decently heavy bag. It was hers now. But she still couldn’t believe it.

Summer Smiles looked at me for a moment, before asking again, “Why are you doing this?”

It bothered me because I didn’t know why either. I thought - finally out of the moment, realizing that I could’ve used those caps to buy myself rations for a week, or maybe some ammo for my pistol. Maybe even a new bulletproof vest, which I desperately needed. A part of me was regretting that decision, now.

Those caps – my money – my loot – could’ve funded my journey.

My journey. For some reason, I was growing fond of helping out random, unimportant ponies. Like … Candy Cane? Summer Smiles? But somehow, everyone was important to someone.

Even me.

I thought, 'How was helping Summer Smiles going to help me?'

When I didn’t answer, she pursed her lips and asked, “How much is in there?”

I poked it. It was still about as heavy as it was when I took it out of my saddlebags.

“Eight-hundred and twenty caps.”

Summer Smiles curled a hoof around its neck, her leg trembling.

“This’ll last us months …” she murmured. The mare blinked, and shook her head. “I can’t take this. It’s not mine.”

I sighed, growing irritated with her stubbornness. Kindness seemed to be an alien concept in the wasteland. "If you don't want it, I'll just leave it there. I don’t want it weighing me down when I’m jumping off buildings with Candy Cane,” I smirked, glancing over at Candy Cane whose astonished grays continued to stare through me.

Our host just stood there, quietly, trying not to look at the bag. So I nudged it again, and again, and again, until it banked precariously off the counter’s edge and she was forced to hold it with her hooves.

I smirked.

With a sigh, Summer Smiles finally relented, clutching the bag tight.

She regarded the bag of caps with grim relief. "Thank you, Red Dawn. Doodle and Hops can eat for a while longer now, thanks to you." The mare paused, hesitantly. "Candy Cane might just be right about you," she murmured, looking away. "There aren’t that many ponies who'd just give out caps like that around here."

"Eh, they weren't mine to begin with. I stole them from the cafones."

That left her dumbfounded and speechless. Several long seconds passed and she shook it off and brushed my foreleg with a hoof.

"Goddesses bless you, Red Dawn. Sugar Rum would’ve kissed you for this …” I shrugged, my lopsided smile stretching across my left cheek.

“I need some time to think about this. The Orphanage I mean." She turned to Candy Cane. "I … I don't suppose you two were planning on staying here for a while?"

"We were hoping we could." Candy Cane held out a hoof. "If you'll have us, of course?"

I couldn’t help but notice as Summer Smiles' name finally matched her likeness. The mare cupped Candy Cane’s hoof in hers as she smiled.

"I could never say no to you ..." Summer Smiles said, softly, still holding her hoof. She blinked, let go, and fixed her gaze upon me. "Not to either of you," she added. “It’s the least I can do.”

She cocked her head at me and eyed me from head to hoof in the silence that followed. My brows furrowed as I wondered why she was looking at me like that. Then I realized that I was swaying back and forth.

I was starting to feel ticklish in the noggin again. I let out a languid sigh, and rubbed at my tired eyes.

"I'm sure you'd like a place to sleep,” I heard her say.

“That would be wonderful."

Candy Cane held my shoulder with a hoof to still my swaying. "We won't be here for long,” she said. “We don't want to be a burden."

"No worries … please … stay – stay for as long as you'd like." She glanced at the door one last time. “It’s the least I can do for an old friend … and a … maybe a new one, I think.”

I averted my gaze from hers. I knew what she was thinking.

But I still didn’t believe it.

But seeing someone smile … seeing someone in that frozen hell smile made my livid flesh and the graying soul beneath just a little warmer. It felt …

… good. For some reason I’d almost forgotten how that felt. The frozen wasteland air made people numb.

But it felt good seeing Summer Smiles, well, smile.

Still, it was far from being a good day. At least for her. If we took her up on her offer, I was certain that she couldn’t be burdened with our stay. With her sister gone, she had more important things to worry about than a stranger sleeping in her home.

"If you'll let us stick around, I could pool whatever caps, food, or supplies I come across," I added.

Candy Cane nodded. "We'd like to pull our own weight," she offered. "It'll be like old times …"

The mare exhaled with a sigh of relief, hugging her. "That's more than I could’ve asked for." She paused for a moment and scanned the bar with a sour look in her eyes, her savings still scattered across the floor. She let out another sigh, this time scorning the dusty, neglected walls around her.

"This place is just despicable. Sugar would’ve hated to see you coming back to my inn like this. I have empty rooms upstairs, but I haven't cleaned them in months ... ever since I closed this place down, I kind of just forgot about everything we didn’t use."

I waved it off with a hoof. "Whatever you have, we’ll take it. I've been sleeping in metal boxes for the past week. Any bed to lay in is a bed nonetheless."

Candy Cane bowed her head. "Anything is good enough for me.”

Summer Smiles nodded, hesitantly, grumbling under her breath. She wanted the best for her guests.

“Let’s get this pony upstairs before he drops dead,” Summer Smiles chuckled at me.

"Huh?” I yawned, rubbing my eyes.

“He’s been beat up pretty bad.” Candy Cane touched a hoof to her chin. “How he’s still standing, I don’t know.”

“After that sinkhole, I don’t know either, Candy Cane,” I said, rolling my bloodshot eyes.

Summer Smiles waved us forward. “Come on, I’ll show you both to your rooms upstairs.”

“Let me just get my bags.” I trotted over to the door where I left them and enveloped them in my magical grip.

Stars exploded in my eyes.

Fire shot through my nerves - my brain - and I careened face first into the floorboards.

I scrambled and flopped around like a fish out of the water, clawing at the floorboards - my face - something warm trickled down my muzzle -

My eyes shot open and I saw through a pair of darkening windows painted with blood.

I fought the urge to scream as Candy Cane galloped to my side.

Someone beat me to it. Summer Smiles’ scream was a petrol bomb that blew up the inferno inside my skull.

“What the hell’d you do, Red Dawn?!”

I couldn’t answer. There was a drillbit in my brain, and every agonizing second that ticked by it drilled deeper. I groaned, my limbs twitching erratically as my consciousness threatened to sleep forever.

“I’ll never get used to being an earth pony,” I wheezed as the two mares wrenched me back to my hooves.

I saw Candy Cane glare at me through my bloody, squinted eyes. “You don’t have to be …” she said. “Don’t go around trying that until after you’ve slept this thing off!”

“What’s wrong with him?” Summer Smiles asked, wincing.

“He has magical burnout,” she said, grunting as she propped me up against the door behind me.

I gasped for breath, clenching my eyes shut as my brain melted inside my skull. A burnout was like having a muscle cramp. But inside your brain. And I was getting sick and fucking tired of that useless horn of mine.

I shrugged them off, irritated with myself. “It’s … I’m okay. I can … I can walk.”

I took a feverish step forward and nearly fell on my face once more, prompting Candy Cane to lean up against me. A long, drawn out sigh wheezed out of my lips.

"Fucking … stupid horn … let’s try this again,” I murmured as I started for my saddlebags. But Candy Cane held out a hoof in front of me.

“I can get those for you –” she began, but I waved her off and reached for them myself. This time, I curled my hooves around my bags’ straps and hurled them over my back with a grunt.

I looked up, and found that the two mares were staring at me again.

“What?”

Summer Smiles covered her face with a hoof, muttering to herself.

“You’re getting blood on my floor.”

*

I stumbled around in almost complete darkness, the only light coming from the open door that led to the hallway behind us. I shuffled blindly across the floor, and ran into something solid.

Whatever.

The heavy obstruction that greeted my face with an audible thump rattled and shook. I was too tired to care. All I wanted to do was to find the bed that was supposed to be in that room.

A light switched on, and the obstruction revealed itself to be a dresser. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught Candy Cane’s worried stare, her hoof hovering over a switch on the wall.

“Thanks.”

Candy Cane watched, silently, as I set my bags down next to an old bed that lay beneath a shuttered window. I could hear, faintly, the wind moaning outside.

The air inside was chilly, but thankfully not bone-gnawingly freezing like it was outside, especially with the storm blowing over us. I was glad I was inside that time.

The room was furnished with a table with an uneven leg, a dresser that was missing a drawer, and a cracked mirror. I didn’t bother looking at it. It didn’t take a mirror to tell me that I looked like shit.

I felt like it too.

I was a sorry sight to look at. Candy Cane knew it. She’d toweled me down earlier with a wet rag to clean up the blood. But I still looked like shit, and I really needed a bath.

“I think I got it from here,” I told her as she stood in the doorway. But she didn’t move an inch. The two mares had helped me upstairs, because I was apparently too loopy to walk up a flight of stairs on my own.

Summer Smiles had left to check on the fillies, but Candy Cane had stayed.

I rummaged through my bags, pulling out my Stable 91 jumpsuit. It was clean. I hadn’t worn it since I’d left home. And I wasn’t about to wear my bloody security barding to bed. I ran a hoof up my chest and curled it around the zipper beneath my collar. I frowned, Candy Cane’s shadow still stretching across the floor next to me. I glanced over my shoulder, head cocked.

The mare just stared at me, slightly confused. I coughed and Candy Cane blinked twice.

“Oh … I … okay,” she said, looking away.

‘You can leave, you know,’ I wanted to say. Whatever. I sighed and shed my battered barding. My teeth chattered, rifling the inside of my skull and joining the dull pain that throbbed in my head. I wondered how long it’d take for me to grow out my winter coat. Everyone else but me seemed fine without being bundled up indoors.

With a zip, I slipped into my blue and yellow jumpsuit, the number '91' emblazoned onto my sides.

I turned, and found myself unsurprised. “You’re still there,” I chuckled, as Candy Cane turned her head back to me.

She smiled, faintly. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t fall on your face again.”

I sighed and flopped onto the bed with a groan, laying my head down on the pillow. My eyes fluttered closed. Soft. The blankets were cold beneath my flesh, but the bed was soft. It had been a while since I’d lain down on something like that. I almost felt like I was back at home. Almost. Almost.

I took a deep breath and imagined I was lying in my bed. I imagined Dew Drops lying next to me, snoring softly as I closed my eyes and began to drift off into a peaceful slumber.

Then I felt the air above me shift. My bloodshot eyes flew open and I eeped.

Candy Cane was staring down at me.

“Shit …” I murmured, tucking my legs to my chest as she placed a hoof on my forehead.

“Your fever’s gotten worse since I last checked. Give me a minute.” The mare trotted away, disappearing outside. She returned shortly after with a wet towel, which she draped over my forehead. Candy Cane sighed, “There. Is it cold?”

I shivered, pawing at the blankets under me before pulling them over my numb flesh.

“Y-yes,” I managed, as I felt my headache begin to wane.

“Good,” she murmured, relieved. “That should cool you down. I don’t want you having a meltdown inside that skull of yours.”

“Thanks, doc,” I said, staring up at the ceiling.

She stood there for a few heartbeats, looking like she had something to say.

“What you did earlier … I’m glad Summer Smiles didn’t have to give them her caps. Doodle and Hops mean the world to her,” she whispered.

I sighed, wishing she’d just leave me be so that I could sleep. I mustered through my headaches a lopsided smile, and nodded, but the towel slipped down my face. Candy Cane chuckled, somewhat amused, and tugged it back onto my forehead. I shivered, my muzzle wet with icy water.

“You made me a pony again, Red Dawn,” she said, tenderly, staring into my heavy eyes. Candy Cane nudged my shoulder with a hoof.

“So I’ll help you become a unicorn again.”

I had already fallen asleep by the time the light flicked off and the door creaked closed.

Footnote: Level 6
XP: 250/3450

Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt I

Chapter 10
Never Work Alone

“Don’t you dare think about going there without me. We never. Work. Alone.”

Dew Drops and I worked side by side, digging our hooves and tools into the machinery that jutted out of the long hall’s steel wall. I finished lubing up the hydraulic water diverter and reached for a wrench to tighten its bolts. But it slipped from my hooves and clattered to the floor. It took more than my magic alone to tighten one of those things, and that mess wasn’t really helping.

Industrial grease was made to lube up machinery, not people. You could've slid my entire body horn-first up a centaur’s ass if you tried, and the bastard wouldn’t have even broken a sweat.

“Fuck.”

Dew Drops spared me a quick glance over her shoulder as she reconfigured the pressure control system to my right. She chuckled, glad that she wasn’t me before returning to her work, her clean hooves clacking loudly against the terminal’s keyboard.

“Didn’t you bring any towels?” she asked, still staring into the terminal screen.

I swung my head to my saddlebags with my hooves crossed. Then I saw that all our towels were bathed in grease. So were my bags.

'Nice.'.

I sighed, muttering, “Yes …”

She didn’t even have to look to know that they were all dirty.

“Any degreaser?”

My left forehoof came to tap my PipBuck’s controls. But I stopped myself at the last moment, glaring at the sticky black hoof that hovered over my PipBuck’s glowing, teal screen.

'Nope.'

Didn’t want to grease up my PipBuck too. Celestia knew that an unlubed PipBuck might be the only thing stopping me from slipping down a poopy, pony-sized pipe.

I figured I’d check my inventory the old-fashioned way. Not like it mattered. My bags were as dirty as I was, anyway. I pulled them close and rummaged through them, tossing our slick towels against the wall and fumbling for the rest.

My ears drooped.

“I think I left it in the supply room,” I murmured, face hoofing. “Fuck,” I swore under my breath at the slimy guck that clung to my face and swore some more when I peeled my greasy hoof from my face.

“Fuck!” I snapped, jumping to my hooves and – "Shit!" I slipped on a black skid and flopped on my belly.

I was going to need a new swear jar.

I stood up on my hinds, glaring at the black Red Dawn shaped puddle of goo that was splattered across the floor.

“Great – just great!” I groaned. “You know what – I don’t even care anymore. I don’t care!” I cried, lathering the black goo all over my chest.

I actually cared immensely.

Dew Drops finally glanced her head over at the squishing sounds I was making with my wet jumpsuit.

“Hold on a ‘sec.” She tapped her keyboard one at time and gave me her full attention. “Do that again – but slower this time,” she grinned, winking at me.

I swiped at her muzzle with a greasy hoof instead.

“H-hey!” she giggled, wrinkling her nose.

I sighed, plopping down on my rump. “I wonder why the MAS didn’t just make a greaser talisman or something.”

“Hmm, out of the budget, maybe?”

I laughed bitterly. “They made incinerator talismans, air-conditioning talismans, water talismans – everything but greaser talismans,” I whined. “How convenient.”

“Looks like you’ll have to go back and get some degreaser.”

I cocked my head at her. “Go back? That’s four levels above us!” I cried.

Dew Drops rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, you big baby. I’ll go with you, then,” she yawned, lowering herself to her forehooves to stretch, summoning a pop from her back. “I need to get the blood flowing in these legs of mine, anyways. We’ve been down here for hours now, haven’t we?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I sighed, pouting like a pony princess with a big muddy stain on her dress.

“Well, the day’s not getting any brighter, come on!” Dew Drops trotted down the hall, motioning me to follow her. I lathered my hooves through my once red mane, loathing the trail of black horseshoes I was leaving behind me with every step I took.

“We’re in a stable, DD. I don’t know what ‘day’ looks like,” I mumbled. “All I know is that there’s a fifteen minute walk ahead of us.” I glowered over my shoulder. “And a lot of cleaning to do.”

We had been there all day trying to fix our level’s water pressure. Everyone else in our shift had already clocked out and gone to bed.

Still, everyone in B block was having limp dick water pressure, because the terminal controlling it on that level was all kinds of fucked. Everyone at B was probably wondering what the hell we were doing.

I sighed. I couldn’t wait to shower all that guck off at 1.5 gallons per minute.

“Well Red, as your teacher, it’s my job to accompany you and guide you along this long, long road.” She paused for a moment, smirking. “To become the best engineer you can be.”

I chuckled, crassly.

“Right. Thought you were gonna say that you’re here to guide me ‘to the fourth floor.’ Fuck me if I forget how to walk,” I drawled, rolling my eyes.

She grinned, bumping my flank with hers. “Of course! Momma Dawn wouldn’t want her little boy to get lost on his way home, now would she?” Dew Drops leaned in and tried to peck me on the cheek.

“Hey!” I snapped, my cheeks reddening beneath the sludge. “I’ve got shit all over me!”

Dew Drops lunged forward and scored a glancing blow with her lips.

“Now I do too!” she laughed.

I clenched my jaw and stared at the floor.

“Screw it,” I mumbled, thankful that the black slime was covering my blushing cheeks. “I could’ve went up myself.”

Dew Drops smiled smugly. “Oh come on, it’s always great to have some company.”

“DD, I don’t need you to hold my hoof … okay?” I looked away. "I forgot the degreaser.” I narrowed my eyes at the mare. “So I have to get it.”

The mare looked straight on ahead as we trotted down a long, wide hall.

“Besides, if you stayed behind, you could’ve finished your work on that terminal. Then we wouldn’t have to be down here for much longer.”

“I wouldn’t have to be down here much longer,” Dew Drops corrected me.

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “That’s a good thing, you feather-brain.”

She chuckled, “For me, yeah. But what about you? It’s lonely down here.”

An exasperated groan hissed through my lips as I shook my head, my greasy, plastered mane flopping around and splattering the floor with muck.

“Lonely … sure. I’m only here because I’m your apprentice, anyways.”

Dew Drops looked at me for a moment. Then her ears drooped as she lowered eyes,

“Shit … I didn’t mean it like that, DD …”

She sighed, shaking her head. “I know you didn’t. Yeah, the engineering board assigned you to me but I’m your friend and we’ve always done everything together.”

“But DD ... you don’t even need me down here. I’m the one learning from you, after all.” I snorted, “You can probably redivert the water to B-Block with one hoof and troubleshoot its terminal with the other hoof. And not just with your forehooves. I mean, with your hind hooves, too.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re down here with me for a reason. And that wasn’t because I could do it myself.”

I just laughed at her.

Dew Drops glowered at me. “You act like I’m the Masked Matter-Horn or something!”

“Yeah, but you are. You should be in the classrooms lecturing ponies on bipolar arcanomechanical systems, not getting your hooves greasy at engineering.”

“Mhm.” She groaned, “I’ll start teaching bored teenagers when I learn how to shit rainbows and fart pixie dust.”

I smirked. “Bet you know how to do all that, too.”

Dew Drops wasn’t smiling back. She stared at the floor as our hoofsteps echoed down the hall.

“I … I can’t, Red. I can’t do everything by myself, no matter how good you think I am at doing things,” she said, softly. “I know how to reconfigure a heating talisman to a cooling talisman – but then what? What happens when I’m not at engineering, doing what I do best?”

“Sleeping? I only see you go to your room twice a day.”

She shook her head again. “Oh, Red … it feels … great being with you guys. You guys make me feel needed, wanted – cared about. It takes two to tango. I can’t feel that way alone.”

Dew Drops narrowed her eyes at me as I stared onward down the hall.

“But you … you always go back to your room between breaks.”

“Because I always have a lot of things on my queue!” I cried in protest.

“Ugh, RED! You just don’t get it, do you!?” she snapped.

We both stopped in our tracks as I peered into her glaring eyes.

Dew Drops blinked, shook her head, and looked away.

I frowned, staring at the floor. None of us moved an inch. Not one inch until I put one hoof forward and started walking once again with Dew Drops trailing behind me. We followed a tight, multi-tiered stairwell that ascended to the top, in silence. A few quiet minutes passed and we stopped outside the elevator doors.

I tapped its controls and waited for its car to arrive.

The elevator door opened and we stepped inside. I stared at the elevator’s control panel for a long time, my hoof hovering over the button to the sixth floor.

“Red … don’t you … don’t you ever feel … lonely?” she finally asked me.

I thought for a moment, biting my lower lip.

“Do you?” I asked quietly.

She smiled at me, peering deep into my eyes.

“Not right now.”

A blue forehoof crossed over mine as Dew Drops tapped the number six, holding my gaze. My eyes darted away from her as the elevator car became remarkably warmer.

We shared that ride together in silence for the next forty seconds as the heavy, industrial grade elevator car ascended up the floors.

*

We never made it up that elevator.

As much as I would have loved to stay … I didn’t … and thinking about it now, I wished that I could have. But I never made it. I left her in that elevator just like I left her out in that blizzard.

I was awake.

My eyes fluttered open at the sounds of hooves clopping against the creaky wooden floorboards. I rolled over away from the muffled voices that were trickling into my droopy ears.

“… burned out,” I heard Candy Cane say, her voice somewhat familiar in my senses as they slowly began to wake. “Girls, he’s just really tired,” she explained to the ponies I didn’t know were there.

Another voice, this one too high pitched to be that of a grown mare, whined, “He’s been sleeping for like five days now!” Whoever that filly was, she was close. Like, yelling into my ear, close. “Doesn’t he get tired of – uhh – being tired?”

“Two days, Doodle. He’s been sleeping for two days, now,” Candy Cane corrected the filly.

Somepony prodded my chest with a hoof. I let out a muffled groan as I buried my muzzle in my pillow. But that did nothing to hinder the hooves that assaulted my ribcage with their merciless jabs. A raspy breath struggled out of my lips as I rolled over in bed. I crammed a pillow into my face in an effort to stifle the poking and the muffled voices that wouldn’t leave me alone.

A voice, gentler and quieter than the last squeaked, “Uh-uh … Mister Dawn?” She sounded a lot like Doodle. It must’ve been her twin sister, Hops.

“Grrr … he’s not waking up!” Hops squawked, her voice cracking. Wait. No, that wasn’t Hops. It sounded more … well, agressive. Like an angry squirrel, if I’d ever heard one. It was Doodle again. "You've been here forever!"

“I guess he’s still sleepy …” Hops murmured, nervously.

I heard hoofsteps clops furiously against the floorboards.

Doodle’s voice cracked viciously, “Okay, that’s it! You wanna do this hard way?” I heard her stomp the floor with a hoof. “We’ll do this the hard way!”

Candy Cane’s voice cut in, “Doodle, wait –”

Hooves slammed into my chest. I sat up, biting my tongue as I choked back a string of curses that struggled for a way out of my throat. For the sake of the children, I merely thought of punting the filly off me instead.

Doodle or Hops – one of the two was crushing my chest with her hooves, grinning at me with Sugar Rum’s blue eyes.

“Wake up, sleepy head!” she shouted at me, her voice like broken glass to my ears. “It’s morning!” I groaned, and let myself fall back onto my pillow, staring blankly at the ceiling with a somewhat renewed sense of clarity.

'Morning,' I thought, 'Morning?' The dim glow of candlelight was all that illuminated my dim room. But it was still dark outside. I wondered, how in the hell those ponies could tell if it was morning or not if it was always night time!? But then again, I didn’t know what morning was … or what the sun looked like … but still!

I batted at the air, eyes still half-closed until the filly groaned, stepped off my chest and walked over to the edge of the mattress. I sat up and looked out the window. I was vaguely amused to find that it was a cool, midnight blue outside.

One of my ears perked as Candy Cane cleared her throat. I panned my gaze across the room and over the monster filly who was prancing impatiently in place at my bedside.

Clinging to Candy Cane’s lower neck and lying upon her back was Hops, her hind legs dangling from sides.

So that meant that the filly that had stomped my chest in was Doodle.

“Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast! Come on, everypony!” Doodle cried, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me violently. With a furious whinny, she hurled herself off my bed and onto the floor with a loud thump.

Candy Cane swung her head between her legs as the filly scampered between them and out the door, leaving us three to the fading echoes of her one-pony stampede. I turned and cocked an eyebrow at the other pale filly that clung to Candy Cane’s back.

Hops grimaced and hid behind a thick curly lock of Candy Cane’s mane before we could even make eye contact.

“Um ... so ... how long have I been out?” I asked Candy Cane as she cooed comfortingly into Hops’ little ear.

“Two days, Red Dawn,” she answered, reassuring the little pony who was still inching her head into her mane.

“Two … days? Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“I was that tired?”

She nodded, “Apparently so; you didn’t even wake up once. You were completely and utterly exhausted. Almost comatose.”

Well, I certainly felt refreshed.

I blinked and saw Hops staring at me again. When I caught her eyes, she turned them away and buried her muzzle in Candy Cane’s mane once more.

“Is she … um, okay?” I asked, rubbing my forehooves together, nervously. Little kids usually had the tendency to stare at people for no reason. I never knew how to react whenever I’d meet the blank stare of some dribbling toddler … but Hops was no toddler. She, like her monster foal of a sister, was reasonably sapient.

Candy Cane smiled once more, ruffling the filly’s mane with a gentle hoof.

“She’s just a little shy.”

The soft spoken filly murmured something through a mouthful of Candy Cane’s mane.

“What was that, Hops?” she asked the girl.

More quiet murmuring. I frowned at them both, but that only made her whimper some more.

Candy Cane chuckled, “You’re going to have to speak louder, Hops.”

“Can we go downstairs now?” the filly asked, one of her blue eyes showing through the strands of Candy Cane’s hair.

“Of course we can, you’re probably starving right now!” she chuckled, looking at her, then at me.

I stared down my chest and heard and felt my stomach grumble.

“Ohh …” I groaned, wincing.

“That means you too, Red Dawn,” Candy Cane said, sounding like my mother. “You’ve had nothing to eat for two days. You should join us.” The mare turned and started for the door, but glanced over her shoulder. “Summer Smiles made applesauce and carrot juice.”

'Applesauce? Carrot juice?' My tongue moistened at the thought of a bowl of applesauce. I rolled out of my bed, stretching out my limbs in a series of satisfying pops. I held my breath and stretched out my spine – “Ahhh …”

I was surprised my legs hadn’t atrophied. I didn't know it was possible for anybody to sleep that long.

I walked over to the broken mirror across the room. I stood upon my hinds and peered into it, running a hoof through my mane with a yawn. I blinked, pausing for a moment. I frowned into the mirror, eyeing my reflections. Something was off. Different.

There was something wrong with me.

I drew my hoof away from my mane and stared at it, scrutinizing it. I leaned into the mirror, eyeballing my mane – my face – my neck.

Goddesses. Not a hair out of place. Not a single hair was out of place. I was clean. I was clean. I dropped to all fours, reached for my collar and yanked the zipper down. My chest.

My entire body. Clean. Spotless.

Even my mane looked brushed.

The blood drained from my face as realization dawned upon me.

I couldn’t have gotten cleaned up by myself. 'That means' … I gulped. The inn was filled with mares. And … someone cleaned me up … some mare saw me … my …

“Oh, fuck.”

Hooves clopped in the doorway.

Candy Cane poked her head inside.

“Red, are you coming?”

“Hrk!” I nearly jumped out of my skin. I swung my head around and saw her standing there in the doorway. “U-uh – uh yes,” I stammered, blood rushing to my cheeks. I watched, suspicion fluttering inside my chest, as I watched her face for an awkward smile – a knowing stare – a wandering eye.

Nothing.

I gulped. “Yes … I’m … coming.”

Candy Cane stared at me for a few seconds. I looked down, and my zipper was still halfway down my chest. My hoof flew to my zipper and I yanked it back up to my collar, a stupid, lopsided grin stretching across my face.

“Okay …” she said, somewhat confused. “We’ll be downstairs.” And she was off.

I watched her tail disappear out the door, my face turning blue. I gasped for air, letting out a breath that I realized I’d been holding it.

“Oh, Celestia …”

I’d seen pictures in the history books – ponies walking around with their backsides uncovered. That was then. This was now. At least in my stable, we wore clothes all the time. And underwear. I was glad that Candy Cane and everyone else I’d seen so far were wearing trousers. Probably because it was cold.

I suppose it was to prepare us for the frozen world above, but it did wonders with imagining what was under someone’s jumpsuit … and made the idea of someone seeing what was under mine, a nightmare.

The only other mare that had seen me naked was Mom. And Doctor Stitches.

But Candy Cane … I grimaced – half remembering her dark silhouette standing in the light of the doorway as I slept.

'Candy Cane saw me naked.'

'Candy Cane saw my dick.'

I started down the hall outside and down the stairs, my shadow dancing against the walls in the candlelight. I kept telling myself that Candy Cane was a doctor, and that it was just as normal and uncreepy as Doctor Stitches giving me a physical. It was the only time Stitches wasn’t a complete stooge during an office visit.

As I climbed down the stairs I remembered that Candy Cane was a nurse. I also realized that my headache had subsided. Must’ve been how I was able to make that distinction.

Then I smelled the applesauce. My nostrils twitched as the scent spirited me downstairs and into the dining area. Sitting at one of the seven tables was Candy Cane, Doodle, and Hops, as Summer Smiles hung a pot of steaming goodness from her mouth. She saw me and smiled, setting the cauldron down upon the table.

“Good to see you, Red Dawn!” she said, somewhat cheerily as the fillies eyed the applesauce hungrily. I could hear the forcefulness in her voice. The pain in her eyes was still there.

Looking at the fillies’ smiling faces, it became apparent to me that she hadn’t told them the truth about Sugar Rum’s fate. She hadn’t told them that their mother was dead.

I suppose it was for the best. Summer Smiles wanted them to be happy.

“I thought I’d treat us all to some fresh food …” Summer Smiles began, pouring the fillies their bowls before pouring two more for Candy Cane and I. “We have enough caps to eat at least twice every other day now, thanks to you.”

I shook my head, staring down at the steaming bowl of sweet, sweet applesauce. “It smells amazing …” I murmured, suppressing a drooling grin.

“Auntie makes the awesomest applesauce, ever!” Doodle neighed, before lunging at her bowl.

“‘Most awesome’, darling,” Candy Cane corrected her.

Doodle stopped an inch above her bowl, frowning until she was cross-eyed.

“Most awesome applesauce, ever!” she added, opening her mouth to lap at the bowl of applesauce.

“Doodle! Wait a minute, young lady!” Summer Smiles snapped, frowning at the filly. “We haven’t said grace.”

Hops chimed in, her voice as soft as ever. “We haven’t said grace since Mom left …”

Summer Smiles stared at the filly, quieted by her innocent remark. She gulped down the lump in her throat.

“For old time’s sake … let’s say grace before we eat. We have to thank the Goddesses for this blessing …” she said, eyeing me, then the applesauce.

“Summer Smiles …” I began, quietly, but she shook her head and took the fillies’ hooves. I lifted my open hoof. Candy Cane just stood there as if she hadn’t heard Summer Smiles say a thing.

We all looked at her in the corners of our eyes. She just stared at her hooves, quietly, waiting for us to continue.

If she was thinking what I was thinking, then I wasn’t sure what to do, either. Back at ’91, I didn’t pray to the Goddesses as much as I think I should have. I looked at Candy Cane, who wore a distant, bitter expression upon her face.

It didn’t look like she did either. At all.

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever even heard the prayer Summer Smiles said next. It made me realize that the religion many of us followed at home was noticeably different in practice outside.

The two fillies echoed her as they prayed. “Dear Princess Celestia; Dear Princess Luna; thank you for blessing our table with family, friends, and the food that we are about to share because of your wondrous, eternal works.”

I felt Summer Smiles raise my hoof, and I did the same as they finished their prayer. “To the Eternal Princesses; your faithful subjects, amen,” they said, together. Not even a second passed after we unhooked hooves when Doodle attacked her bowl in a frenzy of blurring white coat and splashes of yellow applesauce.

I looked back at Candy Cane and watched as her distant expression faded away. At the sight of Doodle’s famished frenzy, the darkness in her eyes caved in to a warm glow.

Candy Cane smiled.

“Doodle, you’re making a mess!” she giggled.

“It’s been awhile since they’ve had anything better than cram or canned bread …” Summer Smiles intoned. I shivered. Canned bread. I remembered the disgusting, tube-shaped, sludgey monstrosities they stored deep inside ‘91’s warehouses. It’d probably be what my stable-mates would have to eat if I didn’t hurry up and get them their water talisman. I pitied them. But I pitied Summer Smiles’ family even more.

Summer Smiles folded her legs across her chest. “I’ll let it slide, this time.” She glared at the filly. “Do you hear me, young lady? Only this time.”

Doodle nodded, her cheeks bulging with applesauce, before she swallowed and gobbled up some more.

Hops, a unicorn, levitated a small spoon and dipped it into her bowl, making an effort to not make any sort of noise whatsoever. She didn’t even let the spoon touch the side of the cracked porcelain bowl.

I looked down at my breakfast, wondering how much it had cost her. The mare noticed I hadn’t even disturbed the surface of my applesauce.

“Eat up, Red Dawn,” Summer Smiles told me, “You haven’t had anything in days.”

I nodded, blankly. Honestly, at that moment, despite my empty stomach, all I could think about was my stable. It was like a pain in my gut that wouldn’t go away. Two days. I hadn’t done anything in two days. Two days. Two days of their rations, gone. All because I was sleeping.

“Heh … right,” I said. I took a spoonful of applesauce down my throat, but the usually orgasmic flavor of golden delicious apples was lost on me. The recently underused bile in my stomach wasn’t the only thing that was eating me up on the inside. Swallowing, I wondered, ‘When is Summer Smiles going to make up her mind?’

'When was she going to hook us up with the Orphanage?'

Somepony cleared her throat, and my eyes darted to the mare sitting next to me. Candy Cane had noticed the turmoil in my stare.

“How are you feeling?”

I turned to her and almost met her eyes. I hesitated and fought back a blush at the mare and her professional, medical hooves. I sighed. I was at least relieved she wasn’t asking what I was thinking.

I finally turned to see her.

“My head isn’t hurting as much anymore, thankfully,” I replied, running a hoof through my brushed mane. I dipped my spoon into my applesauce, before narrowing my eyes up at my horn.

“But I’m not so sure about this bony, vestigial thing on my head.” I was afraid to try it out. I was getting tired of bleeding out of every orifice.

“Oh, it’ll get better, Red Dawn,” she reassured me, as I lifted the spoon to my lips. “You might just need a little bit more rest, maybe a more few days, even.”

My spoonful of applesauce froze in mid-air.

“A few more … days?” I asked, my voice wavering.

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“I don’t want you walking around with a headache, you might have an accident and hurt yourself again.”

Summer Smiles nodded, thoughtfully. “You were really, really loopy when we took you upstairs two nights ago.” She chuckled, “You hit your head on the steps on the way up.”

“I … I don’t remember any of that,” I murmured.

“Exactly," Candy Cane said, "You couldn’t even think straight. You need to rest and keep your head down for a bit … If you’re going to be traveling with me, I’d rather have a conscious pony watching my back than an unconscious one.”

I shook my head, my ears drooping. “You don’t understand,” I began. “I’m running out of time. My stable’s running out of time, and the more time I spend just sitting here …” I trailed off.

“You should listen to her, Red Dawn,” Summer Smiles remarked. “She’s been at your bedside almost by the hour for nearly two days now, trying to keep your head from exploding.” She glanced at the mare who was staring at her bowl of applesauce in quietude. “Don’t ruin all her hard work by hurting yourself some more.”

I sighed, shaking my head once more. I pulled up my PipBuck, eyeing the date at the top of my screen. It’d been almost a week and a half since I left home. I looked up from my PipBuck, my face alight in its teal glow as I caught Doodle’s curious eyes.

“You’re from a stable?” Doodle asked through a mouthful of applesauce.

“Yes. I’m from Stable 91,” I replied, nodding solemnly. “It’s not too far from here. Maybe sixty, eighty miles out?”

“Ohhh, so that explains the glowing Pip-thingy around your leg!” she grinned. My eyes glanced at the PipBuck that was wrapped around my right foreleg.

“Oh this little thing?” I asked, raising my leg for her to see.

Doodle nodded, excitedly. “Well what are you doing out here? My mom says that ponies have it good down there.” The filly looked around her. “Better than what we have here in this dump. Mom says ponies who go inside stables never come out.”

Summer Smiles frowned at her, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“For good reason, I think,” I said, rather quietly.

Doodle looked saddened, the ravenous scourging of the applesauce in her bowl slowing to a halt. “Do you miss your home?”

I looked down at my hooves.

'Home …'

“Everyday, Doodle. Everyday.”

She pursed her lips. “Don’t you want to go back?”

I chuckled, softly. Candy Cane and Summer Smiles were watching me silently. “Of course I do! Of course I want to go back.”

“Well what’s stopping you?”

For a moment I felt like I was at the emergency meeting at ’91 again, standing before the Overmare and hundreds of my other stable-mates.

I exhaled a trembling breath. “I can’t just go back. Not yet. Not until I’ve finished what I started out here.”

“Oh …” she trailed off, staring down at her bowl. A heartbeat passed, and her face lit up again. “Well … maybe when you go back, you can take us with you!?”

I stared at her, my mouth suddenly dry. I wouldn’t be going home for a long time.

Summer Smiles clopped her hooves together.

“Now, Doodle, you’re asking too many questions. Red Dawn still hasn’t even finished his applesauce yet.” Doodle groaned, rolling her eyes. “Maybe when he has a full tummy you can ask him some more, okay?”

She nodded, disappointed, and proceeded to finish her breakfast. I figured that I should've done the same. The applesauce was delicious, but my mind was trailing off elsewhere, off to places and to ponies I wished I could see again.

Stable 91 was my home, but that inn was the closest to a home I was sure I’d ever have in the frozen wasteland.

Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt II

Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt II

When we finished, Doodle and Hops – well, Doodle, really, were ready to go and do whatever annoying little children do.

Summer Smiles rose from her chair. “Candy Cane, I’ll get the dishes. Why don’t you go take the girls upstairs and play for a bit?”

Candy Cane’s ears perked, her smile beaming.

“Alright, come on Hops, let’s go upstairs,” she told the filly, levitating her onto her back as Doodle scampered up the steps. Summer Smiles took our bowls and started toward the kitchen behind the bar.

I watched her for a moment as she walked away, hesitating, briefly. Then I chimed in, “Do you need help?”

Summer Smiles laughed, almost dropping the bowls she had carrying on the tray around her neck. “Do stable ponies even do their own dishes?”

“Well, I …”

Her grin grew wider.

“Uh … that’d be a big fat no,” I said sheepishly, as she shifted on her hooves. “It can’t be hard. It’s not like I’m trying to refuel a flux capacitor or something,” I insisted.

Summer Smiles’ gave me an amused smirk. “Well I’ll be damned … a stallion who wants to do dishes.” Summer Smiles motioned me to follow her.

“What, stallions don’t like doing the dishes around here?”

“Eh, speak for yourself, stable boy,” she laughed. Summer Smiles waved her hoof to and fro, saying, “Most I’ve seen would rather just kill and screw things.” She smirked. “I mean, if we’re talking about the Blood Brothers, that’s all they’re good at.” Summer Smiles tugged at a bucket of melting snow on the counter and poured it into the sink. Some of the slush still remained, and it sunk to the bottom of the chilling water.

I chuckled, darkly. “I ran into a few of them on the road to Poneva. They’re a bunch of pricks.” I remembered the unruly gang of red-clad stallions. Pricks. All of them. Summer Smiles was grinning at me again. I snorted, “What, is that your image of what a stallion’s supposed to be like?”

“Well, I never said that,” she began, hoofing me a rag and a bar of soap. “I did say if we were talking about the Blood Brothers.”

I took the rag and wrapped it around my hoof, before dunking one of the bowls into the slushy water. From the moment I walked into her home, I had a feeling that mare didn’t like stallions too much. “Well, say we’re not talking about the Blood Brothers. What are wasteland stallions like?”

She chuckled. “I don’t know everything about what you stable ponies do, but if I got a cap for every stallion that’s tried to rob me or sleep with me, then I’d be the richest damned pony in all of Equestria,” she said, splashing a bowl in the sink before lathering it with soap.

Well Summer Smiles was a rather pretty mare, to be honest. I could see why that’d be the case.

“All the big merc bands and all the big bad baddies are led by mean, pony killing, pony screwing bad boys.”

“You seem pretty passionate about that, Summer Smiles,” I said, cocking my eyebrow.

She chuckled, bitterly. “Sorry, heh. I just grew up with a lot of girls in the family. Not a single boy where I’m from, except my father. He always wanted a son … poor pony never did get one. He always talked about how he wanted one to keep the family’s name running.”

Rinsing off the bowl she’d been working on, she placed it on the counter on top of another rag. “So Sugar Rum became the boy in the house and left to go do merc work because I was meant to run this inn and make cram sandwiches all day long from one stupid traveler to the next.”

She sighed as she began soaping another bowl. “That’s the wasteland life, I guess.”

“You wanted to be a merc too?”

“Goddesses, no,” she sighed. “I just wanted to be out of the house, doing my own thing.” Summer Smiles sighed again. “The only mares I’ve seen who do anything big are Winter Blossom and Avilign Crème. But then you’ve got Red Eye’s power trip in Fillydelphia, Mister Topaz and Deadeye with their raider army, Sterling and his ultra-advanced pre-war tower, Alder Blaze and his huge plantation, and Captain Foxtrot leading one of the most powerful merc bands in Equestria, and blah, blah, blah.”

Summer Smiles pursed her lips, frowning at the sink. “What are Winter Blossom and Avilign Crème if not blips on the radar compared to those bad boys?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure Winter Blossom could attest. She has her own private army, apparently.”

“Yeah? And Sterling has an army of robots and a tower built to withstand a Goddesses’-damned balefire bomb!” Summer Smiles scoffed, “He’s been around since I was a filly, and nopony’s ever bucked down the World Tree’s doors since – well – ever.”

“Well if it was built by Stable-Tec, it’s bound to be bomb proof.” I dunked another bowl in the water. “Back at the stable we had an Overmare. It was pretty traditional, I guess. For a mare to be in charge, I mean. We’ve always had an overmare.”

“That’s how it should be.” She paused for a moment. “That’s how it was back in the day.”

I gave her a bitter laugh. “Well, like some sour old bastard told me in Dusktown, Equestria’s not the same Equestria it was two centuries ago.” I sighed, “Being out here for two weeks has made me realize it’s in no shape to return to it, ever.”

She nodded, regretfully. “It’s the sad truth. We’ve got monsters wandering the streets, pony or not, and no sun or moon or sky. This place is fucked … and everypony knows it. That’s ‘cus everypony’s been fucked by the wasteland in one way or another ... ”

The mare noticed that I’d stopped scrubbing. I let out a breath I was keeping in with a sigh. She was right about that.

Summer Smiles nodded at me, knowingly. She didn’t even have to ask about what I was thinking. Grunting, she dunked the large cauldron she used to make the applesauce and started scrubbing. “What was it like in your stable?”

I thought for a moment. “It was ... different … better. It was good there. We had it good at ’91.”

“Had?” she asked me. I nodded, solemnly. “I’m sorry about your stable,” Summer Smiles said, softly, “It must’ve been better beneath the earth than up here getting picked off by carrion.”

I told her about daily life in the stable, how we had an orchard and hydroponic gardens, schools, and all the good things you’d never find above ground.

Summer Smiles gazed hopelessly at the freezing water that sloshed around her hooves.

“I wish I could give Doodle and Hops a better life. Better than … this,” she said, looking around her. “When Doodle called this place a dump … she was right. This place is a dump. This entire wasteland is a dump. It’s a miracle my sister and I’ve been able to keep them from swimming in shit for so long. Usually kids their age lose their innocence earlier than that. They don’t know how to shoot a gun, they don’t know how to fight to kill - hell, they don’t even know how to fight …” Summer Smiles shook her head, swearing under her breath as she flipped the cauldron over and began lathering its outer surface with soap.

“My father was a stable-dweller. He came from Stable 95, a few hundred miles or so out of Poneva. He told me the same things you told me. You didn’t know how to fight or kill in places like those … there just wasn’t any need for such horrible things. Me? I’ve always wanted to live in one. Sugar Rum has always wanted to live in one.” Summer Smiles gazed at me earnestly. “I know Doodle wants to live in one too.”

I finished with the smaller dishes and placed them on the counter. “Ah, Doodle and her questions ...”

“She wasn’t joking when she asked you if you’d take us with you back to your Stable, Red Dawn,” Summer Smiles giggled.

I snorted, chuckling softly. “There aren’t that many ponies I’ve seen out here that want something better. Everyone else I’ve ran into in Poneva was just completely fine freezing out in the shit-stained snow.”

“She’s an adventurous little filly,” Summer Smiles giggled.

I snorted, an amused look stretching across my face. “She’s definitely something else. She nearly stomped in my rib cage this morning.” We both laughed as we finished the last of the dishes.

Summer Smiles sighed, rinsing a pot clean, her smile fading away. “I just wish I could make it happen … those girls deserve better than this.” She looked at me with troubled eyes. “A lot of ponies do.”

“There just aren’t that many ponies who want to do something about it,” I said, leaning against the counter as she finished in the sink.

There was a long, silent pause. She pulled the plug at the bottom of the sink and the dirty water began to swirl down the drain.

“Candy Cane …” she murmured. My ears perked. “Tell me again ... why are you traveling with Candy Cane?”

“I need her. I need her help. She knows this city and how to survive in this wasteland better than I do,” I replied. “I wouldn’t last a few days out in the snow by myself.”

Summer Smiles nodded, resting her hooves on the counter as she stared contemplatively at the tiled wall above the sink. “You sure about that? You look like a pony who can take care of himself.”

“No … I made it here by chance, by pure luck. I’ve nearly died four times now. I can’t do this alone.”

“Neither can she,” the mare said. “She needs you as much as you need her.” Summer Smiles turned her eyes low. “When she came here two days ago, she looked at me differently. I was a stranger to her again … the things she’s been through, Red Dawn … they’ve changed her. She isn’t the same mare I saw so many years ago. She’s changed so much.”

“How long have you known her?” I asked.

“Sugar Rum picked her up half dead in the snow five years ago. Brought her back here and we nursed her back to health. Cane lived with us for almost a year. The fillies loved her, Sugar Rum loved her … I … loved her. Then she disappeared and never came back.

“We had a long talk yesterday, to catch up on the time we lost. She’s changed, Red Dawn. She’s harder, more calloused … more scarred. This wasteland … it ruins people. It ruined Candy Cane. She needs help. And you and me? We’re all she’s got, whether you know her as well as I do or not.”

I gulped and hung my head. When my friends stepped out the stable doors, we too were responsible for each other. But I let Amber Fields down. I let Star Glint down. I was afraid to lose another pony I cared about to that nightmare, let alone Candy Cane who’d already lost so much.

I thought back to when we were praying earlier, and the brooding look she had on her face. It was as if she couldn’t stand the mere mentioning of the Princesses, let alone pray to them.

Summer Smiles stared at me, a sliver of hope glowing in her eyes.

“You know how to use a gun?”

I nodded. Well, sort of. I was a terrible shot without SATS. I couldn’t lead moving targets for shit.

“Good. She’s like family to me, Red Dawn. With my sister dead, she and the girls are all I have left. You’re traveling with her now, so keep her safe. She doesn’t have that many friends anymore. You and I are the closest she’ll probably get … and I think you’re a good pony.” I looked down at my hooves, wanting quite badly to disagree with her. “I don’t think I’ve seen any since I met Candy Cane,” she murmured.

The mare pushed my chin up with a hoof so that we could see eye to eye. “You keep her safe,” Summer Smiles repeated, “Or she’ll disappear like she did two years ago.”

When we finished, I was left to my own devices. I sat in my room, inspecting my gear, my clean sets of jumpsuits and my security barding, my pistol, and whatever ammunition I had left. As I studied my pistol, trying to remember how to take it apart to clean it, I heard giggling in the room down the hall.

I stuck my head outside, and looked through the cracked open door at the end of the hall. I saw the pirouetting shadows of Candy Cane and the two fillies as they laughed and danced and enjoyed the innocence Candy Cane had lost.

Those two fillies were the only joy she had left in her life. Because everything else had been wrenched away from her and replaced with terror and suffering. But that was the wasteland. And the wasteland was everything but a better life, or a happy place, or a place to call home.

I returned to inspecting my pistol, but I left the door open, their warm laughter echoing down the hall, and into the room, and through my ears.

*

After dinner, I tried sleeping, but found that I couldn’t. I guess those forty-eight hours of beauty sleep rejuvenated everything but my horn. I rolled around in bed, staring at the ceiling, and listening to the wind howl outside my window. Everyone else was asleep. Summer Smiles, the girls, and Candy Cane. Or so I thought.

Among the lonely, frozen wind that moaned outside, I could hear, faintly, the sounds of pots banging downstairs. I closed my eyes once more and tried to get some shuteye.

'Wait.'

My eyes shot open. There was someone downstairs, my body trembled with a cold sweat.

I cracked my door open and squinted through the darkness; everyone’s doors were closed. Everyone else was asleep.

Someone was downstairs. Someone was inside the inn.

