Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 1. Grey Areas
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Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 1. Grey Areas

Author's Note

Short Description:
Rainbow Dash survived Pinkamena’s muder attempt but was left in comatose. Meanwhile, the world is dangerously escalating to war.

Long Description:
With Twilight crowned princess, everything was said to be just fine. However, after Pinkamena Diane Pie revealed herself being a cold-blooded killer, the situation drifts away from everypony’s hooves. From now on, an escalation of events will bring the world to its knees and the ponies we know so well will go through Tartarus to answer this very simple question:

“Where will you be ready to go to save those you cherish and which sacrifice will you be eager to pay for it?”

This story is an alternative ending/sequel to the known, loved or hated Sergeant Sprinkles’s story, “Cupcakes”.

This is my first story any criticism is welcomed! It is not because it is a sequel to Cupcake that it is necessarily bad. Read it and enjoy the unfolding plot.

I would like to thank Neo Draco for the skilful editing this pony has performed on my story.

Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 1. Grey Areas

ACT I Ξ What stands beneath

Grey areas

…

A lure?

Somepony was calling her.

A joyful, vividly colorful and modulated voice was echoing in her ears.

She had faded more than a few times, unable to keep her thoughts coherent. Pain was dwelling on and within her skin, flesh and blood. She was struck down, lying on an uncomfortable wooden chopping block.

Eerie flashbacks were bouncing in Rainbow Dash’s unconscious mind, melting in harmful memories, twisted laughter and floating smirks. She caught a voice whispering in the shadows. She remembered a bloody scarf swung around a pink neck, some acts of terrific sickening cannibalism and of course this long-lasting nasty feeling of knifes and sharpened edges running on her skin.

“Waaake up Rainbow Dash… Wake up… Wake UP!!”

Pinkie laughed a deep, twisted and disrespectful chortle. Opening her eyes, Rainbow instantly glanced at her belly, driving her insane by the pain coming back and forth in her tortured bowels. The long, atrocious wound was sewn up. Regaining slowly her senses, the wingless pegasus shivered, terrified, disoriented and obviously agonizing in her own coagulating blood. She raised her stare of somepony facing her.
Pinkie Pie’s smile was nastily disturbing, like white fangs shining in the dark, thanks to moonlight… And right now, the moonlight was just the beams surging from small candles randomly scattered around in the room. Rainbow panicked, breathing hardly, searching for pure air, or at least some oxygen which was not corrupted by her own blood stench and her own reeking faeces.

“You shouldn’t rest, my dear pony, you’re missing the party! A party you won’t forget. Look around to our guests! Exhausting Flesh, Dying Life, Hale and Hearty Living Dead Corpses!”

Pinkie was gamboling around the table where Rainbow was shamefully displayed, tied up so tightly that her joints were bleeding. Rainbow gazed at her merciless foe. She was showing off a bag of limbs on which was badly painted a pair of eyes. She then slid her hooves inside a griffon’s head. Rainbow’s fur rose on her skin, she knew so well whose skull it was belonging to. She remembered glancing at it earlier but she had quickly forgotten. Her mind had been rapidly bathed by nothing but pain and pleas. Pinkie then showed up heads nailed on the walls of the basement.

“That… makes absolutely no sense!” Rainbow finally gagged.

“Of course it doesn't!”

Anesthetic was still running through Rainbow’s veins, pushing her relentlessly toward insanity. And it was only an outward ride. With her half-closed eyes, she sought to find a light in the chiaroscuro of the room. She was trying to find something to rely on, something that kept her mind free from the madness… a madness which had already begun running beneath her cranium.

Hallucinations from the pain and fear were driving her insane. Full of tears, Rainbow desperately searched for help. She was only able find a wooden roof where the Pinkie’s shadow was casted by the light of dying candelabras. Everything was hidden behind a dark veil, blurred, and Pinkie was the cause of all of this mess. The hopping pink pony gamboled back to the round table. Rainbow’s breath quickened. It was an uneasy and hesitant hiss.

Pinkie imitated quite well the voice of her dear Applejack, “Had enough Sugahcube?! Mah, this is still the b’ginning! So stahp that death rattlin'!”

Tears flooded Rainbow Dash’s cheeks. Pinkie had something in her hooves and Rainbow had no clue about the true nature of the object. Once again she struggled, trying to break the ties holding her. With an evil strength Pinkie grabbed her “friend’s” mane, biting it harshly.

She forced Rainbow’s eyes to open, and with a nightmarish tool dropped something into them.
Rainbow screamed as she never had before. The pain was agonizing. Something strange, something liquid, was being poured into her eyes. They were on fire and everything went black.
Rainbow Dash’s eyeswet with tears. This pain... The bloody drops were mixed with fresh scabs. Her voice faded in sorrowful hiccups.

“P… Pl… Please Pinkie, for Equestria’s sake, stop! P… p… please! Have a bit of…”

“Mercy? Why? That’s an awesome party, isn’t it? We can’t pause it! Who would want to stop such a cheerful celebration!? You promised it to me! And NOPONY breaks a Pinkie Pie promise,” Pinkie maintained with small shouts.

Rainbow Dash was whining while her tormentor was swiftly hopping about in a frenzy before she stopped. Pinkie Pie’s head was slowly swinging from left to right. She was now doing something on a large desk close to the stairs. Eerie sounds rose which echoed in Rainbow’s ears, only to amplify her dizziness and terror.

SHLACK! Shlack… Shlack… Crack… Shlash!!

Rainbow was absolutely blind. And the fear of the unknown bathed her mind, more vivid than ever as the metallic clatters sprawling from Pinkamena’s location were foreshadowing so many grim things. The mad pony was talking to herself, muttering freaked rhetorical questions and casting away dark threats to invisible foes.

On her own, riveted to the uncomfortable table, Rainbow was left to her hearing. Abandoned on the improvised scaffold she let the shivers roam over her skin. Pinkie erupted in joy, but Rainbow could not care less anymore.

“It would be a shame if OUR Rainbow dies too soon. We have a record to break, a cupcake to make, and the ingredient is not READY!

Pinkie paused. Rainbow nearly imagined the smirk growing on the maddened features of her so-called friend.

“Neither am I!” the party pony finally erupted.

The pink pony turned back to her blind and terrorized captive. How was she not dead yet? The pain was so unbearable, her will to end this mess so strong. Standing over her guest, Pinkie squeezed those scab-covered cheeks.

“Aren’t you so cute?”

“Why Pinkie?! Why do you keep doing this?! Kill me! Enough! ENOUGH!!!!! PLEEEAAAASE!!!”

Pinkie kept being mute. Dash sobbed again. Pinkie was bored now.

“I’m Pinkamena Diane Pie, Element of Laughter! Smile, smile, smile… Or I will carve it on your pretty face! I’m PINKIE, Pinkie, pinkie…” Covered in blood and carved up flesh, Pinkie found a sadistic pleasure in spelling her own name.

In Rainbow’s ears, each of her hoofsteps echoed like a countdown, a jangling mixed with a sharp metal clatter. Pinkie was carrying a knife, no doubt about it. And it was for sure new one that Rainbow had never felt running on her skin and penetrating her flesh. Mind fogged by the pain, the cyan pegasus wagered that the edge was calling her.

“…Cause the end is where we begin,” Pinkie whispered.

Clack… Clack… Clack… Clack…

The same kind of slamming, again. Rainbow Dash opened her blinded eyes. They were burning as if sand had been splashed onto them. And all around, there was nothing but darkness. She, the fearless Pegasus, started fearing this blackened fog enshrouding her. “When we are isolated from everything we have ever known, snatched from our home and unable to grasp what stands and occurs around us, who would not?” She tried to rationalize.

The sweat was dripping from her forehead while her tormentor was contemplating her plaything, a mere living toy. And of course, Pinkie imagined herself as the toymaker pulling the strings.
And then came the sharpness of the blade, slicing and cutting through the flesh, the muscles, carving the bones. The pain was so intense Rainbow Dash let her despair take hold of her spirit.

“KILL ME, KILL ME! NOW! NOW! Now… please! Set me free!”

The blood flowed of her legs, flanks and belly. The warm liquid rolled down her opened flesh. She tasted something in her mouth, was it blood or her own tongue that she was crushing, trying to ease the pain by inflicting herself a different one. Rainbow Dash fainted again.

“No, no… You can’t, it’s too soon! You’re not ready yet! I have to restitch you. You’re still incomplete. Shouldn't you be loyal? Don't leave my party then!” Pinkie said imperiously.

Pinkie re-sewed the wounds, again. Then she gave Rainbow another adrenaline shot. The unconscious pony quivered. And this time it was neither pain nor misery which overflowed her lost mind when she awoke. There was nothing but rage.

“I’ll KILL ya! You hear!? I’ll KILL YOU! I. WILL. KILL. YOU! I’ll shred you into pieces, I’ll break every one of your bones until you’re nothing but mash. There will be no ashes! I will erase everything, even your own existence!”

“Ooooh what a berserker. That’s the spirit, I like it! Help me now,” she ordered coldly.

She went to her “dining table”. Gilda’s skull was flung off the desk and broke on the ground. There was work to be done. When Pinkie came back, Rainbow Dash knew the time to pass out had arrived. She closed her eyes, greeting the death with open hooves, like she had always done with old friends.
Rainbow came upon the whistling of a knife lifted in the air.

“Do it… please.”

Pinkie struck four times and Rainbow Dash fell to the dirty and sticky floor. She was fluttering, defenseless, disoriented, without knowing what was happening.
Pinkie did not stab her but the leather restraints. Rainbow found no available reason. She could not get up; the nails in her hooves were unbearably painful.

“I know you want it,” her interlocutor answered back.

Pinkie’s hooves clasped Rainbow’s. She gave her playtoy the blood-soaked knife.
Holding it with difficulty, a tensed grimace printed on her face, Rainbow was disconcerted.

“Cause the end is where we begin!” Pinkie repeated mystically.

Rainbow was trembling. Her mind was twisted. ‘Why? What was happening? Why, Why? Why now after this entire dreadful and painful journey? What was the purpose of all of this? Had there ever been one?’ She was disbelieving.

“Dash… Dash… Dash… My dear, do you know what this lucky charm is called?” Pinkie whispered, insisting with a poke on the knife Rainbow was now in possession.

“No I don’t…” Rainbow cried, stuttering. Her tears dropped on the floor melting with her own fluids.

“Home… Home Sweet Home.”

A long, horrible and earth-shattering silence set up.

“Do it, Sugarcube. My dea’ friend!”

“DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT”

These words echoed in Rainbow Dash’s head.

“YOU’RE NOT MY FRIEND!”She replied with a scream.

Minutes passed, maybe hours and Rainbow struck, over and over again, stabbing, sinking deep this tool called “Home” in Pinkamena’s body. Nopony would have recognized the corpse. It was dismembered, mashed up, pulp-like. Her remains were a mess on the floor. And sitting in this puddle, the killer was laughing maniacally.

It was so terrible, so wrenching, that the guards who had just broken into the basement were stunned by such play: two eyes reflecting the light of dying torches were staring madly at an unknown cadaver. The place reeked, smelling like a graveyard. Some of the spectators blacked out, the others just threw up.

The wingless pony was palpitating. Standing still, transfixed, she was staring to the stairs, where the guards were located. Rainbow’s eyes were casting dark-red shadows, the coagulated blood spread over her face working as a catalyst.

“Miss… Rainbow Dash, are you okay? Miss…”

“Cause her end is where I begin… I, I, I! Only I!”

The ghoulish pony started moving forward to the white and grey stallions. Going further step by step, covered in blood and absolutely nightmarish, Rainbow was frightening.

“Miss, what happened? You can’t pass! Oh … Wait!”

“I WANT TO GO HOME!” Rainbow Dash screamed and charged drawn out knife-first toward the exit.

ϐ Ϙ ϖ ϧ Ξ ϧ ϖ Ϙ ϐ

“It’s a dark and stormy night, isn’t it?” Princess Luna said to herself.

“I couldn’t agree more Princess Luna,” the Royal Guard sergeant responded, coming from a crossing avenue.

He took time finding the right words, visibly shocked.

“Thank you, your highness for coming here. I thought it was necessary for you to see it, this is unprecedented… Would you be so kind as to keep your calm.”

Trotting through Ponyville, Princess Luna was already suspecting something when an old and, she feared, forgotten fear came up in her heart.

“Thou should not worry about it. Usually we would like this breed of night, but tonight, there is something wrong… d… dreadful.”

She was still having difficulty ridding herself of the antique etiquette of the Canterlot court.
Princess Luna casted a glance at the threshold of Sugarcube Corner’s door. She had a fateful look as she focused on the royal Guards breaking in. Screams were coming from the bowels of the earth, deep in the shop basement.
Luna was quivering on her slender limbs. Even her, the Almighty Night Alicorn, the Mare in the Moon was staggering from tail to hooves from just staring at a broken gate.

To add another straw on the griffon’s back, there was no Moon to reassure her. The black clouds were obstructing everything and the thunderstorm was rumbling far away.

“Sister what happened?”

Celestia had just teleported beside her in a flash. The opalescent princess fixed Sugarcube Corner. Disgust was the sole feeling Celestia felt, obvious through her wrinkled and horrified features.

“We haven't seen this atmosphere in a while, Luna.”

Princess Luna was muted. She was hardly able to breath, afraid even if she would never confess it. The youngest alicorn always had a stronger connection with the darkness and its mobs. And even so, she wanted to flee away from this accursed place.

Another scream resounded. It was clearly Rainbow Dash’s voice but its tone was desperate, full of fear and anger. A Royal Guard showed up in SugarCube Corner entrance.

“Call Emergency care, now!”

Some witnesses ran toward the horsepital as fast as the wind.

“Contact the morgue… And bring back as many bags as they have…” another voice called with despair.

Luna and Celestia stared at each other’s paled faces, frightened, holding their breath. Getting aware of the regal sisters’ presence, the shouting soldier came up with an awful truth.

He stuttered, “Your Majesties, we’ve discovered something atrocious down there… Ten, maybe twenty corpses… They are more or less rotten.”

He took a long-lasting, unsettling and heart-breaking pause.

“We also found Miss Rainbow Dash,” He finally managed to say. “She’s just killed Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie and mutilated her body. There’s too much grim gore to handle down here.”

Celestia nearly fainted, “Not her… them…”

Tear rushed to her eyes, her hooves started trembling.
Princess Luna glared at the ground as she tried to cast away this terrific revelation.

“Miss Rainbow Dash has also been mutilated in such horrific ways.” He held his breath. “She attacked us in a fit of madness when we went down there. We seized her for her safety… and ours. She killed two guards.”

No response dared creep out of the two stunned princesses. The silence was unbearable.

“Should I contact the identifiable victims’ families and Miss Dash’s relati…”

“What is this all about?” a voice rose behind the sorrowful trio.

Luna, Celestia and the guard turned around. With tears running on her cheeks Fluttershy was standing behind them.

“What happened to Rainbow? And Pinkie?” she blabbered, becoming inaudible.

“Oh dear…” Celestia gulped, she had nothing to add.

Avoiding Fluttershy’s hopeless gaze, the princess started biting her lips. This was a kind of situation she had hoped to never encounter. She held back a painful gag.

Within ten minutes the remaining Elements of Harmony had gathered. Rarity collapsed once she went aware of the recent events.
Each one refused of course to accept the truth… that Pinkie was dead, that Rainbow might be the murderer and that the basement of the Sugarcube Corner was the set of the most monstrous rampage in eons. Everypony's expression was nothing but utter disbelief.

But everything really drifted away when Twilight arrived at last.

“Can you explain me what everypony is do…”

She was not given the time to finish her sentence. Glancing at Sugarcube Corner she looked deep inside something unspeakable, upon something she had never met before. It was a dark vision which came up as an already new experience for her.
Before her true eyes were two large claws of mere shadows, creeping out of the contours of the door and dragging themselves out of the basement. It was absolutely irrational and impossible. The talons were waving, attracting her, calling her, seducing her, sucking her in the abysses, down there in the darkness… down in the sickness. And she knew that the end of the path was nothing but madness. But Twilight kept moving forward.
She perceived a disembodied voice, “Come little foal. Let the shadows cradle your soul...”

Suddenly, Twilight was surrounded by greyish and thick smog and found herself trapped inside. Baffled and terrified, she kept advancing deep inside. Step by step she let herself circled by relaxing shadows. The silence was so absolute, so peaceful… It was fine staying there forever… forever.

“Twilight?”

“Twilight!?”

“TWILIGHT!!!!”

Twilight inhaled deeply, sucked out of this terrifying vision of despair. She fell flat on her right flank. During her trance she had narrowed the space between her and Sugarcube Corner ‘s broken entrance. And in front of her hooves were knocked-down two guards.
Tearful and quivering, she turned back to Celestia.

“What did I… Why?” she wept.

For everypony, the eerie play Twilight had performed in front of them had come as a horrifying surprise. All of her present friends were clueless about the way how to react to this strange outbreak. Luna instantly teleported Twilight back to her smoke. She hugged her gently, hiding Sugarcube Corner from Twilight’s with the back of her hoof.

“Don’t look at it, thou just had a hallucination, it happens somehow.”

Twilight managed to stare back to the thresholds of the shop gate. The “claws” were indeed gone.

Applejack was shocked. But as honesty was undoubtedly her Element she did not hold herself from asking a simple question.

“What the meaning of this all? She almost kill’d two guards in order to go down!”

“Thou can’t see it but We, alicorns, can gaze through the veils of this world,” Luna answered hesitantly. “Thou don’t want to know about… the things We can stare at... Thou might not be able to stand it.”

Bewildered, everypony examined the door with narrowed eyes. It was a simple wooden door, broken in half since the guards staved in. Twilight started sobbing. Her friends were totally abashed.

There were ponies gathering around the place while the emergency services were extracting a victim. They all without any doubt recognize Rainbow Dash, unconscious, lying on a stretcher.

Applejack tried to get closer, but the police’s safety belt and the doctors repelled her harshly.

“She is both a victim and a suspect,” an officer stated with a grim voice. “You can’t talk to her. Draw back to your home… a summer storm is coming. Go back home before it starts raining.”

As nopony dared make a move or step aside, he vented with a bit of irritation, “Everypony, move along, there is nothing to see.”

But there was. The morgue employees had just arrived and all the witnesses saw a big cart where was piled up empty body bags.
However the most disgusting spectacle given to watch was that, following the stretcher on which Rainbow was lying down, a surgeon was carrying in a bag containing a pair of light blue wings.

ϐ Ϙ ϖ ϧ Ξ ϧ ϖ Ϙ ϐ

Celestia, Luna, Twilight and the remaining Element of Harmony were standing in the horsepital waiting room. For ten hours the surgeons and doctors had been working on Rainbow, trying to save her… or at least to salvage what could have been. During those ten hours, no further developments were brought to them.

Everypony was afraid and the silence was exasperating their worry. Twilight was drawing circles with her hoof. Rarity was still crying, trying to quiet her sobs. Fluttershy who had collapsed earlier was struggling in her sleep against an unknown foe. Luna was watching upon her dreams.

Suddenly, Applejack bucked a bench. Each pony turned. Nopony dared speak. All of them had failed something or somepony today. Hqving an easy conscience was now a long-gone reality.
Applejack clearly was not doing any effort in holding back grumbles of rage.

“Calm down,” Twilight asked for with a voice betraying her pained thoughts.

“How can I!? Dashy is right behind that door and nopony can tell us… how she is doing,” she burst into tears. “Mah Sugahcube…”

Twelve hours had now passed and everypony was still standing in the room, exhausted. Noon had passed and nopony had leaved the room to even take a drink. The postman brought with him the Equestria Daily. Its claims were stupefying.

Murder in Equestria.

This night the Royal Guards found in the basement of Sugarcube Corner, a well-known patisserie of Ponyville, the greatest butchery ponykind have seen in history. Following the scarce Royal Guard’s statements, thirteen corpses have been pulled up from the bloody cellar, and among the victims, the name of Pinkie Pie, one of the Elements bearers has been mentioned.
Rainbow Dash, the sole survivor, has been taken to Ponyville Intensive Care.

Someponies outline she could be the kill…

“LIES! That’s all LIES!” Applejack yelled, her wrath exploding.

It took ten minutes to cool her temper down.

Twilight convinced her, “Don’t listen to gossips! Nopony knows what happened down there… We must wait for… Rainbow’s waking up.”

“Will she…” Applejack darkened the gloomy atmosphere a bit more. “Ah… Ah can’t stand to lose… fail two friends the same day. Ah…”

The door of medical bloc opened. A surgeon whose name was Dextral Hoof introduced himself to the group. Everypony stood up and held their breath, waiting for the news, good or not.

“She is safe… for now,” everypony felt better. “At least, physically. She… lost her wings. Both. We couldn’t do nothing, the nerves were already dead…”

The audience was ravaged. Tears fell to the ground.

“Does she…” Luna asked.

“No, she will never be able to fly again. She is wingless. Somepony snatched them with a rusty tool…” – he paused, trying to choose words less shocking for his audience – “Miss Dash must have suffered a lot. She has been stabbed nearly thirty times and her… tormentor has taken proceedings as she did not die from her wounds despite her blood loss. This is a master’s work.”

“She’d been… tortured,” Celestia stuttered, disbelieving.

“In the cruelest way. She’ll recover on a physical level but it is beyond my abilities to state that she will awaken without any psychological traumas. We’ve induced a coma due to the pain she is enduring now.”

No pony made a move, breathes still hold.

“All of you should go back home, we’ll wake her in three days. And don’t worry. We’ll keep an eye on her state.”

They were all disappointed but finally resigned to leave. And standing in the forecourt of the horsepital, a strange pony was there, waiting for the three princesses.

ϐ Ϙ ϖ ϧ Ξ ϧ ϖ Ϙ ϐ

“As captain of the Special Services of the Royal Court of Canterlot, may I request a meeting with Yours Majesties?”

The Captain gazed at the other ponies.

“Do not cast them away Sharpened Edge, they are the remaining Element Bearers. They can know the truth,” Princess Luna stated swiftly.

The captain sighed, ill at ease.

“As you wish Madame, but how will they take it?”

He drew a worried glance at everypony. His stared paused a long time on Fluttershy who dunked her head between her shoulders.

Everypony accompanied the captain toward the city hall. It was nearly five in the afternoon and the rain had stopped. But the clouds Rainbow Dash should have moved off in the morning were still standing high in the sky, hiding the sun.

h the assembly room of the Hall, two inspectors were impatiently waiting for the captain and his followers. They were wearing identical large brown tweed coats. Sunglasses were set upon a large oval wooden table.

After everypony had sat down, they started unfolding their version of events. This grim night had finally… maybe… an explanation. The first inspector, a large white stallion, moved forward.

“The basement of Sugarcube Corner was filled in thrash, flesh and blood when we arrived. What we found was your friend, Miss Rainbow Dash, standing over the corpse of what appeared to be Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie. The first one had a butcher knife in her hooves and instantly attacked us when we called her by her name. Miss Rainbow was visibly severely injured and had nails hammered in her hooves. She fainted from the blood loss right after a short encounter… but she had already managed to kill two guards who came to rescue what could have been saved.”

“One was my brother,” The captain said neutrally.

The second inspector brought on the desk a set of crime scene photos, pulling them from his briefcase. Pony’s remains, parts and pieces of flesh was noticeable. There were also knives, scalpels, blood stains and a table carved by hundreds of knife strikes and slashes. A photo showing a burning brazier with nails and pliers inside slid toward Princess Luna. Madness exuded from the photos, just an utter madness.

“Please take it away. I can’t…,” Fluttershy wept, hiding her eyes behind her hooves, her voice unable to go over a mere decibel.

“Neither can I,” Rarity added with a smirk of disgust.

“What is your speculations inspector?” Celestia asked, gulping back a gag.

“We can’t assume that we already have the exact answer about this night events. But with the evidences we’ve found down there it seems that somepony, and Miss Pie is our principal suspect, trapped the pegasus named Rainbow Dash in order to torture her and make her endure the most horrifying experiences. We also found a coat which was made of Cutie Marks…”

Unsettled by the multiple shocked stares fixing him, the inspector chewed his words quite a long time before continuing the creepy presentation.

“By the way… Miss Rainbow Dash’s cutie marks have been unfortunately cut off from her both flanks.”

Fluttershy hurriedly left the room, her face distorted by an expression of disgust. The surgeon had not got the courage to tell them.

“We also found cupcakes…”

“Cupcakes?” – Twilight arched her brows – “How can this be relevant?”

“Let me finish Your Majesty… cupcakes made of Pony’s flesh.”

A queasy Luna covered her mouth with her hoof in an attempt to fight back the irresistible craving to throw up.

“I don’t want details, be quick please!” Celestia implored, grieved.

“The basement is currently a twisted place. Nopony dares to go down there. The smell is untenable, and the place itself...”

The inspector developed his presentation, mentioned cannibalism, and outlined his suspicion about dark rituals.
There was only one unfolded question, the reason behind this insane deed.

“From now on and until Miss Dash’s wake-up, we can’t know. We have to wait. But one thing is clear now. Miss Dash killed your friend Pinkie Pie. The true question is really to know whether or not Miss Pie is Rainbow Dash’s tormentor. Or is she another victim?”

When the inspectors left with the evidence, Celestia gently asked everypony to go back home, to get some rest.

ϐ Ϙ ϖ ϧ Ξ ϧ ϖ Ϙ ϐ

Sleep was rejecting Twilight’s pleas. Whatever she did, however how many times she twisted and turned under her bed linen, she always pictured these two black claws creeping out of the Cake’s basement. She shuddered. Twilight knew how persistent a hallucination could be in somepony’s mind, but... this aftereffect had been lasting for so long she started questioning the nature of her vision. It was so vivid.
Each time she closed her eyes they were waiting for her, ready to strike. And the eerie shadows of a tree the moonlight was casting on the curtains of her window were not helping.

Ten other hours had flowed by since she had left the city hall, and she was not able to get past what she had witnessed. It was enough for her. Waiting for the sandman was over. She had to face the issue tickling her spirit again.

Spike was quietly sleeping on his couch; in order to avoid her assistant’s discontent, Twilight tip-toed stealthily toward the exit of the Golden Oak’s Library.

It was a cold night. The moon was high and some pegasi had the sky cleared during the evening. A soft breeze made Twilight shiver. By night, Ponyville had the aspect of a creepy ghost town. No light was coming from the windows. The noise which gave life to any city unsettled the small alicorn by its overwhelming absence. Alone, she would have sold her wings just to get a friend close to her…
Such comparison pained Twilight, she would have preferred coming with another expression.

Sugarcube Corner was waiting for her, dwelling in the same street since its erection. Plunged into darkness and coldness, the usually colorful place had lost all of its haughtiness.

A large yellow strip tagged the place as a restricted area. “DO NOT CROSS, CRIME SCENE,” It read.
Twilight crossed the warning anyway. She found the entrance sealed by another strip.

There was no claw waiting for her, just a deep and dark room where Pinkie used to sell her cupcakes. Shakes ran under her fur. Cupcakes made of ponies’ flesh. She could not tell… Was she really relieved to face nothing but emptiness?
She quivered.

A strangled cough popped out of nowhere, coming from behind her back. Twilight flinched. Ready to defend herself she turned over in a jump, her horn glowing magenta. A well-known silhouette was sitting on a carriage. A mighty foe she had fought once.

“What are you doing here Discord? Is that another of your twisted schemes? Wrecking chaos does not suit you anymore? You have to make ponies kill one another?”

Gritting her teeth, only anger was readable on her face.

“Where is fun in all of this?” the spooky voice of the creature asked.

Twilight caught sight of tears rolling on the Draconequus’ face. In his hands laid the fragments of Pinkie’s necklace. Colorless, the jewel was as grey as marble and no magic was issuing from it.

“Where is fun in death? Nowhere.”

He paused and his two luminescent yellow eyes glared at the young purple alicorn.

“Tell me Twilight Sparkle, why would I have done such a thing? I’m Discord, a spirit of chaos, not Destruction. There is no fun at all here. It was not meant to be like this,” – he dropped the necklace and buried his head in his hands – “Why Pinkie, she was so funny.”

Confused, Twilight’s mouth dangled wide open. Discord was a treacherous being. But now, looking so depressed and sincere, Twilight pitied him.

“Discord, you should worry about Rainbow Dash, she is the sole survivor.”

“She lives, others didn’t make out as well.”

“You… cynical!” Twilight burst out. “Why are you worried about a murderer! She killed… tried to kill Rainbow!”

“Why are you so confident about it? Did you witness it? No!” He enraged. “I liked Pinkie, I just… I just can’t believe she’s gone…”
He sobbed, “At least let me the benefice of the doubt… the bliss of ignorance.”

Struck hard by Discord’s claim, Twilight tried to rationalize. She always knew that he was fond of Pinkie. They shared the same hobbies after all, pranking and having fun. But… believing that the spirit of Disharmony could have had somehow, a kind crush on the Element of Laughter… she was aback.
However, it was obvious on second thoughts.

Discord spoke to himself, “Why was I not able to see this coming? I should have… I’ve always failed in everything.”

Twilight felt unpleasant and queasy. Discord used to picture himself as a nonsense folk, a being who laughed at rationality and what made sense. This was brand new, terrifying, or at least deeply moving.
Discord’s voice called her back from her confused thoughts.

“Why are you here Twi? This isn’t a place for a princess.”

His tone was frightening, heavy and stern. Discord was generally a funny creature, and even Twilight had to admit it. But right now, enshrounded by the dark, her former antagonist was just a crooked character, veiled by the night and sorrow.

“I… I saw something last night, just there,” – She pointed her hoof toward the entrance of the shop – “They were two claws, it was black, it was…”

“Calling you?”

“How do you know?”

Discord had already gotten up, his face revealing a strong resignation. The moon silhouetted his body as he fixed Twilight in her eyes.

“Never speak of it. To nopony! Do you understand? Seek for it, search for answers because you will try… even if I deter you to do so! Do it, but do not drag anypony with you.”

“But…”

Twilight burned internally to protest, to counter this warning. But Discord put a finger on her lips.

“Quiet! Here is a lesson your dear teacher never taught you. There is always something darker in this world, waiting for the right moment to strike, waiting for an opportunity. There will be no glowing red eyes or contemptuous sneer. The blackness will ambush you from the darkest corners of the earth without any indication. And it always shows up in the most horrific ways.”

Twilight kept her mouth closed, chewing over Discord’s wise words. He continued with a voice more oppressive than ever.

“Listen. Do not make a leap of faith into the unknown with your friends. They’ll be alone… alone in the dark. Do whatever you want, go deep but don’t drag them into it. They will end up wrecked at the end of this ordeal… because, compared to us the ‘powerful ones’, they’ll have no way to combat the power of the dark.”

Aback, Twilight tried to clear up the catch in Discord’s warning. The Draconequus was elusive and did nothing but troubling her more.

“I must go. I have something to figure out,” Discord stated, looking away.

“Discord you can’t abandon us, when we reformed you… you promised to help us.”

“I can’t, at least, not for the moment.”

“Don’t…”

“Sometimes you’ll have to fight alone, young alicorn. One day you’ll be left stranded, trapped or unable to reach your friends, because scary powers always splits apart the strongest links.”

Discord words started echoing magically.

“This isn’t a game. It has never been one,” he warned.

“Wait…”

And he vanished in a white flash.

“Don’t underestimate the dark,” His voice kept going, erupting from the void. “It has always waited for the right moment to strike back. Be ready because it shows no mercy… And remember, this world is frail…”

Now alone in front of Sugarcube Corner, Twilight was devastated with a broken necklace at her hooves, unanswered questions in her mind and a taste of bitterness in her mouth. Discord would never change. He had to bring confusion anywhere, anytime.

“I thought everything would be just fine,” the young pony whispered in the night.

Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 2. Doubts Never Die
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Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 2. Doubts Never Die

2. Doubts never die

By the time Applejack had returned to Sweet Apple Acres, the sun was nearly down behind the western mountains. The events of the afternoon had disturbed her so deeply her mind was shattered and her heart utterly broken. She had now to tell Big Macintosh and Granny Smith, they needed to know. However she strongly believed incapable to tell them the harsh truth.

Applebloom was also an issue she had to raise. She and her friends idolized Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. Scootaloo was even close to worship the latter. And now, Applejack wanted to initiate action, to be responsible and announce the earth-shattering news to her family and her sister.

‘Sometimes a lie is easier to take’. Dredged up from years past, Discord's terrible words resurfaced in Applejack’s mind. Being a liar always brought problems, and the consequences had always been far-reaching. She was particularly aware of this truth. Yet in this particular case, lying was an easy way out.

“Don’t lie, never lie”, she convinced herself, or rather tried to.

A thought popped in her mind. She was not forced to tell a lie nor did she have to tell the truth. Silence was right now absolutely golden. Sorrow soaked her heart. She was pitiful, searching for an escape.
She climbed over the old fence surrounding Sweet Apple Acres. The sun finally disappeared in the edge of her vision. The sky darkened and the first star of Ursa Minor twinkled high in the sky.

Light was bathing the windows of the Apple Family’s farmstead. A sweet smell floated in the air. Granny Smith had made apple pie again, for Applejack’s greatest pleasure. But this enjoyable smell was not enough to chase away her mental goings-on.
On the doorstep, Applejack stopped. She was hesitant and doubtful. With a hoof on the door lock, she tried to calm herself, to mask her inner emotional turmoil.

She sighed, took a deep breath and opened the door. Stomping the doormat in the hallway, she hung her hat on the coat rack and stared at the neighbouring door, half opened.

In the kitchen, Big Mac was already washing the dishes. The Apple Family had dined before the sunset and Apple Bloom was finishing her dessert, a small frozen apple cake. The young filly granted her big sister a broad grin, crumbs stuck on her muzzle.
On the opposite side of the large table, Granny Smith was napping in her rocking chair, swinging back and forth.

“Hi everypony! Hi Winona! How y'all doing?” Applejack greeted, forcing an expression of good mood on her features.

Granny Smith half-opened her eyelids. She caught a drop of sweat rolling on Applejack’s forehead.
Applejack was clearly late. And as elders always disliked anything out of the ordinary, she gazed at the mare who stopped in motion. Granny Smith’s eyes narrowed, her stare pierced her grand-daughter from side to side. Applejack gulped with difficulty.
Granny Smith frowned, relying on her ancient sixth sense. Her gaze met Applejack's and the orange pony instinctively flinched.

“Apple Bloom?” Granny Smith asked gently.

“Yes Granny?”

“Take your pie with you and go to your room, I need to talk to your big sister.”

“But…”

Applejack’s faked smile deliquesced as she understood what Granny Smith wanted… a face to face discussion. She avoided her granny’s stultifying stare, obviously embarrassed.

“Listen to yer gran’ma Apple Bloom. Go up and no arguin’!” Applejack added without much conviction.

She had jumped on the occasion to speak up and turn to somepony who was not oppressing by with a mere gaze. However, Applejack’s words had been too harsh. Apple Bloom scowled at her sister and ran away, tearful.
Applejack took a seat in front of Granny Smith. She held her breath.

“What happened AJ?” Granny firmly asked with her twang voice.

Granny Smith’s forehead wrinkled even more as she sharp-eyed her grand-daughter. Applejack sighed and did nothing but confess the terrible events of the past day. Big Macintosh started stomping the floor, nervously. His left hoof was unsettled.

“She’ll never fly again?” He queried hesitantly.

Applejack nodded. She was livid and thinking about the investigators’ photos still disturbed her. Her cutie marks had been ripped from her stifle. Even worse, she had also taken a look at Rainbow’s surgery report before leaving the hospital. Her eyes… Applejack had absolutely no idea whether Rainbow would ever recover from such ordeal.
The cyan pegasus was broken from now on. Everything that made her the mare she knew so well had been taken away, torn apart. No more awesomeness, no crazy dashing around, no more sonic rainbooms. She was nopony now. Her own identity had been snatched from her.

“You’ll have to be gentle with Rainbow when she wakes up. Watch upon her carefully.” Granny said, keeping her voice neutral. “Don’t be surprised if she tries… well you understand. You remembered what uncle Cidre Doux did when he lost his hindhoof.”

Applejack stuttered, thinking about this old family story.

“Gr… Granny, do yah have to be so crude?”

“But that’s the truth and you know it,” she hammered. “Look… I know you care about her, I just wanted to warn you about that.”

Applejack sighed. She could not argue with the facts. It was time to be honest and face reality.

“Ah...Ah need to think. Ah’m goin’ out!”

On the doorstep, she lit a lantern and put her hat on. She glanced back at the kitchen where Granny Smith went back to napping, then cantered off into the night, bound for the orchards. Ten minutes later, the Apple family could hear somepony noisily bucking apple trees.

Ϩ ϡ Ω ϥ ϕ ϥ Ω ϡ Ϩ

From her room windows, Apple Bloom watched her sister slowly fading in the darkness until the tiny light from her lantern disappeared. The moon had not yet risen.

“Why is she so mean to me?” Apple Bloom complained with eyes wet with tears. “What I’ve done wrong?”

Granny Smith had been so serious when her big sister walked in. Apple Bloom was resented being put aside like this, she was not a foal anymore. Would she always be the Applejack and her grandma’s “silly lil’ filly”?

Thinking, something was clearly afoot and she had to find out what. And this, she thought, was a quest she could not go on alone. She had to gather her fellow friends.

When the Cutie Mark Crusaders inherited Applejack’s old clubhouse, the Crusaders had decided to create a way to assemble. This mode was a signal similar to those “super stallions” had in the comics Twilight kept in Ponyville’s library. Applebloom remembered the joyful face of Scootaloo when she saw the calling signal of Batmane.

She kindled the wick of a candle and brought it to her window. There was a little box which interior was made up of mirrors. Putting the candle inside, Apple Bloom oriented it toward a reflector fixed on a distant tree. A complex system of reflections that the Crusaders had set up should do the rest of the job. Everything put aside, Apple Bloom had to admit that she never really tested it before. She repeated the procedure once more.

Apple Bloom waited for five minutes. Then a large smile cleared her face, she had received an answer. It was infinitesimal, but she could still see a flashing light glaring on the distant apple tree, redirected to her thanks to the mirror. A Crusader had responded.

On second thought, Apple Bloom pouted swiftly. The system had worked, it was an inescapable fact, but she had absolutely no clue about the identity of the filly who had answered. There was always the possibility that an ill-intentioned mare could have responded. That the creature was trying to trick her and keep her away from getting her cutie mark. Applebloom enjoyed imagining herself living a great adventure.

She put an end to her wishful thinkings, grabbed her saddlebags and put on her tabard sporting the Cutie Mark Crusaders heraldry. She faked her shape under her bed sheets with few pillows and then sneaked out of Sweet Apple Acres.

The night was dark and unsettling but Ponyville was not far away. At least she did not have to walk along the Everfree Forest like Fluttershy had to every day… Her cottage was located so close to this creepy place.
She crossed a plaque announcing Ponyville. The only thing she had to do now was to reach the meeting place.

Ϩ ϡ Ω ϥ ϕ ϥ Ω ϡ Ϩ

Anger was running through Rarity’s veins. She was throwing a fit of rage as she never did before, rumbling over her shop. She charged into her models. Carousel Boutique had ended into a monstrous mess since a couple of hours. The unicorn was terrifying. She uttered, cried and was muttering.
Opal, her cat, hid beneath a chest of drawers, trembling and hissing.

She repeated martial arts holds and armlocks on her dummies. One even broke down. In the past she had surprised her friends beating Changelings and even trying to kick a manticore with techniques of her own devising. She, a delicate unicorn, did not fit the role of a powerful warrior. And she was fine with it, refusing to be tagged as an ‘unrefined’ lady. However, as said her mother, it was not a reason to be a complete ignorant in the sweet art of defending oneself.

She was a whirlwind roaring through the boutique. Unfortunately the din she had created was drawing attention. Somepony knocked on the door. Rarity snapped out of her destructive mood and stared angrily at her hallway.

“One moment, please,” She managed to say softly.

She brushed her mane as fast as she could. Her horn started glowing while her magic pushed away the obstacles in the path.

A guard was standing at the doorstep. The reflections of the stallion’s lantern were casting odd shadows on his tired face. With the light coming from below, its shades were utterly creepy. Rarity suddenly remembered some slumber parties where a filly had tried to intone a creepy song .

“Miss Rarity? Is everything okay in there?”

“Oh… Yes, yes, of course. I’m just doing… some spring cleaning.”

Obviously persuasion was not her cutie mark talent. The guard raised a brow, worried and unconvinced. Rarity hid her malaise behind a fake smile. Or at least she tried to.

“We understand what you’re going through,” The soldier reassured gently. “but please, don’t disturb the neighbourhood.”

“I won't…”

She slammed the door.

“Peasant.” Rarity grumbled.

She sat in the middle of the shop, looking at the chaos she had wreaked upon it. She had this horrible felling dwelling in her bowels, this unsettling impression of guiltiness. And she sought for the reason. What had she done to feel this miserable?

“Rarity? Why are you so angry? Have I done something ‘uncouth’… again?”

Sweetie Belle appeared upstairs. She lay low behind the wooden guardrail of the second floor hallway. Rarity sighed heavily and went up. Putting her hoof on the cringing filly’s shoulder she dried her yet-to-be tears and smiled.

“No, no! You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s just… just me.”

Rarity’s hesitation made her sister uncomfortable. Rarity tried to be reassuring, toddling between useless excuses and hackneyed reassuring talks.

“Look, my dear, a particularly terrible event has put Ponyville in grieving. Something that hit my friends and I really hard happened and it keeps bothering me. But it’s absolutely nothing you need to worry about. Now go back to your bed. You need some rest.”

Indeed Sweetie Belle needed to sleep. She had school the next morning.

“Does it have anything to do with… dad and mommy?” Sweetie Belle said, tearful.

“No. Of course not. Now please go back to bed.”

Sweetie Belle was disappointed. Rarity was quiet as the grave about the incident and she would keep it that way.

Ϩ ϡ Ω ϥ ϕ ϥ Ω ϡ Ϩ

Back in her room Sweetie Belle’s anxiousness grew. Rarity had gotten back to her temper tantrum, rocketing heavy loads of dummies in her shop. Sweetie Belle covered up her ears. She hated when her sister was angry. It always made her wet her bed with tears.
Moreover something was afoot, Rarity had admitted it. Sweetie Belle convinced herself she had to get to the bottom of this story.
She paused as something drew her attention. From the corner of her eye she caught a tiny light.

“The signal! It worked! Cutie Mark Crusaders rally!”

Indeed, a luminescent spot was reflected on her wall, right inside the red circle she drew with one of her sister’s markers. It blinked twice for a short period of time and then stopped definitely. Sweetie Belle had to respond. Although to do so, she had to sneak into the kitchen to take the cooking lighter. Inopportunely, the room was downstairs, and she would have to hack through her sister’s mess.
It took her a long time. Sweetie Belle nearly stepped on a broken dummy, but with a lot of sweat and will did fine in the end.

She responded to the call and discreetly left the house.

Ϩ ϡ Ω ϥ ϕ ϥ Ω ϡ Ϩ

“Zecora, what do you think about this? It’s like an everlasting nightmare. I want to wake up.”

Fluttershy was miserably sitting in Zecora’s living room, deep inside the frightful Everfree Forest. As ever before, eerie masks were hung on the wall, doing nothing but saping Fluttershy’s morale.

“Fellow pony, you should not express such demand, Sometimes brash requests don’t go as planned,” Zecora replied, as serene as usual.

“But… I may be harsh, excuse me… but it feels like I’m day-dreaming. I can’t simply believe Pinkie had killed ponies. I simply can’t!” Fluttershy stammered, her cheeks soaked by her small tears.

Gravely, Zecora began alchemizing over her brass cooking pot. Her spatula was scraping and grating inside, making Fluttershy grind her teeth.

“Mop up those tears and cast away your fears. Sometimes nopony can be the right mare in the right place. And then we all shall have dark catastrophes to face.”

A timberwolf howled outside. The wild call echoed in Zecora’s hut. Fluttershy gasped, hiding her head under a pillow. Zecora was worried. It had been two days the creatures had kept shouting to the moon, but it was not the mating season or a period of migration. She was unsettled by these signs, which for sure were of ill-omen.

“Zecora, please. I need advices. What should I do when Rainbow wakes up? I… I’m so afraid she’ll be jealous.”

Zecora raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t figure why she would… I…”

Fluttershy cut off Zecora.

“With Twilight becoming an alicorn and gaining her wings and… that I still have mine… She is grounded now, only able to watch us from there. I’m sure she will be angry at me!” Fluttershy sobbed. “I don’t care about mine because I live on the earth. But Rainbow’s wings were everything for her. They were her life, and her life was up over the clouds, in the sky. I simply can’t look down at her. Life is so unfair.”

“… I can only advise you to let your fears go for what is in the future, we cannot know.”

It was nearly midnight and Fluttershy was afraid to return to her cottage. Getting aware of Fluttershy’s concerns, the shaman offered her hospitality for the night. Fluttershy was pleased, though she first refused the offer. She was kind and reserved and always tried not to bother her friends, hosts or everypony she encountered.
Zecora insisted, and after hearing a new creepy howling, Fluttershy finally consented to stay.

Even if exhaust was laying her low, Fluttershy had not slept since the “sorrowful event”. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw Rainbow Dash, angrier than she had ever been before, pursuing her.

Zecora held out a cup of the brew she had mixed earlier. Thankful, Fluttershy accepted it but took nearly two minutes to start drinking its contents. It seemed to be tea. Bitterness flooded her mouth.

“Eww! What is it?”

“It’s a rare species from where I grew up. It’s a recipe I’ve thought up. It will help you think, making go away what’s kink.”

Fluttershy’s thoughts, which were still bothering her, slowly faded away. The strange potion made her feel better.

“I’m sleepy Zecora.” Fluttershy pointed out.

“My mixture is like a sleeping pill, it will give you a night without what makes you ill.”

Indeed, Fluttershy sunk into a deep and peaceful sleep on the couch of the living room. Zecora covered her with a warm blanket and blew out the candles.

Before she went upstairs, she stared through the windows and shivered.

“Sometimes we have reasons to dread, and thoroughbred monsters we must face head to head.”

Zecora’s hutt darkened as the last candle was blown out.

Ϩ ϡ Ω ϥ ϕ ϥ Ω ϡ Ϩ

Earlier, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom had gathered under the city hall. Few weeks ago, the Cutie Mark Crusaders had found an open air vent which led to the archives of Ponyville. There, surrounded by old books and forgotten lists and reports, they had decided to put their mark on the “Z” shelf. For the crusaders, it had looked to be the most unused and remote location of the basement. Besides, Scootaloo had said it was an act of bravery to come down there.

Sweetie Belle sneezed, the dust was tickling her muzzle.

“I tried to find Scootaloo, but she wasn’t here,” Apple Bloom stated.

“Did you see all those guards around the town? Something crazy must be happening.”

“I know, Applejack was so angry this evenin’, she shouted at me. But I did nothin’ wrong! I swear. That’s so unfair.”

“Rarity was on a rampage too. She turned the boutique upside down.”

“Somethin’ is really messed up. We Cutie Mark Crusaders have to find out,” Apple Bloom harangued.

“Wait! We must meet up Scootaloo first!”

“Ah yes. She could be anywhere. Maybe she was caught!” Apple Bloom exclaimed.

“BOO!”
The two fillies screeched and jumped. Sweetie Belle bumped the “Y” shelf, making it crumble down. Somepony coughed. Standing among the fallen books, covered in dirt, was Scootaloo. Her prank did not end as she had expected. An open book was set upon her head. She snorted, launching dust at her friends.

“Stop it Scootaloo.” Apple Bloom said with a sneeze.

“How did you find us?” Sweetie Belle added, still in shock.

Scootaloo moved out of the pile of books.

“I’ve just seen you hanging outside of the air vent. I’ve been up all night. With all those guards on a war hoofing, I can try out my infiltration skills,” The young pegasus showed off.

“Infiltratin’?” Apple Bloom could hardly believe his ears. “I didn’t know spyin’ was within your league?”

Her ton was clearly ironic. Scootaloo had just showed how she can handle being discreet… and dusty.

“Don’t you see how fun this is? There is a huge mystery in Ponyville and we can figure it out,” Scootaloo emphasized. “Armed guards and a black and scary night. This is the occasion to find our cutie marks.”

The three ponies enjoyed the idea.

“Let’s go!” Sweetie Belle cried out after she had wiped her tears.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders pulled themselves out of the archives. The courtyard was so cold and the Crusaders shivered. A soft breeze started blowing through their manes.
From the corner of the street came the slamming of horseshoes. Lantern lights swept about.

“Guards! Run away.” Apple Bloom spoke in a low voice.

The small group hurried up to the next house and hid behind big flowerpots. The guards were from the night watch, the Princess Luna’s personal earth guards. Their coats were dark grey and the plates of their armour were black and purple. They each carried spears except the head pony, who carried a banner displaying Luna's seal, a twisted and terrifying dragon.

Keeping in step, they crossed the place where Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were hiding. The three unfortunate fillies held their breath and waited as the guards disappeared around the corner.

“What did I tell you, infiltration! I’ve mastered it,” Scootaloo extolled.

“You still don’t have a cutie mark though!” Sweetie Belle remarked.

Scootaloo stuck out her tongue. Her friends responded with giggles.
Roaming the streets of Ponyville, the Crusaders were quite lost in the dark, trying to avoid being caught by the creepy guards of the Night Princess. It was really fun though. They passed some typical cottages of the city and crossed the yard in front of Golden Oaks Library.

After thirty minutes of roving and hide and seek, they heard a voice.

Crawling with caution, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle reached a large square in front of Sugarcube Corner. There were two silhouettes facing each other. One was clearly a pony, the other one was quite disturbing.

“Is that…” Sweetie Belle tried to say when Scootaloo cut her off.

“Shhh…”

Indeed it was the shape of Discord, the notorious spirit of chaos.
The three fillies also recognized the voice of Twilight Sparkle when she raised her voice.

“Discord, you should worry about Rainbow Dash…”

Twilight was far from the Crusaders’ safe haven which made her words difficult to understand.

“Did she say ‘Rainbow Dash’?” Scootaloo nearly exclaimed.

“Shhh, I can’t understand what they’re saying.” Sweetie Belle remarked.

“But what about Rainbow?”

Apple Bloom gave Scootaloo a menacing look. The pegasus quieted. Discord leaned toward his interlocutor. The three spectators were now clueless about what was being plotted in front of Sugarcube Corner.
After a few minutes, Discord disappeared. Twilight looked really depressed. Sweetie Belle caught her crying.

