The trio and baby made tracks through the remainder of the day, using the map extensively, including a slight detour at a noted water feature. The map was old, made before the cataclysm that was the coming of the caribou, so what had been a river-fed lake had dried out into a smaller pond. It was still fed by a stream, and had avoided being completely stagnant.

It wasn't good for drinking, with the question about its purity, but was at least suitable for washing off the blood of their various encounters. They cleaned off their new charge, and they all sacrificed some pieces of clothing to augment the makeshift carrier they already had to make a more secure one. They washed off their clothing as well, and opted to move on without dressing again, letting their clothing scraps dry on their backs as they moved on with as much speed as they could muster.

They fought their way through their own screaming muscles and rising fatigue, stopping only when the sun dipped low and the child started to cry for a meal.

They scrounged up campground supplies as best they could, a circle of rocks and as hefty a pile of sticks and leaves as they could find. The donkey mixed the formula and fed the child using one of the bottles they had taken from the wagon.

“You know, we should give her a name,” the pegasus noted, waggling his fingers at the calmly eating foal.

“If only they had had their Equestrian ID cards, we could have learned the names of her parents. Then again, we didn't search very hard...” the unicorn noted.

“We didn't really have the time to search all that hard.”

“But you did have the time to bury all of them, including that diseased, scarred-up monster!”

“¡Ay! Callate, both of you!” The donkey grunted, being stern and forceful with a low tone. “I expect the foal to be noisy, not grown stallions.”

The two ponies went silent, chastised by the stern words. They all ate their compressed oat rations in relative silence, before the pegasus said, “Now I like the name Cumulus, it's my aunt's name...”

“She's an earth pony. That doesn't make any sense. Now, my grandmother had a fine name, Glitter. Glitter Aura.”

“That does not sound right for her. No, she should be called Flores. ¿Muy bonita, sí, Fores?”

“Cumulus is a perfectly fine name.”

“Glitter or Aura or Glitter Aura. Beautiful and acceptable for all pony races.”

“Cumulus can be for anyone. No one ever complained about names.”

“It just seemed strange on a non-pegasus. But Glitter...”

“Flores Cumulus Aura,” the donkey grunted. “Practical, proper, settled.”

“I always heard donkeys had a practical streak a mile wide,” the unicorn noted.

“The soldiers under General Blueblood are majority donkey, and they're fearless, powerful and very dedicated to their duties. I'd suggest you join, but the entrance training is brutal.”

“Life has recently been brutal, Niño. I think I can make a good effort at least.”

“You've been calling me that for a while, and I don't even know what it means. I only speak Percheron besides Central Equestrian,” the pegasus admitted.

“It means 'young boy' or 'lad' with some connotation of 'stripling' or 'slightly immature stallion' when said to an adult like yourself by an older person,” the unicorn explained.

“And Viejo means old man, sometimes in a friendly way, sometimes not.”

“I know what it means,” the unicorn said with a snort.

“What else do I call you? We were only prisoners, not those with names,” the donkey said, before placing a hand on his chest. “Pedro Cama, marked for death by the pendejo caribou.”

“Vital Monsoon, eager and willing soldier for the rebellion,” the pegasis said, giving the rebel salute of an upraised left fist and his right arm thrown across his chest.

“Old Timer, and yes, that really is my name, just a tired old stallion, sick to death of all this blood and killing.”

“You say that, but now... we have time to reflect on things. Those bounty hunters, they called you un asesino, a killer. A psycho killer. How true was that?'

“Don't take any caribou-delivered ideas at face value,” Vital said. “They exaggerate and lie so regularly it's hard to believe they even know what truth is.”

“Oh, this you can trust. They were right. I was what they said. A psycho killer. A complete, gibbering madpony, a bloodstained monster that only got away because their self-preservation only just beat out their inflated sense of false pride and need for cheap glory. I've been elbow-deep in caribou guts and torn my way through the brainwashed and believers alike, all with my mind in tatters...”

