Fallout Equestria - The Eerie

“Only two kinds o’folk show up to the Skiddish Mare this late; drunkards and travellers. Which one are you, colt?” The old bartender asked as he cleaned out a cracked and ruined glass foggy with two hundred years of scratches and dust.

I took a moment tapping my hoof on the counter as I thought of an answer. It’d been awhile since I’d had to converse with a real pony. “Traveller, I suppose, though I wish I was drunk. It's so fucking cold out there it’d probably make the walk back home to Darkwater easier.”

The bartender smirked at my weak attempt at humor and pushed the glass under the counter. “Well then, how can this old buck help you with a cold walk back home, hmm?” he asked gesturing to the stew over his fire. “Got food. I do got drinks, but this time of year I’m afraid all we got is the Ciders - the orchards are the only places with greenhouses.”

I licked my lips at the prospect of the first real food in years. Alcohol was also something I hadn’t been allowed either. Some would have probably called me an alcoholic, but I just liked to drink I guess. “Gimme a bowl of whatever's left in the pot, and a nice tall glass of Raspy Acre’s.”

He chuckled, taking a pint glass out and placing it in front of me as he got a bowl and moved over to the fire to collect a few ladles of the stew. When he brought it back, I pursed my lips and stared at the pint glass before looking to him. “Don’t mean to sound rude, but got anything bigger?”

The bartender chuckled, taking the glass and putting it away before getting what looked to be some kind of tankard from long long before the war, perhaps back before ponies could even mass produce the glass. “Its kinda old, but I mean I’ll wash it out for you,” he said moving over and easing a rusty faucet, a weak stream of water washing out over the tankard.

My horn flickered to life, taking the spoon set beside the bowl and began to eat.

    “So, what's a young lad like you doing travelling? Colts your age ain’t got no business walking the highways.”

I stopped for a moment, once again tapping my hoof on the counter. “It’s not so bizarre right? Alwhinny County is one of the only places left in the world where a pony can walk alone on a highway. A colt my age travelling is no weirder than say...you having working lights or running water right?”

He gave a nod of conceit. “Suppose you are right, but that's just what I mean. Alwhinny’s got police and working prisons. We got electricity, water, jobs and such - schools and farms. Life’s pretty good up here, compared to the rest of the wasteland. So what's a colt like you doing so far from home,” he asked, placing a ruined off-white cigarette into his mouth and lighting it before offering me one.

I was tempted to accept, but I shook my head. “No thanks, I promised myself I’d quit before I got home.”

I took the tankard in my magic and drank from it. “I’ve been...away for a few years. I’m going back home to visit my old dad. I got something I need to settle with him.”

    “Is that so?” The old stallion said raising a brow. “Awfully young to be a ranger aren't you?”

I shook my head at him. “Nice guess, but I’m not in the Rangers. Not yet at least, though I can’t imagine being a Ranger was much different from what I was actually up to.”

He gave an understanding nod, tapping his cigarette over the ashtray before placing it back between his lips. “So, what were you actually doing, if you don’t mind me asking?”

    “Well let’s just say…” I responded looking out the window of the old ruined tavern watching the huge beam of the lighthouse sweep over the night sky. “I was doing a job my father was too scared to do himself.”

* * * * * * * *

It was impossible! How could she know? This wasn’t possible. There was no way she could know what my dream was. This little filly was just fucking with me. It was a game she was playing.

I didn’t know what reaction to give. Part of me wanted to blurt out some demand for more answers, but another more sensible part of me realized how insane that would look. Indecisiveness instead took precedence and I froze, staring this filly in the face.

    “P-please mister, we need to go back...back to the wall...something bad is going to happen, I just know it!” she whispered as loud as she could. Her expression was even, not pleading, not worried, the only thing betraying the filly was the dampness of her brow, she wasn’t fearful. It was dread that plagued her, the inescapable weight of it pressing on her meek frame.

I felt a hoof touch my shoulder, trying to move me as a voice spoke. I almost jumped out of my own skin at the sudden foreign sensation.

It was Gloom, and she was giving me a curious yet concerned glare before looking to the filly. North had promptly shut up as Gloom appeared.

    “Private Ashes, when you’re grabbing something to eat, make sure to grab your mask. We will be approaching the dunes, and the stormfront itself soon enough.”

North Star had made up her mind it seemed. She was keeping her mouth firmly shut unless we were alone. Gloom continued to stare at me as I hastily grabbed some protein bar and took the satchel containing my mask, slung it around my neck with my magic and unwrapped the bar to bite into it.

    “The Dunes?” I heard the ever inquisitive Allure speak out. “Dunes of what?”

Tall Tale eased in between me and Gloom, switching out canisters on his rig. “Dunes of Eerie Dust,” the croaky ghoul responded, backstepping and lifting a rotten hoof up to point to the horizon. “It's hard to see. We’re still a ways away from it, but that tiny line of purple under the storm--that’s the beginnings of them. The stormfront usually shifts back and forth, and it will dump and swallow dunes of the dust like sand in a sandstorm,” the old ghoul said slipping the hose into his mouth and taking a slow drink from his water canteens. “Most of Penumbra is covered in a blanket of dust, kinda like walking in a desert, but the dunes are where it gets particularly bad. They’re wide enough and tall enough to swallow a whole city. We’re not going that far into the Dunes, but any distance into them is far enough in my opinion.”

Sticky Wicket looked back to us from the front of the cart. “Like, sand dunes,” He asked, “How are we gonna get this cart through?”

    “If we were on hoof we’d just hike them, which is dangerous as hell, but if you’re with a cart you take the tunnels that go underneath the dunes,” Tall Tale responded. “Those sound safer, but they’re not--not really. The tunnels are just as dangerous. All sorts of shit likes to move into them and use them to shelter from the storms. We’re taking Tunnel C under Safehouse Tempo east of here in an old roadside diner.”

Sticky Wicket nodded. “Ah, you mentioned that safehouse. That's where I’m leaving Big?” He asked, petting the large cow standing boredly in front of his cart.

    “Exactly,” Speakeasy said, returning from his nostalgia trip, and taking a sip from his canteen before slipping it back in his belt. ”Safehouse Tempo knows we are coming, and they have got provisions ready. Those were delivered a few days ago, and they’ll look after your cow friend while we do our work.”

Sticky Wicket gave an understanding nod.

    “Shall we be getting on the road?” Speakeasy asked, trotting back the garage, stepping up tall on his hind legs to haul the massive roller door back closed. “You have the air testing kit, Corporal Express?”

The brown stallion nodded back to him. “It’s ready to take out when we need it.”

    “Excellent. I want you to take air samples every three clicks from now on. I would be liking to make our breathing of Eerie as minimal as possible.” our commanding officer mumbled, bringing his watch to his face to check the time.

Sluggishly, our party began its journey once more. The cart and its occupants trundled along the ruined asphalt as we moved down the road. The long boring stretches of nothing were broken up by pauses from Corporal Express Route and Captain Speakeasy throwing a large brilliant white net through the air and pressing some small device to it. Presumably it was for testing the air every few kilometres.

My eyes kept wandering to the cart, to the concerned and somewhat frightened face of the young filly. Whenever our eyes met, she silently pleaded to me. I couldn’t keep my mind off of her. How the hell did she know what was going on in my dream? This had to be some freakish coincidence.  It just wasn’t possible for her to have been in my dream.

It plagued my mind to the point where I was zoning out trying to make sense of it. I was only snapped out when I heard some exotic exploitive exit Speakeasy’s mouth. He had a look of concern on him as he peered from the blanket forward and back. “This is not right…” he muttered.

Curiosity got the best of me and I wandered over to the commotion. Gloom, Express Route, and Speakeasy were all there looking at the small device as it was pressed against the sheet of white fabric.

    “What’s going on?” I questioned as I reached the group.

Speakeasy remained silent, peering ahead of us in deep thought. Gloom looked to him before looking back to me. “We’re at a quarter milligram per square inch now, that's right on the cusp of concerning intake of Eerie. In fact, I suggest we all stop worrying about why and put our goddamn masks on, its already way too toxic.”

Speakeasy swore in his native language again. “This doesn’t make sense. The marker from the last scout team is still nearly six kilometres forward. We should not have Eerie this thick already.”

    “Speak, stop fucking worrying about it. So the storm creeped forward a few miles. Look at that fucking thing, Speak, does that look like something that cares where it's meant to be?!” Gloom shouted, pointing a hoof at the towering swirling mass of clouds, of which whispered a quiet roar of wind perforated by the occasional distant rumble of thunder.

Express Route nodded. “Yeah. If I may, I think you’re being a bit paranoid sir. If it was more than fifteen or twenty kilometres, then I can say you may have a point, but six is still perfectly acceptable. It’s been a stormy autumn. It's not unreasonable for the front to have crept forward a couple miles. It’s pretty normal, actually..”

Gloom rolled her eyes and shook her head. Our commanding officer didn’t respond. “Corporal, grab the marker flag from the cart and stick it out over there.” She punctuated her sentence by lifting a hoof to gesture to a patch of dead grass and sick looking soil. “Everybody else, unless you want cancer, put your masks on now. Stop wasting time, we’ve already breathed in way too much of it,” she yelled, slipping out her own rubbery mask from her saddle bag and yanking it over her head.

    “Remember procedure, rangers; new filter every five hours. We have nearly two hundred of the things for this mission, so don’t be an idiot,” she said, standing back up and looking at me, her eyes glaring behind the glass lens. “For the love of the Princesses and all that is good in this world, don’t take chances with Eerie.”

