When The Dead Start To Trot

hav“I can't take it anymore, I can't.”

She sat in a dark corner of the little cell she was being kept in. She somehow once managed to get herself a rope as some of the slavers were getting the pony next to her out of the cage and tied her up. When they weren't looking, she grabbed one of the ropes. She knew they wouldn't miss one rope when there still were about eight others left.

She felt miserably whenever she saw that rope because every time she saw it, the scene of that poor pony getting dragged away replayed in her head. She didn't remember what her name was but she had seen her in Ponyville before, plenty of times.

That was a month ago.

Ditzy Doo, more commonly known as Derpy, still had that same rope and still felt miserably whenever she saw it.

Everyday, she was taken away through the building to a room in the back of a hall where she had to help them preparing the meals. After about four hours she was allowed to quickly shower while a guard watched her which made her feel incredibly uncomfortable. She could only shower for about two minutes which wasn't enough at all to get properly clean before she was dragged away again. Then she was taken back to the cage and had to stay in there for the rest of the day before the cycle repeated itself.

Sometime in the evening, she usually got food and some water. Only usually though. Derpy was used to it by then that she sometimes got nothing to eat. She knew she would go to bed hungrily whenever she heard drunken screams from the outside. They never took feeding the slaves seriously.

Derpy once again looked at the rope. She had wanted to use it for a long time but never got the chance to. Long before she had arrived, another pony had committed suicide by somehow impaling himself, she was heard. Ever since then, the slavers were much more careful to not let their slaves die.

Her work schedule, if you can call it like that, was almost always the same. Being dragged away tied up whenever the slavers felt like it, then being handed an extremely sharp knife. Derpy didn't even try to kill herself with it. She could be brought to the clinic fast enough to be saved.

Once the captives who either haven't been chosen to be slaves for some reason or slaves who were no longer needed were brought in, Sassaflash, her slave partner, hold the captives in place while they were hanging with their head down from the table, above a huge trough.

Derpy knew the pony laying in front of her that time. She never really had an interesting relationship with her but she has been a partner pre-apocalypse when she was working as a mail mare.

Sassaflash held her in place and looked pleasingly at Derpy. She wanted to get over with it as fast as possible.

Derpy then went down to her as she laid on the table, facing the trunk. She brought her knife down to her former mail mare partner. They looked each other deep into each others eyes, although Derpy felt like their gazes missed each other by miles. She couldn't explain.

Then, she slid her throat open. Blood gushed out the wound into the trough, dying it once again in fresh red to cover the old, dried blood. She almost instantly started screaming and even a bit gagging. Derpy could see a bit of the inside of her throat and the red flesh. The blood continued gushing out. Sassaflash had a hard time getting a hold of not only the bleeding pony but herself.

Derpy remembered the day she started working as Ponyville's mail mare. Due to her clumsiness, she never got used to the job as good as others but quickly became by far the most known mail mare in all of Ponyville. She even had had packets with the message that it only should be delivered by her and no other pony.

She remembered the day Equestria together with the rest of the world went down in flames. She was delivering a package for a customer that only wanted packages delivered by her. She was an elderly but kind-hearted mare. Granny Smith had never judged Derpy because of her crossed eyes.

“Hello? Anypony there?” Derpy had shouted into the house. When she realised the door was open, she simply entered and looked around. She became pretty anxious seeing the house abandoned, empty of any living creature. Except the undead Granny though who had had heard Derpy and fell down the stairs to greet her.

Her former partner was still bleeding although it was beginning to come to an end. When she then bled put and drew her last breath, Derpy once again felt like the beginning of the end has started from scratch.

But it didn't. It just continued and became worse. And she knew that.

It didn't take long for Applejack and Rose to get outside. They tried to be as stealthily as possible.

But when they were outside the building, a few guards with their machine guns were already awaiting them. In front of them, there was a rather large unicorn mare. She probably was almost as big as Celestia herself.

Applejack remembered what one of the Canterlot guards had said when she alongside Doctor Whooves and Twilight wanted to enter. The guard mentioned some unicorn with wings taped to her body. Just like this mare.

“I'd have preferred you taking the front entrance but okay,” the mare calmly said.

