Fallout: Equestria - Master of my fate

It was a day like any other in the Wasteland, the sky was covered by the usual thick layer of grey clouds, a mild breeze was blowing through the half-collapsed ruins that dotted the dusty brown landscape-

‘In the name of the Goddess, die abomination!’

• and I was fighting a small pack of manticores that had dared to venture in our territory with two other green alicorns. With our combined powers we had managed to kill five of the lethal creatures, but there was still one standing: the alpha. After having crippled one of its wings with a combat spell, while my sisters were distracting the beast from the ground, I had took off and started gaining altitude. The manticore was too busy clawing at the shield of my sisters to notice me. Once I was high enough, I closed my wings and swooped at the manticore.

The creature didn’t even notice me. My hoof impacted violently against the horned head of the manticore, shattering its thick skull. The massive body of the manticore collapsed like a marionette on the ground whose strings had been cut, and with a final twitch of its segmented tail, it went still.

I stood on the corpse of my opponent, panting hard and with my heart beating like a drum in my chest as the adrenaline buzzed off from my body. We alicorns are the toughest (and prettiest) motherfuckers of the entire Wasteland, but the manticores had proved to be formidable foes.

‘That was the last one,’ I mentally announced to the two other sisters that formed our wing, glancing at the corpses of the other four manticores lying on the ground all around. The wind changed and I gagged in disgust. An acrid smell rose from corpses of the manticores where our combat spells had burned their shaggy fur, mingling with the stench of death that the creature carried around. Grimacing, I stepped down from the corpse of the creature, only to realize that the hoof I had used to kill it was sprained. Unpleasant, but nothing too serious.

‘These beasts must have ventured here all the way from the Everfree Forest in search of a new hunting ground, probably driven out by the increasing presence of Red Eye soldiers,’ I thought.

The two alicorns agreed with my mental reasoning. Perk of being part of a hivemind: we literally shared our ideas.

‘They will pay for all these nasty creatures they’re pushing toward our home,’ one of my sisters thought.

Both I and the remaining alicorn agreed. We already had enough problems dealing with the hellhounds that infested Splendid Valley, the last thing we needed was a bunch of monsters coming from the ancient forest.

While I used my magic to clean my foreleg from the blood, I spared one last look at the corpses of the manticores. The creatures were as deadly as they looked, but deep inside a part of me was glad that the Goddess had tasked us to kill them instead of something bigger.
Not too long ago several of our sisters had been sent to fight against a hydra. They were successful in slaying the huge carnivorous beast, but more than a few had not returned home. We saw their death through our connection with the hivemind, both from the perspective of the survivors and briefly from the point of view of those who died. I shuddered as images of those awful memories briefly flashed through my mind. I would like to say that they died quickly and without pain, but that would be a lie. Their deaths were not pretty. They suffered. And they had been afraid during their last moments.

My sisters felt my distress through our mental link and promptly started comforting me. One of them gently nuzzled my neck, while the other wrapped her non-injured wing around my shoulders and gave me a small smile that I returned.

Aside from my sprained hoof and her broken wing, we had gathered a respectable collection of bruises, cuts and bites on our bodies during the fight. Luckily none of us had been hit by a stinger, but we still needed to take care of our wounds. We didn’t carry healing potions and there weren’t doctors nearby that could provide us medical assistance, but while for the ‘normal’ ponies this would have been a serious problem, for us it was just a minor annoyance. Not too far from where we had fought the manticores there was the wreckage of an old sky-tank with the faded symbol of the Equestrian Air Force still visible on the hull. Even without any knowledge in mechanics I could easily tell that the war machine was beyond any hope of repair, but it didn’t really matter to us. What my sisters and I found more interesting was that not only had the spark battery powering the sky-tank not exploded when it crashed, but even after two centuries there were still radiation leaking out from the engine compartment. While the levels of radiation were relatively modest, it was still sufficient for our purposes and after having spent half an hour basking in the pleasant warmth of radiation, all our wounds had been completely healed.

After having taken care of our bodies, we flew to the nearest hill and landed on its top, next to the rusted skeleton of what must have been a radio antenna. We simply stood there in silence, watching the horizon and waiting to receive new instructions from our creator and leader. We opened our minds and let the collective consciousness of Unity reach our brains. There was a lot of excitement among our sisters stationed in Maripony. The Stable Mare had returned and had brought with her the Book!

‘Huzza!’ One of the alicorns within me exclaimed in glee. ‘Now nothing will stop the Goddess from spreading the glorious message of Unity across the-’

‘CHILDREN! FLEE!!!’