I jolted, realizing what she said. My horn flared up and my magic flipped my bags open to take the mask out and slip it over my head. The dark black rubber squeezed over my face as my muzzle slipped into the airtight interior.

For a moment my breath drew in no air, and as I gasped for another my mask gave a silent whistle. A lungfull of tangy, foul chemical-tasting filtered air filled my lungs.

We all waited around as everybody got their masks on. Sticky Wicket helped his young daughter slip the mask on, whispering to her--no doubt picking up on her anxiety like any good parent would--and trying to calm her. Even under her mask, North Star looked terrified. It was beginning to have an effect on me. What if she was right? What if she was actually in my dream last night? What if something was actually coming for us?

I began to think on it more. Lemon Zest’s voice echoed in my head. What the fuck kind of parent takes their filly into Penumbra? Sticky Wicket looked reasonably smart and intelligent. Surely he would know better. What kind of pony exposes a child to the most dangerous place in the wasteland?

We’d been walking so long, and I was so distracted I’d hardly noticed the wind beginning to pick up. The meagre overcast daylight was bleeding away. It was so dark you could almost confuse it with dusk.

Ahead of us grew large imposing shapes. They were dark, almost like a small wall was building on the horizon. It took for my boot to come down in a soft crunch to figure out what I was seeing ahead of us.

The Dunes.

I paused to look at what my hoof had stept in, and I was met with a dark purple mound that wisped to and fro in the wind. It was Eerie dust. A pile of it stretched along the road, the lighter particles getting swept up in the breeze, and giving the piles a spooky almost ethereal look. Sand was a bad word for it. It was much too fine to be sand, it was much more on par with flour. My boot left a definite imprint in the dust which quickly bled away as it danced in the wind.

Eerie was a fitting name for what I was witnessing.

As I caught up with the group it only became more and more abundant. Soon the ground was engulfed in it--almost like snow--and it grew thicker and thicker still.

It only grew darker and the wind only grew louder. I heard a voice yell back, muffled by the wind, telling us to turn our lights on. My horn flicked the flashlight switch on my chest, casting a dim white light through the fog. I could see ahead as the slowly disappearing silhouettes had a light blink on one by one, revealing them once more.

Inside I felt something growing. A deep pit in my stomach grew. Dread began to bite away at me, and soon I was checking over my shoulder every few minutes. I was scared. Terrified, even. The wasteland, which I had once described as boring, was looking like a welcoming paradise now.

The air had to be taken in gulps, so dense it was as the grains of Eerie got wedged in the filter, the irksome rattling of pips against my mask and the wail of the daunting wind causing a layer of sweat to break out over my body. Visibility shrank by the second, my range of vision contracting and contracting till all I had for reference was the bobbing, dimmed lights of my comrades. It was like being immersed in bog water, thick and nauseating, the miasma whirling around us felt all encompassing, all engulfing.

On the right side of the road a huge silhouette came into focus. What started as a smudge became the definite shape of a building. I saw a hoof raise, signalling to hold as the silhouette of what I presumed was Speakeasy sauntered forward. His torch flickered on and off sporadically, presumably as a type of signal. We waited in that howling storm for what felt like an eternity before Speakeasy flicked the light in the same pattern, waiting again.

There was a longer pause before he flashed the pattern a third and final time. He signaled us to group up after the third pause of nothing. The line of rangers converged on his shape.

“No response…” Speakeasy said, staring at the building, his voice slow and concerned.

Gloom shrugged to him “Maybe there isn’t an overwatch?”

“Impossible. No safe-house is that stupid. Not having an overwatch this close to the storm is suicide.” Tall Tale grumbled back clearly. I turned my head and blinked, realizing this was the first I’d seen of him since we entered the storm. He had no mask on. He had nothing on, and he didn’t show a drop of concern about it either.

Perhaps Ghouls just weren’t affected by Eerie. It made sense to me. I was quite familiar with death by cancer from how I grew up. You need to have living cells to get cancer, so it's not like it's any real threat to him.

Speakeasy looked at the group of us, quickly locating Allure and gesturing her closer with a hoof. As she joined him at his side, he tapped her rifle with his hoof. “Time to give you a little crash course on the Caster Scope. Lift the rifle up in your magic, aim the scope at that sign on the roof there, and then focus your magic on the scope,” he explained slowly to her. “Pick it up with your magic and try to gently pry the scope off the rifle. Be letting it do the rest of the work, da?” he added.

Allure nodded, easing the rifle off her back and lifting the scope up to the lens on her mask, aiming it at the sign atop the roof of the diner. The cast scope was extremely curious looking. It had the same hull of an ordinary scope, however it was dotted with strange, almost arcane and regal looking decorations of iron and bronze. Like something out of a fantasy novel.

I kept staring at it as Allure silently did as Speakeasy instructed; taking the scope in her magic and focusing on it. It glowed a curious warm yellow colour, and cast out a huge beam of light that cut through the eerie clouds like a hot knife through butter.

“W-woah! It’s...I can see! It's like a scope! I can see everything!” she stammered out through her mask. “How the hell does this work?”

Speakeasy chuckled through his mask “Magic.” he responded “Anyway, what do you see up there?”

Allure was silent, looking at the sign for a moment. “There's like...a really big sniper rifle up there. Looks like an Anti Machine Rifle bolted to the barrier...there's a chair...a spotter scope….”

Speakeasy shook his head “Is there somepony up there Allure?”

She was silent “...No, doesn’t look like it.”

Speakeasy looked to Tall Tale, who responded in kind with a concerned and somewhat confused look.

Speakeasy turned around. “Weapons out, we’re approaching this cautiously,” the stallion ordered in a gruff and stoic tone. “Anything that isn’t wearing a ranger uniform, you kill it on sight.” He began kicking his hind leg back to rasp a long pedal back. His complex battle saddle came to life, clockwork mechanisms clicked and rasped. He slinged his large machine gun out to his side. “And anything that is wearing a Ranger uniform, callsign it.”

    “What’s the Callsign for the Dunes?” Gloom asked, kicking her own battle saddle open which sprung a small sub machine gun out.

Tall Tale did the same, a carbine springing out of his.“Four, three, two, one, and they respond five, six, seven, eight.”

Speakeasy nodded, looking at me. “Ashes, Gloom, and Tall Tale, you are with me. Allure, you will remain here with Corporal Express and Soft Gale.” Speakeasy moved toward the building, with Tall Tale bunched up beside him, and Gloom moving beside me as we advanced. I fetched my rifle from its sling and floated it to my face, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

We all moved cautiously toward the diner, and the once blurry silhouetted shape gained definition. I could see boarded up windows which were strung up and down with barbed wire. The real doors of this diner appeared to have been ripped out and replaced with dented and scratched steel ones.

Speakeasy looked back to me and Gloom “Gloom, take Private Ashes around the back to the basement entrance, see if that is unlocked, me and Tall Tale will continue in through this door, rendezvous at the feet of the surface access staircase.

Gloom nodded turning her masked face to me to gesture me to follow her as we moved around the rear of building, reaching a huge steel door on the ground. She navigated to a small box on the wall flicking it open with a hoof she pressed a large green button looking back at the door.

Nothing happened.

She pressed it a few more times before letting out a sigh through her mask before looking back at me. “Power is off.”

I nodded trying to think on my hooves for our next step. “Well we could try force it open. Does it have a lock?”

    “Presumably some kind of mechanical one…” she responded.

We stood around in silence trying to think before Gloom looked to me and gave shrug “Let’s go back and see if Captain is having a better time then we are.”

As we began to head back we ran into Speakeasy and Tall Tale who were coming around to meet us. “Ah, no luck either?” Speakeasy inquired.

Gloom nodded in response. “That door weighs like a tonne. It's not budging unless we get the power back on.”

    “No overwatch, power is off…” Tall Tale said scratching his chin with his booted hoof. “This place was attacked. Speakeasy…” he added.

Speakeasy stared off he thought silently to himself. “I am getting this feeling too,” the old stallion responded. “Still...we need to pass the Dunes, and we should at least find out what happened. We need a way to get in. I would be preferring if it was also possible to do this without damaging the building.”

    “Is there a roof access or something?” I asked, offering a suggestion of my own.

Speakeasy perked up at my suggestion. “Yes. actually, the roof access wouldn’t be a mechanical door. I am thinking Soft Gale could maybe slip in the top and trigger the manual releases?”

Tall Tale shrugged. “As good a plan as any. Only I got no way for us to get in.”

We began to pace back to the cart. I ran over the plan in my head reaching a block.

How was Soft Gale supposed to get on the roof? Before I could ask the lithe mare reached a hoof back and worked the armor around her back until two large masses of feathers flourished from her back with a great gust of wind. With a bounce and another gust of wind she took flight, flapping a number of times before gliding and coming to a perfect landing on the roof.

I wasn’t that shocked. In fact I had a much harder time trying to think up a proper response to the situation. It was a surprise that all this time the mare had been hiding a pair of wings. but at the same time pegasi weren’t as rare in Penumbra and Alwhinny as I’d been told they were in the mainland.

Apparently one of the major Pegasus cities was still hovering around somewhere far to the east. So because of their proximity to the region the Enclave naturally had a very big interest in the region. Despite this they kept to themselves and kept their distance from everybody, especially the Rangers.

That explained her apparent fondness with Cloudgrain bread though.

Soft Gale’s athletic silhouette gracefully spun around on its hooves, scanning the roof before it moved along the base of the huge billboard and disappeared into the building.

After a few moments we moved to the building's front door, waiting for her to open it. We waited an agonizingly long time, and it was clear Speakeasy was very pensive about splitting up like this. His stance was very closed and he seemed quiet. I’d imagine if I could see his face this would all be easy to notice.