Applejack and Rose stayed silent. Applejack felt like they'd been shot dead in a few seconds if they did anything.

The mare then stepped forward.

“Since you decided to use a side entrance, I doubt you have been greeted properly. Or at all. I usually don't do this so this feels a bit awkward.” The mare took a deep breath and said, “Welcome to your Release”.

Everypony stayed silent for a few seconds. You could see in the mare's eyes that she felt as awkward as Applejack and Rose did.

“Redemption would be more fitting, would-,” Rose wanted to speak up but Applejack quickly silenced her by putting her hoof to her mouth.

“Maybe,” the mare said in thought. “But I don't think we're gonna change it anytime soon.”

Three other guards then came trotting their direction. One of them trotted faster and directly approached the mare.

“Found two intruders, ma'am!” She saluted and then trotted back to the other two guards holding Doctor Whooves and Twilight hostage.

Applejack's eyes widened. Why did they get captured? And where did Twilight even come from all of the sudden?

The mare noticed her glare.

“I suppose you know them. Don't they know it's a bit rude to sneak up on somepony like that like they want to stab us in the back with a kitchen knife? You should have been a better example.”

She slowly walked towards Doctor Whooves who was slightly but still visibly shivering. She stared down to him and raised his head with her hoof so that he would look her in the eyes.

“A shy one, I see. Or can't you handle authority?” She let go of him and stepped over to Twilight.

“And here's princess Twilight Sparkle, princess of friendship.” She spoke with disgust in her voice. “Seems like your ‘services’ aren't required anymore, are they?”

“You sure speak a lot,” Rose then said with almost as much disgust as the mare.

“Shut up!” Applejack snapped at her angrily.

The mare seemed to ignore her and continued. “I sure like your wings.” She slid her hoof underneath Twilight's left wing and weighed it. “Light.”

She then went back to Applejack and Rose.

“My name,” she now calmly spoke, “is Lucky Charm. Now, I know that it sounds kind of… exaggerating, if you want to call it like that, but I didn't get to choose. I am the leader of this little place we call home.”

She signaled the Doc and Twilight to come over to her. To the guards, she said, “You two stay there.”

The two ponies walked over to stand next to Applejack. She could basically feel Whooves’ fear.

Applejack then decided to speak up to tell her why they were actually there. “We're comin’ from Canterlot. Princess Celestia herself asked for a partnership if possible.” She really tried to sound serious and to hide her southern accent for this.

Lucky Charm looked at her before she started to laugh. Really hard.

“A partnership?” she rhetorically asked as she calmed down a bit. “We don't need no partnership. Why would we?”

“Why are you laughing?” Doctor Whooves then said shakily.

“You wouldn't accept us anyway,” she said after a short silent pause. “Somepony would find out anyway and it was all for nothing.”

Lucky Charm then sent the four ponies off into the building, guarded.

Inside, they were brought to a little room in the back of a huge hall in which a lot of desks were standing around. Here, ponies seemed to be working on various things like clothes, weapons and medicine.

In the room, right in the middle, there was a big trough. The guards took them to a table behind it and tied them up on top of it, with their head hanging down. The through was dyed in a dry red tone like blood and it smelled just like that.

Applejack didn't bother restraining as she knew they all would be dead before she could achieve anything.

Whooves who was to the left on the table looked next to him and felt his last meal coming up when he saw a dead mare hanging down, her throat slid open and it seemed like something - or somepony - has ripped it open.

Lucky Charm then came trotting in with a list in her hand.

“Well, looks I can now spare the promotion to somepony else.” She then looked to Applejack and Rose. “So, which one of you was it?”

Rose and Applejack looked at each other confused for a second.

“The guard you shot, in the food hall?” she asked deadpanned. “Gosh!”

“Y'all have an entire hall filled with food?” Applejack asked shocked. “It was huge!”

“Yeah. Don't worry though. I'm sure you'll do great in there,” Lucky Charm said with a smile on her face. She turned her gaze back to the clipboard.

“What have you done to this mare?” Doctor Whooves asked her with a shaking voice.

The mare then looked up at him, then at the corpse of the mare next to him.

“She bled out. What do you think happened to her?”

The Doc didn't what to say at first before building a question in his head to say out loud.