“Wow, something really bad must have happened,” she said in a low voice.

In the middle of the esplanade, Twilight sighed.

“Tomorrow I’ll see her at the hospital.” She said to herself.

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle stared at their pegasus friend. Scootaloo enjoyed a near sisterhood with Rainbow. And now, she was livid.

“The… the hospital.”

Ϩ ϡ Ω ϥ ϕ ϥ Ω ϡ Ϩ

When she returned to Golden Oaks Library, Twilight found Spike as she left him, snoring loudly on his couch. She envied his peace. When she lay down, she, on the other hand, couldn't find sleep.

Tired of her own goings-on, she went downstairs. She was still thinking about Discord’s claims. With her magic, she picked books randomly.

“Mares and Colts of Ancient Times… no! Forgotten Plants from the Arctic Circle! Wait what… how could indexed flora could be listed as forgotten? That’s silly!?”

One by one, she threw books in a pile in the middle of the library.

“Necrodraconoponomicon!?” She exclaimed. “Another fake book... Be… Beyond the realms… I did not even know I had this one, who the buck wrote this… by Star… Star Swirl.”

The name was not written on the book’s cover but it was clearly the mage’s mark that was engraved on it.
Star Swirl the bearded, she could not believe it. How did this book end up here? Moreover, how could she not know about it? Thrilled about discovering absolute magic and knowledge she opened the book.

She only shook her head in disbelief, “How dumb I can be!”

She threw the book away, which fell opened on the floor. Each page was torn or written in a language she had never seen before. She remember to study it later.

Twilight was angry, exhausted and frustrated. Over all, she felt powerless. And she hated that feeling, she who was so organized. She pulled out a book from her shelves, “Nursery magic”. She searched for a spell.

“Sleep spell… Here we go.”

Fed up about the journey she had been through, she went upstairs. She lay on her bed and cast the spell on herself. She fell in a deep but troubled sleep…

She was running as fast as she can, fleeing from something. Was it a monstrous foe? A dark and purple smoke? Or something worse than whatever her imagination could breed? She was clueless and above all, she refused to know its nature.
There was nothing in the world that could compel her to turn and face the threat.

She ran as she never did before. The speed was blowing air through her mane, rustling her fur. She opened her wings and leaped in the air.

For a mere second she thought she would be safe, that the hideous thing could not follow her.
An invisible force broke her hopes instantly. The power tackled her down, shaking her limbs and wings, shattering her inner being. Stunned, she could only witness what was surrounding her…. Mist…. A light grey vapour.
Fear swamped her mind. She was suddenly deprived of all her magic. She shrunk to the size of the filly she was in kindergarten. Powerless, she could only cry. She felt so miserable. And the laugh of invisible bullies did nothing to help.

A well-known silhouette emerged from the haze. It was a deformed, crooked and crippled image of the pony she knew so well.

“Rainbow?”

The so-called pony’s eyeballs had been removed, her mouth was drooling a blackened blood and riveted to a bone necklace dangled both of her wings.

“I’ve no bounds now, but that means no boundaries either!”

Rainbow drew a knife out of her lacerated flank. Slowly she came closer to the young filly. The twisted grin spreading on her ravaged face was the most alienating thing Twilight had ever witnessed.

“Here comes the reward!” Rainbow laughed out loud.

The pegasus’ shadow was in the sobbing pony’s light. It had a weird shape, too big, too torturous, like a draconequus’. Two glowing red eyes gazed at the terrified victim.

“Had enough Twilight?” The monster asked.

Twilight sat up and took the deepest breath she ever took. She was running with sweat and she had wet herself. That hadn't happened since she was a foal. The nightmare had been so… real. But as strange as it could be, she could not remember it well. They were just… Rainbow Dash.

Ϩ ϡ Ω ϥ ϕ ϥ Ω ϡ Ϩ

Once Twilight had gone out of sight, the Crusaders dragged themselves out of the shadows and stood in front of Sugarcube Corner. The warning yellow strips amused Scootaloo, the two others were surprised. They had only seen such bands in investigation movies and series.

“Twilight said Rainbow is at the hospital, we must hurry!”

Scootaloo insisted, shaking up Apple Bloom. The pegasus had started panicking and was on the verge of crying.

“Ah’lright, ah’lright, but stop please! You’re gettin’ spooky!” Apple Bloom conceded, slipping away from Scootaloo’s clutch.

Dodging a couple of patrols, the three novice spies headed to the northern part of Ponyville. The hospital was standing at the exit of the town. It was also surrounded by a large park where the convalescents could “enjoy” their recovery.

Even by night, some parts of the hospital were still lit up. Through the windows, the three fillies could see doctors and nurses in urge. Emergency happened at every moment of the day.However, the east wing of the building was plunged in darkness. It was reserved for the sleeping patients.
Strangely, there were guards here too.

“Not again,” said Apple Bloom. “They are everywhere, like if there are some dark mares hangin’ around the town.”

“There might be one,” Scootaloo spooked with a ghostly tone. “Rainbow Dash can’t hurt herself, she must have fight an enemy! She is super-ultra-extreme-awesomazing.”

“I dunno, but if we want to see her, we have to be quiet,” Apple Bloom stated.

“This isn’t a game… If we get caught, Rarity will be even more furious!” Sweetie Belle pouted.

Everypony except Scootaloo seemed to be on the back hoof in this situation.

The Crusaders hid behind a bush. Scootaloo drew a hardly matching scheme of the hospital. Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom had difficulty to see it. The stars’ light was not enough to lit up the garden.

“See there,” Scootaloo pointed out. “I think there is a back door, we could sneak in and make our way through the hospital… to find Rainbow. Are you with me?”

“I… I guess,” Her two friends answered.

Skirting around the principal entrance where two guards were standing, the Crusaders arrived to the mentioned door. It was the one for the medical service. Scootaloo took the lead. She was worried about her “adoptive big sister”. And each step which made her closer to the hospital did nothing but increase her anxiousness.

“You took me under your wing, I have to help you,” Scootaloo whispered.

“What did you say?” Sweetie Belle asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing.”

The door grated on its rusty hinges, causing the crusaders’ fur to bristle out of fear of being caught red-handed.

“Shhhhh…”

“I ain’t the door!” Scootaloo responded with an ounce of irony.

The east wing of the hospital was really quiet and dark. Rainbow Dash loved telling horror stories about this kind of place when they used to go camping. They were white tiles everywhere and the smell of antiseptics was poignant. The small group faced dozens of doors and each one had a name on a stamp.

“Green Hoof… Shiny Nose… Light Den… Where is Rainbow?” Sweetie Belle gave up.

“We must split up!” Scootaloo firmly said.

“Sp… Split?”

Sweetie Belle was not amused.

After five minutes negotiating, Scootaloo went upstairs while Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom had to stay together on the first floor. Each group had to find out where Rainbow’s room was. Scootaloo wandered about the hall of the second floor. They were four large rooms which could host ten ponies. The first three were full.

She was going to check the last one when clamouring came from downstairs. She heard the blabbering voice of Sweetie Belle. Crawling towards the stairwell, Scootaloo heard her friends verbally duelling.

“Let us go or I’m gonna buck you up!” Apple Bloom menaced.

The guard was on the brink of bursting out laughing. He had grabbed Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom by the scruffs of their necks.

“You can’t go in by night, trespassers shall be prosecuted. This isn’t the hour or the place for young mares. I’ll bring you back to your relatives. Did another filly come with you two?” the guard outlined.

Scootaloo held her breath. Apple Bloom’s hesitation had been explicit for a mere second.

“No! We went alone.”

The guard was not convinced but he did not try to question the youngsters for further information. The large stallion went outside with Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom.

Alone, Scootaloo stayed stoic for a couple of minutes. She was waiting for something to happen. But the guard did not show up again. Slowly she got up, turned around and headed to the last room. There was a unique name… Rainbow Dash.

Scootaloo panted, her wings buzzed. And the door was not locked.
In the dark, Scootaloo recognized Rainbow’s sleeping form. Close to her bed was a beeping heart monitor. Intravenous fluids were hanging on a metal stand.

“Rainbow?”

No response. Scootaloo slid towards her “foster sister”. She climbed on the bed. In spite of the dark, she clearly saw the bandages around Rainbow’s head, covering up her eyes. There were burn scars.
Shakes ran through Scootaloo’s limbs as her eyes filled with tears.

“Ohhh, what did they do to you big sis’?”

She cuddled up to Rainbow Dash. In a way, she was happy. Happy to be there, next to the one she adored, the one she wanted to stay with, the one she had always liked to be. Scootaloo hugged Rainbow, she wanted to fall asleep next to her and stay like this forever.

She groped around.
The wings! Where were Rainbow’s wings. Scootaloo checked two, three, four times. She started sputtering. Quivers invaded her body. Her fur ruffled. Where were they, for pony’s sake?
Scootaloo’s eyes lay, horrified, on the large and stained gauze and bandages wrapping Rainbow’s body. She started panting heavily, sweating her anxiousness.

She checked over and over again. This madness lasted for a long time.

“No! No! No…”

In the end, she had to admit the terrifying reality and face the facts. Her face turned ghoulish. She dissolved into tears and felt like vomiting.

“How will you teach me how to fly? What will you…”

“Please stop…”

Scootaloo jumped and fell from the bed. Getting up she put her front hooves on the bed linens. Rainbow's voice was weak and sickly.

“R… Rainbow, are you okay?”

Rainbow turned her head in Scootaloo’s direction in fits and starts. Even if they were damaged and covered up, the young filly felt like two wide opened bloodshot eyes were staring at her. Two glowing eyes seeking for a victim.
Rainbow’s voice was harsh. She lifted her hooves and scrabbled toward Scootaloo. Rainbow was drooling, unveiling few broken teeth. Her tongue dangled horribly. She crawled like an insect.

“I… want home… to go Home.”

Then the pegasus let out a long and discordant lament before passing out. Scootaloo had already run away. The fear had shaken her, refused her from loitering next to her hero. The complaint echoed for a long time in her twisted ears.

Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 3. When Do The Dreamers Awake?
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Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 3. When Do The Dreamers Awake?

3. When do the dreamers awake?

The hallways of Canterlot were known to be part of the most majestic place in Equestria. Draperies of gold, silver and gemstones shone above the heads of countless guards tirelessly repeating their duty, day by day.
Two ponies were conducted to the chamber of the Throne. The terrified looks on their faces were blatant.
They were none other than Mr and Mrs Cake, the owners of the now notorious Sugarcube Corner.
Guards opened the last gate and left the couple standing alone in the huge anteroom. The palace was bright as the sunlight flooded through hundreds of stained glass windows depicting glorious heroes and deeds of the past. The Element Bearers and Equestria’s Princesses were among them.

Two Alicorns turned their heads toward their guests. The first one, the taller, was a white muse whose floating mane was made of pink, green and various nuances of blue and white. Wearing a golden necklace and a magnificent crown, she had a bright sun as a cutie mark. Her purple eyes were compassionate.

“Princess Celestia?” the couple gasped.

On the other hoof, Luna’s stare was harsh. For a moment, her very presence seemed to cast a pall over the regal chamber and any doubts that she was the warrior formerly known as Nightmare Moon were dispelled on the spot.

“And… P-P-Princess Lun-”

“Enough of this etiquette. Come, we have serious matters to discuss.” She curtly cut off.

Mr and Mrs Cake glanced at each other, “As you wish milady.”

Celestia leaned toward Luna, “Don’t dominate them. They are as shocked by these circumstances as we are.”

“It’s an important matter, my beloved sister. I can’t abide the idea that they have seen nothing, that’s utter nonsense.”

“Sometimes we have to listen and understand, not everypony possesses as much power as you or I.”

“You may be right,” Luna sighed.

The couple had moved close to the regal sisters. Celestia remained silent, staring through the large bay window. Luna looked at the two earth ponies, “Approach and gaze at the outside. Tell me what thou art seeing.”

They could see a courtyard. Dozens of fillies were playing. Their giggles were reassuring that not everything there in Canterlot was duty, royal matters, and intrigue.

“This is Harmony,” Luna cut off when Mrs Cake tried to speak. “Something that we must protect… preserve every day. A duty I failed to fulfil a long time ago.”

Luna stared into her audience’s eyes, “We do not wish to blame you, but to understand why and how.”

Mr Cake and his bride felt nauseous under the almighty look of the dark blue alicorn. His hesitant voice rose up, “We’re so… very sorry but we have seen nothing before it was too late… We had… complete confidence in Pinkie Pie. She attended every task related to the management of the stock. You know Pinkie is… was really good with numbers when she wanted to be.”

“You never went down? You never took a look at the basement?”

“No… Yes,” Mrs Cake said, Luna arched an eyebrow. “I mean two months ago I went down to help Pinkie and everything was normal. It stank like every basement you know. How could I have imagined for a second that such… horrible things were happening there?”

She began to sob. Mr Cake embraced her, trying to be comforting. Celestia glanced critically over at Luna.
The latter gave her big sister her spot. Celestia beamed and spoke with a melodic voice, immediately ceasing the tears, “You must know that today, the inhabitants of Ponyville are in shock. You’ve lost your reputation and you must understand that going back to Sugarcube Corner is not the… wisest decision you could make. I…”

“So that's it!?” Mrs Cake erupted. “You want us to abandon everything we’ve built through the twelve last years, to leave those who count to us. How will my babies comprehend?”

Mrs Cake sobbed. She had lost her temper. She, who had always been authoritative and confident, had hit a new low. Her husband tried to comfort his “sunshine”. She pushed his hoof. Celestia and Luna did not feel at ease, witnessing this pitiful attempt to avoid the facts.

“Mr and Mrs Cake, we might have a solution,” Celestia concluded. “We can loan to you a safe and calm place in Manehatten for the time being. Applejack and her family really want to help you, at least until the scandal weakens. There, you could consider your future more clearly.”
“You want us to flee?” Mrs Cake tripped over her words.

“I just want you to consider that…”

“This can’t be possible,” she shot back. “I can’t believe you want us to flee. Get it into your head that…”

“Mind your tongue,” Luna exhorted before Celestia gave her an off-putting stare.

“…I’m not leaving Ponyville, my children and my patisserie.” Then she turned and left the throne room, tearful, attempting to keep some semblance of pride.
Celestia bit her tongue in an effort to keep from giggling. It had been aeons since somepony had stood up to her in such manner. It was… refreshing.
Luna, however, was exasperated. This pony was so narrow-minded, she thought, just like herself.

Mr Cake tried to call her wife back. A disregarding silent welcomed his complaint. He sighed and fixed with his tired eyes both of his monarchs.

“She is really upset… you know. But I would like to know, if we come back later, will this offer still be available?”

Celestia and Luna nodded as the stallion turned back and urged toward the gate. Mrs Cake could be a shrew when she wanted to.

“And sorry for the annoyance.” Mr Cake yelled as he raced out, chasing his wife.

The yellow and orange stallion disappeared. Luna and Celestia could hear the echoes of Mrs Cake’s grunts of anger.
The two sisters glanced at each other. They could not repress their laughter but it remained short-lived, this was a serious matter.

Following this strange and thrilling meeting, Luna excused herself and flew to Ponyville. It was her duty to assist in Rainbow’s awakening.

Ω ϗ ϡ Ϙ ϐ Ϙ ϡ ϗ Ω

The Mane Six were impatiently waiting in the neighbouring room. Fluttershy had just arrived. Her trip to Zecora’s house had lasted longer than she expected, and meeting a hydra when she returned did not make the trip any easier. Her mane was ruffled, and scratches covered her hooves.
Applejack’s hoof was frenetically stomping the tiled ground, unnerving everypony. Her stare was alternating between the clock, hung high on the wall, and the door. This wobbling movement was really noticeable and annoying.

Twilight put her hoof on her friend’s shoulder, “Calm down Applejack, she is fine right now. We just need… to wait for the nurse.”

“I know,” Applejack replied. “But those three guards outside of her room… I don’t have a good feelin' about them.”

“You have to remember that Rainbow is charged with three accusations of murder.”

“She is NOT a murderer.”

“I know, but the evidence…” Twilight saw Rarity staring at her from the corner of her eye. She was shaking her head pointedly. The purple alicorn took the hint.

“Look Applejack,” Twilight continued. “I’m sure she is fine. We’ll talk to her in few minutes… Princess Luna will come too. She has… questions to Rainbow.”

“Questions…” Applejack cursed. “Ain’t nothin' good about interrogations.”

She was right, Twilight knew that. Three guards were here to make sure Rainbow wouldn't escape… to make sure she would answer whether she wanted to or not.

Solving the argument, the door opened as Princess Luna and the nurse, Healing Rhyme, entered. Luna’s face was pinched by a long and sleepless night, or day in her case.

Each pony raised their muzzle, waiting for information.

“We’ve already begun the reanimation process. She will awaken in ten or twenty minutes,” the nurse stated. “But before we go into her room, I have some things to tell you. About her state…”

Every pony held her breath.

“Miss Rainbow Dash’s physical state is… abominable. She's lost her wings but I have no doubt you already know that. Every inch of her skin and flesh has been cut off or bruised. Recovery will take time and she may suffer her whole life. Even walking will be an ordeal.
She will need you… maybe forever…”

Nausea swamped their minds. The nurse kept going on the explanations, giving details about the wounds, the foreshadowing physical and psychological traumas. That she could suffer from amnesia, temporary comatose, muteness and suicide attempts. She faced Luna, mentioning that any interrogation could wreck her spirit more than it already was.

“When you enter, don’t be surprised if she is restrained firmly. We were forced to. She could react violently. She killed three ponies in that bas…”

“We already know that.” Applejack grumbled.

The nurse avoided the mare’s incriminating stare.

“Also, she has lost her eyesight. They have been burnt with acid. She will recover but she will be blind for a few weeks. Take care about her, make sure she isn’t overstimulated.”

A second time, Healing Rhyme glanced meaningfully at the princess. At the same time, Fluttershy hid her eyes behind her hooves, trying not to think about how painful this reunion would be.

“Finally, I also want you to know that Rainbow Dash woke up last night. One of her intravenous lines slipped out. She had been half-awake for a minute before we took care of her. I think she won’t even remember it.”

“Did she say anything, Nurse Rhyme?” Rarity demanded, hesitantly.

“She screamed.”

The nurse’s last sentence casted a chill over the group. She motioned everypony to follow her. They finally arrived at Rainbow’s room. From the window, they could see two doctors administering painkillers to the bruised body.

The nurse and her two colleagues went out once Luna, Twilight and her friends had gathered around Rainbow’s bed. The former pegasus was breathing loudly. But, it sounded more like a hissing in everypony’s ears. Her eyelids were slowly moving. Each pony could see it under the bandages circling her head. Her body gave small spasms as she was regaining her senses.
They could barely see her skin. She looked like a mummy, wrapped in countless bandages.

She woke up. Unable to see, she started hyperventilating, startling everypony. Hearing the audience’s sudden moves, she raised her hooves toward her closest watcher, carefully feeling the contours of the face.

She recognized Fluttershy when she touched her mane. This familiar and comforting pony made the intense expression on her face fade away. It was not Pinkie Pie… It was definitely not her. She was finally out of the basement. Everywhere else seemed like heaven compared to the underground hell where she had been brought from.

Rainbow tried to speak. At the first attempt, not even a sound came out of her mouth… just a pitiful squeal. Then she found her words and began speaking with a low, loose, and trembling voice, “Is everypony here? I can’t see you… I can’t see anything.”

Twilight, Luna, Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy assented. Each pony gave her a hug. To the surprise of all, Rainbow harshly rejected everypony’s mark of affection with a sweep of her hoof.

“Don’t… Don’t touch me, none of you… nopony… ever.”

Fluttershy, whose feelings had been hurt, stepped back, accidentally knocking over a box of medical utensils. It all fell down the ground, causing an echoing metallic jingling and startling Rainbow Dash.
She screamed so violently, her friends had to cover their ears.
She shook under her bed sheets as she tried to find a way out. The pitch of her voice was so high… and lasted for so long.

“Calm yourself! STOP! Nopony’s gonna hurt yah, Shugarcube. NOPONY AT ALL. It’s over, yer safe now.” Applejack’s voice drowned out the chaos. “Nopony, yah heard me?”

Rainbow Dash started crying, cringing under the bedcovers. The rolling tears on her burnt cheeks intensified her pain causing her to scream again. It took a couple of minutes to bring her back from her panicked state.
Rainbow calmed herself and took a deep breath, “Twilight, Applejack and… Luna or Celestia I don’t know, you stay. Everypony else, get out.”

Rarity and Fluttershy looked at each other. They felt hurt from being sent away in such a harsh manner. They went out after Rarity tried in vain to contest the demand.

“Twilight, when you will get back to your library, I want you to send a letter, with Spike’s help, to Cloudsdale. I can get a pension from the Pegasus Resources Program for Injured Workers. Tell them to send it to my parents.”

She asked Twilight to leave. Only Luna and Applejack remained.

“Luna?” Rainbow’s interrogator stiffened. “I want to know why… why Pinkie did this to me… Why me… why?”

“I can’t respond to you, not until you’ve answered my questions to my satisfaction.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“It appears that you've killed Pinkie Pie as well as two stallions from the Royal Watch.”

Rainbow’s hooves started shivering. She remembered, the knife, home, Pinkie, the guards… the insanity, the basement. She shook her head between her hooves, squeezing hard enough to force small drops of blood from her wounds which soaked into her cyan coat.

“It can’t be…”

“But it is,” Luna cut her off. “Once you've been declared ‘stable’, I’ll come back.”

“Get away… Get out… I’m just a freak to your eyes, some experimental crap… another line in somepony’s agenda…”

“I…”

“Out!!”

Rainbow sobbed. Applejack was alone, silent and stoic, facing her broken friend.

“Applejack?”

The farm pony jumped. The pitch of Rainbow's voice was piercing and caused Applejack to wince.

“Ye… yes Sugarcube?”

“Never call me like that again…”

“Okay…” Applejack swallowed.

“I want you to tell me what you see. You’re the only one who would ever tell me the truth, the only one I can trust with this, the only one with enough integrity to give it to me straight. Describe what you see, draw me.”

Applejack listed each of the macabre and dreadful wounds, injuries, bruises, scars and marks that covered her friend’s body. In spite of the disgust it created in Applejack’s heart, she did not miss any details and made to Rainbow the greatest and most grotesque description that could have ever been done about her.
Rainbow’s face was indescribable, a mix of contentment, sadness, insanity and despair.

“Thanks Applejack. Now leave me alone, ain’t useful to talk to a dead mare.”

Applejack was on her way out when Rainbow called her back.

“Please, the bandages are so tight; can you undo the gauze around my head? I can't stand the sound of the blood pounding in my ears.”

Applejack nodded. She started removing the bandages. Her eyes widened as she noticed that the yellow strands of Rainbow's mane had turned black. She repressed her surprise at the sight, smothering the involuntary gasp it brought. She had already hurt Rainbow too much.
Applejack withdrew in the hallway. Everypony was waiting for her with Nurse Healing Rhyme.

“What did she say?” Luna asked.

“Nothing, she wanted the bandages around her head to be loosened,” Applejack turned to Healing Rhyme. “Have you notice the…”

Applejack mentioned Rainbow’s mane with her hoof pointed at her own. Twilight asked for clarification and what she got shocked her to her core.

“Black isn’t a natural colour for ponies.”

“Extraordinary situations bring incomprehensible consequences…” Luna observed.

“I hope yer wrong.”

“I would like to be, Applejack.”

Everypony heard Rainbow’s voice from behind the door. They gathered around Rainbow’s bed. The black lock of mane covering her head disgusted Rarity. She frowned but did not make a sound.

“What do you need, dear Rainbow.” Rarity initiated.

“There was somepony here last night.”

“Oh you remember it, I came to change your bandages,” The nurse replied.

“No, it was a filly… Scootaloo.”

Everypony gasped. The nurse pointed out that a guard had caught two fillies, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom.

Applejack and Rarity berated their sisters. “They were here!” They yelled.

Apparently the guard who had delivered the two fillies to their respective home had not mentioned where he had caught them.
Rainbow’s painkillers began to take effect and no pony succeeded in making her lucid again. They decided to let her rest, alone in her room.

“Where is Scootaloo at this hour?” Luna asked.

“At school for sure, with Apple Bloom and my sister,” Rarity responded.

Ω ϗ ϡ Ϙ ϐ Ϙ ϡ ϗ Ω

Sitting on her school bench, Scootaloo was shivering. Her two friends gave her worried looks as she was biting at her hooves. Cheerilee had also noticed and remarked Scootaloo’s strange behaviour.
It was nearly time for recess. The bell rang out and every pupil surged out of the classroom, except for Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom and their teacher.

“What’s bothering you, my little filly?” Cheerilee asked with a gentle smile.

Scootaloo turned to the crusaders before glancing back to her teacher, who understood.

“Apple Bloom? Sweetie Belle? Could you go out to eat your lunch, I must have a discussion with your friend.”

“But…”

They griped when Cheerilee made them go to the schoolyard. “What happened?” She started as she sat next to her pupil.

“Have you heard about Rainbow Dash, Miss Cheerilee?”

Cheerilee stuttered, “Hu… eh… Yes, I guess so.”

“I saw her last night at the hospital. I talked to her but she did not answer.”

Tearful, Scootaloo stood up and ran away, disappearing in the hallway. Taken by surprise, Cheerilee arched an eyebrow and sighed.

Once the little pegasus came out of the classroom and went to the playground, she was assaulted by both of her friends. They had decided to make her squeal.

“I… I can’t tell you…”

It was the only response they got. Disappointed, they let her stand up and wipe the dust from her flanks.

“Yes, the blank flank can’t say that Rainbow had lost her wings!”

Scootaloo turned around and faced the cynical face of Diamond Tiara along with her closest friend Silver Spoon. These two bullies were always in the wrong place at the wrong time, she thought.

Hatred flooded Scootaloo’s mind. Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom stared at her friends with fear in their eyes. They could almost see the steam of anger hissing out of her ears.

“And you want to know how I know that? I heard my father talking about it last night. She has lost her wings and… her eyes,” Tiara giggled.

It was the straw which broke the manticore’s back. Scootaloo leaped toward Diamond Tiara before anypony could react. She bucked her up and slammed her against a wall with a powerful impact. Half-unconscious, Tiara could see her archenemy standing over her. Scootaloo raised her hooves and stomped the one who dared making fun of her foster sister, knocking her out. Her little wings buzzed with rage.

Cheerilee and another teacher had witnessed the fight and ran over Scootaloo, moving her aside from the motionless body of Tiara. Silver Spoon cowered in a corner, scared of Scootaloo’s sudden and violent fit of rage.
Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom did not move an inch, they could not, far too afraid of Cheerilee. They had never seen her so angry. The teacher disappeared into the school hall, dragging a struggling Scootaloo. The other professor carried Tiara to the infirmary.

Ω ϗ ϡ Ϙ ϐ Ϙ ϡ ϗ Ω

“Are you crazy Scootaloo?” The headmaster shouted. “You could have broken her leg, or worse.”

“She deserved it,” She mumbled.

“I beg your pardon?” The principal fulminated.

Scootaloo burst into tears, “She stomped on Rainbow’s honor. She spat on her as if she was… nothing. That bully deserved to be beaten, it's the only way she’ll learn her lesson!”

Cheerilee stated, “You can’t solve everything with violence Scootaloo. Violence calls itself.”

“I just responded.”

“And she ended up being hit and had to be sent to the infirmary, not you.”

Scootaloo stared at her hooves.

“I can’t even contact your parents,” The headmaster rose up.

“They won’t even raise a hoof for me,” Scootaloo snapped back, disrespectfully.

“Scootaloo… as you live in the boarding school I can’t expel you from here. But you won’t attend the classes until you’ve calmed yourself. Now leave us and go directly to your room.”

Cheerilee leaned toward her superior as Scootaloo went out, “What do her parents do that keeps them away from home so much? I don’t know much about them.”

“I don’t really know, but it has something to do with the Realm and the Crowns. If I want to send her parents a message I need to send it through the Department of Domestic and Foreign Security.”

Cheerilee's eyes widened.

“Some fillies don’t have the luck to know their parents very well. Circumstances tear families apart,” the principal added.

Ω ϗ ϡ Ϙ ϐ Ϙ ϡ ϗ Ω

Princess Celestia ran amok in her private apartment. Her rage made the wall of the Canterlot Palace tremble. The royal guards were shivering in their armoured pants. It had been a long time since last Celestia’s fit of anger, and no pony wanted to block her way at the moment.
She turned the castle upside down searching for an object that was nowhere to be found. The captain of the guard showed up, yammering, raising his hooves, trying to calm the rampaging monarch.

“Your highness, may I ask why thou hast succumbed to such agitation?”

“The Elements! They have disappeared.”

The captain’s face lost all of its colour, “That can’t be. The Elements were safe in the royal chest, the most unbreakable of the realm.”

“I know that, I’ve made it myself… But it’s not the Elements only which are missing, it’s the chest itself.”

“It… vanished?”

“Yes,” she said gravely.

The captain ran to the great hallway of the Canterlot court and shouted out orders to every guard he could find.
His voice echoed for hours in the Castle.

In her room, the princess of the Sun let her anger explode. The windows shattered with the force of her magical presence.

“Discord, if this is your deed, I won’t turn you in stone this time. I’ll find a more… appropriate punishment, you hear me!”

She tried to calm herself. It was either the ambience or the circumstances, but she had never felt this angry before. It was not ordinary. Convincing herself Discord could be innocent in this whole story, she yet surprised herself thinking up various cruel punishments for having deceived her and every pony in Equestria.

A tipping point was coming. She felt it. Things were going to change dramatically and she and everypony had to be ready. Unfortunately, without the Elements of Harmony, they were defenseless.
She collapsed onto her couch, rubbing her forehead with her hoof. She had a headache.

Somepony coughed. Opening her eyes, Celestia saw Unbendable Scroll, her chamberlain; an old stallion whose blue fur and orange mane had turned grey over the time. Fifty years of work in the Castle had marked the pony’s characteristics.
He had two sealed letter magically floating close to him. He bowed before Celestia.

“Excuse my intrusion Your Majesty, but unfortunately I've brought with me two more lines of bad news to add on thine agenda.”

“What are they, my old friend?” Celestia asked, trying to wipe the anger from her face.

“One letter came from the Griffon’s realm across the sea, brought by a diplomatic raven,” Celestia’s jaw nearly dropped, this hadn't happened in eons. “And the second one comes from the Bad Lands’ Marches. It concerns the Hive.”

Celestia grasped with her magic the two letters and broke open them.

Ω ϗ ϡ Ϙ ϐ Ϙ ϡ ϗ Ω

The school’s bell rang out. One by one each filly and colt went out. Applejack and her five friends were waiting for the three fillies they knew so well. Luna had to depart after she received an urgent message from her sister.
To their displeasure, they did not see Scootaloo coming along with Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom.
The two Crusaders told the story of the day. That Scootaloo ran into Diamond Tiara, that she was summoned in the headmaster’s office and that she was 'expelled' for three days.

“So where do her parents live?” Rarity asked.

“You don’t know?” Twilight was surprised. “Her parents are vassals to the crown. They are members of the upper reaches of power.”

“Like… the nobility?” Rarity went wild with ecstatic glee; her eyes glowed with jealousy and respect.

“Much more like… the army.” Twilight corrected. “We don’t know much about them, it’s quite classified.”

“We?” Applejack pointed out.

“Few months ago Rainbow asked me about Scootaloo’s parents. We made some investigations but we drew a blank.”

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom insisted on going to see their friend, restricted to her room in the dormitory. The Mane Six had nothing to do but to surrender to their “cuteness”. The two fillies could be unbearable when they wanted to.

After fifteen minutes of wandering around the boarding school, they found it.

Knocking at the door, they entered. Scootaloo’s room was cozy and warm. Its window opened onto the City Hall square. On its walls were posters of Rainbow Dash, old photos and, something that attracted Twilight’s attention, a photo of a mare and a stallion, carrying a foal that looked much like Scootaloo in their hooves.

Scootaloo’s father, if it was him, wore the ceremonial armour of the Sky Gusts, the military nobles of Cloudsdale. His stripes clearly meant he was a general. Drawing a clear distinction with this bombastic suit, the mare looked like Daring-Do’s doppleganger, a long and dark mane with the ensemble of an adventurer. Unfortunately, the colours had dried out, leaving a sepia photo.
They had one thing in common, a weird insignia stamped on their shoulder. It was a talon circling a scroll and a dagger. Twilight was perplexed. She was almost sure to know something about this mark. But she could not remember. During her studies with the princess, she had secretly leafed through old and classified scrolls in Canterlot library; occasionally, she happened across and read documents she shouldn't have.

Scootaloo was lying on her bed, looking dejected. Seeing her friends and their relatives brightened her mood a little. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle started jumping on her friend’s bed, trying to restore some happiness in her heart.

“Scootaloo, we know about you and Rainbow last night.” Fluttershy initiated.

Fluttershy’s first step surprised her friends. Maybe it was better that she was the one to speak. She was so kind. Scootaloo’s jaw nearly dropped, discretion was definitely not her talent.

“Is… Is she okay?” Scootaloo stuttered.

“Yes, she woke up, but she needs rest, lots of calm and rest…” Applejack specified. “I…”

“Yes she will be fine,” Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom cut off. “She may have no wings now, but he eyes will heal and she will still be our Rainbow Dash!”

Scootaloo smiled, she would like to be as sure as her closest friends.

Sweetie Belle turned to Twilight, “You could cast that spell you used on Big Sis’ at Cloudsdale that drove her into a crazy pegasus.”

Rarity blushed. She looked like a tomato.

“Sweetie Belle,” she hissed. “You said you would never talk about that again!”

“Sorry, it slipped out.” Sweetie Belle laughed.

“Miss Scootaloo?”

Everypony stared at the door. A stallion, a pegasus in a black uniform, was standing in the entrance. He had an envelope under his hooves. He gazed at each pony with his military eyes then slowly headed to the quivering filly, sat on her bed. The silent was heavy and pregnant. He sighed in awe. He had to force the words out of her lips.

“My deepest condolences. Your father fell on the battlefield this morning. Our hearts grieve with yours. Equestria will remember his sacrifice.”

A chill passed on each face. Scootaloo cringed on herself; her eyes were watery. A sob crackled between her cheeks. She curled on her linens. A long complaint rose slowly, eerily, painfully.

“How… how dare you?” Rarity erupted, pushing the stallion aside. “Haven't you ever heard of tact?”

The stallion sighed a second time. He put off his kepi.

“I’m sorry, but my superiors want me to return to the front line as fast as possible.”

He gulped. He was clearly anxious, ill-at-ease. And his feelings were easy to share with the mares circling him.

“You said… the front lines? As in, combat lines,” Fluttershy noticed.

The pegasus was surprised, “You all still don’t know. Equestria is at war since this morning.”

War… this word shook each pony. War was not a term used often in a pony's lexicon.

“The changelings have been on the move for ten hours and… I’m not allowed to tell you why for the moment, but the Griffon’s Kingdom, across the sea, has declared war on our nation. But they haven’t attacked yet. They are sending a delegation,” He swallowed. “We have been brought to bay. Terrible times are on the horizon.”

He knelt and looked in Scootaloo’s eyes, “Your father was an important stallion. He died a hero in the Bad Lands against Chrysalis’s army and…”

“What about my mother?” Scootaloo troubled.

“The foreign bureau still doesn’t know. She is missing in action… You know, my little filly, she has been in the griffin imperium for months. We don’t know where she is right now. She could have fled to the north or leaded to the South of the old continent.”

“My mother isn’t a coward,” Scootaloo convinced herself.

“I know… my deepest condolences for your father, my little filly. Chin up, be proud, he was a great stallion. The fiercest warrior I’ve ever known.”

He glanced at Twilight and her friends and left every pony. Applejack chased him out.
Scootaloo’s complain burst out. Trembling she tried to repel Rarity’s hug. But she had no strength left. She collapsed on her bed, wet with tears. Crooked, she was a pity. Fluttershy had burst into tears too. She was emotional and empathic. The sorrow was powerful and they all felt tears ran on their cheeks.

Applejack had pushed out the stallion. Tearful she stood in the threshold of the door.

“You! They didn’t teach you kindness in the army?”

“Sorry if this is a bit too fast for you… but I must be back on the front as fast as possible. And I don’t want her to recognize me,” The soldier confessed, a drop sprout under his eyes.

“Wait… why?”

“She is my brother’s daughter.”

“You’re her…”

The stallion nodded painfully.

“Yes, I don’t want her to remember who I am… I may feed the rodents tonight. Two deaths in the family in a row would put her down, especially since her mother is untraceable and that her model, Rainbow Dash has been… shot down.”

Applejack avoided an eye contact with the soldier.

“Eh… What’s your name?”

“Burning Spirit…” He said half-heartedly.

The pegasus left the boarding room. A strange felling plagued his eyes. It was the eyes of a stallion knowing he would die soon, hollowed, grieved, and lifeless. He might have been a burning spirit, he was no longer one.

In the room, a long silence had set up when Applejack came back.
Scootaloo was sobbing silently now, her muzzled hidden her a pillow. A dark cloud had passed on Applebloom’s and Sweetie Belle’s faces. Everypony was nauseous… The silence was unsettling.

“War… I can’t believe it,” Twilight rebelled. “How could Princess Celestia have let this happen?”

“The times, they are changing…” Rarity added mystically.

Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 4. An Old Acquaintance of Mine
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Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 4. An Old Acquaintance of Mine

An old acquaintance of mine

The guards shivered in their horseshoes. Shouts echoed against the marble walls. Unbendable Scroll, the chamberlain, waited in the threshold of the room, silent as always.

“War… Doth thou believe it? War!” Princess Luna yelled. “We should wreak chaos upon them, as Sombra would.”

Arks of black electricity enshrouded her forehead.

“Calm yourself, my sister. You know this is the Griffon’s tradition to declare war when their honour has been trampled. They never attack unless their grievances have fallen into deaf ears.”

Luna threw a sheaf of papers to Celestia’s hooves, they scattered in the throne room.

“Stop hiding from the truth, Ponies. Are. Dying! Our ponytarian forces in Saddle Arabia had to move to the North to protect our immigrants. Their sole role should have been to help the country with irrigation and well-digging.”

Luna exhaled in anger then grunted, “Griffin citizens have gone mad, purging the… what they call the ‘pony scum’. And, as if that wasn't enough, We still don’t really know what is truly behind this. Why did they declare war upon us?”

Celestia nodded, “There’s been foul-ups in our intelligence services, war isn’t something they are… trained to. But we are certain that a high-ranking griffon, one of the Emperor's relatives was assassinated.”

Luna tried to keep hold of her remaining composure.

“And our forces are just protecting the refugees. They haven't attacked any Griffin battalions,” Celestia added. “We won’t give the Prince-Electors a reason to move to action.”

“This is what terrifies Us, We’re not ready if the griffons decide to invade, we are no match. And with the Elements missing… our proper reputation will be smeared if this comes to be revealed.”

Apart of their magical usefulness, the Elements had the same role as regalia for ponies. The loss of such powerful symbols was tragic and Celestia already had some of her closest and most efficient agents tracking the path of the thief.

“Not that the Elements would be useful now that we have one bearer dead and another out of commission,” Luna murmured through gritted teeth, a tear in her eye.

“I sincerely hope they won’t move to attack…”

Celestia paused. On second thought, she convinced herself that the Empire would not strike.

“You know how the Griffin Empire’s politic works. It’s a huge imbroglio of conflicted interests. The Imperator is not even a guide in his kingdom. He is more of a putative prince. And it saddens me to admit it. They will fuel their own strives and the war will be forgotten.”

A long silence settled down in the room, lasting for few minutes.
Their exhaustion was evident in the Regal Sisters’ eyes, both looked out through the stained glass windows of the regal room.

“Time to set the moon and raise the sun, I guess,” Luna sighed. “Another day, another step toward the End.”

“Don’t worry Lulu, the Griffin Emissary will be arriving in two days,” Celestia smiled gently.

Luna’s eyes narrowed. A usual trip between Equestria and the ‘Imperium across the sea’ took one week by boat. Either this meant that the Griffons had scheduled the declaration of war or…

“Remember that in five days, the Gathering will occur.”

Luna was surprised. A small smile cleared her face for an ephemeral moment. She even lost her etiquette for few seconds.

“Oh… It’s been so long since I attended one.”

“You were still banished when the last one occurred four years ago,” Celestia pointed out. “I just hope this one won’t be of ill-omen… again.”

“We can only entrust you of such sayings, my sister.”

And then, the two Alicorns walked through an arch, appearing on a balcony. Miles away, the first lights of Ponyville were switched on as bakers, milkponies and postponies started their long day of work.

In the horizon the sun and the moon transferred their place.

ϐ Ϙ Ͼ ϕ Ξ ϕ Ͽ Ϙ ϐ

Erlier…

Even before the sunset and the rise of the moon in the horizon, Scootaloo had already slithered out of her boarding school. Clouds had formed over Ponyville and an eerie wind had begun to blow through the narrow streets of the town. Weaving in and out between the patrols which were more numerous than ever before, she headed to the hospital.
The townsponies wore expressions of grief from news that Scootaloo did not understand. She did not care in fact. She wanted to see her “big sis”. Rarity and her friends had said she was doing well, recovering swiftly, she was wishing for it. However, she was also truly scarred by the traumatizing experiences of the previous night; when she faced this screaming remains of the one she adored.

She passed by SugarCube Corner and surprised to find herself staring for few minutes at the creepy place, fearful of what lay beyond the black threshold. The many yellow police strips surrounding the place had been ripped off by the wind and the shutters of the cottage were slamming on their hinges. If she had ignored the former function of the building, Scootaloo would have mistaken it with a haunted house.

The perfect pace of horseshoes on the next street alerted her to the imminent presence of a guard patrol. Scootaloo leaped to the closest shortcut and disappeared into the shadows.

The night was rapidly approaching and if Scootaloo was afraid of anything, it was surely to be left stranded, alone in the dark. She jumped over a fence marking the border of the town. She regretted having forgotten her scooter; the trip would have been faster.
‘No, it was a good thing’, she thought, she usually made a racket on her beloved vehicle.

The hospital stood there in the pitch black. Only the lights of the entrance indicated the presence of the rectangular building. Scootaloo was standing at the same position as last time. She first thought about infiltrating it by hijacking the back door again, but the guards should now know about it… since her two friends had been caught there.

Same place, different plan. She had only one solution, climbing the façade.

Twice she made a circuit around the hospital. She fought back a feeling of helplessness at the sight of the smooth, plain, walls, void of anything she might use to climb up.
Sitting on the grass she challenged her mind, searching for a solution. She remembered seeing a shed neighbouring the promenade in the surroundings. The Hospital had a huge park filled with flowers of every colour, it was necessary to get the services of a full-time gardener, therefore, she reasoned, the shed would hold some interesting and useful tools.

Her suppositions proved to be accurate. Opening the shack, she went over to a huge stepladder. It took Scootaloo fifteen minutes to understand how to work it, and ten minutes more to finally find a way to move it from the shed to the hospital soundlessly. She smiled.
The moon rose into the night sky.

In her bed, alone and yet surrounded by the stench of antiseptic, Rainbow was struggling with her wounds. Moving a mere inch would bring her agony. She sighed. She wished to stretch her wings, to fly high in the sky until she could touch the twinkling stars. These kinds of thoughts were, in the end, just another repugnant reminder of her current condition.
Groping her chest, she frowned and started sobbing. This feeling of agony running beneath her skin was coming back and forth. It was unbearable, driving her into bouts of madness. She wanted to keep her grasp on reality, but she had nothing to rely on. Helplessness and pity were the only things popping in her mind when she was picturing herself.

She wanted to ask for a painkiller. Unfortunately, nopony was around, and shouting out would be a waste of breath as a painful and useless call for assistance. It would not worth the effort and the torment.

She started at a noise.
Something had just knocked on the windows. Rainbow heard a slight grating, like those of rusty hinges. A cold breezed licked her face. She started shaking.

“Who?” She coughed, spitting lumps of clotted blood on her white bed sheets. “Who is it?”

She heard something falling on the ground. A groaning echoed in the room. Blind and helpless, Rainbow shivered. Had her tormentor returned? She wished for the strength to scream but she was only able to squeak miserably.
Then her twitching ears caught the high-pitched voice of a young filly.

“It’s me Dash, Scoot’!”

The voice of Scootaloo made something click in Rainbow’s mind. She started crying, but instead of tears of distress and suffering, tears of joy and respite slid down her scarred cheeks. Jumping onto the bed, Scootaloo’s fear vanished when Rainbow embraced her.

“How did you get here?”

“I climbed… the wall… with a kind of… ladder… I’m suffocating… Rainbow!”

Rainbow Dash released her foster sister from her deadly embrace, first due to Scootaloo’s complaint, second due to the pain flooding her hooves and arms. Doubts started invading her mind.

She had cast away her friends so harshly, only a few hours ago. And now she was greeting Scootaloo as if she was her sole friend. ‘What a poor loyalty bearer I am’, she thought. A shadow covered her face. The despair she felt was evident in her expression, even beneath the bandages. She was pitiful.

“I've lost everything and what I could have kept, I threw it away. Scootaloo, tell me what I should do,” Rainbow sobbed.

Small and still very young, Scootaloo could hardly understand Rainbow’s doubts. But seeing her idol in such state was painful. Misery was contagious.

“But you’ve got me. You said you would take me under your wing when we went camping with everypony. I’m not gonna let you down,” She assured as she nestled up to Rainbow Dash.

A thankful whisper crawled out of Rainbow’s thirsty mouth. From her position, Scootaloo saw the black strand of mane dangling under Rainbow’s gauzes.

“You changed your manestyle?” She asked childishly.

“Hue… Yeah, kind of,” Rainbow giggled. The nurse, Healing Rhyme had told her one of her locks had turned black. “Tell me Scoot’, what happened today. There’s been much agitation around her. I have no clue.”

“Dad is dead and mom’s lost somewhere outside… Rarity and the others have said we’re at war.

She paused.

“I don’t want to lose you Rainbow Dash,” She said simply, sadness was audible through her voice.

“I know, I know…” Rainbow tried to give back courage to her little filly.

Rainbow’s mind faded as she thought of Cloudsdale. Once again, she felt useless. During the epoch her homeland would have needed her most, she was bound to a bed, assumed guilty of murder after escaping a serial-killing freak.

“I want to search for for mommy,” Scootaloo mumbled.

These words sparked something in Rainbow’s mind.

“There's nothing left for me here or anywhere in Equestria. I’m free to go,” Rainbow stated, clearly knowing what this was implying. “But I still can’t move… I hate waiting.”

She thought herself as a coward. ‘Blind and wrecked… what help could I offer?’ she kept repeating in her mind, trying to convince herself of her powerlessness.
She was actually afraid to make a choice… the choice. She needed something, somepony to force her making it. Scootaloo was the trigger she expected.

“Come with me!” Scootaloo genuinely jumped for joy. “We’ll travel and explore dark places like Daring Do!”

“Like Daring Do…”

Rainbow giggled but a harsh pain burned her ribs, killing her laughter in the womb. A small tear rolled from her eye and, in each other's embrace, both mare and filly went on the unstained lands of peaceful dreams.

ϐ Ϙ Ͼ ϕ Ξ ϕ Ͽ Ϙ ϐ

Twilight woke up with a sensation of fur coating her mouth. She had drunk last night after coming back home. The previous day’s revelations had shocked her and she had carelessly emptied her wine cave, paying no attention to Spike. He must have suffered from seeing his friend hitting a new low.

Somepony once said that a hangover was just like having a peacock inside of one’s head. Absolutely wrong, at least from Twilight’s point of view. The truth was far more horrible. Her head was aching, unable to remember the last bribes of the night. Her thinking was wreaked by an awful ear pop and she felt uneasy on her four hooves. Toddling, she went to the bathroom and had a long, long… very long shower. Curled in the bathtub, surrounded by thick volumes of steam, she felt slipping away.

She vomited loudly.

She solemnly promised herself to never drink again. Sitting on the drain, she paid no heed to the rising water. The bath, as hot as Tartarus, numbed her mind. She closed her eyes, smiling.

A firm grasp brought her back from under the water's surface. She gasped greedily. She felt somepony haul her out of the tub. Her hindlegs fell hard on a wet floor. She heard the same person turn off the running water which was flooding the room.

“Snap out of it, Twilight!”

The small shout hurt her ears and made them ring. She curled up, begging for a rest. She was on the verge of bursting into tears.

Opening her eyes, she saw Spike, picking up towels into an attempt to dry the ground. The floor was flooded. His face was pale, angry at least, and he was tired. She must have put him through Tartarus last night.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight mumbled.

“You’re the least of my worries,” he said, sighing. “I received a letter from the Princess early this morning. She wants you and everypony to go to Canterlot the day after tomorrow. There is no matter of urgency apparently.”

He shrugged, war made everything relative. Twilight groaned, still lying on the tiled floor.

After having been dried by Spike, she was conducted to the kitchen where the kind dragon served her a strong cup of coffee. She never drank coffee or ever possessed some, how…

“I went to the market while you were still out,” Spike answered the forthcoming question.

“Thanks…” She muttered, gulping the bitter brown liquid, her face contorting in disgust.

It was awful. Celestia, who usually was drinking a lot in the morning, always said ponies did not drink it for the taste, but Twilight was not prepared for such flavour.

“I told you it was strong,” Spike said, drinking his own.

“You drink coffee? Since when?”

“Since we arrived to Ponyville, you know it’s hard to follow you a whole day and restart the same journey over and over again. Being an assistant is not a sinecure…”

“Eh…”

“At least, I learn new words every day.”

“True…”

She finished her cup and asked for another. Spike held out the percolator to the purple pony who could barely open her eyes. Her migraine was reluctant to go away.

It was nearly ten in the morning and a familiar shadow passed by the veiled windows of the living room. A series of knocks followed. Twilight tried to get up but Spike forbade her to move.

“Don’t bother; you’re in no shape to walk.”

He disappeared in the hallway. Spike’s voice rose up, greeting the welcomed guest.
Hoofsteps narrowed and not one but two mares entered in the room. They were none other than Applejack and Rarity. They both looked tired.

“Let me guess…” Twilight grumbled.

“Applebloom an’ Sweetie Belle ain’t given us rest last night,” Applejack answered, sick of the exhaustion.

“Spike! Pour these two rag-slouches a cup, and a new one for my sorry ass.”

It was apparent that the alcohol was still affecting her. Rarity gave a look at the surroundings, an amazing pile of empty green glass bottles were resting in a corner.