The voice of the Goddess suddenly resonated through our minds like an explosion. Nothing new, but what unsettled us was her tone of urgency and the power of her mental contact. It was the first time (and last) time that I felt her presence so strong while we were so far from Maripony.

I glanced at my sisters and saw that they shared my confusion. The Goddess was our mother and we were her children, and children have to listen to their parent. And yet, something made us hesitate obeying her order. Our creator always said that she was the most powerful being in the Wasteland.

Then why was she so scared?

‘FLY, MY CHILDREN!! SAVE YOURSELVES!!’

Unity was pure chaos. We could hear the panicked voices of countless alicorns stationed to defend our home as they frantically escaped like a flock of birds from a burning forest.

I had barely the time to look in the direction of Maripony when a blinding green light appeared on the horizon and the voices in my mind went silent. When a few seconds later my vision finally returned, I saw a huge greenish mushroom cloud rising from the ground up to the sky, wiping everything in its path.

‘Pretty,’ was my first thought as I watched mesmerized at the mushroom cloud. It’s strange how you can find beauty even in the most unexpected places, even in the destructive power of a Balefire megaspell.

It wasn’t the only pretty thing I saw that day. The Balefire bomb had opened a hole in the cloud curtain, revealing something even more beautiful. The sky. It was the first time I truly saw the sky. Sure, we alicorns can fly thanks to our beautiful wings, but the Goddess had never sent us up there above the clouds, where the pegasi lived.

Speaking of pegasi, once the explosion had died down, the sky dwellers had wasted no time and starting repairing the hole in the cloud curtain. That made me angry. Stupid pegasi. How dare they hide from the rest of Equestria something pretty like the sky? That wasn’t fair!

‘The Goddess should order us to fly up there and-’

I froze like a statue. The silence in my mind. It wasn’t right. Why was there silence in my mind, beside my own thoughts? With dread my gaze slowly moved from the sky to the ground. The explosion had came exactly from where Maripony was… and I could no longer feel the voices in my mind, neither those of my sisters, nor that of the Goddess. It could mean only one thing.

Unity was no more.

I don’t know exactly how long I remained in that state, but when I was finally able to shake myself from my shock-induced trance, I realized two things: first, the hole in the sky had been completely sealed; second, the other two alicorns were gone, leaving me alone in the middle of nowhere.

I frantically tried to find them, looked around, using my telepathy, even calling them with my voice, but it was all for naught.

When had they left? Was it when the Goddess gave her last desperate order? When the bomb exploded? Or maybe while my mind was still processing the fact that we were no longer part of Unity? I don’t know and it wasn’t really important in the end. What mattered was that they had left me and that I was alone. For the first time since my creation, I was truly alone.

I felt my anger return and this time it wasn’t for a petty reason like some cloud covering the sun. I felt angry at them. Nay, I felt betrayed! I had called them sisters, just like I had done with any other member of my kind, just like they did with me. I had considered them family, but I was wrong. Family is supposed to help you during rough times, not abandoning you when you need them the most!

I released a long scream of frustration and anger and stomped my front hooves hard on the ground, creaking the concrete with my alicorn strength. Not satisfied, I turned my attention at the radio antenna and I bucked it with all my strength. The entire structure shook and wobbled violently, then, the old bolts anchoring it to the ground snapped and the antenna fell with a long groan of protest, before slamming violently on the ground and sliding all the way to the base of the hill.

I closed my eyes, put a hoof against my chest and slowly drew a deep breath. I don’t know where such a calming technique came from, but it worked and my anger slowly faded away. I was still upset with those two alicorns, but now that I was able to think clearly again, I realized that I wasn’t the only one affected by the destruction of our home and that they too were probably trying to process the trauma.

‘We just hope they are fine,’ I thought before looking back in the direction of Maripony. The next thing that I thought was, ‘So… what are we supposed to do now?’

For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do or what my purpose was. We usually received orders from our creator, but now she was dead and last that I checked the dead don’t give orders. I think. Well, not without using necromancy at least. But I was pretty sure that she had not turned into a huge-ghoulish-thingy. Anyway, the Goddess called us her children, and in a certain way I was like a filly. A big, really powerful filly, but nonetheless a filly that now had to make decisions all by herself, like the grown up ponies.

… Yay! Decisions!

Remaining here was out of the question. Nightfall was coming and there were several creatures wandering these lands that could pose a threat even to an alicorn like me. Especially one that was alone...

I shook my head. ‘Stop thinking about it, it won’t help our current situation.’

It took me a couple of minutes to formulate my next idea. ‘Maybe we should return to Maripony?’

I briefly wondered if I would find some of my sisters there, but then realized that the last order the Goddess gave us was to fly as far as we could from the old military base before it was obliterated by the megaspel. All I would find was probably a huge radioactive crater (not that there was anything wrong with radiation), rocks, and hellhounds.

