S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Discordant Emissions

After a further half hour of walking we had reached Garbage, and had already hidden from a few bandit patrols. My leg had started to hurt again which slowed our progress; the worst part was that I wouldn’t be able to find a medic anywhere near here that would be willing to heal me because this was bandit territory. The Garbage, as its namesake suggests, was a garbage dump before the incident, now it was a place of large hills of trash, all of which was considerably irradiated and usually had whirligigs or other various anomalies at their peaks along with high levels of irradiation. It was awfully fitting that the trash of the ponies in The Zone had taken up base here and called it home; bandits roamed free here with little threat from us stalkers as we knew to stay away from it due to it being abnormally hostile towards us in the fact that there were only bandits here to shoot at you if you needed help in a life threatening situation or were in need of shelter or a trader to buy food and drink from. Speaking of bandits, Night had spotted a patrol that was coming our way, it looked bad, there wasn’t much in the way of cover here, the low ditch we were hiding in would be useless if they came within even just a few meters of us. We silently hoped for something to catch the eye of the bandits as they approached us, surely they were about to see us.

“What’s that” I heard one of the bandits say, thinking he had spotted us I prepared to fight waves of bandits as more will surely come at the sound of gunfire, “Bloody birds, anyone would think they follow ponies in case they drop dead and can get a free feed.”

“Ignore them, they seem normal at the moment, no sign of an emission it seems, we gotta find the source of those gunshots earlier, personally I suspect it was some new guys from The Reapers being stupid but the lieutenant wants us to check it out anyways” shouted the bandit second in line, he seemed like he might be the leader of this patrol to be shouting at one of the other bandits, looking over his shoulder at the crows and the bandit that was still watching the birds above them.

“You spoke too soon” the first bandit said pointing at the sky.

“Something is coming” whispered Swift; looking at the sky where the bandit was pointing; the murder of crows started to fly rather erratically, this wasn’t a good sign, either a large flying mutant was approaching or an emission was about to occur, and in Garbage, there weren’t any buildings you could safely hide in as a stalker in the event of either, and if we had to shoot at a mutant it would attract unwanted attention from any bandit patrols in the area not just the one in front of us.

“Shit, okay everypony we’re heading back to base, looks like an emission is about to start” shouted the bandit at the head of the patrol “that means double time Feather Wipe, you get caught in the emission don’t expect anyone to come to help you” was the audible part of the berating the bandit who was watching the crows received as the patrol rounded the corner of a trash pile and the sound of their voices and movement faded, it seemed this pony was the leader and the second in line was probably the second in command I guess.

“We don’t have any shelter for an emission what are we supposed to do?” said Coach; a thunderstorm started to roll in, confirming that it was an emission that was coming rather than a mutant, the signs of an emission usually involve a sudden change of weather to a thunderstorm, and as the emission got closer to erupting, the light changed colour to a kind of red as well as the wildlife in The Zone scattering to find cover from the emission.

“Just run, we might be able to find a shed or something over to the right here” I said getting out of the ditch we used as cover before stumbling and ending up on the ground writhing in pain as I realised running was out of the question because of my leg.

“Help, please, anypony!” A distressed voice shouted a little to our front and right.

“Let’s see what it is and how we can help if we can” I said lifting my rifle out of the war reign, in case it was a bandit that needed dealing with before moving towards the sound of the voice shouting the same three words. I stopped at a pile of garbage, which I guessed the owner of the voice was on the other side of, slowly peeking around the corner I saw a mint coloured unicorn mare, trying to drag a rather large brown pegasus stallion, the stallion was severely wounded and didn’t seem to be conscious.

“Stalker or bandit?” I asked from around the corner, startling the mare.

“Neither, we’re loners” She replied looking around for where I was hiding, she didn’t have a gun to raise, how odd for someone in The Zone.

“We’re stalkers not bandits, what do you need help with?” I said; walking around the corner, Night, Coach and Swift following me lowering our guns as the mare dropped to the ground in fear.

“Thank Celestia, I need help moving my brother back to our shelter so I can heal him, but I don’t have enough strength to move him, or enough time to heal him here and now before the emission hits” she said franticly yet somehow her voice didn’t rise over anything more than a whisper. As she was pacing explaining her situation I noticed her cutie mark was a red cross, which probably meant she was a medic that could heal my leg, also the mention of a shelter meant that we had somewhere to wait out the emission and hide from the bandits in the area.

“We will help you, but we need to take shelter during the emission, can we wait it out with you?” I asked as Coach took Swift with him to get her to help him lift the wounded pegasus onto his back so he could carry him to the shelter.

“But of course, we have plenty of room, follow me if that’s okay with you” said the unicorn mare, cantering away, leaving us to follow her.

The light canter didn’t do the pain in my leg any good, it was amazing how much pain a pony can endure when its necessary for survival, but we made it with just a few seconds to spare, as once we had closed the door and put the unicorn’s brother on her patient bed did the telltale rumble of an emission hitting come, along with the sound of bodies hitting the ground as some birds seem not to care for emissions and stay outside when they occur. The unicorn went to her brothers side, her magic taking hold of his body as she used her healing spell on him, probably just in time, he really was seriously injured, his body was covered in blood as it seemed he had been shot no less than ten times.

