Original, unaltered chapter.

There are many things the enemies of Tsar are afraid of.

They’re afraid of being discovered. They’re afraid of war. They’re afraid of death, suffering, and defeat. But there’s nothing they fear more than the wrath of the Crimson Tide.

* * *

I felt cold. Very cold. I opened my eyes and looked around unsurely. It was bright day, but everything around was terribly grey. A navy blue spot appeared in front of me. I rubbed my eyes with my hooves and saw Coldbrew, sitting nearby and poking the fireplace with a stick. He waved his good wing at it to light the fire again.

“Good morning, Sparkplug. It’s cold, huh?” he said gently and went back to digging in the fire.

I stood up, wrapping myself in our sleeping bag and trembling. Of course… We were outside. I still couldn't believe that. I could hear some strange mix of sounds. Only after a while my senses awoke and I could understand the words of the song coming from Coldbrew’s PipColt. It was sung by some stallion with a chorus of mares murmuring in the background, almost a capella.

...the snappiest, the folks the happiest

I started to cry. Everything that happened yesterday came back to me in the morning. No more breakfasts in the canteen, no more working with terminals every day… No child. I wanted one so much. I wanted to create a home for it; a family just like mine, before my parents died. I wanted Coldbrew to be a proud dad. We’d have a colt and his first word would be “daddy”. I planned to give him some cute name that’d fit his appearance and define him. I realised he would never exist. He wouldn’t get a small Stable Suit for younglings or his own PipColt when he grows up. That was so sad.

Coldbrew walked to me and lay at my side, hugging my sleeping bag-wrapped self with his wing. Now I was weeping loudly. I embraced him firmly and stained the dark blue fur on his chest with my tears. We stayed like that for long, until the sun finally pierced through the clouds on the far east, or maybe north. Soon, it hid behind the clouds again, though. I couldn’t understand why there were so many grey clouds over the horizon while only few of them were here, mostly white. Prior to the war, pegasi were managing the weather, but now? The weather went wild. Generally, everything was wrong.

In the Stable, we were taught that the world outside was over and that the radiation level was so big that for the next thousand years no one would be able to live there.

“Coldbrew… Why is everything wrong?” I asked him when I finally calmed down and ran out of tears.

He wiped my snouted and licked my tears. He had so beautiful, sad almond eyes. He ruffled my mane with his nose and got up to put two open cans of corn on our improvised oven.

“Because it’s all lies, Sparkplug,” he said after a while with a heavy sigh, mixing the contents of the cans slowly. He looked calmer than yesterday, as if he came to terms with everything. “I’ve read the logs Buckfare had stolen from the Doctor’s terminal… Everything we were told is lies. Safe Lie wasn’t born in Stable 69, Sparkplug. She comes from here… From the Wasteland.”

I needed a while to realise what he’s just said. He lowered the volume of his PipColt radio and looked at me.

“What do you mean from the Wasteland?”

“Normally. She was born here, in the Wasteland, in a place she referred to in her notes as the Republic of Germaneigh.” He gave a long sigh and poked the fire with a stick. “The Overmare sends one of her confidants to the surface to trade and get whatever the Stable needs. According to what Safe Life wrote, her father was a doctor, a heart surgeon who came from this whole Republic. Our Stable just needed a cardio surgeon; apparently somepony important had a heart problem. Might Will traded the chance to stay with his daughter in the Stable for his services.”

Doctor Safe Life hadn’t been born in the Stable, then. But she wasn’t an old mare either, so it couldn’t have taken place too long ago; maybe a few years before I was born. That’d explain many things. For starters, where did she get that book about surviving in the Wasteland.

Cold seemed very upset when talking about what he’d read in the personal files stolen from the doctor, but it seemed that he’d came to terms with those data.

Why weren’t we told about that? Yeah, probably not to stir panic… or hope for living outside. It was probably a dream of every pony locked in the Stable. I had to admit that the dream immediately faded in contrast to what we saw outside with Coldbrew.

“So… What are we gonna do now, Coldbrew?”

“Now? Now we’ll eat. And after that, we’ll take a look at the neighbourhood. The Guide… says to always check both the new places and the old ones we come back to. Just to make sure one doesn’t find something they can trade or consume themselves, like meds, food…” He smiled warmly, trusting the book.