I stumbled to my bedside dresser in almost complete darkness and pulled out my pistol and its holster, wrapping it around my neck. I stepped a hoof out the door and I saw that the lights were off downstairs. I gulped, flipping the safety and chambering a round. Gun drawn, I started down the steps, my mouthbit clenched between my teeth.

My eyes darted to my EFS. For good measure, I entered SATS and scanned the area in front of me. I bit my lower lip. Negative hostiles. The only blips on my EFS were the four ponies upstairs. But then again, my EFS couldn’t tell me who was at what elevation …

'But … who?' I wondered, 'Who the hell was down here with me?'

Frowning, I reached the dining area and beamed the bar with my PipBuck’s teal glow. At the far end of the room, yellow shafts of light spilled out of the kitchen’s doorway and into the darkness of the empty bar. With my mouth bit still clenched, I approached cautiously as the person inside the kitchen continued to rummage through the cabinets.

I stacked up around the corner, my heart pounding in my chest, ready to pump someone with lead. I gulped. And spun into the doorway.

“Candy Cane?” I gasped, narrowing my eyes at the mare whose head was jammed into the innards of the cabinet under the sink.

She eeped, jumped, and banged her head beneath the sink with a heavy thump. Candy Cane moaned and wrenched her head out of the cabinet and fell flat on her flank, rubbing her head painfully as her eyes darted toward me.

“Red Dawn? What … what are you doing down here?” she asked, eyeing the pistol clenched between my teeth.

“I - uh, I was about to ask you the same thing,” I stuttered, relieved that I hadn’t stitched her up with bullets.

Candy Cane groaned, wincing as she rubbed her aching head.

“Shit … sorry about that ... I thought someone broke in or something,” I said under breath, holstering my pistol.

The mare thought me crazy.

“That door’s got a three inch metal bar over it, a chain, and a deadbolt. Not even I can pick through that. Well, maybe the deadbolt, but the rest …” she trailed off. “You’d need a minotaur or a bomb to take that door down.”

I chuckled sheepishly. “Well that’s reassuring. I can sleep at night without being afraid someone’d rob or put a knife through me.”

I flipped my pistol’s safety and holstered it, and held out to her a hoof. She stared at me for a moment, a thin smile creasing her lips before she took my hoof with hers and I pulled her to her fours.

“Thanks,” she breathed.

“You going to be okay?” I cocked my head at her as she rubbed what I hoped wasn't a bump on her head. “I’m sorry I scared you, I didn’t know you were down here.”

“It’s okay … I didn’t think anypony would still be awake at this time,” she confessed, tapping her forehooves together.

I glanced at my PipBuck’s screen. 0221 hours. I narrowed my eyes at her once more.

“Seriously, what are you doing down here by yourself?”

The mare fixed her gaze at the cabinets around her, avoiding mine.

“I was just organizing the pots, the dishes, and the silverware,” she replied in an even, casual tone.

I wasn’t sure how much narrower my eyes could get.

“At … at this time of the night?”

She shrugged, staring at the tiled floor.

“I don’t see why not,” Candy Cane replied, tersely, not meeting my eyes. In quite a hurry, she trotted to a cabinet and the sounds of pots being dragged across wood and tile returned to invade my eardrums. “I thought the blizzard would drown out the noise.” She glanced over her shoulder and smirked. “Guess I was wrong.”

I snorted, “Heh, well, I’m usually just a light sleeper.”

Candy Cane grunted as she pulled something heavy beneath the sink. Exhaling and wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead, she sat up once more.

“You and I both,” she sighed, languidly. Candy Cane gave me another thin smirk. “Though you were sleeping like a baby when I was checking on you these last two days.”

I gave her an awkward chuckle, rubbing my leg absent-mindedly. She snickered, softly, “I even had to flip you over onto your back to put a towel on your head, because you’d rolled onto your belly.”

I frowned at her. I couldn’t remember that. But then again, she’d apparently washed me from head to hoof … and I couldn’t remember that either.

“Well, so much for being a light sleeper then,” I grinned, rolling eyes. “Was my fever really that bad?”

Her expression turned serious.

“Unfortunately, it was. I’ve never seen anypony with this bad of a burnout before … usually unicorns know when to stop.” She sighed. “But you? You don’t seem like the kind of pony who’d give up so easily.”

“Giving up is never an option for me.”

“That much is evident,” she murmured, looking away for a moment. “You wouldn’t give up on my collar, either.” Candy Cane sighed and turned towards me, leaning against the counter. “You pulled through it, for the most part.” She cocked her head and me, noticing the way I teetered back and forth as I stood idle. “For the most part. You still need to get some more rest.”

She was right. That whole ‘someone broke into the inn’ thing made me lightheaded and somewhat out of breath.

“I’m completely fine,” I claimed, holding my chin up high. But I too noticed the way she teetered back and forth on her own hooves. She looked about as worn out as I did when we first got there. If not … worse. “What about you? It’s two in the morning. Shouldn’t you be getting rest too?”

Candy Cane went silent, her expression overtaken by an intangible desolateness that haunted her steel gray eyes.

“Rest. No. I don’t …” She snapped, “I’m not sleepy.” Her eyelids fluttered closed as she rubbed at the bags under her eyes. “Not sleepy. Yet.”

I pursed my lips. ‘You sure look like it,’ I wanted to say.

I stared at her for a long while, and she did the same at me. But a yawn forced its way out of my lips and broke our eye contact. Somehow, she looked relieved. But when I blinked, any indication of that relief was no longer there, replaced by a blank-faced, far-away-from-here look that made the hairs on my coat stand on end.

Something was bothering her. Though I didn’t understand what. She was a free mare, she had her friends back, the fillies, hell, she had a bed to sleep in. But … there wasn’t there. She was someplace else. That kitchen was a whole ‘nother world to her.

I took a few baby steps towards her, close enough to touch the mare with my hoof. I reached out, and she flinched.

Biting my lower lip, I asked her, “Candy Cane … are you okay?”

She nodded absent mindedly. Candy Cane lurched away from me like an unoiled machine, and returned to her lonesome busywork.

“I’m okay,” she muttered, her voice as cold as the frozen earth outside. “I’m … okay.”

I watched her work. She shuffled around on her hinds as she rummaged through the cabinets above the counter, levitating out dishes and replacing them inside in organized stacks.

“Do you … do you need help?” I tried, nervously.

Her busy hooves paused, but she didn’t even spare me a glance.

“I’m okay.”

A few seconds passed as I watched her in silence.

'Alrighty then,' I thought to myself. I started out the door, but stopped to look over my shoulder one last time. She was still doing her thing, organizing the cabinets as the blizzard shook, rattled, and moaned outside. Candy Cane didn’t turn around once to see if I was still there.

I returned upstairs to my bed and closed my eyes. I drifted off into sleep for a few minutes, but something was chipping at the walls of my half lucid consciousness. I rolled over and found out that those few minutes had actually been a few hours.

Four o’clock in the morning.

My ears perked.

Drowning beneath the howling wind, and the clamor of the banging kitchenware, I could hear, distantly, the sounds of someone sobbing downstairs.

*

Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt III

*

Dew Drops screamed.

“DON’T STOP FOR ANYTHING!”

The chillingly brutal wasteland wind howled past our faces as we tore through the snow with our frantic hooves. I couldn’t see them – the monsters that were hounding after us. But I could hear them, barking, snarling, howling into the darkness like animals thirsting for our blood.

They were ponies. But hardly ponies at all. The scorched brush flattened beneath them as they gave chase …

There was nothing else we could do. Nothing, but run.

Their inequine cackles echoed from every direction through the gnarled black trees. They were closing in. Closer. Closer. The path before our hooves narrowed between the gangly scorched trunks like a suffocating black tunnel that both of us knew we couldn’t escape.

Dew Drops' death flashed before my eyes.

I knew how it was going to end.

Tracers lanced through the air. Bullets screamed past us and kicked up showers of snow across the drifts. Their mindless giggles and savage barks demanded a taste of our blood.

They wouldn’t stop. Not until they massacred us all.

Beneath it all, permeating my thoughts – suffocating beneath that horrific cacophony were the shrieks of my dying friends. Their deaths rippled through my conscience like a drop of blood plummeting into a still pond.

I could still hear them screaming … every single one their tormented screams in the distance as Dew Drops and I ran for our lives … because we couldn’t save theirs.

Because I couldn’t.

They had been torn to pieces. Soon. We would join them.

The snow erupted in front of us.

They’d been waiting. Waiting for us the entire time. Three pairs of forehooves wrapped around me, their cold flesh curling around my legs.

“NO!”

I tried jerking away from them. But muscles tore and joints snapped out of place as they hurled me to the ground. I opened my mouth to scream, only for a hoof to come crashing into my skull.

Stars exploded in my eyes. My ears rang and everything around me faded in and out of blackness.

I blinked the darkness away … and stared up into the mindless, black-veined sclera of a grinning monster pony. He laughed in my face. I writhed and kicked helplessly as they held me down. My eyes darted down my chest – and I watched as a psycho pony sunk her chilling, broken teeth into the flesh of my hindleg.

A bloody grin stretched across her lips. She looked me in the eye and told me I was a dead pony. I screamed. I screamed my throat raw. She tore into me again and again, as the onlooking psychos cackled gleefully at my agonized cries.

“No! RED!” Dew Drops shrieked as she leveled her carbine. Her horn glowed to pull the trigger – and somepony swatted the weapon away from her.

My limbs slackened in resignation.

Teeth. Teeth. More broken teeth. I felt them ripping into me like I was nothing but a haunch of meat tossed into a pen of bloodletters. I sobbed through a mouthful of blood, opening my eyes for a moment. I watched as Dew Drops wrestled a psycho pony to the snow.

“DD!” I wailed after her, my voice hoarse. She turned to face me. I met her eyes … and I knew … and she knew … that one of us was going to die. I could see it. The horror – the anguish flashing across her face –

Just as the pony beneath her slammed her back into the snow.

I clenched my eyes shut.

It wasn’t going to be her. It wasn’t going to be her.

Not. Again.

I cried out, willing my bloody limbs to life.

The psycho ponies snarled at me.

I snarled back.

I swung my horn viciously into somepony’s eye and ripped out of her in a gory spurt of blood and vitreous fluid. I swung my head to the right, tearing it across another’s throat.

I clenched my eyes shut a second before his blood splashed across my face. Blind, I kicked out my legs and felt my hooves connect with bone.

Crack – and a pony with a broken neck flopped into the snow. Bathed in blood, I cried out weakly, and scrambled desperately across the snow to Dew Drops like an injured animal.

I reached out with a trembling hoof – and I felt my momentum come to a jarring halt. Someone yanked my tail. I screamed for my life – for Dew Drops, my hooves scrambling uselessly across the snow as they dragged me away into the darkness.

It was the pony with the bloody eye. She laughed at me, reveling in the futility of my struggle.

I heard someone scream – and then a sick crunch. Dew Drops snarled over the cratered skull of a dead pony, blood and bits of pink gore running down her face. With a dull flash, she tore a rock out of the snow.

“YOU LET HIM GO! YOU MOTHER … MOTHER FUCKERS!” Dew Drops shrieked, tears freezing against her cheeks.

She hurled it at the pony behind me – caving in her skull. With a gurgle and a gout of blood, the psycho mare let go.

Dew Drops dove for me, her hooves outstretched.

I met her tearing gray eyes for a single, fleeting moment as both our hooves touched.

Then someone bucked her in the chest.

She uttered a scream as though she had died a thousand times over … a shriek that should have ended the world. Her horn flickered as she fell back, and I felt her magic swirl around me.

But a grinning psycho pony swung a hoof into her horn. I saw it in Dew Drops’ eyes. Her despair.

Dew Drops’ magic winked out.

And I slammed my face into the snow.

A knife sank into my chest. I felt my insides tear apart as it twisted and ripped out of me. Then agony.

“Red!” she wailed, tears and blood running down her face as she rose to her trembling hooves.

I stared at her across the snow, lying in a growing pool of my blood. I could feel my door closing. But as the psychos clustered around me, I watched another door open.

It was her only chance.

“DD … I love you …” I gurgled through a mouthful of blood.

I clenched my jaw and wailed into night, “RUN! RUN! RUN AND DON’T LOOK BACK!” I screamed with all the energy I had left as the psycho ponies gutted me and laid waste to my dying flesh.

She took one last look at me and did all she could do.

She ran.

I watched as she disappeared into the night.

As I lay there dying, their hooves and their teeth tearing me apart, I stared blankly into the night sky and whispered her name through my bloody, pale lips …

“Dew Drops …”

'Dew Drops …'

“Dew Drops …” I whispered feverishly, sweat pouring down my face.

A mare stood over me as I trembled beneath the covers, writhing in nightmare. Her head was bowed and her face was expressionless, shadowed in the dim light that crept into the room from my half-opened door.

I felt her gentle hoof against my forehead and my livid flesh stilled.

Candy Cane’s horn glowed in the darkness of my room and the cool touch of a moistened towel came to rest upon my forehead. My eyes fluttered open for the briefest of moments just as she left the room.

I sighed, softly, and drifted back into a calm, dreamless sleep.

*

The next day, I woke up earlier than everybody else. Starting down the hall outside my door, I could hear Summer Smiles snoring.

I neared Candy Cane's door and stopped for a moment. I had woken up that morning with a wet towel on my forehead. I didn’t know how many hours ago that was, but chips of frost had flaked away from the towel as I pulled it off my face.

Strangely enough, I remembered her leaving my room with great clarity … more so than the entirety of the nightmare that was still haunting me even as I stood awake. In that dream, I was falling into the darkness of death until I felt the cool touch of reality bring me back to life. It seemed like she’d saved me from certain death more than once already.

Pressing my ear against her door, I found that her room was strangely quiet. Every now and then I'd hear someone rolling around on a bed, the mattress’ springs squeaking and her blankets ruffling. I wondered if she was awake … if she stayed awake that whole night. I wondered how long she stayed in my room, watching me.

I shivered. That was kind of creepy. But nonetheless reassuring … reassuring that I had someone to watch over me. It had been weeks since I had felt that same sense of security, from my mother, and from the mare that I loved …

Dew Drops.

I took her place in that dream. A deeper part of me wished that she escaped that night and that I stayed behind. She was a better mare. A better pony than I knew I’d ever be.

But instead of her, I was the one walking down those stairs.

Down there, for about half an hour, I waited for Summer Smiles, who I knew would be the next to wake. When I heard hoofsteps clopping down the stairs, Summer Smiles was pleasantly surprised.

"Red Dawn? You're up early,” she yawned, running a hoof through her bed-headed blonde mane.

For some strange reason, I felt more awake and ready to tackle the day than I ever was when I lived in ’91.

"You sleep well?"

"Like a baby," I replied with a lopsided smile. I watched as she trotted to the kitchen, letting out a long, drawn out yawn.

The kitchen.

I remembered the pots. The wind moaning outside. And Candy Cane …

I wondered if I wasn’t the only one.

"Summer Smiles ... did you hear anything last night?"

She paused for a moment, thinking.

"Uh … I don’t think so? Why?" she asked, puzzled.

I opened my mouth, but hesitated. I didn’t want to assume anything about someone else’s business … I was the stranger there, after all.

But I knew that she didn’t choose that time of the night or that blizzard to muffle her busywork. No. The pots and pans were just another layer of noise to drown out something else.

"Are you going to make breakfast?" I asked her first.

Summer Smiles nodded.

"Maybe I can help you … but I need to talk to you about something.” I cocked my head at the kitchen. “Maybe over … the stove?"

The mare lifted a brow at me, and waved me forward with a hoof.

In the kitchen, Summer Smiles chose to warm several cans of pre-war food. When she assigned me to pot-watching duty, I was relieved to find that watching beans boil was the easiest thing I did in weeks. But Goddesses, did it smell terrible.

Summer Smiles studied my expression curiously as she leaned against the counter. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"

I drew in a breath, and slowly exhaled. “I … heard something in here last night: Pots and pans banging together. I thought it was the blizzard shaking something outside, but …” I trailed off. I looked up from the beans, and studied her expression.

Summer Smiles’ head was cocked, and her lips were pursed. She eyed the beans as I stirred them.

I cleared my throat and continued. “Went downstairs to see what was going on, and – guess who I found in the kitchen?”

She knew the answer before I even asked it.

“Candy Cane.”

She nodded to herself as she leaned against the counter, forelegs folded across her chest.

"I was expecting she'd do that.”

"What do you mean?"

Summer Smiles sighed, lowering her eyes to the floor.

"She's been doing that for the last two days now. Up and about at two in the morning or later, just ... just doing her thing."

My brows furrowed as I gave her another lopsided half-smile.

"The ... the same thing?" I imagined her coming downstairs every night to repeat the same mindless task over and over again – like a ghost that didn’t know she was dead.

Now that was creepy.

But Summer Smiles shook her head, clenching her jaw.

"The day you two arrived, she scrubbed clean all the tables downstairs. The next night, she dusted every piece of furniture in the inn."

I chuckled, "Heh ... not so much of a dump anymore, I guess.."

She just glared at me. Another awkward stupid half-smile stretched across my lips. 'Tough crowd,' I thought.

"On that same night, she poured together all the leftover vodka into one bottle and left it on one of the racks." Summer Smiles sighed, scratching her mane as I eyed her, worriedly. "Couldn't find the damn thing the next day."

"Does she even sleep?"

Summer Smiles shrugged.

"If she does, then she must be sleeping with both eyes open."

At breakfast, we all sat around the same table and prayed. A prayer during which she said not a single word. This time, her silence was deafening. She was wearing her mask again. The same one she wore when I talked to her in the kitchen last night. She smiled briefly as I passed her a bowl of beans.

You couldn’t have been able to tell just by looking at her, but she was hiding something beneath all those smiles.

Every now and then I’d study her face, and I’d see it – like someone banging against a door and she was standing on the other side. Then she’d look the other way. She’d lock the door and try to walk away with a gentle, polite smile.

Especially around the fillies. They kept her from opening that door – distracted long enough for her to ignore the banging outside. I wondered if I’d ever know what was trying to get inside.

I barely knew her, and she barely knew me. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know her. To know what was eating her up from the inside out.

She’d lived in that terrible shithole of a wasteland her entire life.

Her story must’ve been more interesting than mine.

*

Left to my own devices once more, I returned to my room and began furnishing it with my belongings. I figured I might as well, since it was going to be my home for as long as I was out there in the northern wastes. Leaning against the lamp on top of my bedside drawer were my photos.

On one side of the lamp was my family: my mother, Morning Dawn, and my father, Red Roan. On another side were my friends: Amber Fields, Star Glint, Lightning Twirl, Box Cutter, and Dew Drops. I stared at both for a long while. It hurt to be homesick.

I forced myself to look away, before putting what few belongings I had in the cabinets and rearranging the furniture to my liking. Within half an hour, the room looked almost like my room back at ’91.

Almost. But not really.

I let out a somewhat contented sigh, and returned to my bags, looking for Dew Drops’ scarf. I was hoping I could hide it in a safe place where it couldn’t get any dirtier. My bedside drawer was the first place I thought of. It’d be close to me even when I was asleep.

I blinked. It wasn’t there. I stared at the open saddlebag, my heart fluttering in my chest. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t …

A thin line of sweat streamed down my face. I rummaged through my bags frantically, digging my hooves through them. I emptied its innards onto the floor, and turned the bag inside out. It wasn’t there. I threw the bag across the room.

I scrambled across the floorboards, dropping to my knees and searching frantically beneath my bed. I rifled through drawers - I yanked open one of the cabinet doors and barely noticed as it crashed to the floor beneath me.

Dew Drops’ scarf was still nowhere to be found. I stifled my panicking breaths, trying to remain composed as a trembling hoof came to wipe the cold sweat off my brow.

For the next ten minutes, I barreled across my room. I tore off my bedsheets. I overturned furniture. I peered through the cracks in the floorboards.

Nothing.

As I brooded there in silence, I thought of all the places I could’ve left it. My bed? In the drawers? In my bags?

'No!'

I nearly killed someone the last time I lost it. I tapped a hoof incessantly against the floor.

I was going to lose it again if I didn’t find Dew Drops’ scarf – the only part of her that I had left. A low growl escaped my lips as my hoof scratched frantically against the floorboards.

My ears perked. And I froze. My eyes widened.

The howling wind outside my window warped and decayed like a signal dying away into static. I began to hear them again. Their psychotic laughter.

'Hahahahaha … hahahahaha!'

My eyes darted across the bloody snow.

'You lost her again.'

“WHERE IS IT!?”

Hooves knocked outside my door. The nightmares shattered around me like glass, and I found myself back in my room, the chilling floorboards creaking beneath me as I stumbled to the door and parted it open.

Candy Cane’s cool grays peeked through the crack in the darkness of my room.

“What’s going on?” she asked me, blinking.

I chewed on my lower lip as I widened the gap between us.

“I was just looking for my scarf – I can’t find my scarf,” I said frantically, my sanity trying to compose itself.

The mare tapped her hoof against the floorboards and looked away, nervously.

“I … I washed your scarf last night.” She seemed to ignore the strangeness in my stare. “I’m the one who got it dirty, after all.” Candy Cane’s horn glowed with a silvery light and the pristine blue and white fabrics of Dew Drops’ scarf levitated before my eyes.

I nearly fell to the floor and kissed her hooves.

“C-Candy Cane … y-you –” I stuttered, my eyes widening as I took the scarf into my hooves and felt its soft fabric against my cheek. “I –”

“No need to thank me,” Candy Cane said, softly. “I saw how sad you looked when you found out I used it as a tourniquet, and I couldn’t bring myself to let you wear it like that.”

I wrapped it around my neck, relieved.

I felt whole. A part of me had been returned. It couldn’t completely fill the void that Dew Drops left behind, but having it with me provided me a place to rest … a place to contemplate a past that I so very badly wanted to relive.

I sighed, the light returning to my eyes as I felt Dew Drops’ warm scarf around my neck.

“Can I come in?” I heard someone ask. I realized that my eyes were closed. They fluttered open and it was Candy Cane.

I looked over my shoulder and found that my room was a mess again. I eyed the broken cabinet in the back … Summer Smiles’ cabinet ... one of its doors hanging precariously off of one intact hinge.

'Shit.' I was going to have to fix that.

I gulped. “I was just cleaning up,”

Candy Cane held up a hoof.

“It’s fine. I just wanted to check on you.”

I frowned at her. She was wearing her mask again.

“Check on me?” I asked, curiously.

Candy Cane leaned against the door frame.

“Your horn, Red Dawn.”

“Oh … right. That thing,” I murmured, swinging the door open for her.

She trotted inside and motioned me to sit.

I took a seat at the foot of my bed as she studied the useless horn atop my head. “You never did tell me how you burned it out. I don’t remember you levitating anything heavy that day.”

“I don't know,” I sighed, scratching my head. "It just happened. But that wasn’t the first time that I've been burned out, recently.”

Candy Cane cocked her head at me. “What do you mean? When was the last time this happened to you?”

I shrugged, wincing as something throttled the grey matter inside my skull. “About four days after I left my stable, I think.”

Her muzzle scrunched up. ‘What?’ Candy Cane mouthed, narrowing her eyes at me. She wasn't sure if she heard that right. “That can’t be possible. How did you ... how did you burn out twice?"

“I’m sure a lot of unicorns burn out more than once in their lives,” I shrugged.

Candy Cane shook her head. “No, I mean, how did you burn out twice – consecutively?”

“Oh.” I scratched my mane. “Burned myself out while … digging through the snow,” I added, vaguely. I remembered digging those graves for my friends as vividly as I could recall their deaths. If Night Sky hadn’t stopped me, I would’ve joined them that night.

I sighed, closing my eyes.

“Then I burned myself out again at the Scullion two or three days later – can’t remember.”

Candy Cane’s eyes widened.

"So, within the course of a little over a week, you burned yourself out – twice?”

“One plus one is two.” I poked my tongue out of my lips and gave my skull two knocks. "Twice."

She tapped her chin, staring off into space. “How in Equestria did you recover so quickly after the first that you were able to burn out a second time?”

“I didn’t. Not really. Someone gave me this drug called ‘Sparkle’.” She frowned at me, biting her lower lip. “It’s supposed to make my magic stronger or something. He said it could bring my magic back.”

“I know what Sparkle does,” Candy Cane snapped. She looked away, muttering as she shook her head. “That explains a lot. That explains why you were out for so long. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two to sleep off a burnout.” The mare narrowed her eyes at me. “How much did you drink?”

I dug my muzzle through my bags and yanked out the empty vial that had contained the violet concoction.

She stretched out a foreleg and tapped the glass cylinder between my teeth, her eyes widening with disbelief. “Y-you drank all that?” she gasped. I just stared at her uncomfortably. “That’s not …” I heard her murmur as I gave her a blank stare. “No wonder you were out for so long …

“Do you even know the side effects of Sparkle?” Another blank stare. “That pony didn’t even tell you?” The mare glared at me as she waited for a response. “That fool … you don’t know a thing about Sparkle, do you?” she murmured.

“Not much. It tasted pretty good, though,” I said, chuckling wryly. “You tell me."

Candy Cane tapped her chin, muttering to herself. "Pyrexia, dementia, disequilibrium, degeneration of the neocortex –”

I frowned at her with empty eyes, my mouth parted slightly open.

She reiterated, this time, in Laymare’s terms. “Fever, insanity, imbalance, loss of brain cells, and …” Candy Cane paused for a moment. “And …” she craned her neck towards me. “… and shrinking of the scrotum,” she intoned, dreadfully. My muzzle scrunched up, terrified. I wasn’t quite sure if she meant the last part … 'She didn’t, did she?'

I stared down between my legs, terror skittering across my features.

“It carries with it a whole slew of bad things. You can't be loopy like this if we're going to be traveling together.” She folded her legs across her chest, scolding me, “You can get me killed. Worse, you can get yourself killed."

“Thanks for the science lesson, doc.”

“I’m a nurse, Red Dawn.”

I sighed. “Yeah, yeah …”

She reached out once more and prodded the useless thing that poked out of my mane. I groaned, shaking my head.

“Drugs only cover up the symptoms,” she said, frowning at me.

"It fixed me up for a while, though,” I insisted, scratching my mane. My magic had felt a hundred times more potent after drinking that potion. I probably could’ve hurled a table at Grifter, if I tried.

She just shook her head. “Of course it did, but not for long, obviously,” she sighed. “Sparkle was a battlefield chem made for battle mages that were drained to zero, ninety percent of the time, " she told me, as if lecturing a small child. I felt like I was in elementary school again - like a sleepy school colt sitting in a history class, listening to the teacher drone on and on about something he didn’t care too much about.

And the volume of her voice was summoning a painful throb from the depths of my beaten up cranium.

She folded her legs across her chest. "You can’t cast combat spells, can you?”

I scoffed, “Well, I can levitate things. I ... was pretty good at it."

"Red … please.” She lectured me some more, “If you want to be a unicorn again, you need sleep, not a chem fix. Battle mages were conditioned to take this drug; they were basically addicted to it – they drank it like water.”

“Well, they must’ve had balls the size of marbles.”

Candy Cane rolled her eyes at me and groaned.

“I thought you were here to check up on me,” I whined, “Not teach me about how dash is trash.”

She sighed, staring off into space in irritation.

“Sure, hugs – not drugs. They taught me that in junior high.”

Candy Cane snapped, “Then why did you take Sparkle?”

“Because I needed to get over my burnout!”

I flinched irritably as Candy Cane spoke, her voice shaking my headache from its slumber.

“A burnout is a reaction to the threat of mental exhaustion – it’s supposed to stop you from actually burning out everything you have. All Sparkle is, is an inhibitor that prevents neurotransmitters from inducing that response, tricking your brain into thinking it still has more to give. But all you end up doing is exacerbating your condition.”

“Right,” I snorted, jerking my right forehoof back and forth. “Exacerbating.” I sighed, facehoofing. “Are we done here?”

Candy Cane clenched her jaw and glared at me.

“No.”

The mare touched a hoof to my forehead and pursed her lips, muttering under her breath. I rolled my eyes and turned my gaze to the floorboards.

"Any word on the Orphanage?" I pried impatiently, trying to change the subject.

Candy Cane just sighed, "You aren't going anywhere until you can use your horn again, so you need to just sleep for now.”

“It’s hard to sleep when you’re running out of time ..." I said, gazing at her with my bloodshot eyes. I looked away and muttered, loud enough for my own ears, "And trying to keep your entire stable from dying …”

I felt her grasp my shoulders with her hooves.

"You need to know when to stop, Red Dawn.” She let go and folded her legs across her chest. "You can't just be 'digging' through the snow when you're exhausted … or the next thing you know, you'll be digging your own grave."

I blinked. I felt an icy blade go through my chest.

"DIGGING MY OWN GRAVE?" I screamed, so loud that Candy Cane backed away two steps. I stood to my four hooves.

"Since I left my home, I’ve had to dig six graves - one for each poor bastard that's stepped foot in this shit hole," I growled, sucking back in the tears that threatened to well out of my eyes. My voice trembled, "The only reason why I’m still here is because I chose to finish what they started!" I narrowed my eyes at her. "So please … Candy Cane … I know when to stop. Until then, there's an empty grave in Dusktown with my name on it.”

Candy Cane just stared at me in solemn quietude.

“Celestia fucking forbid I burnout a third time! I'd do anything to save my home … and if I need to suffer a little burnout or two, then I will.” I looked her in the eye. “I’d do it again if I had to.”

“Even if it kills you?” she scoffed. "You think pumping yourself with drugs is going to save your stable?"

I gulped a lump down my throat, and lowered my voice.

“It saved you, Candy Cane!" I hissed, jabbing a hoof at her. "I wouldn’t have been able to save you from that fucking whorehouse if I hadn’t taken Sparkle. I couldn’t get over the fence so I had to use my magic to lift up the backdoor’s latch through a hole in the wire." I leaned in, uttering in a dark tone, "If I hadn't used Sparkle, you'd still be a slave."

Candy Cane clenched her jaw and looked away, glaring into the darkness.

“Just remember …” she whispered. “When we’re out there, I can save you when you hurt … but I can’t save you from hurting yourself, Red Dawn.”

She let those words sink in as the seconds ticked by in silence. Then the mare fixed her eyes on my horn once more.

She asked in a quiet, even tone, “Have you tried levitating anything lately?”

I shook my head, broodingly. She gave me a look that told me she knew my answer before she even asked.

And yet Candy Cane pulled a bobby pin out of her peacoat, anyways. “Here, try lifting this,” she said, holding it out to me.

I gulped, and hesitated. I eyed her dubiously, but her expression didn’t change as she held her foreleg out with her bobby pin resting upon her hoof.

With a long and drawn out sigh, I focused upon the tiny little bobby pin. It took a lot out of me, but, to my feverish amazement, I managed to swirl a faint red field around it and lift it a few inches into the air.

I winced. My horn sputtered and sparked, fire slowly creeping through my veins – and I let myself go. I exhaled sharply, and my concentration abated. The pin pinged against the floorboards.

“That was … difficult,” I murmured, wiping away a bead of sweat that formed above my brow.

Her horn glowed as she plucked the pin off the floor.

“You need to rest more. Try taking a nap again. Your brain has yet to completely recover.”

“If those’re the doctor’s orders …” I muttered, sinking back onto my bed.

She opened her mouth to correct me, but decided not to.

“Just … just try get better, Red Dawn,” she said, starting towards the doorway.

I nodded, closing my eyes.

This time, I turned the tables on her just as she reached the door.

“Yeah, you too,” I shot back.

Candy Cane paused mid-step, standing there for a few heartbeats. Her haunted expression turned slowly over her shoulder, her mask darkened by a bob of her candy cane mane as the light from the hall fell upon her face.

Then she turned, swung the door open, and left without another sound.

*

Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt IV

*

Later that day, I was trotting down the stairs when I heard ponies shouting in the bar. I hugged the railing, and peeked through the balustrades to find Candy Cane and Summer Smiles standing in the middle of the dining room.

Summer Smiles pleaded with her, "Cane, you need to stop this, you're hurting yourself!"

"Hurting myself?” Candy Cane snapped. “I'm keeping myself sane, that's what I'm doing!" she growled, craning her neck so that they could see eye to eye.

Summer Smiles chuckled darkly, shaking her head as she studied the mare’s weary face.

"The bags under your eyes tell me a different story."

"And what’s that? What story is that?” she demanded, her voice hoarse.

Candy Cane turned away for a moment, shaking her head vigorously. “You don't know a damned thing, Summer, okay? You don't know a damned thing! You just don’t!"

Summer Smiles opened her mouth – but hung her head instead.

"No … I don’t. I don’t, Cane, so please – tell me!” Summer Smiles begged her.

Candy Cane laughed bitterly, turning her back to her and starting for the stairs.

“Cane!” Summer Smiles cried, and the mare stopped at the foot of the stairs. “I can't stand by and watch you slave around like this. You haven't gotten any rest in days -"

Candy Cane turned and cut her off, sweeping a hoof through the air. "I don't need to sleep!” she shot back. Candy Cane’s ears wilted, her eyes turning low as she murmured “I'm … perfectly fine."

Summer Smiles took a step toward her. Candy Cane flinched.

"No, no you're not. You're not, Cane, and you know it.” Summer Smiles came closer and laid a hoof on Candy Cane’s trembling shoulder, squeezing her gently. "You can tell me, Cane … tell me, please! Tell me how I can help you! Just let me help you – somehow!"

Candy Cane shrugged her off and turned her head the other way.

She clenched her jaw and said, softly, "You can't ..." Tears were threatening to well out of her eyes as she avoided Summer Smiles’ pleading gaze.

Summer Smiles inched closer, biting her lower lip. “Cane …” she said, softly, holding Candy Cane’s hoof. She gave her a warm, gentle smile.

"I can … but you need to let me in." She leaned closer, her muzzle close enough to hers to feel her trembling breath. "I'm the same Summer Smiles you knew ... the same one you’ve always known." She stared deep into Candy Cane’s cold grays. "I love you, Cane, you know I do ... I always have. Please ... just let me help you ..."

“Please don’t …” Candy Cane whimpered, but Summer Smiles held her quaking shoulders, pulling her close – and the mare stilled.

The two peered into each other’s eyes, the silent seconds ticking by like quaking heartbeats. Summer Smiles cupped her hooves around Candy Cane’s cheeks. Summer Smiles hesitated, biting her lower lip as Candy Cane’s let out a shaky sigh.

Then she leaned in and filled the gap between them, pressing her lips against hers.

I watched as Candy Cane went stiff, her eyes widening at Summer Smiles’ kiss.

“GET OFF OF ME!” Candy Cane screamed – and shoved the mare away from her.

"C-Candy Cane – I-I’M SO SORRY!” she stammered, starting toward her with one hoof outstretched.

“NO!” Candy Cane shrieked, stopping Summer Smiles in her tracks. The mare stomped a hoof into the floorboards, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Don’t you ever do that to me again … nobody… nobody will ever do that to me again ...”

Candy Cane turned and fled up the stairs. I thought on my hooves, starting down the steps as if I'd been in the middle of doing so the whole time. Candy Cane didn't even seem to notice me as she blundered past and bolted upstairs.

I heard a door slam when I reached the bottom. Summer Smiles stood alone in the dining area, staring desolately into space. It took a few seconds for her to register that I was there.

"What ... what happened?" I asked her.

"I ... I just need some air," Summer Smiles murmured, clenching her jaw as sobs threatened to erupt from her chest. The mare trotted away from me, buttoning up her winter coat and throwing on her saddlebags. "I'm going to buy groceries ... I'll be back in a few hours."

*

I sat by myself in the dining area, thinking. I wasn’t sure if that was the same mare I met at the Scullion. Poor Summer Smiles … she unleashed a part of Candy Cane I didn’t think she had caged inside of her. It frightened me to think of what might’ve happened had it escalated further.

Probably with Summer Smiles lying on the floor with a broken jaw.

Goddesses.

I wondered: maybe Candy Cane’s barn doors just didn’t swing that way? I mean, I’d probably get defensive too if a stallion took a shot at kissing me like that.

I sighed, shaking my head as I set my hooves upon the counter and lowered my head between them.

That might’ve been the case. But even then, I was hardly scratching the surface.

I came up the stairs later that day and heard voices emanating from the room down the hall. I poked my head inside and found Candy Cane standing before Doodle and Hops, her levitation magic gripping a stick of chalk and scrawling with it across a chalkboard. Hops nodded inquisitively, penning notes into a small notebook. Doodle just sat there with her head against a bookcase, bored.

Candy Cane’s eyes gravitated towards mine when she noticed that I was standing awkwardly in the doorway. She cocked her head and motioned for me to come in with a glancing smile. I took a seat next to the fillies as she continued her lecture.

She was wearing her mask again. It was as if what I saw earlier that day hadn’t even happened.

Candy Cane cleared her throat, brushing a bob of her curly mane out of her eye. She pressed the stick of chalk against the chalkboard and said, “Okay, girls. So far, we have the Ministries of Wartime Tech, Arc-Sciences, Peace, Image, Morale, and Awesome – right, girls?”

Hops nodded quietly as Doodle stared off into space.

'Ugh, I thought, 'History. I hated history.'

Candy Cane’s smiled at Doodle, patiently.

“Right, girls?”

Doodle groaned, and nodded her head furiously, “Yes – yes – yes, Auntie.”

“Good!” Candy Cane said cheerfully, clopping her hooves together. “Now, girls, let’s review the ministry mares, starting with the mare who led the Ministry of Arcane Sciences.”

Doodle opened her mouth to answer, raising a hoof, but Hops’ hoof beat her to it.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Hops said out loud – well, as loud as a demure little filly like her could get.

“Right!” She wrote ‘Twilight’ across the board. “Then we have the Ministry of Morale, led by?”

“Oh – I know! I KNOW!” Doodle blurted out, forgetting to raise her hoof.

Hops’ hoof slowly rose to the air as her sister fidgeted excitedly.

“Yes, Hops, do you know?”

“Pinkie Pie,” Hops answered, once more.

Candy Cane opened her mouth – and Doodle’s hoof shot into the air.

“I KNOW THIS ONE!”

I smirked as Candy Cane sighed, “Doodle, I didn’t even ask my question yet –”

“No – I got this, I swear to Celestia!”

She snorted, “Okay, Doodle, who led the Ministry of Image?”

Doodle clenched her jaw, opened her mouth to answer, closed, then touched her chin, baffled and perplexed. Her muzzle scrunched up as she stared at the ceiling. I felt Candy Cane’s glare upon me as my shoulders rocked with snickers. Doodle wrinkled her brow, thinking – to no avail.

'Aw, hell.' She needed a lifeline.

My eyes darted around, and I coughed, “Ahrarity …”

Her eyes lit up, as if Celestia herself had given her a sign from above.

“Rarity!”

Candy Cane cocked an eyebrow, giving me an exasperated look. I held in a giggle, covering my mouth with a hoof. Of all the ministry mares I probably forgot or didn’t care enough to remember, there was no way I could forget Rarity.

She was hot.

“Good … good job Doodle,” Candy Cane chuckled, writing Rarity’s name across the chalkboard. “Alright, now we have the Ministries of Wartime Technology, and Peace. We talked about them last, earlier, so they should be easy. Who were they led by?”

Doodle let out a squirrelly cry, “APPLEJACK AND FLUTTERSHY!”

Damn. She didn’t raise her hoof.

The little filly grinned as Candy Cane eyed her quietly, and cupped a hoof over a smile. Meanwhile, Hops slowly raised hers.

“Yes, Hops, do you know?”

“Applejack, and Fluttershy,” Hops replied, tersely.

Candy Cane clopped her hooves together, “Great job, Hops! That makes five out of the six ministries. We have one more, and it’s the Ministry of … ?”

Doodle’s ears perked up and she shouted, “Awesome!”

“Yes, Doodle, the Ministry of Awesome, your favorite ministry!” She tapped her stick of chalk against the chalkboard. “But can you tell me who led the Ministry of Awesome?”

'Rainbow … something,' I thought, 'Rainbow … brash? Rash? Crash?' Rainbow Rash sounded like a horrible disease. I sighed. It was hard enough remembering history, but it was even harder to remember a ministry that was known for not doing shit during the war.

But Doodle’s face lit up. Of course she knew.

“RAINBOW DASH!” she nickered, gleefully.

“Right! And can you tell me what their focus was during the war?”

Doodle stood up on her little midget legs.

“They were focused on being awesome, that’s what!”

I chewed my lower lip, suppressing a grin.

Candy Cane smiled, but shook her head. Doodle sighed, hanging hers, dismayed.

“Hops, do you know?”

The little filly nodded. “Nothing that we know of,” she said, simply.

“That’s right – their story is one muddled in mystery.” She tapped her chin, thinking. “They might have been conducting special operations outside of the public eye. My father always told me –”

Doodle whipped her head back and groaned.

“Oh my Goddesses, this is soooooo boring,” she sighed.

“I think this is pretty fun,” I chuckled, nudging Doodle with a hoof. “To watch.”

Candy Cane tapped her chalkstick against the chalkboard. “Now, now, Doodle, you ought to know your basic Equestrian history.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Why do we care, I mean it’s not like we’re ever going to need this when we get older,” Doodle moaned, laying down on the floor with her hooves flailing in the air.

I giggled out loud at that.

“She’s right you know,” I said, grinning at her. She pointed a hoof at me.

“See, even Mister Dawn agrees!”

Candy Cane glared at me, and opened her mouth to say something, but Hops’ voice, soft and hardly audible, somehow beat her to it.

“It’s important that we learn from our history, Doodle, so that the past won’t repeat itself,” she whispered, not looking up from her notes. My eyes widened at the wizened filly’s words. That’s what Dew Drops used to tell me. “Ignorance only makes more monsters.”

Candy Cane saw my bewildered expression and giggled. “Exactly, Hops. I couldn’t have put it any better myself,” Candy Cane said, tipping her chin proudly.

“Blah, blah, blah!” Doodle cut in. “This is just some nerdy egghead stuff that nopony gives a flying feather about. When you’re out in the snow, knowing what dead pony blew the world up isn’t gonna save you when the monsters come out.”

I cocked a brow at the filly, unable to contain a petty smirk. “We’re like twins, you and I,” I said, ruffling up her mane with my hoof. If she kept that up, she’d be like me one day.

A pony who couldn’t even remember what M.A.S stood for.

“Red Dawn … please don’t encourage her,” Candy Cane groaned.

But Hops could attest. “I care …”

“All those ponies are dead anyways. It’s not like they matter now,” Doodle griped. “Can’t we just go outside and play in the snow? I’ve been stuck in this place for weeks now!”

“You know we can’t go outside …” Hops said, her voice merely a trembling whisper. “If we go outside, then those bad Palomino ponies are going to hurt us ...That’s why Mom never lets us go outside anymore.”

I couldn’t feel Candy Cane’s glare upon my face anymore. Something in Candy Cane’s eyes changed.

“Bad ponies shmonies,” her sister snorted. “I’m not afraid of a bunch of fedora-wearing losers. I mean, who wears hats? It’s always dark outside anyways. That’s like wearing sunglasses at night – and it’s always night!”

I gulped, worried about the silence that was coming from Candy Cane.

“Don’t underestimate those ponies …” Hops said, turning to her. “Don’t you remember? They’re the ones who took Auntie Candy Cane away!”

Someone shuffled on their hooves. I turned to the blackboard. Candy Cane had gone stiff. She gave Hops a strange, knowing look, one ear cocked and the other pinned against the side of her head.

“Candy Cane, are you okay?” I whispered.

She blinked and turned her gaze upon me … no, through me.

“She’s seen what they do to people … Auntie knows,” Hops said, quietly. She looked up at Candy Cane. “Haven’t you, auntie? They do bad things to ponies, that’s why we can’t play outside anymore.”

I could hear her breaths, her shallow breaths as she ran a trembling hoof through her mane.

“Yes … yes, bad … bad things,” she said, softly, her wide eyes fixated at something that wasn’t there.

I got to my four hooves and started towards her. She flinched and took a step back, bumping her flank into the chalkboard.

I chewed on my lower lip and asked, as delicately as I could, “Candy Cane?”

The mare shook her head, slowly.

Not at me. She couldn’t hear me.

“Oh come on, Hops.” Doodle sighed, turned to me, and added, “She doesn’t know what she’s blabbering on about. The Palominos aren’t the boogiemares – they’re not just gonna snatch you up off the streets!”

I pursed my lips, trying to ignore them, while hoping that Candy Cane was trying to do the same. I could see it in her eyes. The horror.

She wasn’t. She couldn’t.

“Yes – they do! When the Palominos get angry, ponies go missing. I don’t want to go outside and disappear like the others!” Hops insisted. “It’s safer inside where they can’t hurt you.”

“Ugh,” Doodle groaned, waving her off. “I’ve been locked up in this place for ages. I need to get out here …”

Candy Cane touched a hoof to her throat, rubbing the matted indentation that used to be her bomb collar.

“I need to get out of here,” she whispered.

“If you go outside, we’ll never see you again, Doodle … I’ll never see you again,” Hops said, eyeing Candy Cane who stood there, fidgeting to herself in silence.

She looked like she was trying to stay afloat above a turbulent sea.

My eyes darted frantically between the two sisters and the panicking mare.

“You’re just being a scaredy pony,” Doodle sighed. “All you ever do is read books all day and study your stupid history.” She shook her head, and tapped her sister’s nose. “You need to get out more, Hops.”

“SHUT UP DOODLE!” she snapped. I swung my head over to hear the once quiet filly blow up, “Mom’s right! I know I’m right! Auntie knows too – that’s why she went missing for all those years!” She jabbed a hoof into her sister’s chest. “They took her away from us, and if you go out there, they’re going to take you away too!”

“GIRLS!” Candy Cane screamed, and they froze, turning towards her. A rivulet of sweat trickled down her brow as she stared back at us. “I-I think Doodle’s right. That’s enough class for today.” She feigned a smile, but it came out as an unsettling grin that made Doodle hug her sister close.

“Why don’t you two go and play in your room … I-I have … things … things I need to take care of,” she said weakly. She turned away as tears welled up in her eyes.

The two fillies exchanged troubled glances. Hops whimpered softly as she buried her face into her sister’s mane.

“What?” I started towards her as she made her way to the door. But she didn’t even lose a single step. “Candy Cane, where are you going?”

I reached out with a forehoof, trying to stop her – but she swatted my hoof away and darted around me.

“Hey!” But my cry flew past her deaf ears. Terror flashed across her face – her eyes, and she shoved me away from her and stormed outside, into the hall.

“What are you doing!?” I demanded.

I swore under my breath, clenching my teeth as she fled, galloping away from us. “Candy Cane!” I shouted, trailing behind her.

She reached her door, and threw a glance over her shoulder. I froze upon my hooves. Tears streamed down her cheeks as I met her distant, horrified stare.

“No more … I don’t want it … no more … please …” she babbled, shaking her head furiously as she wreathed the doorknob in her silvery magic.

“Candy Cane …” I started towards her, slowly. But she just kept shaking her head. “What’s gotten over you?” I asked, reaching out with a hoof.

Her eyes darted to my hoof – then to my face.

But she saw someone else.

Candy Cane panicked, flung her door open, and threw herself inside.

I dove after her. “CANDY CANE! WAIT –”

But she hurled the door into my face.

Stars exploded in my eyes as the force of the blow threw me into the floorboards with a jarring thump. “DAMNIT!” I groaned, clenching my muzzle as the girls came dashing after me.

“Son of a ... bitch!” I growled as I felt blood run down my muzzle.

“Mister Dawn!” Doodle cried out, Hops holding on for her dear life as she galloped down the hall. “Did she just hit you!?” she gasped, wide-eyed at the blood that was streaming down my nose.

The two rushed to my side as I let my head roll against the floorboards.

I bit my tongue, fuming; I could feel my headache slowly worming its way back into my skull.

Must’ve been the doctor’s orders – Candy Cane knew best after all. A door to the face kept the headaches away. I cringed as I felt a fire flare up inside my skull. If only that blow had been enough to knock me out.

I tried to stand to my hooves. But something heavy crashed inside her room.

Candy Cane let out an agonized scream.

“CANDY CANE!” I screamed.

I swore under my breath and threw myself at her door, trying desperately to turn the doorknob.

It was locked.

I banged a hoof against it.

“Candy Cane, are you okay!?”

The door quaked from the other side – and I stumbled away from it.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

“Candy Cane!?”

“JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!” she screamed – not at me. Not at us. Especially not at the fillies.

Candy Cane shrieked, pounding a hoof into the floor, “WHY CAN’T YOU ALL JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!?”

The girls huddled behind me as we listened to her horrified screams. She sobbed, crying amidst the sound of the pounding floorboards as she struggled against the monsters only she could see.