“Don’t ask,” Twilight hissed.

Rarity gave her an arched eyebrow.

“Where is Fluttershy?” Twilight squeezed, knocking back her cup.

“She is still in her cottage,” Rarity answered first. “I think she had enough misfortunes for the moment. She wants to keep calm.”

“The calm won’t last,” Twilight said, twisting her mouth. “Celestia want to see us in a couple of days.”

A long silence welcomed this statement. For everypony, something was fishy. But none of them would confess this feeling.

“First time you’d got drunk, Sugarcube?” Applejack guessed with a smile on her lips, trying to ease the situation.

“No… but first time I blacked-out…” Twilight said, holding her head between her hooves, hiding her eyes from the sunbeams going through her curtains.

“How is Rainbow doing?” Spike asked eager to change the subject, unwilling to keep trotting out last night events in the library.

“She…”

Another knock on the door rose up. Twilight complained and before even Spike had moved a finger she was up. She stumbled on her first step but went to the door without knocking over and breaking anything.

ϐ Ϙ Ͼ ϕ Ξ ϕ Ͽ Ϙ ϐ

“Ow, ouch, ah!” The little filly cried.

She was dragged along the way by a powerful guard. His shiny armour, as with the houses all around, reflected the light of the rising sun. He was whistling an old well-known song of New Owleans. The young filly, a small Pegasus with an orange coat and a burgundy-coloured mane was fighting against the stallion’s grasp. She gave him a buck in the flank, making him stop his song.

“What is this obsession you fillies have with Rainbow Dash?” He grumbled.

“Don’t you dare insult my sister!”

“Rainbow Dash has no sister, it’s written on her report, you little liar,” He sniggered.

Scootaloo’s face lost some of her composure.

“She’s more of… a… foster sister,” she mumbled, turning silent. “An’ my name’s Scootaloo.”

The guard celebrated, in his mind, his victory against this noisy and agitating urchin.

“Where do you live?” He asked. “Where do your parents live?”

These two questions made Scootaloo lock herself even more in her muteness. The guard was now eaten up with remorse, knowing he had broached a delicate issue and callously hit a nerve.

“Take me to the sch… to the Golden Oaks Library,” she asked, disappointed. “Please.”

And so be it. They passed by Colgate’s office and bumped into Derpy and, in the end, they faced the library. Without correctness, the guard had Scootaloo sit up and stamped the door with his metallic horseshoe.

His jaw dropped when the door opened. Scootaloo, turning about, mimicked her temporary guardian, shocked.

Twilight Sparkle, former Princess of Dusk was standing in the wide open entrance. Her mane appeared dishevelled and washed-out and the light pink strand looked stranger than usual. It shone with a dark-green reflection which plagued the yellowish-black circles around her eyes.
One of her ears was straightened up while the other was dangling, hidden by her mane.
A light blue mug was magically hovering over her head. On it was engraved the quote “Best Princess”. A drop of coffee stained the ground.

Her enormous bloodshot eyes radiated exhaustion as they narrowed and pierced the uncomfortable stallion. Sweat fell off his chin.

“What’s the fuss?” She said, simply.

A strong smell of coffee and alcohol mixed and sprawled in the air. Both of her interlocutors frowned in disgust. Twilight blinked. When she opened her eyes again, one of her eyelids got stuck in the middle of its path. She went all Derpina. And as once said Rainbow Dash, “Never go full Derpina”.

The guard turned to Scootaloo.

“You sure this is her, the one you want to be guarded by?”

“Y… yeah, today is Saturday. I have nothing to do at the School.”

Applejack, Rarity and Spike appeared. The latter returned Twilight to her chair in the neighbouring room. After talking with the guard, he let Scootaloo enter and got back to his routine work.

“What have you done this time?” Rarity growled.

“I just slept next to Rainbow last night. I wanted to see her. I didn’t want to fall asleep but I did…”

She took a pause, her hoof on her lip.

“… and the guard woke me up this morning.”

The guard’s story did not matter, she had seen Rainbow. Scootaloo was assaulted by dozens of questions. Rainbow had been withdrawn when her friends went seeing her. Applejack asked about her wounds, Rarity about her appearance and Twilight ‘strangely’ was grumbling on her chair, griping over her nausea and headaches.

Scootaloo answered gently, replying that Rainbow seemed in better shape than the time she ended up screaming but that she was really depressed. She even mentioned that she was sorry for being mean with everypony. For a moment she hesitated, wrapping her chin. Then, thinking that truth would be better than hiding the fact she said.

“She wants to leave too… And I would like to go with her.”

The revelation struck every pony in the room. A heavy silence settled. They all looked at the hooves. Seconds passed, worsening the atmosphere little by little.

“Did she really mean it?” Applejack queried. “Do you?”

“I think so… Dad is… dead,” She shivered, the remaining happiness faded away from her face, her eyes tearful. “And I would like to see my mother… Or at least know where she is right now.”

Nopony questioned her logic. It was depressing but true. Twilight spoke. Her voice was a distorted grave imitation of Bon-Bon’s, “She does what she thinks the best… I won’t hold her back. I felt like we abandoned her that night.”

“Don’t you dare say that!” Applejack cried. “Rainbow Dash would not abandon us.”

“Don’t tell lies, she will leave. I don’t see her staying her, having everypony remind her of… her condition. You’re wrong thinking the opposite.”

“It’s t’ue!”

“It’s not!”

The conflict kicked-off, curses flew in the air. Rarity smiled, the scene was similar to any sitcom she liked to read or watch when she travelled to Manehattan.
The strife died as Spike separated the two upset ponies.

“Can’t you stop jumping to conclusions? You won’t decide for her.” He settled down the heated discussion.

Spike was holding his forehead in his claws. Applejack breathed out loud and calmed herself. She changed the discussion topic.

“So… how about Celestia’s appointment?” the orange pony asked.

“We’ll see tomorrow… I booked train tickets for tomorrow evening for every one of us.”

Spike’s cheeks inflated like a frog’s and he belched an emerald-green flame. A scroll bounced on the ground, a regal red symbol sealing it.
Spike opened it and started reading out loud.

“Dear Twilight,

I know this is far-fetched and thrown in your hooves but I must raise your awareness about an issue of the utmost importance. Besides my request for you to come at Canterlot I am sorry to announce you that the Elements of Harmony have disappeared from their chest…”

“Wait, wait… what?” Twilight shouted. “No, the Elements, I have had them since we reformed Discord…”

Twilight stumbled over her hooves, galloping to her personal library, picking up the Elements book and opening it with an assertive stare.
Empty… absolutely empty.

“Alicorns know better, it seems. Oh, faux pas!” Spike teased her up.

Twilight sent him a wicked stare, she was a princess now but sometimes she was trying to convince herself that she did not had signed up for this.

“Girls! I made up my mind,” Twilight said, ironically hesitant. “We leave for Canterlot now!”

Spike, Rarity and Applejack eyeballed their friend, taken aback. Twilight, using her magic, turned her maniacally-tidied home into shambles and, standing in front of her door, she shouted for everypony to come with her. Her voice was still high-pitched and hoarse.

“And what about Fluttershy?” Rarity asked, uncomfortable.

With her magic, Twilight grabbed each of her friends and dragged them to Fluttershy’s house. She took hold of the animal caretaker without any further ado and pushed everypony to the train station.

ϐ Ϙ Ͼ ϕ Ξ ϕ Ͽ Ϙ ϐ

On her bedside table was already piled up two books to read, but Rainbow had asked for the Daring-Do books.

Nurse Red Heart brought her one, the last of the series, making Rainbow Dash smiled a bit. The nurse was an angel, always trying to distract Rainbow from her current condition. Praiseworthy, but ironically it was making Rainbow feel worse. Being cradled was the last thing she ever wanted.

However Rainbow was still blind, for at least a couple of weeks more. Having books she was unable to read was a heart-rending sight.

“You’re getting better, Miss Dash, you’ll be able to stand up with some help in a week if not few days,” She stated. “Healing Rhyme’s magic is absolutely wonderful, painkilling, coagulation, recovery and scarring over. She won’t admit it but we’re all glad to have her here.”

“Could… Could you read me a story?” Rainbow stuttered.

Without working eyes, the crippled pegasus did not see the nurse looking down, avoiding a direct stare to the bed. It was her turn to stutter. Her hoof started shaking silently, worried.

“I… I am sorry, but other patients need me. I will try… to find somepony to keep you company. I can’t promise anything.”

Somepony called for Red Heart from outside the room. She went out a moment and came back.

“You’ve got mail Rainbow.”

Looking at the grieved face of the Pegasus, well hidden behind the bandages she went mute, opened the letter and started reading. It was a letter from Spike.

‘Dear Rainbow

We are currently on our way to Canterlot to attend an appointment with the Princess. The girls will not lie to you but everything has been very awkward around us since your incident and they haven't had much time to be with you with all of the escalation in Equestria.

The Elements have been stolen but apparently that is not the main point of the meeting.

Everything aside, we all hope you'll recover and be back on your hooves as soon as possible. We know how you feel and we’ll be always at and on your side.

Your friend

Spike’

“Thanks Red Heart, just… put the letter on my table and leave me alone.”

She did so and Rainbow found herself, again, alone in her cold and antiseptic-smelling room, crying. She felt like a drag, a burden her… friends tried to take care of, but finally having to leave her behind.
This feeling was overwhelming, ‘was it egotistical of her to want to have her friends next to her? And not just a bunch of few compassionate nurses and letters?’

Resentful, she was. Spiteful, she was. Revolted, she was. Stricken, she was. She felt so full of self-loathing.

ϐ Ϙ Ͼ ϕ Ξ ϕ Ͽ Ϙ ϐ

The trip to the Castle had been awkward. Everypony had been silent all the way, staring out of the windows. Twilight was trying to avoid being sick. Rarity had been mumbling she had not been given the time to take her most beautiful and fashionable clothes. Applejack was finally napping on one of the first class seats and finally Fluttershy and Spike was staring at everypony, waiting for something to happen.

The situation brightened once they stepped onto the Canterlot train station platform. Spike had sent a letter to the Princess, making her aware of the unscheduled arrival of her faithful student and friends.
Celestia, protected by two guards were waiting for them, greeting everypony with a gentle and radiant smile.

They all felt better from seeing a familiar face which was not affected by despair. Twilight, still sick from the trip, walked to her teacher and as usual embraced her.

“You smell funny, Twilight,” She giggled.

“Reality backfires sometimes,” Her student replied.

Celestia nodded, comprehending.

“Follow me. I’m sure you have plenty of questions.”

Accompanied by guards, the security had been enhanced since the latest developments had fallen into pony’s ears. They made their way to a meeting room adjacent to the North wing of the Castle. A huge table stood in the middle of it circled by at least twenty chairs.
Each pony took a seat and listened carefully.

“My little ponies, I didn’t expect you so soon but I think it might be for the better.”

She mentioned the theft of the Elements but it paled in comparison with the second bit of news she had.

“The Gathering will be held in four days,” She stated with a voice which could have been accompanied with a dramatic three tones music.

Twilight’s jaw dropped, everypony else arched a brow.

“We’re doomed,” Twilight gasped.

What? Why doomed?” Applejack hurled. “Explain y’all!”

“You truly don’t know what it is?” Twilight responded, disappointed by her friends’ ignorance.

Everypony shook their heads. She sighed.

“Aaaah… Okay, look. Equestria stands on this world as a neutral territory that no nations can harm because… ponies have magic and Alicorns are among the first born…”

She started wandering off in a mountain-like pile of historical, political and economic considerations. Everypony lost her train of thought.
Applejack cut her off and turned over, facing Princess Celestia.

“An’ in Equestrian?”

“In four days, every representative of each nation will come to settle down the conflicts which popped during last four years. And We, Luna and I, act as mediators. And it has been like this for eons.”

“So why Twilight is so stressed,” Rarity asked, pointing her friend with her hoof.

Celestia gave an amused smile to her student.

“Well, apart from your inclined nature to paranoia…”

Twilight frowned, crossed her hooves and turned her gaze to the next chair. Celestia restrained giggling. The princess looked back at Rarity.

“… However she is right. The tradition requires that the opening ceremony has to be held by presenting to every ambassador the Elements…” She let out a long breath. “…This is why this is quite an issue. Elements are meant to be harnessed to fight mighty foes, and are our regalia. I fear that the Gathering will turn into a mess once every diplomat finds out that we're missing both the Elements and two bearers.”

The day was passed searching for clues as to find where the Elements were, or at least who could have stolen them all. And, in the end, nothing was found. Twilight had in fact not so many hopes… The special services had already gotten ahead of them without finding anything relevant.
The Elements seemed to have vanished.

The evening was calm and everypony went to bed early, the next day would be a decisive and challenging one.

And indeed, it would be. On the morning, a messenger announced the Griffin delegation would arrive at noon. The matinée was stressful for everypony as the first discussion, and negotiations about the war-to-be between Ponies and Griffons would be discussed.

At noon, a flying chariot appeared in the horizon. ‘Only one?’ Celestia thought, standing with the remaining “Element bearers” and Princess Luna in the vast courtyard of the Palace. The ground was tiled of gold and silver, drawing a gigantic cardinal compass. Each was wearing their most magnificent clothes, ready to face the diplomatic mess which should be following the first contact.

Twilight and Rarity tilted their head toward Luna and Celestia.

“Aren't the griffons known for their exuberance, and compulsion to delusions of grandeur?” Rarity asked first.

“… and the size of their delegations?” Twilight followed.

Celestia nodded, perplexed.

The chariot landed softly on the drawn compass and its four stallions neighed, finally able to stretch their limbs and wings. Every spectator gasped and held their breath, waiting.

On the vehicle were two griffons, wearing purple and blood red togas sewed with gold and platinum. The first to step on the ground was young, very…

“CELESTIA!!”

The second one blasted out of the chariot and headed limping to the queen.
The guards spread their spears. Only to see their weapons repelled by a dextral talon.
Celestia gasped.

The regal griffon hugged her. It was one of those familiar and friendly embraces, off-putting the audience.
Jaws dropped, incomprehension could be read in each pony’s eyes.

Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 5. A Friend Behind The Enemy?
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Apr. 2013 - Beyond All Thresholds - 5. A Friend Behind The Enemy?

A friend behind the enemy?

“You should see the look on your face, Celly!” He cackled.

Turning around, his smile grew as four ponies, a baby dragon and a group of guards were staring at him, mouths wide opened, pupils reduced to dots. With his talon, he closed the nearest pony’s limp jaw. The mare had a fur as white as Celestia's. Her mane was deep purple, undoubtedly smooth as it was alternating between curled and straightened strands of hair. She had a certain style for the griffon’s tastes.

“What? You really thought I would attack a goddess, my dear Rarity.”

She cocked her head and her ears perked when he spoke her name. Snapping out of her lethargy, Rarity’s stare ran over the griffon’s red and purple toga. Gold, silver, and platinum embroidered the magnificent cloth. She became starry-eyed, having never seen garments of this standing and regal was the only word she could use to define this masterpiece.

“I need this silk.” She mumbled.

The griffon smiled and inspected each of the ponies before him.

“Shall I close those dangling mouths of yours?” He asked amused, tickling Twilight’s chin with the tip of his claw.

Twilight batted the griffin’s talon aside and rubbed her fur where he had scratched it. The creature was tall. Taller than a pony of course, but also taller than the average griffon. She had read a lot of books about them. They were known to be a little larger than ponies, but this one was one and a half the size of his bretheren. The feathers on his forehead were even able to tickle Celestia's muzzle when he finally faced her and her sister.
The audience’s rational mind returned. Terrified, they awaited a clash

“Princess Luna. I’m so honored to meet the Goddess of the Night,” The griffon saluted, extending his talon after an impressively respectful bow.

Luna shook it. She felt she heard a degree of arrogance and contempt in his voice but kept these feelings to herself.

“The pleasure is all mine,” she replied with a forced smile.

“Of the small creatures wandering on this earth, you’re certainly the most mysterious and intriguing,” The griffon continued.

“Small?”

“And you…” the griffon looked to Celestia without heeding Luna’s last word. “You haven’t changed at all.”

“Excuse me,” Celestia finally had the composure to say. “But, who are you? How dare you act like this in front of my subjects.”

The griffon's jaw fell. It was not surprise which could be read on his face, but sadness… a true, moving, deep sorrow. He swallowed a gag.

“You don’t remember me?” He simply uttered with a sigh.

“Should I?”

He breathed out loudly, pouting.

“If I were to say War of the Apples, would that ring any bells?”

Celestia’s eyes became so huge that everypony thought they would swell to the size of bowling balls and explode.

“Andraste? But! But? How…”

“Gotcha,” He winked. “Ninety-five years we haven’t seen each other.”

Were Pinkie Pie present, she would have gone to extreme lengths for a spit-take, displaying the degree of surprise they all felt.

“How… OLD are you,” Twilight stuttered.

“Well…” The griffon drawled, rubbing his feathered beard. “Apart from your two princesses and plants of course, those cheaters, I could say I’m the oldest living being on this world.”

“This doesn’t answer my…”

“Two hundred and four years old miss Sparkle, or should I say, Your Highness.”

Everypony stared at him in disbelief. He was… extremely good-looking for a twenty decades old rag. Their eyes fixed upon him, the old griffon towered on his hindlegs and started showing off his muscles, and of course his claws, sharp as razors. His toga dissimulated his chest, back and wings particularly well, but under the folds there was no doubt of the powerful appendages within.
Once the ponies started studying him, they noticed, little by little, the marks of aging. The feathers on his head, usually white within Griffin’s kind, were silvered, the nut color of his arms were faded to a nearly white and his claws were seemingly beige instead of their natural yellow and brown. However, keeping in mind Granny Smith as an “aging” standard, Rarity, Fluttershy, Twilight and of course Applejack and Spike had a hard time believing in it.

Posing with his talons on his hips and still standing on his two lion’s legs, he laughed in front of his ‘old friend’ Celestia. It was an odd stance, like the ones Lyra was always trying to imitate, chasing her pipe dreams of being human. Like this, he stood taller than the princess. The guards gulped, their ability to face such monster, if they had to, conflicted with their instinct of survival.

“You thought I was dead?” The griffon named Andraste asked.

“I presumed you were,” She defended herself with a pinch of hesitation. “… even if I never got an invitation for your funeral. I confess I completely forgot about you.”

This confession embarrassed the princess. She felt like she had failed an old friend. She tried very hard to remember the names and faces of every being she met but she had lived a long time and there were so many.

“Oh come now Celly, dry those yet-to-be tears! Don’t show your weakness to…” He cleared his throat, widened his eyes, and took on a spooky voice. “… the enemy…”

The princess giggled. “At least you never changed.”

The griffon snorted approvingly, looking around him, worries in his eyes. He finally get back on his four limbs. He then took a glance to the chariot where he had gone off few minutes ago.

“Come on lad, get off that ‘charette’ and come here to present yourself.”

“I told you never call me… lad, tutor. Mind your rank.”

The voice had a strong accent and from the chariot stepped out a smaller griffon. Twilight, her friends, the guards, Celestia and her sister stared down at a griffin colt… Or griffon cub… they didn't know the usual griffin-related term. He was wearing the same outfit that his elder but at this shoulder was a brooch sporting a red and purple rose. He also had a strange black bracelet on his wrist, decorated with three big emeralds and one ruby. And pinned upon his left shoulder was a talisman depicting a globe hold between two talons. A sentence, in a too tiny font to read, was engraved upon it.

His claws clicked against the stone as he came forward. Greeted with a long silence, he rolled his eyes and bow as did the first griffon. The child put his claw on the pin and bent until his feathers touched the ground. Raising his head, he glared daggers at his guardian.

“Would you please be so kind as to introduce me to them?”

A heavy talon ruffled the top of the griffin cub’s head and a frank laughter followed. “You too will never change.”

The young griffon extracted himself from the unnerving endearment of his elder.
The older one glanced at Celestia who was standing behind everypony. She inclined her head at her surrounding subjects, trying to disclose the fact that she was the only one here to know who the griffon child really was.

“Oh, notoriety and celebrity don’t cross oceans I guess,” He cackled, stopping Celestia’s goings-on. “My name is…”

The youngster gave his forebearer an elbow to the ribs, his eyes firing bolts of discontentment. The tutor laughed, again.

“Before you stands above the mere beings of every lands his…” The griffon tried to choose his words wisely. “his highness Armand Horace d’Outrevent, son of Eric the sixth, First Heir of Griffonia, First Heir of the Western Marches of Prance, First Heir of the Eastern Marches of Ucrane, Second Heir of…”

“Okay, okay Gott in Himmel stop,” Armand finally protested.

The old griffon chuckled and shrugged his shoulders.

“And as said Celly, I’m Andraste. Telling you my whole title would take a complete day and would make my protégée’s look like a surname.”

Andraste gave back the poke to his dependent. He snapped, vexed.

Everypony was now obsessed with the youngest guest of Canterlot, and he was surely enjoying the situation. Being in the center of attention was something the Imperium Court taught him was an inborn right. And now, having multiple pair of eyes from another race staring at him was of the utmost pleasure.

“Andraste,” Celestia raised her voice, breaking the group circling the regal successor. “What is he doing here?”

Her voice was saddened, hesitant and obviously stern. Being mentioned, the heir ducked his head in his toga and retreated two steps from the mighty white alicorn. On his own, the eldest griffon was smirking like a chess-player.

“I only am the liege of my King. And this is a game which is far more complex that it will ever seem to be in your eyes Celly.”

Imperceptibly, he had taken out a small pipe. And when he did, Luna saw, well hidden under the folds of his toga a long metallic tool which shape was strangely similar to a sword. There were also few scrolls and other objects she had not been able to identify. Andraste for his part had witnessed the wandering look of the Princess and gave her a wink.
The silence was starting to overwhelm the attendance, but somepony had other priorities in his mind.

“Andraste? Isn’t that a griffin female name?”

It was Twilight’s voice. She surfaced from the crowd in front of Andraste and with arched brows she was scanning the so-called griffon from tip to tail.

“And you don’t seem very feminine.”

The griffon burst into laughter, unable to stand up, holding his sides. Tears rolled off his cheeks.
Twilight on her own did not feel as easy as the griffon, after calming himself approached her, blocking the sunlight with his intimidating stature.

“You knowledge is amazing,” He said, making Twilight blush. “And indeed it is. My mother thought I would die soon after my birth. And weakness is not something appreciated in Griffon’s society. It is… girly.”

His last word came with a grin, revealing a sharped beak which slammed next to his interlocutor’s ear.

“Unfortunately, I survived and as a consequence, I had to get along with my name. Call it a mother's love mark of affection.”

He grinned again with contentment.

“Well I’m hungry. Celly, would you please show us the way to the banquet room and display this meal your cooks have been so eager to prepare.”

Wide opened eyes pierced him.

“Oh, just joking,” He added, still smiling. “You’ll soon learn that I’m rather unusual.”

He started heading to the castle with everypony in his tow. Rubbing his chin, he started studying his surroundings. Andraste was indeed a strange griffon.

“Let’s check if my failing memory is still good enough.”

ϥ ϧ Ϩ ϗ ϡ ϗ Ϩ ϧ ϥ

After having gamboled in every hallway of the castle, trying to keep up with the pace of the old griffon, they all stopped as Andraste stormed through a door. It was the Canterlot’s royal kitchen.
Screams rose.

Glancing inside with only their head breaking through the edge of the gate, everypony saw Andraste standing in the middle of the clean room. The prep-cooks were curled up in a corner, hugging each other in a fearful embrace. For sure the old griffon was scary. And this was even more so since technically, Equestria was at war with the Griffon Empire. But Andraste seemed to be that kind of being, able to make your forget he was your enemy.

“We had a restroom you know?” Celestia got ahead.

A frown wrinkled the griffon’s features.

“No thanks… sincerely I have to suffer this ordeal every day of every year since two centuries when I’m not on a battlefield. If I can enjoy a good time outside with a picnic and a blue sky to stare at without seeing arrows slashing across it, I’m not going to reject such opportunity.”

“Did he say battlefield?” Fluttershy trembled behind everypony.

He pointed his talon to a kitchen employee and ordered a compelling amount of commodities. One of the prep-cooks had the wise idea to take notes. The others stared at Celestia and Luna whose heads was still the only body part they could see in the opening of the door. Both alicorns nodded, indicating to accede to the griffon’s request.

Glancing over the surroundings, Andraste noticed a huge wooden door in the back. An even bigger smile sprung on his face. Narrowing the space between him and the entrance, he gave a smirk. He shattered the lock with his talon.

“Eh! What are you doing?”

His turn having come, the chef had stormed in the kitchen blowing through Celestia and Luna’s mane, anger in his eyes. The griffon raised a claw, asking for silence. The cook’s face went red, gritting his teeth. Once broken into, the door revealed stairs descending in a small whine cave. Everypony followed Andraste.
He started knocking on the tiles of the walls, causing everybody to raise their brows.

“Solid, solid, solid” *Clang* “Empty.”

The griffon sniggered. Sliding the tip of his claw in the joint of the tile, he ripped it off from the wall, snatching away dust and dirt. Plunging his talon in the hole, he took out an old bottle.

“I knew I would see you again, baby.”

Going back to the kitchen, the griffon grasped three glasses and a decanter pot. He showed up the bottle to Celestia, wondering if she was embarrassed because Andraste was becoming comfortable without any manners or because he had left behind him some unnoticed treasures nearly a century ago.

“It would be a shame if it stayed unopened.”

The cook hovered between the princesses and his eyes lay on the bottle. He read the title and nearly fainted, having a seizure. It was a one hundred and three year old Ponish wine, a vintage which was priceless as the product was unaffordable and too rare.
Andraste looked down to him. The cook was a white earth pony with a rolling-pin cutie mark. The griffon went back to the cupboard and took a fourth cup.

“You’ll have yours, as an indemnification.”

The cook fainted a second time. The griffon jumped over him and led everypony out to the garden.

Once they had arrived, they sat between the tall hedges of the few mazes the royal gardens had. Twilight remarked that Andraste had furtively split everypony in two groups. He had dragged away Luna and Celestia deeper in the maze and had left Armand to the care of her, her three friends and Spike, to the heir’s immense discontentment of course. Internally, the regal youngster was swearing.

“Isn’t he cute?” Rarity started.

“He looks like a big eagle.” Fluttershy muttered, hidden behind Applejack.

“Ah think he looks fancy.”

“Are you really the successor of Eric the sixth?” Twilight added to the hullabaloo.

The griffon bit his tongue, evidently pushed into a corner.

“Ruhe!”

His shout was loud, but ended with a squeak as he was still too young to have a grave voice that made every king proud. He started talking in a language nopony could understand. However, he was obviously swearing. It was a guttural language, harsh and rough in anypony’s ears. Seeing that he was not understood he sat and curled his talons around his knees.

“Freaks,” he finally muttered.

Fluttershy who, of course, was the shyest pony in Ponyville and probably in Equestria burst into tears, struck hard by the nastiness of the griffon’s statement, a malice that was not hidden by his strong and gruff accent. Everypony glared at him and he had clearly no will to apologize. The pressure on him grew little by little until he finally got up and walked into the nearest maze, muted.

“He’s like Gilda. Damn apples I thought that A’draste ain’t an exception,” Applejack growled, mispronouncing the emissary’s name.

“We should go find him,” Twilight guessed. “He is an heir. It would be bad if something happens to him, really bad.”

Rarity and Applejack gulped the newborn stress crawling inside of their throat. Fluttershy was still trying to dry her tears.

ϥ ϧ Ϩ ϗ ϡ ϗ Ϩ ϧ ϥ

Andraste conducted both Princesses in a remote place of the biggest maze of Canterlot. There was an old table circled by a couple of benches. On the right end of the clearing, a pedestal was surging off the ground but with no statue to host. The griffon stood up, silent for few seconds.

“You finally freed him.”

“I don’t know if it is for the better,” Celestia growled.

They sat. The griffon sliced the top of the bottle after becoming aware he had forgotten to bring an opener. He gently poured the dark red liquid in the decanting jar and started agitating it, twisting and turning the alcoholic nectar which smell was incredibly… chafing.

“Walls have ears,” he finally sighed surprising both Princesses. He raised a brow. “It’s an expression from Griffonia. I think in Equestrian it is… loose lips sink ships.”

“Why all this fuss Andraste?” Celestia asked, stern as always since he had stepped on Equestrian soil. “And why did you bring… him here.”

The griffon poured the wine in the four glasses and snapped with his claws. A waiter came out of nowhere, took the fourth and then withdrew to the castle.

“Things are getting pretty dangerous currently in Warclaw. You know that Griffonia, apart from being ruled by griffons is a cosmopolitan society. You can find ponies, zebras, minotaurs and so on. Two weeks ago a pony, a pegasus, sneaked in the Imperial castle and tried to kill Armand and his mother. The assassin killed the latter and nearly got my Lord’s son.”

Luna and Celestia were horrified.

“The pony slit his throat when we blocked him with a net,” Andraste’s talon went searching something in the folds of his garment. “He had this on him.”

The griffon dropped a heavy object on the desk. It was a necklace of gold and silver whose medallion was a small symbol polymerizing a sun and a moon into a single shape. Stupor etched Luna’s and Celestia’s faces.

“This is… so old,” Luna finally concealed. “Before even my banishment…”

The medallion glowed with a blue aura, the same as her horn. She wanted to examine it from a closer point of view. A harsh bang echoed. Andraste had encased it with his left talon.

“Sorry Princess Luna, but this evidence is too important to let you… touch it.”

Celestia nodded to her sister, forced to assent. The griffon returned the jewelry into his toga and drew out a small scroll, broke the red wax seal with a snap. He unfolded it and gave it to Celestia and Luna to view. It was a drawing replicating the medallion from every angle.

“Keep it for your own services.”

Luna inspected the whole parchment, she pointed out that something had been written on the other side of the symbol. She could not read it. She asked her sister for an advice, making Celestia frown once her stare lay on the notes. The griffon smiled internally, he could recognize genuine confusion when he saw it.

“Nopony, nogriffin and clearly nobody knows about this scripture. It could be a code but we haven’t been able to break it.”

Luna bit her lips, thinking deeply.

“By the way, we’ve got serious issues within the Empire. And a majority of the Prince-electors are searching for a scapegoat. Unfortunately the assassination of the Empress was far too tempting to use as a political means for them. Your kind was in the wrong place at the wrong moment.”

“You said you are having… problems?” Celestia tilted.

“The number of murders in the biggest cities has never been so low, but the rate has exploded in the majority of towns throughout the land. Cases of mass insanity has risen up for few months and… the police and the army had to face uprising and maddened rioters.”

Celestia and Luna had glanced at each other when the word insanity had been brought in the conversation. And the griffon had clearly seen it. But he swept it off and shared the exquisite drink with his two interlocutors as a waiter came to serve them some commodities.

After a first look, the wine, red as brick, appeared rough and smelly, printing a burgundy mark on the wall of the cups. The alicorns, used to drinking sweet alcohol frowned when their nostrils took the leathery aroma of the old liquor. On the second try, a pinch of spiciness tickled their muzzle.
Bringing the cups to their lips, Celestia, Luna and Andraste drank a small swallow and took time to savor it.

Their first impression was right. The wine was raspy and acrid. But bit by bit, the unpleasant taste of oxidization gave way to hundreds of delightful fragrances. The flavor of nut, aroma of rose, hints of clove and pinches of aniseed was among the savors that enshrouded their taste buds and olfactory bulbs.
Its musk was glued to their palate and muzzle as the sweetness, the acidity and the tannin were perfectly melted and balanced in the core of the red liquid. First lively with mellowness, the strong wine unveiled itself as powerful and long-lasting once it was swallowed.

Andraste stirred the wine held between his cheeks a last time and spat it on the grass. Luna and Celestia looked at themselves, unable to say if they were expected to mimic him or not.

“I’ve had better… but it’s still a good one,” The griffon chortled.

He stared at the two Princesses, their mouth swelled by the wine rekindling their taste in oenology. They stared back.

“Wine is meant to be drunk you know,” he laughed.

They all took a second mouthful of the divine drink.

“Why did you come here with him?” Celestia finally asked.

“The child is safe while he is here with me or with the Elements of Harmony. By the way, I only saw four of them today. Where are the last two? I need… I need to talk to Rainbow Dash.”

Luna’s and Celestia’s eyes widened, surprised and horrified. Andraste understood that something was afoot. Something had clearly gone wrong in Equestria too.

ϥ ϧ Ϩ ϗ ϡ ϗ Ϩ ϧ ϥ

“Armand?” high-pitched voices called in the maze. “Armand!?”

“Where did he go?” Spike gritted.

“He walked in here for sure. His toga would not let him fly,” Twilight said to herself.

“You’re not helping Twilight,” Applejack grumbled. “You’d use ya fancy magic to find him.”

“Actually, it’s not stupid Applejack.”

Applejack’s features straightened.

“Does that mean I’m stupid most of the time?” She chimed.

Twilight blabbered a mediocre apology.

“One could say that you’re much of a short-tempered kind of pony.”

They rounded the next corner. The path ended up in a vast clearing in the maze. A massive pond sporting a mythical sea pony whose hooves acted as water jets, was built in the middle. The water was clear and with the sunbeams reflected on it as a mirror, the pond was spreading the multiple shades of a rainbow on the surroundings.
Sitting on the side of the fountain, the young griffin was looking at his own reflection, his lion’s paws soaking in the water. He had put off his toga.
His left ribcage was scarred by a long, relatively fresh, and disgusting slash which began above his groin to end at the mid-joint of his left wing. Rubbing it, he was winced. Apparently it still pained him.

Looking behind him, his eyes stopped on the four ponies and a baby dragon. His eyes opened wide in surprise and he rushed to his toga, quickly hiding his wound.

“You saw nothing,” he growled, lifting up one of his coat-tails.

He finally readjusted his black wristband and the golden regalia dangling around his neck. The heir was obviously mad at them.

“Would ya at least apologize to Fluttershy?” Applejack queried harshly, stomping the ground with her hoof, impatient.

The griffon shook his head.

“Will your kind be ever sorry for the unspeakable crime and shame you committed and spread upon my kin? This is the real question,” He spat back.

He then went mute and passed through the group of pony, bumping into Rarity and Twilight. He paused in front of Spike.

“I would never think a dragon would lower himself to serve ponies or even dare walk among us.”

Armand’s voice was a savant and strange mix between arrogance, respect for the dragon and disrespect for the ponies surrounding him.

“Hey! Twilight and everypony is my family, I would go through Tartarus for them,” Spike replied spitefully.

The griffon rolled his eyes.

“Peasants…”

A hoof smacked his forehead. Looking up, he saw… Rarity standing in front of him. She was frowning angrily. Armand’s eyes narrowed. Applejack, Twilight, Fluttershy and Spike held their breath.

“How. Dare. You?” He hissed through his gritted beak.

“You’ll change this behavior! Even Prince Blueblood hadn't gotten this far.”

“How. Dare. You?” He repeated.

His anger was so obvious on his features that Rarity took a step back. He lifted his talon, only to see his wrist stopped in the severe grasp of Andraste, and there, before the horrified eyes of Luna and Celestia, the old griffon assessed the situation, scornful.
He ended the long-lasting silence which followed his miraculous intervention.

“You will apologize now, to all our hosts.” He spelled clearly, glaring daggers at his protégée.

Andraste’s voice was light years away from the joyful tone he had sported since his arrival. It was a soldier’s one, harsh, inflexible and assailing. The atmosphere cooled down instantly. Everyone gulped a gag and Armand started mumbling.

“I cannot hear you,” the old griffon vented.

“I’m deeply sorry for my previous behavior and hope you won’t keep resent against me and my past deeds.”

“Good.”

He released Armand’s forearm. Twilight caught out of the corner of her eye that he had ripped off the black bracelet from the heir’s limb. Andraste glanced at the two princesses and looked down at the ponies, his face was darkened by his anger.

“I want you to apologize too.”

Surprised stares greeted his demand.

“But… why?” Rarity asked, offended. “He hurt Fluttershy and disrespected us!”

Casting away his protégée Andraste brought his face closer to Rarity’s.

“He is a child,” He tilted his head, glaring at Spike, Twilight and Applejack, avoiding Fluttershy who was crying. “And I think he has seen and experienced things that you’ll never wish to. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want you to apologize to him or me, but to your Princesses, Celestia and Luna.”

Both Princesses jumped slightly when they heard their name.

“If it hadn’t been for me, your behavior would have settled the war between our two nations because you… couldn’t stand a stubborn child.”

A freezing silence blew between the remaining Elements Bearers and the diplomat. Finally Twilight and her friends walked half-heartedly toward Luna and Celestia and asked for their forgiveness. Celestia sought for a nod from Andraste. He shrugged.

“Never drift away again,” Luna commanded.

After the ambiance had calmed down, the old griffon pulled Twilight aside. His two piercing eyes were unpleasant and gave the young alicorn the impression he could read her mind.

“His mother has been killed,” he stressed on this last word. “…by a pony, few days ago. Keep this clear somewhere in your mind… Your Highness.”

He went looking after the griffon cub. Twilight felt dizzy and let out a long breath. The griffon was really intimidating. Celestia came closer to her faithful student.

“Are you okay Twilight?”

“It was nothing, he just shook me a little. He can be oppressive when he wants.”

“There is no doubt that he is the Marshall of Warclaw’s Armies. He had nations bent at his talons in the past.”

Twilight’s eyes narrowed, he casted a glance at Andraste. He was comforting the young prince. ‘Him, a Marshall?’ She tried to picture him going to war, armored and armed to the teeth, slashing through his enemies. A question popped in her mind, ‘how many marks the griffon had on his tally?’

“By the way,” Celestia added, mindful. “Sir Andraste is going to Ponyville today and will come back tomorrow afternoon to be present the day after it for the Gathering. He has… business with… Rainbow.”

Twilight goggled. She wanted to protest but Celestia put her hoof on her lips.

“I want you to go with him while everypony else remains to look after the Prince,” She paused. “I don’t want you to spy on him, just to make sure he stays out of trouble.”

Twilight wondered how she could best such imposing being. She doubted even her magic would be any help. Glancing back to the griffon’s commander, she saw him tie back the dark bracelet on Armand’s wrist and ruffled his feathers, a paternal smile clearing his face.
He left his charge to the good care of the others and trotted to Twilight.

“Well, whenever you're ready to leave,” Andraste asked.

“But we haven’t booked a train or a chariot.”

“You’ve got wings, haven’t you Princess?”

She hesitantly nodded.

“Well here we go!” Andraste shouted.

Folding his toga, the griffon stretched his wings. Stares scanned him as he displayed multiples scars and old wounds he had masterfully hidden until now. Few seemed to be due to burns, other were clearly the traces of different kinds of edges and finally an eerie burned round mark plagued his shoulder. The weapon used had pierced him from side to side. Twilight thought a fine spear should have been used against him.

“I… I still don’t know how to fly.”

“Better now than ever!” He sniggered with an amused smirk on his lips.

He grabbed Twilight and held her under his arm. Spreading his wings, he took off in a heavy blow. Celestia giggled when she heard Twilight calling for help as she disappeared with the griffon behind the clouds.

“Dost thou think she will be okay?” Luna risked herself.

“Of course Luna, Sir Andraste is one of the wisest griffons. He won’t harm anybody and he owes me some favors. The only thing that titillates me is how he has pulled everything off. He didn’t even say why he wanted to see Rainbow.”

“He is rather… dangerous.”

Celestia nodded silently and then withdrew to Armand. And with everypony in tow, she led him to his suite.
High above the cloud, Twilight’s cry for help faded and, between the walls of the Canterlot mazes, only the chirping of the birds could now be heard.

Sep. 2013 - The Storyteller - Prologue
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Sep. 2013 - The Storyteller - Prologue

Author's Note

Short Description:
The best place by the fire is always kept for the storyteller.

Long Description:
When the dreary evening comes and the silent night is dark; when the pale moon swells at his peak and Midnight’s bells toll in the countryside, Ponies remember that the best spot by the biased fire is the chair of the storyteller.

ϗ Ω ϗ

This is a collection of one-shots that have a background story-line you can follow or not.

Sep. 2013 - The Storyteller - Prologue

Prologue. The Initial Perjury

The fire crackles in the hearth, spreading an orange light on the scarce furniture the room displays. The biased flames cast eerie shadows on the walls, for your greatest disappointment. You feel your feet shivering slightly.
Next to the chimney, a comfy chair turns its back on you. A flimsy respiration wobbles in the air, whistling gently.

A carpet sprawls on the ground, covering the tiles with a red fabric showing no pattern. This rug is old, probably antic and is sickly covered with dust. Everything in this place is soiled with a layer of specks. You sneeze.
The time has passed by and no care has been brought into the chamber you are now contemplating.

A bark echoes, instantly followed by a snap. You focus and after a short moment of stress, your heart drops in your chest. The whistling has stopped abruptly and angry growls have taken its spot. You have disturbed somepony’s sleep apparently.

“Oh, keep quiet Winona,” a feminine but authoritative voice calls.

The dog lies low, her brows arching sadly. The silence grows… again.
A sight of awe erupts, joining the spluttering of the fire into the quest to slay the unsettling sullenness. Two hooves start petting Winona’s furry chin. The dog drools slightly. Her tail wobbles back and forth with happiness.

“I’m waiting for an important guest, Winona, and I need some rest before this journey starts, you see. Don’t bother my sleep anymore,” the crooked voice engages. “…or I send you back to Applejack.”

Winona begins whining, folding her ears on her eyes.

“Good dog, I know you want to hear my stories,” the pony satisfies the animal which sticks his tongue out, waiting for another compliment.

You step inside the room… noisily. Your shoes squeal on the parquet floor. Cursing yourself, you grit your teeth, disappointed by your clumsiness. You are definitely not meant to master infiltration, or simply, just being quiet.
The pony chair rotates, creaking on the floor in an awkward squeak. The mare tilts her head. Backlit, you cannot determine her features, but her two eyes seem glowing in the chiaroscuro room. You held back a gag of malaise. These two eyes scrutinise you… like a beacon of light aimed in your precise direction, unveiling your true desires. You feel pierced from side to side by an overwhelming stare.

“You’re finally here,” the voice greets strangely –she turns her face toward Winona –. “You’re an impressive house-dog in the end, Mommy would be so proud.”

The dog barks in response and starts hopping around the leather seat, yapping with contentment.
The pony’s eyes slide back on you. They stare right at your face, keeping a record of your hair and eyes colours. Then they slowly, maniacally, pass over your clothes, your arms, your hands, your… fingers. She smirks.

“I dreamed up of something more… impressive,” She gives you a cutting laugh. “Celestia watches me I won’t fantasize anymore on foreigners.”

With a quick movement of her hoof she invites you to sit down by the fire, but still detached from her position. You sit cross-legged quietly. A long silent takes possession of the ambience, stagnant between the mare and you. She has turned her chair to face the fire directly.
You notice her eyes are not glowing. The glimmer had come from the slim tinted glasses put on her muzzle.

You wince. The fire has just flapped, blowing a dry and burning breath on your legs and laps. You feel your skin and hairs sear a little.

“Well,” The mare cuts into the disturbing atmosphere. “You came to hear my stories, didn’t you?”

You nod timidly. She smiles.
Her teeth are pure white, reflecting the lights of the fire. At her left hoof is dangling a glass of scotch. The ice cubes twinkle inside as she lifts it to her mouth, drinking a quarter of a mouthful.

“You want my stories? I hope you have something in exchange.”

You remember and you rack your pockets loudly. The mare’s ears twitch from the noise. She frowns at you, unsure if you doing it deliberately. But it is finally your turn to smile. Pulling it out, you show her a huge golden coin shining proudly between your thumb and your forefinger, thanks to the gleam of the fire.
She snatches it with greed from your tips, puts it in her mouth and bites the item worth a hundred bits. Your smile grows from ear to ear; you know the metal is still fresh out of the mine. Now you can do business with the teller.

Suddenly, she throws it into the fire, and without an ounce of common sense you would have follow it with your hands…
With despair, you watch the coin slowly melting between the embers, a hole drilled in your heart. You turn your eyes to the mare, full of tears. You are broke now, it was your last coin. How can you pay the storyteller now?

“Nopony and… nobody will ever buy me,” she states angrily. “I don’t trade with a simple-minded who thinks everything has a price.”

Her gaze glares daggers at you and her spooky voice shakes your inner being.
A drop of sweat rolls on your forehead and slides in your left eye. You wince and rub your eyelid.

“Once I’m finished,” she hisses like a snake, her eyes back on the fading flames. “You’ll tell me your story, what you really hide inside your heart, in the folds of your soul.”

She sighs sternly and gives you a last glance, nearly distrustful. Cringed on your feet, you hold your knees tight in your arms and you bite your thumbs.

“But now, it is time for my collection of lines. Focus young creature, I won’t tell them twice. They may be grim; they may be tragic or comic, sad or initiating, disgusting or captivating… but they remain stories.”

She takes a deep breath.

“And as each single creature wandering on this world, they deserve to be listened to… because they are their legacy, my heritage, and your lesson.”

She brandishes her glass of whisky over her muzzle and keeps stirring it for a long, heart-shaking moment.

All of a sudden, she throws the liquor in the fire with a creepy violence. You hold your respiration, fearful, waiting for the splash on the burning logs and the waiving vapours. Will you have some on your legs? Will it burn?

Before even reaching the hearth, the liquid turns into sparkles, floating in the air and blurring your vision. Winona moans with displeasure, hiding her eyes behind her both legs. Scintillations of gold, silver and brass fly in front of your eyes, sink into your garment and meddle in your mind. Sleepiness narrows its claws on your soul and you feel your eyelids fell swiftly.
Your ears catch a last declaration of the mare.

“Dive well, nestling.”

Your body is enshrouded by a thick darkness. You finally close your eyes. The silent is absolute, cradling you toward unknown countries.

Sep. 2013 - The Storyteller - First Perjury, A Feast of Liars
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Sep. 2013 - The Storyteller - First Perjury, A Feast of Liars

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Sep. 2013 - The Storyteller - Second Perjury, Our Music Will Be Graphic
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Sep. 2013 - The Storyteller - Second Perjury, Our Music Will Be Graphic

The pegasi had gathered clouds over Ponyville. The day was dark and no shafts of sunlight succeeded in piercing the lid suspended over everypony’s head. It would shower down in the afternoon.

Oh Celestia, she knew she hated the rain! Drumming over the slates of her roof, the staccato of the downpour was of no assistance when she wanted to focus. It did nothing but distracting her from performing anything productive. It was the same for the optional extras this dull weather displayed… bolts of lightning, hailstones and other joyful phenomenons.

At least, the mare thought, the heat wave of the past days had vanished. She was now walking outside under the refreshing shadows of the trees bordering the Everfree Forest. For the first time since three days, he was not sweating a river. She thanked Celestia for this blessing. These two weeks-long holidays in Ponyville were of the utmost relief.

The agitation of Canterlot had her beaten down. Here she could procrastinate, careless about tomorrow, deaf to the noise of the city and ponies. She tip toed under the low branches of the Everfree. The discordant creasing the rustling leaves played was a sweet natural melody. She was happy; the grim marbled walls of Canterlot had deprived her from any connection with nature.
The wind blew through her mane, ruffling her fur. A frisson spread under her skin. She smiled.

She was approaching the Pond of the Two Rocks. It was a location she had seen earlier on the map the library pony had gently given to her. What was her name already? Was it Twilight? She shrugged; it was not her business anymore. The pool was isolated from the town. There, she was expecting that nopony would disturb her meditation.
The mellow chirruping of a spring reached her ears. They twitched swiftly.

In a hollow carved between two imposing boulders of granite was jetting a small stream of crystalline water. The pond was not big, but still vast enough to welcome a group of pony. And to the mare’s greater satisfaction, the place was empty of sentient life that could have ruined her session.

She untied her saddlebags. It slid down her stiffs and fell loudly on the shingles that surrounded the tarn. She could see the bottom of the pool, proof that the water was so clean it was a shame to soil such peaceful haven of rest.

She slithered in and shivered as the coldness nibbled her hooves. It was so cold it felt like thousands of needles was picking her flanks. She loved this numbing feeling. She closed her eyes, leaving her body slid under the water.
Only her face was surfacing. The waves she had created splashed softly on her cheeks and ears, making the air popped on her eardrums.

She gave a long and deep breath. She kept the air in her lungs for few seconds and exhaled noisily, casting bubbles on the top of the pool. It reminded her blowing through a straw in a soda, she smirked.
She was alone, peaceful. Hence she could act childishly; nopony was going to reprimand her for her uncouth manners. And it was better that way she convinced herself. She had holidays and she was going to prey on them without any restrain.

She let her spirit fly away. A dreamless catnap cradled her features and hooves. She fell asleep…

Something hurtled down in the pound with a heavy splash. Waves submerged the mare’s face. She snapped out of her sleep and gasped for air. She stood clumsily on her hooves as she hauled herself out of the pond. She coughed the water she had inhaled out of her throat. She cleared it, struggling with her lungs.
Wiping droplets of water off her eyes, she stared at the pool. Her vision was blurred. The pond had turned murky. She could not hold her disgust. She had been sleeping in that?! Her mouth distorted in horror.
Her mind was then numbed by another compelling question. What had fallen in the pond?

The waves licked her forehooves with a disturbing gurgling. Her pupils shrunk to pinpricks, trying to scan the water. She craned her head over it until her face nearly touched the surface. Seeing deeper than an inch was an impossible task to fulfil. Nothing, there was clearly nothing.

A wet grating erupted at her left side. She turned, looked at it… blinked… looked at it a second time to be sure. She shrieked.

A strange creature was floating just under the top of the water; no bubble was running out of its mouth. It was inanimate, drowned. The mare’s eyes widened. She shoveled her fear deep inside and gulped. She put her hooves on the creature’s garments and pulled it out. She dragged it on the beach. The creature was motionless. Two times her size, it was completely shaved and different objects could be found in its pockets.

He was without a doubt a sentient creature. And he was apparently dead, or at least unconscious.

Like her, he had a dark skin. Hers was grey, his was dark brown.
He had a small muzzle, placed over a large mouth where she saw aligned white teeth. His eyes were closed. She refused to risk herself lifting his lids up. The mare’s curiosity was a real craving. She put her hooves on his chest and squeezed it multiple times. Water dripped out of his throat. It made the mare freak out. Was he really dead? He couldn’t, not now, not now with her!

She approached her mouth from his, ready to blow air into his lungs. She was going to do it. Their lips nearly touched.
A small breath tickled her muzzle.

“It’s alive!” she erupted in joy.

