Fallout Equestria - The Eerie

ACT I

RAGS THAT SCHEME

STEEL THAT HATES

CAVES THAT GROW

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Sleep. This close to the Highlands it was an incomplete experience. Dreamless, mostly, the brute dark oblivion of the brain in the contented off-stage is a sensation everyone is familiar with. Peaceful, content. So deep it resembles the dark. This is what I craved, but never got from my stint on the wall. Every night as you drifted off, as the lights in your brain flickered off one by one into rest, something else moved in to it’s place. The comfortable quiet is disturbed. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s as if that familiar blackness is shifting, like roaches scuttling across, or the oars of boats unsettled the black pool. I can’t nail it, only when you awake your body is stiff and rigid, and whatever sensations you felt in those fleeting moments simply slip from recollection…

A swift kick landed on the back of the chair I sat upon, jolting me awake from the unsettled waters of a dreamless sleep. I blinked bleary eyed, and lost lucidity for a moment before I craned my head around to see the considerably unimpressed face of Allure glaring at me before she leaned back over her rifle and peered into the scope.

    “Stop falling asleep, we’re meant to be recon. You can’t do that asleep.” she mumbled bitterly to me.

I rolled my eyes and slumped into the cracked and faded backrest of the chair, shifting my weight back and leaning on the wall of the concrete pillbox we were in. “Hey some of us aren’t morning ponies.”

Allure gave an amused snort in response “Nobody is at four in the morning.” Our subdued voices were all but lost on the doleful wails of the strong winds. The highland gales crashed against the immensity of the wall, and rolled over our stations like the heavens themselves wanted to flee from Penumbra. I was one of the few who could ever sleep atop the walls.

I started to shiver A frosty gust of air prickled my spine through my throat, causing me to shiver. Peering out the booth, I could see it was starting to turn from late evening into night. A deep autumn chill was rolling in. Of course,these booths had no heating in them.

I pulled my jacket over me as I peered toward Allure who was unflinching as she tilted the rifle toward the long winding caravan highway. The road lead to the Grand Gate -  a definitive amber vein of light that pierced into the deep purple night time. A hundred souls lined up - lamps lighting the way - all eager, and perhaps desperate to get out of this place.

    “Don’t you feel cold at all?” I asked her,  shivering and letting out a sigh My teeth chattering from the frosty winds, the chill must’ve set into me in my sleep, a plume of condensed air escaped from my mouth.

She gave a curt shake of her head in reply.

Across from me on the wall beside the door to the pillbox was some crudely written graffiti. I blinked the sleep from my eyes as I started at it trying to read it.

“Rags that scheme, Steel that hates, Caves that Grow.”

I repeated the sentence in my head a few times for no reason other than boredom. I tried to decipher what it meant. I don’t think any one sentence had got me thinking so hard about it since I was a colt.

Could be about the rangers, our fatigues could be the rags, our guns could be the steel, but that doesn’t explain the caves though.

I gave up trying to make sense of the cryptics scrawled on the wall and looked away out the window. Allure was hunched over, peering at the world below us.

    “I don’t even know why they have me up here with you. We’re like thirty fucking metres above ground.” I sighed again I heaved another weary sigh, the steam drifted from between my chattering teeth like smoke from a dragon’s jaws.

    I looked out the thin gap that was meant to rest our rifles, and gazed downwards. Down at the wall below, a noisy, sputtering cart trundled along the tracks, bumping and shaking with each rotation of the wheels. Illuminated by a single swaying gas lantern, the cart carried a precious cargo of a Ranger fireteam. Scouts probably, all kitted up further south along the wall.

The Stripes were very active in the southern sections of the wall. Our age old enemy still probed the ancient forts looking for weakness, almost like nobody had told them the war ended.

She sighed, leaning back from her rifle, and resting her head on her hoof as she peered lazily into the spotters telescope down onto the Grand Gates of the wall. “You don’t need to remind me how bad of a shot you are.”