“No more …” she pleaded … “NO MORE!"

She was gone. The Candy Cane that had stood sentinel over my bedside for nearly three days – she was gone. All that time, she had been struggling to hold a roof over her head – but she slipped, and all of it had just came crashing down upon her.

My ears drooped as her screams echoed through my thoughts. I found myself inhaling a breath that wouldn’t enter my lungs. I watched the snow turn red around her as she screamed in agony.

“A-are you okay, Mister Dawn?” Hops asked quietly.

I blinked – and kept blinking as my ears perked at Candy Cane’s anguished cries. I touched a hoof to my muzzle, and it came away red with my blood.

“Yes … yes I’m okay,” I told them with a nasal moan, pressing a hoof against my nose and tipping my head back. I winced at a twinge that ignited at the base of my horn.

I swore once more – but all I could hear were her cries, drowning out the pain that was thrumming inside my head.

“I’m okay …” I murmured, looking up at the door she had locked behind her. “But she isn’t,” I said, loud enough for my own ears.

“What’s wrong with Auntie Candy Cane?” I heard Hops ask – a question I wasn’t sure I could answer.

I peered at her door in silence, listening to her muffled, strangulated cries, cries she was trying desperately – and failing to contain. I closed my eyes as she choked on her tears, her screams turning into suffocated sobs that echoed through my wilted ears.

'She needs you as much as you need her,' I heard Summer Smiles say.

"Candy Cane ..." I murmured, staring down at the floorboards. I remembered what Grifter told me – the name that had brought that mare to tears.

I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.

They made her that way.

I glared at my hooves. I hoped Grifter suffered. I hoped he bled out, slowly, and that blackness didn’t take him until every last drop of his fucking blood had poured out of his veins.

“Look at what you did, Hops!” Doodle hissed, breaking my dazed stare. She gave Hops a dirty look, and the unicorn filly bowed her head, dejectedly.

My anger flared. Doodle caught my burning glare and looked away, eyeing the floor. She forced herself to meet my eyes, and straightened out, sheepishly.

I shook my head. I needed to get them away from there.

My gaze softened as Hops sniffled pitifully.

“Did … did she really mean that?” she asked in a tiny voice – and Candy Cane’s cries went silent.

I looked over my shoulder at the door that was still closed. All that we could hear now were her muffled, ragged breaths.

“No. She didn’t,” I whispered. Hops’ eyes welled up with tears. “It wasn’t your fault,” I reassured the filly, gently. I hesitated, but reached out with a hoof and rubbed her shoulder, gently. She just gazed up at me, teary-eyed. “Candy Cane’s just … she just needs some time alone. She’s … been through a lot, and she needs to rest.”

I felt that it was for the best. She'd let us in when she was ready.

“Come on. I’ll take you to your room,” I told Hops. I waited with strained patience until Hops mustered the courage to hold out her legs to me. I almost tried levitating her. With a tedious sigh, I bowed my head to the floor so she could wrap her legs around my neck before I lowered her onto my back.

I turned, and left Candy Cane’s locked door behind me.

Once inside the girls’ room, I set Hops down onto their bed and helped Doodle climb in with her. My ears perked as I could still hear, faintly, Candy Cane’s anguished sobs. They peered out into the hall, worriedly.

“She’s still crying …” Doodle murmured. “Why?”

I looked at them both for a moment, opening my mouth to reply. To explain to them where she’d been trapped all those years. But I just sighed, and closed the door. Candy Cane locked us out for the same reason she locked herself in.

To them, all they heard was a weeping mare. But to me, I heard a tortured mare who was coming apart at the seams.

I envied their innocence. They didn’t understand the things they said that set her off – because they’d never seen what the Palominos – what the wasteland could truly do to people.

They were things that Candy Cane probably wished they would never have to see – things she wished she had never seen. And Candy Cane had seen enough.

I clenched my jaw.

Candy Cane didn’t believe anyone could help her. Not even Summer Smiles. She believed that it’d be better if we didn’t learn about the things the Palominos – the things the wasteland truly did to her.

Just like how it would have been better if my friends and I hadn't opened those doors … if we hadn’t seen nightmare that was waiting for us outside.

The nightmare that Candy Cane had lived every day of her life.

The nightmare she was still living.

That was what Doodle and Hops should never have to see … what no one should ever have to see.

Those fillies deserved better than she did. Better than we all did.

*

Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt V

*

We had dinner without her. When Summer Smiles returned, she was surprised to find me napping on the floor inside the fillies' room as they slept soundly on the bed. When I left the girls and trotted down the hall, not a single sound came from Candy Cane's room.

Summer Smiles hoped that the worst hadn’t happened. That Candy Cane hadn’t ‘opted out’.

When we came to her door, we were relieved to find that we could still hear her breaths coming through the door's wooden panel. Summer Smiles was a thousand times more relieved than I was, more than I could ever be for a mare I only met four days ago.

Dinner was quiet. But the food was fresh and delicious: boiled carrot and potato stew, but without Candy Cane, the girls were dull and inattentive, eating their stew in quietude. Not much was spoken, since the only question that ran circles in our heads already had an answer to it: she'd come downstairs when she was ready.

I hesitated, but I asked her if she was going to unlock the room and check on her. Summer Smiles had apparently tried before dinner. With no success.

Afterwards, I retired to my room and laid down on the bed, pulling the blankets up to my chin.

I wondered what Candy Cane was thinking. She had her scars – that much I knew. Candy Cane was like a piece of lustrous metal, its sheen diminished by hundreds of scratches and grooves upon its surface. But in the right light … around those fillies, she could still be as bright as the most untarnished steel.

I sighed, shifting beneath the covers. Innocent conversation had been enough to make her snap … to snap out of it and become the Candy Cane she’d been hiding away all that time.

The ‘real her’ terrified me. It terrified me because of what might happen to us both if I followed that Candy Cane outside into the merry, wintry wasteland. I needed her. I needed her lucid, capable, and sane, because without her, I'd surely drop dead outside that inn's triple-locked doors. If she ‘woke up’ and broke apart out there ... one of us was gonna die.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. A darker part of me told myself that that dead pony wasn’t going to be me. It couldn’t be me. My priorities were in the right place. If I died, my stable died. But Candy Cane … if she died …

I rolled around, unable to sleep.

All that time … she'd been worried about me lapsing from consciousness and falling to my death. But I should have been the least of her worries. I told myself that she needed to get her priorities straight. Candy Cane was a time bomb waiting to blow – and she knew it, and she was trying everything she could do … by herself … to keep everything from falling apart.

And if she finally did, I couldn’t help but think of the worst.

At my stable, I'd heard of some ponies ... killing themselves. Peach Petals called it Caged Bird Syndrome, ponies who couldn’t take being locked behind the stable doors any longer. They ‘opted out’. They ‘opted out’ of a world they thought they couldn’t live in, anymore. They wanted to be somewhere else. And ‘here’ wasn’t ‘here’.

Maybe I'd find her with her legs slit open, waiting for darkness to take her on her bloody death bed.

Maybe I'd find her in a coma, her organs failing from a Med-X overdose.

Maybe I'd just find her hanging from the ceiling.

Those were all things I'd heard of at home. And the more I thought about it, the more I feared for her life. The more I wanted to care. Not just because she could get me killed, but because somepony needed another pony as much as he needed her.

I remembered what she told me in that sinkhole.

She wanted to help save the people of a city that didn't even give a single shit about her. It didn’t make sense to me. But she cared more about the people around her than herself.

She cared … about me.

I rolled around in bed, not knowing what to do. I never had to deal with the angst my friends experienced growing up; I was too busy doing my own thing to give a single shit. I just wasn't great at dealing with those things. With other peoples' ‘feelings’.

I was an engineer, not a psychologist.

It was a problem rooted in me. I took a lot of things – and a lot of people for granted. I guess I just thought that they’d always be there, whether they cried or whined or griped all day long.

And Dew Drops. I neglected Dew Drops' fantasies and desires, simply because I didn't care enough to humor her. I took her for granted.

And now she was dead.

As I lay there, I realized that I was taking Candy Cane for granted too. Besides, I knew that if she decided to off herself, I wouldn't be able to last one more day out in the wasteland by myself. I figured that it'd be in my best interest to keep her alive as long as I could. I needed to find the Orphanage, after all, and I couldn't do it alone. Not without her.

But that still made her my responsibility.

'Goddesses damnit.'

I thought about what better ponies would do in a situation like this. I thought about what Dew Drops would've done in a situation like this. If only she was still around ... if only I'd died and a better pony had taken my place, maybe Dew Drops still would've met Candy Cane. Candy Cane would've had a shoulder to lean on, and she'd never have to work alone.

I could hear, faintly, the sound of someone sobbing through my bedroom’s chipped, plaster walls. I closed my eyes, and for a second I thought I was in Spring Song's cottage, Dew Drops' cries echoing through my ears. I left the relative warmth of my bed, and cracked open my door. My ears perked, listening for her voice.

It was quiet. I felt my way through the darkness, knowing that Candy Cane's door was just across from mine. I pressed an ear against its surface, and listened for what seemed like hours. I listened to her muffled sobs and the sounds of someone rolling around restlessly in bed.

I sat there outside her room, my back pressed against her door. Listening. Eventually, I sat up and stared at her door with weary eyes. I reached out with a hoof and tapped it warily against its surface.

"Candy Cane ... ?" I whispered.

Her strangulated cries cut to an eerie silence.

I waited, chewing on my lower lip.

"Candy Cane?" I tried again, knocking on her door once more.

Nothing.

I sighed after several minutes of waiting, lowering myself to my haunches. Eventually, her cries resumed because she thought that I was gone.

But I was still there. Waiting for her to let me in.

*

The next day, Summer Smiles and I thought it would be a good idea to leave Candy Cane a bowl of food outside her room. She hadn't eaten since lunch, yesterday, and she had to be starving. I figured that her hunger would eventually force her outside. She couldn't hole herself up in there forever ... unless starving herself to death was what she wanted.

But she still had a promise to keep, and so did I.

With a bowl of pre-war beans sitting on a tray slung around my neck, I knocked on her door.

"Caaaaaaandy Cane, I've got a healthy, slightly overcooked serving of pre-war beans for ya!" I said with the fakest smile and the cheeriest voice as I could muster. I lowered my head at the tray around my neck and took a big whiff of the two-hundred year old sludge and gagged.

"Blech - ahem. Mmm, delicious. What a delicious breakfast," I coughed.

She replied with more silence. Alright. That was understandable. She must've smelled the thing from a mile away.

I sighed, and just left the bowl at her door before returning downstairs. I didn't know how I was even able to stomach those beans the last time. It didn't smell so bad when it was half frozen. Didn’t taste so bad either – if you just got over the smell.

Sitting at the table with the others, we prayed, and began eating in silence. After several minutes of somber quietude, Hops' sheepish voice broke the ice.

"Is ... is Auntie Candy Cane ever going to come outside?" she asked, faintly. I looked down at my hooves. Hops sounded lost, and only Candy Cane could lead her back home.

"I wish she'd play with us ..." Doodle sighed, her ears drooping. "We can't play Oubliettes and Ogres without a game master."

Summer Smiles and I stared at each other hopelessly.

"She'll come out when she's ready, hun," Summer Smiles said softly as she watched the staircase.

I nodded, "She'll have to come out and eat sooner or later." I spooned another mouthful of beans into my mouth, ignoring the smell and swallowing the okay-tasting sludge.

After breakfast, I found myself outside Candy Cane's door once again. I pressed an ear against it and listened for a sign of life. It took a few minutes, but I heard someone sniffle. I wrinkled my nose and sniffled too. The bowl of beans was still sitting on the floor.

"Candy Cane? Can you hear me?"

I waited for almost a minute. Apparently not. That, or she was ignoring me.

"Candy Cane, I know you can hear me," I said. I rested my forehead against her door, staring at the floorboards. "I ... I would ask if you're okay, but I know you aren't." I pursed my lips, waiting for a response ... for something. "Candy Cane?"

Nothing.

"Listen ... the girls miss you. They've been asking for you ... you sort of just left us out in the water that day. And Summer Smiles is worried sick about you. She wants to help you," I told the door. "I ... I ..." I hesitated, sighing. 'Damnit.' What else could I have done? I was just about as helpless as she was. I couldn’t save her from the ghosts only she could see.

I knew more about the wasteland than I knew about Candy Cane.

What could I do? What would Dew Drops do?

I took a deep breath and exhaled, my brow furrowing. I did all I could.

I tried.

"Listen, I don't know what happened to you at the Scullion. I don't know what to say to make you open this door ... and I don't know how to help you, either." I closed my eyes, and placed a hoof against its surface. "But ... please, let us in. Let us help you. Just let us try," I begged her.

I thought I heard the floorboards creak on the other side. But the door remained closed between us.

I took a seat and waited, basking in the beany stench that permeated the hall. I waited for her and listened. Minutes passed by, and then hours. Summer Smiles' family ate at least twice a day. But at around the time I'd usually have lunch at '91, Summer Smiles called me downstairs and hoofed me two ruby red apples. One for me, and one for Candy Cane.

"Did she come outside?" Summer Smiles asked me.

I just shook my head, eyeing the floor. I was beginning to think that she wasn't ever going to come out.

"Just ... don't stop trying," she told me.

I gave her a knowing stare. I hadn’t forgotten what she had asked of me.

"I won't."

Upstairs, I knocked on her door.

"Candy Cane ... I know you're hungry," I began. I glanced at the two apples that lay upon the tray around my neck. "It's 1300 hours and you haven't even had anything to eat since yesterday." Silence. I pleaded with her, "You need to eat, or you're going to starve."

I pressed an ear against her door, and again, I thought I heard the floorboards creak on the other side. "Candy Cane, please, open this door," I begged her. "You haven't eaten in almost ... two days."

More silence. I exhaled a long-winded breath.

"We want ... to help you.” I could feel Summer Smiles’ worried eyes upon me. "We want to help you, but we can't do that unless you open this door … so please open this door." Doodle and Hops stuck their heads outside their room. But Candy Cane was still nowhere to be seen.

"Candy Cane …” I begged, banging my head against her door, “Please stop ignoring us!"

She kept ignoring us.

"Candy Cane!" She replied with another faint sniffle. "Do you want us to help you?” No answer. “Do you want us to help you!? Or do you want to starve? Is that what you want?" My forehoof rapped against her door.

"Candy Cane! You need to eat! Summer Smiles left you some food - food those fillies could've eaten - and you just left it here!" I waited in vain for a response.

Summer Smiles bit her lip and waited.

The girls inched outside, and waited, too.

But all she gave us was more silence.

I stomped a hoof into the floor. "FINE! STARVE! Starve ... you can just fuckin' starve," I muttered, setting the tray of fruit on the floor next to her bowl of cold beans.

I glared at the door. If she didn't want my help ... then ... then ... I felt Summer Smiles’ eyes upon me. I felt the girls’ eyes upon me. The two fillies hurried inside their room and shut the door. Summer Smiles just shook her head, and started down the stairs.

Me? I sighed and planted my rump into the floorboards, thumping my back against her door.

I sat there.

And I waited.

*

Dinner came, and Candy Cane was still nowhere to be seen. I took her meal of steamed carrots, and a few slices of bread that hadn’t risen in the oven, upstairs. I left them outside her door. I knocked, waited a few seconds, and returned downstairs.

Waiting any longer than that seemed futile.

After saying grace, we ate again in silence. The two girls didn’t look at me. They were afraid. Doodle and Hops were still shaken from earlier. Neither of them had ever had a male figure in their life. Hearing me yell must’ve been as horrifying as the first time I heard a bloodletter roar.

I watched them as they poked at their food, staring silently down at their plates. I hated myself for that.

But scaring those children was only part of it. To yell at Candy Cane ... to yell at a traumatized mare ... it made me feel so rotten on the inside.

At '91 we were taught to respect mares, and to respect our mothers, and our mothers’ mothers. They suffer the most in life. Especially out there in the wasteland … a wasteland that wasted no time in breaking in every deserving Goddesses-damned mare that so much as stumbled in the snow.

I shouldn't have raised my voice at her. Not with the girls watching. Not even at all. Candy Cane needed patience and tender loving care that I knew I wasn't capable of giving ... to anyone.

I couldn't even stomach my food because my belly was already full with writhing maggots that made my stomach churn.

"I'm sorry ..." I told them, resting my head on a hoof and hiding my face in shame.

The silence was long and brutal as the girls avoided my eyes. I deserved it.

But Summer Smiles' voice broke the air of stagnant quietude. She smiled at me, wearily, pouring me a cup of water and sliding it across the table.

"Red Dawn ... fetlocks off the table, please."

*

Outside Candy Cane's door I waited, her carrots, bread, and water sitting on the floor next to me. Every now and then I'd hear a sniffle, a cough, or a sigh. But not a single word came from the broken mare's lips as I remained outside her door, waiting for her to let me in.

I wouldn't give up. I was Red Dawn, the fucking fixer pony, and I fucking fixed things. Dew Drops might've understood how to take machines apart and put them back together in one shot … but I wasn’t a one-shotter. I was more of a twenty-shotter, and twenty radios later I finally understood how to disassemble them and build them back up and repair them - good as new.

I didn't give up, not on anything. Not on anyone. Otherwise I would've killed myself and been done with it a long time ago. I would've told Night Sky to fuck herself, laid down in that grave I dug for myself and just waited to die.

I wouldn’t give up on that mare. I wouldn’t ... I couldn't ... just like how I couldn't give up on my stable, or my friends, or my own mother.

I promised myself that I'd build Candy Cane back up too.

With a sigh, I pulled out my canteen from a pocket in my jumpsuit and took a swig. I shook it, listening to the icy water slosh around inside. I set it down beside me, satisfied that it was full enough to last me an entire night outside Candy Cane's door. I figured I'd be there for a while.

For however long it took.

I let my head roll against her door as I stared up at the ceiling, watching as the light bulbs turned off and the candles and lanterns blew out. I watched as Summer Smiles and the fillies trotted past me and their doors shut closed. Seconds as long as minutes, and minutes as long as hours, and hours as long as days passed by.

I waited.

And I waited.

And I waited.

As the night dragged on, I fought to keep my eyes open. But the night had already taken me. They fluttered closed, and I fell asleep and time sped past me once again.

Then the walls collapsed around me. I screamed as I fell backward and thumped my head against the floorboards. I lay there in a daze, and found myself looking up and into Candy Cane's bewildered grays. My eyes darted back and forth in confusion, chasing away my drowsiness and forcing my mind back to clarity.

"Well, well, well,” I said, finally, looking up at her as I lay at her hooves. “Look who finally decided to come out.”

A silvery magical field engulfed me and, with a hoof for extra support, she helped me back to my hooves.

We stared at each other for more heartbeats than I found comfortable.

When she finally spoke, her voice was low, gravelly, and hoarse.

"How long have you been out there?" she rasped.

I sighed, scratching my mane. On the floor, her dinner still sat. Cold.

"Too long," I told her. I fetched her meal, slinging the tray around my neck. I looked back and saw that she was eyeing the food languidly. "Can I … can I come in?"

She turned, saying nothing, and slunk back into the darkness of her room. I frowned through the shadows, and felt the wall for the light switch, flicking it on and bathing us in dull, yellow light.

I took one step forward and nearly tripped over an overturned chair. I stopped and looked around. It looked like a bomb exploded in there. Her room was a disaster. There was a table flipped over in the middle. Papers were strewn about, and scribbled on them were an assortment of aborted sketches, and … mindless chicken scratch. Her blankets were on the floor, and poking out from under their fabrics was the vodka bottle that had gone missing that one night.

It was empty.

Candy Cane reached for it, and found that there was no more left to drink.

“Fuck,” I heard her mutter before she tossed it aside. My ears perked at that. That was the second time I heard her swear since I first met her.

“Candy Cane, we’ve been worried about you for days now,” I told her, her back turned to me. I set down atop her bedside table the tray of food she neglected to eat. “Why’d you finally decide to come out?” I chuckled, adding, “Didn’t expect me there, did you?”

She sighed, her voice devoid of … anything.

“No. I didn’t.” I heard her stomach growl, but she didn’t cringe or double over. It couldn’t have been first she was starved of food. “I … needed to pee …” Candy Cane murmured, much to my disbelief.

“Sure … you did drink a lot of that vodka,” I grinned, but my cheeriness was lost on her. “You find all of that yourself? I thought Summer Smiles didn’t have anymore drinks.”

She just stood there, frozen. I rubbed my eyes with a hoof, shaking my head.

“Candy Cane … talk to me,” I said, holding out a hoof. “What happened that day when you just walked out on us?”

Candy Cane muttered something incomprehensible.

“Huh?”

She did it again, this time, somewhat louder.

“Candy Cane?”

She swung her head over her shoulder, her eyes bloodshot and welling with tears.

“Those monsters ..."

I took a step towards her, and she flinched, clenching her eyes shut.

“What monsters?” My brow furrowed. “The Palominos? There aren’t any here … we’re safe in this inn, you said it yourself.”

She shook her head.

“Safe … safe … no … nopony’s ever safe. Not when they’re inside your head, and every time you open your eyes, you see them around you, all over you … inside you,” she choked, trembling g like she was going to drill a hole through the ground. Her shoulders began to quake as she tried to suffocate her sobs.

She couldn’t. Candy Cane turned to me, her teeth bared and tears streaming down her cheeks. “I never left,” she rasped, “I never left the Scullion. I’m still there, in my head, in my dreams – every waking hour of the fucking day, I’m in the Scullion, and I can never leave.”

I reached out with a hoof, but she flinched away from me.

“Grifter’s dead. Your collar’s gone … no one can ever hurt you like that ever again.”

“NO!” she screamed, pounding her hoof into the floorboards. I took a step back. “YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND!” Candy Cane shrieked. “You don’t know the things they did to me, what those monsters did!” She collapsed to her haunches, burying her face in the blankets that were strewn across the floor.

“I bled for them! They cut me open!” she cried, her hooves hanging before her eyes as if they were covered in blood. “They … took from me … more than you’ll ever know. More than you’ve ever lost,” she hissed, her words cutting into my heart like razor blades.

I approached her, my head hung low.

“Candy Cane …” I murmured as she wept into her bed sheets. I wasn’t even sure if she could hear me. I lowered a hoof to her shoulder, but she just slapped it away.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!”

I cringed, pulling it away.

“I haven’t slept for more than two hours a day in five days, Red Dawn …”

“Why?” I whispered, gently.

She covered her eyes with her hooves, shaking her head.

“Because when I dream … I see them. Because when I lie awake in bed, when I stand idle, my mind wanders to places I want to forget. I want to forget … I want to forget it all so bad,” she cried, choking on her words as sobs forced their way out of her lips. She looked up at me, her face contorted with anguish of the likes I had never seen. “I don’t want to remember, Red Dawn, I don’t want to remember anymore… and when I do … I remember every second of it. Every face, every voice … every name they’ve ever called me.”

She lowered her head between her hooves, and hid her face away from me. Candy Cane sobbed, crying softly into her blankets.

I knelt beside her and did the only thing I could do. I wrapped my legs around her and squeezed her tight. I felt her quaking hooves curl around me. I held her there as she wept into my shoulder, trembling and crying like a beaten animal.

“I’ve … I-I’ve tried to kill myself so many times, but I could never do it,” she whispered, turning her head slowly to a kitchen knife that was lying atop her desk. “What’s the point … when you’ve got nothing to lose, and nothing to gain? There’s nowhere I’m going but hell, anyways.”

“No.” I held her close. “You’re wrong, Candy Cane,” I said, softly. “Nothing to lose? What about Doodle and Hops? To them, they’d lose everything. Their mother’s dead, Candy Cane, and they love you like you’ve been with them since they were born. Do those fillies mean anything to you?”

She clenched her eyes shut, crying softly.

“Candy Cane … I barely know you, and I barely know them. But I do know that they’ve got you to lose. Any moron with a brain can see that. They love you so much; they adore you, I know they do,” I told her. “You had them worried to the bone these last two days.”

She sniffled, pitifully, “But I just closed the door and pushed them away.”

“But they never gave up on you,” I told her, “What does that say to you?”

Candy Cane’s eyes fluttered open and I felt her legs slowly wrap around me and we hugged once more. “Neither did you,” she whispered.

“I don’t give up on anyone, Candy Cane,” I said, remembering the promise I made to Dew Drops, and the words Box Cutter said to me the night we lost Amber Fields. It would never be over until all of us were six feet under.

"It'll never be over until you’re six feet under, Candy Cane.”

She pulled away and wiped her eyes vigorously.

“Why do you care, Red Dawn?”

I clenched my jaw, and curled my hooves tightly around her shoulders.

“An old pony told me once … the closest thing to being cared for, was to care for someone else,” I whispered. “And just maybe ... someone would care about me too. When my friends died, and left me out here alone, I thought that’d I’d join them. But out here, I realize that people die because they die alone. And I need you, Candy Cane ... I care about you - because if I don't ... because if Summer Smiles doesn't ... who will?"

She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

“You’re right …” she murmured. “They’re the closest thing to a family I have. And you … you’re the closest thing to a friend I have right now.”

“We’ll be traveling together soon … that is if Summer Smiles tells us where to find the Orphanage.” I scoffed, “We’re all we’ve got. We're in this together now.”

"Thanks, Red Dawn ... for that. I'm glad that you haven't given up on me yet." She smiled for the first time in three days, letting out a weak chuckle. Candy Cane exhaled, and I felt her legs slacken.

“Candy Cane?” I asked, worriedly.

The mare twitched and she looked around, confused.

“Huhn … huh? What?”

I smiled. “Thought I lost you for a second.”

“No, no … I’m just … so tired.” She bit her lower lip and cringed, her stomach begging to be put out of its misery. “And I’m a little hungry.”

I got up, lifted Candy Cane to her hooves, and propped her up on her bed. She didn’t weigh much. She sat down and leaned on one slender leg, watching me languidly as I brought to her her tray of food. I sat there next to her as she ate. Within minutes, she’d devoured all the food we’d saved for her. I thought that maybe if she ate as much as she did just, and more, maybe she wouldn’t be so skinny.

The mare sighed, hanging her head.

“I still don’t want to sleep. I’m afraid I’ll dream again.”

I thought for a moment, resting my chin on my hoof. You couldn’t drag a pony to a river and make her drink. There would be no way to make that mare go to sleep, unless she went to sleep herself.

I thought for a moment.

“I could stay awake with you, if you want?”

She shook her head, “You need to sleep your off burnout –”

“Oh come on, Candy Cane, I’ve gotten more sleep than you this whole week. If anypony needs to sleep, it's you. Besides, I can spend a few more hours awake.”

“Alright,” she sighed, too tired to argue with me. “Your loss.” She sat against her bed’s headboard.

“Heh, now I’m the one stalking your bedside,” I chuckled.

“Oh hah-hah," she drawled, a weak grin creasing her lips. She sounded like she was trying as hard as she could to stay awake. But her smile told me she was someplace else. A happier place.

We laughed it off as I laid down at the foot of her bed, and she against her headboard. She stifled a yawn, and sighed, staring up at the ceiling.

"All those nights I was watching you -"

"Stalking me, you mean?"

She chuckled and rolled her eyes.

"All those nights, I heard you whispering," she began, softly. "Sometimes I'd hear you cry in your sleep. You kept saying somepony's name ... Dew Drops. Dew Drops. Dew Drops." She tilted her head slightly. "Who is he?"

"She," I said, quietly.

I turned my eyes low, saddened. Her name was an open wound that would never close.

"Who is she, Red Dawn?"

I sighed, my eyes fluttering closed. And in the darkness of my eyelids, I saw her face. Her blue coat, and her teal mane, and her cool gray eyes, and her adorable smile. In my head, I heard her voice. I heard the last words she said to me.

'Run!' But I was tired of running. From her. From the pain. I bit my lip, hesitating.

"She was my friend."

Candy Cane's ears drooped. "Was?"

It was difficult to talk about her out loud. But Candy Cane and I both carried burdens upon our shoulders. But she had bled her heart out to me, and now I shared with her the burden she no longer had to carry alone. I was tired of carrying mine alone, too.

I relented.

"She was my friend. One of my best friends. I loved her ... no," I said, suddenly. "I still love her. She was with me when I left my stable, and so were Box Cutter, Amber Fields, Lightning Twirl, Dew Drops, and Star Glint. I watched them all die. I watched Dew Drops die."

The Candy Cane I’d seen at my bedside slowly resurfaced back to the light. "What happened?"

"Snow furies. Tortured Amber ... blew her up in our faces … skinned Star alive, and wore him like a jacket … blew Box's hooves off - dragged him away … shot Twirl out of the sky, hacked her to pieces … then … t-then her," I choked.

"They took her away from me. I wasn't strong ... or fast enough. There were too many of them." I dabbed at the bedsheets beneath me with a hoof. "I had her in my hooves. But those damned monsters tore us apart ... tore her apart. I tried pulling her away with my magic, but my magic failed me when I needed it the most," I murmured. My heart leaped inside my chest as I remembered the moment I lost her. The moment she died. “I failed her when she needed me he most.

"Dew ... Dew Drops ..." I whispered, as agony writhed inside my heart. "Dew Drops told me to run – to run and never look back. So I did … because it was all I could do, and if I died, then my stable would’ve died with me.” I shuddered, fighting back my tears. “I never even got to tell her I loved her … one last time."

Candy Cane look at me with tender eyes.

“I know what it’s like to lose somepony you love,” she said, quietly, “I’ve lost a lot of ponies I’ve loved … and I still haven’t let go. I can’t … I don’t think I ever can, because I love them so much.” She stared off into space, reminiscing of days gone by. “You know … that’s the last thing you think of them when they go. 'I love you' ... I … I believe that’s the last thing they think too.” Candy Cane hesitated, but asked, tenderly, “Did she love you?”

I clenched my eyes shut and lowered my head.

“More than I ever knew,” I whispered.

Candy Cane smiled sweetly.

“Then she thought of you too, Red Dawn.”

I shook my head slowly, murmuring, "I just wished we had more time." My eyes gravitated to the shifting shadows we casted against the walls as the lights flickered. For a moment, my eyes thought they saw a different pony's shadow against the wall where mine was supposed to be. My eyes fluttered closed.

I told her about how we had went to school together, worked together, and grew up together. I told her how I took her for granted and how she still loved me anyways. But the more I talked about her, the more I wished that she was still there. The mare of my life … I wished she was still there …

“I bet she was brilliant, this Dew Drops – a once in a life-time kind of pony,” she said, smiling at me once more.

“A once in a life-time pony ... yes … and I'll never see her again. I dream about her often. Of better days …”

Candy Cane averted her gaze and ran her hoof through the sheets. “It’s good to dream of better days when the days get darker … I know that all too well,” Candy Cane said softly, "But if you died, I never would've met you, Red Dawn.” She looked me in the eyes. “If I never met you … I'd still have a collar around my neck ... I never would've been able to see Summer, Doodle, or Hops ever again."

I fell silent, hanging my head as I let out a trembling sigh.

"You're … you’re right, Candy Cane."

I took my canteen and held it up in the air.

“To better days … to life,” I said to her, echoing the very words Night Sky had told me, the words that had kept me going through the horrors I’d endured so far.

I took a swig, and held it out to her. She stared at it for a moment, and levitated it to her lips. When she was finished, Candy Cane poured what little was left across the floorboards. “For all the ponies who aren’t here with us … and all the ponies we’ve loved …” She looked at me. “… and for all the ponies we still love.”

My smile was bittersweet as I watched the water turn to frost. But the light in Candy Cane’s eyes looked warm enough to melt away the entire wasteland.

“Thanks, Candy Cane.”

She hesitated for a moment, her brows furrowing as her voice quieted, sheepishly.

“Like you said: we’re in this together now, Red Dawn. And you can call me Cane. Please. Just call me Cane.”

For once a real smile stretched inexplicably across my lips.

“Alright, Cane,” I chuckled, softly. “Ponies call me Red, by the way.”

She yawned, "Red … you should probably sleep now ... we've been up for hours."

I rolled my eyes. "I've had enough of ... of ..." I looked up and she was slumped against her headboard, out cold. "Sleep."

In the corner of my eye, I saw Summer Smiles, peering through the doorway. We met eyes briefly, and she smiled back, thankfully, for doing what she could not.

*

It was early morning, 0400 hours. Summer Smiles and I sat at the bar, two shot glasses of water at our hooves.

“I’ve been thinking,” she began, sloshing around the icy water. I turned to her, curiously, the shadows playing across her face in the candlelight. “I was right about you, you know?

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“What?”

She rested her head on her hoof, watching the dancing candlelight.

“I know you don’t agree with me. I see it in your face everytime I say this … but I think you’re a good pony, Red Dawn.”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know half the shit I’ve done and allowed to happen just to get here alive, Summer Smiles,” I muttered, watching the candles flicker.

“Good ponies need to win, Red Dawn. Good ponies gotta win someday … somehow.”

I sat there in silence, my eyes hidden in the shadows.

“Good ponies don’t win, Summer Smiles … they die.”

She laughed at me. “Then try not to die … Red …” Summer Smiles held my shoulder, reassuringly. “You’re a decent pony, Red, you and Cane. And I think I can trust you, too. The resistance needs ponies like you two. You might think good ponies are far in between in this city, but …”

She slid to me a map, titled the ‘Inner City’. Scrawled all over it were notes, coordinates, tunnels, supply points, and more that I couldn’t comprehend at a glance.

“… but you’ll find good ponies like you in the Orphanage.”

Footnote: Level 6
XP: 500/3450

Chapter 11 - Casting Shadows - Pt I

Chapter 11
Casting Shadows

“All that remained were the shattered, howling jaws of ponies long dead … Their jealous ghosts screamed at me to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the home that they had been denied.”

Focusing warily, my horn glowed and I carefully levitated to myself my saddlebags. With a grunt, I hurled them over my back and fastened their straps as I waited by the door. Through Candy Cane’s nagging, care, and days of sleep, my headaches had subsided.

I was ready to hurl myself into the breach once more.

Now we were saying our goodbyes. Hopefully not for the last time.

The last time I said goodbye … I lost so much. So had Summer Smiles and the girls. They were reluctant to let Candy Cane go again after the short time she’d spent with them. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, not when the wasteland could take any of us away at any moment.

Summer Smiles, standing beside me at the front door, fidgeted nervously upon her hooves. She looked at me worriedly, her lips pursed and her brows furrowed.

I knew what she was thinking.

‘What if we never came back?’

She loved Candy Cane. Summer Smiles watched the mare with a longing stare, biting her lower lip as she struggled to bring forth words. Words that she hoped would not be the last she’d ever say to her closest friend.

But as Candy Cane approached, fillies in tow, Hops stole the words from Summer Smiles’ mouth.

“Please don’t leave us again, Auntie Candy Cane ...” Hops whimpered.

Candy Cane clenched her eyes shut and steeled herself as she levitated Hops off her back. The filly floated sluggishly to an open chair, Candy Cane’s magical field lingering for several precious seconds before she finally let go.

Hops’ lower lip quivered as she held out her forelegs. “Please don’t go …”

Candy Cane sniffled and lowered herself to the floor so that they could see eye to eye. She ran a hoof through the filly’s blonde mane, touching the girl’s cheek as she swallowed her tears.

Doodle raced over to the mare and hugged her foreleg tight, unwilling to let go.

“I’m sorry, girls … I’ll be back. We’ll be back.”

“But what if you don’t!?” Doodle whinnied, her eyes welling up with tears.

Candy Cane ruffled her mane with her other hoof, smiling warmly. Her horn glowed and she lifted Doodle to Hops’ chair and hugged them both. The fillies whimpered, squeezing her tight with their little legs as Candy Cane forced herself to let them go.

“I will … I’ll never leave you three ever again …” I heard her whisper, looking both fillies in the eye.

Summer Smiles bowed her head to the floorboards, and I watched as her shoulders began to quake. I rested a gentle hoof on her shoulder consolingly.

“Do you promise?” Hops cried, softly, burying her face into the curls of her candy cane mane.

There was a long pause as Candy Cane exhaled a trembling, uncertain breath.

“I promise.”

Candy Cane stood to her four hooves, clenching her jaw and swallowing her sorrow once more as the fillies stared up at her with their wide, teary eyes. Doodle stepped off the chair and helped Hops onto her back, following closely as Candy Cane started toward the door.

Summer Smiles sucked in a breath of air and straightened her spine. She unslung a short-barreled submachine gun from around her neck. With a tap of her hoof, the underbarrel flashlight flickered to life, and with another press of a button, it went dark.

She sighed softly, closing her yes for a moment before holding it out to Candy Cane. Her eyes darted to the weapon, then to the mare holding it.

Summer Smiles leaned in and whispered in Candy Cane’s ear, “It was Sugar Rum’s … she left it with me in case somepony broke in and I needed to protect the foals.” Summer Smiles held it higher, her hoof trembling beneath its weight – not from the weight of the weapon, but the burden of truth she’d kept from Sugar Rum’s daughters. The mare blinked away fresh tears.

“She’d want you to have it.”

Candy Cane’s horn glowed and she swirled a silvery field around it, holding it before her, barrel pointed to the floorboards. “But what about you? What if somepony …”

Summer Smiles poked her muzzle into her winter coat and tugged at a pistol that was tucked away inside.

“We’ll be safe here.” She looked at us both, but her teary eyes lingered upon Candy Cane.

“Cane …” Summer Smiles began, but before she could say any more, Candy Cane took her off guard and wrapped her legs around her. Summer Smiles tensed and stood just there, petrified as Candy Cane squeezed her tight.

“Cane …” she whispered again as her legs slowly found their way around her.

The two closed their eyes and swayed back and forth.

“I’m sorry,” Summer Smiles sobbed into Candy Cane’s shoulder.

Candy Cane shook her head. “Don’t be. Please don’t …” She pulled away so that they could see eye to eye. “You’ve been so good to us … to me. You’re one of my best friends, Summer. Nothing can ever change that.”

The mare nodded, sucking in her tears as Candy Cane hugged her once more.

When the two finally pulled apart, Summer Smiles’ forelegs still hung from her shoulders.

“You be safe out there, okay?”

“I will,” Candy Cane replied. She hesitated for a moment, brushing a bob of her candy cane mane out of her eye. Candy Cane clasped her hooves around Summer Smiles cheeks, leaned forward and planted a kiss on her forehead. Summer Smiles looked startled, wobbling dreamily on her hooves as Candy Cane turned, and started for the door.

Summer Smiles shook her head furiously, blinked, and stopped her just as Candy Cane’s horn began wreathing the door’s locks in her magical grip.

“You’ll need these,” she said, hoofing her a map to the Inner City, and several magazines for her submachine gun. Candy Cane took both, and tucked them into her peacoat.

“Thank you.”

“And you, Red.” She hoofed me a thick, hooded wintercoat to wear over my security barding, and a flashlight of my own. I thanked her for the rather thick winter wear, shrugging off my bags and buttoning it across my chest, before hurling my belongings over my back once more.

With a clack, clank, and a creak, the front door lurched open and the wasteland’s unforgiving breeze engulfed us once again. My flesh bristled with goosebumps, and I shivered inside my barding.

I reached out with a leg, ready to take a step outside – but hesitated. It was like dipping my hoof into a body of frigid water, and I recoiled at the wind’s chilling touch.

Candy Cane buttoned her peacoat tight and walked out the door without a flinch.

I steeled myself to follow her, but a hoof clenched my shoulder, tightly.

I turned, and met Summer Smiles’ stern gaze.

“You keep her safe, Red,” she told me – no – ordered me.

I turned and opened my mouth to say yes, to tell her that I would, that I would protect her like I protected my friends.

My dead, dead friends.

But instead, I nodded, and walked out into the howling darkness.

*

The wind screamed outside, shrieking through the twisted mass of metal and concrete that sheltered us from the blizzard. The whiteout had rendered the world outside nearly impossible to see, and I was thankful that Candy Cane’s wits and forethought had pushed us indoors before the storm actually hit.

Tucked away inside of a questionably sturdy shelter beneath the rubble of an ancient Ponevan ruin, I shivered uncontrollably.

Our cozy little shelter was a small crevice just big enough for the both of us to squeeze into. A crevice tucked into the rubble of some unfortunate building that had collapsed above us long ago. My eyes glanced nervously at the ceiling every time I thought I heard the rubble tremble. Sitting inside of a crumbling hole in the ground was the last place I wanted to be stuck in during a blizzard.

But then again, I had no choice.

Inside, thanks once again to Candy Cane’s survival skills we were able to build a small snow shelter by digging in a little bit more. With a vestibule to keep the cold air three feet below us, a raised platform to sit on, and a bunch of rocks to block the entrance, I kept telling myself that being in there was much better than out there.

Because Goddesses help whoever was still outside. The last time I was in a whiteout, the storm had ripped a friend out from my hooves. Out there, in the blizzard, you were on your own. You couldn’t see, you couldn’t stand, and you could only just barely hear yourself think.

Even in there, tucked away from the brunt of the storm, it was almost the same, trapped inside of a pitch black hole in the ground.

Shivering, I fumbled for the flashlight Summer Smiles gave me. But I thought against it. Flashlights ran out of battery, but my PipBuck, while dimmer, didn’t. Sighing, I pawed incessantly at my PipBuck’s interface with a shivering hoof. I missed the right button a few times, my uncontrollable shaking throwing off my aim. But with a curse on the tip of my tongue, and a barely audible clack, I illuminated Candy Cane and I with my PipBuck’s teal glow.

I thought that maybe, if my screen’s color was orange, I’d have felt a little warmer. I would’ve even taken green. Though I wasn’t even sure if balefire alone could melt that winter wonderland.

It was a deeply-penetrating kind of cold. It stabbed deep, through your clothes, your coat, your flesh. My hooves and joints were feeling stiff. My ears and my nose were almost numb. I could feel it seeping into my eye sockets – I could feel it freezing my eyeballs!

Even beneath all that barding, I was only warm enough to be alive. And even then, I was still shivering like I was going to drill a hole into the ground.

I clenched my eyes shut and sat on my hooves, hoping my buttcheeks would be enough to warm them. Truly I was desperate to come to my ass for help.

Turns out they weren’t much help.

I glanced at Candy Cane as she pulled her legs to her chest and huddled in the corner, tucking her muzzle away behind her collar. "So," I began, shivering uncontrollably, "I-is it just me, or is it weird how everyone keeps saying 'everypony'?"

Candy Cane just lifted an eyebrow at me.

I wheezed a trembling chuckle, trying to keep my mind focused on anything but freezing to death. "You know I-I'm pretty sure that's not even correct Equestrian. I-I feel like people are just saying that because everyone is doing it. I-I mean, I'm not surprised, since most ponies here have never even gone to school, and probably don't even know how to read, a-and ..."

Candy Cane was staring at me quietly.

I grinned sheepishly.

"Well, no offense ..."

"I know how to read, Red."

My rambling fell silent. We looked at each other in freezing exasperation, our teeth chattering. I groaned, thumping my head against the wall.

“I-I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! This is insane!” I rasped, “If it keeps snowing like this, I swear the whole world is going to freeze over.”

“This isn’t even the worst of it,” I heard her muffled voice tell me, barely audible over the wind that screamed past us outside. I shifted closer to her so we sat shoulder to shoulder, both our backs pressed against the wall behind us.

“P-please … y-you’re joking, right?” I chuckled, hugging my saddlebags close to my chest. “It wasn’t even this cold when I first left my stable.”

“If I was joking, nopony would be laughing,” she intoned, darkly. “These are just ripples of the biggest snowstorm you’ll probably ever see in your life, Red.”

‘Ripples,’ I thought, ‘Lovely,'

I thought that if that snowstorm was a ripple, then the actual one would have to be something along the lines of a tidal wave. ‘Fuck.’

“If this isn’t a storm, I don’t know what a storm is, Cane,” I sighed.

“People around here call it ’the Tempest’. It comes every year around this time like clockwork, blowing in from beyond the Crystal Mountains in the Frozen North."

"Luna,” I whinnied, “How the hell did ponies live on this frozen rock two centuries ago?"

Candy Cane chuckled softly, pulling her legs as close to her body as she could.

"It wasn't always like this,” I heard her say.

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

"I-it wasn't?"

She shook her head. "Before the bombs fell, the weather here was rather nice, or so my father told me." Candy Cane gazed quietly at her hooves for a few heartbeats. Then cocked her head at me, brushing out of her eyes a bob of her curly mane. "Have you heard of the Crystal Empire?"

I nodded. I knew that it was an immense sovereign nation that bordered Equestria. But when the world ended, it became like everything else: more rubble to litter the earth.

"The Crystal Imperials once had an ancient artifact called the Crystal Heart. It was what made the Imperials different from the Equestrians: it controlled their weather, and it empowered their magic.

“It even protected them from evil."

I laughed bitterly, "Evil, huh? Didn’t help them so much when the megaspells started raining down on them."

"Unfortunately so," she mumbled, somewhat annoyed by my snide remark. "The Crystal Heart projected a shield – a barrier to the Frozen North and its winds. It controlled their weather - it kept the Empire in a state of perpetual spring. It kept all the Crystal Ponies safe. And when they were all safe, they were all happy – and that made the Heart and their magic even stronger."

I exhaled sharply as the breeze penetrated our shelter and caressed my rosy cheeks.

"D-damn … I could really use a Crystal Heart right about now.” I cocked my head at her. “What happened to it?"

Candy Cane shrugged solemnly, her eyes fluttering closed.

"Nopony knows ... My father told me that the balefire melted it into molten lava … I don't believe that though … its shield should've been strong enough to repel whatever the zebras threw at it. They had everything they could’ve wanted, needed – protection – and still the balefire swept them away."

I’d seen pictures of the Empire before the war. They were elegant, posh looking ponies. They enjoyed and loved life as much as they loved each other. It was sunshine and ladybugs all year long in the Empire. But sunshine and ladybugs didn’t save them from the balefire. Neither did their Crystal Heart.

I snorted, chuckling bitterly. "Maybe the wasteland could’ve been a little less awful if they’d just kept the Frozen North from shitting on us.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered in Poneva. It still snowed here, naturally,” she said.

I rolled my eyes, groaning, "Terrific."

“But with their shield repelling the Frozen North’s winds, it was bearable, I think. My father taught us extensively on the Crystal Borderlands and the Empire. He said that it wasn’t as bad back then as it is now, with the Northern Gales blowing in unhindered.

“The Empire was the only thing between Equestria and whatever else lurked on the far side of the Crystal Mountains. Back then, without them, all of Northern Equestria would have been … well, a snowy wasteland.”

“And look at us now,” I muttered. “F-funny how it all works out in the end.” I paused, pursed my lips, and frowned. “Y-you know, I never knew that. I never even knew that – the Crystal Heart I mean. I-I feel like they cut that part out of our history,” I trailed off, “All I ever knew was Equestria.”

I couldn’t even remember if the Empire had an entire chapter dedicated to it.

“Where’d you even learn all this?” I asked. “Sorry, but I can’t imagine there being any public libraries in Poneva,” I smirked.

She nodded slowly as a slight smile crept across her lips. “My father taught me. He also had a wealth of books at his disposal – so a wasteland library isn’t quite out of this world.”

I grinned. "Your father must've been an egghead."

Candy Cane giggled at that, sighing as she rested her head against the wall behind her.

"He sure was. He was the most learned pony I’d ever known. He showered my sister and I with books. We’d finish an entire book one week after the other, and he always had more …” She closed her eyes, smiling to herself. “My father even homeschooled us on everything from Discord to derivatives.” She pursed her lips and touched a hoof to her chin. “Though my math skills are little rusty, now … it’s been so long.”

"How'd he know so much? Hell, I don't even know so much, and I'm a stable pony." I paused, my muzzle scrunching up. "Eh ... that was more or less my fault," I confessed with a dry chuckle.

"Aren't Stables supposed to have top of the line education?" she asked.

"Sure, but you can only learn as much as they’d teach you … or as much as you wanted to learn," I added with a crooked smile. "I for one hated history, so if you ever tried asking me how Discord’s Reign of Chaos came to be, I’d probably just give you the same awkward smile I’m giving you now."

Candy Cane chuckled softly. "My father would've thrown a book at me if I said that. My sister would’ve too … she liked history more than anypony. She loved it. Thought learning from it was the only hope for this wasteland.”

“Oh yeah?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “She sounds a lot like –”

“Hops,” she said, plucking the word right from my lips. Her smile was bittersweet.

My eyes softened. "What was she like?"

“She was just like Hops,” Candy Cane murmured, closing her eyes. “She was so quiet, so shy – but so wise. Doodle and Hops are both really smart fillies, but Hops is truly the wisest.”