“Why did you do that to her?”

Lucky Charm has gone back to the clipboard flying in front of her, surrounded by purple magic.

“We gotta feed everypony here somehow,” she said calmly. “We tested a few ways and everypony loved the way the meat tastes when the pony it belonged to was bled out. And sliding the throat open is the most effective and easy way.”

Applejack felt like her whole stomach was being pumped out, like she would vomit if she would only eat a dust particle right now.

“Look,” Lucky then said as she looked up from the clipboard again, “I know what you are thinking now. Something like 'Cannibals! How could you? You must die!’. But all those ponies out there, the residents, they're innocent, okay? They don't know what exactly that meat is from.”

“And you're telling me that nopony ever got suspicious?” Twilight asked angrily.

“No, I didn't. That was you,” she countered. “Of course there were some ponies who became suspicious. That's only logical. But they didn't last very long. I can be very convincing.” She smiled.

She then shouted to some ponies outside to come in. Four ponies entered the room, two of them were guards. The other two were Sassaflash and Ditzy.

Doctor Whooves’ eyes widened. Almost screaming, he shouted, “Ditzy!”

Ditzy's eyes widened as well and she quickly ran over to him. “Doc!” She cried and hold his head. “You're alive!”

“Well, that's gonna change soon,” Lucky coldly said with a slight tone of joy and put the clipboard aside. “Sorry, I had to resign you to a section before we can eat you. Took longer than expected.”

Derpy turned towards Lucky Charm, tears in her eyes. “Please don't. Please!”

“I like you, Derpy, really,” she began.

“Don't call her like that!” Whooves shouted at her. Applejack has never seen him like that before. She had seen him being angry before but this was different. This wasn't because of two ponies he knew arguing. This was because of somepony being treated - or being called - a certain way.

Lucky ignored him and continued. “But they came in here killing somepony. And we can't tolerate that, can we?” she rhetorically asked with an innocent tone in her voice.

“But,” she then started again, “because it's you, I'll spare him for now.”

“Thank you!” Ditzy said, calming down a bit.

“With that, I mean that he'll be the last one we kill. Or to be exactly, you.”

Before anypony else could react, she then turned to a guard. “Who tied up the princess?”

No response.

“You know we can't eat an alicorn. What were you thinking?” she snarled. She then hold Twilight in her magic while untying the rope.

“Having an alicorn here is a really special occurrence. We can't eat you. I need your wings.”

“What?” Twilight and Applejack asked simultaneously in shock.

“I already have a nice little collection. But the pair of wings from the princess of friendship, princess Twilight Sparkle herself? Now that's a chance I can't risk to lose.”

“Then why wouldn't you kill me first?” Twilight asked, sounding angry but being really feared in reality. Her masquerade worked though.

“I never cut off the wings of a living pony. Anything you do with a corpse except of burying or burning it is just completely morally wrong. Eating however...” She paused. “We don't have enough 'normal’ food left. Three quarters of our food is pony meat. We really know how to get anything eatable off a pony's corpse.” She obviously took some kind of pride in it.

“Ya can't do this!” Applejack then shouted at her. Her nerves were wrecked.

“Calm down, AJ,” Twilight then suddenly calmed down and smiled at Applejack. “It's going to be okay. Don't just always lose your head. You have to stay calm and think clearly, okay?”

Applejack was surprised at her sudden calmness but Twilight was right. She had lost her head too many times the last few days. She really needed to learn how to control her emotions.

Lucky Charm then seemed to put her under a spell that stops her from moving. Twilight still tried to stop Lucky but she couldn't.

“I'm not too familiar with magic and I don't know many spells but I really know those ones,” she then firmly stated before trotting off with Twilight. “By the way, I think I changed to mind. Start with the stallion.”

“What?” Ditzy then shouted with fear. “But you said-”

“Yeah, I said. But now I said something else. I never made a promise, remember?” Lucky then asked sarcastically, a mischievous grin on her face. She then turned around and walked through the door.

“And also, Derpy,” she added, “don't forget to to be especially careful with him. You know it's rather rare for us to have a stallion to eat.” She closed the door behind her and the guards.