Pedro hugged Flores tighter against his body, turning her away to present some of his muscular side to Old Timer. Vital looked on with a mix of awe and revulsion. “How... dedicated. The rebellion needs soldiers like you...”

“I'm no soldier, just an old killer who didn't feel guilty about whose blood he spilled, atoning for the things that made that massacre happen,” Old Timer sighed.

“It seems foolish to ask, but can we trust you, Señor Timer?” Pedro asked, still protectively cradling Flores.

“I don't know. At this point, I want to think so... but I just don't know. I pulled my mind together from broken scraps of what was left. I think as long as I'm on this trip, I owe it to you to explain what happened...”

”I started out a fairly ordinary stallion. A clockmaker by trade, I lived a quiet, ordinary, even boring life. And I liked it that way. My name was not that unnatural. I was called an old soul, as I was very focused on my clockwork and my books about making time tick away. That was what I knew, what was important to me. I had my own shop in a little town, nowhere really special.

“A little town called Lindisbarn...”

The little clock shop was ticking pleasantly away, every clock gearing meticulously set to the same rhythm and timing, so that it was as though one monumental clock was ticking down the seconds of the universe. Old Timer was in the back, working on the guts of an antique grandfather clock for a loyal client. The classic piece had needed the replacement of worn gears, the subtle grind of metal on metal over the long years having made the time slip a little as the finer gears were off by minute amounts from the miniscule shavings. Little things meant a lot if they were attached to bigger things.

He peered through a jeweler's loupe, having long ago found the thing especially useful in his line of work. His current one was a United Colonies professional grade job, with attachments for higher magnification and filters to provide contrast and prevent washout when hitting an area with light to bring out more features. His fine tools delicately picked at the gears, which provided movement for the smaller mechanisms. This clock had multiple features, such as a barometer whose expansion moved small scenes to indicate weather, smaller clocks that timed other regions, and a calendar. All of that, needing all the gears to work just right.

There was a festival going on outside, he knew that. There was always something going on and it did delight him to know it. He seldom participated, preferring his springs and gears, but he was at least somewhat a part of his community.

He knew his neighbors to an extent, and he did at least gamely attempt to get into the spirit of the national holidays. He owed the nation that, no question. The nation cared for and about him, and he gave his love to the nation with all he could muster.

He hummed a patriotic song as he worked, recalling old celebrations from his youth, the fairs and carnivals that made life fun, even for an 'old soul' of a foal. He, in his own way, through supporting his community with involvement and paying his taxes, helped to pass forward his fortune, to make sure new foals could savor the state he had savored. The old ways would remain.

Happiness. Peace. Prosperity. The heretics could have strife and chaos. His ordinary life, his normal life, was his and was enriching. It fed his soul, gave him certainty, let him be involved in his cogs and springs. He was safe with the nation, and the nation could rely on him.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought about joining the festival. The clock would remain. The nation would remain too, but he needed to show just how much it warmed and gladdened his heart.

A strange humming sound... not quite a sound... a hum, a buzz, an odd vibration that was and was not a noise came to him. It was like mana itself was making a noise that he could detect, something wholly new and unusual. It was a distraction, and made him lift his head from the work. Thoughts, alien and horrifying came to his mind. He saw his neighbors, his mare neighbors...

The haunting monstrosity of what he saw would have torn a scream from his mouth, but his body was stiff and unresponsive. The alien influence grew stronger, more pressing, making him less controller, and only an observer. His loupe fell from his face and clattered on the floor, as his body moved like a marionette out of his shop.

The town was full of screams, full of other puppet-like stallions, and his mare neighbors, being stripped by bizarre and ugly antlered vermin. He wanted to fight them immediately. But all he could do was live in his own head, watching through eyes that were and were not his, as his body obeyed commands he did not give. And even if he closed his inner eye, he was still trapped in his mind, so he still knew what was happening, and if he touched his own thoughts, he had to experience it.