“Oh crap, a pseudowolf!” Swift yelled, trying to get her gun ready to fire as the pseudowolf walked into the room from a connecting room near the unicorn mare, not trusting that she’d be able to stab the right one once it used its ability to create clones of itself. Pseudowolves were the effect of nuclear and magical radiation on the timber wolves in the Everfree Forest, they were effective hunters and used psychic abilities to make copies of itself that weren’t made of anything solid, but in the time it takes a stalker or bandit to decide which one to shoot it’s usually closed the distance and tearing into them.

“Wait, stop don’t shoot him” shouted the unicorn mare, turning away from her brother for a moment, “He’s our pet”

“You have a pet pseudowolf? How do you tame a pseudowolf?” Swift calmed down and sure enough the pseudowolf sat by the pegasus stallion’s side as he was being healed.

“Don’t know to be truthful” replied the unicorn focusing on her magic, from the look of her brothers condition, he would be fully healed in the next couple of minutes, “we found him when he was only a puppy, it seemed his mother had been shot by someone when they went past. The poor thing was nearly starving to death, laying by his mothers long dead body, we brought him back here and got him fed up, ever since he’s been our pet, and a member of our family. His name is Kyne.” By the time she had finished her story she stopped her spell, and her brother stirred as he came back to consciousness. “Don’t get up Stone, you’ve lost too much blood to be moving around at the moment, you need to rest for the next couple of days, I don’t have any more blood bags here right now, but I’ll be taking Kyne and raiding the bandit camp’s medical office tonight to grab some more” said the mare softly to her brother as he stirred and tried to get out of bed.

“You sure you can handle it on your own?” said the pegasus to his sister, from what she had said I assumed his name was Stone.

“Of course I can, as long as I have Kyne with me” replied the mare before remembering we were standing on the other side of the small room “oh sorry, I forgot you four were standing there, now that I don’t need to concentrate on my magic, my name is Sweet Tree and this is my brother Stone Wall. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, I can’t thank you enough for helping me get my brother back here so I could heal him.”

“I wondered how I ended up here, last I remember was the gun fight with the bandit squad out near one of the trash piles. I am in your debt for saving my life and my sister’s as she would have stayed with me if the emission hit before she could get me here” said Stone Wall, looking over at us.

“No problem, anything to help a fellow stalker” I said “the only thing I could ask for from you is for your sister to heal my leg; I’d be willing to pay for your services as a medic.”

“I’d never charge a pony for healing them, besides the only pony I’ve ever healed has been my brother except for one time where I healed a bandit my brother had shot, only for him to be shot again when he tried to kill us, and another time that I don’t want to mention. So what type of injury do you have to your leg?” she asked, walking over to inspect the injury it seemed she had already noticed.

“It was a gunshot wound, the only treatment its had has been that it was sewn up after I stopped the bleeding with a flame that Swift here gave me, and I’ve taken two injections of painkillers so I could walk somewhat decently” I told the mare as she looked at the sutures.

“It should heal fine in time, only there will be some pain for a while, whoever sewed it up did a very good job of it; I can most certainly stop the pain but I don’t have the magical energy to fully heal it. I do have to ask what you’re doing in Garbage, no stalkers ever come through here because it’s too risky” said the mare as she started to cast a spell into my flank to aid the healing process and stop the pain.

“We’re heading to the centre of The Zone to find a stalker named Spectre and-”

“You’re going after that bastard? I don’t care if you like it or not, I’m coming with you” said Stone Wall trying to rise out of bed before remembering the condition he was in, and instead decided to lay back down, propping himself up on a hoof.

“You’ve heard of him?” I asked, surprised that a pair of lone stalkers in the middle of bandit territory had heard of him.

“It wasn’t always just the two of us living together; our older sister also lived with us when we lived in Zaton, further in The Zone. We moved here after our sister was murdered by a stalker that Sweet had healed when we found him being mauled by a chimera. After Sweet healed him, our sister went out to check on a couple of traps we had set to catch some food, the stalker who had told us his name was Spectre snuck out a window in his room and killed her. But that wasn’t enough for him; he cut her head off and put it outside our door with a note telling us what he had done. We spent the next year trying to hunt him down, but after that it was like he had disappeared from Zaton, so we moved here so we wouldn’t have to be reminded of his acts whenever we opened the door” said Stone, his anger in recounting the tale being great enough that it felt as if it was a physical presence in the room with us.

“I don’t even want to kill the bastard anymore, you can have him, the revenge for your sister is greater than my revenge for my students” said Coach; almost shaking with rage after hearing about other ponies Spectre’s insanity had affected.

“But brother, you can’t go outside again for a couple of days, you aren’t fully healed yet, you’ll die if you agitate your wounds too much, I could only heal most of the damage, but not all” said Sweet with tears in her eyes as her brother had brought back terrible memories, and was nearly rushing off to his own. Even Swift and Night were wiping away tears after hearing about the murder of a pony by a stalker whose life had been saved by the family of the pony.

“Would the damage be able to be healed by a Firefly or Flame?” Asked Swift, eyes still watery but no longer crying.