“But… The food would spoil after two hundred years… Unless we find something local.”

I looked around. Grey stone blocks and dead trees in the place called the Cemetery didn’t look promising. Generally, the whole place looked like those trees. Dead.

“Actually, that’s not a problem. Of course, a lot of the food is now completely rotten, but as far as I remember we used to have canned food that old back in the Stable. I’ve once asked Mr. Rightdate why we’re given so old food and he told me that shortly before the end of the war, Ministry of Arcane Sciences started to prepare ponies for every possibility, which also included the preservation of the food.”

Oh, how I hated him scrunch his nose like that while being a smartass.

“The packages of newly-produced food, as well as the stocks of the government and Stable-Tec were enchanted so they’d last long enough in case they were needed. That’s what I recall,” he explained calmly and wisely.

His knowledge was really deep and I always wondered why he’d preferred to become a politician rather than a teacher or an instructor. We ate in peace, feeling warmed up by first the food and then the sun that managed to pierce the clouds north from us.

“The weather is weird. The sky on the east and north is almost completely overcast, but here it’s only a few clouds. In the photos and movies the sky is usually blue and almost clear,” he wondered, chewing the food at the same time.

I preferred not to look at the sky so much. It was like an exceptionally tall ceiling, but I had an impression that I’d suddenly get off the ground and fall into it like it was water. It was fine when I was looking at the horizon, but as soon as I raised my head a bit higher I felt that sucking in my stomach and had to turn my gaze somewhere else.

We finished eating, packed our provisional camp and started to look around the cemetery. There weren’t many things to take from there. There were remains of clothes and metal bits on the skeletons of some ponies, like in case of Officer Pain. I found a metal hip flask; it was open so the whole alcohol from it vapourised over the years. I hid it in my bag and was satisfied to see that the sorting spell of my PipColt worked, registering the new item in them.

Coldbrew either had more luck or just grabbed whatever he found, since his bags looked stuffed. For a moment I thought that he took too much and was overloaded, but it turned out he could walk quite well.

“Now we have to go to the place where we’ve seen those lights. The Guide… says that trade is the best way of surviving in the Wasteland. The lights mean that the pony settlements do exist and maybe we’ll be able to trade with the ponies from there.”

* * *

We walked and walked, but the town didn’t seem to get any closer at all. The music from Coldbrew’s PipColt was playing pleasantly entertaining us on the long way. I was just about to ask where he’d gotten those songs from—I’ve never heard them before—when a voice of some unknown stallion flown from the speaker.

“Good mooooooorning Wasteland! How did you sleep? I didn’t sleep well. Why didn’t I? Well, how to sleep well with so much evil around? I’m telling you, the recent deeds of Crimson Tide made a bloody mark on the whole coast. Apparently the Dogs are looking for a hideout to lay low for the winter. No wonder, they do that every year since they besieged Stalliongrad. But I’m telling you, we have to stand against them. If you are sick of ponies, don’t let them steal your stock and murder your relatives.”

His voice was firm, clear and trained, as if he got used to making public speeches. He had a strange accent, very elegant, slightly snobbish, but not arrogant. I stopped in my tracks, pulling Coldbrew’s PipColt to my eyes to take a look. I couldn’t believe the display. Someone was broadcasting over the radio channels. The RDS information told me that the station was called Free Stalliongrad Radio and that it was Monday, 11:12 AM. The bit about month and year was garbled.

The voice from the PipColt continued the monologue. “In other bad, but slightly less upsetting news, our entertainment offer this week will also experience technical difficulties. Due to our terminals malfunctioning, we have to find a way to record the new material for you, dear listeners. Most definitely, today at noon you can listen to the rerun of the last week’s ‘Incredible Adventures of Daring Do’ and at 3 PM we invite you to listen to ‘Wasteland Cuisine’. Today, the exclusive recipe for a gecko salad by the chef Whitesabre. Don’t forget to join us for the daily Boomstick Overview with Private Rainheart right after Whitesabre’s program. I won’t forget about our talks about the Old World and a new good-night story for the younger Wasteland dwellers. Remember, you listen to the Free Stalliongrad Radio. Hard times were never so fun before. And now, some music – I present you Sunset Sky and her ‘If I Were a Colt’. Have you ever wondered how is it to be a stallion?”