We kept waiting. Gloom even sat down on her flanks. “It should not be taking her this long…” Speakeasy grumbled through his mask.

    “It’s a dark building, Speak, and she has to crawl the halls to get back here. You’re being too impatient.” Gloom responded trying to ease his anxiety as best  she could.

Eventually were heard the sound of boots on dirty tile near the door.

    “Soft Gale?” Speakeasy boomed out so she could hear.

Her deeper tomboyish voice responded immediately. “Yeah it’s me, sorry!” she yelled.

Speakeasy shook his head as Gloom stood up again. “It's fine. Get this door open, I want to get out of this storm.”

There was some silence before she spoke up again. “Uh yeah...about that...how would I get this door open?”

Speakeasy shot out a curse in his native language. “I thought you were an Enclave Sapper! How do you not know how to open a door, Gale?” he shot out.

    “H-hey gimme a break here...just because I can open Enclave doors doesn’t mean I know shit about dirtpony doors!”

Speakeasy shook his head and turned around to face Express Route and stepped aside. “You’re the only other engineer here, Corporal.”

    “There should be some kind of crank by the motor...if you pull that a few times it will uh...lift the lock mechanism off the gear, and we should be able to just roll this door open.”

We heard some kind of noise that sounded like a grunt of affirmation. Silence followed, and before long a number of loud clanks rung off the steel door as Soft Gale reached the crank and began to pull.

    “Wow!” she yelled out again “That's helpful! Do all the Safehouse doors have this little manual override?”

Express Route nodded. “Yeah, of course they do. If the power goes out we need to be able to unlock these things, so why wouldn’t we have them?”

Speakeasy stood up, resting his hooves against the door as he wrapped one around the handle and began to grunt loudly, trying to force the door open. It whined and screeched as the metal forced itself along its rails painfully slow.

I stepped up nodding to him and flashing my horn.  I twisted my face uptaking as much of the door as I could in my magic. The combined strength of me and Speakeasy was able to make it give way in a sudden rush of speed, nearly causing my large captain to fall to the ground.

In the doorway was Soft Gale who gave us a proud little wave as we came in. Her grey uniform had a nasty, deep cut along its side, and her battle saddle was absent.

    “Yikes, what happened Gale?” Gloom asked, rushing to her side to look at the cut.

Soft Gale hissed a little in pain as Gloom touched the wound, recoiling slightly.

“Ah...it's nothing. The roof is just caved in a bit. I got stuck trying to climb down, cut myself on some rebar. Actually, my gear is also still stuck up there too. We need to try get that out at some point,” she said.

Speakeasy nodded. shining his light around the purple hazy interior. “Right, for now, Gloom, be patching Soft Gale up, take her to the infirmary. That should be where the old cooling room was. Express and Ashes, I want you to head to back and get the power back on so we can be getting the rear bay doors open and get Sticky Wicket’s cart inside. Allure, you’re with me and Tall Tale, we’re going to watch the cart while they do that.”

Allure, Tall Tale, and Speakeasy exited the main room back outside. “Somebody close the door and relock it for now. We don’t want any beasties getting in!” he said. Express Route trotting over and took the crank in his hoof, working it back a few times before sliding the door closed again before trying to pull it open again to test if it was locked.

He looked to me and shrugged as Gloom and Soft Gale headed back behind the ancient counter of the old diner heading back into the Kitchens.

    “The generator is in the loading bay. let's go Private.” he said with all the firmness of a child being put in charge of his siblings before walking off ahead of me. I rolled my eyes and followed behind him.

We navigated the small corridors, reaching a haphazardly assembled staircase with a much heavier much more solid looking steel door. We did not enter it, however we took a sharp right and entered what I assumed to once have been the loading bay to this diner. The doors had since been rather solidly barricaded and bricked shut with huge cinder blocks. In the corner sat the newest looking thing in here; the generator. Beside it on a small desk sat a humming terminal, the only functioning piece of equipment.

Express Route trotted over to the generator taking a look at it before looking back to me, “Pull on the starter cord for me real quick,” he ordered in a very unfriendly and impatient tone.

I rolled my eyes again but kept quiet, doing as he asked. I took the ripcord in my magic and pulled it out. The generator sputtering once and twice before nothing else happened.

    “Give it another pull.” he said, I obliged again.

Again it spluttered once or twice and nothing else happened.

    “Cells sound alive...but it's the spark fuse that is dead....” he mumbled out.

I cocked and eyebrow behind my mask “Spark fuse?...I thought we used Spark battery generators?” I question.

He sighed condescendingly “Yes, we do, but Spark Batteries still need a spark. They’re not batteries per se--they’re a spell encased inside a hull that mimics electricity output through magic. You still need to introduce energy into the circuit for them to start outputting the spell.”

    “That...how the hell does that work?”

Express Route shook his head and gave a dismissive wave, “It's the only way it can work. Spark batteries don’t store power, they produce it by slowly burning away the magical fuel cells inside them, like a candle. Just never mind, I’m not going to lecture some recruit about advanced magical electrical engineering, I have actual work to do.”

I pulled a face behind my mask as he knelt down and shrugged his pack off. He pulled it open revealing a number of tools. He pulled his mask off taking a deep gasp of the air before he stuck a spanner into his teeth and began to work away at the side of the generator.

    “Is that safe?” I inquired.

“Not at all, but I don’t have a choice like you, hornhead,” he said after spitting the spanner onto the concrete, picking up another tool and beginning work once again. “Shouldn’t be too much of a problem, this far inside the building it should be relatively clean, even with the air filters off.”

I was a little taken back by his tone but I kept quiet. “Well did you want my help then, Corporal?”

He shook his head sharply.

I let out a sigh inside my mask moving my way over to the seat in front of the desk the terminal was perched upon and sat down, leaning back as I waited, watching him boredly.

As time went on that  got boring too, unsurprisingly. I spun around on the rusty old chair and turned to face the terminal. With little else to do I tried to wake it up by touching a few of the keys, which made the featureless green screen blink back on and show a login screen.

Perhaps somewhat luckily for me, it looked as if there was no password needed. I hit a key and I was in the system. I felt a small pinch of guilt climb up my back as I realized I was rifling around in somebody’s business but I was able to shrug it off long enough to notice a file that read “Mandatory Daily Journal”

There was maybe a thousand of them across dozens upon dozens of pages, dating every day back for maybe three or so years. I hit the directional keys until it was over the most recent entry from two days ago.

---

Thursday - Mandatory Report - (Staff Sergeant Bedtime Story)

Iw warned the Staffseargent i said something was down there.

they idn’t blevie me.

now they’re dead.

i heard the screams ahain.

thes nothing in the tunnel to scream

two more days.

---

I felt a shiver crawl up my spine I navigated down to the Wednesday report and opened it.

---

Wednesday- Mandatory Report - (Staff Sergeant Bedtime Story)

The situation is getting out of hand. I Caught Private Smarty trying to sabotage the Generator. He’s losing his mind, he keeps saying he hears screaming down in the tunnel, a mare calling for help.

I’m not equipped to handle this mental health shit. I knew it was a bad idea to send Hail into that cave with the task force. I knew I should have kept him here.

Now the only pony who can try calm Smarty down is dead.

Whats worse is that Corporal Cheers came to his defense. They seem to think locking the hatch to the tunnel isn’t good enough, they’re trying to cut the power to get the deadbolts to turn on.

Cheers has been on my side during this whole debacle but he said they found another one. Another cave opening in the tunnel, a new one about half a mile closer to the door from where the first one was.

I’m going to have to see if that is legitimate before we lock the hatch tonight. If Cheers and Chips are telling the truth and another one of those caves has opened up in the Tunnel we have a real problem here.

First Recon will be here in three days, Captain Speakeasy will know what to do.

---

At some point a golf ball had worked its way into my throat and a distinct chill running down my body signalled I’d started sweating. I moved down to Tuesday and hesitated for a moment before opening it.

---

Tuesday- Mandatory Report - (Staff Sergeant Bedtime Story)

The Storm is still too thick for the radios to work so for now I’m going to make a point to write these happenings down with more detail so I can just send these when the storm passes.

This is my official reporting of the Missing Presumed Dead report of Corporal Aquamarine, Lance Corporal Hail and Private Console. They’re still not back. I know I’m going to get a Court Martial for inadequate response but I just couldn’t risk sending anypony else in there to find them.

That cave, something is not right with it and now it's gone I can at least sleep easier now. Myself, Cheers and Private Smarty rigged it up with what explosives we could and caved it in to close it. Chips is furious with me for ‘trapping’ the task force in there. But I think even she knows now that they’re dead.

I can’t shake the feeling something isn’t right though. I could have sworn I heard somepony scream when the cave started collapsing. I didn’t tell anypony because I think morale is too low as it is. But I think Private Smarty heard it too, but Hail did say ever since this cave opened up Smarty has been acting strange. he might not be in the right place mentally. After his little episode trying to shut the power off on Monday I doubt his stability.

I wish I had somebody to help him.

First Recon will be here on the weekend. I’ll have to pass this message along to them so they can try send it at their next stop. That is of course if this storm keeps up, doesn’t look like its calming down to me at least.

- - -

I felt shivers crawl up and down my back as I closed the last entry. I slowly stood up trying to think. What the fuck had happened here? Speakeasy needed to see this.

    “Lets give this a shot shall we…”

I turned my head to look at Express Route who had the starter cord of the generator in his teeth, beginning to move his neck in a sharp motion to yank it.

    “STOP!” I yelled sharply, shoving him away from the chord, only for it to violently and recoil back into the generator, sputtering once before falling silent.