“Sadly no, I just need to recover some energy then I’ll be able to finish the spell, he’s stable for now and the extent of his injuries aren’t as bad as they seem, while he needs to rest so his wounds don’t reopen he doesn’t need a significant amount more healing, I’ll be able to finish it by this time tomorrow. I’d like him to stay in bed another day after that but he’s set on going with you so it’d be useless to count on it” replied Sweet as she sat next to her brother’s bed.

“Would a Snowflake help your energy recovery?” asked Swift, eager to help the recovery of the pegasus stallion, motivated by their story.

“Again sadly no, It’s not a matter of physical energy, but of magical energy, only time can restore magical energy” replied the unicorn mare again.

“Is your healing spell only something you can do?” I asked getting an idea; if I needed to I could learn the nature of the spell and enhance it with my runes, even if she has to be the one that casts it I can still enhance the spell when she uses it again tomorrow.

“I’m certain that it isn’t but it’s a highly advanced medic’s spell, I’m not sure if I could teach it to you like that, and no offence but I don’t want anyone else casting it on my brother in case they do it wrong, while it is a healing spell, miscast it can be fatal.” replied the mare. “What is your talent anyways? What are those symbols around and inside the circles of your cutie mark? I had a look at it while I was inspecting your wound.”

“My talent is the use of runes to enhance the power of my magic, and also imprint certain properties into objects, like turning a stone into a bomb that I can throw.” I replied; referring to the runic spell I used twice during the day.

“Oh I see, I could teach you about the spell if you think you could imprint enhancing abilities into something that I could use tomorrow when I have enough energy to finish healing Stone” Sweet said as she looked between my cutie mark and her brother.

“It should work, I’ve done it before. Also I might be able to work out the casting of the spell I’ll respect your wishes though and not use it on your brother; I’ll leave the healing to you.” I said, eager to be learning a new spell and possibly assisting in healing a pony who seemed to be the next addition to the party of stalkers that will be coming to the centre of the zone with me.

The sun had set not long after I had started to learn the spell that Sweet Tree uses for healing, and it had been a few hours since we started the lesson.

“I have no idea how but you’ve learnt the spell pretty quickly not only for someone who doesn’t already know medical magic, but also for anyone learning any spells. I assume you understand the spell and know how to enhance it if you can.” Said Sweet Tree with a little surprise that I had learnt a pretty advanced spell within hours rather than days, she hadn’t expected me to fully learn the spell, only enough to understand the nature.

“It’s something I’ve always been good at; I tend to learn spells without a lot of study before hand and I have no idea how.” I said slightly proud about her amazement and my accomplishment “I also have a good idea for a set of runes for enhancing it, but they’re pretty powerful and I’ll need to sit for a while to channel them. As for the object for me to channel them into, do you have anything like a glass ball? I need one or something similar for it to work properly.” I said, thinking about the set of runes that I wanted, there were quite a few to enhance the separate areas of the spell, while it was a healing spell, it was really a collection of a few small spells designed to enhance a particular function of the targets body, while also using the magical energy of the caster to rebuild tissues and the like, to properly enhance it I would need to enhance each particular spell within the greater spell.

“We have this snow globe that was our sisters, will that do?” said the unicorn holding a snow globe from Canterlot in her magic.

“That will work perfectly” I said taking the snow globe in my magic, “I’ll get started on the enhancement. Is there a quiet room I could use?”

“Come through here, you can sit in my brothers room as he won’t be in here tonight, you can also sleep in his bed” said the mare leading me to a door down a hallway that was at the back of the lounge where her brother lay.

I thanked her before she left me in the room to show the rest of my party to the guest rooms in the house where they’d be sleeping, looking around the room I had expected there to be a few possessions around the room, but it was bare, I suppose they didn’t have much from their old house if they don’t have stuff to remember their sister by in their rooms, although I had only seen Stone’s room, not Sweet’s, so there might be a few things in her room. Looking at the snow globe it contained a miniature of the royal castle in Canterlot, complete with a miniature Celestia flying into the sky as she does when she raises the sun during the summer sun celebration, a closer magically enhanced inspection also revealed there to be a miniature of Luna and a purple unicorn watching Celestia from the balcony below where the sun princess was, maybe this unicorn was the famous Twilight Sparkle, the first known reincarnation of the element of magic, it was said she was a purple unicorn who studied privately under Celestia’s guidance, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say she’d be close with the princess and reside in the castle with the sisters if not a regular visitor. If Sweet Tree and Stone Wall really didn’t have any objects left to remember their sister by it would have been hard to give me this snow globe, as I hadn’t said that it could possibly be broken or destroyed in the process, even if it won’t be they didn’t know that, they really have no one left but each other. Sighing I put the globe down in front of me as I sat on Stone’s bed while taking my artefact out of my bag and summoning my runebook, opening the book to a particular page containing a powerful circle for enchanting objects with spell enhancing abilities, a similar circle that I used to imprint the runes in my artefacts for summoning and desummoning my book. I began the channel of the runes I wanted and ordering them into a chain that I used my magic to pass into the globe, only needing a little bit of magical energy to infuse the first link of the chain before it would take in the rest of it as I constructed it.