Two guards were left in the room now. One of them trotted behind the Doc and the other hold his weapon to Ditzy's face.

“Get going!” he demanded without a single tone of hesitation.

Ditzy then slowly walked towards Whooves and stood still in front of her. Ditzy felt worse and worse. The guard stood directly behind her.

Ditzy took the knife she had gotten earlier firmlier now. The same knife she has used for at least fifty times before. It was already a bit rusty. The edges however were kept sharp all the while to make sure that it cuts the throat of that poor pony open enough to allow the pony to bleed out.

“Do it now or you'll die!” the guard behind Ditzy then shouted again. She looked at Doctor Whooves and saw the understanding in his calm eyes.

Ditzy placed the knife in position on Whooves’ throat.

Then, she turned around and threw the knife into the guard's left eye. He dropped to the floor.

The other guard as well as Applejack, Rose and Doctor Whooves first stood in shock before the guard regained her senses and put the weapon up. Rose however kicked her with a leg. She could barely move it but it was enough to bring her to drop her weapon.

Ditzy quickly grabbed the knife stuck in the guard's eye socket and then threw it at the guard. It went right through the cheek.

She couldn't say anything. Instead, she just quickly went to the Doc, Rose and then Applejack and managed to untie them with the help of the knife.

After Applejack was freed, Whooves was there and basically threw himself around Ditzy who could only return the hug. Both cried into one another's shoulder.

Applejack felt both sad and happy for them. But even though she didn't want to, she had to break this moment of intimacy.

“We gotta go. Now.” She stayed calm, just like Twilight had told her to. Ditzy and Whooves broke the hug. They looked into each others eyes before turning to Applejack and nodded.

Stellar Eclipse tried the food and it was delicious. He was still worried about the sudden alarm that now wasn't destroying his eardrums anymore but he was heavily distracted by the barbeque in front of him. Living in Equestria, you rarely get to eat any meat so he was utterly but happily surprised that Release had so much of it.

“So, lot of ponies comin' here?” Big Macintosh asked their tour guide. Except for him, everypony seemed to feel rather safe in the camp.

“Well, although we're advertising for our place a lot, actually no, not a lot of ponies are coming here. At least not anymore. Used to be a whole lot more,” she said.

“Really?” Stellar asked surprised while munching down a large piece of meat. He then, seeing Sweetie Drops’ glance which then also reminded him of her bite, swallowed before repeating his question.

“Yeah. I'm not sure why there are so little new ponies coming. Maybe some other community was jealous and spread a few lies.” The guide shrugged her shoulders. “But we can manage.”

“If you say so,” Big Mac mumbled more to himself than to the mare.

“You don't have to worry, okay?” the mare said. “Our leader, Lucky Charm herself, is making sure that there's enough food for everypony.”

“But where's the food comin’ from?” Big Mac asked the mare again. “It's so much.”

“I honestly don't know,” she said cheerily. “Lucky's taking care of it and doesn't want us to be concerned with that kind of thing.”

“And you're not even suspicious?” Sweetie asked shocked. “Are you serious?”

“Well, I have to admit that I was wondering before where it could come from,” she said. “I mean, I can understand your point. But I think it would be best to just stay out of it, okay?”

“Why that?” Sweetie asked firmly. “We're here for some help. And as I understand it, you're willing to help. But how can we trust you if you are keeping secrets from us?”

The mare looked around and stepped closer to them.

“Please, just stay out, please! It's also so much better for you all.”

“What is going on here?” Sweetie then raised her voice.

“No, no, please!” the mare pleaded. Another guard quickly approached them from behind.

“What is the problem?”

“Uh, it's nothing, really,” the mare nervously said. “Really.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

The guard eyed her suspiciously. “You didn't talk, did you?”

“No, I didn't,” the mare said, sounding more considerate now. “I didn't.”

“You know what? I don't believe you,” the guard said, coming even closer to the mare.

“Come on. You know me well enough to know that I wouldn't do that,” she responded.

The guard grabbed the knife from his waist and stabbed the mare in the chest.

“You betrayed your Luck,” he said before pulling the knife out and ramming it into her head and brain.

As soon as her corpse fell to the ground, the guard screamed, “Hostiles!” With that, he grabbed his pistol and aimed at Stellar's head. When a few other guards arrived, he advised them to bring them into the ‘back room'.