He had no choice but to know what his husk did.

”I don't need to tell you what happened. You know what the brainwashed do in the service of the vile caribou. At least I wasn't forced into fighting. They recognized I was past that. So I was shunted to menial roles, the precursor to being sent to die in the camps for the old and sexless who were not lucky enough to be elected or be noble and rich. That was my lot.”

Old Timer carried out his duties with loose naturalness, his brainwashed persona having taken over his body completely, leaving the old side completely out of things. The other side had only dim awareness that time had passed or that things were happening. It was disconnected from everything, almost an idea of ideas rather than a conscious portion of the mind.

The right-thinking part did everything but think about what the alien part was thinking, saying or doing. Words he didn't even know he knew passed his lips. He had the idea of an idea that actions were happening that were not in his moral wheelhouse. He wasn't even a spectator in his own life, not really. He was a ghost, desperately avoiding anything but the closest thing to absolute oblivion he could muster.

The emptiness of his personal oubliette was shattered with a jumbled impression of pain, fear, the tang of blood and the feel of a shattering that reached deep into his mind, and which ended the mana buzz that had long before become white noise.

Transporting enchanted crystals taken from a strike against the rebels had been his task. He knew that, somehow. Crystals, weapons, propaganda. He had been hauling the things when... something happened... somehow... the border between nothing and everything was hard to pierce.

Something had made him fall, had struck his head against a crystal that dripped with his blood. The rebels had such things, things that protected them from the brainwashing. Seemingly, it could break it. Because he was broken. Snapped. Shattered. His mind fragmented as the brainwashed alien died in screaming agony and left only one personality. Left him burdened with the broken walls of his private solitary confinement.

Two were one and one was left alone to think on all that had happened. All that thought happened in a flash, a blinding, screaming, horrifying flash. Months upon months of atrocities so horrendous that their creators must have been summoned from Tartarus itself. If mortal beings thought of such things... they were more insane than any other creature that had ever drawn breath.

He couldn't even hear the sounds of those around him admonishing him for his accident. The other brainwashed. The true believers. The accursed caribou. The horned beasts. Antlered barbarians. Savages. Monsters.

Like him.

He saw every weeping face, heard so many screams that it was as if a whole planet was screaming. Screaming because of him. He was the source. He was the cause. Brainwashed or no. He was merely following orders. But his body had done it and he had been there, trying hard to ignore it. He couldn't ignore it anymore.

Two were one. One was alone. Alone with the weight of so much pain that nothing could palliate the suffering. Nothing could staunch the flow of blood, silence the screams, the rasp of horns, erase the nauseating stench of burning flesh. He saw it all, all at once. Smelled it. Tasted the tang of stray blood drops. Heard the insults, the shouts, the sobbing, the lash and the sizzle.

He saw a rebel sword in his tunnel vision, his hand scarcely under proper command as he reached for it. He saw, dimly, one of the caribou beasts coming to him, in his brittle iron armor, with an arrogant look, puffed up and inflamed like an infected wound, almost oozing with the pus of his own pomposity.

His vision went white as he lunged, still haunted by all his senses telling him the horror he had inflicted.

Impressions. He had only impressions. Flashes of vision. Still photographs of his fugue. It was more automatic action, but not under the command of the alien interloper. It was him. Psyche shattered into a thousand pieces, nothing left of his rational mind but the old lesson of Equestria. Though grim, the task was necessary, and so necessary, no matter how grim.

He split the skulls of true believers, letting their poisonous minds out of their rotted heads. He sliced through others just like him, as though offering them a mercy in ultimate forgetfulness. And the caribou... there were several caribou. Their brittle armor shattered as he drove the captured sword through their bodies, and their bull necks meant nothing as he swung with the unleashed rage of a stallion who didn't care if he ripped his muscles entirely out of their anchors.