I noticed the door to the bedroom on my left open as the snow globe drew in the last link of the chain of runes, to finish the enchantment I drew out three of the five master runes of the binding circle, ones for sealing, activation and spell binding; ensuring that the rune chain linked to itself at its ends, were sealed within the boundaries of the snow globe and linking it to only containing enhancements for this particular healing spell. Pleased with the result I looked at the pony in the doorway, it was Sweet Tree.

“You’re still awake? It’s already morning” she said looking at the glowing snow globe before it faded back to its original state.

“It’s a very powerful enchantment, it required powerful runes and a lot of smaller runes to be placed together just right, if one rune was out of order it could hinder the spell it’s supposed to enhance” I said looking over to my right where a window was, I could see the sun peaking into the room through the red curtains that hung there. “Although I hadn’t noticed how long it had taken, I tend to lose track of time when I need to focus on my runes for anytime longer than five or ten minutes.”

“Are you sure it worked though? I could see the glow from the runes until just a moment ago” she asked maybe worried that using it will harm her brother rather than assist in healing him.

“I’m sure of it, once the enchantment has been activated the runes become invisible to everyone else, but if I look hard enough I can still see them; and I can’t see anything wrong with the chain, I was careful in the ordering, just as a quick test though I’ll use it on myself to check” I said as I made a small slash on my leg that wouldn’t cause too much trouble if it didn’t work and taking the snow globe in my magic I cast the healing spell as I had learnt it the evening before. The spell seemed to work perfectly with the enhancement, while only focusing on stopping the bleeding the enhancement proceeded to finish the rest of the spell and completely heal the slash, not even leaving a scar. “I’d call that a success, now this snow globe will be permanently enchanted to enhance your healing spell along with all the smaller spells it contains, it’s also a lot more durable now, and it will take a lot to break it.” I said smiling at the unicorn mare, pleased that the enchantment worked perfectly.

“That was quite a way to test it; self-harm is never a good idea for testing something. But thank you anyways; it looked like it could cast the spell all by itself pretty much. I should be able to complete the healing of my brother sometime within the next 4 hours or so, you can rest until later if you’d like” said the mare slightly taken aback by my test.

“Nah it’s fine, when I chain together runes for that long I tend to switch off and pretty much be asleep the whole time as my magic sorts out the right runes” I said stepping down off the bed and passing the snow globe to the mare who just shrugged off the fact that I didn’t need to sleep after being awake all night as she walked back into the lounge to check on her brother; I followed her out of the room and into the lounge to find Night and Swift already up and sitting on the couch across the room from the pegasus stallion who was cleaning his gun and sitting up, obviously an improvement from yesterday.

“Why did you ignore me when I came to check on you last night Middy?” asked the dark blue earth pony jumping to her hooves as I walked into the room looking ready to charge at me if my answer didn’t suffice.

“Sorry Night, I tend to lose all sense of what’s going on around me when I have to channel runes for a while I swear it wasn’t intentional. Where’s Coach by the way? Still in bed?” I said apologizing to the mare before she could smack me over the head for not talking to her while I was channelling.

“Oh that’s okay then, I should have figured that you’d need to focus on your work. Also Coach is outside raiding a nearby bandit camp” said the mare perking up again and sitting back down on the couch next to Swift who was playing with her knives.

“I thought you said that you were going to raid the bandit camp sweet?” I asked the unicorn standing next to me.

“I was going to but Coach insisted that I stay here and he go instead” she replied.

“So he’s raiding a bandit camp by himself? I didn’t think he’d be capable of stealth like that” I said with a shrug.

“Who said he was by himself silly, he took Kyne with him, they’re collecting breakfast and some supplies, Stone said it’s what he would usually be doing in the mornings so Coach decided that’s what he was going to do this morning while we waited for you to get up and for Sweet to heal her brother fully so we can get moving later today.” Said the mare, it hadn’t occurred to me how Sweet and Stone got the stuff they’d need to live without a friendly trader nearby, of course they would be stealing from the bandits stores, it’s what I would do in their situation. “Speaking of Coach, here he comes now” said the mare looking out the window behind her “He looks like he’s been running for a while, he’s redder than normal.” A moment later Coach opened the door and Kyne followed him inside before he closed the door behind himself and dropping to the floor in exhaustion.

“Bloody... bandits... wouldn’t... stop... chasing... just... lost them... in trees” he manages to wheeze out before collapsing entirely and not being able to move for the next few minutes while he caught his breath.

“Seems like it was quite an eventful grocery run” said Stone looking over at Coach on the floor “What did you bring back with you?” the earth pony just slid his saddle bag towards the pegasus rather than giving him a verbal response. Inside the bag when we opened it was a few medkits and bandages, a few cans of spam ham, some energy drinks, a couple magazines of 5.56mm ammo, a PDA and some loaves of bread.

“That should be enough for today, once we get moving again we can go to a friendlier place and buy some food from a trader. What is the PDA for though? The idea isn’t to take everything that isn’t nailed down, just what we can use” I said looking through the bag, I’d take the ammo if no one else took it before we moved on, I have plenty of ammo for now but there’s no such thing as too much ammo in The Zone unless you find enough to weigh yourself down, in that case you’re going overboard on preparation.