While Stellar and the others were dissipated, he could hear some guard telling the scared residents, “It's okay. We've got everything under control. Don't worry.”

As soon as they arrived at the room, the door opened and four ponies stumbled out. Everypony stood silently in place before the guards raised their guns and the grey pegasus mare threw her knife in the face of one of them.

The other guards started shooting immediately while the four ponies ran away and jumped behind one of the many desks standing in the hall and knocked it over to take cover.

Stellar caught a quick glimpse of the 'back room’. A large trough with a table in front of it. With a dead mare laying on top of it. Even from where he stood, he was able to see the dry blood at her throat.

He didn't really have time to think what this meant but, naïve as he was, quickly decided to help the strangers and rammed one guard with his head, knocking him down. His head now hurt as hell, but it was not until then that he realised that he wouldn't get up again.

Sweetie Drops didn't like what he had done but knew she had to help him. She, despite her being weakened by her bite, kicked another guard right in the crotch. Unfortunately, she didn't notice in time that this guard was a mare.

Fortunately though, Twilight was there and shot the guard in the head before it could shoot Sweetie.

The other two guards who were approaching Applejack and the others turned around before they were gripped in Twilight's magic and brutally thrown against the opposite wall. They slowly fell from the wall and stayed down.

The guard Stellar had bumped to the ground stood up again and blindly shot into Twilight's direction. She wasn't quick enough to notice the bullet before it went right through her left ear. She screamed in pain.

Lyra and Caramel who hadn't known what to do or say the whole time finally broke their trance and after Caramel also kicked the guard in the face, even if it wasn't as effective as Sweetie's one, Lyra tried to throw her away. But in all the panic and hectic of the situation, she couldn't manage to cast the spell. Twilight who was still writhing in pain casted the spell again and killed the last guard.

Applejack, Doctor Whooves, Rose and Ditzy then left the relatively high safety of the sturdy desk and looked at their saviours.

“Twilight!” Applejack was quick to exclaim and ran to her. “Oh gosh, they shot ya ear off!”

“Don't worry about me so much,” Twilight winced. “I'll be fine.”

Applejack of course didn't stop worrying and, while continuing to look iif some rest of the bullet was left in her ear, she asked, “How did you get out of there?”

“They took me right into the open and when one guard 'sneaked up’ on this crazy mare, she stopped her magic and I could get away.”

“The door!” Applejack then remembered and was about to burst to the door but Twilight stopped her.

“I sealed it with a spell. Lucky Charm doesn't seem to be able to teleport. We're safe for now.”

Applejack trusted her and didn't check the door.

Whooves took a deep breath to calm himself down and now more calmly walked alongside Ditzy and Rose to Caramel and Lyra.

They stood in awkward silence for a few seconds. Whooves coughed in his hoof and spoke up with the first thing that came to his mind, “Thank you.”

Caramel managed to gather his courage and said, “You should thank Bon Bon and Stellar here.” He noticed the mistake and corrected himself. “Sorry, Sweetie.”

Applejack hadn't even noticed Big Mac as she had run to Twilight. Neither had one of them recognised one another when Applejack's group has bursted through the door. But now, Big Mac had. He stood in shock, his lips trembling, tears making their way up to his eyes. He barely suppressed a sniffle when Applejack let go of Twilight and turned around, looking straight into his face.

Her lips trembled as well. Twilight's didn't but she couldn't help herself but smile brightly. Doctor Whooves realised that this was her lost brother and smiled along.

“AJ.”

“Big Mac.”

They fell into each others arms and sobbed.

When the whole group came together after Applejack and Big Mac had both calmed down, they quickly 'introduced’ themselves to each other. Stellar afterwards was the first to ask, “What the hay is happening here?”

“They're cannibals!” Applejack angrily said. “We didn't want to be surprised so we sneaked up on'em. Was the plan, at least.” She noticed Twilight's look and breathed slowly to calm down again. “And y'all?”

“You can't be serious,” Stellar asked shocked. He felt his heartbeat increasing in terror and shock. Then again, it made nothing but sense. Why the mare who showed them the area around Release didn't want them to 'worry’, why she was killed, why they had so much meat…

“Oh Celestia, the meat!”