Indeed, the creature was alive. The mare smirked for that she had not to kiss him.

His thorax swelled and shrunk continuously. Yet, the animal breathed with difficulty, hissing. She reached his dangling head and moved it in a position that would ease his respiration. Withdrawing her hooves back she felt something thick and slimy stuck on it. She looked with a knot in her stomach. It was blood.

Fear sparked in her heart. She stepped back and fell on her flank.
She stayed prostrate for minutes. She kept staring at a small dash of blood sprawling on the pebbles, awestruck. It was coming from the back of his head.
She gulped. Taking her courage in her hooves, she lifted the creature’s head uneasily. Her feature liquefied. A part of the neck vertebras were seemingly broken. Small holes were visible at the top of his neck, dripping blood. This left a limp impression in the mare’s hooves. She tried to carry him up. The head just fell back hideously in a crack of bones. She winced in pain for the primate.

Unhooking the pink bowtie circling her neck, she clipped it on the poor creature, trying miserably to hold back his dangling skull. She felt nauseous; she could not move him as it would deal him the last blow.

After a moment passed thinking, she made a decision. She dashed in Ponyville’s direction, still wet from her break in the pond. Breaking her speed record, she rushed to the horsepital. She flung the door inward, grabbed the closest careponies and with a stretcher led them to the pool.

Blood had tainted all the ground under the creature’s back. He had not moved an inch, pitifully lying like a disarticulated doll. The ponies accompanying the mare shivered when they lay their eyes on him. They called him a monster.
Their duty was the priority. They put aside their worries and moved the creature on the stretcher. Coming back took longer and the stretcher turned red on the way, blood leaked over its sides.

The creature was quickly transferred in the intensive care department. The mare found herself alone in the waiting room. She sighed. She will need a new Bow Tie. Her hind legs failed her. She collapsed on a chair of the waiting room. She stayed there, despondent for an uncertain period of time. She let her head dangle over the small headrest.

She caught the blood coagulating on her hooves. She hauled herself out of her stupor, closed her eyes and tried to erase this vision from her retina. Her hooves started shaking.

She tried to wipe the blood on a towel disposed on the nearest table. She could hardly calm herself. The blood had stained her fur in some areas where she could not get rid of at the moment.

“Tavia!? What happened?” a voice slashed through the unsettling silence.

Ready to burst in tears, still holding the blood-soaked towel, Octavia turned back and saw Vinyl Scratch. Her roommate had dropped her flashy sunglasses. Her worried eyes were staring at her through her blood red contact lens. Octavia swallowed, she will never get used to these geeky accessories.

Her shivers faded away and she sought reassurance in Vinyl’s hooves. She explained her plight. Correction, she sobbed her plight. She told her everything. Napping, she had left her spirit derive. She missed the creature’s fall. Somehow, Octavia felt responsible for him. She kept thinking she could have save him.

“If I had my eyes opened,” Octavia sobbed. “I would have seen him… helped him before he dived. I would have seen his assailant!”

“Assailant?” Vinyl blabbered.

“He was bleeding from his neck. And there were these… marks,” Octavia hiccupped. “I think he had been attacked.”

Vinyl welcomed this terrifying news with a comprehensive silence. The Everfree Forest was a dangerous place after all. The relevant question was why Octavia went there.
They both looked at the door leading to the surgical unit, they had just heard hoofsteps. The gates opened and a nurse entered in the room. The small plaque she had pinned on her white coat announced she was called Healing Rhyme.

“Your pet is safe Miss…”

“It’s not my pet,” Octavia stammered in horror, willing to stop any misunderstanding. “I was at the Pond of the Two Rocks when it… he fell in. He was bleeding.”

The nurse bit her tongue.

“Yeah… Exactly, we may have a problem about that…” the nurse hesitated, swallowing her saliva.

“What?” Vinyl cut in the conversation.

“Well…” Healing Rhyme said with doubts. She stared outside the window, only to see depressing clouds. “It’s better I show it to you.”

Vinyl and Octavia stared at each other, worried. They followed the nurse to the reanimating unit.
The creature was resting alone on a bed whose linens had just been changed. Far too tall for the dimension of the bed, the nurses had folded the creature’s legs under the sheets. Of course it was not recommended for injured ponies, but the horsepital had no furniture adapted to him. Of course… he could be anything but a pony.

Octavia dried her tears.

Now lit by the ceiling light bulbs, the creature’s features were apparent. He was approximately five feet and seven inches high. He was nearly shaved from tip to tip, except for a thin greyish mane sprouting on the top of its head. He had a dark skin, dark brown to be accurate. It was wrinkled by the time. He was undoubtedly old. His eyes were still closed.

Wrapped in medical outfits, his original garments were folded by his side on a neighbouring table. It was a suit. The coat was as grey as dirt, as was the trousers. A white shirt came as an extra, accompanied by a black tie. There was also a brass necklace where dangled a medallion. Opening it, Vinyl and her friend glanced at a small picture, the photo of a woman for sure. She was smiling.
Octavia and Vinyl put back the medallion on the table, closing it with a quasi-religious respect.

Finally, they peered at the last object found in his clothes. It had a strange rectangular shape, and was hollowed by a series of symmetric holes. Its tips showed minuscule brass rivets and its top and bottom were seemingly made of silver. On it was engraved a simple word.

“Do you think it’s his name?” Octavia arched a brow.

Vinyl shrugged, she titled her head over her friend’s shoulder. She read.

“Hohner…” Vinyl whispered.

Clueless, Vinyl sighed with strength. She blew air on the object. A small twinkling broke the omerta between her and her friend. Octavia dropped it with a gasp of surprise. The two mares looked in each other’s eyes. Vinyl lowered her hooves and took the… thing clumsily, struggling to keep it tight between them.
She raised the object to her lips, inhaled slowly and held the air for a moment. She glanced at her friend, seeking for an approval. Octavia looked at her, perplexed but thrilled. Vinyl blew through the holes of the rectangular tool.
A strange vibrating sound rose. Octavia gratify the object with a genuine smile. It was a music instrument! Vinyl smirked with amusement seeing that after hours of stress, Octavia had finally managed to smile.

Vinyl was also delighted to see something new. Maybe it would be of any interest for her, the true and only one DJ-PON3.
Octavia snatched the object from Vinyl’s hooves. It was her turn to play, and she succeeded in forcing notes out of it. With the first victory she decided to not give in. She fanned a second time through the opening of the instrument, getting a minor chord. A third time, the instrument gave a vibrant and alien scale. A fourth time, she finally obtained an octave. Curious, she tried to produce a far more constructed music through the instrument, improvisation and thrill of discovery as sole guides.

She pouted, unable to find the same sonorities her violin and cello could produce. The instrument was perfect for a traveller. For it was simple enough and she had not expected too much from it. But the fun she experimented with the object was still there.

Looking back at the creature, Octavia asked herself where he came from. She knew she would not get an answer, but it was worth the shot, wasn’t it?

“We have few hopes for him…” A spooky voice snaked behind Octavia’s back.

She jumped in Vinyl’s hooves, startled.

Grinning amusingly, Octavia stepped on the ground after Vinyl had given her a narrowed stare. DJ-PON3 was not entertained. Octavia’s smile died quickly when she lay her eyes on the pony who had scared her. He was a stallion, the surgeon who had dealt with the creature earlier. He was visibly tired.

“His brainstem has been damaged by something I can’t identify…”

Octavia glanced at the bed where the inanimate shape was still breathing slowly, unaware of the goings-on around him. Nurses were setting up brain and heart monitors; they had to keep records of the creature; for a medical purpose of course. Octavia suspected it was also driven by some scientific interest.

“I also sent a letter to Canterlot,” the surgeon added staidly, –She knew it –. “This primate is all brand new for me… Maybe they know something. I also found the traces of unknown psychotropic in his blood.”

Having to watch the lost stares of the two mares in front of him, he sighed deeply. If he had no manners, he would have sunk his hoof in his face and slid it off.

“Believe me. He’ll never wake up from these wounds. He… it is an empty shell right now.”

As the surgeon’s shift was coming to an end, he withdrew in an adjoining room. Octavia and Vinyl looked to the emptiness of space in front of them. Minutes passed before Vinyl raised her voice.

“I gotta go, I have much to do and your small adventure did not ease everything for me.”

“You’re not abandoning me, are you?” Octavia pleaded.

“I have to, Moon Dancer hosts a party tonight. She hired me for the music,” Vinyl replied. Embarrassed, she preferred to change of subject. “Don’t overcommit yourself, you don’t even know him. Go back home. Wait for Canterlot’s help tomorrow.”

Octavia grunted. Feeling betrayed, she moved away from Vinyl with a look of disapproval. She came back at the creature’s bedside and stopped. She drew her hooves toward the silver plated instrument. She was fascinated by the small object.
Vinyl shrugged and left Octavia alone in the room, face to face with the dead-like entity.

Swiftly, Octavia lifted the instrument to her mouth. She tried to play. It was hard to hoofle.

The instrument was clearly not meant to be played by ponies. Studying the creature, Octavia had seen his fingers, similar to dragons’, griffons’ and minotaurs’. These species were more adapted to… handle the object. But she refused to be beat down by something this simple.
For hours she tried to produce a perfect melody, and the night had fallen on Equestria when she finally got something decent out of it.

This day, the horsepital was impressively empty and this was why no nurse came to make her lower the volume of the noisy gadget. Alone, even if the creature was ‘sleeping’ next to her. She went back to her musical meditation.

She had finally performed something kindly interesting. Hours of training had exhausted her and she wanted to sleep. She had not even the conviction to come back home. Slacking around, she went in a neighbouring room. It was empty of life. Octavia took a chair and made it slide on the floor as she came back to the creature’s room. Sitting in, she put the instrument by her side and kept looking at the bed and its occupant with a stalking interest.
In the darkness, the sandmare spread her magic over Octavia and sleep came. She sunk into her dreams without noticing that a small jolt had sparked on the brain monitor.

There was no sun, no moon, no cloud, no shadow, no sky… no ground… nothing.

Everything in that place was absolutely bright. Blank as a white sheet. The silence was deadening. Octavia sighed. No air left her lungs. She gasped with anxiousness, choking instinctively for oxygen. Her new born fear gained in momentum as she also understood she was mute. She struggled, suspended in this blankness, trembling and shaking until minutes passed and that she finally noticed she was not given to breath. Her animal survival reflex was useless here. She did not need to breath. It was… bizarre.

She calmed down, Octavia knew now she was within a dream. She raised her hooves before her eyes. She panicked.

Her harmonious features and contours had been gummed out like a character on an artist’s sketchbook. She was only formed of imperfect traits and sticks likely traced with a bold pencil. She wished she had a mirror, but she imagined herself perfectly well. She should look like a stickmare, or something similar.

Octavia tried to walk. For her greatest amazement… and horror, she was not walking, not at all. Each stepped forward she felt like erased from this blank universe, only to be redrawn further… like on a preliminary sketch of a cartoon. She shivered.

Unable to breath, Unable to talk, she could not express her fear or her emotions. She was mute and naked… Yes, she felt truly naked, here in this white soundless nothingness.

Stunned, she put a hoof in front of the other and slowly began to move forward with no point A from where to go… And no point B for where to trot.
Octavia lost track of time, she was just going forward, step by step with an erratic pace in this impossible universe. Strangely, she found herself unable to tell if this dream was three-dimensional or not. She had been flung somewhere else, where the common rules she was used to were absolutely different. Her mind boggled all along the trail.

A minuscule point popped far in the distance. But in the emptiness surrounding her, it was like an elephant in a room. If Octavia had eyes, they would have swelled to a cartoonish size. She dashed, rushing toward the form. She ran for what seemed to be hours.

She found him…

The creature was here; or at least a badly drawn sketch of him. A round white face deprived of all feature was standing over a long, slender and creepy body only formed of long black sticks. His hands were talon-like, crooked and twisted in an unnatural position. Even in his craned stance, he was still higher than Octavia. And he was wobbling on his skeletal legs.
A monster from under the bed… It was the closest comparison Octavia could do. She trembled and saw that specks of her drawn contours faded in the blankness with her shakes. She tried regaining her composure. If she could, she would have swallowed her saliva. But she was a sketch too…

The creature turned his head in the newcomer’s direction. Something was facing him. Was it a pony? He could not tell. The animal’s face was gummed away, showing only outlines. He witnessed the crackling and withering contours of this mute animal. He raised his hand, trying to appease this communicative conundrum. He looked at his tips. He was hideous with these drawn claws… His shoulders dropped slightly. He tried to speak, nothing… He was powerless.

Octavia wanted to talk, but this simple right had been forbidden to her. She was eager to communicate… but she was trapped. And the creature was right in front of her, at less than a hoof range.
She tried to reach him. Her outlines met the creature’s sketches. They met but did not touch. Octavia passed through him like she would have with vapours. She tried again. Nothing happened.

They were so close, but paradoxically so far away from each other.

Octavia wanted to scream her sorrow, but she was not able to. She could not even cry. Trapped in… Locked in… She curled in front of the creature.

The creature stepped back. His hand was hesitant, trembling. However, an idea sparked in his mind.

Octavia heard a scratch. Being deaf for hours was mind-shattering. For she who was a musician, imagining her life deaf and cut from any kind of music was something she could not stand. She would rather die than being deaf.
This is why this small scratch, like a pencil slithering on a sheet was her deliverance. From her cringed position she raised her head.

With the tip of his finger the creature was drawing something out of the emptiness facing him. Creating lines, curves, lengths, heights and depths he snatched from the blank page an object. It was a parabolic cone which strangely curved pipe was armed with a dozen of keys and minuscule levers. One of its ends was ended by a bended mouthpiece; the other one was a large opening.

Octavia’s brows rose. Was it…

A mouth loomed on the creature’s face. A widened unsettling smile drew on its newly found face, showing impressive aligned teeth. He raised the mouthpiece to his lips.

A smooth and grave tone shattered the silence like a kick in a mirror. Octavia listened to the melody blooming from the instrument. She was bewildered. The music blossomed in the air and imprinted tones from outer Equestria in her eardrums. Octavia was speechless; the music was so slow, so sad. Eerie breed of an organ, an oboe and a clarinet, the tones of the instrument enshrouded her. She wanted to believe that the notes would take shape and carry her away.

And then, something eerie happened.

The music pierced the veil surrounding the strange couple. From the bell of the instrument lower section, minuscule sketch lines flew away like incarnated notes. Stirring in the air, the lines shaped under Octavia’s hooves. Drawings formed, colourless.

A vast meadow of grass sprawled. A peach sprouted behind the musician. Octavia was on her flank, witnessing a music giving birth to some new environment. She forgot about everything and listened.

A wrong chord clacked in the air. Octavia blinked, all the drawings vanished in the tow of the discordance.

She turned back to the creature. The instrument had disappeared from his hands. Akimbo, he was crooker than before. Octavia swore he was crying. Drying invisible tears, he lifted his head and fixed the mare… if only he had eyes.
With his fingers, he drew something out of the air again. He took his creation in his hands and walked to the mare. He delivered her his work.
It was… a violin.

With quivers, Octavia took the bow, held out by the slender creature. Stabilizing the violin under her chin, she put her left hoof on its neck. With the bow, she gave a vibrato.

Colours exploded around her.

Octavia woke up in a violent jerk and bounced out of her chair.
Looking behind she saw Healing Rhyme. Her blurred vision set upon Luna, standing next to the nurse. Octavia’s eyes widened as she gargled with her limp maw, trying to kick some straightness in herself.
Luna’s stare was grieved; she had not slept much this night.

“Hello Octavia!” The princess spoke with her Canterlot voice.

The cellist smiled gently. She had played hundreds of times for Canterlot’s urbane meetings. There, she had come up to know the princess personally.

“How are you Princess?”

“Not very well, We were watching upon the world tonight and something disturbed Us… but We couldn’t find the origin of such perturbation.”

With discomfort, Octavia gave the princess a fake smile. Once the Princess had turned away her interrogating stare, Octavia winced. She tried to remember the strange dream she just had. It was… sketchy and a numbing feeling was stuck in her stomach. She wanted to put her dreams into words, but she was incapable to do so. Sorting out the pain paralyzing her mind was an impossible task.

Healing Rhyme blabbered. The nurse was in front of the brain monitor. She attracted the alicorn’s and the cellist’s attention.

“He is alive!”

Luna raised a brow and got closer to the bed, Octavia in her tow. The creature was inanimate, ghoulish even with his dark skin. Without any monitor, nopony would have been able to discern if he was dead or not. To back her words, Healing Rhyme tapped the screen of the monitor she was looking at. Small signs were jolting on its screen.
Thereafter, she palpated the creature’s cheeks. He was still spineless.

“Why isn’t he moving?” Healing Rhyme said with a shrug. “At least, he is listening.”

Luna grabbed the mare and dragged her and Octavia out. A cloud had passed on her face. A knot was tightened in her stomach. The creature’s state had brought back some harsh memories from a distant past in the alicorn’s mind. Eyelids half closed she sighed with difficulty.

“Because he is locked-In…” She whispered.

Healing Rhyme’s eyes swelled. She glanced back in the room. The “lock-in Syndrom” was a specific case caretaking ponies studied in school. It was too rare to witness it. It was a kind of medical urban legend. The patients were literally locked inside their own body without any possibility to communicate with the ‘outside’, for the rest of their life…
To be trapped until death did his soul and his body part. Thinking about it, Octavia thought it was even worse than death… What if the creature’s nose was tickling?

“Poor little creature, we don’t even know what… who he is, and he is unable to speak,” Healing Rhyme complained. “What an ordeal.”

Luna nodded slowly. Compared to Healing Rhyme, she had seen similar cases during her long span of life. But they always had family to take care of them. This primate was alone… desperately alone. He would pass away rapidly anyway. The ‘locked-in’ patients were always short-lived. Cut off the outside, forced to listen and forbidden to answer their spirit would wither fast. Then they would let themselves die. Carrying on was too difficult to… handle.

Octavia shivered. Dhe could not imagine how terrific it should be to be trapped like this. To be in a dark cage without windows and with only one-sided loopholes. She was not claustrophobic, but she could not imagine it without felling a heavy pull falling down her stomach.
She swallowed; she remembered the dream of the last night. Was it something she had made up or something else? She wondered. Luna, the Princess of the dreamlands, had said nothing. It was intriguing.
The musician tried to convince herself it was just a dream, nothing more, noting less.

Five minutes later, Octavia and Luna were forced to leave as the creature’s state had to be checked. His hygiene was also an important matter.

Octavia went back to her home and passed the whole day studying the primate’s instrument she had stolen. Even more gratifying, Vinyl weren’t there to criticize her about how her manners were only a façade. The DJ pony must have blacked-out during last-night party.

Octavia came back in the horsepital in the middle of the night. She had kept with her the instrument. She also brought her violin, well hidden within its case. In his room, the creature had not moved an inch. He was remarkable of stillness. Like in last night dream, she secured the violin with its chinrest and paced a small suit with the bow. The tone was low-pitched, deafened. The music was filled with sadness.
The vibration in the air reached the sleeping creature. Octavia gave up after fifty minutes of playing… She had no reaction from him.
She was tired. And, as her violin drifted off her hooves, she slumped into the chair she had left the morning before. She sunk again in her dreams, eager to meet again the creature.

His stick shaped silhouette was still here, waiting. At this occasion, he was sat in front of something she knew very well. It was a grand piano, with straight and blackened features. The creature had taken his time drawing it out of nothing. And to his avail, Octavia confessed he did a very good job.
The creature’s head turned and saw the cellist’s outlines traced in the blankness. He smiled. He had also disposed a Cello, leaning against the piano side.

There was no meadow, no tree, nothing… Only he, she and both of their instruments. With her hoof, Octavia mimicked the creature and drew a comfy chair in the air. She settled in and adjusted the cello.

She looked at the sketched primate. His face still distorted like a joker, he nodded.

Octavia slid her bow on the chords. The grave and stern lament of the cello resonated in its belly. The rhythm grew and fastened until Octavia was creating rousing sonority.
The creature head’s wobbled in parallel to the notes. His fingers spanned on the piano keyboard. And he started playing.

It was… majestic. It was not only the music. Octavia was used to incredible pieces of work.

Here, music was giving birth to life itself. His music shaped the world, hers coloured it. Grass, trees, sky, clouds, animals, mountains, caves, ruins… Octavia felt like a goddess. She had no doubt he was felling the same.
She started seeing change on her too. Her poorly drawn features transformed. She felt fur growing on her new dark skin. Her mane sprouted off her head, her pink and white tie made its way to her neck, her cello shone under the sun to which she had given its yellow light. Nibbling her lips, she wiped with her elbow a tear rolling down her eyes.
It was beautiful.

Leaded by the lively pace of the creature, she saw appearing a stage around her. A micro popped as the shape of five red coated females of the creature’s species started singing in front of Octavia. Their lips were only moving, locked in muteness as the lyrics seemed to be held back.

Around the stage appeared rows of seats overwhelmed by a mass of beings of the same kind of the pianist. They applauded silently. Nothing but the carnal mix of their music from two different worlds was given to hear.

She looked at her partner, still behind his instrument. He was stomping the ground with his feet in a fit of joy. His smiling was golden and his features had come back. He was old, wrinkled and was hiding his eyes behind heavy sunglasses. But he was smiling. And this smile was worth a life of maniac researches for happiness. Even broken as he seemed, even blind and even lost in another world, he was smiling…

Octavia burst into tears that dropped on her cello, drumming like downpour. In the background Octavia heard the sound of the instrument the creature played the night before. Overall, Octavia experienced a new kind of music. Her spirit was flooded with questions and ideas. She was crying… She, Octavia, had found a muse.

The beat slowed down abruptly, dissipating the warm it had invigorated in her heart. Forced to follow, Octavia peered at the change around her. The plants withered horribly, yellowing under a dryness that could not affect her. The time seemed to accelerate, seasons passed and the tree in the creature’s back crackled and died quickly.

Night had risen and the moon was going down in the horizon. The piano produced low-pitches notes, located in the bass; grave, classical and flat.
The funky music the creature had created seconds ago was now dead. Octavia felt bluesy. She put aside her bow and using the biggest chord of her cello, she played pizzicato. She pulled the string with her hoof. Sadness was paving the melodic lament. He braked. The music lost in strength until a last note came in a last pitiful whisper. The air stopped vibrating and the atmosphere turned atone.

Silence was sometimes a key part of the music.

The creature’s hesitant hands trembled over the board. He brushed over it, undecided.
He put his thumb and forefinger over the acute notes. He made the piano twinkle in a shrill and drifted his left hand over the low notes. He gave birth to a small melody, amplifying gradually.

Octavia’s eyes widened, she stopped playing again. Over the horizon was growing a light. And the more the rhythm was gaining in momentum, the brighter the light.

A staccato of sounds pierced the silence under the tips of the creature’s hands. It was baroque, powerful. He drummed over the piano and the light erupted over the sharped mountains far away.

Octavia winced, drowned in the light. The brightness was burning her fur. The music grew into an orchestral eruption of sounds.
Grabbing her bow she joined the creature. The rhythm speeded up as they raised the sun over the clouds. The mare and the pianist spread life and joy over the once sleepy fields. Flowers and buds blossomed in hundreds of colours, yellow, white, pink, red, purple, blue… Birds flew in the airs, chirruping with her music.

Aback, Octavia’s warm tears glimmered with the beams of light. She knew she was near the climax of the piece. The staccato had changed into a flow of notes, hard, light, mellow, piercing… eerie.

The spectacle given to her eyes overwhelmed her senses.

“Did you see that?” She cried in joy, hearing for the first time her voice in this plan.

“I don’t see it… I live it!” The creature replied with a genuine laughter.

Octavia missed her next note as she turned back, her eyes glaring with hopes and joy. The creature had a grave voice, powerful and paternal. He raised his hands over his head and thrust his fingers in a final major chord.
A last wave of sounds exploded in the air like a shockwave, filling everything with a last pinch of colour and light.

The vibration amplified and the dream shattered in hundreds of shards, like a broken mirror. Everything sunk into darkness.

Octavia took a deep breath, gasping for air. Her ribcage was crushed under a heavy anxiousness. She coughed and groped around as she slowly regained her senses. The black veil covering her vision faded and she found herself lying poorly on the tiled ground. She was alone in the room, again. Through the curtain she could see small shafts of light. They passed within the holes and opening of the fabric, dispersing various luminous spots on the wall.

Panting, Octavia stood up on her hooves with violent shakes. Queasiness dragged down her happiness. She slowly set up her stare over the creature. His hand was moving. It was slow, minuscule. But… it was still something.

Octavia hauled herself on the bed, rubbing the creature’s cheek with excitement and fear. He should be locked-in like Luna had explained earlier. But right now, the creature was moving his hand, drumming on the bed cover.

Octavia screamed for somepony to come and give her a hoof. Howling like a timberwolf, she squeezed the creature’s thorax by accident. Crying out in stupor, fearing she had hurt him, she tried to sidestep and mixed up her hooves in the linens. She fell over the primate’s knees and ripped off the bed sheets. She hit the floor in a hard bang.
Stunned, she raised her spine and put her hooves by the creature’s side.
The sunbeams showing through the curtains illuminated Octavia’s tears rolling from her left eye. Her lips shivered from the pain, the bemused emotion and the hopes she was feeding for the creature’s miraculous recovery.
Octavia heard hurried hoofsteps coming behind the door. The gate broke in and in the threshold stood Healing Rhyme. Octavia glanced back and saw the nurse’s horribly widened eyes. She was looking behind Octavia’s spine.

Slowly, Octavia turned over with an expressed unease. She was scared.

Fingers gently touched her muzzle and drifted over her skin. Rough and withered, the palm of his hand pressed softly on her face. He was palpating her, seeking for something. The truth struck Octavia. Looking at the creature’s eyes, she only stared at two brown irises veiled by a whitish surface. He was definitely blind.

Even if he could move his arm, the rest of his body was motionless. He had his eyes open, but his face was glued to its current position, away from Octavia’s direction. Somehow, his hand was the extension of its vision, and it continued to probe Octavia’s features. Climbing up to her forehead, passing through Octavia’s smooth mane, the hand drew with its tips a complete tour of her face. It was tickling, and strange.
The creature slid to her chin, feeling the fur on his fingerprints. Octavia swore he was smiling. A twitch plagued a part of the creature’s mouth. He started crying.

“It was a pleasure to hit the road with yah…” The creature hissed slowly through his paralysed maw. “Thanks… I’ve got to hit the road alone now. I won’t come back no more Margie.”

The words died in his gritted teeth and a last breath forced its way out of his lungs.

Octavia slowly derived her stare over his thorax. There was no move anymore. With her hoof, Octavia tried to find a beat in his neck vein. She stared at his washed-out eyes. They were not trembling anymore. They were stuck in their current position, fixing something far over the ceiling encaging the room.

Octavia cringed on her hooves. She broke down in tears. And her cry echoed in the hallway out of the room.

Healing Rhyme moved forward. Standing by Octavia’s side, she grabbed a notebook.

“Time of death, Six-Forty-Seven,” She said, neutral.

”Ah Ah Ah, you should see the look on your face,” the mare by the fire says as the scene freezes again in an eerie picture. “Did you really believe you would be the first one coming here.”

She glances at you from the shadows casted by the red fire in the chimney. Her glasses spark in the darkness for a mere instant.

“Don’t think yourself as a special… guest of this world, would you?” she smirks sarcastically, her voice similar to needles thrust directly at your heart. “You gonna have to find something more compelling to narrate, if you thought the story of how you came here would be your payment.”

You shrink on your trembling feet. Her laughter shakes your inner being so deeply you start feeling nauseous. You lie on the red rug, breathing loudly, exhausted. These dives into memories and stories are so vivid you feel like you are the one living them. It is slowly but inexorably sucking out your energy.

“Well, well, well…” she continues. “Have you learnt something from this story.”

She has a bag next to her. You swear it was not here seconds ago. She leaps inside with her hooves and rummages through it. She gives a cry of victory and looks at you, smiling. You dislike her smile, you hate it so much it makes you want to throw up.
You feel something falling on your laps. You look down, terrified.

Between your knees dwells the harmonica with the same inscription Vinyl read in the vision. There is also a pastel box.

“Creation is not commanded, it births from the nothingness, the muteness… from the blank page.”

Winona barks next to you. You jump. You had forgotten about her. You wipe a drop of sweat off your head.

“Eh, eh, eh… the blank page… Have you ever done something with your own blank page?” she cackled mysteriously.

She stares at you, pierces you with her glowing eyes. You feel sick as you become aware of the same glass in her hooves, with the same liquor.

Another throw in the fire, another spark and another flow of darkness engulfs you. Before you fall unconscious, you can only ask yourself what the purpose of all of this is.

Everything is black once again.

Sep. 2013 - Fallout:Equestria The Mysterious Strangers
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Sep. 2013 - Fallout:Equestria The Mysterious Strangers

Author's Note

Short Description:
When two ponies are committed to deliver an item that could help reshaping the wasteland for the better, what could go wrong?

Long Description:
Cog and Pathog are two strange ponies, they are despite themselves members of an obscure organisation. They were given one duty to fulfill, otherwise the consequences would be disastrous, for them and of course, the Equestrian Wasteland. They are good friends and the way along the journey is flat and boring. What could possibly go wrong?

Thanks to Icudeadnow for proofreading

The story has been written as a one-shot. However if people like it, I may write more of it.

Sep. 2013 - Fallout:Equestria The Mysterious Strangers

The magical land of Equestria was no more and its remains sprawled on hundreds of miles, giving to see only shades of grey, brown and pale yellow. There in the Wasteland, two ponies, two unicorns, walked along a wrecked road, alone with the creeping whistle of the wind. Under their hooves, the dirty and rubbish asphalt was cracked open on several locations, giving to see tufts of dust and sprouts of dried weed, long dead now.

The younger of the two ponies was a mare. She had magnificent turquoise eyes, contrasting with her navy blue fur. Her mane, shining in the dull light of the day, was mauve. Like her, the stallion she was following was scruffy. He had a dark grey coat scarred above his shoulders and hooves. His eyes were as grey as his fur and only clumps of a charcoal mane grew on the back of his head. Both were armed. The mare was wearing an old and rusty magnum in a holster above her stifle, next to her saddlebag. Her senior partner was carrying a heavy bolt-action rifle on his left side, balanced by a metal case on his right flank. The silence was omnipresent and the young mare was itching to break the ice.

“No but seriously Pathog, can you repeat it again…” she said. “Do we have to walk all the way to that place? What’s its name already?”

“For the billionth time Cog. It’s named Sweet Apple Acres,” Pathog retorted with his stern voice.

The poor stallion was losing his temper. His friend’s questioning seemed to stretch forever.

“It’s like one thousand and four hundred miles away from here!” Cog rebuked. “Do we have to do it… on bare hooves?”

“You know that’s our job. That’s what we have been assigned to do. Smile,” Pathog mocked. “We’ve already done half of the quarter of the one-tenth of the journey.”

Cog gave out a long and depressed sigh. She kicked a rock down the road to dampen her anger. The shingle pounced few times before crashing in the old and rusty embankment of the road. The bang that followed filled in the air.

“I didn’t sign for this,” Cog pouted.

“Hey! You know you didn’t have much choice,” Pathog berated. “You’d have been executed otherwise. Be happy that I interfered to save your bum from the organisation’s tribunal for the… things you did.”

Pathog gazed at his female counterpart with amused eyes. Somehow he saw Cog’s deeds as a kind of feat. On her own, the mare was devastated, she felt like she had stepped on a trap that would never release her.

“You didn’t have so much choices though,” Pathog kept telling. “You’re in the structure now. And there is nothing you can do about it. You can’t leave, and even if you tryn we will take care that you’re out…”

Pathog cleared his throat and showed off his most unsettling smile.

“Forever,” he boomed, mimicking the Ministry of Morale’s voice, and laughed. “Be happy that you got me as a tutor. Others wouldn’t have been that concerned about you. After all we’re the same.”

Cog grumbled and stared at the ground for a long time. Silence ensured, putting the conversation on edge. She let Pathog pass him and gave a look at the sky, deep in thought. On his side, Pathog was constantly checking that the heavy suitcase on his right side was hung tight, not risking to fall down. To do so, he always made sure it was perfectly balanced with his weapon. Both items were linked together with a complex system of straps. Yet, the leather was biting his skin.

They walked for hours. The canopy of a chain of mountains that had appeared earlier was now much closer. Like everything in the Wasteland, the mountains were nothing but crooked and grim dark shadows rising like unsteady pillories. As the day was going to an end, the two travelers had faced nothing but miles of dead lands. They were exhausted and wanted to take a break. But they knew they had to keep walking. They had to find a shelter for the night, to hide from the dangers that weaved in the dead of the night. After all the distance they had traveled, Cog and Pathog had started ascending the first saddle between the peaks. Clambering the destroyed road, they both breathed loudly, swearing they would stop at the pass to rest. And when they reached it, the sun behind the clouds was going to set, giving to them an orange and purple tint. The two unicorns struggled to catch their breath.

The distant crackle of a gunshot echoed. Pathog raised his head and scanned the Wasteland all around him. Yet, nothing seemed out of chart. From his position he could see all the plain he and Cog had crossed during the day. It was the same for the narrow path they would take the next one. He was slightly scared. He was sure the gunshot did not come from behind.

Cog snickered, capturing her partner’s attention.

“It’s cloudy today. What do you think the forecast will be tomorrow?” she bantered.

The stare Cog got back from her friend and mentor was a blend between disapproval and exasperation.

“Are you f’cking kidding me, right?” Pathog croaked. “Sometimes, I get real tired of your shit Cog. Can’t you just focus for a second? We may have incoming problems.”

He closed his eyes, trying to erase that stupid question Cog had just asked. He calmed himself.

“We may be surrounded by raiders but you keep asking dumbass and irrelevant questions.”

The mare answered with an ironic laugh.

“Oh dear. You belong to the organisation...”

“We,” he cut off.

“Yeah. We belong to one of the weirdest faction in the Wasteland,” she choked on her words with a nearly mechanical tone. “We act in secrecy to pull the strings of fate and change the future of Equestria for the better.”

She looked hard at Pathog, hoping he had took the hint. That there is more stupid things in the Wasteland than her jokes.

“No, but do you believe in that bullshit?” she ironized. “To recreate a better Equestria? Look around you.”

She swept the landscape with her hoof, showing the wreckages that populated the region.

“A flat, boring and dusty Wasteland from North to South, from West to East, where you are more likely to get killed by a raider than find paper to wipe your ass.”

The two unicorns head-butted, trying to overwhelm the other with crude strength. Their horns crossed.

“Oh shut up Cog! Can’t you at least get your mind into the mission?”

She did not listen and jolted on the side. Pathog lost his balance and bit the dust. He grumbled. Cog blocked him under her hooves, ensuring victory for herself.

“No seriously,” she sniggered. “Do you believe in all that brainwashing we go through? I’ll tell you, the organization is a sect. You hear me, a sect that just thinks a few can modify the future.”

Pathog’s eyes glowed. Slipping out of her partner’s hooflock, he bucked Cog in the throat. She fell on the ground, trying to catch her breath. She started crying. She tried to speak but Pathog caught her cheeks between his hooves. His eyes were extremely stern, glaring daggers at her.

“Down to business, please. If I went with you, it’s not out of the goodness of my heart. Do you understand?”

He ran his hoof through his mane, revealing a tiny plaque of metal riveted to his skull. He did the same with Cog. She had the same device implanted on her.

“Because of you, we got those explosive gifts from the council. Thank you for this, but I’d have been fine without,” he broke in. “So now, would you be so kind as to focus on the mission? That you don’t make our heads boom ‘cause of your stubbornness.”

Sobbing, still unable to breathe normally, Cog nodded.

“Who… who shall receive the package?” she asked hesitantly.

“The oracle said it was meant for a mare named ‘Little Pip’, resident of Stable Two. She should escape from there a month from now.”

“Ah, that oracle,” Cog was going to laugh, but the dead-shooting stare of her partner shut her up. “Well, what’s inside the box?”

As the night was enshrouding the Wasteland, Pathog decided to take a break at the col. It was free of taint and radiation.

“I don’t know, we are forbidden to open it before delivery.”

Cog sighed. Nopony messed with the organisation, especially its members. Tired, Pathog took the battle saddle off and unlocked the metal box fixed to it. He and Cog stared at it a long time. Then they laid it on the nearest rock. From her saddlebag, Cog took out a few travel rations and shared them with her peer. They were terribly hungry and thirsty.

A second gunshot boomed distantly and reverberated in the foothills.

“Do you think we’ll have to fight tomorrow?” Cog asked shyly.

“I guess so. It’s the fate of everypony in the Wasteland.”

“I hope this box is worth it. If I have to risk my life for an unknown mare, I expect her to at least save the world.”

Pathog sniggered.

“I thought like you during my first mission. Then you get more realistic, the one we help will save somepony, a village or a city. But the world…”

Pathog laughed.

They ate their rations, and utterly tired they let sleep take hold of them.

A loud crack pulled the two unicorns out of their slumber. The whistle of a bullet passing by followed instantly. Pathog and Cog’s eyes burst open.

“We’re under attack?!” Cog cried out.

A series of explosions boomed a hundred meters below the saddle. A firefight was ongoing and two groups were fighting each other to the death.

“We keep a low profile,” Pathog ordered. “Luckily, they’ll be all dead in an hour and we’ll just have to scavenge the rest.”

A torrent of shrapnel rained yards from them. A missile had gone wrong beneath and kept flying in the duo’s direction.

“It’s gonna be bad if they come to us,” Cog exclaimed.

“I know.”

The whistling of a second rocket moved closer and burst over Pathog and Cog’s heads, dazing and deafening them. The ground shook and, with blurred eyes, they both saw the rock where their box was standing trembled. Sliding on its side, the rock hurdled down with the case. It needed only a second to see Cog and Pathog leaping behind to retrieve the organisation’s item, their weapons in their mouths. However, they were not fast enough.

The fight opposed a group of travelers inside a makeshift camp. Three stallions, two mares and two young fillies, to a much more numerous gang of raiders. They were all Earth Ponies. Bullets flew in the air and already a mare and a stallion had bitten the dust, dying in their own blood. The only lights came from the shots and a small hearth at the center of the fight. It was loud.

Cog and Pathog stopped and held their breath as the massive chunk of rock bounced a last time and crashed onto the remaining mare among the travelers. She never saw the death coming. The box followed and landed next to one of the fillies. From their higher position and hidden by the darkness of the night, they saw the bandits slowly taking upon the group of travelers until only a last filly was left alive. The foal was splattered with the blood of her sister. She did not even cry. Her eyes were transfixing the box that had fallen at her side. She was fascinated by the box as much as she tried to escape the grim reality of her surroundings.

In the aftermath of the fall, the lock of the box had cracked open and the content was given to see. It was a memory orb, a single black memory orb. The two unicorn couriers breathed with ease in their hideout. Nopony beneath them was a unicorn, they could not use it.

Around the filly, the raiders started scavenging the encampment. To Pathog’s horror, the filly took the orb in her hooves, he and Cog feared she would break it. Ransacking the box with noise, the filly revealed her position. It needed only second before one of the raiders stood behind her.

“Look what we’ve got here? Some raw meat,” he purred.

The raider aimed at her with a small hoofgun, taking his time, savouring this easy kill. The filly turned her head and a gunshot boomed in the air. This swift movement saved the filly’s life. The high-caliber bullet flew past her and penetrated the orb. It burst out in a discharge of white electricity and bluish smoke, right onto the raider and filly’s face. She screamed.

“We’re so dead,” Pathog confirmed from his position.

“We’ve got to do something,” Cog asserted.

Even before her friend answered, Cog had taken aim at the raiders.

“Wait,” Pathog alerted. “We’re only two, we need the element of surprise. We could… just this time.”

“You said it was forbidden to us.”

“Well, I guess we can bypass some laws now. We’re already dead,” he deadpanned.

Cog’s face brightened with a large smile. She hid behind a rock and a burst of green flames enveloped her. As if her fur had been completely consumed by a magic fire, she revealed a skin made of dark blue chitin. Her eyes glowed turquoise. Her mauve mane was still waving on her head. Her hooves and horn were adorned with holes. And in her back had shaped two translucent wings. Pathog followed her example and metamorphosed. Together, they took off and flew over the camp furtively.

“Ah fuck!” the raider that had tried to shoot the filly screamed. “It’s fucking burning!”

His stooges laughed raucously until they saw their friend stumble and fall on the side, trembling. Sweat ran on his face. His features were damaged with the shards of glass coming from the memory orb. The raider was mumbling incoherently. The filly showed the same symptoms; her convulsions were even worse.

A series of bangs cracked in the air and a rain of fire bombarded the raiders. Their heads, limbs, sides and throats gave up under the barrage of bullets. Blood spilled on the Equestrian Wasteland’s soil, melting with the dust and slithering in the cracks.

Two empty boxes of cartridges fell from the darkness above. And the two black pony-shaped creatures descended to the slaughter. They gave the final blow to two raiders that were unfortunately still alive. Then, for a long moment, they stared at the little filly. She was jolting in her own blood. The exploded memory orb had damaged her skin, face and hooves. Cog kneeled next to her, a motherly smile cast on her face.

Pathog rummaged through the metal box. Empty, it had only contained the memory orb. His shoulders fell slightly as every remainders of hope vanished in his soul. The organisation would learn that they had lost the item, and it would be a matter of time before a bounty hunter came enough closer to them to detonate the devices they had been provided.

“We should give her misericorde,” Pathog proposed when he returned to the filly.

“Are you crazy? She may have seen what was inside the orb!” Cog countered.

“She is an Earth Pony!”

“Maybe, if there is the slightest hope, I… We have to grasp it.”

Pathog sighed and returned to the scavenging of the raiders strewn over the area.

“Do what you want Cog, we’re already dead. We’ll bring her to the next village, that she get some care. And then we disappear far, far away from Equestria!”

“I don’t know, maybe she has seen it,” Cog repeated, trying more to convince herself than her partner. “We may have not failed the mission yet.”

“Just…” Pathog massaged his forehead. “Just find a good pair of attires to hide ourself. I’ll follow.”

Most of the raiders’ stuff was rotten and impossible to repair. Yet, Pathog found an important amount of ammo and sparkle cola caps, with at least two weeks worth of rations. When he came back to Cog, she had changed into a dark red coated earth pony wearing a long brown trench coat. Her orange mane was hidden under a large hat. She had wrapped the filly in a nearly unstained linen and held in her hooves. Pathog eyed his partner for a moment.

“Fashion isn’t your hobby, is it?” he grinned.

In a burst of green flames, Pathog changed into an Earth Pony, displaying an orange fur and purple mane, wearing the same clothes than Cog.

“I hope we don’t make a mistake,” he spat.

Still exhausted as the night went short. They walked in the dark of the night with glowing eyes. Changelings could see through the dark of course. And at some point, the sleeping filly opened an eye. And what she saw was two ponies wearing the same war dressing, two ponies whose names and faces were undisclosed. They were her two mysterious strangers.

Oct. 2013 - The Accordion
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Oct. 2013 - The Accordion

Author's Note

Short Description:
A pony in a train awaits a rain of fire, an accordion under his hoof.

Long Description:
Underground, a train goes down a lonely track. Many ponies dwell inside waiting for the ascension back to the light. A black and red, burning, hellish and merciless light.

And among these dummies, one pony is thinking, alone and lost.

Thanks to Rhinotaz for editing my story

Oct. 2013 - The Accordion

A distant and muffled crack waked me up in a start. My head reeled horribly. My vision was flooded with stars and my body was carried away by the incessant wobbling of the wagon. Again I had slept in a bad position. Around me, the atmosphere was thick, clammy and stressful. I heard the helmets of my teammates clattering together. Bayonets dangled on our saddlebags, twinkling in the dull light the red lamp flashed intermittently at the end of the truck. I could record time with this blink. And it was passing by slowly.

The wagon itself was deadly silent, apart from the metallic clatter. Everypony were mouth shut, waiting for the end of the travel, or maybe only waiting for the end. Another loud boom echoed far away above us. The lintels of the roof of the train shook and screeched. I listened... Ponies were swallowing their saliva around me. I did so as well. I felt fear; I could nearly taste it in my shrivelled mouth. I had not been given water before the departure, two days ago. And my rations had been running dry.

The wagon reeked death. I knew that some of us had not made it out, or would not. The stench was poignant, a mix between the infuriating smell of sweat dripping on the faces of stressed ponies, and the ineffable odour of death. It was making the air thicker than it already was. I gave a look at the dozens of anonymous friends around me. All watched blankly at the emptiness standing between their eyes and the casqued heads right before them. All the stares were deprived of will, as if their true souls had been sucked out by an ungodly creature, Despair.

I held my rifle tighter, its cold bore bit the bare fur on my belly. I had not been given protection there. I could only brag that I had a plaque on my torso. At least, I would... I might survive a charge. Unfortunately, we were the front line, the meat shields. We had only few hopes to survive the first minutes.

I could confess, I was frightened, terribly scared. I knew our destination so well. The name of the city did not matter as for the names of my comrades. Names were irrelevant where we were heading. Deep within our souls we knew we were waiting inside a mad train rushing toward Hell.

I was lucky. I had taken position near of a window. A fresh but unsettling breeze was whistling on me through the cracks of the glass. The exterior was as black as our transport. It was a simple wall, armed with rows of copper wires. Sometimes, we passed by a backup lamp, casting its dull yellow light. The cracks, booms and thumbs coming from over us was imperceptibly intensifying. We counted the seconds passing by. We prayed silently the goddesses that had abandoned us, as a lot of ponies said.

The underground where the train was evolving was connected to the surface through endless networks of evacuation pipes. The echoes always came to us distorted, disfigured and somehow, scarier than they should be. Was it because nopony was talking? That a deadly silence was numbing our minds.

I heard a remote whistle, coming from a pipe above us. An explosion burst out on the surface and I was deafened. The wagon, even protected under the earth, trembled on his tracks. For a second, I even thought we would derail. Ponies gasped and held back screams as the wagon tip-toed on the rails. Fortunately it continued its race toward the surface. But… somehow… I could not repress the thought that it was also making us unfortunate. The ride had to go on.

Through the windows I could see chunks of clay and rocks falling from the ceiling of the tunnel. The earthquakes did not slow our pace. The explosion that boomed above us, and the ones that followed were more powerful than ever. Ponies tensed around me. I hear sobs and I lowered my gaze. My eyes were watery too. I should not cry, but in the darkness and the filthiness I was at the moment, I could not feel the tears running down my cheeks.

I gave a look at my saddlebag. It was heavier than the packages of my mates. But I had my reasons. Ransacking it, I took out an old and dusty object. In spite of the noise I was making, nopony stared at me. We were all sinking in our own abstract thought. It was an instrument. It was my accordion, a bayan type. I always remember the face of my friends and ponies passing by as I drew out my instrument. It was strangely shaped and somehow seemed so much tricky to play. Playing it, I created smiles on random faces and spread queries in ponies’ minds. The melody that came out of it was so alien, strange and irresistible it blended within the spirits and awoke the greatest passions.

My accordion was my voice and here, squeezed between my comrades, I could not voice, I could not vent. I could not scream that feeling running beneath my skin. A series of noisy booms crackled far away. For the first time I heard the characteristic clinking of a flying bullet when it crashed on a wall of concrete. I wanted to forget that sound so much, as much as the whistling in the air as they drifted by.

The wheels grated on the racks and the brakes squealed. Underground, the train slowed down and stopped. Some ponies agitated on their aching hooves. Standing straight was difficult, and this sudden stop was enough to make the pain reach their brain. I heard complaints and cries. A long wait ensued and the stress increased as time flowed away.

Then the ride started again. But everything was different. A loud rattling began and I felt the train slopping. It felt strange. The only sensation and sound that came close to it was the ascension of a truck toward the top of a roller-coaster. And we were all sitting there, waiting for the next step of the ride... The downfall.

*clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack* *clack*

The ascent lasted long, too damn long and when the first beams of light slithered through the windows I winced. My eyes hurt so much. I heard dismay around me and I thought the outside was silent. Damn me for being so naïve. I had just been deafened again by the pandemonium playing around the wagon.

The dusk light shone in the west. But the true light came from the uncountable explosions roaring around.

Fog of war, bullets, blood and fire swamped the landscape. The low clouds were blackened by the smoke rising from the abandoned buildings, the scorched streets and burning bodies around. Shades of red and orange reverberated on this cover, acting like a heavy lid over our head. The atmosphere was reddish and yellowed, as if a layer of the fire’s colours had been applied to the city. In the distance I saw a statute. It shocked me... Six fillies dancing around a dried fountains that had been set on fire by an unceasing bombardment. I felt sick and held back a gag.

My hearing came back in a rush and I understood my plight. The air was overwhelmed with cracks of guns, whistling and explosions. I felt crushed under the pressure of the hell playing around outside. My ears popped constantly. I vomited. And now only one idea flooded my mind. Survival.

A pony cried out an order I never understood and the ramps burst open on the sides of the wagon. I ran, ready to take cover. I carried my weapon high, not sure if I was ready to fight. I had never been a good markspony, neither a good fighter. I ran, I stumbled, I stood up again and a sour pain blasted my neck. I fell and bite the dust.

The sky was hellish, red, pink, yellow and orange. A waterfall which water had been replaced with liquid fire... watching over me, not like a lid, but like a horridly warm blanket that would swallow me whole. I reached my saddlebag with my hoof, and hiccupped. Where is the medic? I screamed... tried to. My vision was blurred. Somepony fell on me and blood splattered my eyes. Squeezed, crushed.
Left alone...

Another body fell over me. I was being buried by fate. I cried. Why is everything so black? Why I am so sleepy?

I want to scream.

“Daddy, why are they so many skeletons around here?” a squeaky voice intoned.

“One hundred years ago a great battle happened here. And a bomb settled it forever. Many ponies died here and down here. It’s now nothing but an abandoned place. Death’s shrine,” a raspy and voice answered.

“What are you searching for?” the filly asked, bouncing around.

“Scraps, as always and... oh, oh, oh! Look what we’ve got here?”

The stallion had pushed two wrinkled and withered cadavers over. Below dwelled a small and wrecked pony’s body. Its hooves were contracted on an accordion. Silently the stallion put his left forehoof on the corpse’s neck and with his mouth grasped the mangled leather strap of the instrument. He snatched it off, breaking off the neck of the pony, and ripped off one of its forelegs. It stayed tensed on the object.

“He must have loved it…” the young filly supposed.

“He has no use for it now, and it might be valuable. Don’t you want to eat tonight?” the stallion berated.

