Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.

Bible, Old Testament

Trust.

I’ve found that, in the Wasteland, trust is quite lacking. Nearly everypony has some distrust for ponykind. It’s not like it’s undeserved. Everywhere you look, it seems like somepony has some firearm’s sights aimed at the little space right between your eyes. Greyhorn’s actions were a quick lesson in this distrust for me.

Not even two seconds after we unlocked the door to “Reyna’s” cell, Greyhorn telekinetically flung out his combat shotgun and lined it up against the forehead of the cute mare in front of me.

“Why should I trust you, Reyna?” he barked at her, “You could be a trap for all we know!”

She looked at him with such an innocent look, I thought that I’d just burst into a squee. The cute pegasus (squee!) mare called Reyna Cloverfield that was now sitting (or cowering) in front of me had a lovely chocolate-coloured coat with an interesting yet beautiful mix of green and grey in her mane. She had wings and looked slightly different than most other ponies somehow, but I couldn’t put my hoof on why.

From what I could see during the few steps she took out of the cage she had been trapped in, she was about a hoof taller than me and more slender than most ponies. I couldn’t help but feel that she was going to become somepony quite important to both me, and our group—despite the situation.

“W-w-well I-I um . . .” she stammered. She honestly seemed confused by the difference between my kindness and Greyhorn’s sceptical nature. To be truthful, so was I.

“Save it. Just give me a reason that I shouldn’t unload this into your skull!” he continued.

“PLEASE! DON’T!” she pleaded.

“Greyhorn! What in Tartarus is your problem?!” I screamed.

He looked at me in a way that just screamed You are so inexperienced!

“Well, she could be a raider that just put themselves in there to seem helpless until BAM! They get ‘cha.”

“But-” I began, but was quickly shot down.

“There’s no ‘but’ about it!” he spat back, “Out here, no pony’s your friend! You should know! You thought I’d kill you the first time you saw me!”

“That’s not the same thing! You killed somepony right in front of me!”

“W-well, that’s . . . arrgh!” he nickered. He lowered his gun from the scared mare’s head.

She let out a sigh of relief, stood up and said, “Whew, thanks.”

“It’s no problem. But still, who are you? I know your name but not much about you.” I asked.

“Well, there isn't much to tell,” she began, “I was . . . living with my family in a town not far from here. It was . . . destroyed.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re talking about . . .” Greyhorn began.

“Yeah. Our Town,” she said.

“What?” I said, trying not to laugh hysterically. “Excuse me, but did you just say that the town you came from is called Our Town?”

Like, seriously, who calls a town their town? We get that it’s your town, you don’t need to rub it in!

“Yeah, it was originally run by a unicorn mare named Starlight Glimmer,” Reyna explained. “She eventually went on to become the protégeé of the Mare of the Ministry of Arcane Science, Twilight Sparkle.”

“I think I might have seen her picture in one of the Stable textbooks growing up,” I said. From what I remember, the textbooks spoke of her “Vast knowledge of all things Arcane.” Honestly, I think it was just a load of propaganda. What simple unicorn would be able to singlehoofedly take down a giant centaur with just her magic. Pegasi however . . .

“. . . the lavender-coloured mare could literally outsmart Twilight herself!” Reyna said as if it was the coolest thing she’d heard in her entire life. I realised that I had been completely lost in my thoughts.

Ahh . . . stupid! Pay attention to the cute mare in front of you, Rae!

“Nice . . .” Greyhorn said from where he was standing a few hoofsteps away. He sounded like he’d rather be anywhere else in Equestria. “That was . . . a great story. Can we just go! There’s a train that we need to start just outside, and I would prefer that we get out of here before any more raiders show up!”

“Sorry to say it Reyna, but he’s right. We should get going” I said.

“Oh. Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go.”

We trotted outside. The train had a front engine, two passenger cars, and a caboose. In the engine was a bunch of strange black rocks that would crumble whenever we’d step on one.

“I’ll shovel all of the coal into the engine. Reyna, I need you to pull the brakes when I say so. Rae, you sit in the chair and use the red throttle lever after Reyna pulls the brakes.” Everything that he said had just gone completely over my head. Still, I went to the chair, sat down and, sure enough, found the “throttle” he had been talking about.