After a while his voice was cut off, as if the broadcast ended, but then a melody flown from the speaker. RDS informed us in a bit glitchy way about the title of the song. Coldbrew only gave me a warm smile and kissed my forehead.

“I’ve been listening a bit of his audition in the morning, darling. He sounds like a reasonable stallion and has a lot of positive vibrations. He’s broadcasting from a place called Stalliongrad and encourages the listeners to visit the Steel Square there. I think that after we reach the town with the lights and assess our situation and chances, we should go just there. Apparently they always need ponies to work and NPR pays well.”

“NPR?” I asked, a bit dumbfounded.

“NPR. New Prance Republic. Too bad he didn’t tell much about it, except that they probably don’t come from here and that they fight with this whole Crimson Tide. He mostly talked about them in superlatives.”

I thought that I’d have to pay more attention to that radio if Coldbrew had such a good opinion on it. I had to admit myself that the speaker’s words sounded rational and that he had a nice voice. In fact… Another name and information: New Prance Republic. Probably weeks will pass before I get used to discovering the world again. I hope there are ponies in the place we’re going to.

* * *

I thought finding an even (as even as two hundred years of disrepair allowed), paved road was an unbelievable thing, but it couldn’t compare to what we saw after about an hour of walking: someone was walking towards us. Two someones, even. They were walking slowly, but it seemed that they’d seen us from the distance. I could see that the smaller silhouette was leaning against a bigger one, holding their hoof by their muzzle. Soon, however, they continued to pace to us.

When they came close enough to see more details in the sunlight, it turned out that only one of them was a pony; and an earth pony to boot. The other creature looked like cows from picture books for younglings, but it seemed more like a nightmarish version of meek bovines drawn for foals’ entertainment. It had large, swollen udders and a sun-bleached coat that looked like it had been eaten or simply fell off in some places. The most unimaginable thing, though, was that it had two heads. One of them was looking at us, seemingly intelligent, while the other was throwing hungry glances around. The cow-strosity was wearing a large thing resembling saddlebags, but full of large pockets, with the bulk of its mass perched on the creature’s back.

The pony had grass-coloured coat, with a blond mane. He was incredibly dirty, wearing the weirdest outfit I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a cap on his head that used to be white but now it had a colour of greasy paper put under a pizza. He was also wearing clothes that seemed to be sewn together out of an old leather jacket and a bleached brown sweater full of holes. There were saddlebags on his back, with some long firearm hanging from there. He had a scarf around his neck, dangling together with a telescope on a leather belt. I thought that he probably used it to look at us from afar.

He gave us a conspicuous look, his gaze wandering. First he looked at our holsters, but since they were closed, he calmed down a bit. Then he gave my body a stare pretty far from conspicuousness, which made me cling to Coldbrew’s side.

“Hello! I’m Piggybank!” he said suddenly, causing me to stiffen. Coldbrew also looked like he was about to have a heart attack. “What brings two lonely ponies to The Long Seventeen? No Brahmins and no bodyguards, so you probably aren’t from any caravan…” He paused and looked at us. Guess he got interested by our suits as he started to think. “You’re from the Stable, right? The Sixty-Nine?”

He knew about the Stable! How did he knew? It was well-hidden! We were kicked out of it, but not via the main entrance. Coldbrew clenched his muscles and looked at him. I could see his jaw muscles stiffening when he gritted his teeth. That moment felt like minutes, although it probably didn’t take longer than a second.

“Umm… How do you know about this?” Coldbrew asked, calming down.

The earth pony looked at Coldbrew’s wing, still sticking it the plaster cover. “Oh, I’m older than I look.” He bared his teeth, revealing brown stumps of old dental caps. They were hideous. Did he ever hear about oral hygiene? I hid behind Coldbrew and Piggybank laughed loudly.

“No need to be scared, lady. I know you’re from Sixty-Nine from your outfits and you two as well. You’re healthy, nice, generally unsoiled, wearing blue Stable-Tec suits with huge, yellow 69 on each side. Hard to mistake you for someone else.”

I smacked myself in the forehead. Of course our suits were a dead giveaway!