Express Route, who had been forced against the wall, growled angrily at me and shoved me back, making me nearly nearly fall into the chair I’d just sat on.

    “What the fuck is wrong with you Private!”

I grit my teeth and pushed the deep urge to swing back at the stallion and chose to speak. “They broke the generator for a reason. There's something in the tunnel! They cut the power to close the deadbolts.”

Express Route looked at me with an angry scrowl on his face. “How the fuck do you know this?”

I pointed a hoof at the terminal. “We need to find Captain Speakeasy. He needs to see this before we go further,” I said quickly, leaving the room and heading through the hallways. I met a stern faced Gloom leaving what was once the cool room for the diner, but had since become the clinic.

Her uniform was matted with blood, and in her teeth was a knife dripping with the dark crimson sludge.

She spun her body as she saw me rushing to me like a flash of lightening, pressing the edge of the blade right to my neck. The razor sharp edge threatening to slice my flesh as a hoof held my mouth shut.

    “Four, three, two, one.” she whispered into my ear angrily.

I tried to yelp out in surprise but her hoof held my mouth shut, preventing me from speaking.

She growled pressing the knife harder, speaking through her grit teeth clasping the knife “Four, three, two, one.” she repeated “Tell me the callsign or I’ll cut your fucking throat.” she demanded quietly easing her hoof off my mouth so I could speak.

    “G-gloom its me! F-five, six, seven eight!” I croaked out as best I could behind her hoof. “Five, Six, Seven, Eight!” I said a second time, fear creeping up my back.

She let go and took the knife away sheathing it again as she looked behind me. “Sorry, I couldn’t take any chances. Don’t yell, stay calm, no sudden noises,” she said, angrily staring at me. “If you yell I’ll break your jaw so you can’t yell.”

I rubbed my neck and gasped loudly for air as I was freed again “Gloom! Wh-what the fuck was that!” I demanded with a whispering voice “Where is Soft Gale?”

She looked back into the main room of the diner toward the locked door. “I don’t know,  we need to find her pronto and get Speakeasy, we have a serious problem,” she replied.

    “Yes we do!” I said “There’s a terminal in there--something is in the tunnel!! It killed the garrison. We have to find the captain,” I began before pausing to think on her words “W-wait, Soft Gale was in there with you wasn’t she?”

Gloom shook her head. “That wasn’t Soft Gale,.” she said stepping back from the door as I looked in. Against the wall slumped on the clinic bed was a corpse of Soft Gale drenched in a sick, almost brown coagulated blood that dribbled from a huge slit in her neck.

    “Gloom what...what the fuck!” I blurted out loudly.

She shoved me with her hoof “Shut the fuck up!” she whispered angrily. “That wasn’t Soft Gale, that was a Bloodling pretending to be her.

    “B-bloodling...what?”

She looked back at me and shot me a confused look. “Bloodlings, those mutants that shapeshift and mimic others. Don’t you read books?” she asked before shaking her head. “Just callsign absolutely everybody who wasn’t in this building before. If they don’t know the callsign, you kill them, don’t even stop to think just kill them.”

I stopped for a moment to consider what happened next. “We need to find the others. We need to get Speakeasy inside…”

Gloom responded with a nod. “You run outside and tell the captain, I’m going to see if I can find where Soft Gale is, tell him where I am,” she said stepping away as she pulled her mask back onto her face. “Oh, and don’t forget to callsign them. Trust nobody,” she reaffirmed to me. “Do you understand? Trust. Nobody.”

As she began to step away we heard a loud clank followed by stressed metal as  some nearby machine whirled to life. The lights of the building clicked on one by one, illuminating the room as a pleasant cool breeze began to bellow from the air vents above us.

To our right we heard the sound of grinding metal, a length of steel screeching in protest. I dipped my head backwards down the hall to see what it was. Down the stairs a hefty metal door shook and shuddered in protest as a huge steel rod slid open with the assistance of two large rotating gears.

I felt a pit open in my stomach as I realized what was happening, and I screamed out some guttural profanity as I rushed quickly back to the back room slamming the door open sending it swinging as it smacked against the concrete wall.

Across the room Corporal Express dusted his uniform off as the generator hummed quietly.

    “You idiot!” I yelled to him from the door. “Can’t you read! What are you doing?”

The engineer rolled his eyes, spinning around to face me. “Reactivating the generator like I was told to. I’d love to hear what makes you think you can give me that kind of attitude, Private.”

I grit my teeth seething in anger. “There’s something in that tunnel you idiot! And you just unlocked the door!” I roared back “Did you not read the terminal?”

    “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did Private Ashes, and it's clear that the mental states of the garrison were deteriorating. You’re taking the word of an insane private over the orders given to you by Captain Speakeasy. You have some nerve mouthing off to me for doing my-”

He fell silent. I saw his ears prick up as he snapped his head, looking around.

    “Did you both hear that?” Gloom yelled to us from the hallway.

Corperal Express yelled out in response. “Y-yes. What the fuck was that?”

I blinked at the corporal utterly confused by what was transpiring. “Wh-what noise?”

I listened as hard as I could, but the silence was all I got in response. All I could hear was the wheezing of my own mask. It began to unnerve me, and soon I felt my knees grow weak.

I spun around as quick as I could to face the panel for the elevator to the outside. “H-how do we get this open?” I asked with a great deal of panic in my voice.

Express Route stammered a response. His tone had changed quickly since the scream. The kind of response you’d expect from a pony who quickly realized the gravity of the situation, and possibly the grave realization that he might be to blame for anything that happened next. “Oh uh...the-the crank! Pull the crank and unlock it, then the uh...the green button and then the buttons with the arrows drawn on them…” he said quietly trying to fumble his mask back on.

I pulled the crank. Above me, there was a long slow rasp of steel as some unseen machine opened and unlocked the platform. I hit the button and pressed the arrow. An engine whirred to life somewhere below me in the shaft, and soon the dull daylight began to slip in along with plumes of the haunted looking purple dust. Eventually, the platform lowered and revealed the outside world.

Another lump had risen in my throat, and I swallowed it away as I watched the dust wisp around the room. I backpedaled slightly, turning around to look at Express Route. “You stay here, help Speakeasy and the others get in. I need to tell Gloom to put her mask back on.”

He gave me a pensive but understanding nod as I walked past him making. I made my way out the door of the loading bay and back into the hallway. I could just make out the motionless shape of Gloom who was staring down the stairs at the huge metal door.

“Hey, put your mask back on the dust is getting in through the elevator,” I said tapping her shoulder gently with my hoof.

She didn’t move.

I poked her, this time slightly harder to try shake her. “Gloom, did you hear me? The doors are open. Put your mask back on the dust is getting in.”

    “It...something said my name?” she said quietly, her voice practically dripping with fear as she turned her head to look at me. “Can you hear it?”

I looked back at her, confused as I was horrified. What was she talking about? I couldn’t hear anything besides the elevator and the air vents.

    “How does it know my real name…” she croaked out in a whisper. I could see tears welling in her eyes. She stopped looking at me and had begun to gaze right through me.

I swallowed hard as I felt something crawl up my spine. Terror. Seeing somebody as stone cold and as stoic as Gloom acting so stricken with terror frightened me beyond belief.

    “G-gloom what the fuck are you talking about, I can’t hear anything. What are you talking about?”

From down the stairs there was a quiet groan of rusted metal as the huge door at the foot of the stairs stressed the hinges it rested upon. The sound drew my gaze and I looked down the stairs.

The door was opening!

It swung open incredibly slowly. Inch by inch it opened up and revealed an inky blackness behind it.

“W-what the fuck!” I blurted out, my horn flaring as I felt around for my rifle. I yanked it off my side, pulling and twisting, fighting with the strap that slung to my body as I floated it to my face and lined up a shot at the door.

It swung open more and more, but nothing appeared. There was nothing pushing the door open. Infact it was difficult to see due to the colour, but the door was actually being forced open by what appeared to be water. A dark almost jet black liquid shifted and gushed out of the door, forcing it open.

Even through my masks heavy filters I could smell the stench. It was rancid like some mix between stagnant water and rusted iron. I scrunched up my face. It reminded me of blood almost. With my sudden burst of fear gone I made my way down the wooden stairs toward the heavy steel door, the smell only growing harder to ignore.

I got within a metre and a half of the door and tried to cast my magic on it. It appeared that my magic uselessly brushed off against the steel. No matter how hard I focused I just couldn’t grasp the door in my magic.

    “Do this the hard way I guess…” I mumbled, inching down the steps to the door.

I heard chatter from behind us in the loading bay, and heavy boots stomping as a figure walked in behind us. From just the shadow I knew who it was.

The water looked wrong. It had no shape to it at all. It looked almost like a hole in the floor. The water was totally absent of light, and the tiny ripples that appeared in its surface as it washed around were the only thing to give away that it was indeed water moving along the floor.

I reached forward with my hoof, but couldn’t manage to push it. I moved down another step, my hoof inching toward the silent black fluid as I tried to reach more. I heard a guttural noise of panic behind a mask roar out from behind me.

    “D-do not! ASHES STOP!”

I stopped dead, my boot an inch from the surface of this eerie empty looking water.

Speakeasy’s voice boomed out from behind his mask “Get away from that stuff Private! Do not touch it!” he bellowed, “That is Blackwater! If you are touching that, you are lucky if your leg is all you lose!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I backpedaled away from the shifting stream of blackness and back up the stairs. A  profuse cold sweat had broken out across my body. I nearly fell on my flanks as I joined Speakeasy by his side once again.

    “No more fucking around, everybody in here, now!” He yelled, shoving Gloom and pulling her to face him. “Snap out of it Gloom, you especially have some explaining to do.”