The silence between us was a comfortable one, offset by the unsettling gales providing a discordant, chilling soundtrack to our existences. The last purple hues in the sky faded as the sun’s light slipped, and the darkness of the night settled upon our world. It wasn’t until we could feel the weight of the night around us did she speak again.

There was a thick bout of silence between us before she spoke up once more “Any word from Lemon Zest?”

I habitually nodded my head in response, despite the fact she was not looking to see it. “Got a letter from him this morning; said he’s at Beacon three now, and they’re thinking of putting him on one of the Safehouses along the Great Northern Railroad.”

From my angle I could see Allure cock an eyebrow, and shifted back to look at me. “Isn’t that the...?”

I gave her a stiff nod in response. “The Magenta Line, yeah..”

She gave a concerned look and swung on her stool back to her position; leaning into the spotters scope.

“Hey, better that he’s up north playing in the snow with Communists than down South with the fucking Stripes. At least the Magenta Line doesn’t shoot at us when they sneak around our borders.”

Allure pursed her lips and shifted the scope to further down the road toward the distant hills. “Suppose you’re right. Still hard to believe he’s a hundred and fifty kilometres away, seems like he was only leaving like a week ago.”

I heard the distinct sound of a hefty shift of wind - a sound I had learned to identify as Talc landing with all the feline grace a six-foot-tall monster like him could muster.

Soon enough he paced around the corner and looked into our Pillbox, glaring at Allure leaning into her rifle and me leaning against a wall. His expression wasn’t an impressed one. “Glad to see you’re keeping busy, Private Ashes.”

I gave a disinterested shrug in reply, “Come to give us more busy work, have you, Sergeant Talc?” Over time you start to learn Talc isn't half as scary as he makes himself out to be. In fact compared to a lot of other sergeants, he’s a pushover. He was a likable one, though his bad side was most definitely a very bad side, as rarely seen as it was.

He shot me a smirk and rolled his eyes, “No, as a matter of fact, I’ve come to tell you that the squad you’re meant to be serving in is calling a meeting back at the Lighthouse, and they need you two back there to be in it. So pack up your shit and get walking. If you’re lucky you might catch a Northbound cart back to the Lighthouse.”

I let the stool fall back onto its legs before I stood up and floated my bolt action around my shoulder. “Lighthouse is, like, ten kilometres from here. That’s like an hour walk, Sergeant.” I whined in an almost childishly manner as Allure stood up and swung her own sniper rifle around her shoulder.

“I can carry you back if you prefer, Private Ashes.”

I heaved a weary groan and clumsily scooped up my effects. Talc snorted and departed as swiftly as he arrived, displacing a massive amount of air and shooting off with heavy thumps of his wings. The fatigue was setting in for both of us I think. Allure let out an almost feline mewl as she straightened out her back, coaxing several loud pops as she shook off the stiffness of sitting for hours on end. Together we silently trotted towards the looming Lighthouse in the distance, our boots crunching on grit and dust as we perambulated along the wall.

    “Her Gaze is ten nought fifty-five,” I heard Allure whisper behind me, her soft-spoken voice humming out a familiar chant. “While a Ranger sleeps and a ranger dies, her gaze stays ten nought fifty-five.”

I gave a smirk to myself and spoke up and joined in, “While the hunger of a thousand mouth tide has ebbed to the mountain side, her gaze still stays ten nought fifty-five.”

Allure shut up quickly. At first I thought she was embarrassed, but soon I heard her speak up once more, “While the lamphouse doors are locked, and a soul has never been inside, the gaze of the sister never dies.”

    “The Sister’s Gaze will remain ten nought fifty-five.”

Allure gave an awkward laugh, perhaps to alleviate the strange mood that breaking into a duet would create.

    “Thought you were from Manehattan.” I asked, looking back at her with a curious gaze and a weak smile.

She gave a stout nod. “Nah, I was actually born in Melancholy Bay. My parents just had a lot of caps, and paid for me to go to school for a little in Friendship City, then I came back and worked with them..”