“Now!” he said after shoveling all of the little rocks he could find into a hatch between Reyna and I and lighting it on fire.

Reyna pulled her lever and I pulled mine right after. The train roared to life and, after a moment, crawled to a steady chug. I looked out the window to my right as we pulled onto the bridge connecting the Maneland to the Griffish Isles and watched as the Hill of Stable 68 grew further and further away.

Dad, I’m so sorry.

“Rae! Are you okay?” Reyna said behind me. She must have noticed me tearing up.

“Huh? Oh . . . yeah. I’m fine. Just . . . gonna miss the place,” I fibbed. It wasn’t like I had any real connection to the island. Just the ponies that lived there. Well, had lived there.

I looked around and noticed that after shoveling the “coal” into the engine, Greyhorn had apparently left. I got up from my seat and went to the door connecting the engine to the first passenger car. After opening the door, I found Greyhorn sitting on the left side of the car looking out the window. He was crying.

I walked up to him and asked, “Hey Greyhorn, are you okay? I’m sorry if I made you that upset earlier.”

Apparently, he didn’t notice that I was in the car because, with a look of shock on his face, he said, “Huh? Rae? Oh, um . . . I’m fine. Just came in here to clear my head that’s all. Heh.”

“You sure? You don’t sound like it. Or look like it for that matter!”

“Yes! I’m fine!” he said as he stomped off into the caboose and locked the door behind him.

“What was that?” Reyna said behind me as she entered the car.

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“Our first stop should probably be Our town,” Greyhorn said as he entered the engine again. “It’s the closest settlement to where we were that definitely had some sort of defenses we can salvage. Hopefully.”

It was the way he said hopefully that made me question if I was an asset to him, or just somepony dragging him down. It occured to me that I have no idea what I’m doing for the most part. Yeah, he showed me how to shoot, but I still had the instincts of a Stable-dweller.

“Hey, guys. Um, while we’re here, could I get something from my old house?” she said in the most nervous way ponily possible.

“Will it kill us?” Greyhorn said.

“No! It’s just a black opal!” she said. “Well, that and my recollector.”

“Really?” Greyhorn didn’t sound pleased.

“Um, what are both of the things you two just said?” I asked.

“Well, a recollector is a machine that anypony can wear on their head and record their memories. The black opal is what they are stored in. And, they usually are not important enough to risk lives over!” Greyhorn explained and scolded at the same time.

“It holds memories that I can’t have anypony find! I’m sorry that I don’t want my personal life lost to fuck-knows-where!!” she spat back.

“FINE! We’ll go get your opal and recollector while we salvage anything else from the place.”

He stomped off into the passenger car again saying some racial slurs against pegasi that I really wouldn’t feel comfortable repeating.

“What in Tartarus is wrong with him?!” I said.

“Damn it! I fuck everything up!” Reyna shouted up to the Goddesses.

“No, you don’t. He’s just been . . . weird lately.”

“Ever since I came along right?” she asked.

“Well . . . um . . .” I really couldn’t argue against what she was saying. No matter how much I wanted to comfort her, I couldn’t lie to her either.

“Exactly,” she said as her head slumped.

Damn it, Rae! Say something! What in the name of the Goddesses are you doing?!?!

“No! That’s not what I’m saying! If anything, it’s good that this is happening. Proves that I didn’t know him as well as I thought,” I said, feeling like even more of a piece of shit.

“Heh. I guess I didn’t think about it like that,” she said.

“Well, I guess we should make sure we don’t miss the stop,” was all I had to say. I just wanted some time to clear my head.

“Yeah. We should be getting close to the town in about an hour,” she told me.

Fun. Waiting.

The train came to a stop at the station just outside the town. All of us stepped out of the lovely engine that had brought us here and breathed a sigh of fresh air to be out of the Celestia-forsaken piece of shit. Greyhorn had eventually joined us in the front of the engine, but hadn’t said a word since the last time we’d talked.

The station that we stood in sat on top of a small hill that gave us a nice view of the town. It looked like a perfect equals sign (which was not the weirdest thing that I’d seen in the past few days) and no building was unlike any of the others. One street ran up and down the center of the town.

“Welp, because of somepony it’s time to investigate,” Greyhorn nickered.