“It was the... leaders. It has a couple... stashes marked on the... map” Coach managed to get out, not quite as out of breath as he was when he ran in, but still unable to complete a full sentence. Sure enough, marked on the map of the PDA were a couple of stashes, the bandit leader hadn’t thought to include what was in the stashes but that was part of the fun of finding them, you never know if you’re going to end up with a new gun or more bandages than you would ever need. Looking at the locations that were marked in relation to the path I wanted to take out of The Garbage and out towards Yantar, only one of them was relatively close, the other stash was quite out of the way, I made a mental note to swing past the stash when we moved out.

“SPREAD OUT I THINK HE CAME THIS WAY!” a voice shouted from outside the house.

“I thought you said you lost them” Night said to Coach as he got to his feet to peer out the window, and sure enough there was an eight pony squad of bandits moving in a line rifles at the ready, sweeping the area looking for the stalker who was bold enough to steal from a bandit camp in The Garbage and get caught.

“I think they’ve spotted the house, they’re bound to come check it out, we can’t use our guns or we’ll bring all of The Garbage down on us, even the clans would set aside their differences to kill a single stalker.” Swift said flying out of the room to close the blinds on the windows so we would have some cover from the bandits’ sight.

“Sweet you sure you can’t perform your spell now so we can sneak out the back before they come to look?” Coach asked looking at the mint mare.

“I could try, with the enhancement I think I will be able to, but it will take a few minutes to complete the spell and they’re already on their way” she replied looking out through the gap in the blinds as the leader of the squad pointed at our building and gave his squad various commands that I guessed were something along the lines of go check that building and kill anything that moves. We helped Sweet move her bother down the hall onto his bed so that when the bandits came in they wouldn’t see them.

“Swift and I can ambush them as they come in, they’ll do something else after the point dies or stops responding though, they might just try to surround us until more bandits come but hopefully the lack of gunfire might make them think there’s a mutant in here rather than us.” Said Night as she and Swift drew their knives out and headed to the front door where a unicorn bandit who lead the column of bandits to the building. This was bad, for all we know this unicorn could be a specialist at breaching and might have a spell that could disable Swift and Night before they can kill him, there wasn’t anything I could do though, after enchanting the snow globe I really couldn’t do any magic except one spell, but I didn’t want to use that spell unless it was necessary, the result would surely be met with enough gunfire from any bandits caught in it to draw The Garbage to us. Also whenever I’ve used that spell in the past I’ve been knocked unconscious for hours, if the others had to carry me while running from bandits they wouldn’t be able to get away. Time past, it seemed like hours while we waited for the bandits to approach the door, even though it had probably only been a minute so far, how it had taken them this long to walk about 100 meters to the house I don’t know. All we had was hope that he was just eager and breaching buildings wasn’t his job, we were about to find out as the shadow of a pony could be seen under the door, Swift and Night readied their blades, waiting for the unicorn to enter.

“Okay I’m going to enter, call out in a few seconds and I’ll give you the all clear to enter if I’m able to.” Said the bandit as he gripped the door handle with his magic and opened the door, leading with his rifle, I ducked behind the couch so that he wouldn’t see me when he looked inside for himself. I head hoofsteps moving further into the room and I could see the barrel of the bandit’s gun coming past my cover, then I could see the whole gun, then the unicorn himself, and he saw me.

“What the fu-” he started to say before he was killed instantly by Night and Swift both coming out of their hiding spots near the door that the unicorn somehow missed, covering his mouth so he couldn’t make any more noise.

“Now when they call out to him they’re going to send more in, we need to check on Sweet and Stone and see how long they’re going to be” Swift said taking charge of the situation, moving down the corridor to Stone’s room.

“Thunder!” one of the bandits outside shouted, “Yo Thunder! Fuck, there’s somepony or something inside there, be careful no gunshots means that they’re either very good at hoof to hoof combat, or there’s some kind of mutant like a bloodsucker in there. Starry and Range, I want you two to lead, check every corner before you commit to going around it.” Shouted the same voice, this was very bad they knew to be cautious and they’re only half taking the mutant bait. We entered the room where Sweet was healing Stone just as her spell was fading; she opened her eyes and looked at her brother.

“His wounds are fully healed, we should get moving as soon as possible. Where’s Kyne? Was he with you guys?” She said as her brother got up off his bed.

“Holy shit a pseudowolf” shouted one of the bandits and we heard gunfire “Fuck it was a clone, where’s the real one, OI! SHANK! Thunder’s bodies real torn up in here, I think it was this pseudowolf!” then there was a short scream and a thump that sounded like somepony walking into a wall then another thump. Shortly after Kyne walked into the room with us, blood in his fur; this was good, it gave us a better chance for escape now the bandits would probably think there are a couple pseudowolves in here rather than stalkers.

“Anypony have any psy-blockers to deal with the pseudo? No? Shit. We can’t fight a pseudo in these cramped areas, back off and lets continue our search, that stalker might have made a break for it back towards that camp they have near the gate, if we radio ahead we might be able to get somepony at the checkpoint.” Shouted one of the ponies as we heard hoofsteps leading away from us and outside the door, they even closed the door behind them, their eight pony squad left as just a squad of six.