They couldn't call for reinforcements, not the second time. One had escaped by virtue of cowardice, seeing the slaughter and running with all his cervine fearfulness, likely to hide until it was all over. It was over when the last maimed and dismembered caribou was silenced with a sword to the chest, the bloody blade left standing like a monument. Its slain owner had even had a proper motto etched onto the side. This Tool Kills Fascists.

”Run.”

His legs worked with all the speed his age could muster.

”I remember only one thing with any semblance of clarity. Perfect clarity, after that sea of snapshots, a gallery of violence and rage.

He didn't know where he was running. Directions were meaningless to him. He could have been running into the heart of the caribou territory, to the hands of the accursed king himself. He might have been running into the ocean, to die in the waves. He might have been rushing into the tripartite jaws of Cerberus, to his proper home in Tartarus.

He deserved it. He had betrayed his nation. The things he had done, in the name of alien monsters, thanks to their power and influence, had marked him as a beast. No better than them. He was a fiend of their magnitude. He was running to a fate that he had earned.

He ran, he ran far and fast, knowing he would be pursued. Even if he was as guilty as one of them, they would not forgive him his evil. Because while his monstrous deeds were their delight, his attempt at atonement with the blood of the guilty had stricken at their tiny, trembling souls. Their fake sense of honor, the lies and hypocrisy that rang in his head, repeated to make him believe it, had been besmirched by his attack on their injustice. They would make him pay. They would ensure that he suffered for making them look bad. He would pay for their weakness.

The waste opened its maw and swallowed him whole. He had run to the landscape between caribou and rebel, where their careless anti-magic foolishness and their complete idiocy on matters of ecology had wrought death and desolation.

That was where he belonged. A broken creation of the caribou inside a broken creation of the caribou. He could die in the waste. He could carve out a niche in the wild, live on lean rations and then expire, let nature pull him apart, let the world take its revenge and extract the penalty for his betrayal.

He fell down, exhausted, in the wild. The sun was going down, so he wouldn't die in its glare. But as the moon sullenly rose over him, he thought his bloody form would bring nature's cleaners, to wipe him away.

“They didn't come. Even nature, red in tooth and claw, knew to stay away from me. I was redder than anything waiting in the darkness. They were afraid of me. They were right to be afraid. I was a crazed, unthinking collection of fragmented mental pieces. That jigsaw jumble of thoughts and impressions were all I had of 'me.' It was all I was, just a lot of little shards that needed to be pieced painfully back together.

“Thought-piece by thought-piece, I did it. I stopped vomiting after I had nothing left to throw up, but I still dry-heaved as I was forced to paste disgusting memories back into place, to bring my broken mind back into something like a usable form. I did what I could and the result is what you see here. I hear you rebels unseal the brainwashed as a punishment, and leave them to die. I can respect that, I respect that a lot.”

“It has happened,” Vital said. “For the especially terrible captured in specific raids the Black Knight will do that, and it gets applause. But he can also release them slowly, cutting their heads slice by slice, with care and caution, letting them ease into their return. They are agonized and full of anguish but they had the chance to slowly slide through it. They need help but are at least stable enough to be soldiers. The Released are very dedicated soldiers, though I think they may take on dangerous missions on purpose...”

“I wouldn't doubt it. Suicide is not my idea of how to be punished for my crimes.”

“Crimes done under their control, amigo, remember that.”

“I was just following orders. But that will never satisfy me. I was in there, and I had to remember it all. I have to live with it. I have to live with what I did to my neighbors, to strangers, to those who begged me to stop. I shut my eyes and ears when it was happening. But it all came at me. I saw it. I felt it. I can't forget it. Treason has scarred me forever. Curse the caribou. And curse me as well. We all deserve to die and rot, and someday it will come...”

The three dissolved into silence for a time, the only sounds being the crackling of the fire and the soft coos of Flores as she napped after eating.

Author's Note

One of those names is kind of an Easter Egg. And there's another easter egg hidden in a throwaway reference.