“Well... duh, but...”

“Then, shush. The dead are silent, and in the realm of death silence and oblivion are king and queen.”

They away from the cadaver. And after casting a last look toward its crooked limbs, the filly smiled and nestled up to her father.

They would be able to eat tonight.

Oct. 2013 - Last Speech Before The Terminus v1
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Oct. 2013 - Last Speech Before The Terminus v1

As I write these words, I fear for the lives of my citizens. I asked Princess Celestia for help but my voice has fallen into a deaf ear. I begged Princess Luna for a hoof to carry my febrile will. But my plea has been rejected by her blindness. The regal sisters gather their armies as they know something is brewing between themselves. Princess Luna is consumed with jealousy and Celestia is so focused on her land that everything else vanished into Oblivion. With these turmoils going on in the south, who would care about a poor unicorn king battling for the mere survival of his people? Who cares about the frozen North? Equestria, a pearl among the abysses, is still safe.

But Celestia and Luna have forgotten that Windigos breed in conflicts… that these unholy creatures come from the North, greedy and starving. My ponies and I are the first on the frontline. Hence, we will be the first to fall to their assault. This time, The Windigos are not coming alone. They have brought minions that will ravage our domain. All of them feed on Luna’s growing dark powers as they feed on my citizens’ despair and pain. But I will not let them do freely.

As King, the cutie mark I was given embodies a mighty battle cry. I can blend into the spirit of my friends and comrades. And all together, through this ‘esprit de corps’ we can act as one body, one soul and one mind to overthrow our enemies, and win. I always refused to go further in such fusing of spirits, fearing I would go crazy or conceited. But feeling everypony and me battling as one is a feeling I want to keep dear to my heart.

Thus, it is together that we will go to the fight, whatever the cost, whatever the outcome… And right now I fear facing the ponies I love more than the empty shells that are the Windigos’ eyes.

I am hesitant to talk about it; about what I’ve found in the cavern deep below the Crystal Castle. I sometimes surprise myself to keep staring at my discovery. It is a small dull grey crystal. It would be nothing important if it is was not wobbling with magic energy. I hear it, it is whispering to me. I have to make a choice. I may use it for the sake of my kind but I know that I will get what I want but I will also loose what I have... What I have left.

My chamberlain is coming to don my iron armour, damn I hate its frost bite on my fur. He is coming and I am doing a quick choice, a ‘stupid choice’ I keep repeating to myself. I swallow the tiny gem when I hear a hoof on the door knob. I feel something strange bursting in my chest. My head reels, dizzy.

Once the chamberlain is gone, I look at my hooves. They are turning black… slowly. My once white fur is burning away. Did I make the right decision?

Well, no time to fret. My ponies await me as the Windigos rumbled behind our doors. They creep around my kingdom, ready to leap on their first prey, a pony among my fellow citizens. I will not leave them alone. I am their king and for I shall be the wall between them and these demons. We will fight as one again. And we will win. Otherwise I will… I don’t want to talk about it.

When the gate of the castle burst open on my way, as I walked outside I feel the bite of thousands of eyes staring at me, waiting. Among the ponies, I see the griffons I rallied to my cry, I see the mighty dragon that offered his help for an incentive, and I see the mares, the fillies, the colts, and the stallions together, waiting for our last stand. And I feel this strange power growing within my ribs. I feel sick and some ponies trembled seeing my fur tainting.

I find a promontory and gazed back at the crowd with my sorry eyes. The madness has lasted for too long. It is time to end it. I take a deep breath and put in order the words and sentences bouncing in my head. My voice is deep, reaching the deepest corners of my kingdom. I need to be assertive… inquisitive.

“We stand on the precipice of the end. Ready to hurtle down the steep and smash our bones and skulls. We walk legs-deep in the blood of our comrades, washing down our once shining furs and manes. We breathe, uneasy, while the long panting whispers of our gone families rise from the mass graves below us. The reeking smell of our gangrened hooves blurs our eyes and pains our souls. The air fills our lungs with the perfume of war, sour and numbing as a tasteless and intoxicating wine.

And I face, stuck in the dusty ground, the enemy growling in the distance. Afraid, foreshadowing a machine that will swallow us all. And I stare straight at the dead of the night and see through the dark veils the eyes of the rats that claim they can burn us to ashes. And I despise the oblivion that beckons over our shoulders like a gargantuan maw, thrilled to rip us to pieces. And I scream to fate that abandoned us when we needed it the most.

I have seen our foals’ throats sliced open. I have watched the flows of tears dripping down our streets. I have cried for the ineffable screams of the mares, children, and elders wiped off the scrolls of history. I have dug the trenches where I will bury my kind, my friends, and my subjects. I have cursed the sky for bringing us the eternal night. I have rejected the gods who forsook us, poor beings living in the land where the soil never thaws. I have trodden in the oneiric lands of limbo and caught a brief glimpse of Tartarus. And I have lost faith.

I have tasted your pain and terror. I have felt your hatred and anger. I have understood your rage and despair. I have foreseen your starvation and your fall. I have raged against destiny, now destroyed. I have cursed the sky and the earth. I have howled to the murderous sky, raining fire at dawn. I have seen myself looking through the tainted glasses of my realm. Only to see my disfigured reflection.

I have seen myself murdering my own essence, erasing my own spirit, sweeping off my own mind for the sake of my kingdom’s well-being. I have damned my soul. I have thrown away what made me a pony. And as I feel my sanity drift away, I can say that I have envisioned no byway. Houses burnt to their underpinnings. Ponies eviscerated alive. Fellow soldiers eaten away by the creatures lying before our eyes. A once scarred but lively ground scorched to coal dust by the flames of our enemies’ eyes. Our skulls piled up into spires to reach the black clouds over us.

As a king who makes a beast of himself, I get rid of my angst and sorrow, only to flood my senses with anger and rage. I bestow my allegiance upon you as sovereign, as for my enemies I will have no more pity.

But as we stand, ready to move through the threshold of Tartarus we, the innocents, will fight and kill and cry and scream and murder and bite and destroy those who dared defy us. Do you hear? We will stand still. And steady on our hooves we will rise once again!

Ride to the war, my vassals! Ride to death, my subjects! Ride to glory! And this day, running toward the Crystal Empire’s ending will be marked in history with a monolith of blood and death.

Souls will be crushed to the point they cannot be mended.

The rusty edges will slice the flesh and shed soiled blood.

Sharp arrows will fly and whistle through the air.

Blades and spears will blow to bits.

Bones will be shattered.

And this battle will be written into ungodly scrolls to make sure that everypony will know… that we fight here, today.”

To win this battle, the Windigos themselves must fear me. My magic bursts out around me and my mind blends with my subjects. All roar mightily as they release the anger they have repressed for too long.

It is heady. I like this impression of control and absolute power. Like one core we will ride to battle. United and whole we will fight and stand for my rightful kingdom. My minions will fight with me… for me.

It’s…

It’s strange. Why do I feel so sleepy, so alone… enshrouded by darkness?

Maybe, I was wrong.

2013 project - Shattered - 1. Up, Above; and Out!
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2013 project - Shattered - 1. Up, Above; and Out!

Chapter 1, Up, Above, and Out!

“When the Pit lights with fire, burnt flesh fills the air, along with the Pegasi, laughing, laughing…

Laughing…”

Ever wanted to be trapped in a mine after a firedamp flashover? Well, me too. And do you know the irony in this annoying situation? Name’s Coal Dust… A fitting name for an earth pony enrolled at birth to be a miner. A fitting name when your instinct is telling you to dig your way away from a coal dust fire… Ordering you not to give ponies the opportunity to laugh! To tell my father that ‘his son sparked himself’!

[…]

My guts wrenched painfully as I woke up. My muzzle, half-buried between two big chunks of rock, hissed. My heart beat wildly, making my head and temples throb. My chest swelled in fit and starts, tearing at my flesh as the coal in the air burnt my lungs. My ears were ringing from numbness. My belly ached like a bad indigestion. Everything itched so damn much I wished I could skin myself! I was completely wrecked.

But worst of all, everything was dark. Shocked, I shivered and tried to roll over my back. I was stuck in a tunnel so tight it caught me in a vice. Sharp rocks chafed my skin as I moved. I coughed and spat saliva, smearing my face and coat. Tears started to drip over my cheeks. Stiffness bathed me.

I screamed agony and received no answer. I was alone. No miner was authorized to be left alone underground: safety measure.

Stinging bruises covered my body. Each movement was a torture. I breathed and jerked, hacked and whirled. I was a rat in a cage without exit, deep down an unknown number of meters below the surface. As I kicked to free myself, dust crawled over my face, slipping in my eyes…

I wanted out!

Struggling my way toward I don’t know yet, memories slowly came back, the blur gradually giving space to flashes. A massive panic. An explosion. The heat. The pain. And finally, darkness. Wails had rung, fire, and uncountable clatters… horseshoes grating on the walls, trying vainly to dig a passage far away from death.

Ripping the fur off my skin, I finally slipped through the vice catching me in. I fell forward and yelped. I hit down a steep and narrow tunnel. Breaking stalactites along the descent, my belly crashed against a sturdier point which sunk in my skin. My stomach churned with spasms, and rolling butt over head through the passageway, I vomited.I hit ground, biting in my tongue as my jaw collided. I coughed blood that tasted like iron. I saw light dancing in front of me.

Febrile, I tensed to stand up. Fighting back the pain from the open wounds and bruises was horrible. Hunger also made itself known: y belly growled loudly. I was definitely starving.

Ponds of water flooded the whole dank place, trickling from the ceiling. I rose and freezing cold water dripped over my eyes, running between the blood, bile, and murk. Everything reeked from stagnation but I lapped; thirst was too much to bear with. The taste was so disgusting I emptied myself once again. It tasted like stirred charcoal and sulphur. My throat burnt. My head reeled.

My hooves failed me. I closed my eyes, hung my head low, and I fell. My muzzle slowly sunk into the water, reaching a knee-deep level. The tightness around my chest became more pregnant. I still had my miner suit held tight around my body.
I prodded the shredded pockets, many missing their content. I discovered one small piece of metal, my last possession here. Flat, slightly curved, strapped on a thong of leather, I fixed clumsily it over my left forehoof. The contraption’s tip was a rusty mechanism I scratched repeatedly with my hoof. Once, twice… A series of sparks jerked off the tip and a small flame came to life. My mine lighter gave me light.

Darkness retreated, leaving me in a tight chiaroscuro bubble. The narrow corridor from which I had fallen from remained hidden, though. Being trapped. I couldn’t get over that feeling, like a talon clenching over my heart, messing with my senses.

As I stepped away, my hindquarters hit a wall with a muffled thump. I squealed and froze, fearful.

I turned and faced a massive wall of stacked rubble resulting from an old underground landslide. Such events often happened in mines. One badly rigged explosion and the retaining structure could collapse, often on the miners unlucky enough to be working at the same moment.

It would have just been another standard landslide blocking a potential exit route. If not for a flattened and shattered structure of wood, bricks, and broken slates sandwiched between the fallen rocks. An old, ragged cottage.

That was… unexpected to say the least… interesting even if I had not been trapped here in the dark, flying away from a coal fire, simply struggling to live.

I didn’t want to die.

But my heart was void, a cunning void and pain. A teasing tickle in my chest, never really gone, never really revealed.

I didn’t want to die.

I refused to, because above my head, back in Murmanesk, my birth city, I was anonymous… And in Murmanesk, every day was funeral day for the anonymous.
A kneecap sinking into the water, I pressed my forehead onto the brickwork, which tore apart a little more. I heard my tears drip. The images of fire and explosions haunted me.

I had thought about death much before. But as always, I had pushed away that painful truth, like hiding the dirt under the rug. Each time I would step in the elevator that would lead me to the depths of the earth, I had seen death. Each time I would manipulate arcs, a solidified or liquid blue substance meant for fulfilling everything in a pony’s life, from public lighting to high-end mining explosive, I had seen death. In Mumanesk, I could see death everywhere. Every time the blow to the gut was the same: corroding everything. Motivation. Will. Strength.

I wanted out… But, believing that above was where I wanted to go, I couldn’t. There, nopony seemed to care, nothing seemed to matter. We were hopeless, potential victims of the caprices of another. I had never wanted to die. Not now. Not here. Especially not here…

I curled into a small ball of fur, crying in the hollow of my shoulder, licking my wounds and bruises.

An hour passed, maybe more, spent watching wishfully the flickering light of my hoof-lighter. Soon the light died into in tiny puffs of smoke. Darkness claimed its territory and once again, I was swallowed by the cold, damp blackness. I clenched my sore hooves below my chest. I closed my aching eyes, saving me from the shadows. Another hour, who knows in that darkness, flew by.

I had procrastinated enough. I couldn’t stay there, alone, anymore. Ponies needed me up there. Family, friends… the few I really had, co-workers, my job… If I was going to keep it… I sighed and opened my eyes.

Accustomed to the dark, I focused onto something I’d missed in my hurry: a faint light glowing a pebble throw away from me. Curiosity settled in.

Stiff and sore, I crawled my way toward the beacon. Walking through the water sent shivers down my spine. Trembling, breathing mist, I reached an embankment of grinded rubble. Stepping out of the water, I dropped my hoof on something soft, and squishy.

I felt fur at the tip of my leg, brushing against my own.

Perplex, I wandered my hoof along the shape, rubbed over a set of ups and downs. I hit a flappy, wet shred with my left hoof. What I had thought to be a rock in the dim light was a body. I shuddered, a heavy, cold sweat rolling down my back. My hoof clattered against a set of small uneven dice-shaped solid bits. Any sensation of touch seeped out of my limbs.

Teeth…

The minuscule stream of light threw a few contours of the carcass into stark relief. My rump hit the sand. I was nauseous, my hooves splattered with a blood that wasn’t mine. A thick black blanket covered the body hiding its original colour. I first thought it was coal. The reality was far grimmer.

I had seen death before. This one was among the most banal and normal I had ever seen. Shrivelled, burnt, and petrified, its eyes had closed behind slit eyelids. Its cracked teeth showed beneath hitched up lips. My skin crawled at the sight. I had once witnessed an old buck kill a rabid dog. The creature had squealed, yelped, and battled over the spear slicing in its throat. The old stallion had not even waited for death to do its work to set the animal on fire. With the sizzling of the alcohol-induced flames, the foal I was had just avidly watched the scene.

The corpse I was looking at showed the same state as the dog once the fire had consumed everything. Withered and ugly, shining with its lack of any distinguishable item, its desiccated hooves covered with blood had folded beneath him, likely trying to hide from the fire. Only one difference remained, a long slash next to its neck. Something that couldn’t be natural. It reeked pain. Long and atrocious pain.

A small dot of light pierced through the body’s hooves, hidden beneath a cover of cracked blood. Pulling it out with a grizzly crack, I found myself holding a simple bit of rock a pony had probably broken off a wall. A kind of curved stalactite. Grating off the cover, it revealed itself to be a translucent crystal glowing with a bright blue light.

Contemplating this stream of light pouring out, I found myself filled with a new feeling: An irrepressible warmth that finally sparked a meek smile on my wry face. The pure light blanketed the walls with a blue glow, twinkling in the droplets half-frozen on the rocks. Funnily, an isolated object shone among the rubbles of the derelict house.

Curious, I stuck the crystal between my teeth and walked up to the ruin. I was still wondering how a house could have ended there. To my disappointment, nothing was there to save anymore.

Leaning over the fallen rocks, I discovered a small piece of brass slipping through two large masses of dirt. Digging it out, I unearthed a strange rectangular-shaped box. Split into one larger part made of brass, it also displayed a relatively large window of glass. The tinker had wanted it to be resistant apparently. The whole was encaged behind a series of brass bars. Gliding the tip of my hoof between the tubes, I wiped two clean marks off the glass surface. A strange black disc mounted on one iron cylinder lay beneath. The whole apparatus looked fragile to say the least. And what did a miner like me do? I simply shook it. Something clicked inside, a broken screw or something.

Biting my lower lip, I put the contraption on a rock and sought a way to open it. As I drooled over the glowing crystal stuck in my mouth, the item slipped away. I threw my hoof to catch it. Clumsy as I was, I punched the crystal away. It ricocheted on my discovery, bounced on a rock, and finally dived in the water below. A thousand reflections sparked on the surface of the pond, beautiful. Yet, what caught me was the brass rectangle. Something happened. Something that should have never happened.

The contraption sparked with blue light, clicked on the inside and…

“Hello, Coal Dust. I…”

The crystalline, soothing, and creepily slow female voice died in a shriek.

“Hello, Coal Dust. I…”

Died again.

“Hello, Coal Dust. I…”

Eyes shot open, I watched the black disk turn within the thick, smeared glass. The voice repeated its message, over and over again, each time with an ears-splitting sound… The joints of the brass item kept glowing the same blue pulsing out of the crystal lying at the bottom of the pond.

My name. The voice had said… My name.

“Hello, Coal Dust. I…”

“Shaddup!” I yelled.

I took the contraption between my hooves and bashed it on a rock until the glow vanished and the voice stopped.

“…Coal… Dust… am sorry.”

How did this… thing know my name?! How could this be possible?

I tried to calm myself. I gagged.

Breathing heavily, I glared at the bits splattered over the rock, and others sinking rapidly in the water. Unable to move, the hissing in my lungs died a little. I pondered what to do. This… had said my name.

I…

The earth roared. The walls shook under a tremor that detached stalactites from their bases. Chunks of rock fell over my head. Heat washed over me. I smelt fire reaching far. I saw fire… reaching far. Crawling from a hole in the ceiling, the fire spread like a devil’s tongue displaying many forks. it weaved around the stalactites like water around the relief, tainting the whole cavern in shades of blood.

Running away!

I shoved the bits of the item in my tackle and bit in the crystal, pulling it out of the water. I started running. In seconds, I reached the farthest folds of the cavern. There were no exits for me. No fateful tunnel. Nothing. Everywhere, a wall of rock was waiting for me, blocking the way, sentencing me to death.
Breathing burnt. Opening my eyes burnt. Everything burnt!!! Like hot embers in my throat and acid in my eye.

“Let me out!”

My lungs gasped for breathable air. The walls shook. The tongues of fire emptied the room of oxygen. The quake cracked open the walls. The fire-flooded ceiling started falling apart, the fire itself looming dangerously in my direction. The water flood started bubbling. The cadaver across the place burst again in flames. Trying to cover myself in water and mud, I dived in the overheated pond, hit my muzzle on the bottom. Panicked. I don’t know. I was just trying to live, maybe. A flame sparked over me and licked my left side, melting my fur over my flank.

I saw one wall crumble. And with it, an escape appeared, a thin corridor.
Trickling with water, I thrust myself through the open gate. The fire in my back… the Fire everywhere!

As I leaped through a wall of fire, a violent wave of clean air licked my face. Deliverance.

The stream of black dust wandering before my eyes said otherwise. The stench, acrid, warned me from the danger.

Oh, my father, I would tell him that I ran like Tartarus.

I hadn’t even crossed fifty meters of the tight tunnel that fire engulfed completely the cavern I had just left. I wasn’t ready for another deadly flash point.

Oh, Tartarus indeed, I ran.

Scrambling up the dark passageway, the light of the crystal stuck in my mouth lighting the path, I forced myself further and farther. I heard the mighty breath of a conflagration at my back. My rump felt like it had caught fire.

Head first, I smashed myself into a boulder barring my way. The flames whirled dangerously behind, nearing quicker than I was as they consumed oxygen at a speed I couldn’t match. The boulder cracked and rolled over, myself in its stead.
Before me a path I had taken many time. Carts full of coal and crystal rested unattended on a dusty rail set in the middle. On my left, at a hundred meters, a metal lift. On my right, a long cavity going deep down in the darkness.
Everywhere… smoke, slowly vacuumed by the hole made for the lift… and everywhere, of course, ponies moving around buckets of water, wounded, and dead comrades.

“FIRE DAMP!” I barked. Heads dashed in my direction and panic settled.

Screams everywhere, again, as the path in my back suddenly tainted with the grim colours of lava. I threw myself away from the opening, and ran to the lift.

Survive, survive!

I looked back and saw a pony younger than me try to throw water in the tunnel. With a filled bucket harnessed between his teeth, his fur was the first thing to catch fire, instantly followed by its mane. In the red soaked darkness, I never knew what colours his bore… The fur was already long gone, flowing drop by drop over his skin as the colt scream. His scream changed to a muffled gurgle, then stopped. His skin turned black and cracked before he touched the flames-flooded ground.

I looked away toward the life-saving lift. Ponies had already taken place in its compartment, pulling crazily the lever, trying to urge the lift to go faster.

I wished to scream at them to wait for me. The air was too hot, forcing my mouth shut.

The elevator cracked up and started ascending. Wait, please. I ran and jumped. I had to reach the cockpit of the lift.

I missed and fell on the ground, miserable.

The fire leaped on me, avid and cruel.

Unable to scream, I let myself sink in despair. The flames, a lid of lead that would shush me forever.

[…]

Though the fire lit the place with a cacophony of screams, suffering, and death, I remained untouched.

Quivering, I opened my eyes and, febrile, I saw her.

A mare with a dirty white coat stood over me, prancing over with a hoof stretched toward the fire. Her mane flowed with the colours of fire, crawling over her large brown and seared hood. A glow inhabited her eyes, an eerie light that was for sure not natural…

Flames crawled slowly above our heads, an invisible dome between us and that yearning and deadly furnace.

"Please be quick,” she murmured.

Believing in such situation was hard. The fire was there, at a hoof-reach from gobbling both of us, and yet we had just been saved by some unknown mechanism. I kept my eyes riveted on the girl, kinda young as far as I could tell. She wore dark rings around her eyes. Her hooves were splashed with murk and blood… her blood.

“Don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die,” I whimpered.

She smiled at me.

I slowly gave way to the blackness of unconsciousness, I saw the space in front of me twist. Dots of light danced around my head. Dizziness everywhere. Pain.
“Bear with me!” the mare told me with her enchanting voice.
She coughed, the soot in the air burning our lungs. Despite the pain, she hauled me between her hooves. Soft.

The air cracked. From behind the mare appeared another hooded figure, blackness hiding its features. The mare, oh she was beautiful, her lock of fire dangling in front of white glowing eyes… The mare looked back, a wicked smile on her face.

“Finally you’re there,” the mare sighed in relief. “What should I do?”

The hooded figure hung his head next to the mare’s ears and whispered a few sentences. And the hooded figure vanished. The mare’s smile was gone too. She looked at me with sorry eyes.“It might hurt a bit, but it will be quick.”

I hear another loud crack. The fire roared.

In the couple of seconds that followed, burning pain blitzed through my bruised and burnt body. I yelled. Pain. Burn. Fire. I cried, holding me head between my hooves.

I caught a glimpse of light and the whole world went fuzzy and weird. My mane crawled. I felt like I was dragged on the ground, through a black tunnel with no light at the end. The sensation of movement stopped. I was stuck in a corridor again. Where was I?

Somepony hurriedly grabbed my limbs, lifted me up, and pulled me somewhere. We reached a noisy area, orders were shouted at ponies.

“Close the way!” the marish voice ordered. “FLASHOVER INCOMING!”

Screams and grunts filled my ears. I heard rocks being pushed in an entrance. Water being splashed. The sounds of an explosion. The earth shook. A gust of reeking wind and coal.

I opened my eyes and saw my reflection in those of the magnificent mare. The glow in her eyes was gone, replaced with tears. The colours of her mane remained. Fire. A light in the darkness.

“You’re safe now,” she comforted me, embracing with her hooves the contours of my burnt shoulders. “You’re safe.”
I never thanked her.

I just sobbed and cried in her shoulders. Pains and sorrow filled me with sleepiness. Sobs and tears took hold of me as I knew that the horror… the Pit… would begin tomorrow again. As always.

2013 project - Shattered - 2. Discharged
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2013 project - Shattered - 2. Discharged

Chapter 2, Discharged

“When a miner’s got nothing to do… he’s got some laws to screw”

“Get your ass out of the way!” a voice roared. “You ain’t authorised to do this!”

“He. Needs. Help!”

“And here, you, fallen, has got no power! So move out of the way, bitch!”

[…]

I lay on my back, sore and stiff, a blinding light hung above my head. I was alone. The room I woke up in was entirely covered in white tiles. Its cleanliness put to shame my own hide, the light itself throwing every stain into stark relief.

The light, overwhelming and powerful, was pouring out from a single lamp screwed to the ceiling: an arc crystal, as always. Those tiny contraptions were everywhere and so useful. Sometimes I did understood why we, the miners, were sent to death to retrieve those along with the coal. They were jewels of engineering and refinery. I was so sad I had to put my life on the line to enjoy this warming light on a daily basis.

Shaking my head out of the reverie, I stared at my surrounding, desperate to find something to focus on. The wall on my left had a massive mirror mounted over a series of clean basins. The right wall only displayed a thick, white door.

The fact that I didn’t know where I was washed over me with cold fear. Bending my back in a violent jerk, I sat up… or rather tried to. My whole body shuddered with spasms, pain bursting through my bones.

A few minutes passed, trying to tame the pain and calm myself. I was breathing by little puffs of air, aiming at lessening the ripping sensation cramping my lungs. My dried lips cracked with pain as I breathe, the cold air stinging my two or three teeth. Steadying, forcing myself not to cry but couldn’t stop from shedding one or two tears.

I tilted my head forward to take it my physical state. My chest, swelling up and down, was covered with green and brown oozing burns. Some of my skin showed taints of rosé. My left flank was scarred, splattered with large patches of blistered flesh. My left hip was a complete mess. Where my cutie mark should have been… nothing remained but a patch of brown, a pure mess. Stretching my hoof, I tried to reach where my cutie mark should be. My cutie mark there was gone. Gone.

I tried to look at my other side, willing to take in the sight of it but leather restraints barred my movement. I was tied to a bed. A hospital bed.

I forced on the bind. The binds. It just succeeded in giving me more pain. Hooves and hindquarters trussed up, I writhed about in the free space the ties gave me. My scars scrapped on the leather. The pain sparked fear. Fear triggered panic.

Eyes shot-open, squealing, I attempted escape in spite of the pain, making me shaking. The pain being too strong, I only gave in. My hooves pounded on the side of the bed. Hissing and unable to stop the tremors crippling my limbs, I cried.

“Wow, calmos, child,” a mare advised me as she entered the room, closing the door behind her with a push of her rear end. “Don’t reopen the wounds.

She had a rather loose nurse attire, a mask, and that cold disk of metal with two earplugs which I couldn’t remember the name. Going to the doc’ was too expensive for me anyway. She had tied her dark brown mane into a bun, giving to see her deep brown eyes like two stains on her coat of cream white. Her cutie marks were hidden beneath the white cloth.

“Let me go,” I begged, pulling on my ties only to trigger a new wave of pain.

“And risking a paddlin’, hun? No, thanks,” she scolded with a smile. “I’m not going to make that mistake again.”

She took a piece of white tissue out of her suit and started wiping off my tears, then the pus dripping off the wounds.

“Uh?” I looked at her, perplexed.

She stopped, her smile dying a little, swapping place with a hint of surprise. She raised an eyebrow and walked up so her head was above mine, her hooves clattering rhythmically on the tiled floor. Her lips pinched together and she buckled up a small laugh.

“You don’t remember, hun?” Her voice, as sweet as honey, fell silent as she bit on a pen pointing out of a pocket.

Methodically, she picked up a notebook hanging on the end of the bed, and read its contents. Mumbling, going through my records, she focused for an horribly long minute.

She put the notebook back on its rack and returned her attention to me.

“Oh, sho’y, yesh,” she chewed over the pen, stuck in her mouth before spitting it back in her pocket. “When you were brought here, you were in shock. You broke another nurse’s jaw.”

She sighed and pointed to my ties with a jab of her muzzle.

“We bound you to that bed for safety. It’s not the first time we’ve gotten some irate patients.”

She prodded my skin with a savant hoof, sliding its tip over my scars and burns, giving me nothing but tickles.

“You’re lucky the flashover didn’t damage any vital parts or organs,” she huffed in relief. “You’ll survive. With minor scars, mostly.”

“Mostly?” I blabbered, fear gripping my heart to the thought I would live with more than scars.

“You’re a miner, right?”

I nodded, gulped, and kept silence while she observed me from her dominant position. Couldn’t she untie me? Her eyes followed the lines of scars marking my hide and crawled up to my cheek.

“I can only speak for myself. I don’t know the field in which you work in the Pit,” she stated, overbearingly neutral, “but the mines aren’t a good place for cicatrisation.”

I looked down, and grunted, “Well, I’m sorry about your co-worker, but can I be untied? Like... now.”

I gritted my teeth as she giggled at me. It wasn’t funny.

“Uncomfortable, hon?”

I huffed. the playful nurse was wearing a golden chain around her left forehoof. Gold… Haven’t seen that in a while. Lifting my head up, I tried to take in more of her features. I stopped on her wings, sprouting out of her suit through two sewn holes.

For the first time since I had awoken, I let the silence settle. A knife rubbing in an open wound. I tensed, felt a drop of sweat roll over my forehead and slide behind my right ear. It fell and hit the floor in a heavy drip. Her eyes and mine met. Every ounce of her playful mindset was gone, she just huffed and shook her head. Colours left my face. We gauged each other. To be honest, I was the first to break contact.

“Where am I?” I asked.

Her eyes, cold and dark pierced through me like a spear. Her wings fluttered softly.

“In the hospital of Murmanesk’s prison,” she answered, neutral.

I scoffed at her.

“There is no hospital in that jail. I know that. I’ve already been there!” I deadpanned, trying to grasp the best out of my situation.

And… I knew I should have shut up. She grinned, showing a row of white teeth that made my own, yellowish and uneven, look like shit. She turned around, whipped her tail on my burnt flank and walked by the door. The massive chunk of reinforced wood creaked on its hinges as it closed.

“Unbind me! Where I am!? Please!” I shouted, to no avail.

Now, that was getting ridiculous. Really…

I knew of no Pegasus that would help an earth pony like me. They were too mechanical for that. Too evil for that!

Did they understand the word compassion? Impossible. It was not in their twisted nature to do so. I knew it! I had seen them do the most monstrous things. I knew they were monsters.

And what do we do with monsters?

Nothing, but hide.

“It’s not a jail. It’s not a jail,” I repeated to myself. “Where…?”

A shy laugh.

“Somewhere safe. At least.”

My mane stood on end.

The deep, calm, and inquisitive male voice petrified me. A cold sweat trickled down my brow as, for the first time since I had opened my eyes, I heard that simple, low breath break through the ambient silence. Right behind my head.

“Well, I guess you dislike that situation as much as I do,” the stallion confessed. “But you know the rules. ‘The culprits…”

“… must be punished,” I finished. That’s what the posters were saying, nailed everywhere in Murmanesk. “Steal a pick axe. Steal a friend’s life.”

The sayings were right. They always were. I had known co-workers who’d died because of somepony else’s lies or mistakes. the punition, if not brought by the Pegasi, was always carried by the earth ponies you’d made into enemies.

“Good, good, you learnt your lesson.” His hoof brushed over my mane and crawled down to my shoulder. Painful. “You can be proud.”

I whimpered, pulling on my bonds to see who my interlocutor was. Those bonds were too tight, biting in my skin.

“Who’re you?” I squeaked.

“One thing at a time, would you?” he countered. “What’s your name?”

I froze. He was right behind me… but I still couldn’t see. A hoof whacked the side of my head. The pain snaked in my teeth. Cold. I hiccuped. I was not fast enough.

“What’s your name?”

“Coal Dust.”

His hoof hovered over my face, and dropped. My muzzle scrunched under the strength of a hammer-like punch. I screamed.

His fur was a clear blue. A rare colour to see to be honest. Blue…

Star danced before my eyes. Focusing was hard. Ears ringing, the stallion’s whispering, inquisitive voice crackled once again behind me.

“Who are you?”

A stiffening coldness spiked through my body. My belly wrenched and my mane crawled with all that stallion could do to me. Could and would get away with it. Bathing in fear, my body contracted painfully. My heart, beating wildly, forced a chilling gag up my throat. The dreadful voice was playing with me. I was trapped within his hooves. A void opened in my chest. I was simply nothing.

“Coal Dust. Excavation team. Eastern wing of the pit. Matriculate, 009PSQ-EP90-07-64,” I said in one raspy breath and begged, “please, don’t kill me.”

“You see. When earth ponies want, earth ponies can… when they’re not doing a mule from themselves. Stop crying, It’s unbecoming of an adult like you.” He paused, probably grinning. I heard him clack his tongue in his mouth a few centimetres next to my ears. “You’re still young though.”

I was crying indeed. The pain from his hooves pressing my shoulders, unbearable. I knew I needed medical attention. I knew he should stop. But when Pegasi do, earth ponies look down and remain silence. Rules. The rules! Don’t break them, or it’s a promised new shift in the pit. Don’t break them again, or you get discharged. Then you’re taken far in the East, to fight the war. And, if by any misfortune you couldn’t fight, just hope they won’t throw you over the cliff. The cliff… I had seen it once. Frightening.

“Oh come on, young one,” he fatherly said, tapping his hoof on my shoulder in a gentle way that still made me grunt. “I’m not a monster. I just want to understand.”

The bed creaked dangerously as the stallion threw it sideway.

“To understand how stupid…”

I finally faced him, my eyes shot-open in terror. A rather slender, nonetheless impressively muscular, beige coated stallion grinned back at me. His groomed black mane stretched behind his ears, giving to see a large barren forehead. His eyes, two grey diamonds, looked down at me with no animosity whatsoever. He was wearing a thin black jacket sewn with gold and silver, contrasting greatly with his two wings falling on his sides.

“...and dangerous you are!”

he walked forth so that his muzzle nearly touched mine. The clatter one of his hoof produced as he made his move caught me off-guard. A sound of metal.

“Look in my eyes,” he ordered.

Where his right hindquarter should be shone with a unnatural reflection, but when a Pegasus order, the earth pony obeys. So did I. I looked into his eyes, no matter how uncomfortable it made me. To see myself in those two irises where I could read nor hatred, interest, anger, or anything.

“You were in the Pit, three shifts ago, weren’t you?”

Was it already three shifts? For how long had I been trapped down there? How long had I been unconscious?

Answer!

Answer fast. I didn’t want to be beaten.

“Y- Yes!” I nodded.

“Good,” he smiled. “You were the arc specialist of your shift, am I right?”

I nodded even harder, swallowing the saliva remaining in my dried mouth.

“So tell me.” His eyes pierced my soul. “Why did three hundred and forty seven miners died in the wing you supervised?”

“Three hundred and…”

That was bad.

Terribly bad.

“I’ve killed nobody,” I interjected.

“But ponies died,” he spat back. “So tell me, why?”

“I- I was down there. Was an flashover. Everything’s fuzzy. Can’t say! Body everywhere.”

He smacked my jaw with the back of his hoof.

“I want answers! Not gibberish.”

“I- I…” I sobbed. “I don’t really remember, okay.”

That ‘okay’ was going to cost me a lot. Prancing over, he dropped his two forehooves on my chest. I bent under the weight and pain. I even puked. a few drops stained his suit. Trembling, I meekly looked away, biting in my lower lip to give up the least amount of squeak that could make him happy.

“Stop… Stop, ple-e-ease.”

He growled. “So tell me, what happened!?”

“I don’t know!! I woke up in that cave. Was a body. He’s been killed for sure and burnt after that.” I gurgled. “Didn’t kill him though.”

He remained silent. And so did I.

I slowly looked up in his direction. His eyes fixed the nether before him, in deep thought. I swallowed hard.

“So you’re telling, somepony killed another underground.”

I couldn’t say for sure. The cadaver had that slash around the neck. Could have been a bad landing on a rock. But because it was burnt in a place filled with water… Anyway, the stallion was a Pegasus. No earth pony was to contest a pegasus. I nodded as hard as I could.

“Yes,” I hissed. “Yes.”

“Do you know what ponies do to the liars?” He wishfully asked.

I drifted my eyes away and gulped. My throat hurt from being sore and dry. I wished I could drink. I had that horrid taste of soot still present on my tongue.

“You don’t know?” He gritted, feigning surprise.

“First they cut out the tongue,” I began, pressing my own against my teeth to check it was really there, “then they cut open the hoof with a hook. And they hang the pony with it to a pole. So that everypony can see. The liars.”

“Yes, that’s it.” He smiled. “Now you know what happens if you lie.”

I prefered not to think about it.

Sniffing, fluttering my eyelid to wash off the blurriness from my tears, I look at his hindquarter. One of his leg was made of metal, shining with a small blue arc encased in a glass cylinder. Cogwheels, valves, and pistons activated together as he walked up to me. the movements of the mechanisms was fascinating, making no real noise as it moved up and down. He crossed his hooves on the side of my bed, looking at me with a playful smile. the closer he was, the more uncomfortable I got. A ball of fur formed in my throat. I wanted to puke.

“You know what’s worse?”

I shook my head.

“Right now. I am your only friend. Remember what ponies say. The culprits must be punished…”

“...Steal a pick axe. Steal a friend’s life,” I ended again.

He patted me. “Good, good.” And smiled the most horribly. “So now, tell me. What happens when somepony stole the life of another…?”

I never answered. My lips quivered. Tears rolled, heavy on my cheeks.

“What will happen when your friends will learn that you failed your job. That you may have killed their family?”

He took my hoof in his own.

“I didn’t…” I tried.

His grasp tightened.

“Maybe you didn’t. But what will they think of you? You lived. Their relatives didn’t.”

He was right. So damn right.

“And what’ll happen when you can’t defend yourself?”

“Uh?”

He giggled, “Well, they’re going to be pissed at you. And what about you giving away that you did kill your co-workers… by having nothing to defend yourself with?”

“Defend m’self with what?”

“Evidence.”

I looked at him, eyes-wide. My heart skipped a beat.

"Ah won’t go down,” I interjected.

He laughed, “Not your choice, piece o’cake. You’ve got no choice in this affair.” His stare fell on me like a boulder. “So tomorrow you’ll present yourself to the pit. And you’re gonna be part of the cleaning team. You won’t like it. None of the ponies will like cleaning that mess you did.”

I didn’t… I knew I didn’t. But what could have I said? He was the Pegasus. I was, definitely, nothing.

Nodding was the last thing I had.

“I will… I will.” I acquiesced.

“Good.” He sighed. “Would be a shame that your father lose you?”

“My father…”

He scolded at me. “Your father, while still being an earth pony, has some good strings to pull. He knows you’re alive. Haven’t been told where you are yet.”

I was reassured somehow.

“How good is it to have a father that can pull you out of the shit like that?” the Pegasus dropped. “Many must envy you… to have such position in the Pit.”

I said nothing. There was nothing to say anyway. Ponies were indeed jealous of my father. He was… powerful regardless of his earth pony condition. He was the one who ruled within the Pit, as much as the Pegasi ruled above.

“I’m going to let you go now,” the pegasus said, unstrapping me from the bed. “I’m sure you won’t be stupid to go against your father?”

“Against my father?” What had he told to save me from an expeditive punishment?

“Yes, he’s the one who asked you to prove you aren’t responsible for this mess.” He shook his head apprehensively. “You don’t know how much damage you may do to your father’s reputation with your mistakes. Your father put up some measures to delay the announcement of the adventures of his ‘prodigal son’.” He chuckled as I dropped, my legs cheesy, from the bed. He tended me his hoof, waiting for me to shake it. “Name’s Pureblood, and I’m sure we will make a great partnership together.”

[…]

I opened my eyes on a wet, stinky antechamber of death. The wall reeked, marred with brown and dark trickles of murky water dried from the heat coming from the hissing bodies lying around me. The ceiling had bent across the decades and, in its middle, among moss and putrefied stains of black, a single lamp switching off from time to time was balancing slowly from the loud hoofsteps from one stallion a floor above.

To my right, patchwork mattresses had been lain on which rested ponies, wounded, crying, murmuring, pleading… An earth pony stallion whose face had severe burns loudly breathed a retching air onto my nose. One of his forehoof was twisted and, my eyes following his features down to his hindquarters, I saw his linen had only torn bulge. Amputation.

A needle of fear piercing my heart, I instantly checked my legs and let out a sigh of relief. I was even given the privilege of a blanket with my two remaining legs. I was intact, yet not deprived of wounds and burns. Lifting the blanket, I saw unclean scars seeping with pus on my belly. My head hurt and reeled. My hooves were sore and bloody. However, I was alive. Pain, a simple tick on the checklist.

“Eh, lad, ye’re alive?”

I leaned my head on the left. I was sharing the poor excuse of a bed I had with an old stallion. Pressing his hoof on the gauze strapped to his left eye, he was looking at me, smiling, showing two range of yellowish and uneven teeth. Lying on his back, I was given to see his cutie mark… or to be honest were it should have been. A large gash, burnt and seared to black and a gruesome green and red, covered his flank.

“Yes, it hurts,” he told me through gritted teeth. “But at least I’m not the one on the other bed.”

I nodded silently.

“You too you’ve seen the mare?”

I glared at him perplexedly.

“You know, the white one who carried you here.”

I spoke, or at least tried to. My tongue licked where some molars had broken. Growling, trying to fit in my tongue in this new and eerie empty space, I took a few seconds to muster my words. Once I had left Pureblood, a masked doctor had knocked me out, not even to stitch me up. So technically speaking the mare hadn’t brought me here. Yet, she’d saved me.

“No, I don’t know. She just… happened.”

The stallion shrugged.

“She brought many of us, here. Too beautiful for the Pit.”

“Maybe.”

The stallion sighed. “You ain’t really talkative, are you?”

I was thinking about the mare, wearing her blackened non-flammable cape, shouting around.

I looked at my torso. There, between the coal and muck, remained the mark of two hooves pressing on and on. At least, she had left me with a souvenir, painful ribs.

“Yeah, beautiful…” I breathed.

“Eh, you!” an ice-cold voice spat above me.

Snapping out of my reverie, I found myself towered by a pony wearing a blood soaked pinafore, a red-dripping saw hanging at his belt. He only needed a white ivory mask to be a monster that had escaped of one of my weirdest child dream.

“You can see?”

“Yes…” I hesitated.

“You can walk?”

“I think… so,” I continued.

“You can leave?”

“eh, yes…”

“So stop wasting my time!” He kicked me in the side, cracking the thin layer of mud that had dried over my fur now falling below me on the stinky mattress.

“And take your… scabs with you!” he shouted as I made my way to the door, not listening to his stream of swear words.

I needed rest, but most of all I needed was directions to go back to my family’s cottage. To be honest, I had never been to the doctor, the dudes from the healthcare asked for a price I couldn’t manage to afford in one year of hard labour. Thus, I went on the tangent, hoping the old pony who’d just kicked me out wouldn’t chase me for a meagre payment.

“Hum… guy,” a rattling voice called from behind. A nurse, an old one this time, and an earth pony. “You’ve got to pass the aptitude test after each visit.”

Oh fuck me, that test. To be sure that I was still mentally okay for the mine…

Piece of cake.

[...]

“I… didn’t pass?”

I sat down the room stool, looking at the nurse rubbing her bleeding cheek. She shot me that kind of stare, wondering whether I was stupid… or really stupid.

“So, nurse… Am I ill?”

She pondered a second her answer, giving me a dark-ringed glare as her eyes rose from a paper report. Folded on the top, I could see my name written in black on the yellowish parchment. Pushing a lock of white mane aside her butter yellow face, she cleared her throat and sighed.

“Trauma,” she dropped like a hammer on an anvil.

That was one big word. She caught my dumbstruck look and let out a deep breath.

“To put it in lay-pony’s terms, your body has developed a fear of narrow spaces.”

“Uh?”

She showed me the fold she tried to blind me with. I had her blood on my hooves.

“I’m sorry.”

“I will have you discharged from any mine work.”

“You can’t!” I yelled.

She gave a step back, my bloodshot widened eyes fixing her. Then, biting my lower lip I slowly brought my stare down to the cracked marble blanketing the floor.

“I…” I stuttered, the same shakes that had numbed my senses in the cavern crippling my hooves. “I’m a miner.”

A long silence settled between the two of us. Fillies and foals were playing outside, kicking a probably deflated ball down the street. The nurse slowly raised her hoof to her face, letting out a long sigh, wrinkles folding on her features.

“Why did you have to tell me that?” she grumbled.

I gulped as she walked around the makeshift bed I was sitting in toward a small furniture. Opening it, she took out one single sheet of paper with a round shape blood red stamp on its bottom.

“Wha… what’s that?” I muttered.

She gave me the stare, filled with annoyance as it was clearly not the first time.

“Spare me the whining, please,” she berated. “You’re, just, getting discharged. I’ll send your case to the politburo. You’ll get recruited in the army. You’ll see the world and get some pay apparently.”

Father once told me what he thought about it, chilling.

“Nurse,” I said, my voice febrile. “How many don’t return from the battlefield? In the mine it gets sometimes up to twenty percent.” I slowly rose my head, my count was at three hundred forty seven... A tearing lump in my throat made its presence known as I struggle swallowing the saliva I was chewing on. “Please…”

“You don’t…”

“Please,” I begged, still sat onto the makeshift, stained mattress.

The nurse looked at me, her eyes watering as she bit on her lips, desperate not to tell the truth. Her front hooves trembled as she constricted over her scribbled bloc note. She avoided my curious stares. Her voice slowly rose, crystalline and stuttering.

“None returns,” she spat meekly, her eyes shut as she feared any of my overreaction. “Not that they all die… Just… Murmanesk is not where ponies wanna stay to die.”

She looked at her hoof. “You’re an groundbound like me… You know th’city is our prison.” She was right.

I was just stunned, prostrated. There had always been rumour of those gone beyond the rift… but getting the truth from a rather competent mare was something else than wrestling the words out of one of the chronic drunktards of the nearby tavern. My muscles tensed. I curled up on the bed, locking my knees with my forehooves in a foetal position. The nurse departed.

“Lady,” I called her back, my voice broken and raspy. “How long before you send my case to the administration.”

She stopped in the threshold of the room, the parquet creaking below her hooves. He saw her tail wriggle swiftly. Without a glance back, she sighed.

“Three days,” she muttered with a gruel high-pitched voice. “Three days before the hospital sends your discharge to the politburo.”

She lifted a hoof, ready to go on her fare but stopped. “By the way, there is a letter in the drawer behind you. Letter’s for you.”

Her hoof clattered outside the room.

“Wait”, I yelled. “Please… Can you read me the letter. I… I can’t read.”

She fell back in, ripped off the letter from the sole furniture populating the room, opened it and cleared her throat, clearly annoyed. She read out loud.

“Hi little Coal,

Hope you’ll recover well. I hope to see you again tomorrow. Well, when you get this letter read to you, I guess it will just be one shift in the Pit from our meeting. As I asked the nurse who’s read…” the nurse stopped, grunted, nearly quitted, but kept going on, “...reading this to discharge you so that you can focus ‘properly’ on what I’ve ask you to do.

Hell I know you won’t like that. Neither do I. But it’s something we all have to go through. Proving oneself. So prove to me and your dad, who’s already pissed that you weren’t home as I paid them a visit. You’ve got a beautiful mother and sister to be honest. So, I told him what I suspected you did. And he was pissed. Like Tartarus.

So I expect you to come in handy tomorrow to find out what happened. I found you friends to investigate so far.

By the way, you should really check who your friends are right now. I’m always surprised by how solidarity flow through earth ponies’ veins. I got the nurse reading this ten days of ration for…”

“RAAAh!” she screamed and tore up the paper.

She left in the following second, a tear in her eye, leaving me no time to say something. grasping the two pieces of shredded paper at the feet of my bed, I tried to decipher the paper.

“f… f-or her doh… daughter…

S-See y-ou t-t-tomorr-ow.”

He had signed the letter with his name, Pureblood, and left it with a post-scriptum.

‘PS: Interesting stuff you got in your suit. Did you really tried to smuggle Raw arcs out of the Pit? An arc I haven’t seen yet? And the record… Really interesting. I wished you’ve heard it with me for the last time.'’

I just cringed below my smelly, wet blanket and wept. It sounded like a death penalty. three days and I would be dead… or a wannabe-dead. Either dead on a rope under Pureblood’s order… either in the army, taken far away from here.

“Three days,” I hiccupped.

I had Three days left and I should have hurried. Instead, I just buried myself deep beneath the bed cover and tore up, leaving all my tears trickle over my cheeks in a low, unbearable silence.

2013 project - Fallout:Equestria Little Star - Prologue
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2013 project - Fallout:Equestria Little Star - Prologue

Prologue.

“War, war never changes. It’s a pretty admitted truth. The consequence never changes at all: Death. In a war, what really matters is what remains after the last shell has been dropped and the last bullet has been fired. The end occurs when the losing side comes to the point of deciding that ‘All is lost therefore nothing shall survive our doom’. It’s what is coming. It’s the fate reserved for everypony… Everypony, but you. As I’m giving you that one last stable to protect. That last stable kept in a place nopony will ever reach again. Be safe, live, and prosper. Good luck.”

Scootaloo, Stable-Tec Corporation Vice-President.

₮ ₰ ₣ ₪ ₹ ₸ ₢ ₸ ₹ ₪ ₣ ₰ ₮

“Hey… Hey?” A few pokes clanged on top of my head. “Hey! Star, focus!”

I shook my head and blinked a few times. The view from my position was incredible, fascinating and somewhat scary.

“Stop looking down, you idiot!” the stallion’s voice reprimanded with a long huff of impatience. “We don’t have all day.”

“Oh, fuck off, Tinker!” I spat at the stallion and mumbled, “I was just sightseeing.”

The crimson pony rolled his weary green eyes hidden behind his thick shiny helmet. As I shook my head, Tinker rubbed his cramped shoulder beneath his suit. I saw his eyelids flutter as a speck of dust washed over his wrinkles and hit his left eye. He grunted, twitched about, and tried to wipe it away. I smiled at him as trying that with a helmet on was a lost cause.

“Got what you deserved, ol’ rag?” I smirked.

“Gimme a second, Star.”

Unable to scrub the intruding fleck away, he clutched his hooves tightly to the wall we were both attached to with a series of cables. He grunted, shook himself then surrendered to the task. A tiny drop trickled from his left eye.

“I’m too old for these antics,” he muttered to whoever wanted to hear.

In that case, I was the only one around to listen to him, though it didn’t meant I wanted to. Now, as our environment and helmets barred us from speaking to each other directly, we used transponders. The darn mule never learnt how to turn his volume down. Each of his growls sparked shivers into my ears.

“Can’t we just get this over with?” I suggested. “We’ve got a schedule to keep to.”