I sighed. These two were going to more trouble than I thought. I didn’t know whether or not to even trust Greyhorn anymore, and now I had to deal with their constant conflict. I was eventually going to have to deal with this, but I had no time now.

Oh, Goddesses! Give me the strength to not strangle the both of these two flank-fucks!

As we trotted down the path that let to the town, my PipBuck informed me that this was, in fact, Our Town.

I noticed graffiti everywhere as we stepped hoof in the town. Everything from “Slavers rule!” to “I fucked a helpless mare!” (Okay, the latter was a lie, but some of the things written were close enough. I’ll leave it to you to imagine what was written.)

“Uhh . . . the my, uh, cottage is just over there,” Reyna said, pointing a hoof in the direction of a cottage at the end of the road on the left side of the town.

“Does anypony think that it’s weird that there isn't a single bad guy anywhere? Like, I expected this town to be a bit more heavily guarded,” I asked.

“They . . . um . . . probably just left,” Reyna said. The way she was talking made me wonder how safe we really were with her.

As we approached the little house that Reyna claimed had been her home, I had a weird sense of fear build up in my stomach. My E.F.S didn't say anything that would have suggested that there were enemies anywhere near us, but just walking around felt like somepony was breathing down my neck.

“Okay. Should just be inside!” Reyna said cheerfully. She seemed more relieved to be going in than that we made it to the house.

Greyhorn hadn't said much of anything for the entire trip, but now he said, “If this backfires, I swear upon the Goddesses’ names of Luna and Celestia, you will never hear the end of it. Never.”

She opened the door and we saw that there weren't any monsters lunging out of the dark that we needed to avoid, or evil tentacle monsters that needed to die. We stepped in, thinking if nothing came to kill us from inside, it must be pretty okay.

Inside was nothing out of the ordinary. Which, oddly enough, struck me as weird. Everything seemed normal. Not one thing looked touched. Not one thing.

As Greyhorn and I started searching the small room, turning every sheet, table and flower pot over, I thought I noticed a blink of red light on my E.F.S. It wasn't enough to make me worry. I just wondered whether I got enough rest the last night.

Ugh. I can't find anything that . . . wait a minute. She never told us what she needed.

"Uhh . . . Reyna. I don't think you ever told us what you . . ." I began to say while I turned around. When I saw Reyna, I also saw that behind the closed door behind her were a mind-boggling amount of red dots. I froze.

"What's wrong?" she asked innocently.

I tried to speak but the only thing that came out was a squeak that sounded slightly like "red".

Greyhorn immediately pulled out his combat shotgun and charged outside. The handle of the door glowed as it swung open, revealing a small battalion of ponies. One was at the front of them. The earth pony stallion I assumed to be their leader was a shadowy dark-grey colour, and had a scar running over one of his eyes. The eye that had the injury looked pale and dead. Greyhorn’s eyes widened and he stopped dead in his tracks.

“Oh,” the scarred stallion said, “Well, it seems that our Reyna has actually managed to lure somepony here!” The group started laughing and stopped just as quickly as they had begun.

Greyhorn turned and shot me a look of pure rage. Then, he looked at Reyna with what I assumed to be hatred.

“Reyna, you . . .” I began. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. This made me really happy in reality. Somewhere inside her, there was a little pony who actually cared about us enough to cry that she’d betrayed us. I hoped that little pony was dying of sorrow, because she had betrayed our trust. I promised myself that I wouldn’t come to trust somepony that easily ever again.

“I’m sorry. I had to. If I didn’t, my family would’ve become their slaves,” she told me. She started crying. Through the sobs, I thought that I could hear her whisper “I’m sorry” over and over. Somewhere inside me, I felt bad that I hoped she was dying of sorrow.

“Oh Reyna, you foolish mare,” the leader pony began, “you actually thought that I would let your parents go?!” He started to laugh. This time, the others didn’t join in.

Reyna stopped moving. I could see from where I was standing that her eyes were wide; staring off into the distance as if somepony had been killed in front of her. She seemed to lose all connection with reality. My blood started boiling. Not only did this bastard blackmail her into kidnapping us, but he also didn’t keep his end of the deal?! And with her parents no less! I was seeing red. I didn’t want somepony to experience what I’d been through already.