“Kyne, I want you to check to make sure they really did leave.” Sweet whispered to the pseudowolf, Kyne left the room, making his copies before he left and let them lead around the corner, a very long thirty seconds later Kyne came back into the room, looks like we dodged a bullet this time.

“Let’s get a move on as soon as possible; they might come back with backup to get their buddies effects.” Stone said, stretching out his limbs and his wings, trotting on the spot before he started to gather his gear, his sister also leaving the room to grab her gear before coming back, again without a gun.

We walked towards Yantar, planning to go around the western edge of The Garbage, then cutting east around between the southern edge of The Garbage, and the northern wall of The Bar, which was a small town south of The Garbage where traders went to get the best sales. We expected to find less patrols here, as the majority of the buildings and structures in The Garbage were to the eastern edge, with the exception of a few small buildings on the south western edge, we planned to skirt around these buildings by cutting into the forest that ran in between The Garbage and The Dark Valley before we cut east to get to Yantar.

“Sweet if you don’t mind me asking, why don’t you carry a gun? Not having a gun in The Zone is pretty close to suicide” I asked, curious as to why she walked around The Garbage where if any bandits had seen her she would have no doubt died because she was defenceless, and now when our goal was to reach the centre of The Zone where we would meet plenty of dangerous ponies and mutants.

“I won’t kill a pony or animal with my own hooves, it’s not in my nature” she replied; quite an odd response, mutants barely resembled the animals they once grew from, some of the ponies in The Zone could barely only be called ponies simply only because of their physical structure, nothing about their mental state was a part of ponykind anymore. “I know you may think that I’m silly for it but I just can’t, while you may think the mutants and ponies in The Zone don’t resemble anything of their counterparts on the other side of the perimeter, I believe that even the most corrupt pony can still be healed, as can The Zone and all of its residents.”

“I see, you are quite the medic, ‘there is no such thing as a lost cause’ I read that once in a book, I forget who wrote it but they were passionate about saving anypony who had strayed from the path of ponydom, and would befriend any animal no matter how aggressive they would be to anything they crossed paths with.” I said thinking back to the days where I read books in my family library before I had discovered my cutie mark, while I didn’t really need to study a lot to learn spells even back then, I still enjoyed reading both  fiction and non-fiction books.

“Quiet for a sec” Night whispered motioning us to drop to the ground in the ditch near us “I think I can hear ponies coming.” Night was our pointpony, keeping eyes and ears out for anypony or anything that may cause trouble if they decided to attack us.

“I can’t hear anything, you sure?” I said, listening out for any noises that sounded like a pony approaching.

“Shh I said, trust me on this one, I can hear them coming, my hearing is better than yours.” The mare replied waving a hoof at me. “Get in this ditch over here, it’s another patrol, they’re still looking for us, or rather you Coach.” She said as she ran over towards the ditch that looks like it was made by some sort of explosion in the past, it was deep enough that we didn’t have to do much to stay out of sight, just standing normally allowed us to look out without much of our head showing. A minute past and I thought that I should question Night’s hearing, but suddenly I could hear the voices of ponies.

“You’re such a klutz Illu, you’re gonna just keep slowing us down if you fall over like that every time something moves, it’s taken us a minute just to walk fifty meters because you dropped to the ground at the slight movement of a leaf on a bush not just once or twice but three times.” A voice said, so that explains the time difference, when I first heard the voice I wondered whether it was dumb luck or Night could hear ponies from hundreds of meters away, but they were relatively close, and were slowed down by one of their members.

“You know I never leave the base, I don’t even know why I’m here anymore, and I don’t want to be in The Zone anymore, not since I’ve seen the things that live here.” Said a mare’s voice as the lead of the patrol appeared on the path from behind the trees that lined its edge.

“It only took you a week to realise it, you really should find someone who can get you out of here, it’s not somewhere where you should stay, and I don’t want you to get hurt.” Said this lead of the patrol to someone further down the line, it was the same pony we had first heard, unexpectedly no one else in the patrol of bandits spoke up to criticize what the pony had just said, I’d expect bandits to tear him to shreds for showing ‘weakness’

“None of us want to see each other get hurt, personally if it were up to me, this red earth pony we’re looking for would get off with only a bit of a fine and the stolen items confiscated” said a third voice. What kind of bandits were these ponies? I’ve never heard of bandits that don’t like killing anyone who stole from them, or even crossed their paths the wrong way. The rest of the patrol murmured sounds of agreement.

“Yeah, real pity the lieutenant wants his head on a stick; after all we know nothing of this guy, for all we know he might be taking the food to save someone he loves. Who knows how many ponies we are really killing by killing this guy, he could go on to slay a million bloodsuckers that are threatening a city or something.” Said the leader, the whole patrol was in view now. These guys aren’t the usual bandits, how many more bandits are there like these ones? How many ponies had I not thought twice about killing simply because I felt they were evil, but was wrong about them? How many hearts did I break by ending their lives and making sure they wouldn’t be returning to their base? As these thoughts raced through my head I noticed one of the bandits glance over, I dropped out of sight as soon as I noticed.

“Eep!”

“Illu, did you see another leaf move?” said the leader.

