Inside the freezing walls of the cave, the wind had not been strong. The air had been cold—so cold—but that was bearable.

This was not.

Blue hissed as the wind tore any heat she had stored up from her body. She shivered violently, grinding her teeth whilst she shrank her body down. Despite her fluffed up feathers and fur, though, her muscles still spasmed and her legs visibly trembled on the spot.

“Get moving,” came RipEar’s gruff voice from her side. With squinted eyes—her best attempt at protecting them from the onslaught of air—she glanced to him slowly. Her neck hardly moved. It was practically frozen stiff. When she did meet his gaze, though, she noted that he danced on the spot too and had much the same posture as she; it had been so easy to forget that, even though he knew what awaited them out here, he was just as unfamiliar with these extremes of temperature and exposure. He had spent the past year in the facility, just as she had.

Blue glanced forwards cautiously. The outside world was seemingly endless. Everywhere she looked the eternal expanse spread out before her eyes; the horizon was coloured black against the dim, bleak blue of the sky.

Wait.

Blue yelped and threw her head upwards. Angry, heavy clouds—dark grey clusters—zipped through the cold night air, carried by the fearsome wind. They convulsed as they moved. It was freakish, as if they were alive. Blue’s skin crawled immediately at the thought–but something bigger had caught her eye. It was a wonder she had missed it to begin with.

Beyond the cloud clusters, only slightly able to illuminate the world beneath, the sun and moon hung together in the sky. Where they clashed, a hazy line was drawn, indicating the point at which light met dark in a striking clash of colours. Bright versus black. Day versus night.

“What—” Blue began, her voice breathy and weak. It was at that moment, though, that the wailing of the wind was interrupted. A drawn-out, echoing howl flooded her mind; she scarpered backwards instinctively, the pain from her foreleg suddenly dulled by the adrenaline which coursed through her veins. She slammed past RipEar, unable to think of anything except escaping.

The cliff floor fell away from her hooves sharply, without even the slightest warning. Blue screamed. Shooting down, she unfurled her wings with a cry and hastened to flap them. They broke through the air with a complete lack of synchrony; thrown off course, she smashed into the rock face muzzle-first. She dropped like a stone, her wings suddenly not working against the whistle of the air across her body.

This was it. With a scream of terror, Blue flailed in the air, every limb out of sync with the others. The ground sped up to her at unthinkable speeds. Minute pebbles quadrupled in size with each millisecond that passed. The wind was too strong; too fast; too painful to let her open her eyes. She was effectively blind.

Her body tensed, her legs and wings now clamped to her body. She clenched her jaw in readiness. The breath left her, and she didn’t take another in.

And then she was no longer falling.

The first thing she realised, with a sickened feeling, was that she could no longer feel anything. Her legs, her wings, her ears, her muzzle… There was nothing! She opened her mouth to scream, to cry out to RipEar for help—and then realised she had no mouth with which to scream!

And then, completely involuntarily, she gasped. Her eyes shot open and her wings flared, flapping sporadically. Her legs twitched and spasmed. And then she suddenly remembered what pain was, the dock of her tail sending massive waves of agony through her body from seemingly out of nowhere.

“Argh!” she cried, bucking with her back legs frantically. In a futile attempt to escape the pain she beat the air with her wings heavily, but the movements were still poorly timed and only served to make her body swing wildly.

That made it worse.

Honestly, she would probably never be so relieved to have her body smashed into cold, rough, hard rock again in her life. But, right then, that new pain was a welcome change from the hell that was being hoisted through the air by her tail.

“What the fuck, Blue?” RipEar snapped, and his voice sent a shudder through Blue’s spine. She couldn’t look up at him yet—though even to lift her head seemed difficult right now. “You fell off a fucking cliff! How the hell do you manage that?”

Blue didn’t answer. After a few small hoof stomps, RipEar then sighed and hoisted her to her hooves with his magic, dumping her unceremoniously at his side. “Look, Blue,” he began, his voice still quavering with anger. “You’ve gotta get with the programme. I’ll look after you. I got you to this bloody place when we left the Pe—home. When we left home. And believe me, that wasn’t an easy trek. So when I say to you, I’ll get you across the Scourge in one piece, I mean it.” RipEar silenced momentarily. He then sighed and draped a foreleg over Blue’s back. “Okay?”

Blue nodded slowly. “That howl…” she then began, her words slow. RipEar shook his head at her.

“You’ve gotta get used to it,” was all he said before turning away. As he began to take the first few steps, though, he added with a glance backwards, “There’s a lot of monsters out here. A lot worse than the ponies that attacked the Facility. Question is, can you handle that? Because if not, you might as well just curl up in that cave and die quietly.”