    “So where did you learn The Lullaby Gaze?”

She shifted her her leg up to get the strap to slide further up her shoulder. “Manehattan is the closest city to Alwhinny county, and I mean on a clear night you can even see the lighthouse, albeit barely.” She spoke up, “To answer your question, back in school, teacher would tell us stories about the Rangers and The Great Hunger.”

I couldn’t help but give a short laugh as we kept walking along the darkened wall. The ancient concrete only lit every dozen or so metres by a the weak sulfur yellow  glow of a lamp. “They told you stories about the great hunger in school? Hell of a violent story to teach foals, isn’t it?”

    “Wasteland is a dark place, Ashes. Kids grow up quickly back in the mainland. Not everywhere is as peaceful as Alwhinny county.”

I gave a short nod to nopony in particular before Allure spoke up again, “Wait a second.”

My hooves came to a stop, and I turned around to see the mare lifting a cigarette to her mouth. She also produced  a lighter from her chest pocket, striking the wheel and causing a shower of sparks to ignite the wick, using the resultant flame to slowly light the stick of tobacco in her mouth.

A strong gust of wind was kicked off somewhere east, far into the highlands. The dust was swept into the air, and danced and swirled around in the faint light as it followed the freezing wind.

It’d be winter soon. Winter in a place that barely saw six hours of sunlight if you were extremely lucky. In most places in the Penumbra Highlands the tall cliffs and the permanent fog meant you got three hours of daylight if you were lucky enough..

It was no secret that winter was rough in Alwhinny, even worse in the Highlands. But the Rangers had been here for centuries. We were used to the snow and the frostbite. The cold was an old acquaintance, and the winter was always on our side.

I hissed as a dull throb in my formerly crippled leg rose up, the chill was making my bones ache. I leaned onto it and rubbed my other foreleg against it, trying to wisk away the ache. However, as I stood silent my ears perked as I detected a faint sound I felt my ears flicking as I detected a faint sound; a low rumbling on the horizon, hiding quietly in the wind. It was almost like a quiet and constant clap of thunder rolling in the distance, and creeping over the hills.

“Whats up?” Allure asked, trotting to my side and looking out into Penumbra with me.

ind up, sending out a deafening wail of sound.

I blinked and kept my gaze out toward the Highlands. “Can’t you hear that? Sounds like rumbling…”

She didn’t get to reply.  As soon as I finished my sentence, red warning lights began to flash up and down the wall, and from Lighthouse I heard the sound of the warning sirens begin to wail. I looked back at Allure, and we both began our steady gallop back to the Lighthouse without a word. All the while the sirens wailed away and the lights flashed up and down the wall. I felt a slight jolt of panic begin to rush through me. Were we under attack? Had something happened that I missed?

It didn’t take long after the sirens started for the defensive hardpoints on the wall to flash to life one by one. Massive  searchlights shot up, their beams piercing into the sky and swaying about in the deep night sky, searching for any sign of movement.

I had a feeling that may have been what was happening, but I didn’t want to believe it. One searchlight miles down the wall swayed left and right before it caught a sinister shape in its beam. A forgery hiding in the clouds, shifting with a frightening speed through them. It didn’t take long for the beam to snap back to the shape, and for the dozens of other searchlights to join it, all of them pointing at the same dark and nightmarish shape.

It was a ship; the lights had revealed the hull of an enormous ship as it sailed through the skies, its dark underbelly betraying its shape as it tried to hide in the clouds.

I tried to face it and gallop at the same time, but it was difficult to keep a stable footing as I gazed upon a truly terrifying sight. You grew up hearing of the empire above the clouds. It’d become somewhat of a saddening reality of living in this world. I think every parent dreaded the day their foal asked why the clouds never went away, and why the sky was always gone.

I didn’t think I’d ever see a pegasus. I also never thought I’d be a ranger, yet here I was running for dear life along the wall staring at an Enclave Cloudship as it rumbled through the clouds. The massive body clawed its way southward over the distant hills.