Hellhounds. The mere thought of those mutated mongrels made my blood boil in rage. How many alicorns had died by the hands of those beasts?

‘And the rest of the world dare to call us monsters,’ I thought angrily. Ah! What a nerve! They were the bloodthirsty abominations that tried to kill on sight everything that didn’t belong to their species, not us!

I was there during their last attack to our base. That little unicorn and her friends were leaving after have met the Goddess, when suddenly their skywagon had exploded. A few of my sisters had been killed instantly by the explosion, while another had been mortally wounded. My sisters and I had then been very surprised when that black unicorn lady with a bird as cutie mark had given her a painkiller to make her last moments less painful.

That detail made me reflect. The Goddess had prioritized attacking our foes rather than assisting one of us. I’m quite sure one of our purple sisters would have been able to teleport her to safety. Maybe we could have been even able to save her. I remember how her consciousness slowly faded away and disappeared forever from Unity as she died....

‘Don’t dwell on the past.’

I had to concentrate, keep it together, organize my thoughts. Urgh! This thing of making decisions was proving to be more difficult than expected, but I had to endure, remain focused! I could do it!

My left wing was itching. I opened my feathery limb and nibbled at its base, pulling out an old feather. ‘Ah, much better. Now, where was I? Oh, right, decisions.’ I stared at my open wing and flapped it a couple of times, then I repeated the operation with the other.

‘Hmmm, she told us to fly. Maybe.... Maybe that’s what We should do?’

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a start. I spread my big beautiful wings and with a single powerful flap I launched myself in the air, quickly gaining altitude with each beat, until the ground was a distant brownish surface below me.

As I’ve already said, memories become blurred at that point. While I soared in the sky, I lost my perception of time, along with the details of most of the things that I saw. Maybe it’s for the best. The landscape under me changed continuously, but wherever I looked I could see that the devastation caused by the war remained a constant element. However, if there’s a thing that I know for certain is that while I was flying I felt… at peace. That’s the closest way I could describe that feeling. The wasteland and all its problems and dangers seemed so distant up there in the sky, with the wind as my only companion.

I’m not sure how long I kept flying while in that state of trance, but things changed when, while I was flying over the outskirts of the ruins of a small town, my eyes caught movement in one of the streets. Driven by my curiosity, I dropped altitude to get a closer look.

I didn’t like what I saw. Not even a bit.

An orange filly, barely old enough to have a cutie mark, was running through the debris filled street, chased by two older ponies. They were dirty, covered in garbage that could barely be classified as clothes, even less so as armor, and were armed with rusty blades. While they chased the filly, they laughed like lunatics and screamed all kind of indecent and horrible things they would do once they had caught her.

Even if I wasn’t close enough to smell the stench of their unwashed bodies or see their crazed wicked eyes, I knew what they were.

‘Raiders.’ Monsters wearing the hides of ponies. The Goddess made a point to kill that scum whenever it was possible.

The filly stumbled into a piece of brick and fell with a panicked yelp. The raiders laughed in glee, knowing that their prey could not escape.

Something snapped inside me. I dove like a bomb and landed between the filly and those two bloodthirsty degenerates so violently that the asphalt cracked under my hooves. The raiders had barely the time to widen their eyes in surprise before their faces hit my powerful energy shield at full speed. They both fell screaming in pain onto the ground with their broken muzzles covered in blood, but I gave them no time to recover. My magic enveloped them in a green aura and I threw them against the closest building. I heard a sickening sound of broken bones, but I still kept slamming them against the concrete wall, again and again and again, until the wall was covered with their blood and gore. Finally satisfied, I dropped the broken corpses of the raiders and turned my attention to the filly. She had scratched her forelegs a bit when she fell tripping over, but beside that she seemed to be fine. Yay! I felt proud of myself.

‘Surely she will thank us for saving her. *Gasp* Maybe she will even ask us to be her friend!’

But then why did she keep darting her terrified gaze between me and the bloody remains of the raiders?

I took a step forward and she took a step back. My smile faltered. Maybe it was the first time she saw a member of my kind up close?

‘Have no fear, little one,’ I said telepathically. Her eyes widened even more as she realized that she was hearing my voice inside her mind. ‘They cannot harm you anymo-’

“Monster!” she screamed and ran away.

‘Nay, child! Wait! We mean you no harm!’

Despite my words she kept running as if her tail was ablaze and in a matter of seconds she was gone.