I chuckled softly, remembering the demure little filly. “Almost too wise for her age,” I scoffed. “And your sister?”

Candy Cane nodded, smiling to herself.

“She was,” she whispered, turning her eyes low. “I loved her so much. Father loved her so much. He raised us both and believed we had a lot in store for the wasteland ... and my sister ... she was our little treasure box. She had so many great things and great ideas to offer.” Candy Cane smiled, staring into the ceiling with dreamy eyes. “I think if she was still here today, the wasteland might’ve been a little different.”

I looked at my hooves as Candy Cane let out a trembling sigh.

“Do you remember what Hops said that night during class? ‘Ignorance only makes more monsters’. It’s why my sister loved history so much … why she wanted to teach it. So ponies wouldn’t make the same mistakes our ancestors did."

I snorted, muttering, "Our ancestors were idiots. Hypocrites that preached friendship but slaughtered zebras by the millions.” I sighed, glaring gloomily through the crevice’s entrance. “They made this world. It’s why I hate history ... they have nothing to teach me.”

Candy Cane shook her head. “It wasn’t always like this … it wasn’t. She and Hops, well, they could see the best in everypony. Even our ancestors …” she trailed off, sounding unsure.

My ears perked.

“That sounds difficult to do.” I turned and met her eyes, searchingly.

But Candy Cane broke away from my gaze and fell silent.

“It … it is,” she whispered.

A shivering silence hung over us as we listened to the wind howl outside. “My father … he made her that way. He always said that the reason why the wasteland ia the way it is, is because nopony knows better anymore. Everypony’s forgotten what it was like to live in peace."

"But he knew?"

"He wasn't a stable pony, but he was raised around ponies whose generations had seen the world go to hell. He had an idea of what life was like then, how better it was."

I snorted, folding my legs across my chest.

"You mean the old world that blew everyone to smithereens?"

She shook her head. "That war lasted twenty years Red. They grew up knowing only hate. They too forgot what it was like to live in peace." Candy Cane looked away, staring desolately at her own shadow. “So did we.”

Candy Cane lowered herself to the floor and laid her head down between her forehooves. "Father always believed that we could learn a lot from the old world. That's why he always said history was so important ... he raised us hoping we'd learn. And … we learned a lot." She smiled, closing her eyes. "We didn't even know how to read until we met him ..."

I wasn’t sure if I heard that right.

"Until ... you met him?"

Her eyes fluttered open, and she paused for a long moment. Her gray eyes turned cold as steel as she lowered them quietly to the floor.

"What happened to them – your sister, your father?"

There was a long silence as she sat there huddled together, her legs tucked to her chest. Her voice was but a trembling whisper.

“What happened to them ...” she murmured, echoing my words in a voice entire worlds away from where we sat. Candy Cane clenched her eyes shut. "It’s … better if I remembered the way they lived, not how they …” she trailed off, her eyes still closed shut.

I stared at her for a long while as she lay there.

My voice eventually broke the stagnant quietude around us. "I never knew my father," I murmured. "He was an engineer, too. Died in a steam accident when I was just a foal." I thought for a moment, then added, "At least you knew yours."

For many long seconds, Candy Cane didn’t say a single word.

"We'll rest here for a few hours until the storm blows over," she said flatly, "Two hours should be enough before the visibility clears up again."

I said nothing as I set my PipBuck's alarm to go off two hours later. With a shuddering sigh, I hugged my bags close to me and huddled as close as I could to the concrete behind me.

"Dear Celestia, it's so cold," I sighed with a puff of mist, wrinkling my numbing nose. I levitated Dew Drops' scarf, wrapped it around my muzzle, and tucked it behind my collar.

Several minutes passed as I shivered there, restlessly.

Then I felt someone's legs wrap around me.

Candy Cane buried her muzzle into the scarf around my neck as she hugged me tight. I felt a warm, drawn out breath seep through the fabrics of Dew Drops' scarf and into the chilled flesh of my neck.

"Um ... Candy Cane?" I asked, shifting uncomfortably as I felt her skinny legs press against my barding.

Her words sent another tingly warm breath into my chilled coat.

"Still cold?" she asked.

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

"No."

*

Chapter 11 - Casting Shadows - Pt II

*

The fresh powder crunched beneath my hooves as we trotted through the empty street of a quiet, abandoned city block. Snowflakes swirled past me, lingering upon the fabrics of my winter coat and freckling it black and white.

We traveled for much of that day, or night – whatever the hell it was in this wasteland. My flashlight’s beam and Candy Cane’s magical light orb illuminated the dark path before us as we crunched through the snow.

At least fifteen miles out we walked, and the farther we walked, the emptier the city became. Summer Smiles was far behind us. The Palominos were far behind us.

Home was far behind us.

Even farther for me.

We were the only ponies that walked that road. And I was hoping it’d stay that way.

The farther we went, the deeper we descended into the recesses of the fallen city’s underworld.

Every step was a step deeper into the abyss.

Out of curiosity, every now and then, I’d pan my flashlight across the charred walls of some dilapidated hovel, in search of nothing in particular. Broken, empty windows twinkled in the light as I peered into the ruins inside. We passed by small shops, their roofs caved in, and supermarkets, picked clean by looters, and hotel lobbies, desolate and devoid of life.

I passed by ruin after ruin, until every store, every apartment, every tower that I left behind me became nothing but balefire-blackened walls and crumbling roofs.

It was all the same for miles on end. Nothing but destruction and a city that once was.

After almost an hour, my eyes began to glaze over. I was simply scanning the darkness for the simple sake of scanning. Nothing. There was nothing remarkable left to look at, thanks to the ponies and the zebras and their megaspells. They had destroyed everything, and left little to bury.

And yet, somehow, elsewhere in the wasteland, ponies were able to rebuild.

… but not there.

Not there.

The Inner City was a city of ash. A city of ghosts devoid of life. The lights and sounds of Outer Poneva were gone, leaving us there only with the quietude of a dead winter night. The minutes ticked by like hours as my mind wandered, bored. It strayed off beyond where my eyes could see, wandering, wondering why what little was left of civilization was so far behind us.

Why that place was so empty.

The wind began to dwindle and slow, and a soundless snowfall sprinkled over us in the chilling darkness. All I could hear now were our hoofsteps, my heartbeat, and the voice that murmured nervously inside my head.

Never in my life had I been in a place so … quiet. A place so unnervingly - so unnaturally quiet. There was nothing to distract me from the apprehensive thoughts that plagued my weary mind. Especially the thoughts that I did not want to hear.

In that utter silence, it was almost too easy to be lost in my own thoughts … my anxieties … my fears ...

We walked that empty, broken road alone. Alone. Alone.

Alone …

I wondered if we were truly alone.

The darkness hid watching eyes that neither of us knew were there. Illuminated by our precious light, they could see us … but we couldn’t see them.

I gulped, scanning the broken buildings and rubble as they passed me by, my flashlight cutting nervous swaths through the night. Frowning warily, I beamed my light through the window of some second story apartment, watching as the shadows parted before me like ragged curtains.

A pony with sunken black eyes stared down at me from the windowsill.

I blinked. And stopped in my tracks. ‘Wait.’ Chilling apprehension skittered across my features as I swung my light back and trained it upon the shattered, melted windowpane.

Emptiness. A black void peered down at me the street.

Nobody was there.

Somehow, I was happy to find that no … thing desired to humor my curiosity.

Half an hour later, we were far enough that the outer city’s twinkling city lights weren’t even visible. They were gone. All we had now was darkness. An eerie, undulating darkness that seemed to shake, rattle, and roll when your back was turned.

In the shifting twilight, my eyes began seeing shapeless forms worming beneath the pitch black curtain that circled around us. Shapes that crept and crawled through the night.

But we were still alone. I hoped.

But where there was nothing, I’d find something … something I didn’t want to find. My imagination stalked. It slithered. It chased after the ghosts that evaded my darting eyes. I panned my light across a collapsed building. But my sweeping motion slowed as my wary stare fell through the cracks and crevices of the building’s debris-strewn grave. Drawn in by their emptiness, I peered inside.

Flash.

A mangled face stared back.

I froze in my tracks. But it was just a strip of melted rebar trapped beneath the rubble.

I gulped, and kept walking, playing my light nervously across the city’s broken remains.

It was all too easy to shrug it all off. To just ignore it and keep walking. I kept telling myself that I was just seeing things – that was all. I was just seeing things.

But my thoughts … my anxiety wouldn’t leave me alone. My apprehensions screamed up and down a steep, slippery slope. I felt my muscles tense and my heart flutter inside my chest every time my light parted the black sea before me.

I couldn’t stop searching. Even when I didn’t know what I was searching for.

I walked past an empty doorway to my left, my light skirting the base of the walls around it. And stopped.

Candy Cane kept walking.

I stood there for a second, the charred, ruined doorway looming over me as I watched her walk away, her hoofsteps crunching farther and farther into the distance. My light remained trained on the snow as I felt the hairs on my coat stand on end.

The wind began to pick up again. Blowing through my limbs. Blowing into that empty doorway.

I turned slowly to face it. To peer into its inviting depths ... drawn into the mouth of that gaping abyss. I gazed through the doorway and into that shifting sea of darkness, waiting. Waiting … listening ... watching the shadows ripple and writhe before my eyes like a sea of worms wriggling beneath skin. I didn’t dare shine my light. I didn’t dare to part that rippling black curtain and look upon what was waiting for me behind it.

The horrors that were lying in wait on the other side.

I stared into the darkness. And the darkness stared back. The wind howled through my limbs, howling into mouth of that abyss.

The magic that wreathed my flashlight turned a dark crimson as I shrunk beneath the shadow of that empty doorway.

I lifted a hoof as the wind screamed into my ears and the inviting darkness drew me ever closer.

I put one hoof forward.

“Red?”

I snapped to and flashed my light in Candy Cane’s face.

She narrowed her eyes at me, shielding her face with a hoof.

“What are you doing?”

I didn’t answer her. Everything was quiet. So quiet.

I blinked my eyes vigorously.

“Please, try to keep up,” I heard her whisper, “I don’t want to be out in the open like this.”

I nodded, and started forward. But I stopped once more in my tracks. I looked over my shoulder, sparing one final peek into the chilling abyss inside that empty doorway.

But it was just an empty doorway.

I gulped. And hurried after her.

I fell in behind her, my flashlight and her light orb trained solely upon the road that ran on before us.

I decided, to put my fears to rest, that I’d simply stop searching. The city could have its damned darkness, it could have it all if it wanted for all I cared.

But in the back of my mind, I wondered …

‘… what if we weren’t alone?’

Candy Cane moaned faintly, rousing me from my ponderous state. She stopped in her tracks as she cradled her head in her hooves. Her magic flickered – and winked out, leaving us only with my flashlight’s glow.

“W-what happened?”

“My horn.” She winced. “I need to rest it for a bit.”

Candy Cane had been lighting our path with her magic for the past three hours. Her mental stamina was still weak from all those sleepless nights. I took a deep breath, and exhaled. I figured I’d give her a break.

“It’s fine. We should take turns using flashlights,” I said, twirling mine in the air with my magic. “Just point me in a direction and I’ll light the way.”

She breathed her thanks, and started onwards once more, a few steps ahead of mine as I cut illuminated swaths of light across the road. But no matter how bright my light was, it seemed to do little but squeeze desperately through the blackness around us.

That far from the outer city, Poneva was like the open drifts outside the city’s walls. My light was just a distant, wavering candlelight in a sea of darkness.

And all around us, it closed in. I felt its chilling embrace as it skittered its icy broken talons down my spine and I shivered with every trembling breath. Even colder and colder it became as we trotted into the remains of a skyscraper that had plummeted to its shattered grave in the death throes of the balefire apocalypse.

The twisted maze of concrete and rebar curled inward towards us as we entered. Melted and horrifically reshaped by the balefire, jagged spindles of black metal dangled from its twisted skeleton. A swish, and a brush, and a tap. Gnarled claws as cold as death itself skittered across my mane.

My eyes would dart upward and find nothing but the tangled innards of the razed skyscraper playing against the tips of my cropped mane.

My hooves crunched against the snow, then the gravel. The howling winter winds blew far above, but the icy teeth of the stagnant, frozen air around us sunk deep into my barding.

I exhaled a trembling breath as our winding path became smaller and smaller. The tunnel squeezed and tightened around us, suffocating us in that shrinking, frozen pit until we were muzzle to tail, coat to concrete. We crawled with our bellies dragging across the ancient rubble.

Minutes passed as I stared into the swirls of Candy Cane’s tail. Then my light began to fade. Its yellow beam dwindled like a dammed stream, the shadows threatening to suffocate us all.

It flickered, sputtered, and choked.

Then died.

Utter darkness washed over me.

“Come on …” I murmured, banging my flashlight against the tunnel walls. I shook it back and forth, its yellow beam winking in and out, trying desperately to penetrate the blackness.

The tunnel flickered before me, the shadows giving way for a single desperate second as I struggled to turn it back on.

Then nothing. My heart raced inside my chest as I fumbled with my useless flashlight - lost, blind, and utterly helpless in the dark without the glow of my precious, precious light.

My blind eyes darted uselessly from left to right. Useless and helpless in the dark.

We were trapped. Sitting ducks.

They could see us. But we couldn’t see them.

The air was getting shallower. I gasped with frantic breaths as my flashlight slipped out of my waning magical grip.

Then a draft of frigid air whispered down the back of my neck.

“Are you okay?” Candy Cane asked as my hooves scrambled through the darkness, feeling the frozen earth for my flashlight.

She sounded like she was only a breath away from me.

“I-I don’t know. M-my light went out,” I stammered. My right hoof found its prize and I battered it against the tunnel walls. But it was no use. “What the fuck … these are supposed to be fresh batteries.”

“Just follow me,” she whispered, “According to the map, wherever we go, this particular tunnel leads to the same place. We can’t miss it if we just keep going straight,” Candy Cane told me, her voice speaking from somewhere in the impenetrable darkness.

“You … you sure about that?” There was a short pause before Candy Cane let out an amused snort. “Ah what the hell … of course you are. I’m right behind you,” I said, nervously.

My ears perked. I listened to her hooves scrape against the walls around her as she felt her way through the blackness. So long as I could hear her, I wouldn’t stop crawling.

I paused, my ears listening to Candy Cane’s shuffling hooves. Though I couldn’t see her, I knew that she was still close by. I also knew that I still had my PipBuck. Stopping for a moment, and listening to her make her way down the tunnel, I swore under my breath and I tucked my flashlight back into one of my pockets. With several blind button clacks, I hoofed my PipBuck’s interface.

To my relief, the screen flicked on, illuminating the swirls on Candy Cane’s tail with its teal light. I frowned at them.

She’d been stopped in front of me the entire time.

“You good?” she asked me, her eyes gleaming over her shoulder.

“Yeah, a-at least my PipBuck’s -”

Static washed over my PipBuck’s screen. Its radio flicked on - vomiting incoherent static noise into our ears -

Then its screen went black. And so did my light.

“Fuck!”

“Red Dawn?”

“I-I’m fine. J-just fuck it,” I hissed. “Let’s just keep going.”

I wanted to get it over with.

Without another word, Candy Cane shuffled through the rubble. I followed blindly in suit as the tunnel squeezed around me, battering my ribs, clawing at my barding, raking my bare, shivering flesh.

In utter darkness I crawled, my breaths getting shallower and shallower in the absence of my PipBuck’s guiding light. It was impossible … the stagnant underworld air seemed to grow even heavier, pressing against my chest as my breaths came out as nothing more than strained gasps.

But somehow I was reassured by the sounds of her hooves digging through the rubble close by. I bumped into her tail and apologized. Candy Cane shuffled faster in response. Realizing just how dearly I wanted out of that hole, she quickened her pace.

I followed her hooves wherever I heard them, and stopped whenever I heard them stop.

The only indication that she was still there were the dragging sounds she made as she crawled through the rubble.

I felt the tunnel wall dip away from me to my right.

Exhaling sharply, I leaned left and hugged the wall closely, afraid I’d fall into some icy pit that I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t see.

But close by, Candy Cane’s hooves continued onward, and so I followed them without question. I followed them because I didn’t want to be left behind. I didn’t want to be left behind, trapped and alone in that suffocating, frozen tunnel.

I felt and heard rocks crumble away from the roof and tumble to the earth.

Then the shuffling stopped.

A few feet in front of me, she whispered, her voice trembling.

“R-Red Dawn?”

“Cane?” I managed, squinting through the darkness uselessly.

All I saw was blackness. But I could hear her voice, and feel her fear.

“I’m stuck,” she whimpered. “I-I can’t move …”

“Shit.” The tunnel must’ve caved in and pinned her tail to the ground. “H-hold on, I can’t see,” I hissed, trying to find her tail, her leg – something!

But my blind hooves only crunched through the frozen earth.

“Help me …” she begged. “Please help me …”

I swung my hooves through the air frantically, inching forward, hoping I’d find her. With a loud clang, my PipBuck banged heavily against a pile of debris, and to my surprise, its display flickered on and illuminated the tunnel before me.

My heart skipped a beat.

She was gone.

Nowhere to be seen.

I whispered, shaking uncontrollably.

“C-Candy Cane?”

Her faint, familiar voice echoed faintly down the tunnel in the distance, far beyond where my eyes could see.

Then my PipBuck flickered once. Then died.

Darkness swept over me. I froze upon my hooves, petrified and in the dark as a chilling, nagging sensation skittered down the back of my neck. It was fear. Fear of what awaited me in the dark.

Hooves shuffled through the gravel behind me.

“Red Dawn …” a voice rasped, close enough to my ear to feel its frigid breath upon the back of my neck. My trembling breaths became shallow gasps.

“Help me ...”

My heart leaped inside my chest.

I hurled myself away and bolted, tearing through the gravel as if my life depended on it. Rocks crashed into my ribs and slammed into my skull and tore at my mane.

The temperature plummeted. Something dragged through the gravel behind me.

“CANDY CANE!”

She didn’t reply.

I opened my mouth to scream her name once more –

A ragged gasp escaped my lips instead.

Heavier and heavier. The frozen air crushed my lungs and choked away my frantic breaths. I batted at my leg, struggling to turn my PipBuck back on as I wheezed for air that wouldn’t fill my lungs.

‘Come on – come on – turn on, you son of a –‘

Icy talons dug into my mane. They didn’t let go.

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move. But I could hear its wheezing, ragged breaths as it clawed and flailed through the gravel behind me.

Chills slithered down my spine as a suffocating silence fell upon me.

A frozen breath wheezed against the back of my neck.

I screamed. I wrenched my head away and barreled down the tunnel, shrieking my throat raw into the darkness as the darkness chased after me –

Then I ate a mouthful of tail.

“Hey!” I heard a mare cry out as I ran my head into her hind leg and fell on my face. My PipBuck flashed in Candy Cane’s eyes.

Candy Cane swished her tail across my face. “Yow! Watch where you point that thing!” she cried.

“WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU!? Shined my light in front of me and you weren’t …” I lifted a hoof and my eyes gravitated to my PipBuck’s glowing teal screen. “And … and you weren’t … there,” I trailed off. I gulped and realized that my goosebumps had subsided. The usual wasteland air was permeating the tunnel once more.

Blinking profusely, she came to notice my baffled silence. Her muzzle scrunched up and she narrowed her eyes at me.

“I thought you were right behind me?” she murmured, blinking.

“No - you left me behind,” I hissed.

She shook her head, insisting, “I asked you if you were okay, and you said you were fine. I heard you crawling behind me ... so I just kept going.”

I froze, the blood draining from my face.

‘Help me …’

I turned to her my haunted stare.

“Cane … Cane that wasn’t me.”

*

We huddled closely around my PipBuck’s light in an alcove in the rubble. I found myself glancing over my shoulder every other second – back at the tunnel we’d put behind us. Even with Candy Cane beside me, there was an eerie, unforgivable fear that lingered in the back of my mind.

Fear of the dark.

Because the darkness hid eyes that I couldn’t see.

I clenched my jaw and stared down the broken tunnel we had emerged from. From the frozen, suffocating darkness we’d crawled out of.

I had never been afraid of the dark.

Back at ‘91, I always knew what was behind those shadowy curtains.

But out there … it was different.

Those shadowy curtains hid more than what I wanted to know.

Candy Cane was convinced that I’d been behind her the entire time. Convinced that it was just the debris that had raked my scalp. Convinced that I was simply hearing things, and that the claustrophobia was just getting to me.

But fuck! I’m a damned engineer – I spent my days crawling through pipes, sticking my head through pipes, getting my hoof stuck in pipes!

I wasn’t. Claustro. Phobic.

I shook my head. After all those skull taps … those burnouts … maybe the damage was more inside than out. Maybe I really was losing it … maybe ...

Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me again.

My PipBuck’s light flickered and my heart hammered inside my chest.

No. My muscles tensed and my ears perked as I heard the echo of rocks crumbling away in the distance behind us. As the echoes faded away, only our breaths – only my shallow breaths made the slightest of sounds in the heavy silence. I gulped and let out a trembling sigh, watching as the heavy cloud of mist lingered in the frozen air.

The cloud shifted before my eyes.

"Red Dawn?" I heard Candy Cane whisper.

I turned, and she was snacking on an apple.

"Y-yes?"

She stopped chewing for a moment, her right cheek bulging with apple chunks.

"Hm?"

I cocked my head at her.

"What?"

Candy Cane swallowed and cocked a brow at me.

"What?"

I snapped, glaring at her, "You said my name!"

"No, I didn't," she insisted, before taking another bite from her apple.

I sighed, shrugging, bringing to my face my trembling hooves. I rubbed at my eyes, my ears pinned against the sides of my head. I exhaled a long, and drawn out breath. I clenched my jaw and watched as my breath slowly dissipated into nothingness.

"Fucking shit ...” I murmured, shaking my head.

Maybe I was losing it. Maybe … maybe …

Candy Cane inched closer so that we were shoulder to shoulder, and leaned against me. I took comfort in knowing that she was there, sure that she was there. I could feel her shoulder on mine. She was there … she had to be.

Finishing her apple, Candy Cane swept aside a pair of apple cores, the remains of our snack, as she pulled the map out of her peacoat.

My PipBuck rocked back and forth as Candy Cane shifted the leg it was attached to across the gravel at our hooves, laying down the map Summer Smiles had given us.

In its teal light, she tapped a hoof against a seemingly arbitrary quadrant on the map.

“We’re here,” Candy Cane began. Eyeing the mausoleum of ruined concrete around us, she nodded to herself. “This should be the old Sparkle-Cola tower,” Candy Cane told me, her breaths coming out as wisps of chilled air.

“Sparkle-Cola?” I frowned, squinting at the map.

“An old soda company.” She sighed, “They were one of the leading soda brands back in the day.”

I dug a hoof through the rubble at my feet.

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” I chuckled, grimly.

She tapped the map once more, and to my shock, it came apart.

“Fuck the what?” I gasped, my eyes widening.

Candy Cane shook her head, “It’s alright. It’s supposed to do that.” With both her hooves and her magic, she pulled the map apart – piece by piece.

“What the – stop that! Celestia, you’re ripping it!” I cried.

“Shush. It’s fine, Red, really.” Candy Cane took the six irregularly cut pieces and pasted them back together – good as new, much to my disbelief. “Orphanage ponies carry these maps in groups; they’d split up the pieces among each other so that if one of them got captured, the enemy would only have a piece or two of the whole map.” She levitated the aged sheet of leather before my eyes. “That way nopony’d be able to find all their hideouts.”

I nodded, narrowing my eyes at the six pieces that hovered before me.

“Clever bastards,” I murmured, admirably. No wonder no kne knew where to find those ponies, because it was so difficult to track them – even with their own Goddesses-damned map.

Candy Cane nodded, setting it back down against the rubble at our hooves. She traced her hoof across its surface, stopping at each circle indicating the location of one of many hideouts in their network of clandestine cells all across Poneva city.

“The thing is, is that not all of their hideouts are in use at any given time. If anything, they remain as resupply points, doors locked and openable only with a key.”

“Which we don’t have,” I muttered, swearing under my breath.

She pursed her lips. “For all we know, the next hideout we stop at might just be a weapon’s cache.”

I cocked a brow at her, rather irritated. Yet another setback.

“It wouldn’t matter, because we wouldn’t even be able to get inside.” I face-hoofed, mumbling, “Summer Smiles didn’t tell you where to go, exactly?”

“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “Summer Smiles hasn’t worked with them since Sugar Rum had her babies.”

My jaw dropped.

“Are you … shitting me? For all we know the map might’ve changed!”

She sighed, brushing her mane out of her eyes. “I hope not. But if it hasn’t, then it doesn’t mean that we won’t find them, it just means we might find a cache. We’d just need to try every hideout we come across.”

Candy Cane looked up from our map, and added, with faint optimism, “We’ll find them eventually.”

“Wooooonderful,” I droned flatly, running a shaky hoof through my mane.

She pointed to a nearby quadrant on the map, directly adjacent to ours.

“Yes, wonderful indeed. We’re rather close to one, fortunately.” Candy Cane tapped her chin. “If we can get out of this hole and cut through the Ministry of Morale hub, we should be able to get to their hideout.”

“You make it sound so easy,” I said, trying to conceal my apprehension with a pained smile.

She gulped. I took that as a no.

“I’ve been out here a few times, but not this far out into the Inner City, Red.” She huddled close to me, glancing over her shoulder. “It isn’t safe out here.”

I scoffed bitterly, “When is it ever?”

She rubbed one of her forelegs with a hoof. “You don’t know, Red … you don’t know what’s out here.” Her voice lowered to a dark, ominous tone. “The closer we get to ground zero, the worse things get. The more dangerous it gets.”

When we were outside, about an hour ago, I noticed that there weren’t too many free standing structures in the Ponevan skyline.

“Not much survived when the bomb came.” She gave me a stern gaze. “But whatever the balefire didn’t kill … we need to steer clear of it.” Candy Cane drew her submachine gun, flipped the safety off, and chambered a round.

I drew my pistol as well, and did the same. Candy Cane swirled her silvery magic around Summer Smiles’ map and pulled it apart, levitating to me one half and keeping the other.

“Don’t lose it.” Candy Cane hesitated for a moment, eyeing her hooves. “If we get caught … you need to destroy it … okay?”

I gulped as I held my half gingerly in my hooves.

“Caught by what? We’re nowhere near any of the plantations or their dogs,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t answer.

But she did.

“By whatever is still crawling around out there,” Candy Cane said simply.

She got to her four hooves and led me through yet another partially-collapsed tunnel with a black, opaque hole at its end – our exit. Another. Partially. Collapsed. Tunnel. It was something she seemed completely used to. Me? Not so much. The last thing I wanted was to get pancaked by a cave in.

But getting crushed by rocks was the least of my worries. Especially not in that forsaken place.

I paused for a moment to replace the batteries of my flashlight. They were completely drained. I started after her, checking my pistol and ejecting its magazine to eyeball the rounds loaded within.

“Red Dawn?” someone whispered, close enough to feel its glacial breath against the inside of my ear.

Chills skittered down my spine. Dense trails of mist seethed from my lips with every shallow breath I took.

I shook my head.

My horn glowed wearily and I slid my magazine home, making my way toward Candy Cane who was waiting for me – halfway down the tunnel.

Behind me, I heard the faint sounds of crumbling rocks shifting underhoof.

*

Chapter 11 - Casting Shadows - Pt III

*

We emerged from that forsaken pit. Finally. But my relief was short-lived.

It was as if we’d entered a different city, like something out of the deepest pits of hell itself. I flashed my light across the sky and watched as the wretched spires of balefire-melted concrete and twisted metal loomed ominously over us.

The steel frames of those ancient high-rises had been reduced to nothing but gnarled and twisted spikes. The balefire had consumed the buildings they once held high, melting and sloughing away from their bubbling skeletons. Others, too structurally weak, were instead utterly destroyed, their broken remains piling several stories above us and around us in immense mountains of snow-capped concrete and steel.

It was no longer a city. Not even a fallen one. We had entered a mass grave. Every step I took, crunching through the snow-swept rubble, was a step knowing that somewhere beneath me someone had died.

No one could have survived.

Not that close to ground zero.

And yet I didn’t feel any safer.

I bit my lower lip and flinched every time I swung my light left and right, afraid that I’d see more than just the unmarked graves of Poneva’s countless dead. The city could have its darkness. And it did. The night belonged to them. They were using it against us. Watching us. Hiding from us. Surrounding us.

Whenever I panned my flashlight’s beam across the rubble before me, I was afraid I’d lose Candy Cane to that sea of shifting darkness. Only my ears and the glow of her magelight kept us from being swallowed up by the black sea that parted before us.

Even at the stable I knew that creatures of the dark were drawn to the light.

Our precious lights.

We walked on, our lights nothing more than beacons in the dark – but not for us. For them. For all I knew, they were drawing closer. Stalking – slithering silently through the night.

If there was something out there … we had no way of knowing.

A different kind of silence hung over that place. It was a brooding silence – the silence of a bloodletter stalking its prey, the silence of a sneaky pony crawling through the rubble. I knew what it was like to move without being seen. I also knew what it was to be hunted by monsters.

It was that same feeling ... wading through the darkness, hoping I wouldn’t be pulled under and drowned … devoured beneath the black tides.

The only sounds my ears could distinguish were the winds that scattered snow around us, our hooves crunching through the pale, and the uncertain beats of my heart. I kept telling myself that there was nothing else out there but us.

But that was what they wanted.

I could still hear the voice that whispered into my ear in that frozen tunnel, calling my name … it knew my name. How did it know my name?

Hooves crunched through the snow.

The darkness shifted around us.

My pace quickened, and with every step I took, I counted – mine, and hers.

This time, I swore I’d be right. I swore that they would be ours, and ours alone.

Mine, and hers.

Mine …

Hers …

Ours. Alone.

I could feel my racing heartbeat slow to the speed of our trot as we made our way through the snowy rubble. I breathed in, and breathed out. My breaths came and went in thick clouds of mist that seethed out of my cracked lips. I watched them drift away, carried off by the slowing breeze. I gulped, and blinked twice, eyeing the red and white swirls of Candy Cane’s mane as she led the way.

I listened to the monotonous, muffled clops our four pairs of hooves made through the rubble, and the slowing rhythm inside my chest. Monotony and repetition made ponies bored.

It made ponies comfortable. Predictable. Safe.

Prey never felt endangered until danger actually came.

But there was nothing there but us. Those were our hooves clopping through the rubble. No one else’s. Nothing else’s.

I found solace in my boredom, preoccupied, and safely bemused.

The air was still now. The wind no longer blew.

Clop – clop – clop – clop –

Our eight hooves. Our eight hooves.

My right foreleg panned lazily across the hills of debris, illuminating whatever my flashlight touched. Silence had smoothed the anxiety that was pumping through my veins. Now I was only cutting swaths through the night to light my way through the darkness.

Business as usual. The picture wasn’t any different from any other night I’d spent outside in the wasteland. The darkness parted. My path deepened. It kept my legs moving. We would get there sooner or later.

With my distant eyes, I caught, atop a mound of rubble too steep to climb, a crumbling wall that had somehow withstood the spellfire scourge. I frowned at it. The cadence of my trotting hooves stumbled, and slowed to a walk.

It was just my fucking imagination again. My eyes were making something out of nothing. I swung my light back, knowing it was just another well-placed chunk of concrete.

It wasn’t. I was wrong.

I kept my light trained upon it, squinting through the darkness as I noticed, that painted across its surface, were two distinct black smears. They were frail and distorted, each smear curling away from the broken path we walked.

I blinked, and blinked, and blinked.

And they were still there.

I gulped as I neared, the silhouettes becoming more and more defined. They were unsettlingly familiar shapes: like shadows cast against a wall and frozen in time.

Shadows. Shadows without ponies to cast them.

I peered through the night and saw that one of the spindly, contorted shadows had a limb-like smear held over it.

Like a pony shielding her eyes from a blinding light.

I broke my comfortable silence with a trembling whisper.

“C-Candy Cane?”

She paused midstep, her ears perking as if she’d heard something. Candy Cane darted her head around frantically, startled. She loosened up when she saw me. The mare took a deep breath.

It was just me.

“What is it?” she asked, quietly.

I cocked my head in the direction my flashlight was pointing.

“Do you see that?”

She nodded slowly as we both watched the wretched smears, shivering beneath our coats.

“What the hell are those things?” I kept my eyes trained, searching for movement. But I found none, and neither did my EFS.

Candy Cane hesitated, biting her lower lip. “Blast shadows,” she whispered. “They’re whatever was behind a pony when he or she got vaporized.”

Several long seconds passed as I gazed at the three pony-shaped shadows, their agonized silhouettes frozen mid-gallop, and their jaws dropped and distended as if howling into the balefire oblivion.

Vaporized. Erased. Wiped from existence.

I wondered, for the split second they spent conscious as their flesh burned away from their bones, if they felt pain. I wondered if they felt the shrieking, agonizing pain of being stripped away molecule by molecule, from flesh to bone, before their brains boiled away and joined the wind that scattered their ashes across the earth.

I wondered, in horror, why I was asking myself those questions, and found myself equally terrified that I knew the answers. I tried to push them away, but the thoughts ran circles around my head, drowning out my own, swallowing them up in balefire.

A strangulated gasp escaped my lips and I winced, the air sucked out of my lungs as my skin began prickling and tingling madly. I blinked away the rivulets of boiling hot sweat that streamed down my face. My lips opened to scream, but my mouth ran dry, charred, arid, and desiccated.

“We shouldn’t stare,” Candy Cane said out loud.

I inhaled sharply, trembling uncontrollably as she started along the path once more. I lifted to my muzzle a quaking right hoof to wipe dry the sweat that was pouring down my drenched, matted coat. I touched my face ... but it came away dry.

There was none. There had been none. My chilled, goose-bumped flesh shivered beneath my barding. I gulped a lump down my throat, swallowing the saliva that had been there all along.

I stood there, swaying back in forth, my distant eyes lost in delirium as Candy Cane started away from me. I lifted a hoof to follow her, but hesitated, frowning as my eyes darted back and forth across the ashen drifts.

I turned, lifted my leg, and panned my PipBuck’s beam back into the night, parting the sea of darkness like curtains on a stage. It found its mark, illuminating the blast shadow-painted edifice as I squinted through the snowfall.

They were gone.

They were gone. Bare as a bone – gone, like the wind that howled past us. They vanished as if they were never there.

Vaporized. Erased. Wiped from existence.

My right forehoof dipped back down into the rubble, and the darkness slithered back into the void I’d left behind.

We shouldn't have stared.

I cantered after her, the hairs on my mane standing on end as my shivering intensified, the winds biting deeper into my barding. They wormed their way into the fabrics, raking their icy talons against my livid flesh.

Candy Cane trained her eyes upon the way in front of us, her stare never leaving the illuminated path she cut through the night. Not wanting to look. Not wanting to find anything she didn’t want to see.

But the more I looked away, the more I saw – the more the darkness unraveled before my eyes.

Wherever my light shined, there was a shadow. My beam darted across the grave world around me.

There they were.

Smeared across every wall, every surface. Shadows of all shapes and sizes flashed before my eyes.

Flash.

Tall ponies.

Small ponies.

Dead ponies.

Flash.

Above us.

Around us.

To my left – to my right.

Flash.

My canter became a trot – faster and faster –

Flash – flash – flash.

Ponies reared up on their hinds as the balefire took them – mothers shielded their children from the emerald light – couples held each other close as they burned away – as they all burned away – as they all burned away –

Flash.

I stopped in my tracks. Candy Cane called out my name, but I didn’t answer. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

Shadows. Two agonized blast shadows, frozen in time mid-gallop. One of them cradled a bundled up smear against its chest, holding it close like a mother cradled a child …

A child. It was … was …

“Goddesses ...” I whispered, clenching my eyes shut as my shoulders quaked with shuddering sobs.

Something shifted in the rubble behind us.

I swung my light around. There was nothing there.

I let out a trembling breath into the frozen air as my pulse hammered inside my temples. I watched the icy cloud hang before my muzzle.

Then a gust of frozen wind chased it all away.

Candy Cane’s shriek spun me around. My heart nearly skipped a beat.

Five wretched blast shadows painted the wall before us – their jaws agape in silent agony as they covered their eyes and cowered in horror from the path ahead.

I stared, frozen upon my hooves.

Then their heads swiveled to face us.

“RUN!” I screamed, but Candy Cane beat me to it.

We turned tail and bolted as my heart threatened to leap outside of my chest. It didn’t matter where we went.

‘Anywhere but here.’

Thump – thump, thump – thump –

Our eight hooves. I counted our steps. Eight. Eight hooves. I thought we were alone.

But the shifting darkness was now churning like a turbulent sea.

Tides of darkness crashed all around us as the wind began to moan and the ashen snow began to fall.

I counted, knowing that only eight hoofsteps should’ve been crunching in our wake. Only eight. But my right ear perked as hooves pounded through the snow next to me.

I turned, knowing that Candy Cane was galloping beside me.

The blood drained from my face.

No one was there.

Candy Cane was at my tail, gasping frantically for air as she fought to keep up.

Eight hooves. Eight hooves. Eight hooves.

Thump – thump, thump – thump – thump.

My light flickered before my eyes.

‘NO!’

I watched in horror as my precious light began to die. ‘No – no, not again, PLEASE, GODDESSES' –

Rocks tumbled down the hills of rubble as they crumbled around us.

We were not alone. But then I realized: we had never been alone.

My EFS fluctuated. Behind us. In front of us. To our left. To our right.

Never did their blips linger in one place for too long. I cut flickering swaths through the darkness around me, searching frantically for the horrors on my EFS.

Flash. The walls were bare. Flash. The walls were bare. Everywhere I shined, the walls were bare, and the shadows were nowhere to be seen.

But the blips on my EFS screamed that I was wrong.

I was wrong. They were everywhere. All around us. Closing in.

The snow thickened. The wind shrieked madly as it howled at us from every direction.

I whimpered and begged. But my precious light continued to fade before my widening eyes.

It flickered and waned to a dim, ruddy glow as the darkness devoured my dying light.

Muffled thumps crunched through the crumbling debris.

Those distant thumps became not so distant hoofsteps. I could hear them galloping down the jagged hilltops around us. Eight hooves. There were only supposed to be eight.

Then there were twelve. Twelve hooves crunched through the snow. Faster – matching our pace, stalking us within earshot - lurking behind the howling darkness.

I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to look.

The air shifted around me – and I swung my flickering flashlight about, its beam skimming atop jagged slopes too steep to climb.

Nothing. Nobody. No one.

Sixteen hooves pounded through the snow.

Then twenty. Twenty-two.

Eleven pairs of hooves. There should’ve been twelve. Should’ve. Its muffled clops were missing steps as something dragged and flailed after us through the rubble.

Rocks kicked up small plumes of snow - only a few steps ahead of us.

My dying light flickered across the rubble on high, and for a single fleeting second, I watched as dozens of shadows peered down at us.

I opened my mouth to scream.

“We’re almost there!” Candy Cane blurted out, shattering the feverish delirium that screamed inside my head.

Silence. With a whirring flicker, my flashlight brightened once again. The both of us felt it. Something inexplicable in the atmosphere had changed.

The wind sighed. The snowfall thinned.

And all that remained were our eight hooves and my drumming heartbeat.

We stood there, gasping for air, weapons levitating next to us as we waited, and listened.

Silence.

I looked at her, and she looked at me … with distant eyes. Something caught her attention in her peripherals and I watched her eyes dart to the darkness. But there was nothing there. Candy Cane shook her head, nickered, and continued onward at a feverish canter.

So did I.

With my pulse still hammering in my temples, we approached the remains of Poneva’s Ministry of Morale in quietude. Even the wind had been reduced to nothing but a chilling breeze. Quiet and somber. The silence was still a heavy one.

As we neared, I was dimly surprised to see that the Hub was still towering over us. Whereas the rubble and framework that clawed its way skywards around us resembled individual bones, the Morale Hub was a near complete skeleton, melted into the earth but somehow still standing.

Through the contorted remains of a metal fence we walked and found ourselves at the mouth of an immense, abandoned courtyard. Before us was an open field, strewn with debris and charred carnage. Tall metal posts, topped with the distorted bell shapes of ancient megaphones rose up atop the snow-swept ruins, their shadows forever casted across the gravel behind them.

The wintry winds cradled them back and forth, their charred, metallic forms sighing in the desolate breeze.

We stood there – or rather, Candy Cane stood there, and I waited as she listened. Her ears perked as she shifted on her hooves. Listening to what, I couldn’t tell amid my heartbeat and the moaning wind. But she remained there, glancing around as she listened to what I couldn’t hear.

Seconds that felt like minutes passed. Then I heard it. In the distance, I heard a voice, warped and stuttering like an ancient record player. My ears perked, listening through the frozen gales.

“… smile, smile, smile …” a mare’s distorted voice whispered from beyond what my dilated eyes could see. It faded from my senses, traces of its haunting croons echoing distantly behind us, before waning back into the nothingness.

“Come on,” Candy Cane murmured.

‘No,’ I thought, ‘No. Fuck this.’ But out of fear of being left behind, I forced myself to follow. Further into the blackened courtyard we walked, the voices growing louder and louder.

We approached a charred, twisted megaphone pole, the mare’s warped and distorted singing emanating from its dead speakers.

“Impossible,” I murmured, eyeing the pole’s horribly melted length, its metal shell fused to the rubble beneath it.

And yet her voice still rasped to us its chilling sing song. I listened. And I listened closer … her voice whispered from every direction.

“But if you're kind of worried… sssss… I'll work real hard and do my best to turn that sad frown ssssstthpphBRRZT …”

I exhaled a breath I realized I was keeping in, and watched as the wind carried it away. The storm was intensifying again. Its tortured moans filled the air once more as ashen snow flaked across my shivering body. We stood there next to each other, listening.

Listening … for something.

Then we heard it.

Laughter. Laughter in the distance. Children playing. Their faint giggles and playful laughter echoed in the darkness.

A wracking shiver quaked across my body. Then nothing. My ears perked. I let out a long, drawn out breath. I listened. And listened.

“Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …”

I listened as their voices echoed through my ears … my mind … my thoughts. I started forward in the direction of their voices, slipping my gun into its holster.

“Red, wait!” Candy Cane said, trying to pull me away, but her hoof missed, and I continued, the haunting music and their cheery laughter drowning out her voice.

Drowning out everything.

“Ssssssssscome on everypony smile, smile, smile ….”

I put one hoof over the other, the innocent voices of young fillies and colts cheering me onward. Their faint, echoing voices grew louder and louder as I stumbled blindly through the darkness.

“Frrrrrrrrrrrrill my hhhhheart up with sunshine, sunshine …” the mare crooned as the foals laughed and sang along.

“Red, what are you doing!?”

I didn’t even remember how I got there. I stood in front of a collapsed, melted building, its walls flowing through the snow like solidified lava. Through a gaping, black hole in the collapsed, crumbling wall before me, I heard, inside …

Voices.

The more I listened … the louder they became. All around me from every direction they began to echo.

I stared into the darkness … the rippling, black void that writhed and churned before me as I peered into that gaping hole in the wall. I stared into that darkness … and the darkness stared back.

It stared back and sang into my wilting ears.

“Allerrrrrrr … I really need'srsssbbrrt a smile, smile, smile … from thesrrsst happy friends of mine!” the children sang along, giggling with cheery voices that belied the frozen, dead world around us.

Their laughter echoed over and over inside my thoughts as I stared, entranced, enraptured … enthralled.

My lips began to move in time with their wretched song as I continued to stare, the hole’s mouth whispering me onward … to step in … to reach into the inviting darkness.

“Hahahahaha, HAHAHAHAHA!”

“Red … Red, it’s not safe here,” Candy Cane’s muffled voice told me. “Red, we can’t stay here!” she shouted over them.

But I could barely hear her.

I felt her hooves grab me by the shoulders and shake me … but I couldn’t move. Something was coiling itself around me … my insides … every fiber of my being – draining the blood from my face … the strength in my legs.

“All I really need is a smile … from these friends of mine …” the mare crooned, “Smiles from these friends of mine – MINE – MINE!”

The laughing children shattered into a million pieces.

They screamed. In agony. Their little voices shrieked into my ears as if they were being burned alive, their flesh cooking and sloughing off their screaming faces. They burned. But they couldn’t die.

My shoulders trembled and my eyes ran red with bloody tears.

The mare’s voice loomed over their shrill cries. Her distorted sing song stuttered - coughed - and played in reverse, her pitch dipping and warping diabolically.

My entire body began to quake as the children’s screams coalesced into the tortured shrieks of a single burning filly. She screamed into my ears. My soul.

But the warped, sinister music crashed against my senses - again, and again - threatening to drown out everything inside me and the filly's anguished cries.

I screamed. But I couldn’t hear my voice.

“Red - we need to get out of here!” I heard Candy Cane beg.

“NOOO!” the filly's horrific, tormented voice shrieked into my ears – stopping my heart – hurling me into the snow – plunging us into utter darkness.

I slammed into the drifts. I lay there with silence inside my chest, my mouth gasping for breaths that wouldn't come.

Then my flashlight flickered to life. And so did my heart. Hooves yanked me to my fours. Candy Cane clung to me as she let out a horrified scream.

I swung my light across the snow, and its beam waned, dwindling – dying away as the darkness thrashed around us. Red dots drowned my EFS.

My legs buckled beneath me. My ears pinned themselves against the sides of my head. The screaming. Goddesses. The screaming. From every direction came the tortured screams of a burning city – a city of ponies - ponies burning in endless, hellish purgatory.

A rippling, black hoof shot out of the snow. A second. A third.

Billowing, skeletal shadows rose up from the ashen drifts – emerging from a sea of writhing darkness. Tall shadows, short shadows, mares - stallions - foals - too many to count.

Too many dead to keep buried.

Their melting, wretched bodies shuddered and flailed as they clawed their way out of their shallow graves, wailing in burning agony with their broken, distended jaws.

They lurched forward, trailing tattered clouds of pitch blackness as they shambled after us with their withered, tortured limbs. Some held out to us their trembling hooves. Others didn’t have any hooves to lift.

Behind us, they awoke, rising from their shallow, frozen graves. Above us, on the rooftops, the shadows were perched, peering down at us … watching … waiting … hungering ...

“Goddesses … no …” I heard myself say.

Candy Cane magelight flickered to life as she screamed into my ears.

“LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!”

She wrapped a hoof around mine and yanked me with her as she bolted through a hole in the Ministry hub’s wall. They were inside. Waiting for us, legs outstretched. But Candy Cane blundered through them – and so did I.

Their dark forms washed over me, and I felt my heart skip beats. Stars exploded in my eyes. My blood chilled and thinned inside my veins.

Candy Cane dragged me through the darkness, screaming like a madmare. Through doors, through rooms, through halls, up flights of stairs we galloped, tearing through the debris, and the ashes, and the shadows that reached for our thundering, warm hearts with their cold, dead hooves.

Then she stopped, her hoof letting go of mine, sending me sprawling into the rubble with a jarring crash.

“Cane … what the –”

Then I realized why she stopped.

I beamed my flashlight into the darkness, and standing before us was a young, maroon-coated unicorn mare with gray, cloudy eyes. She raised a hoof into the air, searchingly, her pale mane shimmering as she waved her hoof blindly in the air.

“Cane?” her tiny voice cracked, terrified. “Cane … where are you?”

The mare beside me fell to her knees, mouth agape and eyes widened to saucers.

“No … no …” Candy Cane whimpered, cupping her mouth with a hoof as tears began to stream down her cheeks. She gazed upon the mare, trembling uncontrollably. “No … no, no, no …”

The shimmering pony sobbed, weeping silvery tears. “WHERE ARE YOU!?” she cried frantically, blind and helpless in the darkness she could not see.

Candy Cane started towards her, wanting to hold her but unable to accept the reality of what her eyes were seeing.

“Cane, what … what are you doing? Who is that?!” I shouted into deaf ears as the mare’s sobs drowned out my voice. “Who the hell are you?!”

“I’m here … it’s okay, I’m here,” Candy Cane told the younger mare, both ponies ignoring me as if I wasn’t even there. As if they were in their own world, and every attempt I made trying to draw her attention away was just a muffled voice on the other side of a foggy window.

“Where’d you go? Why … why’d you leave me?” the white-maned mare asked, betrayed. “I waited for so long … but you never came back … you never came back for me like you said you would …”

Candy Cane cried, wiping away her cheek with a trembling sleeve.

“I-I had no choice! They took me away – I-I had no choice!”

“YOU SAID YOU’D COME BACK!” the mare screamed, “You left me behind! YOU LEFT ME BEHIND!”