No. Scratch that. I wasn’t about to let somepony experience the kind of loss that I had.

I flew (literally) at the scarred stallion and started to hit him with my hooves. Before I could do any real damage, I was pulled off of him by some of his henchponies. I must have been stronger than I imagined because it took at least three of them to get me off of him.

“You’ll pay!!!” I screamed at him.

He stood up with a slight smirk on his face and chuckled.

This guy finds everything funny! What in the name of the Goddesses is wrong with him?

“Well, it seems that we have a tough girl on our hooves here guys! And look! She’s a pegasus! Well, you know, she’ll be quite the prize,” he said. My blood ran cold. He suddenly lost the smirk he had and said, “Break her wings.”

I tried to struggle away from the henchponies that were holding me down while another came from the group with a bat. One of the three henchponies holding me lifted up my wing. I suddenly wished that I hadn’t done anything in the first place.

Maybe I should have just stayed in the Stable. That would’ve been less painful than this shit! Oh Goddesses, please hear this! Don’t let this hurt too badly!

Before the ponies did anything, he told them, “Remember: Make her look me in the eye while you do it! I want to see the pain on her face.

One of the ponies took my mane in his teeth and pulled my head up so I was eye-to-eye with the monster that was in front of me. Before anything happened, I glanced over at Greyhorn, who was still standing by the door, and with a look, told him to stay put. His face was terrified. I clenched my eyes shut.

The bat came crashing down on my wing, and I instantly knew that the Goddesses hadn’t heard my prayer in time, or just didn’t do anything about it. The pain felt like hundreds of megaspells going off inside of each fringe on my wing. The crunch from my wing was audible. I think that I may have started crying, but it was just a natural reaction. The pain was so intense, I couldn’t think about crying even if I had wanted to.

“AHHHHHHHHHH!!”

Before I could even look at the pony who was now holding my other wing raised in his hoof, the bat came crashing down on the other wing, and another scream rang out in the Wasteland.

I opened my eyes and saw the smiling maniac in front of me. The pony holding my mane in his teeth let go, and I fell to the floor in agony.

“There. All better,” he said. “I hope you feel grateful that I spared you the trouble of dealing with those things. Well, now. Let’s load ‘em up ponies!”

I wished my body would move, but I just couldn’t. The pain was too much. I just laid there.

Move, Rae! Move!

“I don’t think she’ll be able to make it to the wagon on her own, guys!” the stallion said, “She might need some help!”

A pony pulled me up by the mane again (Like, seriously? Why my mane? Is there no other part of me that they could’ve used?) and dragged me over to a cart they had outside. It was in the shape of a cage made out of sticks and had a floor covered with straw. The pony flung me inside, and I slammed against the back wall of it. I thought I heard a rib crack.

“Oh, and Reyna, our business venture is terminated. Right here. Right now. SO, GET IN!” the stallion demanded.

I looked up in time to see Reyna slowly come out of the cottage. She had no expression on her face. She even seemed older. The henchponies beside her kicked her to move faster, but all it did was push her forward slightly. She got in the cart and just slumped to the ground. Greyhorn followed. I guess he took the hint that the evil stallion terrorizing us wanted all of us.

That same stallion came up to the cart and said, "Welcome to Tartarus, ponies. My name is Blindside and I'll be your new king. Serve me well, and you might just survive. If you don't, well . . . you just got a taste of what would happen."

And with that, he left us, closed the gate to the cage-wagon, and told the driver to go.

I lied down and continued to listen to Reyna whisper "I'm sorry."

Yeah. I probably should've stayed in the Stable.

Author's Note

Rae's getting a lot looser with her language. The fucked up nature of the Wasteland is starting to get to her. This is supposed to be a really damn serious chapter. We are dealing with the psychological issues of all the characters. Including, but definitely not limited to, Rae's depression, Reyna's insecurity, and Greyhorn's secrets that eat away at his subconscious. We also have an opponent! Quite the baddie I must say. Keep on a-waitin' for the next chapter. I finally have caught up with where I was for the most part.

THIS IS GONNA' BE FUN!

Edit log: Rewritten from 3/1/18 to 3/16/18

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