There was a deep, reverberating boom from the West back on the Alwhinny side of the wall as a mighty gun fired in the distance. The tremors from its blast reached me a second before the sound, throwing me off balance.

We finally reached the next concrete bunker along the wall. We darted inside, only to be met by three silhouettes staring outwardly at the shifting of the heavens. Their visages were illuminated periodically by the dull pulsations of a red warning light. One of them was hunched over a massive, frightening looking machine gun bolted to the concrete, a bored expression on his face.

“Whats going on!” demanded Allure, “Are we under attack!?”

The guard took a long drag at his cigarette, and shook his head in response.

“Don’t panic! It's just the Enclave showing off! It's not an attack!” One Ranger inside the booth yelled to us.

The stallion smoking nodded to us as the voice inside the booth yelled once more, “Aye, they do this once or so a year. Don’t worry about it. Enclave doesn’t have the balls to attack The Wall with one Raptor. They’re just toying with us, trying to spook us.” he elaborated.

The thumping in my chest subsided just a tad. The zealous adrenaline doped dummy in my head almost disappointed that we weren’t under attack.

“Then what the hell do we do about it?” Allure asked, catching her breath.

The stallion looked behind us and lifted a hoof to point. “Nothing. Same shit we do every year; Enclave comes and flexes their muscles, sets off the early warning alarms, we respond in kind, and remind them we’re still here.”

I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough there was a bright flickering white light blazing across the skies toward the ship in the clouds. The flickering light cast a long white glowing tail as it flew through the air. As I watched it, I quickly noticed a very distinct effect; the light winked every three seconds.

“Don’t they teach you fucking recruits to not stare at Lavender rounds?” I heard the stallion growl at me. “Unless you want to go blind, I suggest to stop looking at it.”

I heard Allure speak up once more, “W-wait, Lavender Rounds? We’re attacking them?!”

The stallion chuckled and spat his dying cigarette out onto the concrete and stepped on it. “Nope, it’s just a warning shot. Our cannons have a whole bunch of shells tweaked to detonate when they get above the clouds. Specifically for when the Enclave stick their noses where they don’t have business.”

I vaguely remember an ordinance class where we were told of the ace-in-the-hole for the Ranger base; huge artillery pieces that could be fire a terrifying warhead-mounted spell. It produced an enormous burst of intense heat and light which vaporized anything it touched in a big purple fireball for nearly a kilometre.

They were terrifying weapons. Of course, these weapons were stockpiled on the major canons of the gun towers, but beyond the wall there was meant to be one at every single beacon all the way to the edge of Ranger formal territory.

I couldn’t remember exactly how they worked. I wasn’t trained for weapons and ordinance, so it wasn’t my job to understand how the weapons functioned

I recall it was supposed to be some highly pressurized chemical brewed like some potion. It had the consistency of a thick slurry, and was a vibrant purple colour.

When it triggered, the round sprayed the potion out into the air in a fine mist, and the potion would then react violently to the oxygen in the air. The result was a massive explosion which expanded with a great deal of veracity and speed. It was no megaspell, but you could be forgiven for thinking it was, given the destruction it wrought.

The projectile charged further and further into the air, and punched through the clouds. I finally looked away, waiting for the blast. The sirens wailed, and searchlights kept pointed. However, just as I began to wonder if the shell had worked, there was an almighty flare of light that exploded from behind me. The nighttime world illuminated, and grew brighter than the day, coating the world in a searing hot shine of lavender light.

Another brief moment of silence passed, underlined only by the commotion from the emergency alert system before a thunderous explosion shook the world. I could feel the rumble in my diaphragm, and my ears rung out from the mighty bang that reverberated for miles, bouncing off the walls again and again. Slowly, the sound bled away to silence, and I finally spun around to gaze up at the clouds.