“Especially since a few years ago, me daddy helped one doc and his foal to find your Stable.”

He was talkative. Very talkative. But at least we learned that the ponies in the Wasteland are looking for the Stable. And that his father helped doctor Safe Life to get into the shelter.

“Yeah, we’re from there. Could you help us? Is it worth it to go to that place over there? We’ve seen the lights there at night,” Coldbrew asked.

He seemed to have calmed down a bit. Piggybank appeared to know lot and his smile was bright and honest. He reached to his saddlebags and produced some old roadmap. Well… If I recall correctly, those didn’t show all the roads, but they greatly helped the earth ponies and unicorns using self-powered vehicles – the ground-based version of the pegasi’s air carriages.

Piggybank opened the map, which took a lot of space on the crushed asphalt, and started to circle his hoof over it. The whole map was marked with flamboyantly-coloured sharpies with various notes and symbols, probably drawn by Piggybank himself. Finally, his hoof stopped over a long, black line hidden between the others. This one went across about half of the map.

“This here is a road we’re on. The Long Seventeen. Used to be one of main cargo routes, but there are other ones too. Now… Well, in recent years it’s rather decrepit and hardly anyone goes there. Mostly the Bandits and the Invaders; recently a lot of the Tide too,” he explained, pointing at the place where we were. I recognised it from the Cemetery marked nearby in pre-war print rather than the merchant’s notes.

“The Tide? You mean, Crimson Tide?” I asked, leaning shyly from behind Coldbrew. The earth pony smirked.

“I was just thinking you wouldn’t know. Crimson Tide is a bunch of large, intelligent dogs from a country way beyond the Great Emptiness, a great wasteland, even more wasted than what you see here.” He waved his hoof as if he wanted to show us the whole world. “There’s literally nothing in there. The dogs and their wolf chiefs managed to get across this emptiness and they turned their eyes on Stalliongrad. When you see an enormous dog, you’d better avoid it. The smaller, pony-sized too. Not a good bone in them, they’re smart, vicious, and they don’t give a damn about what the others feel. Easy to recognise them, they always wear something red.”

Coldbrew studied the map carefully for a long time, before he finally patted it with his hoof, pointing at the green spot labelled with an arrow and the name “Wellsprings”.

“How far is that Wellsprings? Can you tell us something about it, Piggybank?” he asked the merchant, who looked at him askew. He didn’t like something.

“Not far. At a calm pace, about half of a day. Shorter if you gallop, but it ain’t a good idea. The air is cold and if you get sweaty, you may freeze and get sick. Not a good idea in the Wasteland in winter…”

* * *

We left Piggybank not long later. He gave us a few pieces of information about the neighbourhood, shared a few useful details (I couldn’t wrap my head around using bottle caps and can tabs as money!), and warned us of the wild creatures roaming in this area. The tales of large, mutated scorpions, bears, and rats seemed a bit tall, but it was better to trust those warnings.

The earth around was weird. It was mostly dirt or yellow-tinted lifeless soil, although we could see some small bushes and twisted plants from time to time; despite the sick yellow tint, they seemed to grow and flourish in these conditions.

Some two hours after we left the merchant, we stumbled upon the ruins of a small town. Strange that no one lived there, as many houses seemed to be in a good shape. My PipColt beeped and the map informed us that we were in Cedar Knoll.

We looked around the area. The town was small, just ten houses. I’d call it a village, but we couldn’t see any silos, barns, fences, anything. All that was there was a small, decaying playground, a large building labelled “Hotel” but with its name sun-bleached beyond comprehension, and a big store with a petrol station.

The station was the first thing that interested us. We checked our Eyes-Forward Sparkle in search of other ponies or animals. When it revealed that the neighbourhood was deserted, we slowly went towards the building adorned with a large sign reading “Oilfarm”.

In the front, there were battered pumps. I tried to remember what they were for… Self-propelling vehicles used to stop here… But why? What was pumped into them? I grabbed the rotting hose with my magic and looked at the controls. The gauge wasn’t zeroed and the numbers still showed the price to pay. I could only imagine someone who ran away from certain doom, forgetting to pay or simply stole the contents when everything started to fall apart. Upsetting.