‘... We just wanted somepony to speak with,’ I thought sadly. Now that I could no longer hear my sisters, I was starting to feel the effects of solitude. My ears dropped and I looked at my reflection in a muddy puddle in front of me. I saw a mare with red eyes, a green coat and even greener mane, and a long slender horn. Nothing out of place, just my ordinary look. Then why had she called me a monster?

The Goddess always said that ponies are naturally diffident of what they couldn’t understand and thus they were envious and afraid of our powers. We had always believed her, after all she was the Goddess, and the Goddess was always right.

… but she had also said that nothing could harm her. And now she was dead. Could it be that she was wrong also about other things?

What if we really were monsters?

Glancing one last time the way the filly had gone, I took air again. I wasn’t destined to go far.

I was flying above the remains of what must have been an industrial district, when I heard a sound similar to an angry roar, getting louder and closer with each passing moment. I looked down in direction of the sound and my eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. ‘Fuck.’

I still don’t know how I was able to dodge the rocket, all I know is that its trail passed close enough to my body to scorch my flank. The rocket kept flying for several seconds before finally exploding a couple hundred meters behind me. My gaze followed the smoke trail and soon spotted a couple of hulking figures encased in grey power armor with machine guns mounted on heavy combat saddles.

‘Steel Rangers,’ I realized while they aimed the barrels of their weapons at me and unleashed a deadly salvo of bullets. I took a sharp turn and started performing a series of complicated air maneuvers, but the Rangers were unfazed by my skills and kept firing their heavy guns in short bursts, forcing me to use every trick I knew to change continuously direction and dodge the bullets.

Wait, both those ‘bucket heads’ were armed with machine guns. Then who had fired the rocket?

WOOOSH!

The answer came a few moments later when their friend reached the top of a loading platform and again fired his rocket launcher. Too late I realized that his pals had not actually tried to hit me but rather force me to follow a predictable path.

‘Too late and too close to dodge,’ I thought in panic while the rocket flew toward me. Without other options, I hastily cast my energy shield, hoping it would hold.

It didn’t. Flying non-stop for days without eating or assorbing radiation had took its toll on my body and my ability to use magic.

The energy barrier shattered like glass when the missile exploded on its smooth green surface, and I was thrown in the air like a leaf in the wind by the shockwave. Then gravity grabbed me and started mercilessly pulling me toward the ground. I tried to stabilize myself, but the moment I widened my wings I felt a sharp acute pain coming from my left wing. I glanced at my feathery limb and realized with horror that it was broken.

The impact came sooner than expected, only it wasn’t against the hard unforgiving ground.

Instead, my back crashed against the hard unforgiving corrugated metal of the roof of an industrial shed.

The pain had barely reached my brain when the two century old roof collapsed under my body and once again I found myself at the complete mercy of gravity. I distractedly felt the irregular, jagged edges of the hole in the roof clawing at my body as I fell through the hole, but that sensation was quickly shoved aside when a few seconds later I crashed against another cold metal surface. This one seemed to be thicker and sturdier than the roof of the warehouse, but it still bent and deformed under my weight with a groan of protest.

‘I’m not fat. It’s just the kinetic energy from the fall,’ I weakly thought while every single nerve of my body decided to tell me that I was in agony.

I wanted to scream, there wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hurt, but the only sound that left my lips was a weak moan. The explosion and the fall had turned my body into a really bad shape. I was covered in bleeding cuts, several ribs were broken, and both my wings now dangled limply at my sides. Oddly enough I could feel no pain from my legs, but my relief quickly vanished when I realized that it was simply because I couldn’t feel my legs at all. Each breath I took was like a stab in the chest and my mouth and nose were filled with blood. I tried to cough out some of the blood, but a new twinge of pain, stronger than the previous ones, told me that one of my shattered ribs had probably pierced a lung.

‘So that's how it ends,’ I thought lethargically, directing my blurred gaze at the the hole in the roof above me. The sky was so grey and sad. A far cry from the bright azure I had seen thanks to the explosion of the megaspell. ‘It’s a pity. I would have liked to see the sky one last time,’ I thought while a lone tear fell down my cheek. I was strangely detached by the fact that I was dying, but I guess that’s a side effect of massive blood loss.

And then, it happened. A memory came back to my mind. I’m not even sure if it was mine or if it belonged to another unicorn that had joined Unity, but I didn’t care. The memory showed a beautiful blue sky completely bare of clouds, with the sun shining bright above a huge lush forest. The landscape in the memory was so beautiful yet so alien at the same time, completely different from the barren wasteland permanently shadowed by the clouds I was used to seeing.

The memory was so vivid that I could feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on my body. Slowly and painfully, the corners of my bloody lips curled upward to form what I was sure was my last smile.

I was dying, but at least I was happy.

My eyes finally closed and the world went dark.