“T-the sky!” Allure yelled out. A distance from the hull of the mighty ship was an enormous hole punched in the normally all encompassing blanket of cloud. I gazed through a massive void, marveling upon the incandescent stars for the first time in my life

The sky wasn’t grey, and it wasn’t black; it was a deep, welcoming purple. The void was only broken up by the flickering dots of white and yellow orbs of celestial light that welcomed every pair of eyes that gazed on them. I was rooted where I stood, and I imagine every other person on the wall was, also. Everyone transfixed by the near holiness of the sight. It wasn’t hyperbolic to say we all could have gazed upon that breach for as long as time would allow, if we’d been allowed.

My daze was only broken when  streams of dark cloud flew across the void one by one, stitching one end of the hole to the other before another appeared at a different angle. Perhaps more awe inspiring was watching the pegasus magic in action. We watched as an ancient machine and its operators, hidden a thousand metres off the ground, stitched the wound our mighty guns had opened. And with less effort than it took to make it, the clouds were pulled back over, and the hole was sealed. Like the hoof of the princesses above applied a suture to the wound themselves.

The clouds belonged the the pegasus, and no gun, no matter how mighty, could break them. You’d need an act of the goddesses to pry the clouds away from the Enclave. The searchlights pinned on the hull of the ships scattered once more as the ship shifted up into the clouds. Almost like blood into water, it seeped away into nothing - the mysterious creatures returning to hide in their domain.

We were soon greeted to one last bellowing and mighty roar of a distant fog horn which echoed around the surrounding countryside. The pegasi let the horn thunder for several seconds before the world fell silent. The stallions in the booth all roared out in a spout of sudden laughter. Perhaps the laughter was catching, or perhaps the crushing fear of an empire beyond the clouds that far surpass even the Rangers was scaring me enough to try ease the tension through laughter. So I began to laugh along with them.

    “Only thing the Big E loves more than the clouds is itself,” commented one of the sentries.

    “Feathered colt-fucker bastards,” spat another.

The alarms slowly began to reel down, and the searchlights  blinked off one by one. It was such a bizarre feeling - such a loud and angry display between two of the ruined world’s biggest powers, like two lions baring their teeth and staking their claims to one another. And down here, on this tiny concrete outpost, a hooffull of stallions and mares laughed off the display as harmless foals play.

I’d wondered if a group of privates and deckhands hung by the railings of their mighty vessel and laughed at the display too; if four or five cloud sailors sat around sharing smokes and telling jokes at the expense of us sad ground-dwelling types.

You could be forgiven for thinking the end of the world never happened that night as we shook the hooves of stallions and mares I never knew and bid them farewell, and leaving them to their duties as me and Allure continued our long walk back to the lighthouse. A moment of ease in a world full of hate. Somehow I knew that wasn’t the last I’d be seeing of the Enclave, and of course I had few hopes that my next meeting with the Empire above the clouds would be as friendly and as harmless as this.

* * * * * * * * *

We were late to the meeting. But we had to walk well over ten kilometres in the short time we had been given, so of course we were going to be late. I hadn’t gotten much time to meet with my new squad. Space hadn’t opened up in the Scout Barracks yet so me and Allure were sharing a barracks with some strangers who we had been told were also waiting for spaces to open up in their own barracks. I hadn’t met the others besides Gloom and another dirty-brown Earthpony Stallion who I’d already forgotten the name of.

I’d hoped we’d be getting a chance to meet and greet one another before official stuff, especially considering we’d be in each other's company in the field  for now, but that wish had gone unfulfilled. Gloom had told me briefly that the lithe mare I met on the roof was in the scouts, and same with the veteran who hid behind the scrimmage, but that was all.

We walked in and apologised for being late. Speakeasy gave us that same warm jovial smile and told us not to worry. I also saw the Lithe mare with the strange battle saddle sitting in the corner of the small, neat looking briefing room. Her uniform was in an immaculately clean and neat state. She was staring at me - perhaps silently sizing me and Allure up. I didn’t mind. but it did make me nervous. In fact the only person who seemed annoyed was the brown stallion. He kept quiet, but I could sense animosity from him.