He never experienced vomiting as bad before as he felt like all the meals he ever had came up inside of him from his stomach and made their way through his mouth. Caramel and Lyra felt similar but Lyra managed to suppress the rest of the meal from coming out. Big Macintosh and Sweetie didn't have to vomit but felt terrible for having eaten a pony.

“We gotta get out of here! This is sick!” Stellar almost shouted.

“Wait! Y'all gonna believe us jus’ like that?” Applejack was surprised. “Why that?”

“Well, you're the Element of Honesty, even nowadays,” Caramel said more to himself than to Applejack but she still heard it though.

“Maybe you're right.”

“We have to remember,” Twilight spoke up, “even in times like this, friendship is still magic. We still have to care about one another and help each other out. Even this time period will eventually end. Everyone until right here and now did, and so will this one. But to survive and see the end of it, we have to be there for one another.”

Nopony knew what to say after Twilight's emotional and actually motivational little speech. Applejack felt like she was the one to break the silence. “Wise words. Jus’ like Ah expected from you.”

“That's my job,” Twilight smiled at her.

Bang!

The bullet went right through Twilight's skull. Her lifeless body fell to the ground.

A wave of blood hit Applejack who could only stand in shock. She turned around and saw Lucky Charm standing in the door frame. She snorted angrily.

“Now I didn't want to do this but you really don't get it, do you?” She came closer to the rest of the group who were all in shock and most of them in fear.

“I can handle breaking my morale code for once for those wings but y'all are really wrecking my nerves. Did you really think I wouldn't come back here to look if everything's going alright?" She slowly approached them. “Y'all really have some fucking nerves!”

“T-twilight…”

“How did you get in here?” Stellar asked. Although not his usual behaviour, he could feel the fear in his voice.

“Magic? Teleportation?” she answered deadpanned. “Like I said, I really know my few spells and teleportation is one of them. I just usually never use it, simply to hide it.”

Applejack was speechless like basically everypony else. Nopony knew what to do now.

“Well, looks like the game's over,” she said and circled around Applejack. “Now finally give up. The door is still sealed. You won't get out.” She looked to Lyra. “And I know you don’t have the skills.”

She then went to the nearest wall and teleported Twilight's body to her. While holding her gun to the group, she began pulling the wings.

“More sturdy than I thought,” she murmured to herself.

Caramel began to hyperventilate. Soon enough, Lucky Charm was annoyed again and stood up to come closer to him.

“Shut up! Calm down and shut up!” she demanded, her revolver next to his face. She was careful to not let the others get too close.

Caramel stepped a bit closer. She positioned her gun between his eyes.

“Why?”

“What?” She tried to sound harsh but couldn't completely suppress some confusion.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because we need food,” she coldly responded.

“No,” Caramel said and asked again, “Why are you doing this?”

Lucky became even more confused and lowered her gun. “What the fuck do you want?”

Lyra proceeded to grab the revolver herself in Lucky's moment of inattentiveness and got it out of her grip. She pulled it to her and after a second handed it to Sweetie who then focused on aiming at Lucky's head.

She chuckled.

“Come on, y'all really think you can get out of here? Even if you have the guts to kill me, which you don't, the few dozen guards out there will get you. There's one exit for this place. No way you're getting outta here.” She grinned mischievously. “You're not gonna kill me.”

Before Sweetie could say anything, Lyra realised. She wasn't quick enough however as Lucky already took the revolver with her magic.

“Thank you.” She raised the gun to Sweetie.

She chuckled. “Look at y'all. A bunch of earth ponies, a crippled pegasus and an useless unicorn.”

Although she didn't say anything, Lyra obviously took offense by her comment. Lucky Charm noticed.

“I see. Getting offended by some comment from a stranger, is that it?” She slowly walked to Lyra.

“Yes, I'm not very good at those kind of spells but I can tell you that you'll no find nopony who's better at anthropology than me,” she stated with a firmness Stellar has never seen from her before. She really seemed to take pride in her anthropology studies.

“Oh, you mean things like the tales of humankind?” Lucky mocked her. “That's all just a pile of shit, you know that, right?”