Gloom pulled away from his gaze, staring back at the door. “Speak...it knows my name! it keeps saying my name!” She said, her teeth seething. “I’M NOT BRUSH ANYMORE, STOP CALLING ME BRUSH!” She roared beligerently over his shoulder, gritting her teeth so tightly they looked like they’d shatter. Speakeasy held her around her body and pulled her away. The mare struggled, but Speakeasy was twice if not thrice her size. He didn’t have a single issue pulling her away and shoving her into the medical room, halting as he saw the slumped over body of Soft Gale against the medical bed.

I saw his face turn to stone as the gears turned in his head. For a moment he seemed alarmed, like Gloom had done something wrong, but he spoke up again. “...where is Soft Gale?” he said looking to me.

    “We don’t know sir, she...disappeared. Gloom says that wasn’t her...she killed her….it.”

Speakeasy nodded. “And she was right to do so. Gloom’s spent years studying bodies and equine anatomy. I trust her before I’d trust myself in identifying a Bloodling. This situation has rapidly gotten bad…” my commanding officer mumbled to himself, tapping his forehead with his hoof.

    “We need to find Soft Gale. If the doors were locked, she can’t have gotten into the tunnel, so it stands to reason that she has to be…” Speakeasy paused abruptly.

Everybody in the room perked up their ears, twitching as they all heard some distant sound. Their eyes focused on the door down the stairs.

Everybody except me, and a tiny filly who sat perched on her father’s back.

    “Anybody else hear that?” Sticky Wicket asked, and the room filled with nods.

Allure, Corporal Express, Sticky Wicket, Tall Tale--everybody nodded except me and the tiny filly who looked at me just as curiously as I looked at her..

    “Screaming...that was definitely a mare…” Tall Tale remarked.

    “Screaming--what are you talking about,it sounded like...a dog or something.” Allure responded.

    “My brother...somebody whispered my brothers name…” Sticky Wicket said, the terror almost visibly dripping from his voice. His young filly stared at the door, down the stairwell, and then to me as she climbed off her father's back and took a nervous step toward the stairs.

Speakeasy was frozen, and he turned his head  around to face Tall Tale. The Ghoul’s face had pulled into something I couldn’t describe. Horror perhaps. As if the ghoul had seen a ghost.

    “Speak…” Tall Tale said sternly to our captain. “Call it, Call it now. I told you this would happen back at base, and you ignored me.”

Speakeasy pensively stared back at the door, his mind straining, the gears turning in his head. “You cannot dare expect me to make that call, especially not now. Soft Gale is missing. I can’t leave another one behind again, Tall.”

Tall Tale grit his teeth, staring at our Captain. “There is no dare about this Speakeasy,” he growled, “Cersum’s Grey Cover, code three, this is fucking textbook Grade A anomalous occurrence. Why the hell do you want my opinion on these things if you don’t even listen to me, Speakeasy.”

The commanding officer kept thinking. I could feel a pit in my stomach open, and my heart ached in sympathy for the stallion. He was clearly torn. It was almost awe inspiring to see how well he was taking it. You’d hear about how Speakeasy was some born leader, but I’d never seen it in action before. A stallion under colossal mental anguish simply remaining as calm as he was.

    “Gloom is losing it, we have a tunnel network flooded with The Blackwater, and goddess this base is completely abandoned. Soft Gale is missing, we have Bloodlings, and on top of that we just had an Anomalous occurrence. How the hell can you not call this off?”  Tall Tale growled with his ancient and ruined voice. “Any other commander would get a court martial for not calling this off.”

Speakeasy put his hoof down. “What will you have me do, abandon Soft Gale? I cannot do that to another Veteran, not after what happened to Easy Rhythm. I’m not leaving another Ranger to die Tall Tale.”

    “Okay so we go in guns blazing to save one Ranger and we all fucking die, just like Cersum and her Scouts did. Soft Gale knew the risks. Gale is a ranger--a veteran ranger--Speak. she’s read the Greycover and she knows what happens in situations like this. She fell behind. We cut the rope, or we all fall together.

Speakeasy sighed, his head hanging low. “Okay… okay. You’re right, we’re falling back. Get the hell to the elevator and retreat,” he said, looking to all of us. “Now, I’ll get Gloom, no stalling.”

I managed to strangle a word past the lump in my throat that had lodged itself during the argument. “W-wait so we’re just leaving Soft Gale to die?”

Tall Tale spun his head to scrowl at me. “What's the first rule in the Rookie Greenback, Private Ashes?”

I paused, remembering the handbook we had to study. I poured over the pages in my head. It didn’t take long to remember it. I always thought it was out of place. Most of the rules in the book were common sense, but the first rule was starkly different.

“The actions of your superior officers should never be questioned or refused especially in times of crisis, no matter how illogical or unreasonable they may seem. Rookies and low rank officers are not privy to mission sensitive details as of The Hermes Incident.

I felt like crying out a refusal, protesting in any way I could, but I just let my head nod and sink low. “Yes sir,” I mumbled through my mask as Speakeasy returned holding the shoulders of a nervous looking Gloom, who glared at the stairs.

As a group we began to wander out back into the rear room replacing our gear, somewhat defeated and at a loss. I’d never felt something like this before. Fear, self loathing, anger, and pure confusion. I kept it bottled up for later. What else was there to do.

Sticky Wicket stood by his still remarkably bored looking cow as he wheeled the cart back onto the elevator. Speakeasy leaned over the buttons to begin working the console.

    “She’s here. I found her,” a familiar melodic young filly’s voice echoed in my head. “She’s walking down into the cave. I think she might be crazy…”

Before I could even stop to question what had happened I heard Sticky Wicket screech out some agonized scream of terror. “Where the hell is my filly!” he said, storming off the lift and rushing toward the door out of the loading bay before he was yanked back by the hoof of Speakeasy.

    “It feels wrong mister Ashes, like the world feels sick, but I feel so calm it's so relaxing.”  her voice sighed in my head. “I can see everything. I can see everybody…”

I felt a familiar prickle of panic rush up my spine as I listened to the screams and beggings of a father who’s daughter had wandered into hell. Speakeasy held his thin frame like it was paper as the father struggled and the lift began to rise up.

My heart pounded faster and faster. Nobody had a face. There was just mask after mask staring blankly at a grown stallion on his knees, crying in grief.

This wasn’t right. I had to do something.

    “...why did you kill your father mister Ashes?”

Every muscle in my body seized up. I stared at the floor before I turned my head to Speakeasy who was staring at me watching my face screw up. Beside him Tall Tale rushed forward and restrained Sticky Wicket who thrashed angrily in his hooves.

I think he knew what I was thinking, he could see it on my face.

“Sir, what happens if I disobey orders?” I asked.

“You get a court martial provided you don’t die and are stupid enough to come back,” he replied.

“Then what?”

Sticky Wicket let out a roar and kicked Tall Tale in the gut, pushing the old ghoul back into the wall of the elevator before galloping off into the halls of the building.

Speakeasy’s face was as cold as stone as the stallion ran off. “You’re found guilty, because you are guilty, and there's a whole squad here that knows you’re guilty,” he said sternly, his hoof reaching to stop Tall Tale from chasing the stallion down. “And then they line you up against a wall and shoot you.”

    “Good.” I replied, walking off the elevator and following the distressed father. “Prison is fucking boring anyway.”

I was calm for some reason. I expected to be filled with fear as I watched the stallion rush down the wooden stairs, his hooves splashing loudly in the water. I kept up, promptly following behind the stallion down the stairs, my boots splashing against the dark thick water pooling on the floor of the tunnel.

I wondered how toxic the blackwater really was. I couldn’t feel any pain, and Sticky didn’t seem to be in any sort of trouble.

    “Sticky!” I yelled to the stallion entering the pitch black tunnel behind him, “Slow the fuck down!”

It was the darkest place I’d ever seen. My magic flicked my headlamp on, but even then it only punched through a foot or more into the inky black tunnel. The thick water splashed around my hooves as I galloped down the tunnel. No goal, no direction, and no purpose.

Was it curiosity? Maybe.

Truth be told I really don’t know why I followed these three down into the darkness, into certain death. I look back at it and I wonder to myself, had I never done it, had I just obeyed orders and let three ponies die, would any of what happened to me have occurred at all?

My light did not reveal much, but the beam from my headlamp did reveal enough of the rocky tunnel wall for me to notice the natural and dull looking stone turning to its black twisted diseased shape. The cave walls were perforated now, a sick black colour and dotted with thousands of holes like the stone was turning turning into a sponge.

I gazed at the repugnant stone wall not really paying much attention to what was ahead of me before I rather painfully walked right into a motionless body, its eyes staring down an opening to our left.

The mouth of some ungodly hellspawn sat open and ready to swallow me. Left and right of the opening were various tools--a pickaxe, a sledgehammer, chisel after chisel. I couldn’t even begin to think how many more tools lied beneath the water.

Was this the Cave the garrison had found?

It looked wrong. Everything about the cave felt and looked wrong.

It was too round, too perfect. It's stone walls were that same disgusting offputting perforated texture. It was so unnatural it couldn’t have formed, and it was so hideous that nothing could have dug it. I could hear water splashing echoing up toward me as something walked along the shallow water further and further away from me.

    “NORTH!” the father screamed, chasing down after her, prompting me to also follow him into the tunnel.

    “...does your sister know you killed your daddy Mister Ashes. Does anybody know, or is that a secret?”

I was not going to give him that satisfaction. He didn’t deserve it. Not after what he did to me.