    “Take a seat. Tall Tale had to step out briefly, but he will be back soon. I’ll get you two up to date while we wait for him,” Speakeasy said, moving back to a damaged and hastily mounted chalkboard.

Speakeasy looked at a small, cracked wooden desk in the corner, peering at a small folder filled with notes. His mouth moved silently as he repeated them to himself before he stepped back. “So, are either of you two familiar with a small merchant company - I believe they call themselves Sea Urchin?”

Allure nodded I shook my head.

    “My brother works for them back at home,” she said, almost excited to be telling us this.

Speakeasy gave her a warm grin “Ah, you’re from Melancholy Bay, yes?”

Allure nodded back with a smile, “I did. I know the name is kinda off putting, but if you can get used to the smell of fish everywhere, it's an amazing place!”

Speakeasy gave her a nod and continued, “Anyway, Sea Urchin recently finalized a contract for a trade caravan protection into the Highlands. I’m not sure for what reason exactly, but from what I understand the high council wants to break the perceived monopoly the Vanity Bazaar has for trade in the region.”

    “As I said before, where do we come in,” the lithe mare asked, scratching a hoof against her neck.

    “The company has sent up some small caravan to help scout the fastest way to the Magenta Line so they can map it out. Which is where we are coming in. High Council wants us to guard them, for lack of a better word, and lead them down the safest and fastest path we can find so they can map it.”

    “So we’re foalsitting,” the brown stallion interrupted

Speakeasy shrugged back to him, “For lack of a better word, yes.”

The brown stallion nodded in reply, thinking for a moment to himself before he spoke up once more, “Okay, so what route are we taking and where are we taking them?”

Speakeasy peered at his notes before back up again, “You will all be getting a folder with the details soon enough, but to answer your question; the company is at Wayward Watch tonight, and they will be here by morning. From then, we will depart out the great gate down the main highway into Penumbra before we reach Junction one, where we will follow it to the base in the ruins of Old Chaperone Town.”

Speakeasy peered at his notes one more time. “From that point on, we follow the Great Northern Railroad all the way to the border of the Magenta line. Depending on how good or bad the trip goes, we may stop at The Ket, but I, as well as the company, would like to avoid anything to do with the Vanity Bazaar,” he said, pausing briefly before speaking up to clarify, “I don’t think I need to explain why keeping this a secret from the Big Three of the Bazaar is a good idea.”

    “Just call them the Cartels, Speak, that’s all they are,” gravely and ruined voice croaked from behind us. I turned around in my chair, and saw the marred flesh and coat of a ghoul stallion standing in the door. The ghoul was far from wearing any sort of battle armor, but he wasn’t in his fatigues, that's for sure. He had an odd set up - it seemed like a series of straps and reinforcing bars clasped a decently sized cannister to his side with a long tube that fed into his ancient lips, which chapped and scarred from a lifetime of use.

The tube was between his teeth, and as he finished talking his lips wrapped around the hose and his lips and shifted as if to drink from the tube before he let it out of his mouth and walked into the room, closing the door behind him.

“Ah, welcome back, Tall Tale,” Speakeasy replied to him.

Tall Tale walked passed with an ease that didn’t match his age. I’d never seen a ghoul before in my life, and few ponies in Alwhinny county actually had. I’d expected him to hobble or limp, but he trotted up to my side normally.

I looked up to see his ruined leathery face and his milky eyes stare judgingly at me and Allure. “Greenhorns,” he croaked, sticking his rotting foreleg out and presenting a chipped hoof.

I stood up and shook it. He gave me a garish smile before he moved his hoof back to lift the tube back into his mouth to drink once more. My eyes followed it as I watched him drink from the curious hose.

    “It's just water,” he croaked again before swallowing, “Irradiated, but still just water. Had one of the Veteran engineers rig it up for me.”

I could only manage a nod. It seemed as if he knew what I was going to ask next. Perhaps it was from a lifetime of needing to clarify it each time he met somepony new. “Alwhinny wasn’t bombed during the war, so there's no radiation up here. Ghouls don’t have living cells to repair and upkeep bodily and mental function, so I need to ingest radiation somehow, otherwise I just fall apart out here.”