Lyra was becoming angry. She started concentrating and built up her magic.

“Wanna impress me now or what?” Lucky raised her gun to her head. “Come on, show me what you got.”

Lyra began sweating but didn't stop her magic. She even began grunting a bit.

“Too much for you to handle? Too bad.”

Then, in a flash of light, Lyra released her magic and teleported some residents of Release inside the building. They looked around in panic.

When they realised that Lucky was holding her gun to Lyra's head, they were even more shocked.

“Lucky, what are you doing?” one of them asked in horror. “We don't do that here! I thought this whole place was civilised!”

“It is!” Lucky exclaimed after a short pause full of confusion and even a bit fear for some reason.

“You told us that we would only hold hostiles captive for a while, not kill them.”

“And especially not letting them walk around!” another pony said angrily.

“Don't forget to look in the room over there,” Applejack then said. She didn't like to send those ponies in since they've obviously never been outside longer than at most a few days but it would probably make them hate Lucky so she felt like she had to.

Lucky Charm was still too nervous. Stellar felt actually kind of bad for her. What she had done was wrong but she really cared about her ponies.

Before Lucky could react, a resident went in the room and came out a few seconds later gagging, trying to keep his last meal inside. The other residents quickly looked too and they reacted pretty much the same.

By now, Lucky actually seemed so hopeless that she threw her gun away which landed near Applejack. She didn't pick it up.

“That's not right!” the resident who calmed down first began. “That's not how we do things here!”

“I…” Lucky was speechless.

“Why did you lie to us?”

“Why did you do this?”

The question went on for about a minute before she finally erupted. “I had to keep y'all safe! I had to keep y'all fed! The world's gone to hell! You can't just go the local restaurant and eat! That's not how it works anymore! We had to do it so that you can survive!” She breathed heavily.

“What? Did we eat other ponies?” one resident concluded.

Only now Lucky realised that the residents didn't even think about cannibalism and that she just admitted everything.

Applejack saw her chance. She picked up the gun.

But she dropped it again.

Like Stellar, she saw that she cared for those ponies. She decided to try something else. For Twilight.

She lunged at Lucky and brought her down to the ground with a yelp. Applejack gathered all her strength and with one swift kick, she destroyed half of Lucky's horn. The pieces almost flew to the other side of the hall.

Lucky screamed in pain and fell unconscious.

Whooves stepped closer. Applejack didn't even see shock in his eyes anymore. He had gotten used to things like this.

“What should we do with her?”

Applejack returned her gaze to Lucky. “Ah'm gonna take her outside in the woods somewhere and put her there.”

“You do not want to kill her directly?” he asked. Now she could see surprise in his eyes.

She whispered, “For Twilight.”

Stellar and Sweetie together with Whooves went back to Canterlot. Applejack and the rest have stayed in Release for the moment. They didn't even know they were on their way back.

“Forget it, it's too late.”

“No, it's not!” Stellar didn't want to believe that this would be it for Sweetie. A while ago, after her insisting to help Applejack bringing the unconscious Lucky Charm into the woods, she had been the one to fall unconscious. Whooves had concluded that the bite has infected her whole body by now.

Stellar pleadingly looked to him for reassurance. He avoided his look. And Stellar felt terrible.

When the guards recognised the Doc and Sweetie, they let them through instantly, together with Stellar. The three of them made their way to the castle as fast as possible. Seeing Sweetie, even the castle guards let them through and one of them led them directly to the throne room. The guard swiftly entered the room and came out a few seconds later. All three of them could come inside.

The throne room seemed like the only place in the world that hasn't lost its glory even in the apocalypse. Even though the windows didn't seem as bright as they used to, the rest of the room was as shiny as ever.

Princess Celestia stood in front of Twilight's window and hold two pieces of it in her magic aura. She fixed them but whenever she did, two more would fall out.

“What can I do for you?” she said with a voice as calm as always. She turned around and saw Sweetie collapsing on the floor.

“Oh my, Sweetie!” she suddenly said worriedly and trotted over to her. She quickly saw her bite.

“No, no,” she said in shock. “I shouldn't have sent you out there.” She hugged Sweetie.