“I’m sorry … I’m so sorry … I couldn’t fight them … or they would’ve killed us both,” Candy Cane murmured, shaking her head furiously.

“No – you gave up,” the pale mare snapped. “You knew that you weren’t strong enough to fight them … you never were.” The sobs shuddering inside Candy Cane’s chest froze. “Father and everypony else died for nothing … because you gave up.”

“I ... I … that’s not true – THAT’S NOT TRUE!” Candy Cane screamed, pounding a hoof into the snow as tears poured down her face.

“That wasn’t the first time you got our father killed … don’t you remember? Don’t you remember? Mama and Papa died to save you … and look at what you’ve done with yourself. You wasted the second chance they gave you … the chance they gave us!” she spat.

“No … no, no, no …” Candy Cane sobbed, the other mare’s words plunging deep into her bleeding heart.

“Yes. You know I’m right … you know I’m right,because you gave up on me too.”

Candy Cane blurted out a quaking sob, clenching her eyes shut as she fell to her haunches and held out her forehooves, pleadingly.

“I swore to the Goddesses that I’d do everything I could to get out and come back for you! I broke out seven times! Seven. Times!”

The pale mare let out a cruel laugh.

“The Goddesses … where I am now, where Mama, and Papa, and Father – where everypony else is … where you’re going to … there are no Goddesses. You’re right: there never have been.” She bowed her head, her pale mane falling before her darkened face. “The Goddesses ... they’re all lies … just like the lie you told me when you left me behind ... just like the lies you’re telling me right now.”

She convulsed as if struck by a freight train, her face contorting with agony as the mare’s words tore her apart.

“If only you’d just died the first time …” she whispered in a tiny voice. “If only we’d just died the first time, Father never would’ve thrown his life away trying to save us. He never would’ve wasted his life just to save you ...” she hissed.

I eyed my EFS. An immense, amorphous red mass was standing before us.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the blast shadows were trapped at the other end of the hall. Some tried dashing forward, only to shriek as their silhouettes rippled and distorted. They howled at us both, trying to lay upon us their cold, dead hooves.

Candy Cane’s suffocated voice sent shivers down my spine.

“You’re right … Mama and Papa … Father never deserved that … none of them did.” I heard Candy Cane murmur through sobs. “Maybe … maybe we really should’ve just died.”

My jaw dropped. “Cane … Cane! What are you talking about!?” I laid a hoof on her shoulder, but she shrugged me off, shoving me away from her.

The younger mare held out a hoof, a demented, crooked smile creasing her lips.

“We still can,” she cooed, her tone bitter sweet. “And when we do – when we finally do, we’ll be together, just like you always wanted.” She grinned wickedly. “We’ll never ruin anypony’s life ever again.”

Candy Cane stumbled towards her.

“Never again …” Candy Cane whispered. “No more wasted time … no more wasted lives …”

I watched as Candy Cane reached out to touch the trembling mare’s outstretched hoof, their hooves merely breaths apart.

My eyes widened as I saw that the floor dipped inward and fell away into the abyss. ‘No.’

The pale mare was standing on the other side.

“CANE - STOP!” I screamed, lunging towards her.

But she couldn't hear me. She was lost in her own world, lost in her own delirium … lost in her own dark history. Just like how her father made her.

With a shriek, Candy Cane lost her footing and plummeted into the abyss.

“NO!" I cried, screaming my throat raw as I dove for her. I slid to the crumbling precipice, hoof outstretched and listening to her scream fade away as she plunged into the darkness.

She was gone.

She was gone.

“No …”

I slowly lifted my eyes and stared at the pale mare that stood over me. She cocked her head, a disturbing grin stretching across her cheeks. Her eyes flashed green and trails of violet energy rippled from the corners of her emerald eyes.

And as I shrunk beneath her wicked stare, her chilling, insidious voice whispered:

“Yes …”

Her jaw ripped open with a blood curdling banshee wail, distended and vomiting violet light that blasted frozen air past my face. Then her flesh sloughed off her bones – and her limbs exploded away from me into a cloud of living darkness that splattered the wall behind it. With a sickening squelch, it seeped through and vanished.

And left me to an approaching tide of flailing apparitions.

Alone.

In that instant, the blast shadows were turned loose.

I looked over my shoulder, and there they were, dozens upon dozens of contorted, wretched shadows galloping down the hall, hooves outstretched. With no one left to hold me aloft, and not with a single shred of courage left within me, I panicked.

Teary and wide-eyed, I stood there helplessly as they stampeded towards me, my chest rising and falling with shallow, suffocating breaths. They took her away. Candy Cane was gone. I failed Summer Smiles. I failed Candy Cane. I failed. Another pony added to the list of ponies I could’ve saved.

And once more, I was one with none. I was doomed to die cold, helpless, and useless.

I glanced around numbly, unable to shed anymore tears. To my left, I saw that the hallway continued into the night.

I was a doomed pony. But I figured I’d make them work for it.

I ran. I ran. And I ran. My flashlight’s fading light struggled to pierce the darkness that threatened to engulf me. But it was no use.

It wasn’t long until I found myself at a dead end, my hooves scraping desperately against an unyielding mountain of rubble. I bowed my head and frigid tears streamed down my cheeks as their maddening death rattles drowned out my thoughts.

And washed away my will. And extinguished my resolve.

In the dying light, I watched. Helplessly. At the far end of the hall, they staggered forward, their jaws distended and agape as they howled in unending, ceaseless agony.

I whimpered once. And I felt my legs buckle beneath me. It was over.

My beam flickered weakly as it clung desperately to life, my own short existence flashing before my eyes as the coalescing tides of howling darkness washed ever closer.

Flash.

They closed in.

Flash.

I could see their skeletal faces –

Flash.

Dripping like melted candlewax –

Flash.

Black flesh sloughing off their bones –

Flash.

Their shadows loomed over me –

Flash.

A cyclone of distended maws fell upon me –

Flash.

And I knew no more.

Footnote:
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Chapter 12 - Oblivion

Chapter 12
Oblivion

“They were gone. Bare as a bone – gone, like the wind that howled past us. They vanished as if they were never there. Vaporized. Erased. Wiped from existence …”

A city of burning people screamed into my ears.

I was falling. Falling into a swirling chasm of hellish agony. For them there was no end. Again and again they died all around me.

I could feel their pain – their torment as their tortured souls washed over me … my entire being sinking deeper into an abyss not even they could escape. Flashes of emerald light illuminated the abyss in time with their screams like lightning before thunder.

Every time their shrill cries for help – for mercy – for death reached a ghastly crescendo, spellfire flashed in my eyes and I saw their melting, skeletal faces and charred bodies whirl past.

But one voice – one voice cried out louder than the hell that burned around me.

I opened my watery eyes, and emerald light parted the darkness for the briefest of glimpses.

A husk of a stallion, his hind legs nothing but charred, smoking stumps, scraped towards me.

Then darkness.

I felt his cold, dead hooves curl around my muzzle.

There was another flash. His melting candlewax maw tore open before my eyes as he howled into my face.

“I’M SORRY!” he screamed.

I tried to open my mouth, tried to speak, tried to peel his hooves off my muzzle as darkness swept back over me.

But as I wrapped my hooves around his, his flesh wrapped around mine, engulfing me in rippling black sludge. He was melting into me – his hungry, liquefied coat slithering across me. Its chilling tendrils wormed their way across my cheek, leaving streaks of dripping black paint that trickled heavily down my face … over my widening eyes … into my gasping mouth.

My bloodshot eyes darted to the hooves around my muzzle and screamed – but my voice was lost amidst the cyclone of nightmarish carrion that whirled around me. His melting, skeletal face inched ever closer to mine as his bubbling flesh trickled down my chest, thickening and engulfing my shivering brown hide with a layer of frigid darkness.

Emerald light painted his blackened, charred skull before me.

“I’LL NEVER LEAVE HER!”

His distended, dripping maw opened, as if to swallow me whole – a breath away from my face.

“You hear me …” he hissed into my ear as the emerald light died away. Droplets of melting flesh splattered upon my cheek.

“I’ll never leave her again ...”

Never. Leave. Again. For a single fleeting moment, my muscles loosened.

“C … Candy Cane?”

That was all he needed.

His writhing tendrils wrenched my mouth open.

With a deafening shriek, he plunged into me.

My eyes rolled into their sockets - and a film of black paint poured over them and darkness stole away my sight. Frigid black candle wax washed over me … my entire body … inside me … swimming through my innards, tearing me apart from the inside out -

pushing away the soul within.

“NO!” cried out a mare’s voice. A skeletal pony dove towards me, ruined forelegs outstretched. “LEAVE HIM ALONE!”

Hooves tore through the amorphous black sludge that slithered across my flesh. She tugged, and peeled, and dug, the stallion’s defiant, yet agonizing screams drowning out my own as she ripped him apart.

As she ripped me apart.

“GET OUT! THIS ONE IS MINE!” howled another voice, and another pair of dead hooves and broken jaws stabbed into me.

They weren’t the only ones.

More came. More dead souls came to devour my flesh.

Hundreds of dead hooves careened into me in a frenzy of flailing limbs and snapping maws. No longer could I hear the candlewax stallion’s voice as they shredded him to pieces, tore him out of me and hurled him into the night – only for another black soul to take his place ...

Only for that to be wrenched away too.

The screaming. The ripping. The tearing. They reached through my flesh, vying for the soul underneath, trying to tear it out – snatch it away – rip it from my chest. Rows upon rows of chilling, broken teeth sunk into my shoulders, and my throat, and my sides.

My flesh survived – but with every chilling blow, my soul grew colder, as if I was being dragged, screaming into a body of icy, black water. I watched as the light of the surface grew farther and farther away. I could do nothing but watch helplessly … numbly … distantly as they dragged my soul from the warmth of my drowning body.

I could feel them filling the void my soul left behind.

Slowly, sanity, consciousness, and even death itself became nothing but distant streetlights along a pitch black road. Streetlights that grew dimmer and farther with every part of me they tore away.

Beneath the shrieking hurricane of billowing shadows, the very things that made me equine – the very things that made me Red Dawn were being wrenched away from my shaking hooves. I felt emptier, and emptier, and emptier as they devoured everything until nothing but faint shreds of my soul, my conscious, screaming soul remained.

I remembered.

I remembered my promises. My convictions. The people I had to save. I remembered …

I tried to remember …

Tried … fought to remember as the darkness threatened to swallow up the sinking raft that was my soul. I thrashed against the tides of darkness, not willing to give in even as their black waters began to fill my near empty vessel.

I wasn’t willing to give up what little I had left. For all that I had left were my promises. The words that I had said to the people I loved. But the shadows showed no mercy. They were indiscriminate. They took, and as they took, the more I forgot.

The more I forgot who I was.

I heard his voice again. The candlewax stallion returned, flailing and slashing through the billowing cloud of apparitions in a whirlwind of screaming agony.

“HOLLY!”

An icy jolt speared through me, and I felt his presence slither inside my vessel once more.

Drowning.

Drowning. I was drowning. But my body began to float to the surface … as someone else.

The light began to fade from my eyes.

I began to forget. Names. Places. Memories.

Even people. People I remembered I loved. 'I couldn’t … I can’t … forget ...

'Me …'

In an instant, there was a flash.

From the darkness came an emerald light so bright that it washed the darkness away. With it came a filly’s tormented voice, the same voice that had screamed – begged Candy Cane and I to stay with the only word she needed to say:

“NOOO!”

And in that instant, I remembered.

I remembered the emerald spellfire.

It burned away the black candlewax that threatened to devour me whole, and with it, the shadows that danced around me.

Then it began to burn away …

'… me.'

It shot through my veins and through every nerve ending in my body. Engulfing me. Cooking my flesh. Boiling my blood. Burning me from the inside and out, consuming me – ripping me away from the world I had grown to hate.

My veins, my arteries, my eyes - they ruptured and popped as the fluids within boiled over. My flesh sloughed off my bones, and my bones became dust.

In mere milliseconds, I was incinerated.

And then nothing.

<-=======uuU X Uuu=======->

The echoing cries of a thousand dying ponies rang through my ears.

In a flash, the darkness gave way to light, and my eyes opened to a doomed, burning world.

I ... remembered ...

I was running.

Or at least as fast as my little legs could take me. Ponies towered over me. They were nothing but a screaming rainbow of blurs as they galloped past me in the fiery twilight – too many to count – too many galloping in the same direction. One wrong step was all it took – as one mare learned when she tripped over the icy curb and disappeared beneath a hundred unforgiving hooves.

But no one cared.

Not even when the shells that shrieked down from the burning, suffocated skies detonated into the masses. There was a deafening crash, then a muffled crack as I was thrown off my little hooves. I felt something warm run down my face as the unrecognizable remains of ponies plastered my ivory coat with gory crimson.

Through dark, blurry tunnels I stared into a sky of fire and ice. Great winged shapes, whirring red-eyed drones, and laser spitting war machines clashed behind curtains of blackened snowfall. With every fiery explosion that painted their cruel shadows against the clouds, I knew someone had died.

More flesh to stoke the flames.

It was hell. It had to be. In the bloody snow I lay, watching as the city around me burned. All around me ponies were dying. And running. And dying. I wanted to wake up, to leave.

I wanted to run away.

I willed my limbs to move – but they weren’t mine. I cried out for help, but a filly screamed for her mother instead.

No one came.

The asphalt convulsed beneath me as muffled hooves pounded past in the ringing of my bleeding ears. I could hear faintly, amid the shelling, and the screaming, and the crashing, a stallion shouting someone’s name.

“HOLLY!”

Eyelids fluttering, my ears perked and my head turned instinctively in the direction of his voice. I recognized him instantly. I knew him. I knew his name. Snowy. Snowy … my brother.

He was my … 'no.'

I didn't have a brother. And yet his voice alone was enough to dull the pain that coursed through my veins.

“HOLLY, WHERE ARE YOU!” Snowy screamed.

Closer.

I searched frantically through the frenzy of hooves and screaming ponies, tufts of my pink mane dashing across my face in the blurry tunnels of my eyes.

A shadow swept over me.

My eyes widened, then clenched closed.

Hooves drove me into the asphalt. There was a disgusting crack. Then agony. I felt bones break. I felt my fragile little bones break. Liquid fire erupted through my veins, and a horrifying shriek ripped a bleeding gash down my lower lip.

The suffering was mutual. It crashed against the shores of my consciousness as viciously as it did upon hers, and my silent, tormented cries joined her shrill, keening screams.

No one cared.

Beneath their hooves, a filly screamed for her mother.

But no one came.

A mare galloped past me. I saw her eyes meet mine for the briefest of moments - and she kept running, her screams of terror barely audible over the other countless, doomed souls. And I was one of them. I gagged – sick to my stomach – shrieking at my right hind leg – broken and twisted – shattered bone spearing through my bloodied flesh.

Again, my anguished grimace darkened beneath someone’s shadow. I didn’t even have a chance to scream. I didn’t even have time to close my eyes.

I wanted to close them so bad. I couldn’t watch. I wanted to get up and run. But at the same time, I was helpless and innocent. I wanted to lay there and cry, to cry for my mother, for my father –

For ponies I had never seen in my life. And yet they were as real and familiar as Stable 91’s whitewashed halls.

I was scared.

She was too.

I shielded my face and screamed.

Teeth bit into my mane. Within seconds, I was airborne – and tucked against someone’s chest. I howled for my mother until my eyes opened and I realized my forelegs were wrapped around a stallion’s neck, his coat an alabaster white – just like mine.

I looked up and saw his face - and knew exactly who he was.

“Holly, are you okay?!” Snowy glanced down at me, a wiry foreleg hugging me protectively against his chest.

I buried my head in his brown mane as if to escape the carnage erupting around me. But I couldn’t. Every step he took sent a river of lava through my broken leg and my quivering body.

“Little sis! Talk to me! Please!” he begged. I only squeezed him tighter, trying to hug the agony away. Trying to hug the world away. My shoulders rocked with sobs as I clung to him as if he was going to let me go and I was going to tumble away from him into the abyss. But he never did. “I’m sorry …” I heard him say, his voice trembling.

“Where’d you go?” her voice - my voice – our voices whimpered in unison.

“I lost you in the crowd.” I felt his muscles tense as he hugged me closer. He spoke to me softly, his voice reassuring me even as shells screamed overhead and exploded across the street.

“I’m sorry.” The burning world around me seemed to fade away as I squeezed him as tight as I could and listened as his voice spoke louder than everyone’s screams. “Holly, I’ll never leave you again,” he promised me, his words echoing through my mind a thousand times over.

I believed him.

“I’ll never leave you again.”

I nodded furiously, tears pouring down my cheeks.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

For a moment, we stood against the tide of fleeing ponies. They parted around us like a river parting around a stone. Unmovable. Inseparable.

I closed my eyes, and the pain, and the city, and the war – it all seemed to fade away as Snowy cradled me in his hooves. Then someone’s coat brushed against my leg. Glass shattered all around me … and I saw only fire … blood … and death.

I screamed.

Terror flashed across Snowy' face as his eyes widened at my mangled, useless limb.

Holly blinked away our tears. I blinked away her memories. I stared into Snowy’s eyes and saw my distant face in his reflection, my brown coat dripping black and my lips curled, screaming in horror. Hooves raked against chalkboard.

I watched as Snowy’s flesh sloughed off his bones like melting, black candlewax.

Like. Black. Candlewax.

Holly blinked once more, and the windows to his soul, the same eyes that had stared into my mine, rippled with anguish. It was his fault. Her leg ... my leg ... it hurt him more than it hurt me.

“Gods … I’m sorry … I’m – I’m getting you out of here!” Snowy swore, his hooves stomping into the asphalt. He galloped forward – knocking aside ponies in his path.

“What about Mama … what about Papa!?” I gasped, my leg jolting with agony every time Snowy pounded one hoof into the road after the other.

But the only answer I got was another artillery shell that showered us in debris and red mist.

Mama. Papa.

Disjointed memories of ponies I didn’t know seethed past me as I remembered the parents I never had.

“Snowy … what about Mama and Papa –“

“They didn’t make it!” he snapped, ramming aside a pony too slow to veer out of his path.

Hot tears washed away the pain in my leg as something else shattered inside of me.

“They … they didn’t?” I croaked, sick to my stomach. My eyes fluttered … I could feel the darkness begin to take me. Not because of my maimed hind leg. But because I remembered.

I remembered my father levitating me through the air, my hoof brushing at his yellow and white mane with every giggling twirl. I hovered before his muzzle, and he smiled, gently nuzzling my nose with his. I muttered wistfully when he set me down on my four hooves and threw on his saddlebags. He brushed down his scrubs and told me, softly, that he was working overtime again. He said he’d see me again tomorrow … tomorrow.

I remembered my mother reading me a story at my bedside. I remembered my favorite story –Daring-Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone. She hoofed her reading glasses and hugged me close as I listened to her, sinking my head into my pillow and losing myself in the fantasy world of Daring-Do. She pressed the covers closed and I whined, wanting to listen some more. 'Tomorrow,' she said, kissing me on the forehead and saying goodnight. She flicked the lights off, and took one last glance at me … smiling one last time before gently closing the door.

I went to bed that night waiting for tomorrow to come.

That day was tomorrow.

I heard a gurgling retch as Snowy galloped past a stallion whose gory hooves fought to keep his innards from spilling out of his chest.

“MAMA!” he screamed. “PAPA!”

They were never going to come for him.

Neither were Holly’s.

They were gone. Her parents … my parents … they were gone. My breaths came out as hopeless, shallow gasps, my entire world coming apart at the seams. I was sobbing now. Tears welled out of my eyes as I whimpered and wept.

In the distance, Snowy’s muffled voice struggled to be heard..

“Holly,” he began, through clenched teeth. “We’re going to make it! You’re going to make it!” Snowy’s eyes met mine, tears trailing down his grimy cheeks. I felt his foreleg hug me closer to his chest.

“I won’t lose you too,” he sobbed, his voice shaking. “Not again.”

What legs I had that weren’t broken tightened around Snowy’s chest. I buried my muzzle in his mane and wailed my bleeding heart out.

But my voice died away as an immense, winged shadow shrieked over us.

Upon wings of steel and billowing thunderclouds, an aircraft armed with racks of missile batteries and autocannons strafed over the masses of fleeing ponies. The thundering sounds of roaring cloudship engines drowned out even the pounding in my chest.

It turned on its axis, its pair of screaming rotors tilting so that its nose aimed down the street to my right. The frenzied rainbow stampede, undaunted and driven by the mindless instinct to survive, galloped beneath the cloudship’s shadow even as the building behind it to our left exploded in a plume of ash and cinders.

Snowy swung his head over his shoulder and screamed something to me, something about my ears –

And above us, the cloudship unleashed hell.

There came a whirring hum, then a wailing shriek. In an epileptic lightshow of thundering gunfire and hissing missile volleys, the world around me flashed white. I screamed my throat raw in deafened silence.

On the other side of the street, a tank exploded, leaving behind a mass of twisted, burning metal. Black, equine shapes fled for cover only to be blown apart in blurry splashes of gore and dismembered limbs as the cloudship’s nose-mounted autocannon ripped them to pieces.

I felt fire upon my cheek.

The blistering touch of a spent shell casing the size of my foreleg rolled down Snowy’s back and grazed the side of my face.

Time was slow and cruel.

My flesh curled and cooked – cooking before my very eyes. The smell of burning hide - my burning hide wafted into my nostrils. Snowy's gait faltered as he cringed at his smoldering flesh. But the agonized scream that left my lips was a whip that lashed him onward – faster.

Faster!

I felt his leg tighten around me.

He wasn't going to stop for anything.

Blinded with stinging tears that wouldn’t seem to stop falling, there was another flash and a dying metallic shriek as the cloudship, now behind us, erupted with hellfire. The equine silhouettes upon the ceilings above us cheered - then turned their weapons down to the herd.

I watched as they opened fire.

Ponies dropped left and right. Mares and stallions and even foals were crushed beneath the stampede as bullets stitched across their chests – clipped their legs – cratered their skulls. I watched as a filly about my age disappeared beneath her mother’s lifeless corpse.

I’d remember that.

I’d remember the despair in her eyes as a hoof came down to crush her skull. And her ribs. And whatever was left. She disappeared beneath the tide of rainbowed pelts and I realized that I was still screaming.

It was a massacre.

I looked up and two stories above us and a zebra rose up upon his hindlegs. His striped, black and white mane bobbed with his head as he shouldered his rifle and took aim.

There was a fiery glimmer in his scope.

I knew he wouldn’t miss.

But a winged, armored shape plowed into him and swept him off and into the street. There was a sickening crunch as the black-armored pegasus smashed him into the asphalt in front of us in a shower of bloody snow. The pegasus reached out with a gory hoof – and my brother turned the other way.

But even the pony’s servomotors whined as Snowy tried plowing past her.

“She your daughter?” a mare’s voice crackled through her helmet, her foreleg firm and unmoving against Snowy’s shoulder. She fixed her helmet's orange eyes upon me and my broken leg.

In the reflection of her bloodied, angular visor I saw myself … I saw Holly. I saw her once white, blood-caked face and disheveled pink mane. I saw the vicious gash that had ripped across her lip and the long, teardrop like burn that streamed down her cheek – like a tear that would never dry out. I saw the eyes of a filly, her innocence lost, and her own eyes unable to believe that the pony that was staring back at her was … her.

I knew that feeling all too well.

I turned away and buried my muzzle in Snowy’s mane, whimpering softly.

“Sister,” he said.

The mare threw her head over her shoulder and ducked as an artillery shell leveled a building nearby. She touched a hoof to the side of her helmet, her head bobbing as she shouted into her radio.

“Center peel – cover us!”

I looked up into the fiery sky and the winged silhouettes of armored pegasi engaged the zebras upon the rooftops. They traded tracers and streams of magical energy as bodies tumbled down the roofs and spun out of the sky.

The pegasus looked at me, and then at my brother.

“Get to the evac point!” she ordered, a palpable trembling in her voice. She pointed her leg down the street. “We’re getting you ponies outta here!”

I watched as scores of pegasi touched down onto the asphalt and corralled the fleeing ponies, herding them to safety even as the zebras continued their merciless onslaught. But for a short moment, the gunfire paused and everyone turned their eyes to the ember sky as immense, black shadows darkened the earth below.

From the fiery ashen clouds burst a pair of twin-rotored cloudships that screamed over us, escorting another pair of cloud-trailing transports. They landed in the center of an intersection at the far end of the street, debris and discarded refuse swirling around them. Their cabin doors slid open and pegasi streamed out, taking positions upon the rooftops or ducking behind overturned autowagons around the perimeter.

With open hooves, they gathered as many ponies as they could.

It was almost too good to be true. I almost believed that we all weren’t going to die.

But I knew better. That world felt so real – and I was living it through another pony’s eyes. But not too long ago I stared through the eyes of another dead pony and saw the balefire end her and everything she loved.

Realization dawned upon me. I never knew my father. I never had a brother. My mother wasn't an earth pony - she never wore glasses either. And I've never read a single Daring-Do book in my entire life.

It was no memory orb. It was someone’s living, breathing memory. And I was living it through her eyes. As her. I looked up and saw around me Poneva city – a city at war.

And the Great War ended 200 years ago.

If only I didn’t know how it was going to end.

If only I didn’t know that that pony was already dead.

Crack! Gunfire kicked up gravel against my face and the armored pegasus threw herself in front of us, bullets pinging against her armor.

“Go, go!” she screamed, before the twin-linked energy casters upon her shoulders unleashed a blazing arc of violet lightning. Across the street, from a second floor ceiling, a smoking corpse tumbled to the asphalt.

I felt my insides churn. Not from the sight of the zebra’s mangled corpse – but from a sinister, undulating mechanical drone that violated … penetrated my senses. Everyone on the street heard it. Felt it quaking through their bones.

It was the resounding, overwhelming sound of a voice roaring over the groan of churning machinery.

Then there was a great crash. Everyone turned to look.

A store to our right collapsed around a lurching, treaded war machine. Its hull was striped black and white, and covered with ungodly, blood red glyphs that glowed hellishly in the smoke. A pair of tusk-like missile batteries jutted out of its turret – the barrel of its main gun exuding a fiery, ember glow.

In its destructive wake followed three smaller tanks and dozens of zebras who promised us only blood and fire.

Leading them forward, the gargantuan war machine plowed through the debris, the smoking length of its immense battle cannon revolving slowly towards us. The amalgamation of equine sapience and cold steel roared – its spine-tingling psionic impulses howling for blood inside my paper thin skull.

The pegasus mare took a step back, her crackling energy casters hesitating at the unholy monstrosity.

“Gods …” The mare shoved Snowy onward just as the tank’s runes gleamed with hellfire. “Get outta here – now!”

My brother turned and ran.

And the road behind us exploded.

The shockwave threw us off our hooves.

I felt Snowy’s legs curl reflexively around me as we tumbled helplessly down the street like ragdolls. The air was punched out of my lungs as we slammed into the asphalt. Hard. Snowy took most of the impact, but my vision swam as I crashed headfirst and into the road in a heap.

I stared numbly into the fiery, amber skies as gray snowflakes collected upon my face – the tank’s psionic death horns howling distantly in my dwindling consciousness. Tracers and laser bolts streaked over us as buildings within the blast zone moaned and collapsed in their death throes. I cried out as I rolled over onto my side, my mangled hind leg scraping against the rubble.

Then I saw her.

Frantic radio chatter spewed out from the pegasus’ cratered helmet, impaled through and through with a talon of shredded rebar. I listened distantly as a mare shouted into the comms and my senses slowly faded back into horrifying clarity.

“… KRRFT – zebra armor – engage, ENGAGE -"

Twin shadows darkened my face as two of the flying barges’ escorts broke formation and hurtled towards the zebra battle tank. But a stallion’s voice broke the static.

"Belay that order! Whiskey Hotel – Cloud Lima, stay in formation!”

The steel monstrosity’s death horn screamed into my thoughts. My vision blurred, and the muffled, alien chants of marching zebras began to fill my ears. In my daze, I tried to sit up, but ducked as autocannon rounds shrieked over me and blew apart anyone that rose to their hooves.

“Sir we’ve got stragglers -”

“FUCK’EM, THEY’RE ALREADY DEAD! GET THIS SKY-TANK IN THE AIR!”

'Goddesses … no ...'

The mare screamed into the comms. “FUCK YOU, SUNSPOT! WILD FLOWER, COVER THEM! NOPONY GETS LEFT BEHIND!”

“KRRFFT – 10-4, Lightning Dust. Nopony gets left behind.”

With their autocannons thundering and missile batteries shrieking, they strafed the zebra infantry that advanced ever closer. One of the smaller tanks blew apart – and another became engulfed in smoke, stopping in its tracks – immobilized. Dismembered limbs and debris shot skyward as the cloudships screamed past, plotting another attack vector.

For seconds, nothing moved beneath the red and black cloud.

But my stomach began to churn – and in the back of my mind, I witnessed fleeting visions of a bloodied zebra – equine shadows dancing over his mutilated flesh –

And a cacophony of ungodly psionic screams coalesced inside my skull.

Through the plumes of rising smoke their glyph-inscribed war machine lurched forward – undaunted – its hull smoking and sloughing off its ruined frame. Behind it, through the hellish glow of its blood-red glyphs, more billowing black shapes marched through the dust and burning embers.

I laid my head back down helplessly, whimpering softly as I stared at the pegasus mare’s lifeless eyes through her shattered faceplate. My breaths came out as shallow, frantic gasps as I felt her blood pooling around me. Still warm.

I moaned, fighting for the strength to sit up. I turned, and saw my brother. Snowy was lying on his back, his chest heaving for air – a hoof curled around a length of rebar that pinned him to the road. Panting through bloody teeth, I watched, helplessly, as his eyes darted back and forth, spiraling into shock.

Sobs erupted from my lips. “Snowy!” I wailed, tears cutting streams down my grimy cheeks.

I turned and saw the zebras and their war machines rumbling toward us, chanting in their chilling, alien language. Their dark war hymns echoed in my thoughts, staining them red with the death and destruction all around me. I looked around me and saw dead ponies. Charred ponies. Perforated ponies. Dismembered ponies. Even colts, fillies – foals. Just like me. And the more I stared, the more I hated.

The more I hated them. The more I hated the stripes on their coats. They killed my parents. Destroyed my home. They did that. Those striped monsters did that. And they were going to murder me like they murdered everyone else.

“Snowy – Snowy, they’re coming!” I shrieked into his deaf ears. Their engines roared even closer. I could imagine them crushing both of us beneath the treads of their tanks. I could hear my flesh squelching. My bones crunching. I imagined them laughing as Snowy’s skull popped underneath their treads like a melon.

No. They were going to kill my big brother – the only family I had left. No. No! I slapped at his face furiously with a trembling forehoof, crying out his name through a river of burning tears. Zebras rallied among the ash, and cinders, and slaughtered ponies.

They’d be upon us in minutes.

“Snowy!” I cried, pressing my nose against his and staring desperately into his unresponsive eyes. “THEY’RE COMING!” I reached out with a hoof and touched his face, my shrill cries crashing through his disoriented state like a sledgehammer to glass.

“THEY’RE GOING TO KILL US!”

Something shattered behind the glassy windows of Snowy’s eyes. His pupils constricted. He blinked, and I felt his wiry muscles tense explosively under me.

“SNOWY!”

My voice wrenched him away from the precipice.

Snowy roared with grim defiance and tore himself free with a violent squelch. He swept me up in his hooves, and the world blurred past my teary eyes once more.

We leapt into the fray, joining whatever stragglers were left. Down the street behind us, the barrels of the striped tanks pierced through the curtain of smoke.

They opened fire.

Snowy galloped through the hail of screaming tracers, howling his throat raw even as ponies faltered and came apart around us. I watched as pegasi dove down from the sky and carried the lucky ones to safety.

But the zebras were cruelly intent on making sure no one made it out of there alive. One pegasus dove down toward us, his legs outstretched – but the zebras arced their tracers skyward to our would-be savior and he exploded in a cloud of bloody feathers and scrap metal.

Snowy only hugged me tighter.

Then I heard the roar of cloud engines as a pair of cloudships shrieked towards us.

The two light tanks replied with a barrage of shrieking autocannon rounds, punctuated by the whoosh of a gale-force wind. With a deafening thunderclap, one of the cloudships erupted in flames – the monstrous battle tank’s left missile battery smoking. Through its smoking death throes, the cloudship’s partner shrieked past, and engulfed the zebras in an inferno of vengeful, bone-jarring missile volleys. Within seconds, the formation was engulfed in smoke and fire, the acrid stench of cooked flesh and petrochemicals wafting downwind.

They did it. The zebras were dead.

The world seemed to slow around me as the blood drained from my face and my eyes widened with horror.

Howling, psionic death horns echoed through my ears and my mind. Through the fire, it roared even louder – the tank’s inequine, steel sapience only driven to rage as it screamed in blood curdling agony.

'Impossible.' The massive, striped war machine, its crimson glyphs blazing like hellfire from its melted, ruined hull, crushed the other tanks’ burning skeletons beneath its treads as the spellbound demon within roared with fiery vengeance.

As the last cloudship accelerated into the sky, the twisted, melting wreckage of its wingman rained down upon us – us, the stragglers who survived. Only a hoofful of us were all that was left.

Almost shoulder to shoulder we galloped, for our lives – and Snowy, for my life.

The air suddenly felt a thousand degrees hotter. I looked up and choked, an inferno reflecting against my watery eyes. As if by instinct alone, Snowy hurled himself away just in time for the pony next to us to disappear beneath the cloudship’s fiery tail section.

A mare, screaming for her life, shoved us out of her way as she bolted past us. But the falling sky screamed louder. She almost made it across the street. Almost.

She didn't even have a chance to cry out before she was cleaved in half by a whirling metal rotor.

I swallowed the bile in my throat.

“GODS!” Snowy cursed, her gory halves tumbling past us.

She was close. But we made it farther.

But what we saw made my jaw drop with despair. I watched helplessly as one of the cloudships ascended to the sky.

“No … Gods, no …” Snowy murmured, galloping as fast as his legs could take him.

They were going to leave us behind.

I waited for the other cloudship to take off. But it didn’t. My heart leaped when I realized that the other one was waiting for us – but no one but the remaining pegasi scrambled inside. No Ponevan but us entered the perimeter.

We were all that was left.

Armored pegasus ponies galloped over and rushed Snowy and I to the cloudship’s open cabin doors. 'We made it,' I thought, 'Goddesses, we made it.'

Snowy held me up to the cabin door, and I gazed inside. Packed shoulder to shoulder were dozens of terrified, huddled ponies who gazed back, numbly. A helmetless, turquoise pony with empathetic amber eyes reached out with a hoof to take me.

But an armored form pushed her aside, and a pegasus with captain’s bars stamped onto his segmented chest plate stood before me and blocked my view into the inside.

He shook his head and I saw in the reflection of his orange visor the fury in Snowy’s eyes.

“We’re over capacity,” he shouted, barely audible over the cloudship’s engine. “The ship can't take anymore!”

My mind went numb. I played his words over and over again in my head. My thundering heart faltered for a second as his words shattered all the hope inside of me.

“What!?” Snowy snapped, pulling me back reflexively. “No – no! You can’t just leave us behind!”

The pegasus stood even straighter, addressing Snowy as if I wasn’t even there. As if wedidn’t even matter to him.

“This sky-tank can just barely make it into the sky," the Captain growled, "No. I can’t let anymore onboard.”

"He's got a filly for fuck-sake, Captain!" the turquoise pony cried out.

He reared his head at her, his eyes glaring through his angular visor.

"This is the last time, Lightning Dust! You’re out of line, Lieutenant!"

Lightning Dust's growled.

"And you're out of your mind if you think I'm going to let you leave these ponies behind!"

The armored pony's servomotors whined as he shoved the mare against the hull.

"I. Will," he growled.

I broke down into tears as the striped doom that awaited us fired a shell into the sky trying to strike down the circling cloudship.

Snowy cradled me against his chest, and screamed, “You … you son of a bitch! YOU SON OF A BITCH! You’ll kill us!”

"You're a selfish, heartless little fuck, Sunspot," Lightning Dust hissed.

Captain Sunspot threw his head back and gave her a bitter chuckle, yanking off his helmet. "I'm hearing this from a Wonderbolts Academy washout that nearly killed the Ministry Mares while showing off!" He wrenched her to her hooves and stared gunfire into her eyes.

Lightning Dust opened her mouth but he cut her off, jabbing her in the chest with a hoof. "Saving these dead ponies won't change shit, Lightning Dust. Anybody still down here or without a pair of wings is already dead!" he growled, swinging a hoof at us.

Snowy’s leg trembled uncontrollably around me as he drowned in rage.

"Let me remind you that the only reason why you're here is because Rainbow Dash thought she'd give a selfish, heartless little fuck like you a second chance."

A bomb went off inside of her. "GO TO HELL, SUNSPOT!" she spat. "I've changed – and I'd rather die than leave these ponies to those fucking stripes!"

He shoved her off the sky tank, his energy casters crackling agreeably. "I'm happy to oblige you,” he snarled as she scrambled to her hooves.

A mare’s voice crackled over Lightning Dust’s radio.

Everyone’s eyes turned to the sky.“KRRFT – I CAN’T OVERLOAD ITS GLYPHS IN A SINGLE RUN!” The cloudship shrieked overhead, and we watched it rocket toward the immense war machine.

“Just keep it busy, we’re loading up the last of the civvies,” Lightning Dust shouted.

Captain Sunspot clenched his jaw. “I thought I –“

“Negative – it’ll be on you soon … I-I NEED TO ENGAGE MY TILTROTORS! I’ll empty my missile batteries!”

Lightning Dust’s blood drained from her face as the cloudship slowed to a sluggish hover.

The tank’s right missile battery hissed.

“NO!” Lightning Dust howled.

We watched in horror as the cloudship spun out of an expanding cloud of fire.

Radio chatter screamed over the comms.

“SNBRRRRTT – BLEW OFF MY FUCKING WING!”

Lightning Dust stomped a hoof into the rubble, cursing frantically. We all turned to watch as the remaining cloudship tipped precariously to one side, smoke trailing from its ruined hull.

“Hotel Whiskey – do you copy!?” Lightning Dust begged.

“I’M LOSING HER!” a mare screamed over the comms.

Everyone took a step back and watched as the zebra war machine’s engine revved hungrily, its howling, psionic death horns roaring for blood.

Its battle cannon began revolving to face us.

“We need to take off - NOW!” the captain shouted as the rest of the pegasi scrambled inside.

“YOU CAN’T!” Snowy cried, and hurled himself forward.

But someone tackled us into the ground. Knocked from his protective hooves, I tumbled away and stars exploded in my eyes as I careened into the broken asphalt. Snowy howled his voice hoarse, bucking and screaming, pinned to the dirt by an armored pegasus.

The pony struggled to keep him down as he thrashed and flailed against his servomotors like a trapped animal. He swung his helmeted head over his shoulder.

“Captain, we’re running out of time!” the pegasus screamed, the battle tank’s damaged turret screeching lividly in our direction. But circling around from behind, the injured cloudship banked precariously to the earth.

“Wild Flower! You need to break off, now!” Lightning Dust screamed into the comms as the smoking cloudship plummeted out of the sky toward the striped war machine.

The mare’s voice hissed over the radio one last time. “NEGATIVE. I’M NOT LETTING THAT STRIPE THROUGH!” There was a pause, static crackling across the comms as the cloudship spiraled out of the sky. “I’m sorry, Lightning Dust. Don’t leave anypony behind. Wild Flower – out.”

“NO!” Lightning Dust cried.

Wild Flower and her cloudship, missile batteries flashing with everything she had left, collided nose-first with the tank’s turret. One second the hulking monstrosity was there. And the next, it was not.

Its glyphs burned as bright as a star going supernova.

Then its hull caved in.

The magically-enchanted ordnance within exploded, and with a deafening psionic screech, the hulking metal abomination and its aberrant sapience were rent apart from existence.

An immense, bone-jarring explosion engulfed the entire intersection, leveling every single one of the buildings around it.

Its psionic screams faded away, sinking into hell, as an earthshaking shockwave rippled across the shattering asphalt.

The captain shouted as he punched a dent into the cloudship’s hull, “GET THIS SKY-TANK IN THE AIR, GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!”

Gusts of water vapor surged past my broken form as the cloudship’s engines saturated the air with billowing mist.

“NO!” Snowy cried as my bloodied mane whipped violently against my face in the roaring turbulence.

I turned my gaze helplessly to Lightning Dust – and she just stared off into smoking crater across the street.

“No …” I heard her say, faintly. “No. No!” She dived inside the cabin and careened into the captain, curling her hooves around his shoulders and yanking him to face her nose to nose. “We’re not leaving anypony behind!”

“Stand down, lieutenant, or I’ll –”

“Wild Flower died for these ponies!” She turned to the wailing filly whose mangled legs were splayed out across the asphalt. “Fuck your orders!” Lightning Dust screamed, shoving him aside.

As the pegasus that pinned Holly’s brother to the asphalt unfurled his wings and flew into the cabin, already several yards above us, Lightning Dust unfurled hers. Her hooves crunched heavily into the snow next to me.

Lightning Dust lifted me gently, careful not to hurt my broken leg.

I saw Snowy rise to his hooves. His eyes widened and he rushed towards us, reaching out to me with a hoof. But Lightning Dust shook her head, his hoof a breath away from my cheek.

Her eyes turned to me, to Snowy, and back.

“I can only take one,” she said softly.

Snowy stood there with a distant, shell-shocked look in eyes. It must’ve been the blood loss. He came to, blinking away tears as his trembling hoof touched my cheek.

He clenched his teeth, and shook his head vigorously, tears pouring down his pale face. He craned his neck downward as Lightning Dust cradled me in her hooves. I reached out with a trembling hoof and he slowly curled his hoof around mine.

“Holly …” he began, slowly. “I love you, okay?”

I stared at him, numbly, my mouth moving but not a single word escaping my lips. I stared into his eyes, my entire body shaking. Holly’s voice was nothing but a distant whisper.

“I-I … I love you too.”

Snowy squeezed my hoof with his. “I’ll never leave you. I’ll always be here with Mom and Dad – I’ll …” He sobbed, staring down his bloody chest. “I’ll never leave you,” Snowy told me as Lightning Dust unfurled her wings.

“I’ll never leave you!” he cried.

We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. But an eternity was not enough. I opened my mouth, but found that I could not speak. I closed my eyes and trembled.

‘This can’t be happening.’

It was just a dream … a nightmare. Everyone has nightmares … but we always wake up from them. Always.

I was going to wake up, too.

But my eyes opened, and Snowy was still there. I was still in Lightning Dust’s hooves.

And the sky-tank was still gaining altitude.

I held out my hoof … and our hooves touched.

I didn’t want to let go.

I opened my mouth to tell him that I believed him. To tell him that I’d miss him. That I wished he could come with us. That I never wanted to lose him. Not him too.

Not again.

But Lightning Dust spoke instead.

“She’ll be safe at Stormpeak,” Lightning Dust promised, flapping her wings and lifting us into the air.

I watched as distance pulled our hooves apart. My hoof hung before my face, reaching out to curl around Snowy’s – already yards away – not wanting to let go even as we grew farther apart.

Snowy stared up into the fiery skies, his eyes never leaving mine, and mine never leaving his.

My breaths came and went as shallow gasps, as Snowy became smaller and smaller until he was nothing but a distant silhouette drowning in the shadows of a dying city.

Lightning Dust stepped through the sky tank’s cabin door, and another soldier swung it closed. It slammed shut. But my eyes couldn’t leave its steel frame.

Among the fearful whispering of the ponies huddled around us, and the rumbling of the cloudship’s hull, I didn’t feel safe. I glanced frantically at the windows, knowing that Snowy was still down there – and I was up there – and even around all those ponies, I was still alone.

Alone.

Everyone inside whispered of ponies who didn’t made it. Of ponies who they watched get cut down. Of ponies who simply disappeared into the crowd.

I froze, my eyes widening to saucers. My jaw began to tremble. My shoulders began to quake. I felt Holly’s overarching consciousness ripple and boil.

I left my brother behind.

“I’ll never leave you …” I whispered, tears welling up in my eyes. Holly’s presence drowned out mine. I floundered helplessly beneath her violent hurricane of anguish – drowning in her despair – drowning in her agony.

“Insubordination! I wouldn’t expect anything less from an Academy washout!” Captain Sunspot screamed as hot tears streams down my cheeks. “I’ll have you court-martialed for this!”

Sunspot would’ve let my brother die. But it was I who left him behind.

Snowy was going to die alone down there … all alone, watching the fiery skies as our cloudship rocketed away. He was going to die. Alone.

Just like me.

“Snowy … don’t go… please don’t leave me,” I whimpered distantly, cupping my ears with my hooves, trying to drown out the bickering pegasi with Snowy’s name. I relived the last twenty minutes of my life.

I stared out the window and into Snowy’s inexorable, unrelenting eyes, wishing that he was really there. There with me.

"I saved her life, Sunspot!” Lightning Dust screamed over my trembling voice. “We came here to save ponies, not kill them!”

My heart began beating faster than I could breathe. I felt like was going to melt through my skin, every inch of me wanting to fling that door open and hurl myself out and into the clouds.

I whimpered, shaking my head furiously as Lightning Dust’s armored leg remained wrapped around my chest. I wriggled and begged for Lightning Dust to put me down, begged her to let me go. I batted my hooves against her armor and sobbed Snowy’s name in despair, begging for him to come back – telling the frigid hull the words I should’ve said to him before Lightning Dust flew me away.

“I’ll never leave you … I’ll never … never …”

But I did. And I knew. I knew that if the zebras didn’t get him, the balefire would. Poneva was doomed. Everyone still down there was doomed. The Enclave survived the balefire … and so would the ponies above the clouds. Captain Sunspot was right … everyone that was left … everyone still down there without a pair of wings was already dead.

And I left Snowy behind.

I lifted my hooves from my ears, unable to drown out Sunspot’s grating words. But then I heard them. Voices. The two pegasi weren’t the only voices that were scraping at the insides of my ears.

My ears perked as Lightning Dust’s radio wailed with static.

“KRFFT - gone! Cloudsdale – dear Celestia! Cloudsdale’s gone! It’s – SNRRBBRRRTTT –”

I lowered my gaze to the transmitter beneath Lightning Dust’s collar.

The cabin went silent.

“Manehatten’s gone dark, their comms are down, repeat, their – SNBBRRRRTTTT”

The ponies inside murmured with growing alarm.

“They’re gone! SNBRRT – Impossible! The entire city, i-it’s – SNBRRRRRTT – Fillydelphia too, son of a … they couldn’t have - KRFFT - Stop this! This is an open channel! Everyone cease and – dear God … there’s something in the sky. I-it’s … it’s - SNBRRTTT– confirm? Zed Bravo confirmed! Repeat, Zed Bravo – SNBRRR –”

“Shut that fucking thing off!” Sunspot screamed, and Lightning Dust clawed at her collar.

The cabin trembled with a terrified, nightmarish silence.

Lightning Dust turned and found that everyone was staring at her.

“What … what was that?” someone asked, shakily. Lightning Dust stared, her mouth agape but without answers to give. Harnesses were shrugged off. Hooves clopped against the steel floor.

Another pony came forward.

“What the hell is going on?” a unicorn mare demanded, approaching us. “What happened in Fillydelphia?”

“Fillydelphia? I-I have family over there!”

Everyone undid their flight harnesses and crowded around us, demanding answers Lightning Dust couldn’t – or didn’t want to give.

“What happened to Manehatten? What are they talking about?! My grandma’s living in Manehatten!”

Lightning Dust squeezed me tightly, her eyes darting to Sunspot, the crowd, and back.

“You!” as mare shouted, stumbling towards him. He looked startled, taking a step back, his flank bumping into the sky-tank’s hull. “What’s going on? You’ve gotta know!” When he didn’t answer, she came closer – too close.

Sunspot snapped to and shoved her away.

“Stay back!” he screamed unevenly. “Everypony stay seated, and we’ll get to Stormpeak in one piece!”

“Screw Stormpeak – I need to get back home!”

Ponies scrambled towards the cockpit.

“Everypony, please!” Lightning Dust shouted over them as Sunspot and the pegasi darted in front of them.

A stallion shook Lightning Dust by the shoulders. “What’s going on!?” he demanded.

But a mare shoved him away and begged, “Let us out of here!”

“I need to go home!”

And among the crowd, beneath their screaming voices, someone whispered the truth.

… balefire ...

The cabin went quiet.

A mare’s voice broke the silence.