    “Has it imported too, like some goddamn priss from Tenpony Tower,” the lithe mare rang out with a giggle that sounded very impressed with itself.

The ghoul shot her back an unimpressed smirk, then looked back to me. “Ask young Soft Gale over there about her obsession for cloud grain bread,” he said in reply, as if to shoot back to her. He gave my shoulder a friendly slap and walked passed, taking a seat toward the front.

As I sat back down, Speakeasy cleared his throat and looked over his notes a final time. “So, that is the length and breadth of it. Any more questions before I let you all go?”

    “When do we leave,” the soft voice of Gloom spoke up from somewhere behind us.

Speakeasy gave her a nod. “Oh-Five-Hundred, sharp,” he said in response,“Provided we make good time, we should reach the edge of the fog by sunset. I want to minimize movement in the clouds during the night - eliminate it all together if I can, so we’re only moving during the day. Which we should be able to do, provided things go well.”

The brown stallion finally spoke up, “Two hours of walking a day isn’t much, sir. With all due respect, is it not worth it risking moving during the night, and save us the resources? You’re limiting our movement to an hour at Dawn and an hour at Dusk, with a ten-hour stretch of sitting on our flanks in between. That's slow as hell movement.”

Speakeasy nodded. “Normally I would be agreeing, Corporal Express, but because of the nature of this mission the high council gave me a blank cheque for filters and batteries. No need to cut corners on protocol, no need to rush, and no need to risk moving through the fog during the night, especially when we’re guarding civilians.”

The brown coated Stallion who I now knew as Express gave Speakeasy a nod and reclined in his chair.

Speakeasy looked around. “Anypony else, or are we done here,” Speakeasy asked, returning to the desk to gather his notes. Nopony else spoke up. “Right, we are done here. Folders with your hardbacks will be on your bunks by tonight. Give them a good read, discuss them, memorize them - what have you,” the middle-aged stallion mumbled as he squinted his eyes and brought his face closer to a certain page of his notes. His expression changed very quickly. “Get good sleep. I want to see you all at the armory ready to gear up at Oh-Four-Thirty on the dot ready to gear up and get going by five o’clock in the morning,” he announced loudly, looking away from the notes with a confused look on his face.

We all stood up gave our salutes and made for the door “Tale” Speakeasy spoke up as we began to walk “Stay behind, we have something to discuss.”

    “Aye, captain,” the ghoul known as Tall Tale said, spinning around on his hooves and heading back to our Captain. As I left the room I saw Speakeasy looking right at me, his head making a gesturing motion. The door closed just as Tall Tale peered back as well.

Had I done something wrong? Did I imagine that, or were they talking about me? I stared blankly at the closed door before I felt a hoof tap my shoulder, making me jump slightly. It was the lithe mare I knew as Soft Gale. Gloom and Allure were beside her.

    “Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, Greenie,”  the mare said with a smirk, amused by my little jump. “So your first mission beyond the wall tomorrow, huh,” the mare asked with a genuine cheerful grin.

I blinked, still a little lost as to what was happening, but I nodded in response and managed out a weak, “Uh, yeah I suppose it is?”

Soft Gale let her grin fall to a smile before nodding. “Cool. In that case, we need to go out and do something with you and Allure. Its very important - an oooooold Scout tradition.”

    “What is it?”

Soft Gale spun around on her hooves and began to walk away, following a rather neutral looking Gloom. “Its a surprise. We’ll come get you in the evening.”

* * * * * * *

Since Lemon Zest left, I’d been having an extraordinarily hard time finding things to do. He and I usually spent all our time at the Fort’s bar, but since I had nopony else to drink with, I’d been spending a lot less time there.