I was absolutely surprised when after pushing the trigger at the end of the hose, a stream of some liquid shot out of it and nearly splatted on me. I squealed, dropping the hose. Coldbrew ran to me immediately, looking at my deed.

“Honey…”

“WHAT?!” I shouted, scared and unnerved. His ears drooped for a moment, but then a smirk adorned his face.

“You’re so great you can make even a pump shoot…” He laughed loudly lowering his head. Dick jokes… Okay, I found it funny too. We laughed together, ending it with a kiss. Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all? As long as there’s place for laughter in life, it’s worth living.

When we calmed down, we entered the building. It wasn’t that big. From the front, it had an exceptionally dirty glass wall. On the right, there was a big, open garage with remains of a small self-propelled vehicle inside. Coldbrew took the gun out of the holster and searched the garage holding it in his teeth. I levitated my weapon and sneaked to the main entrance. The door was slightly ajar; I could only see the darkness inside, but my EFS didn’t show anything but Cold’s blue line. I turned on the torch in my PipColt and slowly walked into the dim interior of the petrol station.

It wasn’t much. It seemed that many before us already visited this place and took everything that wasn’t attached to the floor. The shelves were almost empty; the floor was littered with empty cans and bottles of alcohol and other drinks such as Sparkle Cola. To my surprise I noticed that there were some untouched bottles with it left. Looking around to see if no one was watching, I started to pack them into my saddlebags. I was packing the fifth when…

“Hey, what do you have there?”

I jumped, startled, and aimed my gun at the source of the voice, the bottle of Sparkle Cola breaking on the ground. Hearing that sound, I squeezed the trigger with my magic and… I only heard a click of the trigger.

Coldbrew looked at me, scared, but he relaxed after a while. He put his hoof on his chest, breathing heavily. I dropped the gun and started to cry. I almost shot my love.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t want to!” I cried loudly, sitting on the ground and covering my eyes with my hooves. The spilt, sticky drink was barely important now, even if it glued to the fur on my bum. “I got scared!”

After a while he walked to me unsurely and cautiously took my gun. He spun it in his mouth and gave it to me. “You’ww know bettew,” he lisped through the handle. “And tuwn the safety off next time.”

My ears low, I took the gun from him and hid it in the holster. I was afraid of it now, but his firmness was calming me down. He didn’t take my gun from me, giving me a second chance even if I failed completely. Maybe he loved me, or maybe he simply believed in me?

* * *

Colbrew was more quiet and grumpy afterwards, but he didn’t let me feel that he was mad at me in any other way. We gathered loads of bottlecaps from the station’s premises and we were about to go and check the houses. We were standing on the main street leading to the centre of the settlement, when we heard something like rustling or scraping. Our ears perked up; we also checked our EFS radars. There was Cold’s blue line there, but there was another one next to it. We followed it and saw this.

It was slim and covered in bleached fur. One of its eyes was covered with a red sash, wrapped around its head in such a way that it kept its rather long ears permanently perked up. It has a large, black nose, and a pair of black eyes, staring back at us. Meanwhile, it was sniffing the ground, drooling. We couldn’t see the rest of its body, as it was behind the building. Only after a while we realised how big it must’ve been.

“It’s easy to recognise them, they always wear something red.”

“Sparkplug, get back and go to the road… I’ll cover you. Then gallop to Wellsprings. I’ll be right behind you,” Coldbrew muttered through gritted teeth, looking around and turning to his EFS from time to time. “Now!”

I ran.

* * *

We were running as fast as we could. At first we thought the dog wasn’t chasing us, but not even a ten minutes later, it followed us down the trail, together with two others; one of them was incredibly large, with quite pronounced muscles, while the other one looked like the first one we’d seen back in Cedar Knoll, but it was grey, with longer snout and somewhat weird eyes. This one was even stranger, as it wore some clothes with a red sash around his chest. They were shouting something in an unknown canine language, barking loudly while were ran until we were almost out of breath. We weren’t used to such running, but it seemed like the fear kept making our aching legs move.

Soon, we drifted off on uneven terrain, the road turning between some cliffs and spiralling somewhere below. The marker showing an approximate location of Wellsprings indicated that we’d have to go around, as running straight could end up in running across an even rougher terrain. And the dogs seemed not to get tired while getting closer.