“N-no - NO! It can’t be! It just can’t!”

Balefire.

All hell broke loose. The screaming ponies hurled themselves at the pegasi, trying to force themselves into the cockpit. Blood spurted into the air as the armored soldiers bucked them aside and ponies wrestled them to the floor.

One mare curled her hooves around Lightning Dust’s shoulders. “What about my foals!? My husband!? What happened to Manehatten!?”

“I-I don’t know, I don’t know!” Lightning Dust stammered, before a pegasus tackled the mare to the floor.

“Get these civvies in line!” Sunspot shouted, and the pegasi inside the cabin fell upon them.

Screams echoed out from every direction. Ponies were flung across the cabin or hurled to the floor in blurs of tangled limbs. Ponies cried out for their families, their husbands and their wives and their foals –

And I cried out for the brother I left behind. I buried my muzzle into Lightning Dust’s amber mane and screamed and screamed Snowy’s name as someone tried to curl a hoof around her neck. She spun around and bucked the pony in the face with an audible crack. Lightning Dust pushed me against the window as she unfurled her wings and shielded me from their battering limbs.

She grunted through clenched teeth as a hoof connected with her unprotected head, knocking away her earpiece.

Then I heard the familiar, whirring shriek of a charging energy weapon. Through Lightning Dust’s turquoise feathers, I watched a pegasus buck a pony off of her, level her weapons, and take aim.

Her energy casters glowed as bright as a star, and –

“STOP, NOW!” the captain’s voice shrieked into our eardrums through his helmet’s amplified loudspeakers.

Everyone stilled.

Seconds passed by in silence, my face pressed against the window as I listened to the shrill ringing in my ears and felt Lightning Dust’s frantic breaths against the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes and whimpered and sobbed, wallowing in the grim silence that hung over us.

I closed my eyes … and heard as the faint, suffocated cries of a hundred thousand weeping voices whispered into my thoughts in passing like a chilling winter breeze.

My eyelids fluttered open.

And I saw the sky ignite with fire.

In a heartbeat, the dark, ashen clouds that curtained off the land beyond Poneva’s borders were wiped out in an instant. Through the blazing, emerald skies – for the briefest of moments – there was a brilliant pink flash - and with it, came a tide of unfathomable sorrow that washed over me – us – as Holly and I gazed out into the distance with empty eyes…

I watched with an inexplicable hollowness inside me as the distant lands beyond Poneva were swallowed up in balefire. Far north of the burning city below, an immense, verdant mushroom cloud loomed over the earth.

Ponies trotted slowly to the windows – speechless. They must’ve felt it too. The despair. The sorrow - a collective anguish that washed away our resolve. Our eyes widened with horror as the radioactive cloud swelled unstoppably into the stratosphere.

'Goddesses.' I watched as hundreds of thousands of ponies died in an instant.

“… not them too,” I heard Lightning Dust murmur, sweat pouring down her brow. Her voice trembled uncontrollably as she whispered the names of ponies I didn’t know. “Ardor – Sunset … no … no – not them too – oh God … oh my God …” Her hoof loosened around me, the verdant spellfire reflecting in the fading light of her eyes. “They’re gone. They’re all gone …”

Her radio crackled to life as we gazed out of the windows with distant, empty eyes.

“- SNBRRRT - detected balefire detonations across Equestria and the world,” a mare said to us over the comms, her voice grim yet resolute. “The stripes flipped the switch. So did we.”

I felt several dozen eyes upon the back of my skull. Someone collapsed to the floor. Another let out a violent sob. Others shook their heads in denial. Some began to weep. The rest stared at their hooves, unable to speak, the emerald mushroom cloud in the distance nothing but the final nail in their loved ones’ coffins.

All around us, the world was being washed away with balefire.

Through the comms, the mare spoke flatly, her voice hoarse and faltering through the static. “Cloudsdale was the first, then Manehatten, Fillydelphia, Canterlot … we’re just now getting reports of a confirmed balefire detonation in the Crystal Empire,” she said, her voice trembling.

“I won’t lie to you ponies; it’s impossible to quantify the absolute number of Equestrian casualties.”

Her words shook me to the core.

“There are simply too many.”

I felt Lightning Dust hug me tight. I wrapped my legs around her and sobbed.

She bowed her head, her breaths shallow against my coat.

“It’s over…” I heard Sunspot murmur, pulling off his helmet and letting it tumble to the floor.

The voice on the radio spoke over our subdued cries. “SNBRRT – no – not for us. Not for the pegasi. All wings, Operation Skyline is a go. Fly home, and stay the course. Stay. The course. We will carry on. Whatever gods are out there, I pray that they help us all.

“General Spitfire, out.”

I closed my eyes and listened as everyone inside murmured and wept. I listened to Lightning Dust’s trembling breaths, her tears trickling down her cheeks and into my mane. The mare shuffled on her hooves, and both of us stared outside the window with tears in our eyes.

Against the backdrop of a hellish, emerald sky, I saw hundreds, if not thousands of black dots rising from the burning city below.

Swarms of autonomous zebra drones zipped across the skies, and great-winged serpents abandoned the battlefield. Meanwhile, pegasus cloudships, gaining altitude faster than our sluggish sky-tank could, accelerated into the clouds as we lagged behind the growing swarm of fleeing pegasi.

But there was one. There was one black shape that flew against the rest.

It left an acrid black trail in its wake as it streaked across the sky, faster than some. Faster than us.

I watched in horror as it careened into the heart of Poneva city.

Then there was a green flash.

It shined through the windows and illuminated the inside of the cabin for the briefest of seconds with blinding, hellish light.

And colossal tidal waves of emerald spellfire swelled across the earth.

It consumed city block after city block – mile after mile – washing away skyscrapers like twigs in a hurricane of emerald annihilation.

And I knew, and Holly knew, that her brother was gone.

I touched a hoof against the glass. Hot tears that refracted the cruel light in my eyes slaved down my agonized grimace.

“Snowy …” I whimpered weakly. “No … Snowy! SNOWY! SNOWY!"

Lightning Dust held me tight as I batted my hooves against her armor and cried.

“LET ME GO! LET ME GO!”

“He’s gone!” Lightning Dust screamed. “Celestia … Luna …” she choked on her words, casting her gaze to her hooves. “Cadence…” Lightning Dust once again stared off into the emerald skies. “They’re all gone …”

I turned and peered outside the window pawing at the glass, and saw an immense, titanic mushroom cloud of infernal spellfire plume up and into the sky.

At its farthest reach, its radioactive crescendo arced several leagues into the atmosphere.

And with it, a roiling shockwave traveling faster than the balefire itself, obliterated clouds in its wake.

My heart skipped a beat.

'Goddesses. No.'

Cloudships stuttered, banked, and plummeted out of the sky. The comms exploded. Hundreds of doomed ponies shrieked in unison as their hapless coffins of metal tumbled into the path of the unstoppable spellfire scourge.

My ears popped.

And I knew we were all going to die.

It was then that every pony began to scream.

The ship rumbled and screeched, its machinery shrieking in its shuddering death throes, threatening to tear itself apart. The lights inside turned red, and I felt the cloudship tip forward.

This was how the entire world ended.

The sky-tank tumbled end over end, and I slipped from Lightning Dust’s hooves as we fell out of the sky.

Gravity wrenched us apart.

“NOOO!”

Lightning Dust threw her hooves in front of her to catch me, her eyes widening –

But gravity hurled her away. She didn’t even have a chance to scream.

Lightning Dust slammed violently into the hull - and her head whiplashed forward with a disgusting snap.

I watched numbly as gravity tossed her lifeless body across the cabin.

She was gone too. I closed my eyes as the world spun around me. In a rainbowed daze of colored hides and armored limbs, ponies hurtled away left and right. Necks snapped. Limbs broke. Flesh squelched. I caught my forelegs onto a rail and held on for my life, screaming Snowy’s name –

Then I heard a voice whisper into my ears.

I closed my eyes and listened as the waters of our shared consciousness settled into quiet placidity.

“I’ll never leave you.”

I believed him.

“Snowy …” I whispered among everyone’s screams as a tear streamed down my cheek.

And the cloudship’s hull was rent asunder.

The shrieking of shredding metal and the grounding of rock into gravel and dust – the screams of ponies as they were flung from the disintegrating wreckage – the sickening crunches of flesh and bone as ponies were mulched beneath -

It was over as fast as it had begun.

Slowly … my breaths came out as shallow, gurgling gasps as I stared into the emerald sky. I tried to raise a foreleg and found that I had none. I peered down my gory chest: a long strip of hull halved my body from my chest down. I laid my head against the ruined earth in silent anguish.

“Sno … wy ...” I rasped, weakly.

There was a flash of light, and for a split second, my shadow danced across the cloudship’s ruined hull.

I felt the most intense heat against my cheek. There wasn’t even enough time to scream.

The pain was indescribable; it stripped away the weight of my useless flesh as my mind recoiled in hellish agony for the briefest of nanoseconds.

And it was gone.

It was all gone.

But I continued to stare … to stare at the hellish, emerald skies even as the balefire’s path of annihilation swelled miles beyond what I could see. I found myself lying upon a flattened piece of wreckage, staring at the spike of steel that had only moments earlier split me in half.

I was alone.

So I screamed. I screamed for my mother, for my father – for my brother.

No one came.

I screamed until I could scream no longer … until my hope dwindled and died away and I waited in silence, reclining into hollow tranquility. I waited, and waited, and waited. Waited until the emerald skies turned gray, and the radioactive glow dissipated into nothingness.

Snow began to fall. The wind began to blow.

Then the night and its eternal darkness swallowed up the land.

Slowly, the wreckage, my unmarked grave, was buried beneath the wintry snowfall. The ashen drifts buried us, whatever was left. But there was nothing left. Nothing left but the ruined, empty buildings that collapsed beneath their weight. Skeletal skyscrapers that had survived what everyone didn’t crumbled back to the earth.

The frozen earth seemed almost at peace. But I wasn’t. There was an indescribable emptiness inside me. So I wandered … searching for my parents… for my brother … for Snowy.

I crawled through the rubble. Found my way through the empty, wind-swept streets. Sighed among the quiet, hollow ponies that wandered with me.

But even shadowed by the seemingly unending polar twilight, the world seemed to get darker - and darker, and darker as I wandered.

Puddles and tendrils of darkness rippled and coalesced across the snow like black oil floating to the surface, disturbing the dead.

I saw ponies sink into the darkness.

I saw the darkness swallow entire ponies whole.

And as I retreated to the place where I died, I heard a voice among the howling blizzard.

The same chilling, insidious voice that had taken Candy Cane’s life.

“I’ll never leave you again.”

<-=======uuU X Uuu=======->

Footnote: Level 6
XP: 1250/3450877

Author's Note

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Chapter 13 - Broken - Pt I

Chapter 13
Broken

"Everyone has nightmares … but we always wake up from them. Always."

Echoes.

I heard their muffled cries. The distant gunfire. The sounds of buildings crumbling.

Then I began to remember. Stallions. Mares. Foals.

A tail rotor cleaving a pony in half – a filly’s screams as her mother’s corpse crushed her beneath – Holly wailing her brother’s name …

Then the balefire. The balefire echoed through the caverns of my consciousness – searing into my mind scattered glimpses of blood and death.

I opened my mouth to scream, Holly’s voice joining me – before hers fell away from mine … fading into the furthest corners of my thoughts and I awoke.

But I didn’t. I shuddered and convulsed, my eyes closed, unable to open – the feeling of falling, of sinking into eternity dragging me ever closer to madness.

My fall slowed, and I felt my coat brush against the snow. Then nothing.

I opened my eyes and the world around me shimmered with a silvery, rippling luster. In the distance I saw evanescent pony-shaped silhouettes bobbing across the stark landscape. They cantered upon the shimmering, amorphous snow that billowed across their hooves beneath the pale, dead sky …

I was dead. So were those ponies. Dead in some kind of purgatory waiting for a light to take us through the clouds.

I lay there, waiting.

Waiting for the Everafter to come. The Everafter I was told that awaited everyone when they died – where my dad was, and Dew Drops, and all my friends were.

But it … it didn’t.

My eyes widened. They gazed into the distance and saw the familiar skeletons of burned out buildings rise up around me. Ponies walked among them – trotting up staircases that were no longer there, gazing through shattered, melted windows, and sitting around tables that had been incinerated in the spellfire that annihilated them all.

It … wasn’t the Everafter. That sinking feeling engulfed my heart once more.

‘This isn’t the Everafter. This isn’t the Everafter.’

'Hell – the Underworld – Tartarus – no.'

No …

Worse.

Poneva.

I reclined into a defeated stillness, staring into the shimmering, ashen skies, unable to think, unable to find words to voice the hopelessness and sorrow in my heart. A hollow breeze whispered through my wilted ears, caressing them with its chilling breath.

Carried with it were whispering voices that stumbled – lost and confused through my thoughts. They were the voices of the dead – souls of ponies that I had seen torn away from the world firsthoof.

What sort of terrible fate was it to die and be forgotten, when all who could have remembered had died with you?

Not even bones. No one even knew they were gone.

Maybe not even they knew that they were dead.

They were just numbers. Numbers that General Spitfire couldn’t even quantify.

We were alone. I was alone. Alone in that forsaken place, with those forsaken souls. It must've been the most terrible feeling to be … forgotten. I was dead. So were my friends – and my mother would never know how we died.

I’d never see her – or my stable again. I was just a lost soul, just like Holly. Through her eyes I’d seen things that could never be unseen.

Through her eyes I learned what it truly felt to despair … what it truly meant to be left behind ... and now I was wallowing in it. I felt the urge to wander as my soul searched for a place to belong.

I wanted my mother. I wanted to go home.

Helpless and stranded, I lay curled up among the shimmering drifts – cold, weary … hollow …

Candy Cane was dead. My friends were dead. We were all dead. And now my stable was going to die with me. I lay there and waited … waited for eternity to come.

A hopeless grin stretched across my lips as I stared off into the pale, dead skies.

When I was alive in the wasteland, I felt trapped in a nightmare. But even in death I still couldn’t leave. I was still trapped inside that unforgiving, frozen world – that fucking wasteland, - that nightmare ... and I was never going to wake up.

I let my head roll across the silvery concrete and closed my eyes, numb.

I was going to be trapped there.

Forever.

I rasped a grim chuckle. It really was a nightmare I was never going to escape.

Just like Holly.

Something shifted in the lifeless air. Slowly at first, I felt the universe ebb and flow. The shimmering, ghostly world around me shifted and parted, and a familiar presence filled the void around me.

My eyes fluttered open. A filly with pink hair was standing over me. I saw the long scar that ran down her cheek like a tear that was never gling to dry out. Then, I knew …

It was her.

“Holly?” I whispered.

A weak smile creased upon her pale lips. She reached out with a small forehoof, and laid it upon mine. The wisps of silver that shivered around us settled like a calming storm. I felt warmer. I felt … safe.

I sat up upon my haunches as she held my hoof.

“Where … are we?” I whispered.

But I already knew.

Her glowing, pale face darkened.

She asked softly, her voice echoing through my thoughts, “Where do you think we are?”

“Poneva?”

Holly looked away.

“Yes,” she whispered.

My ears drooped as I hung my head, hopelessly.

“I knew this wasn’t the Everafter …” I let out a humorless chuckle. “Why did I even ask?”

Holly closed her eyes. “If we were in the Everafter, everyone would be here,” the filly intoned, staring quietly into the snow. “My mom … my dad …” Her eyelids fluttered open. “… your dad …”

I let out a long, drawn out breath that didn’t turn to fog.

“And … your brother,” I whispered.

She closed her eyes. Her words chilled the lifeless air that hung over us.

“He’s still here.”

I pursed my lips. “Why?”

“He’s looking for me …” Holly hugged her small forelegs around one of mine. “I’m … scared,” she told me, her voice trembling.

Emerald spellfire flashed before my eyes.

I remembered the black candlewax. The flesh sloughing off his skull. The tendrils of darkness plunging into my soul.

I closed my eyes. In the distance I heard the echoing sobs of some weeping, trapped soul.

“I … I am too,” I whispered.

I heard the filly sniffle.

“What happened to him?”

Holly stilled, closing her eyes and curling up next to me, the warmth of her presence dwindling.

“It changed him.”

“… it?”

Holly choked up, nodding her head as she began to tremble against me. I opened my mouth to say more but froze at the horror in her contorted expression. As I listened to her quiet sobs, I forced myself to look away; there was something about seeing a child so … afraid, that ripped me apart from the inside out.

Holly looked up at me with her wide, terrified eyes. “Sometimes, I don’t know …” she whispered, “Sometimes, I don’t know if it’s really him …

“I try to hide from both.”

I gulped.

“Both?”

She nodded, slowly, staring at her hooves.

“He tried to take you,” Holly began, prodding my side with a hoof. “He tried to take you so he could find me.” She looked away, gazing off into the shimmering distance. “He won’t stop until he does.

“He needs a body … he thinks I’m still alive. He thinks I’m at Stormpeak, and he wants to go there. But he needs a body, first.”

It all made sense to me. The last thing he ever said to her was that he would never leave her. But I knew, and she knew that she was lost forever.

Even if Stormpeak survived, Snowy would never find her, no matter where he looked.

“I can’t go too far from here … and I’m running out of places to hide, Mister Dawn.” She looked at her hooves. “Everybody is.”

Holly looked over her shoulder, her ears perked as she heard something I did not.

But I felt it. It swept through me … across that lifeless world … rippling across the shimmering snow like a droplet of water plunging into a stagnant pond.

And everything caught in its wake was stripped of its silvery sheen. All around us, the wind, the whispering voices, and the wandering souls froze in an instant.

“Everybody?” I whispered in the deafening silence. “Or just … us?”

Holly cast her gaze off into the distance, watching the shimmering skies gray like an aging mane.

“Everybody.”

“Snowy … he wasn’t the only one who tried to take me,” I told her. I remembered as those frenzied, forsakened souls tore each other apart, fighting frantically for the scraps that were my mortal vessel.

I could still feel their cold, dead hooves clawing at my flesh.

“They need bodies, just like Snowy,” Holly said, “Otherwise they won’t be able to run away.” She shook her head as she touched a hoof to her shimmering, ghostly chest. “We can’t run too far from this place.

“Not like this.”

I gulped.

And the concrete began to fracture beneath our hooves.

I looked down and my eyes widened.

A strange … blackness bled from the cracks, devouring the shimmering light around us. I stared at them and watched as they began to spread like black, bleeding capillaries across the earth.

“R-run away from what?”

Holly’s ears perked as she took a furtive look behind her once more.

In the distance, something exhaled a raspy breath.

“Him.”

There was a disgusting crack – the sound of a skull being split open.

Then something dribbled onto my chin. It was frigid and thick. It soaked deep into my coat, like a stain that refused to wash away.

I touched my hoof to my muzzle and a shallow breath escaped my lips.

My hoof was smeared black.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

I felt it pattering against my underbelly from below … sticking to my coat like thick … melted ... candlewax. I whimpered as I forced myself to look downward – and a droplet of black fluid sailed past my muzzle.

My eyes followed it skyward … and I watched as teardrops of darkness fell into the sky. Each drop coalesced into a vast, black ocean that drowned the world in darkness … a darkness colder than death itself as it slowly engulfed the ruined skyscrapers in the distance …

… block by block, street by street, stone by stone …

… soul by soul …

It washed them away, swallowing them up as they disappeared beneath the hungry tides.

I stared down at my coat … my matted coat dripped with living, frigid darkness. It trickled up my legs, up my chest – leaving trails of black as it slithered up my neck and –

“H-Holly – w-what’s happening!?” I screamed, springing to my hooves.

She looked up at me numbly as lines of liquid darkness trailed across her graying coat.

The filly tugged at my sleeve, wearily.

“He’s … he’s here …”

I heard it again … a raspy breath hissed among the pitter patter of the black rain. Far off in the distance, I heard a mare call out my name.

“Red!”

My ears perked as I strained to hear her over the thickening rainfall that drenched me black.

“Red, where are you!?” Candy Cane cried.

I froze. Every part of my being froze. My eyes darted across the twilit earth, not even caring as the rippling black sludge swam around my fetlocks.

She was out there, somewhere, beyond where my eyes could see.

I couldn't save her in life.

Even in death, she was still so far away.

“RED DAWN!”

“CANE!” I tore a hoof from the living darkness that coagulated around my right hoof, and threw it in front of me – but Holly stopped me in my tracks.

“NO!” she screamed, her voice resounding through my shuddering thoughts. I shook them away, and kicked off my hooves – but everywhere I turned, the filly stood before me in defiance.

“Let me go!” I snarled.

But she wouldn’t let me pass.

I stood there as my eyes searched frantically for a red coat, a candy cane mane – someone’s gray eyes in the dimming twilight. But with every second that passed, the black ocean in the distance swept its tidal waves of darkness ever closer, drowning everything I laid my eyes upon.

Then I saw her. There she was, standing in a clearing in the distance as an immense riptide of living darkness loomed over her. Her face darkened beneath its shadow.

“Cane – CANE!” I struggled to move - to lift my hooves - to hurl myself forward and gallop toward her. But the black sludge coagulated around my hooves.

I couldn’t move.

I watched helplessly as the billowing tidal wave of darkness swept over her and swallowed her whole.

“NOOO!” I screamed.

“THAT'S NOT HER, RED DAWN!” Holly’s voice shrieked into both my ears.

“THAT’S NOT HER!”

“How do you know!?” But Holly didn't answer. All she did was stare past me, mouth agape and with wide, dilated eyes. I threw my gaze over my shoulder and found out why.

'Celestia ... no ...

Everywhere I looked – from every direction the black ocean swelled toward us.

Again I tried to lift a hoof and run, but something yanked me back down.

I was rooted to the ground.

I gasped and gagged as viscous, black tentacles curled around me - slithering up my legs, my chest … my throat … tightening, constricting, suffocating ... I could feel their freezing touch inside of me as the the black sludge melted into my flesh ... as their tendrils wormed their way towards my pounding heart.

“H-Holly!” I choked, holding my trembling hooves to my face as tendrils of living darkness curled around them before my very eyes.

But the filly didn’t answer me.

She stared blankly into the darkening skies, her body slick with black candlewax from hoof to throat. Trails of darkness slithered up her muzzle, tracing long black tears across her once alabaster cheeks.

“HOLLY!”

The filly’s eyes met mine.

“Run.”

She blinked – and my flesh sloughed away as the balefire took me once more.

*

My eyes flew open – I screamed, and ran my back against a wall.

My breaths –my breaths – frantic and wheezing through my lips in jets of hissing mist reminded me that I was ... still alive. I could feel my hooves crunch through rime and debris. I could feel my heart drumming inside my chest.

I could feel the cold, unforgiving wasteland air gnaw at my flesh.

And beneath the blizzard that howled outside, I heard something hiss in the darkness.

‘Him ...’

I flinched – scrambled to my hinds and stumbled into a corner, my heart leaping inside my chest with every heaving breath I wheezed. I lifted a trembling foreleg, guiding my PipBuck’s light across the charred, snow-swept halls as my pulse hammered inside my temples.

‘Where is it? Where is it –‘

The air shifted around me. My heart skipped a beat.

A gravelly, sinister voice whispered from every direction:

“Run …”

Adrenaline exploded through my veins.

I did as Holly told me. I did as the darkness told me. I ran, and it didn’t matter where I ran to.

‘Anywhere but here.’

I screamed – and hurled one hoof after another as I galloped into the darkness.

With every hoof that crunched through the debris beneath me, I realized that I was alone. The blast shadows were gone. They were nowhere to be seen – gone without a trace.

I remembered the black tidal wave – the immense red mass on my EFS.

The one that took Candy Cane’s life.

The blast shadows were afraid. And Goddesses, so was I. It was coming for me. For all of us.

I just couldn’t see it. But it could see me. Hooves galloped after me, but everywhere my ears perked I could hear its hoofsteps crashing against the charred concrete. Behind me. In front of me. To my left and to my right.

It laughed at me – mocked me, its cackles erupting everywhere from the darkness that rippled, swelled, and closed in around me.

Beneath its sinister laughter, I heard her voice.

Candy Cane called out to me – nowhere to be seen, her voice tinged with a serpentine whisper, “Red Dawn … where are you?”

I kept galloping. I didn’t look back.

“Red … help me ...” Candy Cane cried, “Help me, please … Hahahahaha …”

It wasn’t her. Goddesses, I knew it wasn’t her as their voices slowly coalesced and their insidious, diabolical laughter echoed ceaselessly through my thoughts.

It only made me scream and pump my legs harder. Corners and halls flashed across my eyes as I tore the snow-swept floors apart with every hoof I hurled in front of me.

I ran knowing there was nowhere to go. ‘Anywhere but here.’

I didn't even notice as my right forehoof caught a stump of rebar.

Clarity left the building before I could scream.

Stars exploded in my eyes as I hurtled headfirst into cold concrete and complete blackness stole away my senses.

The darkness around me cackled with glee – a sick, twisted laugh – amused. Amused at the sight of my pathetic, futile struggle as I kicked and flailed myself across the floor on my back with every screaming buck of my legs.

My PipBuck’s screen flickered.

It was then that my light began to die.

“No – no, NO!” I begged, sobbing until I ran my back into a dead-end. Now there was nowhere to go. Nowhere but there.

I bucked my legs, backing myself into a corner – trapped – doomed as the charred, ruined walls flashed around me.

I tried to blink away the stars in my eyes. But it didn’t matter. None of it did.

Static washed over my PipBuck’s screen. My eyes darted to its screen – and for the briefest of seconds, a face with blazing emerald eyes stared back.

A shriek erupted from my throat.

My PipBuck flickered to black.

“NO! DON’T DO THIS TO ME!” I wailed, trapped in utter, complete darkness. I shook my right forehoof in vain, slamming it against the floor, then the wall then –

I felt the air shift in front of my face. ‘No.’

“No – no – no …” I whimpered as I clenched my eyes closed and huddled against in the corner. “Please … not again …”

I waited for the broken icy teeth. I waited for the cold dead hooves.

I waited for a fate worse than death.

But nothing came.

I felt my shallow breaths against my legs as I sat there, curled up into a ball in some dark, rime-encrusted corner. An eternity passed as I sat there, waiting for the worst: never ready to die, but helpless to stop it.

My light flickered back on. The PipBuck around my leg illuminated my face and casted my shadow against the wall next to me.

I beamed it across the room. Nothing. Empty. The room was empty.

I stared at the bare, blackened walls until my head stopped spinning. I found that I was holding my breath, and I let out a trembling sigh, running a quaking hoof through my grizzled mane.

“Fuck … fuck …” I murmured as I tried to get it through my damned head that I was alone. And yet not a single sliver of relief fluttered inside my chest.

I closed my eyes and gasped for air, trying to catch my breath. Maybe it had its fun and it was going to fuck off now. I wanted to believe that. Goddesses, I wanted to fucking believe that. Maybe it was gone.

Maybe it was gone. I looked around me. The hollow darkness stilled … quiet.

It was gone.

I shifted my gaze to my left and saw my shadow. I counted its ears, then its horn. Same as mine. I gulped, and let out a trembling sigh, running my hooves through my mane once more as a rivulet of sweat trickled down my muzzle. Turning away, I leaned forward and buried my head in my hooves, shivering beneath my barding.

But in my peripherals, my shadow remained upright.

I blinked, lifting my head from my hooves. And yet the shadow did not match my posture.

My sweat froze upon my face.

The shadow turned its head towards me. I screamed.

It exploded outward and into me in a cloud of living, shrieking darkness.

Reflex clenched my eyes closed as nothingness consumed me.

*

Chapter 13 - Broken - Pt II

*

My eyes fluttered open.

‘91’

I looked up and saw it stamped onto a massive, cog-shaped door.

I stared at it for a long, long while. I reached out with a hoof, and touched its cold steel surface. I gave it a few knocks, summoning from it a trio of dull thuds.

I took a step back. And another. Four steps back. I realized I was holding my breath, and I exhaled … slowly. Slowly, I turned my head over my shoulder, and watched the Northern Wasteland’s unforgiving blizzard howl past the tunnel’s entrance.

I wasn’t going back out there.

I turned, staring at the two digit number that was stenciled onto almost everything I owned.

91.

Home.

I took six steps forward, and didn’t look back.

Every step I took sent a rattle through my saddlebags. In them and upon my back, I felt a certain weight bear down upon me that made my heart flutter. My eyes closed, and a long, drawn out breath seethed through my lips.

Outside Stable 91’s door, I stood alone, tracing my hoof across its frosted, dented surface. I remembered how when I first left, I’d seen the bloodied horseshoes smeared across the door as far as I could reach.

They were still there. There were so many of them. So many ponies had died where I stood.

As I reached out to touch a hoof-shaped smear, I saw my sleeve. I stared at it as if I’d never seen my own leg before. I took in with my eyes every dark speckle of blood, every splatter of dried out crimson that stained my ragged stable suit. My security barding was torn up, and bullet holes riddled the plates where my kevlar armor had kept me alive.

Alive.

If only my friends were too …

At least I survived to finish what they started. ‘And finish it I will.’

I was home. I was finally home.

I found a control panel along the wall to my left and punched into the terminal the code to open the stable doors for the last time. For the very last time.

I was never going out there again.

The tunnel began to rumble and groan as the immense, cog-shaped door parted before me.

I waited, wishing it would open faster as I tapped my hoof against the floor, the weight upon my back growing heavier with every sluggish second that passed.

There was a metallic groan as the door finally gave way. Finally. I stepped through the portal and into the darkness – but it was a familiar darkness. A darkness I could sleep in without a gun under my pillow.

I waited inside the vestibule as the front door slid closed behind me. A symphony of wheezing hisses followed as the airlock depressurized, and its locks clicked and clacked.

Surrounded by several inches of steel, I felt safe even without the light to tell me that I was going to be alright. Everything was going to be alright. Everything was going to be alright ... I found myself staring over my shoulder at my saddlebags, a triumphant grin stretching across my lips.

I made it.

The airlock finally depressurized. Mist sighed past my legs as it began to part. I waited, expecting the familiar white-washed halls of my home to unfurl before me.

I yearned so badly to see a friendly face, to see jumpsuit-clad ponies rush towards me – cheering as I opened my bags and gave the Overmare the prize I’d fought so hard to obtain.

I wanted to see the look on my mother’s face – the pride, the joy. I wanted to tell her that I kept my promise: I returned, and I was never going to leave her ever again.

Everything I did … every person I killed, every indignity I endured was for my home.

My family. My mother.

All I wanted was to go back to my normal life … and live the rest of it in peace with the only family I had left.

Home.

Goddesses, I was home. I was finally home, and I never wanted to go back.

I never. Wanted. To go. Back.

The door groaned, and began to part open. I stepped through, grinning from ear to ear –

And no one was there to greet me.

In a series of rumbling coughs, the lights flashed and illuminated the floor before me a few painstaking feet at a time. Like curtains on a stage, the lights parted the darkness and revealed to me the show’s gruesome end.

No.

‘No … Goddesses. NO!’

Blood. Dried out. Smeared across the floor. The wall. The ceiling.

The ceiling.

They hung from the ceiling. Ponies.

Dismembered. Butchered. Like pieces of meat. They swayed back and forth as the stable’s ventilation wafted to me the stench of death and decay.

Silver Dove. I recognized her. She was a stable-sec pony … was … she had wished me goodbye and good luck before I left. Now … she was just a piece of meat.

Butchered like an animal.

I gazed at her swinging, dismembered carcass … her wings torn from her back and her head hanging from a thread of putrefying flesh and vertebrae. I stared into the empty, black eye sockets of her ravaged, skeletal face. Her eyes were gouged out.

Her eyes were gouged out.

I took one step forward, fell to my haunches and heaved the contents of my stomach onto the floor, sobbing as my eyes flicked from face to agonized face – ponies I knew: Twisty – Sea Shammy – Beryl … but most of them were too ruined … too ruined to be even recognizably equine.

Everywhere I looked. Everyone I saw …

Dismembered. Innards spilled. Flesh ripped away.

Even worse.

But they all shared one thing in common: their eyes were gouged out. My head darted frantically from carcass to carcass as I staggered across the killing floor in a distant daze knowing that at one point … they were ponies. Some were slumped against the walls – their eyes gouged out. Others hung over the railings above me – their eyes gouged out. Others lay mangled and spread-eagled at my hooves – their eyes … gouged … out.

Nailed onto a wall at the far end of the vestibule was Overmare Peach Petals. Or what was left of her. All her body parts were there.

They were all there, but arranged to spell out a word that trembled from my contorted lips.

“Liar …” I murmured, staring at her jawless head. “Liar …”

Her eyes were gouged out too.

I stood there, staring at that word. That word spelled with Peach Petals’ despoiled corpse. I stared at it for a long time.

'Liar …’

We promised that we would save our stable.

‘Liar …’

I promised that I would save them all.

‘You liar …’

My eyes clenched shut as tears began to stream down my face. I stood there unable to move, shaking, stricken with an inconceivable terror that coursed through my veins with every faltering beat of my heart.

“No … no … NOOO!”

Everyone was dead. Everyone was …

I stumbled forward, covering my eyes as I screamed into ceiling.

“IT CAN’T BE – I-IT CAN’T!”

I stopped in my tracks. Smeared in blood across the wall, at the far end of the hall were more words.

Deliver us.

My tears twinkled with the flicker of the overhead lights as I read the words over and over.

Deliver us.

Deliver us.

Deliver.

… us …

I … couldn’t …

I couldn’t save anyone …

Not even my stable …

My legs gave out from under me and I crumbled to the blood-slicked floor.

‘… all of them … everyone’s …’

“Dead,” I heard my mother say.

I looked up with tears in my eyes, and saw Mom stumble into the ruddy, flickering light. There was a shattering pop as a lightbulb exploded behind me. I stood up upon my rickety legs as I dragged my eyes up from her hooves and saw her bruised flesh – her barding ripped up in all the wrong places. One of her wings dragged across the floor as she staggered towards me, limp and broken and leaving behind her a trail of gore.

My mother was drenched in blood. So much blood. Blood that couldn’t have all been hers.

I cried out and sobbed into my hooves, unable to stare into the gory, empty caverns that were my mother’s eyes. I kept trying to look away, only to turn back and see her still standing in the flickering, dim light.

Something flashed in her hoof. A knife.

“Mom? Mom …” I reached out with a hoof – but my mother held out the knife between us and I froze in my tracks, my lips trembling with sobs that I struggled to swallow.

“Wh … why?”

“Because you never came back,” my mother rasped, “You promised me … you promised …”

I shook my head furiously, whimpering as I covered my eyes in denial.

“I’m here now, Mom,” I wept, trembling all over. “I’m – I’m here for you now …”

She hung her head, rivulets of blood streaming down her cheeks.

“No …” she sobbed, “It’s too late … too late for everyone …”

“Why … w-what the fuck happened?” I cried.

My mother cocked her head at me. She sighed, the horrifying waver in her voice belying the deranged, twisted grin that stretched across her broken lips.

“Dead … everyone’s dead,” she sobbed, shaking free teardrops of blood from her pale, sunken cheeks. “I … I tried to save them – as many as I could … I even saved Amber’s colt …”

My mother … she stared through me with her hollow, empty eyes. “If you’ve seen the things I’ve seen … then you’d know …” She hung her head, her disheveled red mane falling before her face. “Then you’d know that you wouldn’t need eyes where we’re going …”

She cried softly, tears of blood streaming down her cheeks. They trickled down her muzzle, dripping to the blood-caked floor with distant plops.

“That’s why I delivered them …” she whispered to me. “That’s why I saved them from this nightmare …”

I shook my head vigorously as my tears mingled with the blood beneath my hooves. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing, and every time I opened my eyes, I kept seeing it.

“Mom …” I started towards her, my hoofsteps faltering until we were a hoofstep apart. I stared at her face, and yet I couldn’t find the strength to peer into the inequine holes that were my mother’s eyes. Eyes that had once promised me unconditional love and comfort.

Now they were gone. And so was my mother. And yet I still called out her name, as if she would wake up and be my mother again … the only family I had left.

“Mom … Mom!” I begged her … and each time she did not answer. “Why … why’d you go and do this to yourself?” I whimpered, reaching out to her a hoof.

But she just shoved me away.

Another lightbulb exploded behind me. Quaking sobs ripped out of my throat as I wept, reduced to nothing but someone else’s son.

“Why …”

“Because you couldn’t save us…” she whispered, “Because you … you can’t save anyone.”

Krapop.

Shadows darkened my mother’s face as she pressed the knife to her throat. She looked up at me with her dead eyes, and a tortured grin stretched across her bloodied lips.

“Maybe … maybe I should save myself,” she sobbed, bloody tears trailing down her cheeks, “Maybe … maybe ...”

My eyes widened.

“Mom … what are you doing?”

She let out a trembling sigh … finished. Then she closed her eyes.

And I watched as she dragged the knife across her throat.

No.

“NOOO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

I caught her as she slumped forward, my mother’s blood – my mother’s blood drenching my hooves red and splashing onto my cheek as I pulled her close and screamed her name.

“NOOO!” I shrieked, kicking away my sleeping bag. I sat up, sweat matting my coat to my flesh and my breaths rasping in and out as wheezing sobs.

Somone stirred next to me.

“Red – Red!” I heard Dew Drops say, her voice barely audible over my thundering heartbeat. Her hooves wrapped around me as I held my hooves to my face – blood still trickling down my shivering flesh. Then I felt her squeeze me tight, and I blinked away the blood that was dripping from my hooves.

“Red … Red it’s just a dream …”

I fought to catch my breath as she hugged me, cooing softly into my ear until the bodies, the blood, the entrails – my mother … all of it faded away into the silent night. I shifted inside my sleeping bag, the faint crunch of gravel reminding me that I had left my stable only a few days ago.

That I was still in the wasteland.

“It was all just a dream,” Dew Drops reassured me, running a hoof through my mane. I closed my eyes and leaned against her, feeling her warm breath upon my neck and the tightness of her embrace.

Dew Drops. Dew Drops. Dew Drops …

My heart skipped a beat as something leaped inside of me. I swung my head towards her, and found myself lost in her familiar gray eyes.

“DD y-you’re …alive,” I murmured, my eyes widening. She opened her mouth, cocking an eyebrow at me – but I threw my hooves around her and rammed my muzzle into hers. Our tongues met and I knew.

I knew she was there.

“Mmmunnf …” Dew Drops sighed, before pulling away from me and smiling awkwardly in the warm glow of her PipBuck’s interface. “What was that for? And of course I’m alive,” she whispered, amused at my babbling.

“I thought … I …” I ran a hoof against her cheek, feeling her soft, velvety coat brush against my hoof. “You’re alive,” I said again. I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers once more to be sure. “You’re alive …” I murmured, clutching her tightly as if she could fall away from me at any moment. “It was just a dream … Goddesses, it was just a –”

“What’s going on?” I heard Box Cutter –

Dew Drops eeped as I let her go and she fell back into her sleeping bag.

“BOX!” I shouted, springing to my forehooves – and a series of annoyed groans resonated inside the cave.

“Fuck … go back to sleep Red,” Lightning Twirl hissed. “We’re leaving at 0600 sharp – and I don’t care if it still looks like night, because … because …” she paused when she saw me, jaw dropped with wide eyes.

“You guys are alive …” I murmured, shining my PipBuck’s light across the sleeping bags. Star Glint groaned and rolled over inside of his sleeping bag, and Amber Fields sat up, rubbing her heavy eyes.

‘If they were all alive … then Mom was okay,’ I told myself, ‘Goddesses. My mom was okay. Stable 91 was … okay.

‘They were all okay.’

“What are you talking about?” Amber Fields yawned.

I stared at them, still dumbfounded.

Lightning Twirl whistled. “Yoohoo! Equestria to Red – what’s gotten into you?”

I exhaled slowly, blinking away the tears in my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. ‘This … can’t be real.’

I remembered … Star Glint … flayed alive. Amber Fields – a crater. I remembered Box Cutter being dragged into the bushes. Then Lightning Twirl … the machetes – and their laughing … I turned to Dew Drops, laying my hoof upon hers.

They had torn her away from me. I realized that her mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear her words over the thoughts that screamed inside my head.

“… Dawn, are you okay? You looked like you just saw a ghost.”

I thought I did. I blinked. For the briefest, most fleeting of moments, the light in her eyes flickered away and the blood drained from my face. In them I saw despair … despair as they ripped her away from me, their monstrous laughter echoing through my ears. I shook my head, holding her hoof with two of mine – and kept shaking until I shook the ghosts out of my thoughts.

She was there with me. And so were my friends.

“You’re all alive …”

Everyone was wide awake now, either glaring at me or looking quite confused.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Star Glint chuckled.

I gulped. “How long … how long have we been out here?”

“Three days, Red,” Amber Fields answered.

“Only three days?” I sighed, looked at my hooves. “It feels like it’s been weeks …”

Star Glint snorted, “You’re talking crazy, Red.”

I shook my head. Everything that I saw … those days I spent alone in the snow … in the city. A city my friends had never seen. ‘Could it be?’ I wondered, ‘Could it be I was … no.’

I looked at them, and they looked at me. I curled a hoof around Dew Drops’ hoof once more.

She was warm. Warm as the blood that was flowing through my veins.

She was real.

I told them. Everything. The snow furies. The mercs, the slavers, the bloodletters, the bat ponies, the World Tree, the water talismans, the cafones, Candy Cane … I told them about Summer Smiles, Doodle, Hops, and Candy Cane …

Everyone was silent for a moment, glancing among themselves, then at me. They listened intently – sleepily – as I told them about my living nightmare.

Box Cutter just whipped his mane back and laughed his ass off. I didn’t believe it either.

“Bat ponies? Like pegasi with bat wings?” I nodded. “You’re crazy! That’s … that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of! What the hell kind of snow have you been eating?” he said, chuckling softly as he turned to the others.

His chuckles died down to a troubled silence as they all shrugged. I sat there before them upon my haunches as they stared at me with uncertainty. I said nothing as the silence and the seconds ticked on.

My ears perked ... I could hear the wasteland outside, scraping its hooves at the mouth of the cave trying to remind us that it was still there. I listened, quietly … listened to the blizzard blow outside … its winds becoming moans, its moans becoming screams - its screams becoming shrieks -

My eyes fluttered closed.

“Heh ...”

I felt everyone’s eyes narrow upon me.

“Hahaha …” I hoofed my face as a wild grin stretched across my lips.

“HAHAHAHAHA!”

Box Cutter’s lips creased with an awkward smirk as my mad laughter filled the air. They glanced at each other, puzzled as I snorted and gasped for air to fill my aching lungs.

I flopped onto my belly and laughed until my chest ached and my friends looked on confused - concerned - until their baffled silence cracked, and chuckles broke their awkward smiles as our defiant laughter echoed out into the wasteland.

Perhaps it was the sight of seeing someone like me, the hardass engineer pony who took everything too seriously lose his shit that kept them laughing.

It didn’t matter. It was the best laugh I’d had since we left ’91.

It just might’ve been the best laugh I’ve had in my entire life. It felt like centuries since I had anything more than a grim chuckle. It felt like centuries since I’d ever felt … relieved.

I couldn’t believe it. My friends … the mare I loved – they were okay. Goddesses, they were all okay ...

Amber Fields gasped for air, still giggling.

“What in Celestia’s name has gotten into you, Red?”

Star Glint snorted, “Looks like he finally got that stick out of his ass.” He folded his legs across his chest. “Who knew it only takes three days out here for someone to snap?”

“Don’t tell him that – he might go back to good old Red again,” Box Cutter chuckled.

“Alright, alright everyone, can we all shut up and go to sleep?” Lightning Twirl groaned. “We’ve got a long day … night, whatever – ahead of us tomorrow. We can’t be tired when we’re out there.” She glanced at Amber Fields. “Can’t risk getting tired in the middle of a snowstorm.”

My lopsided grin capsized.

“Wait … what?”

I felt Dew Drops’ legs wrap around me from behind.

“Come on Red – let’s see how many ponies we can fit inside of a sleeping bag,” she cooed, pulling me on top of her.

Box Cutter frowned as he watched Dew Drops stuff me into her sleeping bag.

“Since when the hell did those two get that close?”

“Right? And I thought Red was gay,” Star Glint snickered.

I rolled my eyes and Dew Drops pecked me on the cheek as we both tried, frantically, to squeeze ourselves inside. I knocked over my saddlebags in the process – swearing under my breath as some of its contents spilled out into the cave’s floor.

But I didn’t give a shit. I really wanted to cuddle the hell out of Dew Drops. She flopped on top of me, managing to cram her lower body inside – kneeing me in the chest. I wheezed out a sharp breath, a curse on the tip of my tongue – only for that to be smothered by a wet smooch. Giggling, with my hooves on her shoulders, Dew Drops finally managed to wedge herself snugly inside our now rather cozy sleeping bag. And it was getting warmer, fast.

Coat to coat and tangled up in each other’s legs inside of a cramped bundle of thick fabric, there was nothing else we could do but rub against each other.

Her hot breaths panted against my cheek while I planted kisses furiously along her neck. She let out a soft giggle as I pecked one on her nose, pulling her close – relishing the warmth of her coat. I felt my hooves gravitate to her flanks as I pressed her hips firmly against mine.

It was as hot as a furnace in there.

But I didn’t care. It felt like I had endured an eternity without the taste of her tongue. And even with every fervent kiss, even with every loop and turn of her tongue – it was still not enough.

Dew Drops bit her lower lip and blushed. She sighed, pulling away for a moment and staring at me, incredulously.

“Damnit Red … are you crazy?”

I thought for a moment.

“I might be …” I gave her a lopsided smile, genuinely unsure with myself. “Though you seem to be liking crazy right now,” I whispered, the warmth between her legs still pressed against mine.

Dew Drops giggled as I planted another kiss on her lips.

“Mmmunf … not here … heh,” she whispered, suppressing a laugh. “Not with everybody else … just watching.”

I heard someone snicker and shift inside their sleeping bag. Another yawned. ‘Oh.’ I almost forgot that we weren’t alone. An awkward smile creased my lips.

Dew Drops wiped that off my face with another tender smooch.

“Just … just tell me you love me; that’ll hold me back until we get home,” she whispered, hugging me tight.

I didn’t even hesitate.

“I love you,” I told her, closing my eyes.

She nuzzled my neck as I ran a hoof through her soft, teal mane.

“I love you too …”

We lay there for a moment, listening to the cadence of our panting breaths, my legs wrapped around her, and hers around me. But outside, it was still difficult to ignore the haunting moans of the wasteland’s familiar winds.

Reality check. The wasteland was still out there. Still, it waited for us.

The blizzard intensified, the winds reminding me of the dangers that were lying in wait. If our enemies were the same … then we’d know how to fight them. I’d make sure we’d stay together, that we’d never get separated. I wouldn’t let Star Glint take a piss by himself outside. Fuck, I’ll watch him piss if I have to.

I hugged Dew Drops even tighter as I felt a gust of wasteland wind claw its way inside the cave’s mouth. We both shivered at that, but it was too cold for even the combined warmth of our bodies to overcome. Dew Drops’ shifted uncomfortably, her teeth chattering. Her horn glowed with a silvery sheen as she levitated to herself her striped scarf, tucking it inside our sleeping bag and lifting her head slightly so that she could wrap it around her neck.

I pursed my lips, shivering. I thought about covering our heads with my sleeping bag. Maybe then, the winds wouldn’t hit us so hard. I rolled over, and shined my PipBuck’s light against the black mass that were my belongings, searching for the sleeping back that lay at the foot of my saddlebags.

I swirled my magic around it – and paused for a moment. I stared at my bags for a moment, before dragging them closer to me. I parted its folds and peered inside.

Dew Drops’ scarf.

I held it close, feeling its worn fabric rub between my hooves. I rolled over, studying the mare that was lying next to me.

A blue scarf was wrapped around her neck.

And another one was bundled up in my hooves.

I let out a shuddering breath. Nausea welled up inside me and my heart fluttered inside my chest.

I watched my leg tremble with the tremendous weight of the striped fabric that hung from my hoof. I stared at it with widening eyes, absorbing every detail. The dark red smears. The particles of charred concrete. I ran a shivering hoof through its worn, coarse fabric.

We had only been outside in the snow for three days. We hadn’t killed anyone … we hadn’t fired a single shot from out guns …

I stared at the faint, hoof-washed blood stains that streaked across my scarf.

My heart skipped a beat.

And paradise shattered before me like glass.

I was falling. The shrieking screech of hooves dragging across chalkboard hurled me into the ashen drifts.

Cordite in the wind. Bullet holes in my shoulder. Blood running down my face.