Maybe that’s why I went to save them. Because somewhere deep inside I knew that if I did, that monster would get the satisfaction he did not deserve. I had to prove him wrong.

Hoof after hoof crashed into the thick black water. I galloped along the cave which grew wider and wider every step I took.

I wasn’t thinking anymore, my mind was no longer empty, some fleeting memory shoved its way into my mind. Forcing itself into the limelight.

I hated that stallion.

    “You’re young North, you wouldn’t understand if I tried to tell you.” I spoke aloud to the filly who was wandering in my head like it was her playground.

    “...try me,” she responded coyly, “I might surprise you.”

I sighed, catching up to the stallion and yanking on his clothes to stop him from running.

    “He deserved to die North. I killed him because he was a piece of shit, and he had it coming.”

* * * * * * * *

Winter was cold in Alwhinny. Very cold.

The cells didn’t have heaters in them. It made sense I guess, there was barely enough power in this town  to keep the schools lights on, why waste power on prisoners. Berryripe Bleaks was unfortunate to not have a Dust of their own to get their grid back to maximum.

I could see my breath condensing in front of my face as I sat alone in my cell, staring into the dimly lit hallway as I heard the steel door screeched open and the sheriff walk in. His hooves clattered along the concrete floor as he appeared in front of the bars of my cell staring at me.

    “I expected you to be asleep.”

I smirked and looked at the sheriff, scratching my blotchy facial hair. “You sit in this fucking place for three years and then tell me you wouldn’t be awake too.”

His horn glittered as a ring of keys appeared from his pocket. The ring floated down, and with a rasp he slid it into the lock, twisting it with a satisfying click. Somewhere inside that steel door the locks and tumblers shifted and the door sprung open on its rails. He reached forward and pushed it open with a hoof.

The sheriff stepped aside and gave me a gesturing motion “Let's not waste your time, then, Young Ashes.”

I stood up and trotted out of the cell, giving it a long gaze as I exited and walked down the hall toward the steel door.

I heard a clank on the steel bars as I walked past. “Good luck out there, Ash,” the old husky voice of the mare who’d I’d shared cigarettes and stories with for the past three years yelled out. “The Skittish Mare, you better be there, you owe me a drink.”

    “You going to remember my face in two years, Hedgerow?” I laughed. “I’ll be there, old mare, don’t worry, look after yourself.”

I exited into the hall of the station, walking with the Sheriff as we moved out into the lobby. The town guards and the rangers all stared at me as I walked past. Near the door was a mare who was apparently the new deputy. The old one had died from cancer in the middle of my sentence.

As the sheriff walked into the lockup room for the prisoners, the deputy took a key in her teeth and harshly grabbed my hooves, unlocking my shackles one by one and tossing them onto the bench as the sheriff came back with a box in his magic.

    “Here are your effects young mister Ashes,” he said looking to me, “I’d say congratulations, but what you’ve been through ain’t worth celebrating.”

I gave a grunt and took the box in my magic nodding my head to him. “Look after yourself sheriff.”

    “Don’t you worry about me, worry about yourself.” he grunted “I don’t want to see you in here ever again.”

I stepped outside into the streets of Berryripe Bleaks. I stretched my legs and let my bones pop satisfyingly as the freezing cold winter night welcomed me back into its embrace. I had a long walk ahead of me, a long lonely walk.

I guess it was too much for that asshole to at least walk me home.

I didn’t have a lot of caps left. Honestly part of me considered it a miracle that some guard hadn’t stolen them while I was locked up. I wrapped myself in clothes that were three years too small, and a scarf that was covered in dust and headed into town, buying myself a drink and a bowl of stew from the Skittish Mare to help warm myself up.

With a bowl of the spicy stew and a mug of the warm fruity cider this tavern was famous for, I set out into the weak snowy morning, following the ruined ancient asphalt and centuries abandoned carts that dotted the road South. My only company was the distant but constant flash of the lighthouse, its enormous beam sweeping across the sky above me as I wandered down the road.

Back to Darkwater Down, the only home I’d ever known.

I was going to kill that piece of shit.

* * * * * * * *

In the dark tunnel I saw a pair of eyes look back at me as Sticky Wicket dashed forward, splashing along noisily in the water to scoop the filly up and embrace her. “You stupid little filly!” he yelled “What were you thinking!”

North was silent, she stared at me without saying a word. Like she’d just grown up a little, like her childhood had been ruined. I didn’t blame her, perhaps the cruelest thing you can learn at her age is that the world isn’t as black and white as you think it is, that nothing was as easy to comprehend.

We were in some kind of opening in the tunnel, some large open area where this mysterious and hellish looking cave split apart into a dozen other caves and tunnels, sprawling out like the tendrils of a creature of the deep ocean or a tangled series of roots beneath some mighty tree.

Everything uneased me.The ribbing of the walls, it’s humidity the unsettling reverberation of the air that kept that perpetual droning in my ears, it all reminded me of the back of a throat, a long esophagus I was creeping down, all that it was missing was the uvula. Or perhaps, we had long since passed it. The anatomical passage was dormant. For now.

    “Get her out of here,” I said to Sticky Wicket, “Run back and get the fuck out of this place, find Speakeasy,” I ordered the young father.

Sticky Wicket nodded. “Th-thank you...thank you!’ he spluttered out.

    “I didn’t do anything,” I said, a flutter welling in my stomach. “Now go, and don’t look back.”

The father nodded frantically, placing the filly onto his back and galloping as hard as he could back down the tunnel we’d just came from.

    “She’s not alone you know,”  North’s voice echoed in my head. “Those things...are with her, watching her…waiting for...” she said, pausing for a moment.

I pursed my lips behind my mask and reached around my back with my magic, taking my rifle and presenting it at my front as I continued down the tunnel into the darkness.

    “I can hear them all thinking, Mister Ashes, all of them. I can hear their thoughts like they were all talking at once. It’s so strange…” she began. “There is hundreds down here, crawling around in these caves...and all of them have the exact same thoughts…”

I blinked curiously as I walked along, my rifle gently swaying in my grasp as I trotted. “So provided this isn’t just me going insane and you can actually...read thoughts...what do bloodlings think about?”

    “...you.” she responded, her voice quiet inside my head. “They’re thinking about you...they’re...waiting for you.”

* * * * * * * *

It was early morning when I showed up, pushing the bent and rusted gate that was on this property before the war had even started, trotting along the long straight gravel road that penetrated through the rows and rows of graves and tombstones. There was an old mare here with some colt looking at some grave.

He was on a rocking chair. He had a mug of something warm in his magic as he looked at the ruined singular piece of paper that lay on the wooden spool he used as some kind of table.

I stopped dead silent at the veranda of my home, my father not even bothering to look up as I stood there. “Can I help you?” he grumbled. “I don’t work on the Day of the Sisters, I’m afraid, so if it's an order you’ll have to wait till tomorrow.”

    “Too good to look me in the face, huh?” I responded, tilting my head as I pulled my scarf lower. “Or maybe you just don’t recognise me.”

It looked like he turned to stone as he craned his head slowly up to look at me, adjusting his glasses slowly to take me in.

    “Oh...they let you out early did they?”

I gave a small nod “Yeah, they did, thanks for not being there to walk me back. I wanted the privacy, and well you know me, I’m too proud to ask  you not to show up,” I said with a sarcastic smirk. My mind awashed with a thousand emotions I could scarcely comprehend, and it seemed as if my way of coping with them was humor.

He squinted and shot me a look of pure daggers as he picked up on my sarcasm. “I’d watch your tone if I were you. You’ve got a mighty pair just to show your Goddess forsaken face around here after what you did.”

I shot out a laugh, swallowing a lump appearing in my throat. “Oh...yeah, some nerve I have right?” my teeth grit painfully in my mouth.

He grumbled, folding his paper up and and putting his mug down. “You never were one to think,” he said, standing up and taking his things and heading to his door. “Leave,” he ordered. “And never come back. Learn from your mistakes and don’t ever show your face around here again.”

    “No...NO” I screamed snapping and breaking my cool. “Fuck you Ray, you don’t get to do this, you don’t get to do any of this!” I roared, rearing up onto my hind legs and slamming them into the gravel. The old stallion halted in front of his door as he looked back at me. “I did my thinking…” my voice strangled out, my jaw trembling. “THREE YEARS, I was in there for THREE YEARS, Ray, and if I didn’t do the social service and the good behavior tests I would have been in that fucking place for FIVE!”

His own teeth grit as he snarled back at me in that angry cornered dog look only he could give. “And after what  you did, you should have stayed in there. You should have fucking stayed and rot you despicable little shit.”

    “Gee, I’ve been here five minutes and you’re already upset with me. What now, you going to go kill Dust and blame me for that too you fucking coward?” I snarled right back. “You don’t get the high ground this time, Sun Ray. Not this time. I was in a cell half as big as our bathroom for three years. You took EVERYTHING from me, and I sat in a cold concrete box for THREE years and you didn’t lose ANYTHING!”

He stomped his hoof on his wooden deck and his magic flared, yanking a long double barreled shotgun out of of the frame it sat in and aimed it at me. “Get the fuck off my property before I kill you and drag your body out myself!”

I furrowed my brow and spat at him. “Look at me, look me in the eyes.” I growled “I will hurt you, do you understand, I will not rest until I have taken everything from you and destroyed it. I swear on my mother's grave, I will make you pay for what you did to her.”

    “That was your fault and you know it, Ashes, you ungrateful sack of shit!” he growled back. “It’s your fault she lost it, it’s...it’s your fault. If you’d just done what you were told she’d have never gotten sick!” he pointed his gun to the side and with a loud boom the shotgun barked out a pillar of fire and smoke. “NOW GET OUT.”