“And you’re the one telling me that?” he coughed. “Times change.”

After his fit of anger against his dusty nemesis, a lock of grey mane had fallen before his face. It hid the few brown freckles peppering his right cheek and wiggled in front of him as he kept rambling on. His ear twitched repeatedly, trying to bring the offending strand of hair back to its place. Then, he jumped away from the wall and let himself whirl in the nether.

I gasped in fear and tried to reach him. I was already too late. His body mass slammed back on the wall as his cordage pulled him back to safety, a meter or two away from where he started, and right next to me. I felt the force of the impact vibrate in my bones. While I was glaring daggers at him, he simply hoofed me his blowtorch with a large grin on his face.

“If Madam wants to start,” he grinned. “I don’t see your tools around. Have you lost yours again?”

“Shut up, Grandpa,” I protested. “I haven’t lost anything… again. I just forgot my own stuff.”

I snatched the blowtorch off his hoof and locked it on the magnetic clip that adorned each of my horseshoes. With a few kicks on the trigger, a thin but vividly blinding blue flame spurted out. Narrowing my eyes, I gently aimed at the broken pipe we’d been assigned to fix. Those damn pipes were used to cool down the Stable’s reactor and its critical internal parts. Those fuckers had to break at least once a week. I looked at Tinker’s backpack, a tiny sheet of metal tipped out of the cracked leather. At this rate, we would soon be lacking metal for replacement.

“That’s not the first time, Star,” Tinker pointed out after a long pause. “Are you sure everything’s alright?”

I sighed. I hung my head low and let the torch’s flame die out. I let out a deep, long breath and closed my eyes.

“I’m bored, ‘pa,” I confessed. “Like supremely bored.”

I opened my eyes again and looked straight into his. He just gave me a dry chuckle and smiled tiredly. I was the first to broke the awkward silence.

“Have you never… I dunno… wished for something else? To do something else?” I asked. “It’s the Stable over everything else. Stable there. Stable here… It’s only about the Stable. Nopony ever asked me what I wanted to do.”

Tinker smiled at me again with that wise, rueful, painful look.

“I could say that it’s how it has ever been, is, and will be. But I know the answer would never satisfy you. Nor will it satisfy anypony to be honest.” He chuckled sadly. “Let’s say it’s how it must be. Since my grand-grandfather entered the stable when he was young and when he later became the chief engineer, our family has served the stable as dutifully as it was able to.”

“We ain’t Overponies, though.” I joked. “We don’t enjoy their great life.”

“I don’t think you’d envy her current position, it’s quite the stressful job.”

“Maybe,” I whispered.

“Well,” he put his hoof over my shoulder and brought me closer. “We serve and protect. Thanks to our work, ponies live along peacefully, and as such it has been for many years. Don’t you think it’s a beautiful goal? Living to help others?”

“I hate the Stable,” I countered, flatly.

“Who doesn’t, filly?” he said. “We all hate it but that’s all that we have. Equestria has been dead for many years. There’s nothing left on that barren rock now.”

“But, what if the Overpony is wrong?”

Tinker laughed, “We could lift mountains with ifs, my dear.” He patted over my shoulders and snarled. “Stop tormenting yourself, you’ve got a pipe to fix.”

I looked back at the torch with a long sigh.

Jan. 2014 - Fallout:Equestria Wish Machines - Intro
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Jan. 2014 - Fallout:Equestria Wish Machines - Intro

Author's Note

Short Description:
Eighteen years after the Last Day, a mare unveils a past she thought forgotten. By doing so, she will set on fire the anthill the birthing Wasteland is.

Long Description:
Throughout her four-decade long life, Vault Skin has been a rather common Earth Pony mare working as a master of none for anypony paying her enough caps to live another day. However, a well-paid job will awaken a dark scheme from before the Apocalypse which consequences stretch up to our current blood-soaked epoch, eighteen years after the balefire engulfed the world.

Co-written with Unrest
Advised by Sophos
Edited by Phoenix Archangel & Icudeadnow
Thanks to Kkat, Somber, Mimezinga, No_One, Unrest, Novus Draconis, and Vincent Brugeas for being constant sources of inspiration

Jan. 2014 - Fallout:Equestria Wish Machines - Intro

Introduction

Imagine a long and lonesome road cramped with deception and obsession; a life of adventure we can all relate to. All the ordeals we struggle through to get to its end forge us, mold us to a unique behavior, and teach us who we really are. Yet, the question whether this trail is ours or not is what breaks us all in the end.

“You okay, boss?” a mare’s voice echoed, probably calling from the bottom of a wishing well.

If an era of constant wars showed me something, it’s that only one thing always remains the same; Pain. Atrocious and unwavering pain… and the blade in my chest, piercing through my back and pinning me to the ground, agreed with me. Yeah, she was nodding, that fucking bitch. Take your time fucking me… you weren’t even patient enough to go through the right angle….

My eyes jerked open, blurry with blood, mud, and motes of dust. A dark grey ceiling seven feet above my head from which dangled roughly torn wires cracked with electricity. Sparks burst from tapered tips, lighting the vision of apocalypse around me. It had all gone briskly... broken furniture, disemboweled bodies, broken machines, loose wires, and blood… lots of fresh and ugly blood, steaming in the cold air.

I focused, my mind fighting back in all the thoughts pouring out of my bleeding wounds. My skin and flesh was flapping around the blade, small jets of dark red spitting out at regular intervals.

“I-…” I gasped. Blood flowed out of my mouth, bubbling with my raspy and hurting breath. “I-…”

“Oh, shit…” the mare appearing in my range of vision hiccupped, hauling herself over my body.

Her old and teary eyes shook, oh come on… they never blended well with her tanned fur and red-wine mane. Oh… low shivers writhed in the tips of my hindquarters, gaining momentum as they crawled in my backbone up to my neck. My fur raised on my wrinkled skin as something dripped on my face. It couldn’t rain inside, could it? Were those tears?

“Are… are you crying?” I hissed at the frightened mare.

“You’ll survive,” The promise flew out of her quivering lips, unconvincing. “You’ll-!”

I put a hoof on her shoulder and gave her the broadest smile I could muster… damn it was hard to smile with the pain…

“It’s too late,” I confessed with a broken gurgling voice, my eyes blinking haphazardly. “Where’s Lil’Filly?”

“Why do you care?” the mare cried at me. “She killed you.”

“How’s she?!”

“She killed you…” She blurted, her confidence slowly fading away under my repeated assault.

“’Cause she’s mah daughter!!” I screamed with authority.

I felt the mare tensing, whining, fighting back… But in the end she would give in. She had to….

“How’s she?” I breathed smoothly. “You don’t want me to call Gate, do you?”

The mare petrified on her legs, her eyes bloodshot in the terror the name represented. She looked at me with those now pinprick-sized pupils, pleading and bending at the same time. I smiled, showing teeth that I’d guess were broken. Damn, it hurt.

“How is she going?” I asked again, getting on my nerves.

“She’s passed out…” the mare blubbered, growing sobs hacking her speech.

Inhaling slowly, I tried to lower my heartbeats. With time, my eyes adjusted and met my friend’s. Her expression, a stirring mix of fear, stupor, disgust, and obedience, struck me in my retching guts. Friends weren’t supposed to act like that…

“I want to hug her…” I paused, thoughtful. “Ah… and don’t try to take the blade out. It’s good where it is now…”

It was difficult to speak, or to breathe. I contemplate the mare as she complied and disappeared beneath this eerie fog of war thrust over me… was that it, dying? Being slowly swallowed in darkness… gulped by an endless sleep. Close to the mare… I pictured shadows… many angry, teary, or shocked eyes. I heard whimpers… damn bunch of sissies… what had I taught y’all?

Like a ghost, a stallion slithered out from beyond my vision. In response to his step forward, ponies gasped in terror around me, muttering as they backed away. His flaming blue eyeballs stared down at me, contrasting with his pale grey blue skin and his dark grey locks. He had once worn a pair of sunglasses, but the tainted glass had shattered away a long time ago, leaving only a broken frame behind. Over his shoulders stood a long, torn, and bleached coat, falling over his hooves smeared with mud. Snickering at me, he walked further, tilting his head until our two noses nearly touch.

“You’re always waiting,” I complained.

“I’ve just always been there,” he claimed smoothly.

“I’d have preferred to see that damn old buck, personally.”

“Well, let’s say that I’m far better being here than Gate.”

I sighed a giggle, the sword rubbing my chest shooting down my mood with explosion of pain. “Yeah… guess you’re right.” I paused. “Well, seems it’s the end of the trip. I failed.”

“Are you so sure?”

I raised my eyes to the ceiling, my tears falling down my cheeks.

“Don’t ramble that fate thingy discourse of yours… it’s sooo boring.”

He laughed, “What I mean is that your objective is fulfilled. As intended.”

I shook my head dismissively, “You’ll never change,” and coughed over my bloody lumps.

“Because you never did.”

“Stop trying to speak,” the mare came back to me talking in my ringing ears, avoiding to glance at the stallion… my head was all fuzzy. “Here’s your daughter.”

My chest jolted. Spits of blood splattered the crying mare’s tired face. Some found their way to her eyes and. Shrieking, she dropped the young mare right onto me. A massive series of cough wrestled out of my shredded lungs. My legs hacked aimlessly, shushing me again in a stupefied stance of utter pain.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry…” The mare fell back, fearing a retaliation that was never to come.

Calming myself with only scared ponies trying to hide around in the shadows of the corners, I slowly glanced at the young mare resting onto me. Petting her mane, I studied her features, thrown in stark relief by the fires and sparks decorating the room. She was so beautiful; an indigo fur and a light blue mane, covered in scars, burns, and wounds… Her eyes closed tight… a star among the swine. Her lips, stuck into a half grin of disgust and joy, remained unwavering. I spectated that unconscious face, magnified with a pure and unaltered disgust of myself and a beaming joy of the earlier fight. I taught her very well. She was magnificent.

I smirked. It had been a hell of a battle; and I had lost. But now that it was over, why should I care?

“Because you’ve still got something to do,” the stallion weaved his words in my mind, his two pairs of hooves stomping the cold metal used to build the floor.

I growled, trying to stretch my hooves. The blade stopped my attempts, excruciating claws of pain wracking my body from the inside… I staggered and let my head fall on my side. My hoof, or was it my prosthetics, slowly crawled to my torn out saddlebag. Piercing in, I grappled out a pack of med-X, a healing potion, and a tin of mint-als. Well, not that risking an overdose was of any importance now.

The sudden lucidity and feeling of restoration invaded my body, battling back the dolor the alien sword rubbed in my wound. In a softened hiss, I called back the tanned mare, now closely followed by four other ponies… just mere shadows to my eyes.

A PipBuck was still attached to Lil’Filly’s leg, eh… Nice. It’d be easier. Tapping clumsily on its broken screen, I switched on the recorder. My jaded eyes moved between the mare, the shadows, and the stallion, slowly gathering around me. I chuckled. Those dumbstruck faces… priceless. I lied in my own blood, my skin ripped apart and my bones crushed by my own thoughts, remorse, and wounds. I might suffocate, but I would talk. You needed to experience what I’d done, and why I did so. I just hoped you would approve my choice, or maybe lack of choices. Just… don’t be too hard on me. History had always been its own judge and executioner.

“You’ll listen to me carefully, for I will tell the tales of my life… only once. It'll be your lesson and binding. You will maybe… probably hate me after that. But I will be long dead before you shut my mouth up. But if you understand why I did it, and why I had to, I hope you’ll continue the duty I’ve put in each one of you. Because we’re needed. Because we’re are the smugglers of a bridge Equestria has to go through... And this is why that once I’m done, you won’t kill Filly… and you will leave this room and me behind to never return. You will leave me with her.

And if you don’t catch my point yet… You will. And if you still refuse to see the truth, then you’ll accept it… whether you like it or not. Because it’s the only thing you truly have left as your own. You’ve lost everything… but my words.

If I am to narrate you my tale, to show you what I had to do… was forced to do… I hope you’ll find a way to make yours the reasons behind all the mess that happened recently. There won’t be any ‘Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria’ with me. I’m sorry. We’re just ponies who gave in the abyss.

My name is Vault Skin, and I’ll show you how I fucked up the Wasteland.”

ⱴ ⱷ ꜠ Ω ꜡ ⱷ ⱴ

Footnotes; Vault Skin, Class: Wanderer

Specials:

Strength, 6

Perception, 4

Endurance, 10

Charisma, 5

Intelligence, 5

Agility, 6

Luck, 4

[Welcome to Fallout:Equestria – Wish Machines]

[Enjoy your stay]

Jan. 2014 - Fallout:Equestria Wish Machines - 1. Hit The Road, Wrack!
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Jan. 2014 - Fallout:Equestria Wish Machines - 1. Hit The Road, Wrack!

Chapter One: Hit the road, wrack!

“Every road beckons. No matter where they lead, each has a distinct story to tell.”

Growling with a grisly pout cast on my face, my left prosthetic arm grabbed the last of my rooks and slid it aside the chessboard between my defeated ranks of pawns, knights, and bishops. They were already too many to count as I gave a sigh.

“Damn it!” I rasped, struggling not to hack my hoof through the remaining standing pieces to end the mock game and the humiliation.

“Check,” a stallion’s voice chuckled, picking my ears through a receiver stretched off behind the chessboard, crackling with static.

Built into one of the remaining wall sockets, the military radio sent whirring noises in fits and starts; the only interruption in a series of long unnerving silences.

“Your move,” he mentioned with a teasing and slurring voice.

“Oh, come on!” I shouted to the idle piece of scrap metal. “How can you be so strong at chess? You’re not even looking at the board!”

“Not my fault if I have a good memory,” he giggled. “And maybe… I say maybe… I have my own chessboard to keep track of the challenge… well… if you could call that a challenge.”

His laughter set my cheeks ablaze. I bit my lower lip and swept the sweat of my forehead, my hoof joints popping out as I glared daggers at the receiver. With a victorious grin, I moved forward one of my pawns, the tips of my metallic claw biting in the dirty plastic of the piece.

“Bishop, e, two,” he claimed so quickly I hadn’t had the time to lay the pawn down the wooden plaque.

I studied the chessboard with dumbfounded narrow eyes, eyeing my pieces sternly, eagerly searching for the motives behind his choice. My eyes followed the path of a knight toward my line of scattered pawns and found my king was trapped, again.

“Check,” he snickered.

My ears burning, I roared and threw the pawn across the room, turning my back to the board. I heard the piece bounce on a wall and roll under a nearby furniture, grating over the parquet. I slapped my face.

“Really?!” I grumbled. “How can you do that? I haven’t told you what I was going to play.”

I rose my eyes, the seeping smirk reeking off the receiver throbbing in my mind. Staring at the ceiling was not that bad after all… At least better than looking dumbstruck at my defeat. The greyish lintels had bent under the weight of the years, struck with slithering fissures, their dark brown varnish trickling into layers with slivers of dust.

“Not my fault you’re that bad at chess,” he huffed. “Even more if you’re that predictable.”

Chewing on the inside of my lips, bulging my cheeks with air, I sighed and focused back on the game.

“I’m sorry, Monsieur Moebius, if it’s the only game I have.”

Couldn’t he just stop laughing at me? It was… just humiliating.

Moebius, also known as ‘the little fucking trickster’, was an abrasive annoyance for many, but I knew he could be a kind pony. I had met him a long time ago, back during one mission I had signed for hadn’t turned quite well. His help had taken me out of a faux-pas. The guy was a pure genius as a scavenger and stealthy throat-slicer, a fucking bastard if you ask me. But, if I had one advice for anypony, it would have been not to trust him on a daily basis.

The bad sportmare I was wondered why I was still talking with him. Well, I hadn’t seen anypony else in Hollow Shades to play with in a long while… The question: “How had the stallion gotten my number?” was still vivid in my head. I wasn’t mad at him for breaking into my private life... finding the right number and a line that still worked was amazing.

“You want to play another round?” he asked, probably grinning at me from the other side of the receiver. “It’s a guessing game.”

“I don’t like that kind of stupid,” I grunted. “Spit it out.”

“You’ve got some visitors.”

The connection broke, leaving the room silent, empty. Prostrated, I sit unwaveringly for a few minutes, my breath and heartbeats the only sounds reaching my ears. I looked at my desk in the back of my office, next to its emptied cells, an orange light was glowing from behind my monitors.

“Oh, fuck me,” I gurgled, forcing my shaky, achy hooves to stand up.

I hopped to my desk. Its many screens were flaring a painful muddy green at my eyes as I sat in my wheeled comfy chair, one larger and not meant for ponies in the first place. But, as I couldn’t pull my strange battle saddle off, thanks to the fact that I had lost the key a while ago, I was deemed to sit in an uncomfortable position that made me jerk and twist more than often. Snaking in the chair, I listened to the terminal’s speakers, bipping stridently in unison, a reddish diode glowing over my keyboard. Nothing good was coming out of this.

I glared back at the radio, troubled that Moebius had hinted something was ahoof before I did. Anxious, my heart clenched at the idea the radio dissimulated a camera, spying on each of my movements from the shadows. Heck, call it a Ministry of Morale complex, but eighteen years after the end of the world I was still afraid of the sprite-bots eyeballing me from the next street corner, at least when I was not in control. Those little balls of metal creeped me when they were wandering about, whether silent or blasting a thousand times rewinded pre-war music.

I stared at my monitors, their degraded quality making me want to bulge my screwed eyes out. Many pixels had died throughout the years, their happy green light melted into a murky and painful glow. I focused. Pressing repeatedly over my keyboard, I narrowed my eyes to picture shapes out of the pixelated images, seeking for an intruder inside the city. Maybe Moebius had just messed with my paranoia…?

The night wrapped Hollow Shades into a thick dark blanket, the wind’s roars flinging the remaining shutters on their creaking and jolting hinges; a torture through my terminal’s obsolete speakers. Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to listen to the low and discordant cacophony.

A series of pushed keys later while fighting my head throbbing, the screens switched to the western entrance of the town. There, the black tapestry was still whipping over and over again on its pole, the violent breeze blasting the contours of the lonely fabric. Sole passer-by, the dust swept past across the two walk-paths of the alleys, weaving between the cracks of the road. As usual, shadows were carved into the walls and asphalt, beaming off a reeking, darker than black sludge that spiked jerks and sweat down my spine. Hoofmarks stamped the ground, tracing a trail toward the inner parts of the city. A moment of victory later where I believed I had found a burglar, I grumbled my dissatisfaction out. Those were just mine.

Getting bored faster than ever, I zapped between different scenes like I did decades ago with my old TV, searching for a camera displaying a useful angle. That many were long dead wasn’t helping at all. Yet, one caught my attention. It monitored a large boulevard of the eastern part of the city I had always been reluctant to wander in, an industrial area cast into a lid of creeping shadows, teasing my heart in discomfort. The ruins were as terrifying as a ghost city could be in an era of world’s ending. The area had always bore the traces of the apocalypse more than the western side of the city. I winced, the wind moaning on top of the chimneys and through the scrapped metallic façades made my speakers grunt despicably. Phantoms’ pleads in my ears. I zapped and… I blinked at my monitors with blurry eyes. A zoomed in, carbonized, toothless, cracking, and dangling open mouth welcomed me.

“Aaaah!” I jerked out of my chair, my bum and head hitting the floor with a huff of dust.

My breath uneasy, I looked at the ceiling for a moment that stretched to eternity. I hauled my hoof to my ribcage, feeling my heart trying to rip it open and fly away out of fear. Damn it, I hated when a cadaver was hanging in front of my CCTV…

“You sure somepony lives here,” a feminine voice beckoned, muffled by something covering her mouth. “Who would stay in such… hole?”

Struggling to get my breath under control, I crawled to my seat and rolled my hoof onto the keyboard, seeking for a better view. Between abandoned rusty delivery carts, two ponies in heavy barding were hitting the street toward the Hollow Shades’s center, drawing large circles around the mummified corpses strewn across the roads. Slow and uneven, their pace suffered from sore hooves that came from a probably long walk. I forced my eyes to catch their worn out features despite my screens and the darkness outside, leaving me nearly stranded. It wasn’t my night.

“Well, a pony does inhabit the place,” a stallion noted with a deep voice, rolling his tongue with a characteristic pop before he looked asides, checking the crossroad before him. “I guess we have to trust the paladin, she was not really happy to tell us where her old friend was living. But it was necessary. What we’ve been charged to do is of the utmost importance. We can’t fail.”

My ears perked up at the mention of the Steel Rangers’ rank, they had talked to the Paladin I owed, and she gave them my location. The mention of a quest or whatever was also… disturbing. I licked my lips and craved for a better point of view.

Activating a sleeping sprite-bot with my terminal’s override code, I forced it to float over a nearby factory’s crumbled roof, opening over a chain production line that hadn’t moved for a long time. Maneuvering clumsily, it stationed stealthily over the duo. Willing to take a broader look, I turned its zoom to its maximum. Though the green shaded computer screens blew any sense of color, I could still see their cloths and equipment. Heavy, ragged, and dusty.

The mare’s long and disheveled mane fell on her face as she was struggling with a bulky gas mask, its strap falling loose on her temples. Holding the protection with her left front hoof, she was hopping with difficulty on her three other legs, striving to catch upon her companion.

“Stupid. Earth. Pony. Gear!” she grunted.

Two steps ahead, the stallion granted her with a scowl and a wink. “Well, if you hadn’t been a dick to the merchant, he would have provided you some better stuff. Like, you know… something useful for a unicorn.”

She smirked back, shielding herself with a laughable pride.

“He tried to rob us!”

“That’s called business.”

“Yeah, I still…” her right forehoof tripped in a bump of the asphalt. Muzzle first, her face hit the dirt in a loud thump. Butt toward the sky and hoof sprawled over the road, she swore inaudibly, her mouth forced shut by her own weight forcing on her jaw. Breathing puffs of dirt over her mask, its glass protection shattered, she eyed her companion in silence. He hoofed her a small IV bag filled with RadAway, a straw piercing its top, offering her a single raised eyebrow from behind his own glass helmet.

“Want some?” he said, grimacing over the rancid and horrid taste of the orange liquid in its plastic pack.

I chuckled, my voice echoing in the sprite-bot’s speaker.

And a long, long… very long silence followed.

I blinked at my monitor, the duo slowly looking up at the hovering sprite bot one or two pony-length over their head. I scrunched my nose at my screen as the three of us spent an unsettling pause scanning each other, well… my robotic emissary. Only my teeth biting on my lips kept me from laughing. Yet, I couldn’t stop my recurring snorts. The stallion screwed his eyes at the bot with curiosity. The mare however glared daggers at it, keeping her proctologist examination stance up, her eyes cursing it for her bad luck.

“Wasn’t me,” I blurted through my microphone, pressing on the bot’s retreat command.

“Catch it!” the mare blared at her stooge, pointing at the metallic parasprite with a hoof. Her mask fell in response and she roared her rage out.

Losing no time, the stallion flashed forward in the robot’s tow through the Hollow Shades’ streets. Making it fly by the pipes and pass under the bridges, I sometimes found the time to cast a glance back. Sweating over his leathered gear, the stallion wasn’t inclined to give space to me. The hopping mare, on her own, had nearly disappeared far behind. Not so comfortably seated in my chair, I found the mouse and cat game enjoyable. It could go on for hours. But like everything, it had to have an end…

A bell rang out across Hollow Shades, sending shudders through the concrete, walls, and cracked windows. The glass twinkled and shattered, the doors flung shut, and one or two standing cadavers slopped down the dirt in a retching flopping noise. City roaring under Midnight’s beckon. A call from outer space echoing to the underworld. The stallion and I gradually slowed down until we stopped, looking away toward the darkest alleys of the town. A chill crawled over the city, blanketing everything with a cold feeling of emptiness. Void.

The bell clattered once again. Vibration through my bones.

Eyes wide, I jumped out of my chair. My knee tangled in my keyboard cable. My installation crumbled on the ground as I fell head first, my chin hitting the parquet rather violently. Fear shooting quivers down my spine, I grappled a large blanket, wiping the sweat off my forehead at the same time, took my guns, and ran outside. I hoped I wasn’t already too late.

“Ah, ha! Gotcha!” the stallion mocked in the interphone far behind me as I left, his hooves tinkling onto the sprite-bot.

The bell gave another tremor. I rushed through the threshold of my office door. Its clock hung on its wall over the three balloons heraldic, dead for eighteen years. I couldn’t slack. My hooves stomped the ground, cracking the thin layer of vitrified mud beneath the dirt and scraps scattered around. The distant bell boomed in my ears. I was already late.

The bell tolled a ninth time as I reached a crossroad, the one the duo had passed by earlier. Deserted.

“Fuck,” I spat.

A sound of rumble in my back forced my head to jerk.

“There’s a pony right here!” a crystalline voice pealled.

The mare faced me, her features and colors broken by the darkness, the stallion standing behind her, a hoof hung around my sprite-bot. I cringed back as a sliver of starlight briefly illuminated the city block through a hole in the cloudy sky. Running with sweat, spitting loads of steam with my raucous breath, two bloodshot eyes maring my face, I glared death at them. They stepped backward as my two mechanical arms stretched out of my sides and grabbed them by the collars.

The tenth bell modulated the sharp cold of the night.

I kicked the robot out the stallion’s grasp and pulled both of them toward the nearest building while they vainly bit down on the metal limbs to free themselves. The mare shrieked, the cold embrace of my prosthetics needling on her skin. I bucked the entrance door open with my earth pony’s strength. It fell into pieces as two decades of caring disdain had rotten it away. The eleventh bell clacked as I found a narrow storage room, pushed the two rash intruders inside and closed the trail behind. I locked the door as the twelfth bell ring zoomed and I stared back at the two bemused ponies, my guns dangling on my sides, my two additional limbs whizzing on their cogwheels, and a siren’s howl rising from the depths of hell around the city. A world’s ending appetizer.

The mare opened her mouth and I stuck my hoof in.

“Hush!” I ordered through a whisper. “Fools!”

“What’s…?”

“Shush!”

I flung my blanket over the three of us, curled up, forcing my two stooges down with my cold steel claws.

“No move, no sound, and we might survive,” I whispered, tears breaking off my eyes before I began my pleading, the siren muffling my voice. “Please maketh them go away, Celestia. That in thy beaming embrace the death flies over us but does not stop.”

“Who?” The mare fidgeted on her hooves.

“That thy eyes keep the shadows at bay… Those of the unrests. Maketh them go away, that they absent hooves leave no crack in the house, that their breath does no sound, and that their missing eyeballs do not stare at us, for it means to die. Please, Celestia, giveth us hope, keepeth the shadows away, for dead must not blend with the livings.”

I closed my eyes, listening to the deafening siren blasting through the house bricks and foundations, attentive to the creeping cracks of the walls, caring about the crawling winds weaving through the unwatched fissures. The locked door slammed and jerked on its hinges and lock, an eerie storm roaring behind. The three of us snuggled in each other’s shoulders. The room was unbearably cold.

“The shadows,” I whispered. “Don’t look at them. They will eat your hearts.”

I felt the mare shiver in my hug. Whimpers, hiccups, and tears.

“Soon they will away,” I concede.

“Mom…” the stallion muttered.

Humming over the roofs of the town, the wind twisted and turned outside, wobbling the door like a maddened pony eager to break in. I kept us below the blanket, the warming air slowly impregnating the makeshift hideout with our own stench of fear and stress, a spicy reek added to the whole. Minutes flew past, and the siren finally began to die in the distance. I rose my head from under the blanket and stared into the two pairs of twinkles before me, the duo’s eyes. One of them had peed all over the place and I felt my skin soaking bit by bit.

I licked my lips, pushed the cover aside, groped the wall with my hoof and switched the light on. The lamp exploded in light, showering us with glass. Gasping, the mare sought for a refuge below the stallion’s powerful shoulder, undoubtedly an earth pony. A chuckle grew stronger deep within me as I let the silence between the three of us sink in like a rusty knife in a wound. I took a long and deep inhalation, stared at them and giggled with a wide grin that presented a range of yellow teeth.

“Well, hope you enjoyed the thrill ride and the big drops on Stallion Mountain. The attraction opens once a day at midnight when the bell rings across Hollow Shades,” I said with a low snicker. “The first ride is always free. The direction refuses to pay for your cleaning.”

“What?” they shrieked in unison.

I dodged the febrile mare’s hooves, trying to strangle me in the dark. Clumsy, ashamed by the pee splattering her hindquarters, she dropped by my side, her back hooves intertwining in my wet blanket. I raised a brow at her exposed bum, her horn suddenly glowing orange. I walked away from her disincarnated grasp and my rump hit the stallion’s forelegs. A sudden flash of light lit on his face. An electric torch between his hooves. The room suddenly thrown into stark relief, the two peers laid an eye on me as much as I eyed them back with a low playful smile, happy they had gone so far in the joke.

Yet, something caught me off-guard. Air inflated my warming cheeks until they swelled to the point they were about to blow up like balloons. To be short, I failed controlling my burst and I rolled down my left side, a harsh and teasing laugh breaking through me.

“What?” the stallion growled. “It’s my coat that disturb you?”

I waved my brows, ducking my lips in a funny grin. “Now that you say it.” I fell back on the ground, cackling as I held my sides, the stallion trying to set me on fire with his glare. “Did Pinkie Pie drop you in Cloudsdale’s paint factory?”

I laughed, wiping a tear off my cheek.

The stallion’s bright pink hide shone in his torch’s chiaroscuro light, his violet mane streaked with indigo tied into a ponytail falling behind his left shoulder. It was too awesome, amazing, not to laugh at, I only knew one kind of pony with such set of colors, at least until now: mares. A big muscled oiled earth pony male piñata. The sight was eerie, unreal in a world where green and pastel colors had been blasted away to leave behind just their darker and moodier tones. If not for moving to kick me around, swearing at me, he would have made a magnificent Fillydelphia Fun Farm’s statutes from before the Last Day.

“Stop it,” he hissed, to no avail. “Celestia dammit, stop that.”

My laughter slowly spread to the mare who’d been looking back and forth between the two of us, a hoof in front of her mouth as she tried not to mock her friend. The dirty orange fur on her shoulders was covered by long disheveled brownish locks, falling all over her head and hiding half of her eyes with only her glowing horn sprouting out of the mess.

“Stop what?” I rolled over my back.

“Just stop it,” he mumbled, his face turning red as he hunched over, hanging his head low out of shyness. “It’s already difficult to bear on itself. So don’t make it harder to take.”

A few low hues and cries later, I sat over my flanks, massaging my achy cheeks and ribs. Little compared to her companion, the mare shook her head, her eyes craving to set me on fire after she had calmed herself. I could see her barding humid with pee. Laughing time was over.

“Sorry for… that,” I apologized.

She threw a hoof at me with enough delay to shield myself with one of my prosthetics. A moment of stupor later spent staring down at my mechanical barding, she hissed, “Do this once more and I swear I’m gonna break your mouth.”

“Oh come on,” I countered. “It was fun.”

“No!” both the mare and the stallion spat at me.

Smiling, my eyes wandered on their equipment, eager to get a closer look on what I’d already witness through my CCTV. Both wore a thick leathered armor peppered with scraps of CBRN-proof yellow suits and metal plaques that clicked and clanged over their shoulders with each step. The stallion carried a massive black shotgun on his left side, tied to a brown light battle saddle, its trigger extension folded behind his neck. The mare on her own seemed to take a great care of a bolt action wooden precision rifle strapped to her back, displaying a metal support that had stripped off its scope. A mask dangled around the stallion’s neck while the mare’s counterpart was nowhere to be found, probably lost in the chase. I pointed my hoof at her missing item.

“I’ll replace it for you,” I proposed.

She patted her face with widened eyes and gazed sternly at the pink stallion, whose hoof stretched in his saddlebag to pull out another small medical bag of RadAway. Quickly, he hoofed it to her, gave me another, and sucked on a third little glowing orange bag, disgust tearing up their faces. I stared down at the bag with disdain. I sighed and pushed it back to him.

“Don’t need it,” I stated.

He screwed up his eyes to a knife blade’s width and raised an eyebrow. “You’ve already taken some?”

“Eh… sort of,” I chuckled. “Don’t waste one for me,...eh...” I suddenly realized I didn’t know their names.

I drew my hoof out to them and gave the weird couple the best smile I could muster.

“Name’s Vault Skin,” I presented. “Sheriff of Hollow Shades.”

They eyed each other with that look of surprise and suspicion. My lips shut close as they glared back at me. The hoofshake that followed went overwhelmingly formal.

“I’m Lozenge.” the stallion insisted with a not-at-all mistrustful pout. “But call me Loz.”

My playful grin wasn’t going to fade soon. Loz’s sight was giving me cuteness diabete all by itself. He was young, maybe not old enough to remember the days from before. Yet, his skin was already marred with scars of past skirmishes, usual between groups of survivors fighting over the scraps of the big cities’ peripheral towns. His Cutie Mark was a pulley with a red rope sliding in. I tilted my head to the mare who wiped a narrow stream of glowing orange running off her lips.

“I’m Blast,” she grunted, grimacing as she caught me looking at her flank, marked with a large black rectangle shattered in the middle.

“You hate geometry?” I teased like hot embers on a bare skin.

“Yeah, maybe.” She giggled and shrugged, falling back to a more serious look. She wasn’t going to forgive me soon for my joke. “I’m not gonna stay here without a gas protection. I don’t wanna die.”

“Follow me,” I said, waving a hoof toward me. “I’ve got a house.”

We walked out of the lonesome building we had taken refuge in, the wind chill stinging my skin. The town was now eerily calm, the breeze the only rustle in the air. Loz followed me close, lighting the road with the sliver of his torch, seeking to unveil with the light every piece of shadow that appeared darker than black in his eyes. Was he afraid of the dark…? I didn’t know. But I could see him looking with disgust and fear at the grim shadows cast around the walls. I even saw him wince at the look of one little foal, its dark silhouette cast in some falling pebbledash, his smile strangely white in that all black face. Welcome to Hollow Shades.

While he was agitating around, I couldn’t stop but looking at his hilarious fur and mane. Poor boy, he should have had a hard life with other colts. He was an earth pony granted with a bulky frame that even seemed alien in my eyes, bigger by two heads than Blast or me. His shotgun was clattering on the buckles tying his barding to his sides. What beamed from him was an impression of cleanliness. His mane and hide were properly tied and brushed, and even if the fragrance of sweat and labor reeked off him, I could see his care for his own person. I even put myself to shame. Loz wrestled a large and rusty rad-counter out of a pocket, waving it around. It cracked back and fro, up and down. Not a good sign I guessed, his eyes flickering and his lips closing tight. He gulped, his head slowly leaning next to me.

“You’ve been living here for a long time?” he asked with a low grave voice, his eyes riveted on my Cutie Mark exposed to the light of his lamp. That was a question I was eager to sweep away.

“Since ever,” I answered.

“How are you not…”

“We’re here,” I cut him off hastily, pointing the entrance of the sheriff office.

We contoured the massive fountain that borrowed Princess Luna’s traits, built to open on the central square of Hollow Shades, and walked toward my office. The building stood fiercely, a muffled green light glowing through its cracked windows. Caring about Loz and Blast, I watched dumbfounded the nastiness of my hideout. It needed to be scrubbed, to have its furniture dusted, its hinges oiled, its walls repainted, its shutters replaced, maybe its canalizations redone, and finally some ponies to populate the city around. Similarly, it reeked off the fact that I was a messy, oblivious, and often disorganized mare. My yet-to-come guests would dislike having me as a tenant. I caught my two guests staring at the camera hung onto my office walls.

“Just my camera system,” I explained to them, afraid to walk into a deadly trap.

I put a hoof on the wood stairs leading to the swinging doors of my office, ready to pass by the old buck and his burnt rocking chair when somepony coughed behind me.

“Vault,” Blast initiated with a whimper, her eyes avoiding mine. I looked upon her hide, smeared with her own fluids. I pinched my lips in comprehension.

“I’ll get you something to… wipe it off,” I said. “I’m sorry if I went too f…”

“No, no… It’s not about… that,” Blast cut me off then asked dubiously: “It’s just… Where did the bell ring come from?”

I raised my eyebrows, thought about it and frowned.

“Oh that? No fucking clue. There’s no church in Hollow Shades.” A hoof through the door, hiding my smirk behind a flat face, I welcomed her. “Après vous, Madame.”

Blast’s terrorized face made me smile on the inside. She huffed past me, her chin overly pointed up.

“The RadAway’s in the kitchen,” I shouted at her as her flanks disappeared in the dark. My ears flicked at the creaks Loz’s hooves wrestled from the porch stairs. I winked at him. “Make yourself at home. You two must be tired from the walk. Long time I haven’t got visitors… Heck, it’s even my first time.”

I pinkie-smiled and pushed him inside. Slowly, I raised my head and I fixed the other side of the Luna’s fountain in the middle of the square fronting the office. There was nothing but somber shadows distorted by the night and my accumulated fatigue… For a second I thought… nevermind.

Sighing, I jerked my head away from whatever fading vision my spirit could come up with in such damned city.Swallowing my saliva, I walked in my office, the swinging door creaking as they closed behind my rump. My eyes wandered in the large hall, searching for the presence of my visitants under the dim light of the dying lamps above our heads.

Blast had already found a gas mask in my storage. Both she and Loz had readjusted their suits to be exposed to as less radiation as possible. I was certain radiation here wasn’t that deadly… I should investigate that. Her bag leaning against my desk, I saw the myriads of orange medical packs within. How many had they bought to reach me? I didn’t even know where they came from. I looked behind her, my eyes riveting onto the stallion’s face, his jaw chewing on the space between his clenched teeth. I was sat comfortably in from of my screen. lowly, his head rose and two picky, glaring, and hurt eyes struck me with questionable motives.

“You’ve enjoyed spying on us?” he grunted.

“My duty as sheriff,” I replied, looking down to dodge his stare.

“You’re a kinda loyal mare if you’ve been doing that job for eighteen years,” Blast chuckled, letting her voice drop to a scary growl. “Not that keeping an uninhabited city is of any interest.” She let a long silence set in like a knife in a wound. “Unless you’ve got something to hide...”

I tensed, a little frown on my face. My mouth opened, dangling silent for a second or two as I ransacked my memories. Why I was dedicating myself to Hollow Shades was eerie for anypony else. I wasn’t on a quest or anything that would influence the world. I just… loved my city. I loved the anonymous prisoner blasted asunder in his cell, the old buck sitting still in his rocking chair… the playing children…. and of course, the... shadows. So why was I staying here, or more likely always coming back here? It was a good question. I bubbled with my lips, staring into thin air before Blast waved a hoof before my eyes.

“Hey? You okay?”

I blinked. “It’s just my home,” I confessed. It was the truth, Hollow Shades was what I could call home. A small radioactive island lost in the middle of an ocean of radiations, away from the daily survival, sometimes violent, that plagued the ‘outside’.

“How long have you been living here?” Loz asked,looking at me with pecky eyes, betraying distrust.

“Oh, the pinkie plushie isn’t confident?” I teased, making him growl. I smiled, remembering my time past at the local school playing along with classmates I had long forgotten the names. Soccer, hoof wrestling, or some hide and seek. “I’ve always been here. Good memories.”

We eyed each other for a short but unsettlingly silent pause. I coughed exaggeratedly, clearing my throat to make myself heard. It was time to reverse the conversation.

“Why did you come here? If my guesses are right, a long trip such as yours isn’t for chocolate treats.”

Loz sighed, throwing his violet ponytail over his right shoulder, twitching his hoof around his chin, ill-at-ease with my recurrent teasing. He gave Blast companion a stern look. She breathed out, and shrugged disappointedly.

“You’ve heard about Tenpony Tower?” she began, unsure about me being a trustable pony. I looked up to the ceiling, giving them an obvious answer.

“Who didn’t?” I said, tapping my hoof on the dusty parquet.

“So you know the Steel Rangers tried to break in lately but failed.”

“With casualties,” I added, Loz acknowledged the truth with a silent nod. Was he sad? “So what?”

“The Steel Rangers’re gathering a small squad to break into the tower’s defenses, again. They want to check on the tech’ kept inside the tower’s protection shields.” She broke her speech and looked at Loz, waiting for a sign of approval. “The first encounter wasn’t very well handled from both sides.”

“Tell her.”

Rubbing an absent beard, pensive, Blast looked at me with sad little eyes.

“The Steel Rangers’ main force might break everything inside if a skirmish with the surviving inhabitant happens. Needless to say that those survivors would be stomped to death.” She shook her head, probably thinking about the countless dead it meant. I was more eager to balance her last statement. Rangers had been killed apparently. “I’m gathering a team to go in and see for ourselves what’s going on inside.”

“You’re from the Steel Rangers?” I brought forth.

Both looked at each other, and after a short moment spent staring at each other, they both went through their saddlebags and hoofed out a strange round piece of leather; its contours were shredded. Puffing a haze on the inside of her mask, Blast showed me an insignia I couldn’t forget. Etched on a leather canvas, a pair of phoenix wings enclosed an apple-shaped box circling three uneven cogwheels, the whole cut into two symmetrical halves by an sword. Steel Rangers. Eyes widened, I gulped my saliva. I was picturing power armors, embracing their sunken and starved curves.

I swept the ‘we’re Steel Rangers so follow us’ argument away with a swift lateral movement of my hoof.

“Why me?”

Loz fidgeted on his hooves, probably thinking about how to phrase his demand.

“You’ve worked for the Ministry of Morale,” he stated to my stupor.

“How do you know?” I hiccupped, my tongue forcing flickers through my voice, turning in an awful lisp. “Who’re you working for?”

“We’re initiates,” Blast cut Loz and me off. “And we’re the last hope before the paladins decide to bust in Tenpony Tower’s doors. We have ten days to find a team, go in, and negotiate a peaceful way out.”

I growled, closing my eyes and holding my temples between my hooves. I sat down the dust and parquet beneath. Volutes of smoke flew off from under my rump.

“Why can’t the Steel Rangers give me some rest?” I groaned. “I’ve just finished a mission with them and they already want me back.”

“You do a good job apparently for a… mere wastelander,” she smirked at me.

Our eyes met, my left eyelid twitching under the fatigue.

“Why me?” I repeated.

“You’re a former Ministry of Morale’s agent,” she said so neutral it shot spikes of shivers down my limbs. She pinched her lips, and gave a grave look. “You know… unconventional technologies.”

I shook my head in disapproval. I was too old for that kind of things, and I had left that past behind me. I had even forgotten a lot of my training. Thinking about Tenpony Tower, the truth unveiled.

“You want me to hack through the Tenpony Tower’s computer defenses,” I wailed, my hooves giving two steps back out of Blast’s reach, now dangerously far too close to me. “Why?”

Loz put his right hoof in front of his partner.

“Tenpony Tower is a Ministry of Arcane Science Hub. There must be a shitlot of tech inside, which means a lot of defenses we can’t go through without an expert’s help. And the previous engineer had been killed by the Tenpony Tower’s occupants.” I smirked at that. “However, many remains have… probably suffered of the balefire bomb that exploded near the city center,” Loz finally hummed. “And surviving agents from the MoM are rare today.”

“Why can’t you contract an engineer from the M.A.S. or from the M.W.T., you’re Steel Rangers after all. You must have got plenty of them after eighteen years making a bad reputation!” I fought back.

“Well, Paladin Seed was right about you,” Loz sighed. “Half-hearted as a mule!”

“Wait, she gave you my location!” I will have to spank that overconfident mare the next time I’d meet her.

Loz gave me an eyebrow. “But she asked you to consider this as a favour from you to her. You owe her, is that it?”

This was bad played from her. I was indebted with a mare from the Steel Rangers, a paladin. And today, she had to ask me to fulfill a promise I had made years ago. I hated that feeling, being trapped in a deal that was more about stealing that paying back some debt was unnerving. It was also involving killing ponies, starving, probably badly trained, and maddened by isolation. I was maybe a mercenary, but not a murderer.

“Because… well...” Blast started laughing. “Steel Rangers are soldiers, not Doctors in Computer Science. We lack of proper engineers and ponies around Manehattan that can handle tech properly. The competent personal is located elsewhere at the moment…”

I’d have asked where this ‘elsewhere’ was but knew I would get no answer.

Blast’s glare shot untold threats at her friend who ashamedly smiled and shrugged in response.

“Hey,” Loz cackled. “Don’t look at me like that, not my fault if you made me trip over the keyboard last time. You sent the wrong order.”

Blast face changed from a stern stoic look to a wrinkled vexed face. “Don’t talk about that,” she hissed.

I laughed at those co-workers putting sticks in the other’s wheels. I rubbed my left hoof with the other, pondering the implications of the mission I was given. It was extremely dangerous. That a few Rangers had already lost their lives in the process was more than a needed evidence for me to refuse… But Seed… damn! First I was forced in this trade. And I wasn’t talking about being required to show off what I had quickly forgotten eighteen ago. With the balefire had indeed come unemployment.

“I’m not suited for the job, not anymore,” I confessed. “I –“

“You are,” she insisted. “We need somepony like you. And well, you’ve signed for this before looking at the bottom of the contract.” She smiled.

Grunting, I facehoofed, holding my head my hoof pressing on the metal strap stuck in my skin; my elbows resting on my akimbo knees.

“We can’t stay here,” Loz peered in the conversation. “I don’t know about your… condition, but Hollow Shades is radioactive… on a deadly level. Blast and I can’t stay here. We’ll wait for you beyond the Eastern border of the Hollow Forest, tomorrow. If you miss the appointment, we’ll find a more suited pony.” This hurt like a knife on a fresh scar.

Still hanging my head, I stared at the inside of my hooves. In the low light I could still see the smears of blood from the poor stallion from Junction, blackened, dirtied, and washed away by two weeks of travel. How could those two young ponies stand my company? I was pathetic. Biting my tongue, shoveling back tears I didn’t understand the origin, I looked up. Both were waiting impatiently a positive answer… or negative. I couldn’t tell whether they really wanted me or they were just following orders.

“Tell me,” I sliced in the building silence. “Even if I have to respect a promise, what’s my reward? I don’t work for crumbs.”

The businessmare she was smiled as if she was signing a fruitful contract. Trying to fit in, I shared her grin. With difficulty, though.

“A full-time position within the Steel Rangers,” she brought forth.

For anypony that wandered the wasteland, such offer was a chance of a lifetime, for it meant being sure not to starve and live a longer and healthier life among the rumbles. However, I wasn’t feeling like leaving Hollow Shades… definitely.

“You’re lonely, Vault,” Blast whispered, triggering quivers along my backbone. “I can see it on your face. Why not come on an adventure. It’s better than waiting to rot in a dark rat hole such as Hollow Shades. I may be rude, but being the sheriff of a city with nopony to defend is rather cynical. You could save life going with us. There are ponies outside that need help of ponies like you.”

“I know,” I murmured. “I’m just…”

“Old?” Loz finally teased, grinning as he finally balance the score between him and me.

I was forty five years old, fuck him! In Wasteland’s standard it was a rather long life indeed. But.

“I. Am. Not. Old!”

Some ponies had died unborn., though. I got to leave several lives through peace, war, and apocalypse. I clenched my eyes, hunching over my shoulders as I cracked the joints of my hooves together, hurting myself to make the hurting questions go away.

Blast sighed and smacked her hoof on my desk, wrestling a jolt out of my legs. The screens flickered and wobbled softly. “You’re wasting our time, and health.”

“I’m sorry,” I blubbered. “It’s just…”

“We’ll wait outside the eastern Hollow Forest’s border tomorrow,” Loz comforted me, hauling himself out of my chair to walk up to me, giving me a hoof on my shoulder and a warm smile. “Agent, it’s your choice.”

My mane crawled and my fur itched along the way to the border of Hollow Shades as I followed them to make sure they went out without a problem. My belly churned at the thought of leaving once again my native city and ached by the silence that had followed Loz’s last words. I didn’t know what I wanted.

“Tomorrow,” Blast repeated, her voice seeping care. “We need you. We’ll be waiting for you, don’t worry.”

Yet I did.

Once back to my office, I sat in my rocking chair under the cracking porch, wobbling back and forth under the freezing windchill. Drums started over my head as rain flowed down the city from the sky. The dirt melted and washed away in torrents through the cracks in the asphalt under my eyes. Light streaked the sky, its rumble following close. What should I do?

In abrupt bursts, bolts of lightning showered the city. The lights cast shadows over the black buildings, moving and living eerily. As the headrest of my chair ascended, I peeked a look at the walls closing on the square. Darkness was seeping out of the carvings, shadows and undead getting back to life. The black silhouettes crawled numbly around, my eyelids unbeatably heavy. Was my mind failing me? Ranks of anonymous featureless shadows crawled forward around Hollow Shades, entering, leaving, waiting in my range of vision, seeking for some incomprehensible things that I couldn’t even fathom. I heard the laughter of children playing soccer, the humming of an old buck puffing through his pipe, a mare welcoming clients, another eyeing passers-by, and screams… lots and lots of tortured shallow howls.

Cold trickles of sweat rolled from the top of my neck to my left flank, stinging me along its way with unbearable shakes. Wind blowing through my mane, the night loomed its darkness over me, the rain its maiden. I fought back tears, biting my lips in resignation. Blinking to wash away the achy dark waters, I screamed the vision for the vision to disappear. But it wasn’t my choice to do. He… it, or she wouldn’t go… Through the raindrops, one specific child’s shadow lurked out of the night from beyond the occupied Luna’s fountain as a drowned foal out of black and murky abysses. Her two dull green glowing eyes punctured my coat, pain ripping off my soul. My fur raised on its root. Lightning bolted through the watery sky, cracking off the dark dissimulating veil masking the… thing’s smile. A monstrously wide grin. Saw-shaped green-glowing white teeth. Smiling, waiting, teasing. The blackness bubbled around its traits, popping and sprawling so its shape was never really defined… or simply redefining throughout its wavy movements, like a primordial darkness from where life was going to birth and die for the first time. Sometimes edgy. Sometimes only a simple overzealous and devouring smile in the nether.

“Go away,” my lips articulated, my throat deprived of air and sound. “No pony will be yours tonight. Go away, ghost lost in darkness. Remain far away from them.”

I blinked. It disappeared. My stomach churned and growled. Fear crawling in my mind, clamping my thoughts with alien desires. Freedom, escape, destruction, oblivion.

“Vault…” Just a murmur.

I gulped.

“Vault!” A mere scream.

I whimpered.

“Vault.” A simple order.