The wasteland winds screamed past my ears. Unforgiven. My hooves dug canyons through the snow. Futile. Dew Drops was screaming. Screaming in agony. I watched in horror as I tumbled away from her. My hooves flailing. My horn flashing.

Useless.

I tore the scarf from her neck.

No. NO!

Dew Drops’ eyes fluttered open. Her brows furrowed when she heard the panting, frantic breaths that rasped out of my lips. I stared madly at her scarf – the bloodied one in my hooves, then the other wrapped around her neck – my hooves – then her neck – my hooves – her neck – my hooves –

I blinked, and saw another mare lying beside me.

A silky striped scarf was wrapped around her neck.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

A broken scream erupted from my lips.

I bucked my legs as hard as I could and I hurled myself away from her, screaming as my heart palpitated in my chest, skipping beats and threatening to explode. I floundered through the cold gravel as the world spun around me and a disgusted, churning horror slithered inside my guts.

“Red!” a mare hissed in Dew Drops’ voice. “Red what are you doing?”

I took a step back, staring at the mare … my eyes … flashes of red – the screaming – the tearing – the blood that wouldn’t wash away –

My eyes.

I saw a dead mare claw out of her sleeping bag.

“Stay away from me!” I screamed.

“What the hell’s going on?” Lightning Twirl’s voice demanded, her silhouette closing in on me.

I shined my PipBuck in her face, and she recoiled from the light.

Dew Drops stammered, “I-I don’t know – he just got out of bed and –”

“SHUT UP!” I screamed, my head spinning as I watched Dew Drops’ scarf hang from her neck. Reality spiraled away from me like a knife twisting inside my gut.

The darkness rippled and swelled.

Four silhouettes rose up from the gravel. I swung my glowing PipBuck around me and wrenched open the veil of writhing darkness.

I saw the faces of my friends … my dead, dead friends.

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU PONIES?”

I stumbled upon my four ungainly hooves and stepped onto something metal. I curled my hoof around it. My carbine. I swept it up in my hoof and levitated it in my flickering scarlet field.

Hoofsteps crunched through the gravel to my right.

“Red … put the gun down …” a voice called out to me.

I turned and stared into the bloody skin of Star Glint’s face.

My hooves crunched into the snow. The wind whipped past my face. A fury grinned with gory teeth through Star Glint’s bloody flesh.

I blinked – and Star Glint stood before me.

I shoved him away. “STAY BACK!”

Box Cutter caught him in his hooves as he stumbled backward.

“Red, what the fuck are you doing?” Box Cutter demanded, his voice wavering. “This is crazy!”

I trembled uncontrollably, a twisted, horrified grin stretching across my muzzle as sweat poured down my face.

“Crazy …” I murmured, lifting my carbine.

I glared at the pony through my trembling iron sights.

“Crazy? THIS IS CRAZY!” I shrieked. “THIS,” I thrust out my forehoof so that they could see the blue scarf wrapped around it. “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!”

“Red, just calm down,” Dew Drops said softly, reaching out to me with a hoof. My trembling stilled as I felt her hoof against my shoulder.

“I gave you one before we left the Stable, remember? I thought it’d be cute for us to have matching scarves ...”

I stared at her for a moment, my chest heaving for air that I couldn’t breathe – my mouth moving but words refusing to leave my lips. I tried to remember that – I tried to believe her … I wanted to believe her … ‘No. No – no –’

“NO!” I swatted her hoof away from me. She was lying. SHE WAS LYING!

“BULLSHIT!” I hissed, blinking away a rivulet of sweat as my pulse thundered in my temples. I stumbled on my own four hooves, blinking furiously as the bloody snow crunched and squelched beneath my hooves and their sadistic laughter filled my ears –

I felt my flank hit a wall.

I covered my ears, shaking my head vigorously as the screams refused to die away – as the blood-curdling screams of my friends refused to die away …

“None of this is real … NONE OF THIS IS FUCKING REAL!”

“RED!” a mare called out to me. I shook all over as her voice yanked me back behind my iron sights.

“What are you talking about, Red?” Amber Fields whinnied, her PipBuck’s light flashing in my eyes. “I saw her give you that scarf …”

A snarl tore across my lips.

“LIAR!” I swung my carbine’s flashlight across the cave, painting their faces in its harsh glow as my back scraped against the wall and their hoofsteps and glowing PipBucks inched ever closer.

“Stay back!” I sobbed, holding my head with a hoof as tears streamed down my cheeks and I blinked. And blinked. And blinked away my tears as their mangled corpses limped across the gravel and the voices of my dead friends called out my name.

I tried to shake away the black paint that was pouring down the walls around me.

A scream fought its way to my throat, and I could ignore the bitter, repulsive taste in my mouth no longer.

I collapsed – vomiting into the gravel at my hooves. My muzzle hovered over the acrid stench of stomach acid as I sobbed, and my tears mingled with the putrid puddle beneath me.

I felt hooves wrap around my shoulders – but I tore myself away from them.

“I SAID STAY THE FUCK BACK!” I cried, stumbling back to my four hooves as I lifted my carbine.

The ponies backed away as they heard me flick the safety off.

“Put … the gun … down, Red Dawn,” I heard Lightning Twirl’s voice command me. But I knew it wasn’t her. The Lightning Twirl I knew was dead.

She was dead.

They were all dead.

“Go back into the fucking dirt,” I snarled, painting the blue pony’s face white with the cruel light of my carbine.

“He’s lost it, Twirl,” a blond-maned stallion whispered.

“YOU BETTER SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR HEAD!” I screamed back, sniffling as I struggled to choke down the sobs that were making my shoulders quake. “No – no …no … I can’t kill someone who’s already dead.”

A sneer tore across his lips. “That nightmare’s gotten to your head, Red … you’ve lost it, you’ve fucking lost it!”

I laughed at him until my throat was bloody and hoarse. They exchanged frightened looks, confused and afraid.

“Nightmare? This is a fucking nightmare, and … and I’m going to wake up to another one,” I sobbed, my magic wavering as I swung my iron sights from face to familiar face … stopping at Dew Drops. “You’re all dead … you’re all dead … none of this is real, don’t you get it? All of you – you’re all DEAD!”

Metallic clacks echoed through the cave as they chambered their weapons.

I gulped a coarse lump down my throat, suddenly parched as I saw their PipBucks lower to the floor and the flashlights mounted on their weapons bathed me in glaring white light.

“Please … don’t make us do something we’ll all regret, Red,” Lightning Twirl's voice warned me, her voice shaking.

“Fuck you …” I murmured. “FUCK. YOU! Is this some kind of sick, fucking joke? I know that none of this is real – none of you are real! You’re all dead! I saw you all die! I saw it, Goddesses fucking damnit!”

They took a step closer. They kept their weapons trained upon me. Except Dew Drops.

“It was just a dream, Red … please …” Dew Drops begged, her carbine still aimed at the floor. My magic waned at the sound of her voice … “Just put the gun down … let’s just talk this through!”

Another step closer.

I shook my head, flinging droplets of cold sweat to the frozen earth. She approached, inching closer as I refused to meet her watery gaze.

Closer.

“We’re your friends, Red … we’re here for you … please!” Dew Drops cried.

I looked away, sobbing quietly as rivulets of burning tears streamed down my cheeks. A shivering hoof came to wipe them from my face – but my hoof came away dripping with blood ... I stared at it as it hung before my face, watching through my blurry eyes as blood dribbled down my gore-slick leg ...

My eyes unfocused – and resolved to see Dew Drops standing before me, peering into my teary eyes … and the blood began to fade away.

I blinked.

“No … you’re not,” I slurred in a daze, shaking uncontrollably, “None of you are … none of you are real.” I clenched my eyes shut, and shook the blood … the tears from my face, “My friends died out there in the snow ... I KNOW WHAT I SAW!” I roared, stomping a hoof into the gravel.

Everyone took a step back. I glared through them as they stumbled away from me, confused and afraid.

“I watched you die, Amber,” I rasped, pointing at her with a trembling hoof, “I felt the blizzard take you away from me … I couldn’t hold on … I couldn’t hold on …” I wept, staring at the empty hoof that hung before me as the blizzard howled relentlessly past my ears. “I let you go – and they found you and killed you right in front of us!”

Amber Fields shook her head in denial, unable to believe the dribble that was spilling out of my lips. I turned and saw Star Glint standing next to her.

His skinless, flayed skull grinned back at me and I choked on a sob, covering my eyes as I raised my carbine at him.

“Star … Goddesses … I let you go outside by yourself, I let you go, and those monsters took you – cut your fucking skin off and wore you like a coat!” I stabbed a hoof into my chest. “I let you go!”

“You’ve gone mad …” he murmured.

I laughed, cradling my head with a hoof. “It was my fault, Celestia, MY FAULT!” I wailed, beating my hoof against my chest until it was bruised black and blue, “I watched them blow off Box Cutter’s hooves and drag him away like a piece of fucking meat – and there was NOTHING I could do to help him!”

Box Cutter’s submachine guns lowered at the sight of my contorted grimace … the pungent, acrid stench of burning hair and charred flesh wafting into my nostrils. I could still hear him screaming as they dragged him away into the cackling darkness.

My carbine’s light flashed into Lightning Twirl’s violet eyes as she narrowed them at me behind her iron sights. “You… you’re the reason why I survived. You’re the reason why I made it out of there alive …” The blue pegasus’ lips were pursed, her shoulders tensed and her battle saddle’s carbine shuddering uncontrollably with her. I clenched my eyes shut, trying to suck back in my burning tears.

I couldn’t.

“I survived because most of them were too busy hacking you to pieces to see me run!”

My shoulders quaked with sobs that threatened to shatter the world around me. I tried to swallow my agony – tried to choke it away as I steeled myself and struggled to keep my carbine aloft in my magical grip.

I gasped for air that was too thin to breathe … out of breath, out of mind as the world spun and warped around me. My gaze fell upon Dew Drops, her lower lip trembling at the horror in my eyes as I relived every second of the night they stole her away from me.

I heard her screams echo in my thoughts … the ripping and tearing of meat – and everything inside me began to come apart from the seams.

“Dew Drops …” I cried, “I watched as those monsters dragged you away.” I shook my head vigorously, unwilling to believe what I had seen, unwilling to believe – for the briefest of moments, that she really was dead.

“You told me to run … to never look back, and I ran – I ran damnit, I RAN! I ran and I heard you scream, Goddesses … fucking damnit – I heard you scream! I heard them laugh as they…”

I fell to my haunches, hugging her scarf close to my chest …

My horn flickered and died … and my carbine clattered to the rocks. I hung my head low in despair, staring through teary eyes at the only thing left of the mare that I loved. “I-I should’ve stayed,” I wept, “I should’ve died with you … but I ran and I RAN – and I was the only one who made it out ALIVE!”

I cradled my head desperately in my hooves, tears seeping through the cracks.

“I want so badly for this to be real …” I whimpered, “I want to believe that none of that happened. I want to believe that you’re all still alive …”

But my misery, my agony, the burden of being alive while they were not drove my hoof downward and shattered the gravel beneath me.

“But how can I lie to myself and say that this is real when every time I think of you, I see you all die AGAIN – AND AGAIN – AND AGAIN!” I screamed, pounding the gravel into dust with a bleeding, gory hoof.

I collapsed into the gravel, my head spinning and my lungs fighting to fill themselves with air. Hoofsteps crunched towards me … and I felt someone’s tender hooves caress my tear-drenched cheeks, holding my head and tipping up my chin to meet Dew Drops’ soft, comforting grays. I blinked away the tears, and stared into the windows of her soul … into the familiar eyes of the mare I loved.

“Red … love … please …” Dew Drops whispered softly, in a voice that stilled the tremors that quaked through my shivering, numbing body. “Everything’s going to be okay … you need to trust me, alright? Everything’s going to be okay … I’m here, now … I’m here with you, Red …” she breathed, cradling my head with her hooves as I felt her nose nuzzle against mine.

Slowly … slowly my hooves found their way to hers, clasping them tightly as silent, violent sobs rocked my shoulders back and forth. I squeezed her hooves, nuzzling her as I shook my head, my heart telling me to never let go … to never let her go …

… to never … let … go …

But my mind told me that I already did.

“No,” I whispered, “No you’re not … not anymore … and it’ll never, ever be okay.” I stood to my hooves, shoved her away from me, and glared down my carbine’s iron sights. “I need to get out of here, and you ponies – whoever the fuck you are, are all going to get out of my way.”

Lightning Twirl’s battle saddle clacked as she aimed it at my head.

“Put … the gun … down, Red,” she demanded. But I didn’t. “I SAID PUT IT DOWN!”

I braced the weapon against my shoulder.

“Don’t do this Red, don’t do this to us … don’t do this to me!” Dew Drops screamed. “We’re supposed to save our stable – together!”

I bowed my head and clenched my eyes shut, my chest heaving back and forth with my suffocated sobs.

“We were …” I whispered. I lifted my head, my distant, bloodshot eyes and contorted visage bathed in the cruel light of my nightmarish reality.

“But not anymore.”

“Put it down, Red!” Box Cutter begged me. “Please!”

“Drop it! Drop the fucking gun!” Star Glint screamed as Amber Fields chewed anxiously on her shotgun’s mouthbit.

“DROP THE FUCKING GUN, RED!” Lightning Twirl shrieked.

“PUT IT DOWN!”

“CUT THE SHIT!”

“DROP IT - NOW!”

I didn’t. So they kept screaming at me. They wouldn’t stop screaming … the screaming wouldn’t stop …

“PUT THE GUN DOWN!”

“DON’T MAKE US DO IT, RED!”

“DROP IT!”

Goddesses … make it stop …

“NOW!”

The wind whipped past my face. The bloody snow squelched beneath my hooves. The furies’ sadistic laughter cackled over their screams.

I stood there numb as my legs threatened to give out from beneath me ... their voices joined by the sounds of my thundering heartbeat, the gunfire, the wails, the tearing of flesh and meat as they all screamed inside my head – until their voices – their agony – until it all drowned beneath the wasteland’s cruel, demented laughter …

Darkness swept over me. The entire world was falling apart, and I could not bear to carry it upon my shoulders any longer.

I whipped my head back and howled my throat raw, rearing upon my hinds and clawing at my scalp with my hooves - black paint cascading down the walls around me –

“RED!” Dew Drops shrieked.

And I yanked the trigger back.

There was a trio of flashes – a splash of blood painted my muzzle red – and a thump.

Then silence.

Dew Drops lay at my hooves in a growing pool of blood and brains with a hole blown out the back of her skull. Her horn was shattered and arterial scarlet was pumping out of a ragged gash in her throat.

The light died in my eyes.

“DD …”

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!” Box Cutter screamed – and I slipped into SATS.

The world slowed around me to an agonizing drag so that I could see the horror of my betrayal stretch across their faces. I watched with empty eyes as each guided round speared through their marks – cutting them down one by one.

And one by one they fell.

One by one, my friends died.

Again.

In seconds that dilated to hours, I killed them.

I killed them all.

I stood over their unmoving corpses, their blood pooling around my hooves as the wasteland winds howled a hollow requiem fit for a funeral. I stumbled forward to the cave’s mouth but fell to my forehooves among my slaughtered friends in a splash of bloody mud.

I let out an anguished wail, clawing at my face to wipe away my tears only to paint myself red with their boiling lifeblood. I couldn’t bear to look at them as their blood mingled with my tears and dribbled down my face and my hooves.

My eyes gravitated to my PipBuck’s dim, blood-splattered interface. I saw the date twinkling at the top right of the screen.

Three days. Stable 91 was three days behind us.

Three days … three … Goddesses-damned days. Dew Drops was right. My PipBuck told me that they were right all along. They were …

… right … and as I turned my eyes to their faces – contorted with the horror born from my monstrous treachery, I despaired.

The snow furies didn’t kill them.

I did.

I killed them all.

I slumped forward as my right forehoof splashed next to me. I closed my eyes, levitated my carbine to my muzzle, and opened wide.

Then I heard someone let out an anguished moan. My eyes flew open.

Bones and joints snapped behind me. I turned and watched in horror as Dew Drops’ corpse convulsed like a dying, thrashing spider as something writhed beneath her skin like hooves stretching apart plastic.

Her pallid flesh contorted and stretched - her bones broke inside of her, kicking up gravel and dirt with every disgusting pop of her bloodied limbs. Her legs snapped, twitching violently one last time before her corpse squelched into the mud. She lay there in a pool of blood, stiff, as I sat up and cupped a hoof over my trembling lips.

Her eyes rolled back into her head and her back arched as she let out a low, gurgling growl. With a series of disgusting pops, her trembling corpse stood itself to its four contorted, gangly legs, its head hanging unnaturally to the side.

“Red … Dawn …” two voices croaked as Dew Drops’ corpse limped toward me, a bloody hoof outstretched.

I yanked my carbine close and pulled the trigger – but the weapon clicked empty.

Dew Drops’ head snapped to face me, and I peered into her hellish emerald eyes.

My muscles stiffened. My heart skipped a beat. Shallow gasps hissed from my lips as I shrunk beneath the crushing weight of her petrifying stare.

I tried to turn away. I tried to run - but my legs wouldn’t budge.

I couldn’t tear my widening gaze away from her insidious eyes.

She began to weep. Not tears, but dark trails of shimmering, violet magic.

Her horn, a curved black spike upon her head, flashed purple –

and I felt my hooves leave the floor.

I careened into the cave’s wall with a wet crack. Blackness stole away my senses for a moment, and when lucidity did return, Dew Drops’ corpse loomed over me – peering down at me with a sadistic, diabolical grin that stretched across her bloody lips.

She cocked her head.

“I thought you loved me, Red Dawn?” she asked, a sinister voice as coarse as sand whispering beneath her words. I willed every fiber of my being to look away.

I managed to lift a trembling hoof.

But her bloody grin only widened.

Jagged black frost crystallized over my limbs.

'No …'

I watched in horror as the corpulent mare crawled atop my heaving chest. She straddled me with her forehooves wrapped around my shuddering shoulders. I screamed, concentrating on a rock that was lying next to me – only for my horn to flicker with violet light.

Useless.

I felt broken glass rake into my skull. Frigid black ice crept across my horn.

“I thought you loved me …” the two voices cooed. Dew Drops’ muzzle hung a breath’s length above mine. Coagulating blood dribbled onto my face. I could do nothing but peer helplessly into her infernal, half-lidded eyes.

Amid the other’s coarse whispers, Dew Drops’ familiar voice floated to the surface like a bloated carcass.

“Don’t you still love me, Red Dawn?”

Tears trickled down my face as her chilling breaths crashed against my bloody cheeks. “Tell me that you love me … Red Dawn …” she hissed, her gory lips hovering above mine. I tried to press them close. I tried to shake my head. I tried to scream – but all that came out was a choking, suffocated cry as I felt her cold, slippery tongue slither through my lips.

I clenched my eyes shut, tears seeping through my eyelids.

Her tongue wormed inside of my mouth, carrying with it the taste of death and decay. My legs bucked and squirmed uselessly. Her cold, lifeless coat grinded against mine.

She slowly pulled away, a thin rope of blood and saliva trailing between our lips.

I gasped for my breath. And screamed.

“HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP!” I shrieked my voice hoarse – only for a pair of frozen, gory hooves to slam my mouth shut.

She leaned into me and whispered into my ear:

“Nobody can hear you scream … hahahahahaHAHAHAHA!”

Her horn glowed. An invisible force clenched around my neck. I choked and sputtered as she crushed my throat, suffocating my muffled sobs. “I love you, Red Dawn ...” she sighed, pressing her cold lips against mine and wormed her tongue inside of my mouth again and again.

My lungs ached. I could feel the darkness closing in. I tried to fight it – to fight her – to fight the sick, disgusting sensation that was building up inside of me as I felt her knee brush against the inside of my thighs. She let go and watched me with a twisted smile as I panted to fill my empty lungs.

“Please … stop …” I begged her … the nightmarish abomination that wore Dew Drops’ face.

“But I can’t stop now, love …” she whispered, running a hoof down my chest and …

“Hahahahaha …

‘No.’

“STOP!” I screamed, “GET THE FUCK OFF ME!”

A hoof slammed into my jaw. I spat out blood and teeth as she held me close and whispered into my muzzle.

“You can’t stop me …”

‘No – NO!’

“CANE – CANE! SOMEBODY! HELP ME – PLEASE!”

The mare’s eyes rolled into the back of her head as she dropped her jaw – torn and distended – violet light erupting from her mouth and eyes. She threw her head back and unleashed a mind-shattering banshee wail that wrenched apart the quaking earth around us.

“I thought you LOVED me, Red Dawn!” the two voices shrieked as her hooves tightened around my throat. “Have you been loving another mare this whole time? Have you been FUCKING this CANDY CANE behind my back!?”

“C-CANE!” I choked. But she tore her mouth open wide – and sunk her vicious canines into my shoulder.

She looked me in the eye … and ripped them out of me.

I gasped for air – and an agonizing, horrified scream escaped my lips as I gaped at the bloody, ragged hole she left behind. I trembled and quaked uncontrollably as my blood pooled all around me.

Again she locked her chilling gaze with mine, and whispered through her gory lips, a gravelly, insidious voice rasping beneath her words, “It’s okay … you’ll be mine again, Red Dawn … all mine, soon enough ...”

She forced my lips apart with another bloody kiss, worming her tongue into my mouth so that I could taste my own blood. I writhed like a trapped, netted animal until my muscles burned out and my pointless cries for help came out as nothing but suffocated, wheezing gasps.

She held my mouth shut with the glow of her crushing dark magic, lapping greedily at the blood that soaked into my barding. She savored its coppery taste - the taste of my helplessness - my fear. I watched as the dead mare slowly crept down my chest, planting gory kisses along the way.

She stopped just above my waist.

Her muzzle hovered between my legs, and a wicked, ravenous grin stretched across her lips.

I tried to close my legs. But she just shot me a sinister, half-lidded stare. A stare that reminded me that there was nothing – nothing I could do to stop her.

All I could do was beg.

“Stop …” I wept, closing my eyes. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t watch as her cold, pallid tongue rasped against my crotch. “Please … no ...” I pleaded with her, trembling from my emptying veins and drenched in the blood that pumped out of my shoulder.

It was no use.

“You like that don’t you?” she whispered, kneading my heaving chest - rougher - and rougher until my coat and my flesh began to scrape away.

I shook my head furiously, clenching my jaw as my flesh turned raw.

“Please … stop … stop!”

She sighed, and cocked her head at me, staring through my tearing eyes in the crushing silence that followed.

“... no.”

She slammed her hoof into my gut.

I cried out. Bile surged to my throat.

I swallowed – and screamed my throat raw. She simply looked on, absorbed in my agony.

She wore a sick smile as she lowered herself between my legs and pressed her hoof against my swelling bruise … and pushed … and pushed … digging her hoof into my ruined flesh.

I clenched my eyes into an unforgiving blackness. A blackness that couldn’t smother the agony that writhed inside of me. My blood vessels popped. My nerves shrieked for oblivion. I screamed - only for my voice to waver inside my ragged throat as I felt her vile tongue rasp against me.

My eyes widened. My lungs ached.

I was soaked in my own blood.

But the pain that churned inside my gut was no longer enough to distract me from the horror that unfurled below my waist.

She grinned – and I shuddered helplessly. I watched as her frigid tongue dragged across the disgust and the shame that threatened to overcome me.

The mare stared through me with her gleaming emerald eyes, licking her lips as a string of drool dribbled down her chin. I felt her release her hoof from my bloodied bruise.

It changed nothing. The torment remained. It continued.

“You’ve always wanted this … haven’t you?”

She licked her tongue slowly between my legs, her half-lidded eyes never leaving mine.

I uttered a pathetic sob.

The mare’s cruel laughs echoed through my wilted ears.

“Don’t do this … please … stop ...” I pleaded weakly as I begged the foul sensation between my legs to leave me alone. It didn’t. It crashed against me - it fought for an escape even as my mind screamed at my body to not give in …

She didn’t stop. She didn’t stop - I couldn’t stop as I felt her through my jumpsuit.

I tried to concentrate upon the ruined flesh of my shoulder - the bloodied bruise that swelled across my chest. I screamed for my blood to wash me away and drown me beneath. But none of it … none of it was enough to distract me from the rasping of her tongue as it laid waste to my trembling body.

“Hmmnn … I love you Red,” she cooed, planting a disgusting kiss between my legs. She uttered a sadistic laugh at the shivering throb that sent a repulsive – perverted, guilt-ridden shiver down my spine. I shook my head vigorously, tears splashing against the bloody gravel.

‘I can’t do this … I can’t let this … monster do this to me … I can’t … I …’

Her hooves wrapped around my waist. Her horn glowed, and I felt her tug at my zipper.

“No …” I sobbed, tears streaming down my cheeks.

Tug.

“STOP!”

The dead mare growled, baring her vicious, inequine teeth.

“I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME!” she screamed, slamming a hoof into my face. I glared at her – dazed – my face contorted with agony and my shoulders quaking with violent sobs.

I said nothing as another hoof connected with my jaw.

Thwak.

“I thought you loved me Red Dawn!”

Thwak.

“Tell me you fucking love me!”

Thwak.

“TELL ME YOU FUCKING LOVE ME!”

Thwak. Blood peppered the gravel. Thwak. My eyes rolled into the back of my head.

She squeezed her hooves around my throat and forced me to look into her flashing, emerald eyes.

“There’s nothing you can do! NOTHING! How does it feel to be helpless?” Thwak. “How does it feel to be left behind!?”

Thwak.

“NOW YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DIE ALONE!”

Thwak. Thwak. Thwak. I let my head roll across my shoulders. I let her hooves slam into my face. Again. And again.

“Is this how much you love me?” she screamed, glaring as violet light erupted from her hollowed out eyes and her distended maw. “You loved me so much that you killed me – TWICE!”

Thwak.

“You KILLED me Red Dawn! YOU DID THIS! YOU DID THIS! I loved you more than you ever knew - and you KILLED ME FOR IT!”

Another bloody thwack. Another muffled scream.

“I. THOUGHT. YOU. LOVED ME!”

“NOOO!” I howled.

She froze … and stared at me … horrified … her green eyes slowly widening to saucers. She lowered herself onto my chest, and I flinched, one bloody eye closed, her quivering lips a mere kiss away from mine.

“I … I-I thought you loved me, Red …” Dew Drops whimpered, the emerald light fading away as I stared into her tearing, graying eyes … Dew Drops’ beautiful, familiar grays ...

“I thought you loved me …”

Her once lovely face shimmered and blurred away as tears welled up in my eyes. I began to weep, washing away with my tears the blood on my cheeks as my entire body convulsed with broken sobs.

I blinked away my tears. I blinked away her lies.

“No … I don’t … I hate you …” I whimpered, clenching my teeth. “I HATE YOU! I FUCKING HATE YOU!” I spat in the deceiver’s face. “YOU’RE DEAD! SO FUCKING STAY DEAD!”

The light of life died away in her teary eyes as she stared distantly into the hatred that burned in mine …

Dew Drops lowered her head, her teal mane falling before her darkening face. A tear rolled down her cheek ... her hooves slowly clenched around my shoulders as I felt her body tense up against me. I peered up at her … Dew Drops … my Dew Drops ... the mare I loved ... and watched her shoulders quake with shuddering sobs.

Then she smiled. And laughed. The mare laughed, whipping back her cratered head and laughing into the ceiling until the other voice – serpentine and sinister joined her. Their cruel, sadistic laughter crashed against my eardrums - my thoughts - the inside of my head until their voices coalesced into a single, insidious cackle that shattered the world around us like glass.

"Hahahaha - HAHAHAHAHA!"

The ceiling exploded outward in a thundering crash as the earth above crumbled away and gave way to the sky - a churning maelstrom of nebulous dark magic. Cascading from the eye of its storm was a hellish shaft of violet light that engulfed us in its horrifying brilliance.

Bathed in that wicked glow from on high, her billowing shadow loomed over me. I peered up at her, and watched a satisfied, triumphant grin slowly stretch across her lips.

Dew Drops’ eyes blazed with infernal, emerald light as she whispered:

“Yes …”

*

I woke up screaming.

I writhed against the chipping, snow-swept concrete beneath me, my hooves wrapped around my chest as I kicked and bucked my way out of the darkness that haunted my eyes. They flew open … and I saw only ruin.

I sat up, slowly, tucking my hind legs to my chest, staring at the blackened concrete until my eyes began to well with burning tears. I let them fall, rocking back and forth as they stung my swollen, bloodshot eyes. I cried until my sobs turned into retches, my lungs giving up on me as I collapsed to the floor – writhing and wheezing in a heap.

I woke up. I woke up, and looked around me and saw the blackened, charred halls of the balefire-blasted Morale Hub. Another nightmare. Only this time, the nightmare was real. And I was never going to wake up from it.

My friends were still dead. My stable was still doomed. And Dew Drops … I cried out and slammed my hoof into the floor, trembling uncontrollably. I shook my head, trying to shake away her wretched, screaming ghost. I tried to remember her face, the face of the mare that I loved, the mare that I’d grown to know and love for the last two decades of my life.

But all I saw was her ragged throat, her grisly, eyeless sockets, her broken horn – the hole that had been punched out the back of her head. I saw her sinister eyes blaze with unholy dark magic.

All I saw was a nightmare. A nightmare I wanted to forget.

I cradled my head in my hooves, trying to grasp the reality of the world around me. I rocked back and forth once more, weeping silently.

For what seemed like hours, I sat there … trembling. Alone.

Then I heard a muffled scream. A mare’s scream. My ears perked as I stumbled to my hooves and to a doorway that led out of my hiding place. I heard her again. It was faint - distant.

But it was getting closer.

“… Dawn! … Red Dawn!” a familiar voice screamed.

Candy Cane.

It was … Candy Cane. It was her.

“Cane …” I murmured. But I gulped a lump down my throat. I remembered what Holly told me. That wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been her …

“RED! WHERE ARE YOU!?”

I listened to her voice as she continued to call out my name.

I listened … and shook my head, sobbing uncontrollably.

I touched the pockmarked concrete, scraping my hoof against it. It was as cold as the wasteland. Just like I remembered it.

I slammed my head into the concrete. A thin line of blood trickled down my face as the world spun around me.

My blood. Warm. Just like I remembered it.

I drew my pistol, and ran after her voice.

Saying nothing as I listened, I pounded against the concrete floor in the direction of her voice, turning corridors, bounding down staircases – Candy Cane’s voice getting closer and closer.

“RED!” she screamed.

I turned a corner and slammed into someone. The momentum hurled me against the door frame with a dull crack. I gasped for air, thrashing to my hooves as I levitated forth my pistol and beamed the black figure on the floor with my PipBuck.

Candy Cane’s wide-eyed expression flashed before me. Her horn glowed and she bathed me in the white glow of her magelight.

“Cane –”

“Red –”

She ran into me, her legs wrapping tightly around my chest.

“I thought I lost you,” I murmured. I pulled away from her and peered into her bloodshot eyes. “You’re … you’re real, right?”

Candy Cane nodded. “I … I think so.”

I gulped and let out a trembling sigh.

“I thought I lost you too, Red.” She curled a hoof around my shoulder. “But I heard you shouting my name … I knew you were still alive … I just had to find you.”

My brows furrowed at that.

“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her. I had been silent the whole time. “I heard you shouting after me, so I just followed your voice.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but fell silent. I watched her haunted gaze stare past my shoulders.

“Red ...”

I turned and saw my shadow. A billowing silhouette with a curved spike atop its head loomed over me.

“You…” I dove for Candy Cane, shoving her onward. “RUN!”

We galloped away, both knowing just what it was. Both knowing what it could do.

The concrete halls cracked and split behind us as it ripped across the walls, the ceiling, the floors – it was intangible and invisible to our eyes, but as real as the concrete that moaned and erupted around us. It was back. For more. It chased after us through the writhing darkness. The shuddering groans of shattering concrete told me that this time, it wasn’t a game.

It had its fun. Now it wanted to finish what it started.

Candy Cane, faster than me, flashed her magelight before us – her light flickering madly across the wasteland’s swirling snowflakes like static noise across a terminal screen. The howl of the northern winds beckoned us onward. ‘Anywhere but here. Goddesses, anywhere but here.’

We charged into the parting sea of darkness – and blundered outside into a storm. The blizzard swept over us, raking at the flesh beneath my barding as we stumbled into the whiteout, our lights useless in the heavy snowfall.

Then I felt something slam into my chest. I coughed and retched, the air punched out of my lungs as I fell face first into the snow in a plume of powder. I winced, my flesh bruising as I panted for air that refused to fill my lungs.

RATATATAT! Plumes of snow kicked up around me and I ducked under the staccato cracks of automatic weapons fire.

“RED!” Candy Cane screamed over the howling wind, her silhouette flashing dimly in the snowstorm as her submachine gun coughed out bursts of lead.

An uproar of demented, psychotic laughter filled the air.

Snow furies.

In the back of my mind, I heard someone laugh … it was an insidious cackle that echoed in my thoughts. I took a furtive glance behind me … and its dark, serpentine hiss faded away into the howl of the wind.

I turned, drawing my pistol – and found myself staring into the black-veined sclera of a snow fury.

A fury mare squeed, “You’re mine, stable boy!”

I snarled, and yanked the trigger back.

Footnote: Level 6
XP: 1400/3450

Author's Note

Chapter 13 Commentary

Chapter 14 - Darkness is Coming - Pt I

Chapter 14

Darkness is Coming

“I’m running out of places to hide, Mister Dawn … Everybody is …”

I snarled and yanked the trigger back.

Crack!

The fury mare slumped into the snow with a ragged hole between her eyes. I growled through my bared teeth, blinking away the scarlet that peppered my muzzle. I stood there for a moment, the pallid snow swirls thickening, the wailing gales intensifying. The world slowed around me – and I stared into the darkness.

No gunshots. No flashes.

But I heard them. Blood ran down my face as I soaked in the familiar, psychotic laughter that echoed through my ears. It was them. The snow furies. I couldn’t see them. But they could see me.

There had to be dozens. Hundreds. All of them screaming their mindless, demented laughter.

‘… now you know what it’s like to die alone ...’

I brought a hoof to my scalp, running it through my mane as their laughter grew louder and louder – cackling from every direction … behind me, before me, my left, my right - inside my head - my thoughts -

‘HAHAHAHA –‘

Then nothing. No more voices. No more gunfire. Only the howl of the wind and the distant beat of my heart.

Through the blizzard I saw a faint, black silhouette standing in the twilit snowfall. The wind shrieked past its billowing black mane, as it hung its faceless head in motionless quietude.

The black figure stood there, engulfed in the violent snowfall, close enough for me to make out its equine shape, but too far to see its face – too far to see what made it equine. All I saw was its dark silhouette obscured by the unforgiving storm.

I watched and listened as the beating in my chest slowed to a frozen silence. All the sound in the world finally faded to a frozen silence.

The storm waned for the briefest of seconds.

And a ragged scarf billowed from its neck.

Slowly, its faceless head turned to face me.

‘I thought you loved me Red Dawn …’

I blinked.

The blizzard shrieked past me and a fury erupted from the storm.

“HAHAHAHAHA - HAHAHAHAHA!”

This time, I didn’t blink. I pulled the trigger twice. Twice he was struck in the chest. He stumbled, but he wouldn’t stop. His laughing wouldn’t stop.

“HAHA – I’VE GOT A PRESENT FOR YOU, BOY!”

He reared his head for a swing with his morning star.

“SHUT. UP!”

My horn plunged into him first.

I tackled the stallion to the snow in a plume of white powder. The blizzard intensified, my legs and his muzzle and the morning star clamped between his teeth all I could see.

He whinnied through a mouthful of rusted steel, laughing uncontrollably through his bloody lips. My hoof crashed into his throat and he dropped it with a retch. Then I slammed another hoof into his teeth. I didn’t even blink as he wheezed his blood into my face.

My hooves tightened around his throat, and even as he choked and clawed at his neck for air, there still echoed inside my head his immutable, demented laughter.

‘HAHAHAHAHA – HAHAHA –’

A scream thrummed inside my chest – and my pistol discharged a round that exploded out the roof of his skull. I stared down at him, watching blood and gray matter pool out of the hole in his head … listening.

There they were. Still laughing. They wouldn’t stop. They weren’t going to stop until they were all dead.

The snow whipped past me as I galloped towards the muzzle flashes of Candy Cane’s submachine gun. I found her ducked behind a slab of broken concrete. A fury lay slumped against it, his blood slowly turning to frost as the blizzard refused to relent.

I blinked.

His emerald eyes shot open, vomiting violet light from the tunnels that were his distended maw.

I leveled my pistol – and he was dead.

“Celestial shit …” I murmured as the gunfire wrenched me back to reality. I felt Candy Cane’s hooves grab my shoulders and pull me to my hooves as bullets screamed over where my head used to be.

“Where … where the hell did they come from?” I snarled at her, my voice barely audible over the howl of the wind.

“They must be wondering the same thing,” Candy Cane replied breathlessly. I listened to her words as she spoke louder than the voices that cackled around me, “I didn’t even hear them … see them … how did they know we were here?” She levitated her gun over her cover and let loose a staccato burst of fire.

None of them hit anything.

But a stray bullet exploded against the concrete before me. Chipped shrapnel nicked the flesh of our muzzles and I screamed, “THESE FUCKING SHIT HEADS!” I heaved my pistol over our cover and yanked the trigger back … screaming as blood ran down my face … every deafening CRACK overpowering the voices that fought for my attention.

But the muzzle flashes that blazed across from us behind the curtain of snow didn’t relent.

I could feel their bullets hissing past my mane. I could feel my pistol kicking inside my magical grip.

Candy Cane’s voice shook me back to reality.

“Red – stop firing!”

I clenched my jaw and ceased fire. It’s not like I was making much of a difference anyways. But the furies didn’t. Muzzle flashes bloomed dully in the snowstorm, the cascading snow swirls obscuring the furies – and us.

I scratched at my mane, trembling uncontrollably.

Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …

“Red!” My distant eyes watched in slow motion as she reached for another magazine.

I listened to her voice … struggling to be heard.

“... how many … left …”

I shook my head, clenching my eyes shut and grinding my teeth.

“Red … how many … left!?”

“Too many …” I heard myself whisper.

Candy Cane’s voice echoed faintly through my wilted ears.

“How many rounds do you have left!?”

I shook my head vigorously, trying to shake the ghosts off my shoulders –

“RED!” she screamed.

“Four!” I growled. Four. I only had four left.

“They’ve got more bullets than we do. We either wait them out or let them come to us.”

“I don’t see any other way - do you?” I snapped.

Candy Cane paused, staring at me for a moment. “I have an idea.” She ejected her magazine, eyeballed its contents, then pointed a hoof at me. “I’ll keep their eyes down range. Go around them.” She grunted and loosed a burst of gunfire over her head – and the furies’ fired back.

The concrete exploded over our heads.

“Go! They’ll see me, but they won’t be able to see you!” I winced as rocks exploded an inch away from my forehead.

‘Red …’

I shook my head, trying to hear Candy Cane’s voice, trying to focus on her words as they spoke over the whispers that rose in volume like waves crashing against me.

“Red, let’s get going!” she screamed, her submachine gun flashing in my eyes.

‘Red Dawn …’

Candy Cane’s mouth opened –

“RED!” Dew Drops shrieked.

I tore my spade from my bags and made a mad dash into the storm.

Away from Candy Cane’s voice, their cackling only grew louder.

I heard, faintly, beneath their laughter, Candy Cane’s submachine gun rattle another burst. A few heartbeats later, the furies did the same. And every time someone fired, I saw a gun barrel flash back through the curtain of snow.

I could see them. But they couldn’t see me. I galloped through the storm, engulfed in the howling snowfall.

I fell upon the first snow fury, and sent my spade swinging toward her skull.

It broke through with a dull squelch – and stuck. I planted a hoof into her lifeless corpse and tugged – ripping it free. I stared blankly at the gore that dripped from its steel head. My jaw clenched.

‘You did this …’

“Please …”

‘HAHAHA –’

I galloped onward and found the next fury. This time, my spade ran through the nape of his neck, and he screamed, his rounds spraying wide as he flailed his forelegs through the snow, his hinds laying limp.

I saw his face one last time – contorted with a quivering, agonized grin – and I cratered it with a downward swing. I hadn’t even hesitated. I stood over him, my teeth bared, and my eyes widened, panting for my breath. Listening.

‘You’ve always wanted this …’

“Stop …”

‘But I can’t stop now …’

“NO!”

The world sped past me. I screamed, hurling myself into the storm – wrenching apart the frozen curtains with every hoof I threw over the other.

The fury swung her rifle to face me.

I swung my spade into her horn.

With a CLANG, and a dull crack, her horn shattered to pieces.

“HNNG – GAHHHH!”

The fury fell shrieking – floundering in the snow as blood poured down her face.

I stood over her, my spade raised high like a grim-faced executioner with another head on the block. I reclined into the eerie silence that washed over me amid her anguished screams … a screaming silence.

She clawed her hooves at the stump that used to be her horn, wailing in agony, her breathless cries resonating through every fiber of my being …

… drowning out the storm. Drowning out my thoughts.

I only raised my spade higher.

“Red, stop!” Candy Cane screamed, her hoof yanking at my sleeve. I blinked, my eyes darting back and forth as if I’d just woken up from a dream. “STOP!"

The magical field around my spade intensified. The fury curled up into a ball, whimpering and convulsing like a beaten animal.

“She’s finished,” I heard Candy Cane tell me. “There’s nothing she can do now.”

“There’s bound to be more of them around here, Cane.” I turned to her, my scarf billowing in the wind. “We need to kill her so she doesn’t come back with more of them!”

Candy Cane pursed her lips, kneeling beside the hornless mare.

“We don’t know that,” she said, softly. “You broke it right off,” she murmured, reaching out to touch the fury’s forehead. The fury recoiled from her hoof with a pathetic, feeble whimper.

I stared at the fury beneath me, letting her panting, agonized breaths echo through my ears. I felt a pang of satisfaction in my heart. A part of me wanted to send my spade crashing against her skull.

But it almost felt good watching one of those animals suffer.

I wondered what Star Glint said to them before they skinned him alive. I wondered if he begged. I wondered if he pleaded for his fucking life. We were helpless to stop those monsters … but now … that fury was helpless to stop me.

All it would take was a single swing. I would even make it quick, even if that sack of filth didn’t deserve a frozen metal grace.

“Please …” the mare whimpered. “I don’t wanna die …”

“Shut up,” I growled, jabbing my spade into her chest. “Don’t you know what these fucking monsters do, Cane?”

I turned and felt Candy Cane’s gray eyes stab into me like cold steel. “I know full well what snow furies do … Red,” she whispered. “You haven’t seen half of it.”

We gazed at each other for too many heartbeats, my voice wavering beneath her chilling stare. “You were fine with me killing them earlier,” I began, tipping my gory spade at her. “What makes this any different, now?”

Her eyes relented, and she blinked them close.

“Red …”

“SHE’S A SNOW FURY!” I screamed.

“I kill because I have to, not because I can.” She pointed a hoof at the bloody, quivering, babbling mess at our hooves. “That’s what makes us different from them.”

I stood over the fury, my spade still enwreathed in my magical grip. The fury flinched, shielding her face with trembling hooves. And through a crack between her forehooves, I watched the black veins in her sclera recede.

The fury … the mare beneath me whimpered.

“Please … lemme go, you’ll never see me again, I promise …”

I closed my eyes, a trembling breath hissing through my lips. I heard her giggling at me. I heard her insane laughter echo through my ears.

My eyelids flew open, and I saw her face – neither grinning nor laughing, but contorted with agony.

“Let her go, Red …” I heard Candy Cane tell me. “She’s finished …”

The cadence of my pounding heartbeat slowed. My conscience beckoned me.

I tucked the spade into my bags.

“Go,” I heard myself say, softly. The mare looked up at me with wide, teary eyes.

“I said … GO!”

She scrambled to her hooves and stumbled away from us. The mare fell once, before hauling herself back to her fours and disappearing into the storm.

A trembling sigh escaped my lips as I bowed my head, still as a corpse as my mane and my scarf billowed like tattered fabric in the wind.

I felt a hoof rest upon my shoulder.

“Red … ?” Candy Cane began, but the wind stole the words from her lips.

I just shook my head and shrugged her off, closing my eyes as the blizzard howled mercilessly into my ears.

‘Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …’

“Come on,” Candy Cane said, her face and voice difficult to make out as the cascading snowfall thickened. “It’s getting worse. We need to get out of here.”

Were it so easy.

*

Even sitting still, my heart raced inside my chest. Beneath the shadow of a vast, collapsed parking garage, the darkness shifted and swelled. In it I could make out figures – but with every blink, they flitted away. Nothing but ghosts haunting my weary eyes. To close them would accomplish nothing. They were still there, slithering beneath the shadow of my eyelids.

Slithering in the darkness.

Outside, above several thousand tons of concrete, beneath the wailing winter, I could still hear them. Laughing at me.

It hit me, then. They weren’t laughing at me because I was weak, or because of the hatred that was simmering inside of me. No. They were laughing at me because I was a victim.

I had always been one.

Even with my gun smoking and standing alive among the dead – I was still a victim.

I sat there in the rubble and detritus, blank-eyed and shrunken to a slouch beneath the noisy quietude. The laughs rang out distantly – miles away. But I could still hear them, laughing their mocking laughter … Dew Drops among them – giggling about how I thought that I slaughtered my friends – how fucking hilarious it was when I put that carbine in my mouth and opened wide.

I would’ve done it. I would’ve ended it all.

I clenched my jaw so hard I nearly popped it out of its socket.

They all seemed so real. I wanted them to be real. After Dew Drops’ death, every dream, every thought I had of her was one wishing she was still alive. I got what I wanted – and to my disgust … I got more.

The darkness knew just how well it could wrench apart that scabbed over gash in my heart. I may not have given it what it wanted … but I knew, and it knew that it had still won.

While it wasn’t easy to get used to the cold, it horrified me that I felt that it was becoming easier to get used to the wasteland. The dreary lifelessness. The empty streets. The death. Around us lay scattered a shallow graveyard of ancient motorwagons. Among them I could make out the faint silhouettes of equine remains – pulverized beneath massive boulders of concrete that had fallen upon them when the streets above caved in.

Having had a taste of a normal life – as normal as it could get – among friends, ponies that I loved and grew up with … I only hated the world around me even more. I hated the snow furies. They did this to us. They did this to me. I hated the snow, and the cold, because they kept me shivering and awake when my mind wanted to drift away.

If only I had just ignored the scarf … if only I had just turned away … they … she would still be alive ... But I killed them. And I would’ve killed myself, too …

Staring at Candy Cane as she rummaged through an arbitrary pile debris, scavenging for Goddesses knew what, I pictured … I tried to picture that that mare was Dew Drops, instead.

Candy Cane met my gaze briefly.

Her lips tore apart – violet light vomiting from her distended jaw. My hoof jumped to my holster – and when I blinked, it was just Candy Cane milling about.

Picking through the detritus, Candy Cane gathered trash from the remains of a crushed motorwagon. Carrying it back, she formed a small pile before us and lowered her head, her eyes clenching shut as sparks leapt and fizzled from her horn. With a dull flash, the trash ignited, and a small fire burned bright enough to light the broken earth beneath our hooves.

With a trembling sigh, she slowly lowered herself to her bottom and sat next to me.

She bowed her head to the small, flickering flame and held her shivering hooves over it.

It wasn’t warm.

But it lit up the parking garage adequately. Ancient motorwagons lay strewn about, overturned, cratered, or buried beneath the rubble. I squinted through the darkness and saw a bony hoof poking out from beneath one.

I blinked, and for a moment, I saw the hoof shift through the rubble, clawing for the surface - drowning in the darkness. I blinked again, and it was just someone’s charred remains. Shaking my head, I fixed my gaze upon a place where the light could not touch. It was better that way. Just like how it was better if I’d not known if the wasteland existed, outside ‘91’s door.

I found it difficult to not stare directly into the darkness. It was all around me, and when I closed my eyes – it was still there. I was afraid. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of the dark. What lay behind that curtain of obscurity wasn’t the Olden Pony looking for her rusty horseshoe. There were far worse things lying in wait.

Far. Worse. Things.

Candy Cane leaned forward, and winced, grunting softly as she clutched her chest. My ears twitched at her voice, but my blank stare did not leave the darkness beyond the campfire’s dim glow.

“It’s quiet, here.”

It took me a moment to register what she said. Several more to realize it was her speaking. My eyes remained fixed into the pitch blackness beyond the light of our campfire.

“Red, what’s wrong?” I said nothing. “You seem different.”