“W-what?”

“You heard me.” RipEar turned his head away as he spoke, ascending into a slow trot across the narrow, uneven path. “The Blue I knew once had no problem out here. But you aren’t that mare anymore, so I can’t tell you how you’ll cope out here. But you know what? You were down in the disposal”—he spat that word—“books in the facility, so your odds of surviving are infinitely higher out here.”

“Disposal?” Blue squeaked, her wings suddenly clamping down to her sides and her tail to her legs. But RipEar was already walking away, his short tail swishing to and fro. It was almost as if he was happy to be out here again.

A massive gust of wind, strong enough to make Blue stumble into the rocky wall of the track, reminded her of why she most definitely wasn’t glad. With a shiver, she fluffed up her feathers and took a slow breath. She pinned her ears to her neck and then ascended into a slow trot.

Like it or not, the Scourge was supposedly her home now. And RipEar had saved her from annihilation. Technically speaking, she ought to at least try to survive. She owed him that much.

The slow trot down the slope, however, did little to convince her that she stood even half a chance out here. With each drawn out, haunting howl—they were definitely getting louder and longer—she bolted. More than once, she shot straight into RipEar’s perfectly rounded rump (though that wasn’t such a torture for her, she had to admit). After a heavy-hoofed buck of aggravation from him the fifth time she had done so, she settled for ambling skittishly a few metres behind him. Every out-of-place noise made her jump, but she only fell off the cliff path again once. RipEar didn’t see or hear that, so all in all, she considered the trip down to be a success.

By the time the pair reached the base of the cliff, Blue was walking with significantly less stiffness. Perhaps she had overreacted. Was this so bad? Sure, it was dark and freezing out here—she couldn’t feel her ears anymore—and there were so, so many terrifying noises… but the only thing to endanger her so far had been herself.

The howling sounded again. She brushed it off. It was louder now, yes, but each time she had heard it nothing bad had happened. No nightmarish dogs or wolves had appeared in thin air as she seemed to have expected; it was fine, right?

“Hey, Blue,” RipEar grunted. He stopped and turned to face her, though not after scanning the open valley they now found themselves in with his dagger and horn light. Satisfied, he raised a hoof in the direction they were headed in. “Look over there.”

Blue did as she was told. Squinting, she licked her lips slowly as she fought to make anything out—and then she saw it. “What is that?” she whispered. She felt almost speechless at the size of the clearly pony-made contraption which lay, rotting slowly, a short distance away. It must have easily been as tall as a tree!

There weren’t any to compare it to out here, though. This land was quite literally barren of life. Since she’d only seen trees in century old facility books, it was arguably a little hard to tell.

“That’s an airship,” he said. “Been there since the outbreak, I’d guess. It looked in good repair when we came here last. Well, for a crashed one. Figured it might be our best hope for some supplies. Gear and the likes. Anypony who is stupid enough to venture out this far into the desert is either at death’s door by now or on the hunt for the facility. Maybe both. So searching such wreckage probably hasn’t been on anypony’s mind.”

Blue raised an eyebrow and glanced at the airship. “A century from then, and no one has grabbed this loot you’re expecting. Really?”

RipEar shrugged. “Well, airships have bloody good locks and defences too. So if you can pick a lock—or, I guess, buck it off—then they’re usually a good place to start. Plus, the worst enemy you’ll find in there would probably be a mutant fly or something, and so long as there’s not a whole swarm, they’re easy to handle.”

Blue shuddered. This was fine. No need to get enemies involved.

“Right,” she murmured. Her eyes landed on RipEar’s dagger and didn’t leave it, just in case he was to somehow lose it. They needed that.

As they neared the airship, the incredible craftsmanship of the thing became known. It was a real beast, with an unpenetrated metal case and a distinct lack of windows at all. It was a monstrosity. Around its edges semi-luminescent mosses had begun to grow—one snapped at Blue when she got too close—but that did little to hide it.

RipEar headed straight for the massive door when they reached it, making short work of the heavy duty padlock there. How had he done that? He then glanced about quickly before he beckoned her in. She shot after him immediately. The lack of wind upon entering the airship was heavenly.

RipEar overtook her straight away, dagger held out in front of him as he began to walk along the corridors of the first floor. Blue followed like a loyal puppy, trotting along gayly—until she heard something that made her stop in her tracks.

A thud sounded somewhere above. Then the howling noise returned, ten times louder than before. A filly’s scream, impossibly loud, sliced through the air and through Blue’s ears. She reeled, gasping for breath.

RipEar hadn’t even flinched. But they weren’t alone.

Author's Note

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Aeluna