I spun around and walked back down that same path I’d walked in on.

He would pay, I was going to make him pay.

He wasn’t going to get away with it this time.

Not again.

* * * * * * * *

The tunnel stretched out into a wide cavern again. Sitting in the middle of the room on her haunches was a rather rough looking Soft Gale with her mask around her neck as she breathed very slowly and deliberately, staring off into nothingness.

    “...is that you newbie?” she said, looking at me with bleary eyes.

I nodded, shining my light around as I aimed my rifle, my hooves splashing noisily as I entered the room.

“You doin okay Gale?” I asked moving closer to her offering her a hoof, retracting it for a moment “Sorry but...four three two one.”

She shook her head “Its me...five, six, seven, eight..” she responded weakly,  her sentence pausing as she let out a wet hacking cough. “and no not even slightly. I thought you guys had abandoned me. The greycover says you have to if stuff like this happens…”

She took my hoof and weakly tried to stand up before she fell face first into the blackwater. I gave a wince as she did, looking either side of me and reaching down. I took her in my magic and grunted as I lifted her body up as best I could.

She coughed and sighed. “It’s no use anyway. I appreciate the help Ash, but...we both have blackwater poisoning now, we’re already dead.”

I sighed as I let the strain go, letting the mare rest across my back so I could carry her out.

    “Gale how the fuck did you get down here? The security door was locked.” I asked taking my rifle in my magic and walking slowly and cumbersome back down the tunnel.

She grumbled and I felt her shift on my back. “I...can’t remember much but...I think there was some second tunnel and an airvent. I only know about changelings...don’t know anything about these mutants freaks. I guess they have a knack for digging holes…”

I heard a hiss and I felt a prickle along my neck. I angled my light as best I could, and I nearly jumped out of my own skin when I saw the face of some albino white monster staring back at me. It was a dirty white colour, its fur was not fur--it seemed to be some kind of exoskeleton, which shone gently as I pointed my light at the thing. Its eyes were freakish blood red compound eyes like that of some fly, and its legs formed into large holes much like the walls of the cave around us.

I pointed my rifle at it with a grunt, shivering in fear as it grinned menacingly, flashing its filthy brown fangs at me and flicking a serpentine tongue.

    “No need for violence,” it said, its alien sounding voice hissed to me. “You will not be harmed, the great old one calls out for you in his sleep. I must bring you to him.”

    “What the fuck...no!” I said jabbing, forward with my rifle. “Get the fuck away from me!”

It jumped back a bit and hissed, coiling itself. It moved to jump, but I let out a guttural yell and pulled the trigger, my rifle spewing out fire and punching a bullet right through his outer shell sending a spray of the brown ichor out across the walls before falling to the ground.

    “I’m afraid you have no choice in the matter,” an identical sounding voice hissed from behind me. I jerked my head around and nearly jumped again. There was a dozen of them in the room we were just in. “The great old one wishes it, and it is our purpose to serve him. It is YOUR purpose to serve the great old one, you simply do not know it yet.”

I tried to strangle out something else to say but I couldn’t. Instead I just broke into a gallop, holding Gale as best I could with my magic as I galloped as hard as I could, my hooves splashing against the blackwater and my hooves easing around on the joint as I tried to balance on the uneven floor.

I grit my teeth as I sucked air desperately rushing through the dark tunnel back the way I came.

I could hear the tide of hooves, a stampede of angry monsters behind me chasing me desperately along the tunnel.

We finally exited into the second cavern, and I felt a weight slam into my side with a yell from both me and Soft Gale. I nearly did a full flip as I fell into the rocky floor splashing water all over me.

I desperately spun around to my hooves and faced the threat. A single bloodling fought it’s way to its hooves and turned to face me with a hiss. “The world belongs to the great old one!” it screeched “Do not flee from his grace!” it said, pouncing on me.

I pulled the trigger panicking as I realized I hadn’t actioned the bolt, and I was pushed to the cave wall. I roared out, spinning the rifle in my magic as I jabbed the butt of the rifle forward and smashed it into the face of the creature. It let out a sickening wet crunch as its insectoid exoskeleton caved in with the hit and it fell to the flooded floor twitching and shaking.

Another pounced on me, knocking my rifle from my magic as it crawled forward trying to grapple me to the ground. I kicked my hooves to try pry the monster off me but it held on with just slightly more desperation than I was trying to kick it off. In a moment of clarity I flared my horn and yanked my knife from my sheath, roaring as I swung it down and slammed the blade into the skull of the monster, yanking it out and stabbing it again before its grip loosened and I kicked the monster off me, stumbling to my hooves.

I rushed to Soft Gale and moved to pick her up again with a panic as I looked to the roof of the cavern. White shapes crawled out of the tunnels and branches of the roof, hissing as they crawled out like a swarm of large ants, others buzzing out on nightmarish wings.

I strained my horn harder, yelling in agony as a nail of magic drove itself into my skull as I hefted her onto my back again. We began to rush forward again down the cave.

Panic was welling inside me, it was too fucking dark! I couldn’t see any more than a few feet ahead of me. I had no idea if I was three feet from the tunnel network or three hundred.

I’d lost my rifle and was left with only my knife bobbing gently ahead of me in my magic as I rushed along the cave. It dripped the sickening coagulated blood from its blade down the hilt before it dribbled off onto the floor.

I felt a huge wave of relief crash down onto me as I tumbled out of the mouth of the sickly cave and back into the concrete reinforced tunnel network.

I took a moment to give a sigh of relief, a mistake I regret to this day.

Another huge weight smashed into me and sent me tumbling into the wall with a great deal of force, causing me to fall again and lose Soft Gale who yelped in agony as she fell, as well as the knife falling from my magic into the water.

The bloodling crawled onto me and screeched out a sinister, baleful note, rearing up before bringing its hooves down onto my face. There was a sickening snap and the sound of glass being shattered before I screamed out in pure agony. His hoof mashed into my left eye, shattering the glass. I thrashed around in pain screaming gritting my teeth as my magic desperately padded around for something to use.

I felt something long and with a great deal of weight on one end. With little else to use I gritted my teeth, taking the object  and slamming it into the changeling. Much to my surprise he flew off me like he’d just been bucked away by an earthpony’s fearsome buck.

I rolled around in pain. My body fueled by pure adrenaline as once again I pushed myself to my hooves. I looked at what was in my magic--some long sledgehammer that was lined up against the wall hung in front of me.

My left eye was nothing but pure undescribable agony. Throbbing and hot. I searched around for Soft Gale who was pushing herself to her haunches as the bloodling spun around with a great deal of agility to stand once more and face me.

I let out a roar and swung the hammer in my magic. It was remarkably easy to work with, giving it a little kick and letting physics do the rest of the work. The huge metal head of the hammer slammed into the side of the bloodling with a crunch so loud it echoed down the tunnel, sending the bloodling flying and crashing into the wall to his left, twitching slightly. My hammer kept up its motion, and with a sickening crunch slammed into the creature again squishing it against the wall and crushing its midsection with a spray of brown blood.

I yelled, hefting the hammer in my magic as I stumbled in pain over to Soft Gale for the third time. I hefted her onto my back as I began my weak desperate gallop down the halls toward the metal door and the dull white light flittering through the half open gap.

I felt another wave of relief rush through me as I stumbled through the opening, and with a yell, kicked my hind legs up to slam the metal door shut against its frame, the steel frame shaking as it met the speeding door.

I could hear screeches and chittering as the bugs crashed into the metal door, desperately trying to pry it open. I felt my heart leap into my chest as I saw the half a dozen or so white faces shifting around in the dark through the peephole.

Another moment of clarity was afforded to me as I once again stumbled into a weak gallop up the wooden stairs, spinning around as me and the mare on my back crashed into the loading bay. I slipped Gale off my back as gently as I could, rushed towards the gently humming generator in the corner, swinging the hammer around above my head again, letting it crash down into the generator. The pristine looking power generator crumpled like some soda can as the hammer crashed into it. It let out a loud bang and a cloud of pink smoke and sparks showered into the air as the lights in the building flickered off one by one and the air stopped.

From here in the hallway I heard the sound of the stressed metal as the huge steel deadbolt automatically slid back into place, and with a heavy shunt secured the door tight once more.

I nearly fell to the floor in relief. I let the hammer swing and rest on the concrete floor, and let my body rest on the hammers weight as I caught my breath.

Soft Gale was sitting on her haunches staring at me. “Y..you...holy shit…”

I looked back to her, my right eye blurred and my left eye a mess of indistinguishable hues of red and white blurs.

    “Don’t worry...we n-need to...g-get the fuck out of here...if they have a second tunnel they will be following us soon...and we need to catch up to Speakeasy…”

I  stumbled over to her and helped her up and onto my back again. I clutched the hammer and let it drag along the ground beside me, letting out a long screech as metal scraped along concrete.

I headed to the infirmary, my whole body shaking as we stepped inside, Gale looked at the body of herself in the corner of the infirmary with a great deal of confusion.

    “D-don’t ask…” I mumbled as I moved toward the medicine cabinet. My first instinct was to reach for the healing potions and down one, but I stopped short remembering Gloom say that drinking a healing potion would lead to your skin healing over the wound and make the problem three times as bad. I was blind as sin in my left eye, and the realization I could have reinforced glass shards all through my eye made me nearly throw up. I let out an exploitative dreading for even a moment that I’d have to put up with this agony, but in the corner of my eye flashed at least three small syringes.

I reached for the syringes and looked at the small glass hulls of them. Morphine. The writing on the glass was small, but with enough straining and winking I could focus on it enough to make it out.