“It's okay, it's okay,” she tried to reassure Celestia but she knew it wouldn't work. And it didn't.

“Losing two ponies at once,” Whooves murmured to himself.

“Who?” Celestia asked absentmindedly.

“Princess Twilight,” he said before he realised what impact it would cause. But it was too late.

The window fell apart completely.

Celestia looked up at him rapidly, then turned around to the broken window.

“I see… Twilight…” She was slightly stuttering. Other than Whooves had expected to see, Celestia didn't even try to hold back her tears and sobbing. “It's quite tragic, isn't it?”

Stellar could see that she obviously didn't know how to handle her emotions so he walked over to her and hugged her. He could feel his own eyes watering. He normally would never have dared hugging a princess, princess Celestia out of all of them, just like that. But he didn't care now. She sobbed in his shoulder.

“And Sweetie?” he asked carefully. He knew that she wasn't emotionally stable in the moment but he had to know.

“Too late,” she whispered. “We don't have any spells for bites.” She then stepped back to the window and picked up the pieces. “I don't even know if we will ever be able to do anything for bitten ponies.”

“Amputation,” Whooves quietly said. “If you are fast enough, the infection will be stopped in time.”

“But that ain't a possibility now, is it?” Sweetie said, chuckling for a second.

Stellar couldn't believe she was chuckling over her death sentence. But he knew better than to begin arguing.

“But do you think you can get Lyra? I want to say goodbye properly,” she then asked way more seriously.

“I'll get her. Just hang on,” Stellar said in a tone to show everypony that he wouldn't argue about it. He quickly went out of the room and hurried to get to the magical train again.

When he arrived, he didn't bother listening to Applejack and a pegasus stallion who were arguing about something. Instead, he directly approached Lyra who stood near them.

“Come with me, please,” he carefully said. “It's Sweetie.”

“Well, this didn't work out at all.”

Lyra looked at him shocked and with fear in her eyes, then simply followed him back to the train.

The two of them sat next to each other awkwardly, silent. Lyra knew what would happen and couldn't believe it.

Stellar could basically feel her tenseness himself. He tried to somehow lighten the mood a bit even though he was aware that it most likely wouldn't work anyway.

“I always wanted to fly. But I never really got the chance to learn how.”

“What?”

“My parents just thought it would be a waste of time for me to learn how to fly,” he continued.

“But flying is like the most normal thing for a pegasus to do,” she picked up the conversation.

“I know. That's also more or less how I tried to always convince them to let me visit a flying club for ponies with disabilities. Didn't work. My parents were both very stubborn.” He shortly smiled. “I wish I could spend some more time with them.”

“Did… they get them?” Lyra tried to ask carefully.

“No. My father was too… careless. I'm not sure how to describe that. He fell off the roof and broke all his legs. Lost too much blood and was too shocked,” Stellar remembered everything that had happened more calmly than he thought he could. “And my mother was ill.”

“You seem to have had a good relationship with your mother, didn't you?” she asked.

“Yeah, why?” he asked surprised.

“Just a feeling. You don't seem to want to talk about her.” She then gasped. “Oh my! Sorry! I'm so sorry! I was so insensitive!”

“Don't worry. I'm over it,” he assured her.

“Really? Just like that?”

“It's been several years, so, yeah,” Stellar said.

They fell silent again. He had hoped she would open up a bit again but she really didn't want to.

By the time they arrived back at the castle, in Celestia's throne room, Sweetie was already dead.

“No. No. No!” Lyra began screaming with increasing volume. Stellar stood next to her in sadness and didn't say anything. Doctor Whooves didn't know her but he still felt terrible for Stellar and Lyra and wished he could do something for them. But he could only think of one thing.

He grabbed his knife and walked towards Sweetie Drops’ body. “To prevent reanimation.”

“No! I'll do it,” Lyra quickly interrupted him. “I should do it. I have to.”

“Are you sure?” Stellar asked sadly. She didn't answer however and instead took the knife, a bit forcefully even, from Doctor Whooves. Slowly, she then, after taking a deep breath, shakingly stuck it into the side of Sweetie's skull.

Celestia still was crying and looked out the broken window.

She whispered, “Don’t let their deaths, their sacrifices be for nothing.”