“No I swear it was something else this time, it’s over there in that hole” the mare replied. Damn it, she saw me and now they’re going to come to check and we’re going to have to kill them, I didn’t want to have to kill ponies that seemed so... friendly, even if we are at the opposite ends of the spectrum for groups.

“Alright I trust Illu enough to check it, circle around, then close in step by step, if it turns out to be the guy we’re looking for... try to kill him as painlessly as possible, I don’t want anyone to be brought to base alive to be tortured” said the leader.

“What do you want to do about this Midnight?” asked Coach, checking his guns.

“Really, I’d like to say non-lethal force but there isn’t a way for us to get close enough to them in broad daylight for it to be effective... so we have no choi- wait, yes we do, what I want you to do is to just use non-lethal force I’m going to use one of my spells, but I won’t be conscious after I cast it so one of you will need to carry me, anyone have night vision goggles?” Swift and Night raised a hoof each, “okay, you two think you can knock them all out in three seconds?”

“Easily” said Swift

“Oh wow, a whole second to spare, if only I brought an appropriate snack” said Night

“You two will take care of them then, Coach, Stone and Sweet, don’t be alarmed when I cast my spell, just close your eyes for the three seconds, that goes for you too Swift and Night, once you knock out the last one, or just before the three second mark close your eyes and take off the night vision.” I said as I drew two runes into the dirt at the base of the ditch, they were the first two runes I learnt in my childhood, the runes of my name ‘Midnight’ ‘Shade’.

“Brother there’s more than one pony in there, one of them is the target I think” said a voice behind me, I looked to see a bandit aiming down his sights at us.

“Close your eyes now” I said to the others, finishing the last part of the rune and casting its spell. Darkness overtook me.

There was a blinding light, this was new, I shielded my eyes from the light, looking around I discovered that I wasn’t in the ditch anymore, but I wasn’t anywhere I knew in The Zone either, Where was I? Starting to panic I looked around for any sign of where I was and where the others were, had they been attacked while I was out and I’ve been brought to someone’s base? I shot up off the floor and stumbled forward when I overbalanced and tripped over something on the floor, it was a lamp, it looked similar to the lamp I had on my bedside when I was working in the power plant.

“You slept in late today honey, it’s already well past midday” a voice said. It was a voice I recognized but I couldn’t place on anyone in The Zone that I could remember, then I took another look around, I know where I am, I’m in my old house near the power plant. It wasn’t how I last saw it though, it was fully intact, not burnt out and torn apart. “You still asleep or something?” said the voice, the voice that I now know to be my wife’s voice; as I pieced it together she walked out of the bathroom.

“What’s up with your mane and clothes?” I asked noticing her shiny black dress to accentuate her light grey coat, and her blonde mane had been straightened, not that her mane needed much straightening.

“We’re going out to dinner tonight for our anniversary, remember? Our booking at Enzo’s is in forty minutes, so you better start getting ready, don’t take too long in the shower either, even if Celestia is covering our bills for you working here it’s just rude to shower for as long as you try to get away with” said Howling Gale, slightly angry with me for not knowing why we’re going out tonight or that we were going out.

“Oh yeah of course, sorry still tired I guess, don’t rightfully know what day it is!” I said with a smile, she smiled back at me.

“I know, you never know what’s what when you wake up.” She said as she gave me a kiss when I walked past her to get in the shower.

After my shower and little bit of grooming, I put on my suit that I’ve had since our wedding, while Gale doesn’t like me wearing it, it was all I had for formal attire that would get me let into Enzo’s

“Ready to go Middy?” Gale yelled from the lounge where she was waiting for me to get ready.

“Yeah I’m ready, with five minutes to spare including walking time, I think that’s a record, what do you think?” I replied walking out of our bedroom and down the hallway to the lounge.

“I agree, you’re usually getting out of the shower right about now”

The walk to Enzo’s felt shorter than it had been, I couldn’t recall any memories of the walk, but it had taken ten minutes to get here. The waiter showed us to our table, it was out the front of the restaurant the sun hadn’t quite fully set yet and still provided a considerable amount of heat as expected on a late spring’s eve. He gave us a menu each and a drinks menu between the two of us.

“Would you like bread and butter Sir and Madam?” He asked; pouring us a glass of water, with his magic, from the bottle he had placed in an ice bucket to the side of the table.

“Yes please, thank you” I replied and he produced a basket of bread rolls, a small dish of butter and a butter knife and placed them on the table.

“Is that all Sir?” he asked.

“Yes for now, thank you” I replied, and the waiter returned back to his post at the entrance to the restaurant where he decided who could and couldn’t be a patron of the world famous Enzo’s authentic Griffon cuisine restaurant.

“Who thought we’d ever eat at such a fancy place as this; you were right this job was a good idea, at this rate you’ll be able to retire in a couple years, maybe less if you get that promotion, and we can move to Ponyville and not have to worry about money at all.” Gale said watching me as I buttered up a roll for each of us.

“That will be a great day when it comes” I said to her with a smile, I looked around at the other tables, they were empty, I could have sworn there were other ponies here when we were seated by the waiter, who was also absent from his post.