“Leave us alone! We didn’t do anything to you!” I shouted behind me, risking running out of breath. I was sick and afraid of them. “We just want to go away!”

I heard a guttural, pronounced cry. I’ve never heard such a voice before. Still running, Coldbrew and I looked at each other.

“Freeze! Or I’ll shoot!”

Of course we didn’t stop, even though the command sounded like it was yelled by security forces. We heard a shot and, with a puff of dust something made a hole in the cobblestone between us. For a moment we stood still and looked behind us. The grey dog in a uniform stood on its hind legs, holding a long weapon I recognised as a rifle in his paws. He was aiming at us while two other dogs ran towards us.

We didn’t stood there for long, immediately rushing forward in panic, finding new strength to run for our lives. We ran down the winding road, zig-zagging down the enormous rock shelf almost like stairs. The twisted metal barriers put there for vehicles’ safety seemed too tall too jump over it safely, especially with Coldbrew’s injured wing, so we kept following the road, to our peril.

The clothed dog with a rifle stood atop the hill, firing single shots at us. He either wasn’t a very good shot, or he had trouble aiming at us while we were running, as the bullets were whistling past us. On the third turn, the two other dogs jumped at us. The smaller one definitely overshot, jumping above me and hitting the metal barrier with his head, staggering away. And then, I heard Cold’s scream.

The slower and larger dog nailed him to the floor with his body, squashing his injured wing. I heard the plaster crack (I hoped it was just the plaster) and screamed loudly in fear, standing still. I heard barking and rattling of the weapon. The grey wolf in clothes also jumped above the cliff and ran down the road much faster than we did.

“Run, Sparkplug! Run! I’ll make it!” Coldbrew shouted from under the dog, tears of pain welling in his wide eyes. “RUN!”

I was afraid. I was so afraid. So I did what he told, crying and not paying attention to any obstacles. I only knew the direction. To Wellsprings. Towards ponieś. Down there, I could see the faint outline of the town.

* * *

The grey dog didn’t give up. His two companions weren’t after me anymore, but he hung his rifle on his back and followed me, hardly exhausted. I was out of energy; my legs and lungs were burning as if someone pierced them with red hot nails; I couldn’t see anything through tears and my heart almost broke in half.

He got me on one of the turns when I couldn’t see him, trying to catch a breath. He charged at me, hitting my snout causing my vision to blur. I hit a wrecked vehicle and he was already on my back. I regained consciousness right in time to cover myself with my hooves, not letting him land on the top of me. I don’t know what he wanted, but he hit me again; this time, he hit my PipColt, causing something in his arm to crunch. In panic, I used my magic and levitated my gun, shaking and struggling against a much stronger dog. I turned off the safety and put the gun against his head.

He jumped back, letting me go and at the very moment I heard a shout from the cliff above me.

“Use the SATS!”

The wolf and I raised our heads and followed the voice from nowhere until we saw a mare. She was tall, wearing a trench coat and an old fedora. Her snout and neck were covered in bandages. Guided by instinct, I aimed the gun at the dog, turning on the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell. The world stood still, or rather skid to a crawl. The wolf froze in a weird position, staring at me and reaching for the rifle on his back.

An official message flashed before my eyes – the license agreement I was (allegedly) making with Barn Industries company. What Barn Industries? Who cares?! I just wanted to get out of there right now! The time slowed down, yet I was still as scared as before. I clicked on the confirmation and agreement and my sight seemed to lock on the dog.

The matrix of the spell let me focus on the vital points of the creature referred to by EFS as “Wolf Scout”, as well as predicted damage I could do with my gun. I didn’t know how, but the program calculated that I needed four headshots. It allowed me to add five of them to the queue so I did just that and released the spell.

I heard the shots of two guns and a rifle and the Mysterious Mare quickly disappeared behind the edge of the cliff.

Author's Note

Footnote: Next Level

New Perk: Mysterious Mare - from time to time you may be visited by a mysterious mare who will give you a helping hoof… With deadly effects.

Survival- 5% increase in skill

Ad Autorem:

I would like to thank KKat for creating this wonderful universe. I would also want to thank Samey90 for his wonderful work on retranslating the first two chapters for you guys and that he keeps working on more translations for you! Hope you guys like the content that's in store for you!