I looked aside at the old buck rocking chair, now completely black and reeking off darkness. Above the carved black shape moved a mass of shadows, slowly materializing. A head, two… no four hooves, snatching off the furniture’s forms. Lightning boomed. Its smile, through melted, holed, and rubbery, bubbled lips. A tail weaving like a snake around the wood of the chair. A darker than black, light-devouring, and dropping mane. And finally white eyes ripped off their pupils staring into me.

“Why are you leaving, Vault? Why’re you leaving if you always come back,” it tore through his throat.

“It’s my home,” I answered. “My place is here.”

“So, why do you even leave? You thrive to flee. Pathethic! You don’t deserve nothing of this.”

Yes, I was pathetic, a mare that didn’t even know what she wanted, hesitating between many possibilities and offers until those opportunities had long run dry. Incapable of choice. Incapable of thought. Incapable of living.

“Do you remember the day the bombs fell?”

The creature’s head hung on the side toward me, giving me tearing black puppy eyes. I nodded, thinking about the many screams, shouts, and cries… Incapable of forgetting. Pain flowed down the back of my hooves as the apparition touched me. But the pain came from where my teeth had bitten deep, imperceptibly at first. Blood dripped down, melting with the rain splashing over me, the wind rendering the porch useless. Eyes burst open, I looked at the shadowy square, hazing with the flashes, rumbles, and drumming.

“Yes, I do,” I muttered.

“it still burns, eh?” it teased. “The screams, the heat, the pain. But you lived against all odds!”

“I…” I whimpered. “Everypony keeps disturbing me, I want to rest.”

It smirked at me with such jealousy it reeked off her pitch-black swallowing hide.

“Who are you?” I was fed up repeating that question at each of our encounter. It wasn’t the first time I had that argument.

“Stupid question as always,” it retorted. “I’m what you’ve stolen from! From everypony that died here.”

I breathed in and found myself unable to exhale, my head turning red, burning. The thing stood over me from her fragile stature, scowling down at me.

“I…”

“What is good is forever forgotten, and it’s bad,” she howled. “What is bad is worshipped on an altar, and it’s bad too.” She giggled. “So, what can you be sure of?”

“Of what I do!” I spat back mechanically. “That I must survive.”

“So, why are you coming back here again and again? You’ve stolen lives.Now you’re offered freedom but you’re stealing it from yourself?”

“Because you can’t leave Hollow Shades,” I hissed. “Ponies hurt, but I can forgive them. You! You hurt more. You cannot leave.”

“Yet I will!” It neared its head toward mine. It kissed my closed lips and I felt my breath taken away. Her voice rose once again. But it wasn’t hers… It was… mine. “One way… or another.” She… it gave me a little challenging nod, its smile ripping off its cheeks from ear to ear and beyond. An open maw.

It dropped his… its head on the side and drifted away for what seemed to be an eternity, hopping on legs shaped into slicing cones. Hooves sent through an oversized pen sharpener, sinking slightly in the mud, cracking the layer beneath. A nearly inaudible feminine laugh fell in its stead as it merged away in the pitch-black rain. It took effort not to faint on the spot, knowing it would come back stabbing me.

I cried under the muffling wind, the deafening thunder, and the horrid howls that had gobbled up my town. I crawled my poor body to my desk, crumbled down in my chair, curled up, and the good hoof of Morpheus welcomed me in a nightmarish sleep as I wept myself until my tears would dry. But they never had.

Ø VƱ ϵ α Ħ E!α ϵ Ʊ Ø

Outside Hollow Forest, once travelers had crossed the border, a makeshift encampment stood still, soaked in the rain that had watered down the region the whole night long. The sun had peered over the hill and clouds in the eastern horizon, nibbling the wasteland with cold tendril of grey light through the grey lid over my head.

“She won’t come,” Loz rambled, focused on scrubbing off the mud splattered onto his shiny black shotgun, his battle saddle suspended next to him on a low branch of a carbonized tree. “We shouldn’t have come here. Used too much stuff for nothin’.”

His pink coat had turned violent with the rain, his ponytail was now a disheveled mass of hair falling on his shoulders. around him was scattered emptied RadAways.

“We said we’ll wait in the morning. And morning ends at noon,” she condescended. “We stay.”

“Smartass,” he grunted.

I had awaited long behind a tree nearing the end of the forest, trying to catch anything from the duo. Minutes spent doing so taught me they were kinda boring.

“I’m here,” I bellowed, slowly walking out of the Hollow Forest, a small saddlebag hanging over my loader barding and my two guns shining below. “Sorry for making you wait.”

Surprisingly, Blast hugged me tight, giving me a bright warm smile. “Thanks. I was sure you’d make the right decision. Staying alone there is not healthy, ponies are meant to band together.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t so sure about the band-thing. I had heard grim things happened in the south, near the Bad Lands.

“So, are we going?” Loz asked, loading his gun with large twelve millimeters cartridges. Grinning at each crystalline and smooth click his shotgun gave in response. Damn scary pink buck.

I looked down at the box of cartridges between his hooves. My eyes grew wide. The gauge cartridges were transparent, leaving the slugs exposed… Well, first there were only one slug per cartridge, similar to a sabot if it was the name. One large heavy sharp slug with fins filling each gauge entirely made my mane crawl. How deadly were those bullets, if you could still call them that?

“Brenneke slugs,” Loz called out, smirking at my sudden fear of his arsenal. “Meant for deep penetration, extreme crippling, and wall breaking.” He aimed at me and pulled the trigger. I ‘eeped, until I understood the safety was still on. “...you don’t want to be on the trajectory.”

“Fuck you with a metal bar,” I shouted.

He clacked the pump back and forth in his mouth, loading in the last slug.

“An eye for an eye, a tease for a tease,” he cackled.

Blast whacked the back of his head with a hoof.

“Stop scaring people with your gun, dumbass. You already do with your color,” she mocked.

“Don’t start with that too,” he muttered. “You promised me”

She raised her eyes to the sky. “Of course.” Then looked at me. “You’re ready to go?”

“Yes. But we aren’t going straight to Manehattan.”

The two pairs of glaring eyes that rammed through me after that creeped me out. I had to pull out an explanation, quick. I sweated, stuttering. “Don’t worry, we’ll just need help. I know a buck. Name’s Moebius.”

“Where does he live?” Blast asked, not reassured. “We’re running out of time.”

“It’s on the way. There’s just a short detour to make. He lives in Fillydelphia.”

I had never seen pupils shrink so fast and veins burst red around irises.

“Filly… delphia?” they both trembled.

“Yes, why?”

“…” They both stared silently at each other. They looked back at me like I was some kind of autistic-aggravated idiot that hadn’t crawled out of an isolation chamber for two decades. People often gave me this look. Never understood why.

“You’re crazy!” they cried out. “It’s a death hole!”

“You’ll see, he’s a funny stallion!” I laughed.

“You’re twigged.”

And I laughed even more.

ⱴ ⱷ ꜠ Ω ꜡ ⱷ ⱴ

Footnotes; Vault Skin, Class: Wanderer, Level Up

New Perk: “’You saw that?’ ‘Saw what?’”

Maybe you are a parapsychic mare, or maybe you’re just plain crazy. However it seems that you nurture a deep connection with the past. Be careful it doesn’t trap you in a thought reality that isn’t real.

Maybe… just Maybe...

Jan. 2014 - Fallout:Equestria Wish Machines - Prologue
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Jan. 2014 - Fallout:Equestria Wish Machines - Prologue

Prologue

How does it feel trying not to fall asleep while being in the most precarious situation? Well, from my expert point of view, it’s slightly annoying…

‘Snip’

I jerked my head aside, a dull spike of pain shivering down my left ear.

“Ouch! Careful with scissors! You jerk!” I spat at my manedresser, struggling onto the largest shop’s angled chair, a large fabric thrust over me and a hot humid towel on my eyes, for security he had said.

I was just afraid of scissors… and knives… and needles… and files… everything that able to slice and cut through a pony’s hide. Dammit, my life had been threatened to end at the tip of an edge so much I had developed repulsion to anything enough sharp to kill. Somehow, I was glad I was a mare… I wouldn’t be able to shave myself if I had been gifted… well... that testosterone factory between a male’s legs.

“Oh sorry, Vault,” a stallion chuckled. “But with that shock of hair you’ve got, I can’t really see where your ears fall. How long has it been since the last time?”

“Two years,” I grumbled, feeling clumps of dirty and disheveled hairs fall onto the canvas covering me.

“See,” he snickered. “If you were to come here more often, you wouldn’t have suffered from my little misdemeanor.”

Well… big words. I was used to them with that poor rump of a stallion he was. Damn, memorizing names had never been my talent. Another shameful weakness he had remind me the second I had stepped in his shop. It wasn’t my fault, I traveled. I had never been able to come back here since the last time. It wasn’t even more my fault if caps didn’t flow out of my wallet to get a proper haircut regularly. Trading was a daily struggle in the wasteland.

“You shouldn’t be so cheap,” he admonished me. “You would gain to be beautiful.”

“Ain’t my job to be a pretty mare,” I growled.

“Suit yourself,” he playfully acknowledged my complaint.

I huffed. I wasn’t penny-pinching with that lad, I swear!

“You really ain’t easy to deal with, you know,” he neighed, struggling with the smelly tangled locks he combed and cut, paying no care to my whining.

“Ouch…” I sighed. “If you were kinder… Ouch! …With me.”

“What don’t you get rid of that big tiara of yours?” Did I have to go through that question every time I needed to socialize with somepony? “Because, it’s not making my job any easier.”

He was a clever boy, he had kept in mind how I had reacted to the sight of scissors flying over my head the last time. In this position, the towel over my eyes, I wasn’t given to see the mirror in front of me. But it didn’t matter. I had looked at my face so many times and shoveled down that constant headache to get that my ‘tiara’ wasn’t gone. It would never be.

“For a hundredth time… it’s rigged to my head. Like screwed, riveted, stuck, glued…”

He heard him shrug. The jewel, if you could call it so, was a one-centimeter thick strap of black metal circling my forehead. It stretched behind my ears until its two ends met above my backbone where my mane stopped growing. Across the years, time had attacked it, leaving a dark, almost wrecked, tiara. Once completely plain, the diadem was marred with indents that had stripped the paint away.

This item followed me everywhere with its constant, nearly invisible migraine. It was my own stupid, ugly crown, which ponies were used to giving me names, fearful stares, or curious glances from. In the Wasteland, differences were despised on, marks of the alien. And to be honest, I often felt like a stranger to myself.

I had been teased so much throughout the years I never stuck with any group, settlement, or pony. I wasn’t an outcast though. I referred to myself more like a mercenary, an escort, and sometimes a factotum. I was bound to side with nopony. A sad life in perspective. But I was given to travel and do something different from just surviving, scavenging the rotten remains of a society dead eighteen years ago.

“So Vault, whatcha gonna do?” my manedresser told me. “Heard you finished your job with the Talons.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed, waving away his coming questions. “Had to help a group of Steel Rangers through the Wasteland’s northern regions. Happened that an Equestrian Army’s wrecked warship had ran aground in South Québeak. I wasn’t expecting they would ask me to escort back their finding to Baltimare.”

“Baltimare, that’s quite a long run,” he snorted back in surprise. “Haven’t they finally cleared a path to Tenpony Tower? After eighteen years?”

I grumbled. I had heard stories of Tenpony Tower… The mega spell that had hit Manehattan during the Last Day had been so disruptive thick greyish clouds of radiation had plunged the whole coastal region into a deadly darkness. Worse, the fallouts had stayed so concentrated and intense it even messed with the spell matrixes and regenerative talismans of the Steel Rangers’ power armors. Manehattan had had been a pit of silence, cut from the remains of civilization wandering about Equestria since. Yet, every status-quo was to change one day.

The rumor had spread like wildfire. A courageous group of Steel Ranger initiates, commanded by a paladin, had pierced through the crumbled city’s metro and found its way to Tenpony Tower. What they had found were survivors. Real survivors! Not the feral ghouls that commonly roamed inside those no pony’s lands. How they had survived for eighteen years was still unknown to me… Rumors were rumors, but the fact remained that over the five Steel Rangers that had roved in Manehattan’s deadlands, only three had come back. Apparently the survivors had reacted with violence to the group of heavily armored scavengers.

Many ponies had been laughing under cover to this half-failure. During the maybe six or five last years, the surviving rangers had gathered into cohorts and started a gory crusade, wrestling out of the dust the technologies lost after the apocalypse. A noble quest if you ask me… But kind words weren’t an excuse to the massacres they had originated. ‘Technologies over ponies’ were their motto from now on.

“Baltimare is a safe place,” I retorted. “But heck… we moved a warship cannon on more than seven hundred miles… a real pain in the ass.”

“A… cannon?” he pondered, hardly finding any truth my statement.

“Not any kind of gun,” I added. “A monster that shot rounds of sixteenth. Kinda something capable to saw off a skyscraper.”

“You just had to roll it down the hills,” he teased me with a sarcastic tone.

I glared daggers at him, the towel on my face blocking the way though.

“They just wanted to take the loading system out,” I grunted. “They didn’t expect it to be worth seventy tons. The operation lasted four months instead of one…” Feeling the sore muscles in my back and legs I let a long breath slither through my teeth. “At least I got a humongous pay.”

The stylist’s ears flapped happily at the thought that I was indeed going to pay for his services. He didn’t even hide his glee… Had I built such a reputation about being a bad customer? It wasn’t my fault if my wallet had nothing but dust and moths inside most of the time.

I groaned, completely exhausted by the journey. My job had been to scout around southern Québeak, making sure no random scavenger was going to disturb the operations. Some skirmishes with bandits and Talon’s remnants had happened, but that was all. Those four months had gone languidly, nearly boring me to death.

“Why did the Steel Rangers recruit you? They never rely on an external help.”

He was right. The rangers were notorious for their chauvinism, preferring to go naked into radiation rather than asking for help from wanderers like me.

“I have… had a debt toward a paladin,” I dropped.

“Oh…”

I wasn’t really answering the question, but at last it was better than just pissing the real reason out. Yeah, I was indebted toward one of the Steel Rangers’ paladins, but I hadn’t paid it back yet. The real reason was far less appealing.

A long silence settled between the two of us, only broken by the snips and snaps of his scissors over my messy locks. I could hear a few ponies walking outside of the shop, talking loudly as they passed by. Conversations were all about Tenpony Tower. Rumors indeed spread like wildfire. He took a long and muffled breath.

“So, how much do you weigh now?” he ‘subtly’ asked.

I snorted. And he said I was picky on money...

“A lot of caps and...”

The doorbell rang as somepony stepped into the shop, his horseshoes thundering on the creaking parquet. A coat flapped on the pony’s side as breeze engulfed the room, until he slammed the door shut.

“Sorry. I already have a customer, please come back in thirty min-”

The rattling of a weapon being unstrapped shushed my manedresser. His hooves started fidgeting and he deliberately fall back behind my chair...

“Don’t you dare move,” a stallion barked at him.

A clip being loaded in a chamber pinged on my far right, the newcomer’s hoofsteps echoing on the floor as he contoured my chair.

“Keep doing your job, wrinkled balls,” he spat.

Now cursed with irrepressible quivers, the scissors summed up their activity over my head. I bit my lips, he was going to needle me with the tips, again. Did I told you I feared pointy things?

I tried to hide my own tremor, to no avail. At least I benefited from that canvas to dissimulate my train of thought. Unfortunately, my hooves dwelled on the chair’s armrests and I couldn’t move properly. Enough said the wet towel on my eyes blinded me as well.

Chair legs screeched on the wooden floor as the aggressive stallion pulled a stool one or two pony’s lengths in front of me, somewhere a bit on the right.

‘Snip’

I gritted my teeth at the scissors, feeling their movements as they tickled the top of my mane. The security of his weapon tinged off and I slightly ducked my head between my shoulders. A drop of sweat trickled down my neck and I swallowed.

“What do you want?” I croaked.

The intruder pulled his chair closer and the cold bite of a barrel stung my cheek. Cogwheels whizzed and turned and… A power armor… he had a fucking power armor, even if it sounded scrapped and lighter.

‘Snip’

“Please stop,” I requested my manedresser, pleading his messy hooves and tools would stop touching the skin under my mane.

“Keep going,” he was ordered.

I was dead if I couldn’t find a way out of this situation. And those damn scissors! Stop.

“You stole something from the rangers, didn’t you?”

My ears perked up. My breath died. I would have vented my innocence but the tip of a gun pressed painfully into my skin. My heartbeat raced up and sweat moistened my face. His hoof petted mine on the armrest.

“Good,” he cracked. “You’re not going to fuck me up on this argument.”

“Why do you think I would?” I chatted, trying to gain time to think straight.

‘Snip’

If only that scissors could stop.

“In Baltimare, you’ve dealt with us. We paid you a lot of caps but still, you stole something in the archives.”

“You really think I would smuggle something out of the Ministry of Wartime Technology’s hub?” I sneered. “I’m not that dumb, you know. I wouldn’t fuck with an employer that pay me three times the common price for my services.”

He snickered. “Yet you still took something away from us. Vault the trespasser ain’t a pony that messes with the Steel Rangers. So now you’ve got two choices. First one, you give us back what you stole and the caps we paid you, and we won’t talk about it ever again. Or, I just have to kill you and justice will be served. For my brothers you’ve deceived.”

The hammer of his revolver clicked back, now armed and ready to fire a big caliber bullet right into my face and skull. The cold maw of the weapon ran across my skin, weaving to my right ear, then wandering to my eyes until it reached my forehead, stopping only under my leaded crown.

My face was burning, the tip of my hooves quaking imperceptibly under the cape collecting the fallen hairs.

‘Snip’

Oh, please… made that sound stop.

“I don’t have all my day, Vault Skin,” the ranger bleated. “I would dislike to kill you, you’re a good pony, helping. Just a shame you’re a little thief.”

Under the swab, my eyes shot open, aiming in the direction I thought he was. his gun waved around my head in an impossible way, resounding with the twinkle of telekinesis. So he was a unicorn.

“Comply, Vault,” he averted.

I would have paid to see his face as my grin grew onto my own, revealing teeth I knew were yellow, some missing, loose, or decayed by time and a lack of hygiene. Casually, I turned my head right. I had dealt with bandits before, this one was a poor bum trying to get some food in his stomach. He had tried to bluff me with something I never did.

“You’re not a Steel Ranger,” I emphasized and licked my lips. “First because Steel Rangers don’t give power armor to unicorns. Second, because the Steel Rangers don’t refer to me with my real name.”

His hoof hit my face and the towel jolted away, leaving a trail of water as it twisted in the air. It hurt but I was now able to see. I looked aside and met the eyes of a young brown male unicorn with a muddy yellow mane. His horn flared a buttery white glimmer which clenched onto his massive revolver. He indeed possessed a power armor. However, it was a downward wreck of shit, a wreckage of what I had been used to see back with the Steel Rangers, the real ones. The armor’s joints were pierced, its wires and tubes leaked, and whole plaques of metal had been torn away by bullets. He even seemed ill-at-ease in this cage of metal.

“Where did you find that crap gear?” I coughed out small splatters of blood. “On a cadaver?”

“Stop playing that game, cunt!” he cursed. “Just give me your caps, I know they paid you well.”

I gave him one of my exhausted looks. I was tired. If he had asked me my spare change I would have given him. Heck, I was rich! But not for long, though. Yet, he willed to take my life and my caps. The gun quit its position aiming at my head and descended toward my chest. He wouldn’t dare, killing him was out of question, he would have done so the moment he had entered the shop. My guess was that he wasn’t a killer, not a yet-to-be murderer. Just a poor err...

‘Snip’

He was still here… My really dedicated manedresser. Or he was just scared to hell to move any further. Yep... his drumming teeth were enough to know he had pissed himself. The odor was just another proof.

Grimacing with disgust at the stylist, the unicorn drifted his attention back to me and jabbed my neck with the cold embrace of his gun.

“Where’re the caps?” he insisted.

I tried to stand up but one powerful blow in the face shoveled me back in my sitting position.

“Stay where you are, with your hooves on the armrest.”

“If you want them, I’ll have to take you there,” I noted. “You really think I would keep all my stuff on me? I ain’t silly. It would be uncomfortable.”

“Don’t be so cocky, bitch!”

The swish of a knife being pulled out of its sheath petrified me in my sloping chair. I saw the glint of the blade passing over me, enveloped in a magical aura. Though he didn’t move, the unicorn swapped his gun with the short sword, aiming at the poor manedresser who curled up, dropping his scissors on the ground. My attention was all aimed on the short blade, rusty, smeared with coagulated blood, and broken at its tip.

“You, colt cuddler,” the robber intoned at my stylist. “Get me her stuff, or I blow up your sorry head.”

“You threaten bunnies with that tooth-pick?” I ironized.

The blade suddenly dropped at an inch of my neck. Screaming, I jerked and kicked in my defenseless position. My breath reached its maximum. My heart pumped haphazardly, it was going to jumped out of my chest. My eyes watered. I could see my reflection on the sharpened edge beyond the filth. A pale green mare with a black mane broken with tiny streaks of greenish white. Age had taken a toll on me since the last time I had encountered a mirror. For a second I even forget the mirror was an epée meant to cut open my carotids. I looked in my green eyes, dark rings of fatigue circling them. My jaw was shivering at the sight of the sword. Please, I hate them so much.

“You’re less chatty, eh?” he grinned at me before turning back to the stylist. “Hurry up, gimme the caps or I kill you.”

“D-...” I began.

The sword dropped and I froze. The feeling of the edge on my skin was pregnant. No blood was running out. That bastard had swiveled it to its unsharpened side in his movement. I saw myself crying as I met back my reflect in the rising blade’s body. I also caught fear and anger, teeth gritted to a point I thought they would shatter. Yet, I calmly hung my head, defeated. Or not… Nopony threatened me like that. No pony.

Fighting through my tears, my instinct crying at me that survival mattered, I stared aside at the unicorn, gathering all my spirit to muster a fine answer.

“Let him go,” I stumbled upon my words.

Well, it wasn’t like I had wasted a chance for an epic line… He chuckled back at me, finding reassurance in my hurried and stuttering speech.

“Otherwise what?” he spat at me. “I can see your two hooves. If you’re not growing a horn or a pair of wings in the seconds to come, I don’t know what an old runt like you can do.”

That burned. An earth pony in this situation was pretty useless. In fact, in my leisure time I had often wondered why earth ponies hadn’t run extinct in the Wasteland. Unicorn were far more useful in a daily survival, and today unicorns monopolized the few remaining job in the wasteland. I had to admit unicorns proved themselves far more efficient than us earth ponies. Even a unicorn bandit was scarier than his earth pony counterpart. To be honest, only the Steel Rangers were tipping the weights back to a balance.

The roof started drumming and ponies sought for shelters outside. Rain, and with its acid and radioactive droplets, forced ponies away, throwing the shop into a stark silence and chiaroscuro ambience. It only needed a lightning bolt and… Here was a flash… one, two, three, four… and the loud crack rammed on the walls, vibrating in unison. The wasteland, so chaotic but predictable at the same time.

I focused back on the stallion, my breath loud and heavy, my eyes wobbling back and forth on the blade and the pony waving it at me.

“Otherwise I’ll kill you,” I proclaimed, gulping down the lump in my throat. I could still feel the touch of the knife on my neck. “As sheriff of Hollow Shades.”

I tensed. Looking in his eyes was a difficult exercise, I was the one nearly strapped onto the chair, my hooves empty and seeable by everypony smart enough to look at them. And it I who was at the wrong end of a knife. My belly growled from the stress and my head had a hard time not to reel. Messing around in a tilted chair wasn’t among my qualifications.

Yet, I obtained a little respite. My statement sparked a bribe of fear in the stallion’s mind. I had expected he would laugh at me, and I would have shared in the laughter with him. But he simply glared at me with blank empty eyes. The silence overwhelmed the shop, the drumming of the rain and the dripping of water falling through a crack in the roof counting the time for us. Watches had stopped functioning a while ago.

The unicorn’s nose was sizzling as he inhaled slowly, probably broken in the past in a tug fight. Given to see him under a better light, suspense building up between the two of us, sweat hurtled down the wrinkles cast upon his young frowning face.

My heart clenched, giving place to a strange void feeling I could only fill with fear. My stomach retched as I struggled to maintain a decent poker face. His eyes riveted on mine, goggling me with a blend of unbelief and incomprehension.

“Hollow… Shades… ?” he hesitated.

“Yes,” I prompted with a hissing voice, aware his knife was lazily dropping over me in his lack of attention. “That’s my city.”

I breathed out in an effort to erase this impression of deafness in my ears. Blood rang in my eardrums, hassling my concentration.

“I’ve…”

‘BANG!’

The rumble was followed with the gargles of a body dropping on the floor, the stylist’s.

‘BANG!’

The unicorn’s eyes met mine.

“No, I…”

His magic flailed. His smoking gun and short sword fell on the ground. His stare slowly looked down at my hooves, still on their armrests, only a small hole was visible in the cap covering me, giving fumes. He lifted his hooves to his neck, groping clumsily where his Adam’s apple should have been. He only found a jetting open wound, smearing his brown fur with loads of dark red. His legs darkened with the blood’s color. His hindquarters staggered and failed him. Crumbling on his back, he didn’t even fight back the pain. His eyes vomited anger and bewilderment at me. Those eyes… gradually fading to a shade of black.

“The Steel Rangers didn’t only give me caps.”

I rose from my innate stance, my back giving cracking pops under the effort. I shake myself, letting my sore and asleep limbs drop on the ground. Chills ran beneath my skin as my fur rose on its root. The unicorn gunning me down with his crying eyes, I tapped the cape put on my body with my hoof. He followed me to the small hole where fumes still billowed through. His mouth was formulating one deaf question… why… or how…

“I’m a one trick pony,” I conceded. “You don’t teach a monkey how to make funny faces, though.”

I pulled off me the canvas. The expression of stupor on his face broke a sad smile on mine. For the whole duration of his crazed conversation, I had slowly moved beneath the cover. Only my two hooves unmoving on the armrests had lured him away from the true threat.

“You’ve never seen a powered work loader saddle?” I mused sadly. “Don’t worry. You’re not the first one… You won’t be the last.”

Turning my head back at my rump, a dusty battle saddle welcomed my sight. The two rivets where should have stood weapons gave their space to large hydraulic joints powering two humming mechanical prosthetics which wrists ended with four-finger claws. The right one seized up one large revolver stamped with the Ministry of Wartime Technology’s symbol, giving fumes from its bore. The other limb however was folded on my side, occupying the place of a would-be saddlebag. A laser beam handgun was clipped beneath, ready to be draw out as the limb would telescope. Completely built in metal, its edges were cushioned with a worn out leather that would irritate my skin. Maintained onto my back with locks easily distinguishable under the metal limbs, the saddle fitted closely with my starved curves. A keyhole was constructed in each side of the item, ready to welcome a terminal key to discharge the magical locking system that managed the fixation. Too bad I had lost the key years ago… I didn’t always take the largest chairs for no reason, and I wasn’t fat! The upper part of the saddle covering my back was occupied with a zooming spell matrix allowing me to control the machine. It was a beautiful piece of magic and technology, a property of the M.W.T. I hadn’t stolen, I swear!

The unicorn hiccupped before me, tapping onto my front hooves with his. Pleading eyes that refused to accept it was the end of the trail for him. Biting my bottom lip, I stepped closer and looked at the heavy tears rolling off his cheeks, melting with the blood for those which trickled from his neck. I sighed.

“I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I can’t do anything for you. It’s too late.”

A moan of pain erupted from behind the chair. I peered an eye beyond and saw the manedresser jerking and yapping about his shoulder. He might be a wimp, but he would survive. The other stallion however...

Watching over a dying pony was never easy. Especially if it was one you’ve just shot. I sat next to him and scanned his body. His blood expanding under his body was soon almost like a red lake. My fur soaked in the fluid, warm and smelly. Exhaling, I hunched over him and slipped my hooves beyond his shoulders. Straining on my muscles, I lifted him up to my chest, sporting the most motherly face I could draft. I sang a lullaby for the dying.

"Little filly, why are you weeping

While I'm watching over you?

Tell me, little filly, why are you crying

While I'm staying with you?

My thought are all for you,

Caring for every moment

For my girl I have and will pursue

Each simple enjoyment

There is a train, Little Filly

Heading to heaven’s gate

Crying freedom with mighty glee

Ready to take away the hate

Dry those tears, Lil’ Filly

The dark nights soon will end

Though the storm is chilly

The sun will surely ascend

Sadness is common load, Filly

I just hope you’ll find laughter

While everypony gonna knee

To the reaper mare’s cold brazier

Thank the time you will spend

to walk life with beaten cleats

Just be careful Filly where you wend

Be careful with the rails down the streets

Lil’ Filly, the train takes blindly

As long as you can, away from its tracks

Let the heart run ablaze in your thorax

The train awaits ildy, brashly... bluntly

Little filly, why are you sobbing

Remember I’ll always be right here

Little filly, stop your mourning

For you, I’ll never… disappear...”

Glassy and teary eyes dropped in their sockets, witnessing a nether I couldn’t fathom. With the same sorrowful smile, I leaned my head to his ear.

“I’m sorry,” I begged. “Hope the Ever-After will treat you well.”

I hauled him out of the puddle of blood, hearing it dripping off my kneecaps and belly. Scrapping the armor off his starving limbs, I laid him on the cape. Something as simple as a piece of fabric which had served to hide the slow movements of my prosthetic arm, an extension of myself that had, in the end, dealt him the final blow. Leaving him there, not like he was going to move anyway, I paced toward the stylist and put him right back on his three remaining working legs.

“You okay?” I eyed him with those ironic moves of my brows.

He was bleeding and grunting, but it was not something that would kill him. The glare he shot back at me said it all, he’d survive. I chuckled. He just stared back at me with scared, shaky eyes.

“I’m sorry I messed up your shop… and your shoulder,” I panted, feeling all the stress I had ducked back in my chest pour out of each of my pores.

Breathing loudly, I let my bum hit the floor in a crack. My coccyx and tail would hurt me for a few days. On his own, the stallion was wincing, sweating heavily as he bit on his tongue and lips to lower the pain. The tendons of his neck flapped under the rush of adrenaline, his eyelids shivered uncontrollably.

“And you,” he called, looking at me like I was a ghost. “You sure it’s okay. I’m just hurt. But you… Don’t you fear the blood.”

I laughed, a cackling which died in the instant as I raised slowly my head up to him, seeking for an excuse, and any kind of redemption in his look.

“Not the first time I killed,” I mourned. “It won’t be the last. And I’ve seen worse.”

I sighed at that painful truth. The wasteland was harsh on everypony. Few were given to live long and even if eighteen years only separated ourselves from the last day of civilization, it was far enough for challenging the spark of a pony we all were, remnants of the old world. I was more worried for the generations to come. Such acknowledgments as Celestia or Luna’s reign and visions would soon be forgotten, or would become forlorn myths. And like many ponies, I was wondering what was going to happen after this tipping point.

“And the song?” he found the courage to ask.

I would have preferred he didn’t.

“A song I wrote for my daughter… a long time ago,” I blubbered, feeling tears I couldn’t fight back crawling up to my eyes.

“Where is she now?” he brought forth.

“I don’t know… I don’t know anymore.”

Hiding my mood, I passed by his side and went to the stock room behind his stall where I knew he had stored my gear. I found a small torn brown coat, a cowmare’s hat, a heavy purse, and two pairs of leathered and metal reinforced horseshoes, worn out by endless walks. Putting the coat, the hat, and the shoes on, I hesitated to throw the purse upon my flank. My eyes met my bloodied side, hiding under a thick and glued layer a good half of my Cutie Mark. I caught the curious stylist’s look.

Even I often failed on how to properly describe it. A pitch black shield of a rectangular shape which bottom side was tapered into a point, slit open in its middle and closing on a strange dark green circle engulfed in imperceptible green flame. I concede it was a pretty badass Cutie Mark.

“Could I borrow a towel?” I chipped in, eager to waive away the topic. “Just to wipe off the blood.”

He hoofed me one. The next few minutes stretched to eternity trying to erase the red shade off my greenish hide, to no avail. I will need a bath. I chided myself, I lacked time for such a fancy leisure. It was time to hit the road again. I sadly looked at the stylist, waiting, observing me. I hung my head. I opened my purse and put a hoof full of caps in his. If we would have been in a cartoon, his eyes would have blasted with two equestrian notes, too bad we weren’t in one and that bits had fallen into disuse. You couldn’t hold value in something that wasn’t built to last.

“I’ll take care of the body,” I offered. “I don’t want that on your shoulders, nor on any of the ponies from that town. Just use my money for cleaning everything, and get a healing potion. The wound is superficial, but you know, infections come fast.”

“You sure you want to do it?” he demanded after a short nod. “I could get the undertaker.”

Walking to the corpse, I caught the ponies giving us fascinated looks through the windows of the shop. The rain had imperceptibly stopped and the gunshot had attracted passers-by like crows to a fresh carcass. Many were fillies and foals, dirty and malnourished, eyeing me with devouring eyes. Crows. I glared daggers in their direction and they fled.

I leaned toward the cadaver, eyes closed and the blood already clotting in his open throat. Somehow, a slight smile was drawn his lips. I closed his front hooves over his chest, folded his hind legs over him.

“Sorry I didn’t know you name,” I murmured.

Using the same absorbent towel, I washed off as much blood I could before closing the stylist’s cape over him. Working as an undertaker I supposed was a pretty grim vocation. But somepony needed to take the shift.

“How you’re going to move it?”

“Him,” I corrected. “I have a brahmane outside.”

“Wait, you’ve got one of those two-headed cows?”

I laughed.

“Don’t be silly. Those are legends. I have yet to see some of those mutated creeps that ponies say graze the wastes. I turned off toward here when I reached Fillydelphia’s borders. I just found that brahmane hanging around, and it was a tamed one.”

“Well, I’ve seen some big cockroaches in the region.”

“Radiation kills,” I stated. “And if it doesn’t, well… Celestia has mercy of your soul.”

I didn’t leave him the time to answer. I would be glad to avoid talking about ghouls. I pulled the packed body out, leaving a bloody trail in its stead. The cow was there, standing idly next to a bucket of murky water I had bargained at the saloon. The sky was bleeding out, aching and choking, the air drenched with thick reddish clouds that blocked the sun’s light, its slivers struggling to pierce through. The wind whizzed over my head, making the brass sun sculpture hung onto the top of the nearby church spin in an endless screech. The ground was moistened with rain, small rivers was weaving in the cracks, and soon my horseshoes would be covered in mud.

Throw in stark relief, the town was marred by a layer of red and sickened orange descending from the sky. Ugly and rotting houses creaked around me, and yet ponies survived here. It was a rather enjoyable sight, if not purely depressing. But as I’d just said, they outlived the many ordeals of a merciless daily life, barely. Skin over bones, sunken cheeks, and bulged out eyes struck my sight. Seeking for something more reassuring, I looked up beyond the decaying roofs that populated the small city. Beyond the distant I found my eyes stuck on the sharp steep of a massive mountain… Foal Mountain, going straight from Canterlot’s peak to the outskirts of Fillydelphia. The Western part of the chain was delimited by the bed of a dried river that had evaporated with the balefire. I also nurtured memories of the tips of Foal Mountain being covered by the white embrace of snow. Today it was just an ugly shade of brown, grey, and red sprouting like a bad pimple toward the blocused sky. My hometown was beyond that mountain, but it was dangerous to clamber it, ponies have disappeared on its slopes. The cold hacked them away, or something else might have. My way was to hike around the mountain to finish my journey. The city I was in marked the location where the ancient river forked toward the south. Junction was its name.

I hoisted the wrapped body over the brahmane’s back which snorted at the new and disturbing load.

“Do this for me,” I gently asked the creature, rubbing its chin. “It won’t be long.”

The cow carried a large saddlebag I had darned back to a rather good shape. I had emptied though, I hadn’t been trustful in leaving it unattended with food and supplies while being given a haircut… haircut… I growled. I hadn’t finished the session. Turning around, the stylist was waiting in the threshold of the door. With the dim sunlight, I was finally given a proper view on his traits. He was a grey turquoise unicorn with a brownish orange mane falling behind his ears. His thin legs looked even slender, a long lasting lack of nutriments was to blame. His flank sported white and grey open scissors. He smiled at me.

“My name is Snips by the way.” He blinked at me, setting my cheeks on fire.

His hoof on his shoulder, blocking the blood from flowing out too quickly, he trotted to the nearest medical centre, leaving small smears of blood behind. I hung my head low and took my only cattle to the nearby food shop. I had a long way to go back home.

Finally, I went my own way and stepped out of the city, lonesome and battered by those time of wrongness. The brahmane humming in the air, I cast a last glance at the old isolated town of Junction. Everything was a shade of yellow, orange, and red… An atmosphere of death and reclusion.

Days passed as I walked along the waterless bed of the Foal Mountain’s river, each one of them making the high slopes of Canterlot’s peak bigger and bigger in the horizon. The sky above the ancient capital was swamped with pinkish clouds, which forced ponies to avoid that place like the plague. Strange stories circulated about monsters and inventions of the devil hiding among the ruins. I wasn’t enough brave enough to check it by myself.

A week had flown by when I reached the end of foal mountain’s ridges. Canterlot was only twenty miles from there. Its look only was sufficient to wash me with a retching impression of emptiness. I had visited Canterlot in the past, before the bombs. I wasn’t ready to excavate the past from the ruins. The past… I had been told once that a beautiful architecture is what makes beautiful ruins. I didn’t remember who had said that, a wise pony for sure, and he was right. The world was deeply ugly to my eyes; the truth was the world had always been ugly to begin with. Even in the wasteland there was a kind of continuity.

Contouring Foal Mountain, I headed toward the East in Manehattan’s direction and soon I followed the tracks of an old rusty railway, which had connected the big metropolis with Canterlot. The railway was not a single straight trip toward the coastal city. The tracks forked after their detour near of Neighagra Falls toward the South, a large forest hung to the north face of Foal Mountain. There, deep beneath a once green ocean, ponies could find a medium-sized city wearing the sweet name of Hollow Shades. My hometown. The city I was responsible for as a sheriff.

From Junction it took me two weeks to reach the border of the Hollow Forest. The trip had been spent lonely with a wasteland and a cow for some companions. I was used to it though, at least since the bombs had dropped. Trees had been scrapped off their leaves. Birds died long ago and their chirping, long forgotten. Even the color green was something eerie today. And without my own pale green hide, I would have thrown that piece of basic knowledge into oblivion. It was amazing how ponies could forget such basics if they weren’t used to deal with them on a daily basis.

Cracks splitted the road in the Wasteland, giving space to a yellowish weed growing among the fissures in the asphalt. The white paint of the marking had been scratched away and the blackness of the coating had turned grey and brown with dirt and sand.

The road… The road stopped at the border of the forest, leaving a narrow beaten path next to the disused railway.

The Hollow Forest itself had once bore the leaves of the deepest green. But today, it was nothing but a gigantesque orchard of burnt black, crooked, and disgusting trunks which branches pointed at the absent sky, imploring mercy to the princesses. Maybe they were howling at the hidden sun, the excruciating pain the Last Day had spread across Equestria. I would never know. I just stepped on the path with my brahmane, alone with those blackened ribs of long gone life.

Like many things in the wasteland, the Hollow Forest was stuck in a bubble of time and utter silence during the day. Unsettling and mind-wrecking, the forest was cast in shadows that fought back the weak sunlight. Wandering deep in its meanderings was an ordeal, similar to moving through the dusk during the few minutes before all light had died in the horizon. By night, I was huddling myself close to the cow, both seeking for the little warmth we could snatch out of each other. I was afraid of lighting a fire in such a place. I did once. If the forest was creepy by day… The night was the nest of my deepest fears. The hot embers rising in the air blasted across the field of dead trees relentless and mangling shadows that twisted, turning into improbable shapes that gave my mind terrific hallucinations to chew on. Never again I would use my lighter here. You didn’t light a torch in the Hollow Forest. You just keep your rank, hiding, waiting immobile for the sun to rise again behind the cloud cover.

If the forest was dreadfully silent by day, the night was a nightmare of low, recurring sounds. Trunk cracked in heavy thumps, their dead black fossilised branches waving under an absent wind. I always closed my eyes during those moments, when your superstitious brain rambled on that the night was going to swallow you whole like a nameless god’s mouth, crunching your bones apart and sucking your blood out. I was curling up, putting my hooves onto my ears, waiting for sleep to take over me.

It was the last night before I finally made my way back home and it was as dark as ever. Stars had deserted my nocturnal life since eighteen years and the light pouring out of the moon was not strong enough to carry a glitter through the cloud cover. The trees moaned and their darker than black shadows tweaked and hacked in my eyes. I could feel the shivers running through the cow. It sought for a refuge under my shoulder. A root cracked within a stone’s throw, and I perked my head low, sniffing. My trembling hoof reached the cow’s saddle. I ransacked its bottom and stopped on the object of my thoughts. Pulling it out, I skidded on the pocket’s leather strap and the item bounced off me, bashing over the top of my head until it hit the ground in a bone crack.

Fearing a forest and shadows that I knew couldn’t hear or smell us, I stretched my hooves and caught the thing. Protective, I curled over the round object. It was a cold curvy ball with two large gaps encasing a smaller triangular shaped one. The whole stood over an articulated part which edge tickled my skin beneath my fur. A skull...

Rolling over, encasing between my hooves the thing, I coiled myself against the cow’s smelly belly and it did the same with its head. Whistling softly, I waited for the night to eat me away. Sleep only came one of two hours later.

The morning struck me like a punch in the gut. Sipping some poorly purified water, I chewed and swallowed some preservative-soaked cereals. Everything was bought from a store back in Junction, even the food for the cow though it could sustain itself with the grass along the way.

Taking one of the leather straps of the Brahmane’s saddle bag, I tied the skull to it and hit the road once again. Drizzle was raining from the sky as the sun reached noon. We passed by an antique plaque marking two miles before Hollow Shades. Grass and mangled thorns wrapped the rails, pointing out that no train had rolled down this track for two decades.

The more I moved forward, the more the land slowly lost its cover of dead trees, giving on a dust-saturated ground devoid of relief, eerily plane and sloping toward a city that could welcome thirty thousand souls. I smiled. I was back home.

As always, foals played next to the walls of the cottages, their soccer ball thrust in the air. As always an atmosphere of decay glowed out of the houses. Many had their roofs destroyed, knocked off walls and the doors and other wooden infrastructures bore the marks of flames and time.

“Hi, Munchkins,” I greeted the foals with their balloon, who didn’t looked at me, absorbed in their game.

I shrugged. I passed by the bakery and saluted the old mare standing idly behind her stall, always waiting for a client. Among the many habitations where ponies hung around the terraces or the inner yards, many shops still showed off their logos.

The first was Brewy’s Emporium with its rows of jars behind dusty windows. Behind the door stood the shadow of the tenant. The poor old buck managing the place was kinda paranoid, spying on everypony entering the city. At least, I was a known face. Silly Snake’s shop was built between two massive ten stories high council housings which ruined facades watched upon me with as many eyes as they had windows. The buildings’ white paint had washed away with a thick cover of grey and brown. Silly Snake was a joke shop like many, its pediment once a bright green had stripped off the roughcast.

“Howdy?” I asked the tenant, keeping my path down the road.

I waved at her but she never answered, occupied with customers. I could see their silhouettes being deflated balloons. I would need to ask the next traders to bring back some tubed helium. I walked by and reached one of the many squares of the city. A large pond gifted with a magnificent fountain sculpted in Luna’s traits was standing by its center, jetting a continuous dash of murky water. Moribund moss covered Luna’s brass features, leaking from its rivets a greenish goo that oozed over her perfect body. The repair pony hadn’t come for years. I sighed and passed by.

The square was covered by the unique shadow of a massive building, a monolith of black metal bearing the symbol of the Ministry of Wartime Technology, a set of gears surrounded by an apple-shaped box, with a sword bisecting through the middle. Standing solely with its one hundred feet tall size, it was an intimidating sight. No windows gave on the inside. It always left me the feeling of a scar in the middle of Hollow Shades. It had helped Equestria in the war effort, though.

Before the main entrance stood a statue of her minister, Apple Jack. The sculpture who’d been five ponies tall had slopped on its side, crumbled, and shattered into bits over the dusty marble stairs of the entrance. The guilty mechanism was still visible, an intertwining of rails and pistons that had pushed the construction aside, revealing a massive and dark deep missile silo. The hub had been a launch facility during the war, holding on a megaspell missile aimed at the far away lands of the Zebras. The silo was now empty. I had never been inside the facility. I was curious but not insane. I guessed the basement of the hub would remain an abstraction to me.

After a moment of sad contemplation, I fell back to the fountain, touring it to reach the other side of the square. I saw the candy store, with its usual queue of greedy ponies. The comic book shop was next. Foals used to stay inside, reading idly all the pages they could before their mothers exited the market store nearby, ready to go back home.

Everypony was acting silent, respecting their order as always. Waiting stoic, as always. Taking off the saddle of the brahmane, I slapped its butt and it ran away.

“Make sure you’re not eaten by a rad monster,” I cried out in laughter.

Wiping a tear off my face, I swiveled on my hooves and finally faced the end of my journey. I stepped on the creaking wood stairs of a famous place of mine. Built in concrete, stamped with a balloon triangle, one yellow and two blue, the sheriff office of Hollow Shades stood proud with its sole ground floor, constructed plain pied with my cottage behind. Two rocking chairs awaited under the office porch. One was already occupied.

“Thanks for taking care of my badge, dude,” I smiled, taking the six dusty golden star off the wobbling armrest.

I pinned the insignia on my brown trench coat, pushed the office door, and threw the cow saddle into the room. I sneezed. Dust was everywhere, covering every piece of furniture and items strewn over the place. With a swing of my hindquarters, I bucked a lever on and a humming noise engulfed the police office as the light slowly brightened over my head. One flared and exploded in a small rain of glass.

“At least water’s still running,” I cheered.

Before the war, the city was fueled with a coal power plant located outside of the Hollow Forest. The Balefire striking Equestria had put an end to that and Hollow Shades had to go back to its ancient way. Before this time of necessity, I had barely been taught that an underground river was running below the city. In fact it was that geographic wealth that had permitted the city’s erection. With the industrial revolution, the first electric power brought to the city had come from a turbine built in the cavities hundreds of feet below the surface. Apparently, it was still turning. One by one, electronics woke up behind a desk set up at the back of the office, next to a row of cells.

“So, bandit, you still there?” I sniggered, tapping my hoof against the bars. His silhouette waited in the back of the last cell, curled up above a pitiful bed. “I hope the others treated you well.”

No answer… I sat in the chair in front of my desk and tapped the tip of my hoof on the ‘enter’ key of the terminal’s board. I unsheathed my two hoof guns and put them aside on my bureau and took a comfortable position in the seat. I spread the content of my purse next to them and a few caps fell off the desk’s edges. I dropped my shoulders, feeling all the tension in my muscles stiffening my movements. Time was to be lazy.

Today was a good day.

The radio burst out cracks, eighteen years it had stayed silent, only barking static at me. I had kept it switched on, no matter what, ponies might call for help. Typing on the terminal, a series of small screens displayed on my left attracted my attention. Hitting the same key repeatedly, I checked Hollow Shades’s CCTV. Some had died during my absence and over the ten sprite-bots I once had, only four still worked, floating right out in the streets, searching for proof of sedition among the population.

I saw the same foals, mares, and stallions in the streets, deformed into black silhouettes by the old and expired cameras of the town. Bored, I looked at the cow saddle and took it on my laps. Stretching a hoof to its bottom, I wrestled out the skull. Diligently, I laid it on the keyboard, for it to face me.

“I already told you I was sorry,” I argued. “You were the first to attack me, and you were threatening that stallion… what was his name alr… Snips! You could have just asked me and I would have shared some bits with you, but noooo… you had to make all that mess.”

I sighed, the skull looking at me with those two deep pits of black.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” I scolded him, grabbing it between my legs. “oh fuck you, go with your brothers.”

I took the skull off the keyboard and leaned on my right. It would fit with the others, all assembled in a small pile. I was far too lazy to count, but that wasn’t a problem. I saluted them all.

Tilting my body back toward the saddle, I found inside a small rectangular plaque of plastic and metal. I play amusedly with the cassette between my hooves for a minute or two. Clumsy, I messed up one of my juggling and the tape bounced off my hooves and fell on my right. Growling, I spread to reach it. It had tucked the skull, left on the top of the pile. I looked at it with wide eyes.

“Oh, come on,” I pouted. “I know, you gonna bash me ‘cause I lied.”

Yes, sort of. Back in the warship’s remains, I had forced open the captain’s cabin and took out one of its records. Steel Rangers disregarded remnants of the past that differed from valuable technology. They never knew, they wouldn’t have to. It was my secret with the skull.

“Hey, it’s just a radio record,” I snorted. “The wasteland is just so silent… Hollow Shade’s so dead it’s deafening.”

And it was, really. I put the tape in the radio station. A rising crescendo followed by a unison of stallions and mares cracked out of the old speaker. The sweet rhythm in my ears, I left my sitting and wandered to the nearby kitchen. My prosthetics extended and snatched a sealed bottle of hooch and a dusty glass. On the brink of leaving the room, I caught the grizzling counter on the table, ticking toward the red. In a spiteful huff I pushed it off the edge; it broke when it reached the ground. I walked out, the bottle and the glass twinkling in each of my metal claws.

“Across the Equestrian’s borders

Are creatures which roam, roam, roam...”

Sitting in the empty rocking chair, I glanced at my close neighbour.

“Want some?” I asked, expecting no answer.

The rocking chair was just reeling with the wind. My stare bore on the distance. Far away, beyond the children’s silhouettes, the mares’ shapes, and the stallions’ shades, the border of the city stood lonely.

“Afar from places where the sun glows

Are wonders nopony saw, saw, saw...”

There, one large pole carried a long, shredded, and pitch black standard whipping in the wind, alone just like me.

“From the deepest caves to the highest peaks

Are ghosts of the past wai- aiting.”

Next to the pole was a large slab of metal printed with the name of the city, Hollow Shades. Beneath, the number thirty thousand five hundred seventy two was crossed, replaced by one single digit, as lonely as I.

I was finally back in Hollow Shades. A city of damned. A city of black contours cast onto the walls. A city of many winds moaning prayers from the past. A city bearing the eternal ashes of the dead. A city of still standing screaming corpses, blackened but vigilant. A city of countless smiles, eyes, and shapes carved into the vitrified dirt.

I turned my head to the other rocking chair and stared at the ashy shape of a stallion blasted into the carbonized wood. I smiled.