“I was wrong, this job was a terrible idea” Gale said, but it wasn’t quite what she sounded like, I turned to look at her and rather than seeing my wife as I remember her there was a ghoulish corpse seated across from me. “Your idea killed me Mid, we would have been fine for money and you know it, if we moved to Ponyville like I wanted I would still be alive, you killed me Middy. You and you alone are to blame, cooling systems were your job, you failed to keep them up to scratch.”

“No stop it, I wasn’t working that day, Lone was the one that forgot to check the cooling cells.” I shouted at the thing across from me.

“I’m not a thing middy, I’m the result of your decisions” it replied. It may have sounded like my wife but she never blamed me for what happened, she would have told me. “Who said I’m your wife Middy, I didn’t say I was; I’m you. Particularly the part of you that died when you became a cold blooded murderer, if you didn’t insist on swapping shifts with Lone, you would have been able to stop the meltdown and there would be no zone for you to kill ponies, bandits or not, either way it still killed me when you first shot that kid.”

“He was aiming a gun at me, I had to kill him.” I said, rising out of my seat and backing away from the ghoul in front of me, I tried to turn away but it wouldn’t let me I had to stare it in the eyes.

“His pistol was out of ammo, you let him bleed out as well! That’s cold blooded, even for the bandits, the least you could do was finish the job rather than steal his marbles out of his bag after he stopped screaming and died from blood loss.”

“I-I didn’t know what to do... it was the first time I had to shoot to kill since I entered The Zone.”

“You knew he was young, too young to even drink, not like it mattered in The Zone, how do you know his family wasn’t in The Zone with him? Maybe that night you killed more than just a teenager pointing a gun at you.” I couldn’t reply this time, I had no justification for not trying to save the kid after I found out he was out of ammo, nothing that I would accept, I was worse than the bandits that I hate so much. “I know you don’t have any justification for killing us, I am you after all, just wait though, I’ll be back one day, and I won’t be the only one that looks like this when I do return.” As he said his last bit he started to fade and by the end only his words remained to finish his warning, I was finally able to look around again, only to find nopony here with me, just a devastated cityscape. I checked my bags and found my artefacts, they were my reminder to myself that I would do anything to help anyone I felt needed my help and wouldn’t try to kill me. Suddenly I heard a cackling laugh behind me, I spun around to find nopony behind me or in sight; only what I thought could have been a flash of a hoof disappearing around a corner but I wasn’t sure.

I woke with a start; I looked around my surroundings to find myself near a small campfire on a hill near a patch of woods, around me the rest of my party slept except for Coach, who stood guard near the path I assumed they had taken to get here.

“Midnight? You right there?” Coach asked; he was startled by my sudden awakening.

“Yeah, nightmares that I couldn’t wake from. Where are we and how long have I been out?”

“We’re slightly to the north of Yantar; it’s been a day and a half roughly since the encounter with the bandit squad.” He replied as he turned back to watching the path for anypony or anything who thought to attack us.

“How did that go? Was the darkness enough for Night and Swift to knock them all out?”

“They missed one, but they got him after the three seconds were up, one of them was fast though, Swift got a pretty nasty cut when he parried her strike and countered with his own, it’s the reason why we only got here earlier today rather than last night. Sweet was only able to stabilise her but there was still the possibility of it getting worse and if she deteriorated too quickly Sweet wouldn't have been able to keep her alive. Swift started to drift that way until this morning when Sweet finished her spell, she said that it would have been earlier but apparently your enchantment stopped working while you were out-”

“Wait my enchantment stopped working?”

“She said she thinks so; the snow globe didn’t feel the same in her magic she said”

“That’s no supposed to happen, it should function in every situation except when I stop it myself or when I die” I said as I thought about what this could mean, had I died for a short time while I was dreaming about my conversation with myself? Did it have anything to do with the sudden appearance of this version of myself I had never felt before, guilt was one thing but a dead part of myself was different. Now that I think about it, it, he, me didn’t feel like they were a part of me at all but rather somepony else; but that was over now, I had a more pressing issue, if that enchantment had stopped working had the others? The realisation hit me, I took out my artefacts, casting an expert eye over each of them; the runes on them were unchanged, the spell still bound to them. Not trusting that looking the same was good enough, I took the white marble in my magic, and willed my runebook to be summoned, nothing happened but right when panic started to edge in I heard the same chuckle from my nightmare inside my head and my runebook fell to the ground in front of where I lay. That’s the important thing, that my runebook could be summoned still, taking up the black marble, the book desummoned with ease, and resummoned when I tested it again.

“There aren’t any other important enchantments you need to check are there? Also care to explain exactly what that spell was?” Coach asked after seeing how worked up I got over my runebook; I’d think he was pondering what I would have done if an important enchantment had stopped working.

“No, none that I wouldn’t already know about by now. It’s the spell of my namesake, Midnight Shade, as you could probably guess from the name and the effect you saw it’s a spell that surrounds the area a few meters around me in darkness, to people outside the area they see nothing different, inside you can’t see anything at all, except for some reason night vision still works even though inside there isn't any light to enhance. By the way, do you know what time it is? My watch stopped and it says that it’s 19:30 on the 15th, which is either a couple weeks ago, or in a couple weeks” I asked the stallion looking at my watch, what an odd time and date for it to stop on, the 15th of next month would be the ninth anniversary of my marriage to Gale.