For no other reason than an excuse to do something interesting I started showing up to the fortress’ firing range. I still sucked at aiming, but the practice and the knowledge was useful. Plus I’d begun to notice that I was much more proficient with slower high-powered rifles and carbines, though we all simply got standard issue rifles until we bought or found something better, or something we prefered. It was useful to know what weapons I was better with, especially with the mission coming up. My aim was so bad I doubt I’d be able to save my own life with it. I had hoped the practice would help, but it wasn’t really. My aim was just as horrible as it was when I started.

In that vein, I’d spent most of today at the shooting range, and when that got boring around midday I decided to wander the wall and take a look around some of the more abandoned sections. The wall was well over ten stories high - thirty something metres tall in its lower parts. However, in the guntowers it was more around forty metres. The lighthouse itself was a tower compared to that, pushing nearly ninety metres.

While the upper parts of the lighthouse were off limits, most of the wall was open. Provided you could prove who you were. Most of the hallways and rooms were abandoned; all of them scavenged and left for a day when they’d be needed for their space.

Something I noticed on the lower floors of the wall was the wall itself was no longer the bland concrete I’d gotten used to. It changed more to a cobblestone - a very ancient looking design. Perhaps the wall had been here before the rangers even arrived, and they just extended it? I’d have to find out for sure one day.

As it got later I eventually made my way back to the recruit barracks. I pushed the door open with my side and slipped in, observing the room briefly before a flash of green dove forward and pushed me back out the door and onto my back.

Allure was on top of me, a piece of paper in her teeth. A shocked look on her face as she  stumbled up to her hooves, quickly realizing the position we were in.

“Allure!” I grumbled, getting to my own hooves and gritting my teeth. My leg started to ache where my fracture once was. “What the fuck!”

She spat the paper into my face the moment I was standing again. “Your sister works with Red Eye!?”

I froze up for a moment. Before she left, I vaguely recall Dust mentioning to me as a kid that ponies elsewhere in the wasteland would probably react to her job with more hostility than Darkwater Down. “Wh-... how the fuck do you know that?” I picked the paper up in my magic and brought it to my face.

_______

Dearest Brother

Have you been well? I haven’t heard from you in some time. I presume its because they’re not letting you write letters yet, or what you’re up to is just not interesting enough. Regardless, I have fantastic news.

I had a meeting with Master Red Eye today. I did intend to present it to him much more professionally, but he was curious and asked me first before I even had a chance. He wanted to know what my “Urgent Business” back home was.

I told him about Father’s death, and about and the breach in the wall, and he almost insisted that he send an envoy or party to offer assistance to the Rangers. The morning I write this, they have just been sent off! They should be there in a few days!

I hope some kind of agreement could be reached between us and the Rangers. Good things could come from this. Celestia knows that wall can never have enough guns on it.

Anyway, that was all I had to say. Please remember to write back soon brother. I’m anxious to hear what you’ve been up to in these few months.

~Dust

________

Damn it!

How old was this letter? Envoys from Fillydelphia were coming. I was probably going to be in Penumbra when they arrived! I was such an idiot. I really should have wrote back to her sooner and told her I’d finished basic and became a ranger. I’d need to write it and send it before I left tomorrow morning.

Wait, I was forgetting something here.

    “Wait, you read my fucking mail!” I growled back to her.

Her face went from concern to a blush, and then shame in the blink of an eye. Perhaps I’d been too loud…

    “Well, it had no name on it, I thought it was from Lemon…”

I shook my head and scrunched the letter up in my magic. “Whatever, it’s not a problem. Just keep your mouth shut about Dust, alright. Last thing I need is the ponies who I’m relying on to save me from  unholy hellspawn find out my sister works with a slave lord.”

Allure pursed her lips. “Thats what I needed to tell you,” she blurted, out looking at the letter.

    “What?” I grumbled back to her, forcing a smile and a wave down the hall as I saw our squad mates, Gloom and Soft Gale, exit from the stairwell and approach us.

Allure forced a smile too, leaning into my ear, keeping her face as uncompromising as stone. “Gloom is a fugitive in Fillydelphia.”

My smile dropped almost as fast as my stomach did.

    “Ash, she used to be a slave.”