My voice broke the silence. It was gravelly and desiccated as if I’d just woken up from a deep slumber. “What do you mean?” I asked evenly, a near-imperceptible waver in my voice.

Her ears shifted at that. She must’ve noticed.

“We’re alive,” I whispered, still staring into the darkness. “That’s all that matters.”

Candy Cane looked away, sadly, lowering her gaze to the firelight.

“No … it’s not,” she whispered, hauntingly, a soft sigh … or was that a sob – punctuating her words. She looked up at me … and I felt her eyes boring into my peripherals. I met them, her haunted, chilling grays. She just stared, her lips parted open as if she wanted to say more.

Candy Cane’s tired eyes lingered upon my blank stare. Several seconds passed before she turned away, her head pivoting like an unoiled, rusty machine. Her ear lingered, still fixed in my direction.

I said nothing. My ruined mind could find nothing to say.

It could find nothing but the darkness that terrorized it like a disturbed colt pulling the legs off a spider. Like a weary, tortured animal, I laid my head down between my hooves and stared into the fire, watching it flicker, wavering and weak.

All I had to do was to blow it out like a candle. A rogue breeze was all it took to extinguish its light. We weren't too different. We were just playthings … we were just fucking toys in the clutches of something greater. Something … evil.

It didn’t want to kill us.

It wanted to torture us.

It wanted us to suffer.

Once more I tried to imagine Dew Drops’ face. Her cool gray eyes … her velvety blue coat … her tousled teal mane … her soft face and gentle smile. But instead her eyes flashed at me with emerald hellfire. I felt my limbs freeze over. I knew that that thing wasn’t her. And yet all I saw behind the shadows of my eyelids was a monster.

‘Don’t you love me, Red Dawn? Hahahahaha …’

I shook my head vigorously. Her voice … its voice … nothing but a disembodied, chilling cackle from the darkness. A laugh devoid of pity. Devoid of mercy. Devoid of equinity.

I remembered the crazed doomsayer I encountered in the Outer City not too long ago. I thought she was full of shit. I thought it was all a fucking joke.

She said that she saw the darkness.

So did I.

The darkness was real. The darkness was alive. And whenever I tried to think about the ponies I loved … I …

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About her. The taste of death on her tongue. The smell of rot in her flesh. Her cold blood as it dripped onto my face.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her. How she wouldn’t stop – how … how I couldn’t stop. How that monster took advantage me ... And to think that that was what I wanted Dew Drops to do to me. I couldn’t even believe it myself … to think I actually wanted … that …

… that I wanted to feel her hot breaths upon my flesh … and feel her tongue wrap around me … to force her down with my hooves. To hear her gag – hear her whine for breath. To release her – so that the air that would fill her lungs would not be the only thing to come.

Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …

My legs began to shake. I lowered my head to my trembling hooves, my mouth moving but no words escaping my tongue. Disgusting names spun twisting circles around my weeping conscience, convicting me – judging me – punishing me.

‘You pervert … you … you fucking freak …’

Was it true … ? Was it? ‘I’d never … I …

‘No …’

I tried to deny the whispers that suggested that – that somewhere – somewhere in the blackest regions of my conscience, there lay buried a twisted fantasy … where I wanted it … and more.

A fantasy where I wanted to defile the face of that lovely mare. I couldn’t have … I couldn’t have wanted to hold her down and fuck her brains out …

But the voices kept telling me I was wrong.

‘NO!’ How could I want to do that to her … the mare I loved … the mare I grew up with. Dew Drops … my teacher – my friend – my lover. How could I ever think … think to ruin my Dew Drops?!

But I was wrong. My body told me I was wrong. My body wanted her to tear open my trousers and give to me with her cold, rasping tongue, and her slick, chilling insides the fantasy it had hungered.

And all the while my mind had screamed at me to stop – my heart screamed at me that it was wrong.

And yet a part of me still wanted it.

She was a corpse. Reanimated by darkness … by evil in the image of my Dew Drops.

‘She was a corpse.’

A gasp – loud enough only for me to hear, wheezed out of my lips. I fought the urge to vomit, to hurl and retch away the pallid butterflies in my chest … the wretched twist in my putrid gut … the disgusting, unholy fantasies that gurgled inside my head.

I almost … I almost said yes.

I wanted to cry … but all I felt was anger. A boiling hatred that bubbled and popped inside of me. No longer could I think of her as the pony I loved … she was gone … and it was all its fault. The greatest insult to injury. A salted wound that had just begun to scab over – was now oozing and festering with infection.

The wasteland destroyed my friends.

Then the darkness destroyed their memories.

There weren’t any more tears to shed …

All that was left was hatred … for Dew Drops’ twisted grin, the brutal rasp in her voice, the sickly, unholy glow of her half-lidded eyes. What she did to me … what it did to me … I only wanted to make it pay.

It made me a victim … in the false safety of my own mind … I was victimized. On my own terms. Behind the safety of my own walls.

My hoof slid to my holster as I scraped at my pistol’s safety.

Click. Clack. Click.

The wasteland – the darkness – whatever the fuck it was, wrenched away from my hooves almost everything I loved. The wasteland killed them. Then the darkness killed them again.

On. Off. On.

My hoof curled tightly around my holster. Someone was going to pay … pay for the guilty, disgusting fantasies, and the putrefied memories that, in my thoughts, rolled over in their shallow graves. I wanted to find something tangible to blame. Something that could bleed.

Something that wasn’t myself.

Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …

Snow furies.

“You did the right thing, Red,” I heard Candy Cane say.

I bowed my head away from the firelight, a veil of darkness hiding the hatred that burned in my eyes. “The right … thing?”

A twisted, lopsided grin stretched across my lips. “Letting that – that fury walk away? That was the right thing?” I stood to my fours, my hooves trembling beneath me. “I wonder,” I whispered, “I wonder how many people she’s killed? I wonder how many people she’s butchered … and we just let her walk away.

Candy Cane peered up at me.

“And That was the right thing to do?”

The mare was quiet for a moment as she averted her gaze to the crackling campfire.

“She … she was begging for her life, Red.”

I only laughed.

“Would she have done the same?” Candy Cane stared into the fire, jaw clenched. “Would she have let you walk away?”

There was a long silence as the frail firelight danced dimly across her grim face.

“No,” I said for her. “She would’ve fucked you with your horn while you were still alive!”

She shook her head and whispered, “It doesn’t matter …”

I felt my heart leap inside my chest.

“What … did you say?”

Candy Cane finally turned to face me. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, louder this time.

I snapped.

“It. Doesn’t. Matter!?” My muzzle came within inches of hers. “Those … animals killed my friends – and – and you’re saying that it doesn’t … fucking matter!?”

The mare stood firm, her voice even. “I never said that.”

“Bullshit!” I hissed. I grinded my teeth, glaring into the darkness. “It’s all their fault …” I whispered, my eyes clenching shut as their laughs resonated through my ears. “Those animals killed them … and they would’ve killed me too …” I bowed my head and added, in a voice only I could hear, “They should’ve … but I won’t let them.”

I turned, slowly, staring my distant eyes through hers. “I used to wonder why I made it out of there alive … I used to wonder why me – out of all those ponies – made it out alive.” I gazed into the dying firelight as it wavered against my bloodied, grime-encrusted face. “Why … Goddesses … why?” I asked her.

She just stared back in silence.

“I wonder … I wonder if it was so that I could make them pay …”

Candy Cane took a deep breath, and slowly shook her head. “That mare … she didn’t kill your friends,” she said, softly. “She didn’t kill your friends, Red.”

“No. But that fury will kill us!” I snarled as she continued to shake her head. “She would’ve killed us ... and if we don’t stop them first, it’ll be our pelts that’ll be keeping them warm when the Tempest comes!”

“You don’t know that,” she whispered. “You broke her horn … she was beaten – useless. She wouldn’t have even been able fight back.”

A bitter chuckle wheezed out of my lips.

“Why are you being so naïve? They’ll come back with more, and they’ll murder us both!”

Anger flashed across her face.

“You don’t know that!”

“And you don’t know that either! I’m going to laugh my ass off bloody when they come back and rip us to pieces! You should’ve let me put her down when I could!” I snarled, stomping a hoof into the ground.

“AND FOR WHAT?!” she snapped. “So – s-so you can get your revenge? How does killing her – unarmed and useless accomplish anything?”

“It’ll save. Your. LIFE – AND MINE!”

Candy Cane grew quiet, her ears wilting as she stared at her hooves in the heavy silence. I could hear her shallow breaths hissing out of her trembling lips.

“Save … save us from them?” She looked up at me in horror. “What about us? What about us, Red?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? What about when we become just like them!?” She demanded with wide, pleading eyes, “What then? What in Equestria would’ve made you different if I’d just let you knock her head off while she begged?”

“Not a dead pony,” I shot back.

“It would’ve made you a murderer!”

I threw my head back and laughed as if that was the funniest damn thing I’d ever heard.

“I already am, Cane!” I grinned, holding out to her my forehooves as if they were covered in blood. “And if it saved my life … if it saved yours, I’d do it again!”

“NO!”

She curled her hooves around my shoulders and shook me. Hard.

“It’s. Not. Worth it.”

“Cane –”

“IT’S NOT WORTH IT!” she screamed into my face. “I’ve lived in this fucking wasteland my entire life - and I’ve seen enough.” She jammed a hoof into her chest. “I’ve seen enough! I … I watched as furies murdered my family … I saw them rape my mother while they slit my father’s fetlocks and made him watch.”

The waning firelight crackled and popped.

“Why? Why did they burn my village to the ground? WHY DID THEY BUTCHER MY FAMILY?”

She uttered a violent sob, her trembling hooves tightening around me as she blinked away the tears that welled up in her eyes. Candy Cane’s head slumped forward into my chest, rocking me back and forth with her shuddering sobs. “Why, Red …” she whispered, clenching her eyes shut. “I’ll never know. Furies don’t need a reason for the things they do. They do it because they can.”

She yanked me by the collar and glared into my eyes with her bloodshot grays. “I’m not like them, Red. I won’t be like them. I kill because I have to, not because I can!”

Her grip loosened around my shoulders, but she lingered close. I could feel shallow breaths against my face.

“You don’t know … half the shit I’ve seen,” she whispered, “And if you expect me to do the same things I’ve seen ponies do in this tartarus …” Candy Cane let me go. She turned away from me and clenched her teary eyes shut.

“I’d rather die.”

I bowed my head as we stood there in silence.

“Cane …” I murmured.

Hooves crunched behind me.

“Then die,” someone whispered.

My heart skipped a beat.

A shallow gasp escaped my lips as a hoof curled around my shoulder and spun me around.

I found myself face to face with the black-webbed sclera of a grinning snow fury. The fury’s horn glowed – and I shoved him back into the darkness.

“Son of a …” I rasped, stumbling away, as their broken grins and ragged hoods and wheezing gas masks stepped into the waning firelight. My back hoof crunched into our campfire.

Everything went black.

“GET THEM!”

Someone curled a hoof around mine.

In a heartbeat, I found myself running.

Hooves pounded after us as Candy Cane’s light orb and their flashlights flickered to life. All I saw before us was rubble and debris as a dozen beams of light cut blazing swaths through the dark tunnels that were my eyes. Candy Cane’s head swung back and forth, searching the rubble – frantically – for something my eyes couldn’t see.

Her light orb flickered to black.

“CANE –” I shouted – then someone shoved me to the ground with a crunch – hooves stabbed into my chest – sharp bits of concrete scraped against my hide as hooves stuffed my back into a wall.

I bucked my hooves, but they were only met with cold, cold concrete. I couldn’t see. ‘My PipBuck! If I could just –’

My horn scraped against the rubble and my magic sputtered and popped.

‘FUCK!’

I wriggled helplessly, the muscles in my hinds tensing for another buck - and someone’s legs wrapped around me. Tight. There came a breath upon my cheek as I heard Candy Cane whisper, “Be quiet,” as the snow furies whooped and shrieked, their flashlights flickering outside through the strands of her curly mane.

I stifled the gasps that were wheezing out of my lips, and winced at the numb, throbbing sensation in my chest. Slowly, as the seconds that felt like minutes began to tick by, an inexplicable, dull pain welled up inside of me. The pain soon became agony as I felt something warm soak into my jumpsuit from the inside out.

It was only until I felt Candy Cane’s peacoat brush against my chest that I realized …

‘They stabbed me.’

“Oh … f-fuck …” I murmured, my eyes widening.

“Be quiet!”

Candy Cane pressed her cheek against mine as she wedged herself deeper into the crevice. Panic coursed through my veins as my breaths came out as ragged gasps.

‘They stabbed me – they fucking stabbed me –’

Candy Cane clapped my mouth shut.

But it wasn’t enough.

There was a flash. And she screamed.

“HAHAHAHAHA!”

A snow fury yanked her tail and dragged her away from me – screaming.

Candy Cane’s light orb winked to life and I saw the horror and resignation that flashed across her face. I reached out with a hoof, wisps of red light flickering across my horn.

“NO!” she cried out – not at them – but at me. “DON’T! IT’S NOT WORTH IT!” Candy Cane dug her hooves frantically into the rubble as they fought against her thrashing limbs. “NO!”

I met her eyes for the last time.

“IT’S NOT WORTH IT, RED DAWN!”

Then a hoof crashed into her skull, slamming her face first into the concrete – and her light orb winked out with a splash of scarlet. Then the world cut to black.

All I heard were their laughs, cackling behind the curtain of darkness as they left the broken stage. I listened as their voices echoed through my hollow, concrete coffin. I listened until all I heard were the voices in my head.

Laughing. Mocking me with their deprecating laughs.

‘You did this … hahaha … hahahahaha …’

I closed my eyes and let out a trembling sigh.

I wanted to laugh with them. To laugh my ass off bloody, and tell her I was right – that they would come back for us. To kill us. To flay us alive. And as I dragged my bleeding self out of that hole, with my PipBuck flashing across the rubble, I saw that she wasn’t there.

All that was left was the other half of the map, trampled beneath half a dozen hooves – splattered with Candy Cane’s blood.

I stood there, staring at the pieces of frayed paper. Trembling. Even as blood trickled out of my chest. ‘Not again.’ Those two words played across my thoughts. Repeating like a broken record.

Not again. Not again. Not again.

A magical field lifted up the bloody scraps of paper, floating them weakly before my eyes as they wavered, tracing every line of blood, every speck of scarlet that was soaking into its frayed, crumpled surface.

‘Snow furies … they …’

No. ‘Not again …’

My aura dwindled and whined. Then nothing. The pieces fluttered into my trembling hoof. I gazed numbly at the hoofprints that were stomped into the broken earth. I tucked the pieces away, and lowered myself to the floor, reaching out with a hoof to touch the crater that Candy Cane’s face had made when they stomped her skull in.

I lifted my last health potion to my lips and downed it, tossing it aside with the rest of the shit that lay heaped around me. I checked the rounds in my pistol. Four left.

“Fuck …” I hissed, pounding a hoof into the earth. “FUCK!”

I wanted to blame her. She should’ve let me knock that fury’s head off. I wanted to give her a cruel smile and laugh in her face, and tell her that it was all her fault. But there wasn’t anyone else to blame.

She was gone.

I clenched my eyes shut, flicking my pistol’s safety off.

Snow furies.

*

It wasn’t too difficult to track them. Neither was it too difficult to find them. All I had to do was follow the blood. The ancient night was still young, and the blizzard had calmed to a ragged, incessant breeze. I poked my head over a slab of melted debris and saw them.

A camp full of furies.

Dozens of them. But it didn’t look like they were there to stay. In the wavering torchlight that lined the perimeter and lit up the center of their camp, I saw wagons parked here and there. Upon them and around them were cages, boxes, piles – some empty, some full of looted valuables or garbage.

Others were full of bones.

Others were full of discarded, frost-bitten meat. Others … others had ponies in them. They stood there, heads bowed – defeated as the snow furies circled them, poked them with machetes, or barked disgusting remarks through the cold, steel bars.

There lay limp a silhouette under several pairs of legs. I knew it was her.

They hadn’t killed her.

Yet.

I knew how they operated.

My eyes flicked to the discarded scraps of meat and bones that lay strewn about, and the torsos and skulls that were mounted upon gnarled spikes.

I drew my pistol, and counted. One, two, three, four –

Then stopped. Of course. There would be more furies than I had bullets. I pounded a hoof against the charred concrete that concealed me from the glow of their torchlight.

Without her … I knew I was lost. She had been … nice enough to leave me the other half of the map. She knew I wouldn’t be able to save her by myself.

She knew that she was finished the moment they dragged her away.

I shook my head, rubbing my eyes furiously with my hooves as I slumped into the wall behind me and slid to ground with a muffled crunch. Even with the other half of the map, I was still lost. I looked up into the vicious, melted spires of rebar and cooled, molten concrete that rose up above me. Then back at the map.

All I saw were numbers, quadrants, and planographic symbols that meant nothing to me. I didn’t even fucking know where I was. But Candy Cane did. This time, I couldn’t save her alone. I was lucky I didn’t die the last time.

I gazed longingly at her still form. I didn’t even ask her about what happened to her at the Hub. I didn’t even ask her if she was okay, or how hard she fell the last time we got separated. I … I didn’t even ask her if she was okay.

That mare … that mare trusted me with her life. She went out of her way … she threw away her freedom and resigned from the prospect of settling down just to help me. To help me. And I didn’t even ask her if she was okay.

I took her for granted. The last mare I took for granted was dead.

I needed her. Goddesses, I needed her. She deserved better. So did many other ponies who’d entered and left my life … and she had only just entered mine. Whether she liked it or not, she had stepped through that door.

And for the short time I knew her … I wasn’t going to let her leave. Not like that.

My only friend.

‘You keep her safe, Red,’ Summer Smiles’ voice echoed through my thoughts. I did. I had kept her safe like I did with my dead, dead friends. I cradled my head with my hooves, rocking back and forth as anger and guilt boiled inside of me.

Those fucking snow furies … not again. ‘Not again.’

There were simply too many of them. But either way, without her, I was screwed. I’d never find my way back to the Outer City. I cupped a hoof over my PipBuck’s screen to dim the glow and stared at its map.

I looked around me, and uttered a defeated sigh.

It looked like it was calibrated to give me the layout of the city before it collapsed and folded upon itself. What roads, bridges, and sidewalks there were before, were no longer there.

I’d never make it back alive without her.

My eyes squinted through the darkness back the way I came, tracing the hoof trodden, bloody trail that snaked through the snow. We’d left those furies we killed earlier behind and all their belongings where they’d fallen. They had guns.

And I could use a resupply.

I heard the creaking whine of the cage’s door being swung open. I peered over the rubble and watched as they dragged out a pony, screaming and begging for his pathetic life. They circled him like predators, hungry for blood and carnage.

I watched a fury break rank, and toss the pony a club as she brandished her own. She taunted him with insults until he found the rage to lash out. The furies cheered when her club cracked against his ribs. They cheered when he struggled to his legs only to have a kneecap shattered from another brutal swing. They cheered again when she brought it down upon his skull.

Pulping it.

I gulped, casting my gaze away from the carnage. Then they went back to the cage and retrieved another, tossing a mare into the ring.

‘Luna’s grace. They're going to murder them all.

‘They're going to murder Candy Cane.

I turned, and hurried down the ridge.

I needed to find a way.

I needed her.

I figured that even if I died trying, I was going to die anyways.

I spared a glance to the twilit sky, watching the black, nebulous storm clouds as they loomed over me. A snowflake fluttered down from above to land upon my nose. I snorted, as several more began to fall upon my face. The wind was kicking up again.

Soon, the tracks leading back there would be gone.

I lifted my PipBuck to my muzzle. Clack. On my map, a blue X winked over my current location. I’d need to find my way back to the Morale Hub.

I paused for a moment, and glanced over my shoulder at the torchlit camp. Maybe those damned furies weren’t worth it.

But Candy Cane was.

*

Chapter 14 - Darkness is Coming - Pt II

*

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%

Chapter 15 - The Death of a Dream - Pt I

Chapter 15

The Death of a Dream

“Good ponies don’t win, Summer Smiles … they die...”

Dead.

Wiped out. Almost two dozen ponies killed behind the safety of their own walls.

I tried not to look at the mare whose brutalized corpse hung crucified above me.

It was hard not to when the same brutality painted every inch of that frozen hole in the earth.

That hideout was supposed to be secure … that hideout was supposed to be hard to find …

It was supposed to be safe.

The ponies who had died in their beds, their throats slashed open … they thought the place was safe too. Surrounded by that horrific carnage, I began to question if anywhere was safe.

A string of bile and saliva dribbled down my lip, the puddle of vomit at my hooves cooling rapidly, exposed to the cold, dead air. My eyelids fluttered, trying to blink away the horror. The blood. The entrails. The patches of flayed coat. The skinless musculature, now black and blue. The exposed, ruined haunches of dead mares.

The hollow eye sockets.

I had seen that before. Their eyes were gouged out … everyone’s eyes were gouged out … so were Silver Dove’s, Beryl’s, Peach Petals’ … Mom’s …

Before my eyes a nightmare repeated itself.

My horrified stare gravitated to the sign above the crucified mare’s head.

“Goddesses …” I whispered with a tremble that shook me to the bone.

‘Goddesses … what happened to them?’

But as I stared at the carnage, it was not them I thought of. It was the Goddesses.

The Goddesses couldn’t help those people. The Goddesses didn’t help those people.

Tears welled up in my eyes. Where were they when that … thing attacked us? Where were they when Dew Drops attacked me? Where the fuck were they when those people were slaughtered like fucking animals!?

No. No … this wasn’t a slaughter. They weren’t butchered, either.

They had been desecrated. Profaned. Reduced to bloody morsels. Cut apart and savored like finely-prepared cuisine.

I wondered if they put out their eyes before or after they tortured them. I wondered if they begged – if they begged the Goddesses to help them.

I wondered if it even mattered.

It didn’t take eyes to feel the excruciating agony they must have felt. You could see it on their faces. Their skinless, contorted faces, rent black and blue from the icy talons of the wasteland air.

What kind of monster could have done that? What kind of disgusting creature could have taken the time to butcher those people so meticulously, so methodically, so … so thoroughly?

Not even furies … not even furies could’ve … I gulped. Just like Candy Cane had said: furies killed because they could. Furies killed. Furies raped. Furies tortured. That was what made them different from whoever – whatever defiled those poor souls.

I looked up. I looked past the pony whose entrails dangled over me. She wasn’t even the center of it all.

I scanned the room, my eyes glazing over the blood and the ponies that decorated the walls. From coagulated red to frostbitten black, my eyes caught something that stood out from the rest of the macabre canvas. Lying before a bloodied, blade-scored bureau was a weapon. But not like anything I had ever seen.

I enwreathed it with my magic, the strange pistol scraping across the floor as I brought its black frame to the glow of my trembling PipBuck.

Underneath its barrel were two vicious blades, perhaps to slash and stab with. I scrutinized the weapon, unable to find the things that made conventional weaponry … conventional. No ejection port. But there was a mouthbit. A trigger. A magazine.

I had never seen a weapon like that until then. But it was clearly designed for equines.

I aimed it at the wall, and pulled the trigger.

ZZZTWHAP!

My eyes widened at the glowing spike of cooling metal that had impaled the charred concrete. My stare gravitated to the gory message above the crucified mare’s head.

The words smeared above her skinless, grinning skull were the message.

I held the alien weapon before my eyes.

That was the signature.

Whoever or whatever did that, did it to make a statement.

I didn’t know who they were, but I did know one thing.

There wasn’t any point in staying there. The dead couldn’t speak. The dead couldn’t tell me where the Orphanage was, or what was coming, or what the darkness was. And I sure as hell didn’t want to be there when it came.

I shook my head vigorously.

I folded a leg protectively over my churning stomach. I couldn’t stop staring at the innards that dangled over me. I froze, gulping down fresh bile.

Whatever had killed those people could still be out there.

I rushed to Candy Cane’s side and shook her hard.

“Cane – Cane!” I hissed. Her limbs twitched and she drew in a sharp breath, blinking away the blackness from her eyes. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

She shook her head, the blood draining from her face once more. She sat there, her numb features devoid of the urgency that pumped through my veins.

“H-how …” she slurred in a quiet, wavering voice, “How could this have happened …” Candy Cane covered her face with a hoof. She turned her gaze to me … but not at me. She stared through me. She stared at the ponies whose bare, skinless haunches were pointed upward to the ceiling.

Candy Cane stood to her hooves and shambled over to one of the unrecognizable mares – the only indication that she was a mare by the few unravaged parts that were left on her. She just sat there. And stared … her lips moving but not a single word escaping her lips as she trembled and shook, her haunted eyes darting frantically back and forth – trapped and unable to escape her waking nightmare.

“It can’t be ... nopony should’ve been able to find this place … nopony can … not without a map … nopony ever has …”

“Well someone did,” I growled, “And they could still be out there!”

Candy Cane snapped.

“If they found this hideout, then the rest are in danger!” she blurted out, leaping to her hooves. Candy Cane yanked out our map.

I froze. Our map. Whatever murdered those ponies … they had one too – just like ours.

They knew where to find the others. I clenched my jaw.

“We need to warn them,” Candy Cane said before I could. She unraveled the map before her eyes, darting them across its quadrants. She nodded and stuffed the map back into her coat.

Candy Cane lifted a hoof to turn the other way to the exit – but she froze upon her hooves.

The blood drained from her face.

“I hope it isn’t already too late,” she whispered.

My mouth ran dry as I tried to gulp the lump down my throat.

“Doesn’t look like anyone made it out of here alive,” I rasped, gazing numbly at the carnage around us. “The others won’t know what’s coming for them …”

Candy Cane closed her eyes and hung her head to the bloody floor. “We know what they can do. The Orphans don’t. They’ll be slaughtered ... just like them,” she whispered as her eyes fluttered open and stared distantly into the carnage.

“We are leaving,” I told her as I swept the spike pistol from the gory floor and slipped it into my bags. We reached the door and –

Something scraped behind us. My heart skipped a beat.

“WHO’S THERE!” Candy Cane screamed, tearing her gun from her holster.

I scrambled for mine.

Nothing. My eyes darted across the room as Candy Cane’s ragged breaths broke the dead silence. I waited for the laughter. For the shadows. For the monsters that murdered everyone. But there was nothing. No one.

Candy Cane’s ears twitched – and she leveled her submachine gun at the bloodied desk behind us. The desk where I’d found the strange pistol. I glanced at her – but she didn’t meet my eyes. She started forward, her teeth bared and her nostrils flaring.

She inched towards the bureau, gun drawn, her ears pinned against the sides of her head. I crept after her, my heart racing in my chest. My hooves slowly squelched into the gory floor.

We approached. My pistol trembled in my tightening grip. The desk moaned. It rumbled and shook like there was something trapped underneath. I shuddered, my red magic turning crimson as I clenched my pistol tighter and tighter. Closer and closer. Hooves scraped across the floor beneath the desk.

Closer.

My aura glowed a bloody red. I watched as a mangled shadow writhed in the darkness.

Candy Cane stopped in her tracks. She lowered her weapon and looked over her shoulder as the blood returned to her face.

“Red …” she murmured.

My PipBuck’s light parted the darkness beneath the bureau. Peering up at us were a pair of bloodshot green eyes. They fluttered closed for a moment, neither lids shutting in unison. When they opened, the light of life in them were dimmer than when I last saw them.

“Goddesses …” I murmured, illuminating the mare’s pale, blood-drained face. Her pupils didn’t even dilate. Candy Cane and I rushed to her as her head rolled across her shoulders and she slumped onto the bloody floor.

Her pink coat was cold and clammy as I curled my hooves under her forelegs and hauled her out from under the bloodied desk. I held her frail body, biting my lower lip as I realized the pony in my hooves was nearing death.

Her bloodshot eyes blinked open.

“Please …” she rasped. “Water … do you have …”

I levitated to her my canteen. She took it with a trembling hoof, tipped it to her mouth, and spilled it down her chest.

“I gotcha …” Candy Cane said softly, kneeling beside us and guiding it to her cracked lips.

She drank until she sputtered and choked.

“Goddess … h-how … how long have I been out?” she slurred. The mare looked all around her, her eyes widening to saucers. She shot up from the floor and away from my hooves. “Goddess – how long have I been out!?”

Candy Cane grasped her by the shoulders and gently settled the panting mare back down to the floor. Candy Cane eyed the blood that was running down the back of her head and gave me a worried look.

The mare trembled in Candy Cane’s hooves. She peered up at us with her dried out, bloodshot eyes.

“Th-they – they – they killed everyone!” she screamed, wheezing for breath. “Goddess, how … how did this happen? How … oh Goddess, I … I-I- GAH!” She hoofed her forehead, moaning as agony shot through her skull.

Candy Cane shushed her, grasping her shoulders tight. “Please, slow down,” she said gently, brushing aside a lock of the mare’s brown mane as it fell in front of her blood-drained face. “What’s your name?”

“M-Minnow. I-I’m Minnow,” she wheezed, trying to stand to her hooves.

I glared at her. “Sit down for Celestia’s sake!”

Minnow shook her head furiously. “No – I – Goddess, everypony’s in danger! I need –”

Candy Cane held her head between her hooves. “You need to sit still. And please stop shaking your head ,,, you’ll only make your concussion worse.” Candy Cane gave her a faint smile, holding her hooves. “We’re here to help you …”

Minnow clenched her eyes shut as she took a deep breath.

“No … no – I-I need to tell the others … I need … I … oh …”

She moaned, cradling her bloody head in her trembling hooves.

“You’re in no shape to do that right now,” I told her. She didn’t seem to hear me as she tried shaking her head again. Candy Cane clasped her hooves around her, trying to still the trembling mare.

I glanced at the desk she’d been lying under.

“How long do you think you’ve been in there?” I asked, breathlessly.

She tried shaking her head, but Candy Cane held her still.

“I don’t know … Goddess … Amoré – I-I don’t know. It all happened so quickly and I just – I just … I can’t remember …”

Candy Cane pursed her lips, brushing aside Minnow’s disheveled mane. She scrutinized the bloody bump on her scalp. “Couldn’t have been more than an hour – maybe less,” Candy Cane said. She lowered her voice. “Any more than that, and she never would’ve woken up …”

I gulped, clenching my jaw.

“What happened?”

She closed her eyes, shaking her head.

“They … they came back from a supply run … yes – they came back, and … and …”

“Who did?” I asked.

We fell silent as she brought a hoof to her head, moaning softly.

“They … they were one of us …” she whispered, “They left, came back, and just started … started killing. The door came down and there was shooting and screaming … I was writing a report when it happened. I-it – it was like they were completely different ponies …” Minnow covered her face with her hooves, shielding her face from the horrors that flashed before her eyes. “We tried to fight them – tried to barricade the door – but they were too strong! So … so strong … they knocked me down and hit me in head. Last thing I remember …” She eyed the empty floor in front of the desk, and I glanced over at my saddlebags. “They left something behind.”

“I know,” I murmured, grimly. “It’s in my bags.”

Minnow stared at the floor, her ears pinned to the sides of her head.

“Y-you should’ve heard them – heard the things they were – Amoré – I-I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. They were hissing and shrieking in some weird language l-like animals … like they were possessed b-by – by fucking Goddess knows what.”

I found myself reading the words atop the crucified mare’s head once again as Minnow’s voice faded to silence. I couldn’t stop thinking about the message they’d left behind.

“Were they speaking Zebrican?” I asked.

“No. N-no it was something … else. I’ve heard Zebrican before. No. It couldn’t be. They weren’t speaking Zebrican.”

Minnow moaned and tried to stand back up, to crawl past me, but she slumped into my hooves instead.

“We need to get her someplace safe,” Candy Cane said to me.

“We? I-I don’t even know who you ponies are,” she said, trying to sit back up as she pawed at the floor. “H-how did you even find this place? There’s no way you could’ve –” Her eyes met mine and the blood drained from her face. “Oh no. Oh no – oh no – oh no … you’re one of them … Goddess, you’re one of them! YOU’RE ONE OF THEM!”

“No, we’re not!” I hissed, holding her in place – trying to quiet her as the sounds of her struggle echoed out into the hall. “If we wanted to kill you, we would’ve killed you by now!”

She shook her head frantically, jabbing a hoof at the massacred ponies around us.

“They wouldn’t have!” She pulled away from me and stumbled to her wobbly hooves. “You didn’t see what they did! You didn’t see how they killed us all!” Minnow sniffled, “They murdered us! They … they …” Her shallow breaths wheezed in and out as realization dawned upon her widening eyes. “They … they left me alive …”

“Minnow, calm down or you’ll pass out,” Candy Cane said, reaching out to her with a hoof.

She shrugged her off. “W-who are you ponies? Who the hell are you – t-tell me how you found this place – now!”

Candy Cane and I exchanged worried looks as the mare trembled uncontrollably.

“I’m Red Dawn.”

“And I’m Candy Cane. We’re not here to hurt you …” She levitated out our map.

Minnow went stiff.

“H-how … h-how did you get that!?”

Candy Cane tried to hold her still, but Minnow swatted away her hooves.

“ANSWER ME!”

Candy Cane held up her forehooves.

“A friend of mine gave it to us; her name’s Summer Smiles. She was a runner,” she told her, slowly. “We came here because we wanted to join you ponies.”

“I can’t believe this …” Minnow murmured. “I-I can’t believe this … this is insane … insane!”

I gazed at her numbly, unable to keep my eyes from wandering across everyone’s butchered remains.

“I can’t either.”

Minnow hung her head, clenched her eyes shut, and grinded her teeth.

Candy Cane lifted Minnow’s chin with a hoof. “Minnow, you need to listen to me. The Orphanage may be in grave danger. If the ponies that did this found this hideout, then they’ve likely found others, too. We need to warn the others.”

Horror flashed across her blood-splattered face. “Amoré … Goddess – n-no – no! They’ll kill us – they’ll kill us all!” She gasped, scrambling away from us and taking a backward stumble to the door. “I need to tell them!” I caught her just as she tripped up over her hooves and nearly cracked her skull on the floor.

“I NEED TO TELL THE OTHERS – BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”

“Stop!” Candy Cane grasping her shoulders and held her still. “You have a concussion! You’ll never make it back on your own! Let us help you.”

“We’ll take you back home,” I said, with forced patience as Candy Cane levitated to me the map and I laid it out on the floor. “You just need to show us how to get there.”

She tried shaking her head again, but Candy Cane held her still.

Minnow ground her teeth.

“Errgh … why … w-why – h-how can I trust you ponies?”

I looked all around us. We were the only two ponies still standing.

“You don’t have much of a choice,” I told her. “Everyone else is dead.”

She moaned, slumping to her haunches and pulling Candy Cane down with her.

I sighed. “If it makes you feel better, we wouldn’t be asking you for directions if we already knew where to wipe out another hideout.”

“It doesn’t. I-it really doesn’t!” Minnow cried. She covered her face with her hooves. “Damnit … Goddess damnit … I-I … hrk – okay! Okay – fine … fine …” Minnow looked up at me pitifully, her chin quivering. She held a trembling hoof over a quadrant on the map and jabbed a hoof into it. “There. That hideout’s occupied ... still … I-I hope.”

Candy Cane gulped, and nodded to herself, quickly. “That’s not too far from here.”

I grunted with effort as I hauled Minnow back to her hooves, only for her to slump against me, clinging to my shoulders like her life depended on it.

I only hoped to the Goddesses that she wouldn’t slow us down.

Our magical fields swirled around her as Candy Cane helped me lift the trembling mare onto my back. With Minnow properly situated on top of me, Candy Cane and I bee-lined it to the exit, gingerly stepping around the defiled remains that lay at our hooves.

Those people had been defiled enough. If only someone could bury them.

My horn glowed. I swung the door open – and stopped in my tracks.

A pony stood before us, a pistol levitating in her magical grip. Her teal eyes widened. She curled her lips and hissed as she bolted the other way.

“HEY!” I shouted after her.

Time seemed to slow as I caught a glimpse of the disgusted sneer that tore across Candy Cane’s lips before she blurred into motion. “STOP!” Candy Cane screamed – drew her submachine gun and galloped after her, loping explosively through the snow. Goddesses. The other pony was fast. But Candy Cane was faster. Something told me in the way she bowed her head, teeth bared, that something else was driving her onward.

I felt Minnow’s hooves tighten around me as I struggled to keep up.

Candy Cane’s snarled – her teeth a breath away from chomping upon the other pony’s tail.

The unicorn’s horn flashed teal.

Snow exploded into Candy Cane’s eyes.

She screamed – and the pony jumped out of the way just in time for Candy Cane to slam blindly into a pillar of concrete.

“Son of a bitch!” I screamed, drawing my pistol.

The unicorn scrambled atop a mound of concrete, rocks and debris cascading down upon Candy Cane’s writhing form. The pony bared her teeth at me and snarled as I leveled my pistol and opened my mouth to shout – but her horn flashed with a bluish, blinding glare that engulfed her entire body in seething waves of cerulean magic.

My jaw dropped. So did my pistol.

The pegasus glanced over her shoulder and hissed, unfurled her wings, and rocketed off into the sky. I watched – awestruck as her winged silhouette disappeared over the mountainlike ruins that towered over us.

“What. The. FUCK?”

Candy Cane staggered upright upon wobbly legs, cradling her head in her hooves.

“Did you see that!?” I gawked.

“Ughrk … what?” Candy Cane looked around us, dazed and confused as clarity slowly returned to her eyes. “What … where the fuck did she –”

I jabbed a hoof into the sky.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t fucking see that!”

Candy Cane clenched her jaw and shook her head. Her eyes darted to the mare who was still sprawled across my back.

She asked Minnow, “Was it one of them?”

No response.

“Looks like she’s out,” I muttered, shaking one of her limp forelegs.

Candy Cane stared at her with distant eyes, standing there in silence. A rivulet of blood ran down her forehead and she shuddered back to clarity. She brought a quaking hoof to her face and wiped it clean, staring off quietly into the snow.

I gulped and peered up into the sky just over the mountain crest where that … thing had disappeared behind.

If they could fly … then we were already too late.

*

A dreaded silence hung over us like a headsmare’s axe. It was the burden of knowledge. Knowledge of the darkness that was to come. It weighed heavily upon our shoulders as if the entire sky threatened to fall upon us.

Our hooves clopped audibly across the rubble, echoing down the empty streets and through the shattered skeleton of that dead city.

With a barely conscious Minnow clinging to my shoulders, I galloped after Candy Cane as she frantically navigated the streets ahead. Her eyes darted to the map then to the mountainous rubble around us, struggling to find landmarks I couldn’t see.

She knew as well as I did that time was running out.

Darkness was coming, and the Orphanage wasn’t ready for it. None of us were.

It was a race against time, and even Candy Cane was struggling to find the finishing line. This far into the inner city, the trail of equine civilization was near impossible to follow. When I scanned the streets ahead and the jagged Ponevan skyline, I saw only snowy mountains of rubble and broken paths of gravel.

And Minnow’s grasp was getting weaker. I could feel her clinging to my shoulders for her dear life as I bucked my hooves into the snow.

Our hooves echoed through the empty ruins that blurred past us. They echoed.

They echoed deep into the city, through every nook, through every cranny, through every hole and every crevice...

A bird croaked overhead. I gulped. My ears perked at the sound of wings flapping through the air. I threw a glance over my shoulder.

Black shapes circled over us like vultures hovering over carrion.

“C-Cane!” I shouted after her between my breaths.

“What is it!?” she shouted back.

“Look up!”

She did. Candy Cane stumbled as she swore under her breath.

Wings whipped through the wind.

We both turned our eyes to the sky. A murder of dark shapes was gathering over us, circling overhead in a growing maelstrom of thrashing black wings. They gathered like a storm, flocking to the frantic echo of our hooves as they shrieked and screeched into the night.

The sound was deafening. Their cries raked my eardrums and gathered even more of them until their soulless croaks drowned out the pounding inside my chest.

“Holy fucking SHIT CANE WHAT THE FUCK ARE THOSE THINGS?!”

She didn’t look twice.

“Haunters! There’s too many of them – just keep running!”

I looked twice.

I shouldn’t have looked twice.

Wings swooped down towards me. I ducked – and I felt the frigid air rip past my ears. The haunter shrieked, and shot back up into the sky.

“You think we can outrun these things?!” I shouted back.

Candy Cane said nothing as a cacophony of shrill, avian shrieks pierced my ears. My horn flickered to life and I yanked my pistol from its holster.

BAM – BAM – BAM!

My pistol lit up the night and a murder of screaming, black-feathered haunters dove away, parting around my gunfire. I glanced over my shoulder, and in a burst of feathers and blood, one of the dying monstrosities barreled towards me.

It was the size of a small colt.

I caught sight of its scaly, twisted visage – its immense, black-veined eyes and wickedly-shaped beak.

Then I felt its talons rake across the back of my head. I cried out as its claws ripped away chunks of my mane and sliced into my scalp. It swooped overhead in its death throes and careened into the snow in my path. I growled, blood running down my face as I trampled it beneath my hooves – and stumbled. It was as if I’d ran over a speedbump.

A mutant demon speedbump.

‘Fuck …’

Bullets shrieked over my head.

Candy Cane’s submachine gun cut swaths through the darkness. The murder cackled in reply. They circled over us, feinting and receding away from the muzzle flashes that erupted into the night. But in between every rattling burst of gunfire, they circled ever closer.

I willed my legs to pump faster as I stabbed my pistol over my shoulder and yanked the trigger back.

Our combined gunfire flashed our shadows across the drifts.

BAM – BAM – BAM – BAM – CLACK!

The night washed over us.

The force of a charging stallion careened into me. It knocked the air out of lungs. Minnow tumbled away from me, and I slammed face-first into the snow.

There was a ringing in my ears. I dug my hooves through the snow as I swung the dim light of my PipBuck’s screen across the drifts. Minnow was lying belly-up and unconscious beside me.

A distant, gnawing wail screamed towards us.

I clenched my eyes shut and hurled myself on top of her.

Muffled screams tore from my lips. They slammed into me from every side, from every angle. I batted them away with my PipBuck, knocking away the mutant beasts only for them to dive back into me – stabbing and clawing and ripping through the tough fabrics of my saddlebags.

Their claws scored my kevlar-plates and raked across my unprotected sleeves. They sliced through the flesh of my legs like razorblades, every icy, blood-letting talon sending twinges of agony screaming through my veins.

My eyelids flew open and I saw Minnow staring up at me – petrified with her widening green eyes.

Then a blinding flash of white light engulfed us.

Candy Cane’s hooves landed before me. I looked up and saw the bloody grimace upon her face as she poured all her concentration into powering the orb of blazing magelight that hovered over us.

She swung it back and forth.

Tormented shrieks filled the air. Haunters flailed back into the sky. Some slammed into the drifts, shielding their eyes from the blinding light that washed over them.

“Cane!” I moaned, my mutilated legs trembling beneath me.

“Get up – get up!” she screamed weakly.

I threw one of Minnow’s legs over my shoulder, and forced myself to stand. I felt the straps on my saddlebags tear, and my left bag slumped off my back.

“FUCK!” I turned, and swiped a hoof across its eviscerated strap. A sneer tore across my lips as the strap ripped away and tore my bag open. I watched in horror as my belongings spilled across the snow. “NononoNONO!”

“Red – I can’t hold this thing any longer!” Candy Cane cried as her magelight flickered and popped.

I could see their circling, winged forms flashing over us.

My ammunition was in that bag. I groaned, straining my magic as balled up and swept away as many magazines into the air as I could and darted my eyes to Candy Cane’s. She clenched them closed and screamed – launching the blazing orb of light into the sky. It sailed through the night – through the murder of black beasts and exploded in a nova of blinding white light.

The light lingered like a flare, and the haunters’ anguished cries echoed through the city.

“GO – GO – GO!” Candy Cane screamed, and we galloped away as fast as our legs could take us. As fast as my mutilated legs could take me.

I left behind me a trail of blood. Minnow’s stumbling gait and the white hot agony that coursed through – and out of my veins threatened to send us both crashing into the snow. I clenched my jaw and screamed through my teeth, forcing my legs onward with every aching, bloody step.

I winced and levitated my pile of ammo before me, searching for a magazine for my pistol.

My eyes widened at what I found.

A grenade.

The haunters’ banshee screeches filled the air once more as Candy Cane’s magelight flare faded to black. Minnow moaned, and I felt her leg begin to slip away.

'Shit!'

Wings ripped through the air.

I levitated the ball of ammo to my muzzle, clenched the grenade in my teeth, and yanked the pile away. There was a faint ping as I tossed the grenade over my shoulder.

The haunters shrieked into the night –

And an explosion erupted behind me.

The fragmentation ripped through them. I listened for a moment as their anguished cries fell further away. A grim smile creased my lips, but only for a moment as Minnow slumped into the ashen drifts. I stopped in my tracks and nearly dropped my pile of ammo.

My eyes widened in horror as her still body lay spread-eagled across the snow. I trembled uncontrollably upon my bloody hooves, grinding my teeth as the remaining haunters, undaunted, hurtled down the street towards us. My eyes fluttered closed, and a trembling breath escaped my lips.

There was no way in hell we were going to outrun those things. They had wings. I had carved up legs. They ached and burned as I stood there, darting my eyes over my shoulder and back down to the mare at my hooves.

She was going to get us killed. She was deadweight.

I grinded my teeth as I calmly stuffed my belongings into my bag and dumped the rest. I stared down at Minnow’s still body.

I wondered if she was even going to make it.

I wondered if we were going to make it.

I turned as I heard Candy Cane’s voice echo down the street.

“RED DAWN!”

I clenched my eyes shut.

“FUCK!”

I yanked Minnow out of the snow. My magic engulfed her body as I hurled her over my back and galloped after Candy Cane.

We pounded our hooves through the snow, thrashing and flailing our weary, battered bodies. Every second that dragged by – Minnow’s limp body – the bleeding, mutilated flesh of my legs – they dragged me down like boulders on my back as the blood drained from my face and stars flashed in my eyes.

Ragged gasps tore from my lips. Black tunnels closed in around me. I struggled to power through the fetlock deep snow, painting it blood red with every heavy step I took.

But it wasn’t any use. The haunters were gaining on us, hell bent on feasting upon our ruined carcasses and picking our bones clean.

The world exploded with amber light.

I ran into Candy Cane as floodlights bathed the street. Black, pony-shaped silhouettes peeked out of buildings around us. We both stood still as they trained their guns and spotlights upon our pale faces.

“WAIT!” I screamed.

And gunfire erupted into the night.

Blood and gore rained down upon us as the shrill, deafening death rattles of exploding mutant birds pierced my eardrums. Their mangled carcasses splattered into the snow, shot out of the air by that hail of gunfire.

I opened my eyes, and found that Candy Cane and I were hugging each other close, bathed in viscous, rancid haunter blood.

Their spotlights fell upon us like lights on a stage. She let me go first.

“W-we can explain!” she began, but a squad of ponies in thick winter garb stepped into the light.

They kept their weapons trained as the lead pony approached.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but his eyes widened.

“Minnow?!” he gasped, lowering his weapon.

The mare sprawled across my back slowly lifted her head, shielding her eyes from the light with a trembling hoof.

“Don’t shoot,” she rasped, “Please … they’re … they’re with me.”

Then her head slumped back into my shoulder.

*

Chapter 15 - The Death of a Dream - Pt II

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Introduction

Book 1 -

Learning to Fall

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria ...

… all was lost. The virtues of friendship were thrown away - drowned beneath the tides of the Great War. Life as everypony knew it came apart in a matter of hours. Balefire megaspells, the products of a devastating war with the Zebras, fell from the sky and millions of lives were extinguished. Few were spared. Not even the ponies of the Crystal Empire. Long ago the Crystal Empire alone kept at bay the evil that lurked beyond the Crystal Mountains, until they too joined the rest of the world in a pyre of spellfire. As the Empire's thousand year vigil came to an end, a sinister, aberrant darkness washed across the ashen drifts of the Northern Wasteland.

200 years have passed since the North was plunged into utter darkness, and life struggles to persist in a world devoid of virtue. Mercenaries, criminals, and monsters – pony and mutant alike, thrive in this Goddesses-forsaken wasteland. But even then, they are the least of greater evils, for when the bombs fell, long ago, the world was not reborn in spellfire, but in darkness.

Unbeknownst to the nightmarish horrors that swept over the world above them, the ponies of Stable 91, one of many underground shelters designed to spare their inhabitants from the apocalypse, sleep softly within the comforts of their white halls. But it was only a matter of time before their precious little world fell apart and they awoke, screaming, with not a single ray of light to touch their faces ever again.