I took the syringe and snapped the plastic end off, lifting a hoof up and bracing it against the wall as I eased the syringe in and let the auto injector do the rest of the work. I looked around the cabinets some more, taking a healing potion anyway. “What about you Soft Gale, anything broken?”

She shook her head “I-I don’t think so…”

I passed the healing potion up to her with my magic. “G-get me a Harmony potion...maybe it's not too late to stop the Eerie poisoning…” she stammered out.

I looked around some more and let out a pleasant shiver as a cool chill climbed through my veins where I’d injected the morphine up my leg and circulated around my body.

The agony began to bleed away and it helped clear my head enough to focus a little easier. I searched up and down the cabinet and found a small milky looking magenta fluid in its own small auto injecting syringe. There was only one.

I passed it to her and spun around on on my hooves. “Are you sure? You might be poisoned too, Ash…”

    “I’ll be fine,” I responded, walking out toward the door. I took a new mask off the shelf in the barracks room and two spare filters, presenting one to Soft Gale as I slipped the new mask on. I did my best to keep it from touching my damaged eye as I carried myself and the pegasus mare to the front door of this diner, cranking the lock open and forcing it aside.

I looked either way. I could focus again. My mind was clear and the agony was gone. Despite this, I was still blind in one eye and the storms made it impossible to see regardless. I gave a weak smile as I saw the tiny almost unseeable dots of white light swinging to and fro in the distance. With a weak walk I moved toward the lights, with the goal to catch up to them.

If I could see the face on that smug piece of shit now.

* * * * * * * *

There was the sound of the occasional crack of gunfire and screams throughout Darkwater Down. The warning sirens wailed up and down the large town as I galloped along the mainstreet. I’d been enjoying a drink and hiding from the cold that night before the sirens started.

You could hear the roars and screeches of some nightmarish hellbeast. It wasn’t flying--the rangers would have picked it off long before it got here. It had to be some kind of land based creature, and it had to have snuck in somehow. That only meant one thing; the wall had a hole in it.

    “MAKE WAY!” a booming voice roared out, amplified artificially and laced with the sound of electronic filtering. I jumped to the side and watched in awe as two ponies clad in huge sets of power armor thundered past with about half a dozen or so rangers behind them.

Soldiers. The main battle and rapid response units of the Rangers, clad in heavy kevlar and the highest spec equipment, they were all veterans, each selected for their vast wealth of knowledge and aptitude.

Their armor made them tower above the ponies behind them. They were huge in those suits, bigger than even the largest griffins ever seen. Their steel hooves slammed into the asphalt with a great deal of weight as they galloped past, their massive metal frames hauling guns so big you usually only saw them mounted on the roofs of tanks.

Their armors were painted vastly differently. One was painted dark grey and white trimmed, as was the uniform for rangers in power armor. It also had stamped and painted the lighthouse sigil onto the flanks and shoulders .

The other was in a scratched and aged black paint with some sigil of gears and apples on it. A long red and gold braid was tied on one of his huge pauldrons across his back in some strange ornate decoration.

I stared long enough to realize they were headed North along the main street searching for the monster. It had since grown silent and was not giving its position away. Perhaps it hadn’t panicked in a while, but the town was still in chaos, and it seemed as if the rangers had just as much idea where it had gone than I did.

I heard a bark of gunfire and I turned my head to face it. The sound came from the west, and as I galloped to the middle of the road I was just in time to catch another blast. This time I could see the flicker of orange as it shot into the air.

It was coming from the graveyard.

I broke into a fast gallop toward my home down the old gravel road. As I grew closer I noticed a clear wide path had been bowled through the gravestones, and the wooden roof of our ramshackle home had been caved in. A stallion galloped around in the dark, a shotgun in his magic as he flicked it back up toward the house. I jumped the gate and leapt back into the yard up the gravel toward him as the wooden wall of our house exploded open in a shower of splinters. The huge beast rolled onto the patio of our house. It was something massive, perhaps as tall as a large stallion and a half. It stood on four squat stubby hooved legs and it had a short face. Its head was a mess of twisted and demonic looking horns and growths, and its body was covered head to hoof in strange black mossy looking fur. It looked almost like a bison from the old deserts of West Equestria.

My father aimed the shotgun and pulled the trigger, a blast of flame exploding out and throwing a hail of buckshot outward, smacking into the hellish bovine creature, releasing a spray of red blood.

With a roar it charged at him slamming into the old stallion and throwing him back against the ground. His shotgun flew into the air and clattered into the gravel near me as my father grunted holding his pain inside as the monster scuffed its hooves along the grass preparing to charge again.

I rushed over to the shotgun yanking it up in my magic. I flicked it open to check if it still was loaded, and sure enough while one had been used the other shell was ready to fire. I flicked it back and aimed the long rusted shotgun at the monster’s head who stood still flaring its massive nose and scuffing its hooves preparing to charge, paying me no heed.

My magic eased down on the trigger as I aimed it at the bison. Before I could pull it back enough to fire, I paused, remaining motionless as I slowly turned my head to face my father. He sat silently on the ground, his head shifting between me and the monster right before him.

I looked into his eyes as he stared back, his eyes full for fear for the first time in a long while. Without a word, our eyes were firmly glued to each other. I relaxed my magic and let the shogun fall gently and point to the ground.

I expected him to say something, but he didn’t. He just hung his head low and began to mumble what I assumed was a prayer as the creature roared and charged forward. Within a moment the stallion that was once my father was trampled and crushed under the rearing hooves of some massive angry spawn of hell.

The monster let out a beastial snort as it grew bored of stomping on the dead body. It shuffled slowly to face me, and did much the same as it already did. It lowered its head and presented its mass of horns and bones to me and scuffed its hoof along the gravel.

With another roar it charged, galloping toward me. In a moment of panic I threw the firearm up and shot the shell hastily, the buckshot digging into the beast but not stopping it. It thundered toward me. I froze in fear as I heard a yell, and I was shoved so hard I must have flew a foot or two to the side as the stallion clad in power armor stood where I was and braced his hooves into the ground. The bison slammed into the huge steel pony, but rather than throwing the ranger aside like it had my father, the two pushed against each other. The stallion roared as the other ranger stomped up on his left flank, his red braids flicking in the wind as it spun around and lobbed a hefty kick into the beast, sending it back a few feet into the patio with a crash and a shower of spinters.

The two stallions kicked their hind legs and their battle saddles sprung open. On the left the braided stallion let fly a hail of loud powerful sounding shots as he showered the bison in a hail of heavy machinegun fire. The other trotted forward slowly, a huge cloud of fire spewing from his battle saddle and spraying the monster in a jet of flaming napalm. The monster screamed and roared in agony stumbling back and crashing through the ruined wall, the two rangers kept up their onslaught, the heavy machinegun punching into it as the other sprayed it with streams of flames.

It was a spectacle, perhaps I should have felt some more remorse as I was ushered away by a group of rangers. The house I grew up in went up in a tower of smoke and flames and the two rangers clad in their armor walked into the flaming building like it was nothing to inspect the monster’s burning corpse.

My eyes were fixed on the bloodied and crushed corpse of my father as he lied on the dirt.

At least he didn’t die anywhere near her grave.

* * * * * * * *

    “Well the good news is you’ll be fine and you won't lose the eye,” the stallion clad in a dirty white coat said to me as I looked back at him. “Bad news is by this point the infection is so widespread and the damage so great that once it's healed you’re not going to be seeing much out of it. Plus we need to operate again to get the last of the glass out.”

I nodded, my body weak and my throat dry as I lied on my back in the infirmary bed. My pain was dulled with painkillers, but I could still feel the tingle in my eye. They were keeping my doses moderate to try keep me from becoming too addicted to it. “So when am I going in for surgery?” I croaked weakly.

“Within the next hour, if all goes well. You are getting sicker from the infection and I can’t give you antibiotics yet, not until we’re sure we’ve got all the debris out of you. We need to get it done as quickly as we can. We also need you as healthy as you can be for the detox sessions. While you aren’t exhibiting signs of blackwater or eerie poisoning, we cannot be too sure with stuff like that. So we’re going to really try scrub that stuff out of your body.”

I nodded again. That's all I really felt like doing. My body was powerless, sapped of strength and my brain was sluggish. I could feel my head heavy and hot. The infection was really taking its toll, and I just wanted to feel better again. “Do whatever you have to…” I said to him. “A-also you wouldn’t happen to know where I can get a pen and paper from? I want to write a letter to send off before I go under the knife, I guess…”

He gave me a nod and a cheerful smile. “Sure, I’ll go grab some for you,” the doctor said, stepping out of the room and heading off.

I sighed, turning my head to the window and stared outside. I could see the lights of Berryripe Bleaks in the distance, and the constant beam of the lighthouse above us as it swept across the sky.

I heard hooves clattering on the tile floor as the doctor returned with a piece of paper and an old pen in his magic, he rested it on my lap, reaching across and passing me some old hardcover book to write on.

    “Thanks,” I croaked in response to him, letting out a wet choking cough as he left the room.

I placed my pen to the paper and let out a sigh as I began to write.

_______

Dear Sister.

I’m going in for surgery again today, the doctor says I will be fine they’re just going to get what they couldn’t get out before this time. Don’t worry about me, I’ll live, I’m too stubborn to die anyway.

I haven’t heard anything about what they plan to do to me but from what I understand, Gloom, Soft Gale Allure and even Talc are all trying for an appeal to drop the case but Speakeasy and the high council take what I did very seriously, so I’ll write when I know more.

I’ll write again as soon as I’m awake and moving again.

Look after yourself Sis.

~Ashes.

_____