Hollow Shades, a city of children’s shadows burnt into the brickrock. I was finally back home…

“Home. Sweet. Home...”

ⱴ ⱷ ꜠ Ω ꜡ ⱷ ⱴ

Footnotes; Vault Skin, Class: Wanderer, Level Up

New Perk: “Good to be back home”

Could it be a feeling of déjà-vu or memories, this place keeps a special room in your ablaze heart.

You gain +5% in Speech and Survival in the places you’ve already visited.

Mar. 2014 - Megastructures
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RoMS' Extravaganza

Mar. 2014 - Megastructures

Prologue

The cold, biting my hide…
The chill, frizzling my mane…
The silence, deafening my ears…
The smell of oil, retching my guts…
And that breathe on my face…
Which wasn’t mine…

My eyes fluttered. Opening one eyelid at a time, gasping for air as my muzzle was buried deep in a gooey brown puddle, my limbs shook of all their might. I was cold, I was alone, and I was scared.

Slow and shaky, I lifted my face out of this lair of reek. On my febrile hindquarters, eyes shot wide at my hooves and torso trickling with oil and unholy fluids, I tried to wrestle myself from my stupor, to no avail…

Spasms running across my spine and shakes crippling my limbs, my stare wandered around me. I couldn’t see anything as every point of space was thrown into a dreadful pitch black. Numbness gripped my mind. And the breath, continually flowing onto my face spread a cold deadness beneath my fur. Gulping, struggling to keep my composure, my mind screamed at me orders I didn’t listen to. Where was I? How did I get there? Was I covered in filth? And this breath…

Two greenish glowing dot burst open before my eyes and I froze. Adjusting like two microscopes on a slice of translucent crystaln the two flickering points scrutinized me with a terrible sight, cold, hopeless, and heartless. They were huge, terrifying… So large I wish I couldn’t see my reflection in those glassy orbs. A white fur smeared with black, brown, and grey. A sick purple mane soaked in murk, falling into atrocious locks onto my face, neck, and shoulders. How uncouth… And the whole… my features outlined by an eerie green light bursting off those two… glaring eyes. I was pale, terrorised, completely out of phase.

Unbearably slowly, my eyes drifted away from those artificial mirrors and took a proper view of my surroundings. The glow spreading a dull light over the barren land before my hooves, I found myself stranded on a large metallic platform, a drip-drip from a pipe located far above me and hidden by the darkness hitting the floor two hoofsteps away from me.

I jerked my head back, sweat crawling down my neck in between my jaded mane and fur. I could see no wall, only darkness and a guardrail vanishing into it. Lethargy weaved in my bones, and with what seemed to be ants running through my veins, I staggered and curled up into a ball.

This moment of respite went short-lived, the whirring of uncountable rusty cogwheels breaking a silence I couldn’t have fathom back in Ponyville.

Home… the thought struck me. I wanted my warm bed, my dusty shelves, my frou-frou, voili-voilà, and bric à brac... My soft silk bed linens stuffed with feathers. My warm tea time at four in the afternoon. I wanted home so ardently, but I was just offered a cold, alone, and miserable night. Was it even night?

The warm breath came back and swiftly slapped my face. Undutiful, I looked up at the two green dots and gulped. It was looking at me, passively, in a silent tearing up my very soul. And then, light burst from above. The lamp, hung up on an insanely far ceiling focused on me, bathing me in a sliver of burning white. I was being watched, and I couldn’t even tell by who.

Rubbing my eyes with my quivering hooves, trying to wash off the filth only to spread it like peanut butter on my pristine coat, I finally brought my sight up to my watcher.

It wasn’t equine…

I cried out and my whimper went lost in the nether, as everything was dark and shallow two meters away from the stream of light. I couldn’t look at it, yet I couldn’t stare down. I was so scared, powerless.

I just said it wasn’t equine… The truth was that it was even a living being.

Two massive bulging balls of glass marred with two deep black pit circled by large zooming green irises glared at me with an irrepressible coldness. Instead of a muzzle, it displayed a bony white nose like an upside down ship bow sporting no mouth but two large tube which tips, ending below what must have been its cheeks, were two silently rotating fans. The breath came from there… It was the respiration of a machine.

Yes, it was a machine, the largest, most horrendously-looking, and far-fetching engine I had ever laid my eyes upon. Twenty times the size of a pony, its thin, insect-like shape weaved past me, its many arms showing off razors sharp claws clattering on the ground, leaving indents in the metal floor. From my position, it looked like an erring slender crow skeleton which wings had been ripped away to be replaced with myriads of arms of many shapes. Wires and pipes hung below its belly like ripped open guts. Sickening.

I spectated nearly religiously as it neared a wall I could finally see, thanks to the inbuilt light of the creature’s eyes. It raised its hooves… claws to the wall, drawing a perfect square with its shiny sharpened nail. Then, the scream began.

It wasn’t a common scream a mare would howl as horror was breaking into her daily life. It was screeching, raspy, and loud, like a broken knife etching over porcelain inside a gigantic echoing castle. Unbearable and painful. I covered my ears and cried back.

“Make it stop,” I begged.

And indeed, it stopped instantly. Tears flowing down my cheeks, my eyes wandered up to the creature’s hands. There, tiny stream of bright green and blue flames died and revealed beneath a grown brick of metal, square and hung onto the mark it had made in the wall. He had just built an object out of nothing. I would have been impressed if the dolor clutching my head sparked shivers in my backbone.

“Please, stop it. It hurts,” I supplicated.

The machine hung its head onto the side and looked at me. The stare duel didn’t last long as I broke the contact with its intense flaring bright eyes. It started beeping, tilting its head from left to right intermittently. Was it… communicating?

“I… I don’t understand,” I blurted, trying to wipe my tears, only to cover my fur with even more oil and dirt, I would have sold my soul for a bath. “I… can’t understand.”

I heard a pop as the machine slowly hung its shoulders and head and bent over me, covering my body with a large shadow. With widened eyes, I followed a thin cable hovering from the creature back in my direction, a crawling black and metallic tendril. I froze as it stopped a hoof away from my nose, my attention riveted on the five centimetres long needle pointing from the cable tip.

“What… the…”

The creature raised up its claw and tapped its right temple with a crystalline clicking tunk.

“Wait…” I muttered. “I’m not going to stab myself with this long, unrefined hospital tool of horror.”

The machine’s head reacted with a shifting backward movement, betraying a sense of surprise. Slowly it showed the side of its head, revealing a small built in plug-in, similar to those guitar rear thingies the mare everypony known as DJ-Pon3 in Ponyville used, a jack I think it was called. And right know the plug-in was as thin as a long and frightening needle. I hated needles.

I gulped. “I don’t have one... I’m not a rusty cranking machine such as you, you punk!”

Being compared to a machine. Boorish! But soon, I was going to regret my honesty.

I yelped, a claw encasing my neck and lifting me off the group, biting in my skin like a monstrous maw. Thrashing around, kicking the air in hope I could sustain myself to escape the hellish burning sensation sizing my throat. The machine held a whirling scream. I stopped, scared to death, the creature’s eyes now glowing red, staring at me in the white of my eyes.

Holding me like a mere puppet, another of its deadly gripping hand bit on the side of my head, cutting down a large chunk of my mane, which fell down to my upmost terror.

“What are you doing?” I yelled, only to gurgle for air as the machine tightened its grasp.

The hand closed onto the right side of my head and I screamed.

I screamed as I never did, for I hadn’t known true pain until now. Staggering pain, ripping-off pain, moulding pain, breaking pain… Tearing me apart like a sheet of paper under the shiny edge of an exotic sword. I screamed until my vocal chords cracked. I hissed until my mind blacked out. Supplicating, pissing myself, thrashing, jerking around, and just… begging for my life, I saw light washing over the world around me as my eyes slowly closed. I hadn’t had the time to see beyond the pain and darkness swallowed me like an old friend.

-- α ϵ Ω / Ω Ø α --

Blood burst painfully beneath the skin of my right temple and forehead. My ears whizzed in a mind-induced cacophony. I rolled on my back trying to scream out my pain.

“The size of the megastructures is of approximately one hundred forty thousand seven hundred twenty-three kilometres wide and growing, no one knows what lays beyond. The government will soon take you to a provided shelter. Don’t panic, don’t move, and don’t fight. Wait,” I heard a mechanical voice in my head. “You…”

I jumped away and a new wave of pain washed off my body, straining my muscles and throwing me off-guard. My jaw hit the ground in a loud thump. Tears crawled off my face and I hugged my knees tightly.

Before my eyes lied the cable and its needle, blood dripping off its point. My eyes perked up with stars. The stars took an ice blue colour and slowly reshaped into weird writings, superposing over my vision. I saw numbers and words I couldn’t understand, labelling every item laying around me. A name was displayed over the machine’s head.

It wasn’t surprising that I began panicking. I rubbed my eyes, likely trying to scrap away something that wasn’t physical. Pain sparked again from my right temple and through my body.

After a scream, I slowly raised my limb to my head.

My hoof hinted on a foreign piece of metal stuck into the right side of my forehead. Small, round, and painful. I touched it once.

“What have you done to me?” I said, bemused, at the creature.

Twice.

“What. Have. You. Done. To. Me?” I growled.

Thrice…

I looked up at the creature. The cable had already disappeared. ITtturned away from me and backed away toward the wall.

“What. Have. You. Done. To. ME?” I shouted.

The robot’s claws bit in the metal and like an arachnid it walked up the wall above my head. A wall that was endless, its ceiling disappearing through a mist only an insane distance could breed. Soon it was too small to be seen.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!” I screamed and fell into a low cry, tears flowing to my eyes.

Indeed, I cried… hitting the floor with my hooves. Whining in pain. I was pathetic, but whining had always been my speciality. So I whined... I whined until I cried myself to sleep. Yet, sleep never came.

As time passed, I wiped my tears away and stood on my hooves, desperately trying to forget about the lancing headache.

To my horror, my eyes lied upon the world around me, and something broke within my heart. Beyond the guardrail, everything was engulfed in a shallow white light, highlighting the leaks, rust marks, construction mistakes, and abandonment this world which wasn't mine was suffering from.
A gargantuan closed world the only sight shattered my conception of reality. Emptiness and ramparts… everywhere was emptiness enclosed by god-sized ramparts… pure metal, kilometres-tall walls disappearing over me and below, bridges stretching toward the infinite, gigantesque structures growing in an insanely wide area. Black and gooey, scarred with rust broken pipes, and wires as large as mountains. I was lost inside the entrails of an infinite monster of metal I couldn’t fathom the size. I could see black clouds immobile in this horizon enclosed in this antechamber of a cold artificial hell.

I was lost, without any landmark in a world of silence, trapped in a majestic and terrifying maze of metal. There was no grass, no animal, no chirping… nothing. Just me and a city of metal created for and by beings that could step on me like bacteria. I was lost in translation in a world I wasn’t meant to see.

Where was I...?

Maybe on Equestria...?

Maybe in the future...?

My name is Rarity, and this is my story through the Megastructures, a story of blood, oil, destruction, and search for a mythical way out.

Author's Note

Short Description:
When Rarity woke up, she wasn’t at home anymore, left stranded in an alien place she had no knowledge of... Maybe on Equestria… Maybe in the future…

Long Description:

.Log Annex
My name is… Rarity
I don’t remember how long I’ve been here…
Everything's so grim, so sick… so broken and asymmetric…
I can only feel it, this crippling angst when my eyes lay upon them…
The Megastructures…
Nopony will catch me... keep me from my one true goal...
Find a way-out of this cold hell...
A way back home.

ブラム! (Blame!) crossover My Little Pony

Mar. 2014 - Candle
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Mar. 2014 - Candle

Author's Note

Short Description:
A candle fading in your hoof, drip-dripping away with your precious time

Long Description:

"Who watches the watcher?"

Luna has a nightmare

One crippling story for one creepy pony

Mar. 2014 - Candle

Candle

By RealmOfMereShadows

“I rise from the deepest abyss. Bones crack from my own stiffness, legacy from Time, cunning and mischievously flowing down the stream down to the pit of death. The pain blinds the weak, and only I... survives the shadow that lurks within us all, as, unlike my faerie sister, I was gifted with the weakness of the mortal flesh so that, despite my immortal soul and spirit, I was bound to strive for darkness, and forbidden tales and knowledge of yore.”

The pain stabbed my flank like myriads of sharp needles, avid for my regal blood. Heart pounding forth in my chest, my head reeled and jerked from the dust laying between me and a floor I couldn’t see. Black and dreary like a weary midnight, the pitch-black night enshrouded my eyes, wrapping myself into a veil of darkness and creeping shadows.

Yet, I couldn’t give in to the night for it was far too soon.

My will gave me the strength to wrestle a tiny violet light from the maw of the night itself. A simple, fragile candle, lit and febrile on its small brass candlestick, melting and fainting, at my hooves waiting. And its light soon wouldn’t be. Indeed, time was dripping, and promptly the dark would spree.

Horn alit holding up the dying flame, I walked forth the black. Silence in my ears and a sour taste marring my tongue, my mane, usually flowing and fluttering over my shoulders, dropped straight over my face. No wind was there to push it away from my eyes…

Lifting a hoof, hoping some breeze would slither down my ears to give my back my sense, I moved aside a lock of midnight blue hair…. And for once I wished… No, I craved for that I didn’t.

Darkness is a wicked and rueful, yet merciful spouse… a rampart hiding us from what remains beyond its veil. Yet, would you still call it in such rewarding way if the lid itself was closing on you, dripping on your hide a darker than black goo reeking a carnivorous instinct that rose every one of your very hair on your skin? Darkness… a cage without bar that seizes your mind to lock your own self into a torture, either physical or mental, but a torture that will always leave you scarred for a lifetime… An immortal lifetime in my case. First, it gets to your hooves, shaky and unsteady. Second, it crawls up your limbs, like ants fighting up the blood within your veins, begging from all their might to swarm your sides. Third, it grasps your spine and lingers your back up to your neck. Fourth, it snatches the heat from your face, bleaching your features with a bubbling blurter of fear… And, only then, it clutches your heart into a deadening clench, an evil anchor keeping dragging you down forever the pit where fears lie… where demons dwell… and where you thought you had all of it locked up for never meeting them ever again. This is the abyss of your own true mind.

“Luna…” a scrawny and somehow antic voice called, drawling away in the darkness. “… where are you…”

Darkness wasn’t a wall. It was only a frail glass. A murky black window opening on the untold, the uncountable, and the untreatable. Eyelids closing up over my revolted eyes, I preferred focus myself over what I could still fathom; something different than far-fetched and crooking shadows swallowing the light, my small flame fluttering over its damp wick. A droplet of wax ran down its side and I watchfully spectated it fell it over the candlestick down to the black beneath my hoof.

“Time. Is… Ticking, Luna.” it laughed. “Count. Each. Drop.”

Darkness is a cage which, even cold like ice, shatters your soul, makes you want to tear up your barding, fur and skin to free yourself from this burning feeling in the hollow of your chest. This basic instinct to fly away from the pain and emptiness. This wish for a scorching light to bathe you. However, darkness is stronger, it has always been as light is only an epiphenomenon, such as life.

At this very moment, I was burning from beneath, wishing that I could scream as I couldn’t even squeal. I supplicated my hooves to run away, but it would mean blowing out the candle and be prey to what lurked beyond the veil. And I wished I could stop watching. Yet, when everything was black, how could sompony tell if he was sleeping or not? Closing his eyes or not?

I realised I was trapped with and by my own stupid little fears.

I told you… darkness was swindling. And playing it would always be, a game of smoke and mirror, a game of mind and deceit.

From the dark slowly descended a large unformed tongue of black. Lowering until it nearly touched my muzzle, it then steadied. Droplets of shadow hurtled down and bit my fur like acid. Even though my eyes weren’t enough to pierce the cloak of darkness, I saw it move from beneath, like a parasite worm weaving below the skin of the bed-ridden martyr. Paralyzed by my own terror, I let it swirl and slithered around me like a snake with jet-black scales.

Two turquoise glowing eyes and a wide shark-teeth smile fought its way up to the surface of this nether, and riveted on me. I dropped my stare and tried closing my eyes. I found to my stupor I couldn’t.

Skin itching, mane crawling, ears frizzling, I looked at it and fell into the jealous glare of my sister. Eyes missing, her mane was falling into clumps, while many of her teeth were losing up in her mouth, scarred with a rictus of masochistic pain.

“Your moon hurts me.”

I cried for help, but no sound reached my ears, my voice withering in my mouth as a tasteless sludge blubbered down my throat, choking me. It went into my lungs and stomach, and solidified into a crippling concrete. Hacking my hooves around, the candlestick fell out of my magic grasp and shattered on the ground into shards of brass. The candle spread its wax over an invisible floor and rolled in my direction.

I took it between my shaky hooves and tried to put it back on its broken support. Burning wax melted and glued over my fur. Tears rolled down my cheeks. And suddenly, the coldness stung my side.

Snuggling up my flanks, cuddling me with hooves colder than death, the wreckage the apparition was flowed over my hide like an overwhelming and tenebrous blanket… An overly attached girlfriend that had given in to insanity, craving to fulfil her own animal desire like a mare in heat, sucking me out of my warmth, hopes, and life. Her sharp teeth maw neared next to my nearest ear, nibbled it a little, leaving a few deep and bleeding marks…

From the depths of hell rose a numbing, almost violating whisper…

“I don’t want to die Luna, so you’ll have to.”

Closing my eyes to a knife blade-width, tears flowing more than ever, I looked down at the bottom of the broken candlestick as the candle’s flame snapped into a greyish smoke next to me. Yet, before the dark could gobble me up whole, silencing me forever, I saw a last time my own reflection, smiling…

And I wasn’t.

Apr. 2014 - Sweat, Flesh, Blood, And Bones - Prologue "Pull the Trigger"
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Apr. 2014 - Sweat, Flesh, Blood, And Bones - Prologue "Pull the Trigger"

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A thud echoed in the darkness, quickly followed by a splash of mud as a man fell on its knees, hissing out its last breath, a small jet of dark red spitting out of a large gap slashed though his neck. As the last shivers ran across the dead shape’s back, a large shadow stood from behind. A knife rested in his right hand, reflecting no light as a thick lid of black clouds hid every star from the blood-soaked edge.

Thunder roared over the biped’s head and a lightning bolt slashed through far in the horizon, throwing his tanned face and brow hair into stark relief. With the last stream of light, his eyes opened, revealing two deep green murderous eyes. Tonight, the hunt was on.

A droplet hit his forehead and, as a new bolt cracked far above the man’s head, downpour crashed over his bareback. The storm quickly enshrouded the land in a thick veil of rumbling water. Freezing and numbing, the liquid rampart strained and bit, tensing the silent hunter’s muscles. Seeking for warmth, he weaved around the vegetation, dead trunks, crooked bushes, and still surviving trees. The harsh sensations gripping his body were as many physical anchors making each of his step a struggle. Trying not to care, he focused on keeping his head down, silent as he was closing in toward a lit fire a few hundred feet in front of him.

A makeshift camp made up by three ragged tents was soaking rapidly under the dreary deluge. The fire was badly protected by torn canvas, giving fumes as the wind was blowing water on its embers. The loud voice of two men talking was muffling the trickles cracking over the hot rocks circling the hearth. Beyond, a third individual was beating out a child with a large leather thong. Each time the hand was going down, the kid’s crystalline voice erupted in a squeaking yelp.

Hidden behind a dead trunk, the hunter narrowed his eyes to a knife-blade width, trying to distinguish the features of the three bandits. The rain, coupled with loud cracks of thunder, dropped a load on the scout’s shoulder. Water trickling down between his muscles, scars, and mud marring his sides, he chose to crawl closer, taking the risk to reveal his position.

Pondering the pros and cons of attacking upfront, scanning the three men for a hint of a weapon other than sticks and blades, his eyes went down on a tiny box left safe under the linen of one of the tents. Splattered with indent scrapping away the black paint, the item was rusty, covered with dust, and hermetically closed with a strange long lock. The dance of the flames coming from the camp fire threw strangely weaving shadows on the nearest side of it.

Stopping by a puddle of sludge, the hunter slipped his knife in, blanketing the red and shiny edge under a thin cover of brown murk. He walked around a tree, entered the camp through the hiding spot a tent’s shadow offered him and stood, heeding at the raucous laughter of the three men, ready to strike when the time would come in handy.

“J’vais pisser pronto, garde un oeil sur l’gamin,” the one carrying the leather strap called, stepping over the child as he wandered away from the camp.

“T’inquiètes, il est pas prêt de bouger l’con,” the second laughed, quickly followed by the third stooge.

To join his words with acts, the man kicked the curled up kid, throwing his ragged boots in his thigh. Sobs burst in response.

Crawling out of his hiding spot, the hunter glided behind the nearest of his preys who was looking down at his friend beating the child by the book. Even though rain drummed over the fabric of the tents, one could hear the third moaning his satisfaction outside the camp, freeing himself from an overweighting burden. Time was running out.

The blow, fast and silent, sliced through the throat, slicing deep through the sinews, throat, and bone. A hand over the dying weight’s mouth, the body crumbled like a castle of cards under the breeze. Its knee hurtled over a rusty pan left unattended on the ground. The metallic thud echoed under the rain.

The second bandit jerked his head on the side, looking straight at the hunter. An indented rusty knife welcomed his stupor, right through his nose cartilage. Blood spurted out. The bandit’s eyes slipped to a red-striated white as they revolved behind his eyelids. Thrusting the blade out, drawing a large jet of red gore on its way, the hunter sought for the third remaining assaulter.

His eyes locked on the tip of a gun a few feet away. The weapon blared a white hot burst.

In a reflex, the hunter slid on the side, the bullet missing by a hair’s width, then jumped over the campfire, bringing himself forward to an arm reach of his target as the second bang echoed.

Pain flared in the hunter’s right shoulder, passing through the articulation, shattering bones, splitting apart the ligaments, and drying the synovial cavity out of its fluid. Carried away by the strength of kinetic, the hunter stumbled over his assailant and both roared in pain and rage.

Both fell back on the side of a tent, ripping its fabric off. A hard floor of dirt welcomed the gunman’s back and the weight of the hunter wrestled all air out of his lungs, kicking him out for a couple of seconds. Groping around in the chiaroscuro, seeking for his knife, the hunter pushed the bandit aside. His fingertips met the cold touch of metal.

Square shaped, the box was sitting there right before him, for he had not come for the urchin but for this piece of lead. Losing his wit, the hunter crawled in the direction of the key item.

A fist struck his back, cracking a few ribs under the sucker punch’s strength. A kick followed and an arm slid around the hunter’s neck, locking his jugular in a deadly stance, tightening.

Gasping for air, the hunter now become hunted struggled, hacking his hands and feet around… trying to reach with his bare hands the face nearing toward his right ear.

“You think you can fuck with me,” the bandit jutted, his raspy voice massacring the language with an outrageous accent. “You piece of shit.”

The foreigner’s arm shifted his muscle gears and slowly, the hunter’s face turned from red to violet.

“You understand,” the bandit beckoned, grunting each time he tried to clench his arms a bit further. “I think I know what’s inside the box!”

“Mah… dick…” the hunter gurgled.

The bandit lowered the hunter’s head in a fit of rage, bashing it over the metal box itself which soon was covered with blood.

“This is mine!” he laughed madly. “Haven’t opened it yet, but you and your fuckhead friends must keep great things inside! Ain’t walking down the roads with shit in a locker! Gonna sell it to the army in Geneva. Will buy food and…”

Eyes shifting away, the hunter heard a scream above his head and the armlock vanished. His head hit the ground turned into mud as the flogging rain had entered the tent through its torn side. Lightning bolts streaked away up above this world of grim, gore, and gashes.

Looking aside, the hunter saw the kid, holding his knife, striking as seconds passed, again, again, and again, down to the bandit’s neck, eyes, head, chest, arms, flesh, and clothes. Despite his little height, twelve years old at most, he was striking down the bandit, rage blaring off his eyes, teeth clenched, flashing with the thunderbolts, crying and smiling at the same time. Hard times called for harsh measures. Yet, it was always hard to see the littlest break apart under one’s eyes, even more when it showed off how powerless one were to stop such a shameful gall.

The kid raised the knife over his head, ready to hit once again the already dead disfigured mess of wounds that could not be called a human anymore. A hand thrust out of the darkness and held this final desperate attack toward the incarnated pain that had dared lift a hand on him.

Acting rabid, the kid shrieked and turned around, biting at the arm holding his hand until blood was drawn. A feminine voice yelped and forced the child away with a slap from the back of her other hand.

“Oh, the fucker!”

“Maria,” the hunter hissed, lying on his chest, his ribs stabbing his lungs and sparking shivers down his spine.

A sliver of moonlight poured from a slit in the night cloudy sky, reflecting over the girl’s face standing a footstep away from the fallen warrior. Tanned by filth, young, yet marred with the mark of exhaustion and trauma, her face peered down at her friend with two piercing brown eyes. Giving a second punch in the child’s ribcage, making him drop his stolen knife, she kneeled over the man and started pressing over his right shoulder. Her black hair soaked as blood spurted out, bubbling over her slender fingers betraying an overwhelming state of famine.

“Don’t die on me, please,” she blurted.

“Eh, careful!” shouted a third male voice.

Maria jerked aside as the urchin struck forth with the knife, his eyes burning with tears. This time a heavy hand fell down on his face. Suckering, powerful, and dry, the uppercut sent the young boy away, making him bit the dirt in a loud thump.

Two young men walked in the light, and looked around, catching on what had just happened. The blue eyes of the one who had cast the child away glowed under the dim light, his once blond hair now brown by a flagrant lack of hygiene. His lips, torn in a rictus of disgust, revealed yellowish teeth.

The shocking sight of their downed friend forced a gasp out of the last human. Small and slender, his black hair had agglomerated in long dreadlocks, covering his ghoulish face enclosing two frightened brown irises. He was carrying the sole weapon of the group, a large shotgun, rusty and scrapped by time and lack of proper care.

The three men wore large hirsute beards, their features, while still apparently young, were scarred with wrinkles of exhaustion, hanger, and never-ending stress… Survival. But from the four of the group, the girl called Maria was the most pitiful. Parchment skin over flailing bones.

“John, help me instead of standing there like a motherfucker!” Maria cried out at her blond dumbstruck friend. “Don’t let Adam die.”

Her daggers-glaring eyes darted at the last one. The scrawny little piece of man’s hand clutched over his weapon, gritting his teeth as he awaited the girl acid statement.

“And you, Kreps, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t let them steal the box!”

The blemish rastaman looked down at his feet, his shoulders dropping a little.

“Yes, M’am,” he muttered.

Kreps’s eyes went up toward where he had seen the box as he had entered the tent, trying to shut his ears from Maria’s pleadings as John and she were actively trying to stop Adam’s open haemorrhage. His eyes twitched. The box was nowhere to be found.

Eyes widening, he tilted his head at the outside of the tent and saw the kid humping away, the box under his left arm, the knife held clumsily in the other. Blood rushed to Kreps’s head and rage burst out his chest.

“Come back here!” he screamed at the young poor boy running away for his life, thinking taking the knife and the box with him was of something useful. “Don’t make me do this.”

Kreps raised his shotgun and aimed at the whining kid, desperately trying to cast himself in the safe shadows outside in the dreadful storm. “Don’t force me!”

Struck by pure terror, the child turned his back and tried to sprint, toddling among the roots hidden by the darkness. Kreps closed his eyes and pressed the trigger. The recoil shot his shoulder back, nearly wrestling the gun out of his hands. The shot rammed the air in an ungodly roar. The gun ejected an empty brenneke gauge as a tree was already shredded to pieces a few inches above the child’s head. He screamed a grating shrill as bits of wood peppered his surroundings.

“Are you crazy?” John urged Kreps from his crouched position.

“He has the box!” Kreps bellowed, starting the chase. “And it’s mine.”

“Stay there!”

“It’s my mistake! I’m gonna repair what I’ve done!”

And he disappeared in the night, rain, and lightning bolts.

“Dumbass!” John raged, drifting his attention to Adam’s convulsing body. “Is he going to make it?”

“I don’t know,” Maria replied between two sobs, her hands covered in gore. “I have stuff in the car.”

“Help me then.”

John ripped off a large shred of the rags he wore and applied a tourniquet on his friend’s shoulder, drying suddenly his bleeding out veins. Adam growled in his half-stupor half-comatose state. He screamed when Maria and John lifted him off the ground and began carrying him out in the rain.

The camp fire had died, plunging their surrounding in the dark. A shot rang far away.

“Such a brainfuck,” John muttered as he turned his head toward Maria, the low hanging head of a passed out Adam between the two of them. “Let’s get back to the car, fast!”

The trip to the car extended up to ten long minutes, accounted by the pouring rain over the heads and bodies, and the booms breaking the drumming filling the air with a deafening silence from time to time. Three times a shotgun had roared in the far away.

Resting over a smashed open road without any marking, the car was a large dark beige four-wheel drive, muddy and scrapped. One window was cracked open and the headlights were non-existent. Large indents marked its front and sides, along with sparse bullet holes.

Grunting, Maria opened the backdoor and John dropped the limp body in the stinky yet dry large trunk, pushing away the mess accumulated in that closed space, scarce dried food, used cartridges, a large bag stamped with a red cross, and a huge metal case.

Maria grabbed the Red Cross bag and rummaged through its content, pulling out gauzes, scissors, bandages…

“We don’t have antiseptic…” she dropped.

“Doesn’t matter, help me bandage that wound!” John spat.

A gunshot cracked not far from the car and the sizzling of a bullet passing by rang in the trio’s ears.

“Stay right here, you sick fuck,” Kreps voice beckoned loudly.

Maria and John looked outside and stared at the urchin, standing in the middle of the road, afraid, clenching his arms over the box, Adam’s knife nowhere to be found in his little hands. On the opposite side, pointing with his shotgun at the child and the ground intermittently, Kreps threatened to shoot once again if he could not make the box peacefully his.

“Drop it,” Kreps shrieked with a tone easily mistaken for a pleading. “I don’t want to do this, but it’s mine, mine alone.”

Shivering from all his might, the child looked behind his right shoulder at the car. Occupied bandaging his gunned friend, John was swearing at the limp shape sprawled inside the large truck. Next to him, Maria, a foot on the inside of the trunk and a hand on the roof rack of the car, aimed at Kreps a small gun she had retrieved from the metallic box.

“No kids, we said!” she rasped her voice. “Not. Anymore!”

“It’s my burden…”

“As much as ours…” Maria supplicated.

“No, it’s mine and mine alone!”

Kreps held up the gun at the child, pumped a cartridge within, and swallowed. “Last warning, drop it, I count up to three.”

“Kreps, don’t do it,” John warned, his eyes still riveted on Adam’s motionless body.

“Three!”

A bolt of lightning cracked open the sky over the five life-stranded humans, midnight toiling on the dead watch dangling around the steering wheel of the car. The winds closed up the night sky, throwing the world into dim oblivious shadows as moon and stars disappeared. Only five pairs of eyes remained.

“Two!”

A bolt of lightning struck open a nearby tree, dichotomizing its trunk into two burning shreds. The rain flogged the faces, blanketing everything under a thick layer of biting-cold water. The child’s sob erupted in the air, his little hands bleaching under the strength he applied over the leaded box. He looked up at Maria, seeking for help. Her grip over the handle of her gun trembled as the last warning rammed the hair like a needle the arm of a drug addict.

“One!”

The boy raised the box as the shotgun bellowed with a loud bang. Yet the flash which closed everybody’s eyes was not the deed of the gunshot but the explosion of a lightning bolt melting the slug mid-air as it struck the box and through it the child behind.

A Doppler Effect stretching to infinite in everybody’s ears, ringing like a carillon of cathedral bells, eyes opened over a horrendous sight.

The box dropped on the ground, glowing blue as a hole had punched through. The kid raised his hands to his torso where a blood-splattering hole was visible despite the nightmarish rain. Shaking madly, he slowly looked at Kreps who, overwhelmed by guiltiness, lowered his weapon, glaring beyond the child in an astonishing horror. He turned toward Maria who, awestruck, had her eyes fixed onto something that first escaped the child’s comprehension. John’s livid face betrayed something was wrong. And finally, the kid settled his teary eyes on what laid behind him.

The slug, bloodied and dripping fluids was stuck mid-air, glowing the same sickening blue as the box. The drip of blood floated in its trail. There was no pain, only terror as all took in the harsh reality that rain had stopped falling, stuck into place as if time had stopped flowing.

The child screamed at the hole in his chest, the rain resumed its path, the blood dripped through the air and wounds, melting down in the mud into a sickening dark brown, and a last crack of thunder wracked the sky. The white bolt descended onto the screaming little piece of human, tearing the sky with marvellous black and violet shades soon replaced with a blinding light.

ⱴĦ – V α ϵ R, E! Ω – Ħⱴ

“You sure it worked?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“In mah opinion, she broke the weather,” Applejack retorted.

“Maybe she just stopped the rain,” Rarity chuckled, then laughed as Rainbow Dash gave her a weird look.

“At least it’s fun, look!” Pinkie laughed, tip-toeing on the guardrail of Twilight Castle’s first-floor terrace, digging out a path through the stuck-in-motion rain and calling out at Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom to join her in her mining quest.

The atmosphere was dark. Thick grey cloud hiding the sky thrust ponyville and the country into a dim ambiance of end of the world. And though the wind had stopped, many ponies had locked themselves behind the safe walls of their houses.

“Eh… maybe you shouldn’t have used your magic,” Fluttershy raised her voice over a butterfly’s squeak, hiding her eyes behind a full lock of soft pink mane.

“Stop,” Twilight said, grumbling over, glaring daggers at Rainbow Dash. “It’s you who asked me to solve the storm problem lickity split!”

“Wow, stop right here,” the cyan pegasus countered. “You teleported us all here and even used the power of the box to deal with that.”

“You asked me to stop the tempest!”

“Yes, because Snowflake and Derpy were sick since they tasted that watermelon you brought from Canterlot…”

“And because you were too lazy to do it by yourself,” Twilight cut her friend off. “And I got this watermelon from the Griffin Ambassador, it was in the cornu copiae he offered to Celestia. Not my fault if there was a spider in the melon.”

Rainbow Dash raised her hoof, wings flapping around and catching dew as she flew past the petrified rain. Pouting, she rubbed her head, searching for a good answer, breathed in, and smiled.

“I…”

A violent slash of white streaked the sky, passing over the heads to strike the tallest nearby mountain, shattering its peak. The explosion was bright blue, deafening, and burning. Blastwaves washed over Ponyville, breaking left unattended windows, flipping over tables, abandoned carts, and barrels. The sky bubbled with blue, violet, green, and yellow lights as rainbows whirled from the mountain, chasing the menacing clouds away, and with it the rain and winds. Then, Ponyville, although partially damaged, stood proud in the bathing sunlight.

“Ah, ah!” Twilight erupted in joy, jumping on her hooves as she had been thrust on the ground by the strength of the blow. “Told you!” Who’s the best princess? Who’s she?”

Laughing, dancing victoriously around a knocked out Rainbow Dash whose eyes were dancing with stars, Twilight stuck out her tongue, her childish instinct taking over… until a high hanging flag with her cutie mark and its pole snapped and fell down her head. Headache conquering the young alicorn, her mutters sparked laughter among her friends.

“I came, I saw, and I don’t believe my eyes…” she grunted.

And her friends laughed even more, unaware that a few kilometers from here, among the rubbles falling from the shattered mountains were more than just rocks.

Old Version:

A heavy shape fell on the ground, quaking and gurgling in vain. Next to it, a thing was crawling in the mud, its face covered with a blood which was not its own. Its breath was husky and loud. Mist shrouded what might have been his mouth.

Thunder rumbled.

The pouring rain was beating up its naked back, freezing it to death. Its wrinkled left hand was holding tightly a long and rusted dagger.
Its target… its reward was not far now. A good old feeling swamped its mind. It remembered this instinct, tasted this impression and licked off its lips… It was the thrill of the hunt.
The strange being was ready to strike. His yellowish teeth shined in the dark.

Lightning was coming back and forth and the sludgy shape rose from the dirt. Brownish silt trickled down its neck. The… thing was bipedal, tall and utterly scary for unwise witnesses. Nearly hidden by a long black mass of hair, its two dark green eyes reflected the light of a fire camp fifty feet from there. With his other hand, it kept its weapon from casting any reflection. The time to act had come.

It hunkered down and plodded toward its goal. There between few crooked bushes, two patched tents were set up. The fire was kept away from the rain with an ingenious system of canvas. Even so, the humidity was constantly assaulting its flames, making their warmth disappear instantly.

The stalking foe hid behind a dead tree. Two creatures of its kind were standing in front of the nearest tent. They were talking harshly. Unfortunately, the rain, added to the rolling thunder kept the shirker from understanding anything.
It grumbled. Did it have to act? Did it have to wait? It had no idea, but for sure time was running out. It stretched its muscles. And then started the final countdown. It prepared to leap onto its preys.

Its green pupils narrowed as something caught its attention... this was unexpected.
A third creature had showed up. Its right hand was carelessly strangling a younger one, a child struggling in vain. This pitiful play amused its merciless spectators. Each one of them laughed raucously.

There was no time left. The hunter had to make a move… Now!

It drew out again its sharpened knife and winded like a rodent behind the tents.
The first of the three targets was in its death zone. How could this go wrong? They were expecting nothing in this god-forsaken place. The crooked black haired shadow had a goal, and because the opportunity had showed up, this hunt would end with few new marks on its tally.
None of these three campers, or whatever they were, was also expecting a branch to crack under somebody’s boot, behind their back.

“Fuck!” the stealth form snapped, it was one jump far from its first prey.

The three antagonists turned over and stared into a pair of eyes standing in the shadows. Unfortunately, they struck first… the questions could come later. Bullets flew through the air. They pierced the fabric of the tents, carved the surrounding trees and revealed with the brightness of the triggered gunpowder the face of the creature…
It was a flat face showing a little muzzle and whose small ears were surrounded by this black long hair of it. Its teeth were squalid, evidence of a long-standing self-negligence.
It was, unfortunately indeed, a man.

The hunter’s lungs let out a long hoarse cry when he launched himself toward his first opponent. This one fell on the ground, its throat sliced in half. The victim’s blood would soon mix with the rain and the mud.
The second cringed, holding the guts slipping out of its stabbed belly, mumbling in pain.

The unleashed predator turned back and faced his last opponent. Tall and amazingly strong, this blond haired survivor had already released the youngster and was now pointing his gun toward his companions’ murderer.

A flash lit up the place. The sound of a gunshot echoed between the dead trunks and then the noise of a hard fall on the ground was heard.

Crawling in the dirt, now covered with his own blood and displaying a deep and disgusting gap in his shoulder, the quivering hunter was suffering from miserable hiccups. Worst, he had lost his knife, which had bounced away, disappearing in the shadows.

The hunter, defeated, was now lying on the ground. His opponent, victoriously laughing stuck his boot on his spine and turned him over. He stopped giggling for a mere second when his stare met two green eyes glaring daggers at him. A powerful kick in the wound followed making the agonizing body gasp at the satisfaction of its persecutor.
He started rampaging the deadly-wounded corpse, stomping the one who dared attack him and his now-dead friends.

But even if screams came out of the fainting creature’s blooded mouth, no “pity”, “please” or “mercy” raised up. This resistance unnerved the torturer. His hand reached the black hair of his victim and grabbing them with strength as he lifted up his head. His victim’s face was smeared with silt. And coughing, his mouth was spitting out blood and liquefied dirt.

The trembling body tried to get up but ended to smash again on the muddy ground. Laughter welcomed this failed and disappointing act.

The hunter, still struggling to breath air instead of peat was given a moment of rest. His antagonist had stopped looking down to him and had gone to pick up a chopping knife. He took time choosing his tool, ruffling his blood hair and beard.
For the broken human, lying pitifuly between the tents, death beckoned. The dying man could almost feel a cold breath on his neck and shoulders.

Walking back to the bruised body, delighted in tormenting his victim, the blood bandit spoke in a grave, demented and frightening voice. No doubt he was a male.

“I know what you want. It’s not me or the teenager, but the box!”

The tears stopped rolling on the half-buried face. He frowned, crackling the mud, blood and mucus coagulated on it. Two bloodshed and murderous green eyes rose and stared into those of their tormentor which were blue as a sky they had not seen for eons.

“Man never changes and what he desires is power, power, power… only power,” the standing tormentor deadpanned.

Holding the chopping knife, he drew a large and heavy-looking case from one of the tent, its lock was welded. He made fun of his silent audience… this unarmed and inoffensive so-called hunter which was now struggling desperately to survive few more seconds.

“But it ain’t yours. And I don’t want to know that you and your group of pricks … those… virgin have it.”

He laughed, expecting no answer from his interlocutor, still fighting to not drown in the mud.

“You know, there is a military camp at Geneva, they have food, water… clean water you know, not this junk you and your friends drink every day. And of course weapons… And this box… I haven’t opened it yet, but I think I know what’s inside. And it’s mine now!”

A bolt of lightning struck a closed tree. Sparks flew in the air.

“Unfortunately, you’re alone right now. And it’s alone in the dark, surrounded by the shit that suits you so well that you’ll die. You’ve got Boris’ condolence.”

The bandit pressed the muzzle of his pistol on the speechless young man’s forehead, holding him straight with the edge of the chopping knife on his neck.

Instead of a shot, a squeak echoed. The pressure of the gun fainted. Opening again his eyes, the human wreck saw a fork sinking deep in his executioner’s right leg. Between him and a tent the teen was on his knees, receiving reckless hits from the butt of the man’s gun.
The child face was bruised and dark brown clumps of hair were now stuck to the grip of the firearm.

“You little shitty bastard! What you got was not enough! You want to die now?!”

Hope sparked in the hunter’s mind, watching silently the molestation from his painful position.
It was an opportunity, his last chance to fight. Tightening all of his limbs and using his only arm left, the turned-prey hunter rose again. The molester would have not expected such will from a bag of bruises and bones. The struggle was harsh and inglorious.

The hunter rushed forward to his enemy’s throat. Like a heavily wounded lion struggling to survive, he bit deep in the skin, the flesh and the bones of its rival’s neck, tearing off tufts of his blond beard. The hunter broke a tooth and blood flooded his mouth and his face, blurring his vision. He kept struggling against his opponent’s desperate movements and screams.
Putting his right arm around the molester’s neck, he blocked himself and the still shaking corpse in this deadly pose. Blood was shed. With a snap he stole his contender’s life, a man’s throat stuck between his teeth.

Three minutes passed by until the survivor released his armlock. The sky was clearing as the storm was pushed away by the morning’s wind. “A blessing”, he thought.
His breath was hesitant. He became aware of his wounds, his damaged ribs and of his skin burnt by the acid rains.

Rolling on his back, he brought something out of his pocket, an old and corroded plastic switch. Copper wires were still connected to it. He was switching it on and off, creating a typical clicking sound.
It amused him. A faint scowl of satisfaction appeared on his bruised face.

Blood loss was achieving him. His temple was beating, preventing him from thinking clearly.
He thought that if the pain or the blood loss were not enough to deal the final blow, infections and diseases would get rid of him. He started praying. For three years, there has been nothing to rely on. Everyone had to survive on its own. Groups formed and collapsed as the true human’s nature revealed itself, this unending quest for power, weapons and positions.
Three years of disorder had the foundations of our society first undermined and then swept off Earth’s surface one by one. Chaos set up.

A voice called him. Was it Death, this old friend?

“Verdugo?! Verdugo? VERDUGO!”

Someone was shaking him, trying to keep him awake… alive. Torchlights were aimlessly pointing around in the clearing.

“Fu! We’re losing him,” the voice shouted, calling for someone out of eyesight.

The one talking was a young adult, skinny as someone who had starved for months. His brown hair and beard gave him the look of a without shelter, which was true for everyone at the moment. His blue eyes, hidden behind small glasses, were tearful. He had a scar on his chin.

“Bloody hell, do you see his shoulder!” A thinner male voice spoke.

The so-called Verdugo felt himself slipping away. His vision blurred as eternal rest started invading his limbs. He felt himself falling for a mere second and then… a punch in his terrifying wound woke him up. He screamed out of pain.
A blond haired young man was now squeezing him. At his right the first one was now looking at him with an empty stare. Dark grey ring was circling his eyes. Lots of sleepless nights had indeed left their marks. His beard was nearly tickling his friend’s face.

“Sorry man! Talk please! Say something motherf’cking throat grinder!”

“Shut up Kreps, you’re annoying…”

“Oh man! You scared the shit out of us so badly!” His blond friend stuttered.

“The box, I got it back.”

The last one pushed Kreps, now anger was flooding his eyes.

“You nearly killed yourself for that f’cking box! You stupid cunt!” He slapped Verdugo.

“You’re so dumb Ray, you know what’s inside. We can’t leave such b…”

A tear dropped on Ray’s cheek, disappearing through his badly cut brown beard. He put off his cracked glasses and swept them off. He was shaking and sobbing. He had got back his friend.

The thinner voice, Kreps’s one, started shouting few feet away from their position. From there, his look was the one of a small and skinny punk, his hair was so long and dirty they had pasted up in natural muddy dread-locks. The blond aspect of his hair was in fact now long forgotten.

“This kid is kicking up my balls… literally! He doesn’t want to give up the box.”

“Kreps, tell it’s radioactive. It will calm him down.” Ray replied cynically.

Indeed, once he heard the forbidden word the urchin instantly threw away the metal case. Kreps dumped a flow of insults as the mallet fell on his left foot. He was still having this weird way of pronouncing the “r” and “w”, typical for a German.

“Don’t hit the child, he could still be useful,” Ray ordered, wiping a tear from his eyelid.

“Don’t even touch him… I don’t know what they did to him, but don’t touch… him,” Verdugo whispered.

He pointed hesitantly at the throat-less body next to him, blood was still spurting from the wound. And to support the wounded’s claims, the child tried to bit Kreps’s hand when he approached. Verdugo should have been a really bad example.

On his side, Ray tried to wash and bandage his friend. Wiping off the blood and mud from Verdugo’s face, Ray revealed a washed-out but still tanned skin where these two well-known green eyes were crying tears of salt and blood.

“Eh! Don’t die! What will we do without yah?”

“Everything. Murderers are common these days.” Verdugo sarcastically responded.

A clicking sound rang out from Kreps’ wrist. Few tools were stitched to his sleeves and a small barometer was riveted to his watch. His eyes were nearly glowing from his anxiousness.

“The storm will come back, and with it, the acid rains. We must hurry!” He hissed, mist enshrouded his mouth.

After having the camp scavenged, the group crept out of the forest. A ravaged road was waiting for them. A derelict of a former Mercedes was parked on the roadside. The kid which had not talked yet was following them.

The front door opened. A young girl rooted herself out of the hulk. Her black hair was covering her face, her arms and legs were bandaged under a heavy black leather coat, too large for her thin shape.
She was carrying a gun.

“What happened down there?” She asked after her hazel eyes looked down on Verdugo, nearly unconscious. She gulped back a gag. She was undoubtedly worried.

“Verd’ four hundred four on us.” Kreps said, smiling.

Ray, the current leader of the group gazed at the German.

“No more nerd joke from now on”. He ordered. “Take the steering-wheel. Maria an’ I must secure Verdugo’s state before this crank’d and curs’d walkin’ dead pass’ out.”

Ray had this notorious habit to start speaking fast, making his spelling incomprehensible at some point, once he stressed.

“I’m not dead yet you know.” Verdugo pointed out with his weakening voice.

“You will be if we do nothin’ for ya!”

The group dragged up Verdugo on the quarter-deck. The muted kid jumped into the vehicle and watched Ray and the girl cutting through the nasty wound of their friend. The pain made Verdugo screamed. The young teen covered his ears and closed his eyes.
Verdugo fainted when Maria’s hesitant hand ripped off a rotting piece of flesh. She had never been good with scissors.

“Sissy!” She fulminated.

π ϖ Ϙ Ω Ϙ ϖ π

When Verdugo waked up, he found his wound badly patched and oozing pus. He felt nauseous, his skin was burning and his eyes were still blurred. Acid downpours were not something to make fun of.

“Eh! You’re not dead!” Maria shouted with irony.

“Thanks nurse Obvious!” He hissed slowly.

He felt like a stampede had shattered his body and mind, like after an alcoholic black-out, when hangover is so rooted in your head and guts you only want to throw up. But it had been two years since he had last tasted an ounce of vodka.
Maria was stressed out. She had no antiseptic left, meaning that her friend would die within days if they could not find some in the wreckages. With her fingers she was tangling her black, smelly and rough locks of hairs.

But this kind of worry was not up to the agenda for the moment. A monstrous bolt of lightning struck down a tree, smashing it in half and kindling flames over it. Verdugo’s stare wandered in the car. The silence kid was stoic. He said nothing, just staring outside with his light blue eyes, wide opened. What was attracted his attention was Kreps and Ray in the front, shouting and taunting each other.

Now his eyes had focused, Verdugo could see the massive hullaballoo outside. Rain, lightning, wind and chaos were surrounding the car. Where the fuck Kreps had gone? Everyone felt like they had been transported into a hurricane.

Gusts of wind were punching the truck from every side. Bad day, this was a real bad day. Darkness enshrouded the vehicle while Kreps was struggling to maintain it on its four wheels.

“Did the sun already set? How long did I sleep?” Verdugo asked in a low and weak voice.

“You won’t believe it,” Ray said when Kreps switched on the headlights. “It’s noon… NOON.”

Another tree fell down on the road. Streaks of lightning smashed it into pieces.

Kreps snapped. The wind had struck with such force it had lifted up the car. Without time to think, he just screamed out his powerlessness and braked aimlessly. He crashed the vehicle on the verge of the road.
The impact happened so fast that no one reacted in time.

Maria was the first to wake up, she looked around her. The rain was biting her skin. Kreps who never fastened his seatbelt had been catapulted through the windscreen. He was unconscious thirty feet away from the truck. She lifted her hand to her forehand, in her hand was melt black hairs and blood.

“Oh fuck me!”

“Whenever you want…” a voice rose from the car.

Ray was a lucky bastard, enough at least to have been greeted of a functional airbag. Unfortunately, his glasses had been crushed by the impact and shatters were spread on his face.

“I would prefer having sex with our good old undertaker Verdugo rather than with you, Mister handkerchief.”

“You so mean… Go see how Kreps is doing! A German dying in a German car crash would be patriotically… ironic.”

Maria gave him a finger. She headed to the motionless Kreps’s body. He had two cracked ribs and maybe a commotion. It could have been worse. But now she had two badly hurt people to care about. And in this world it meant death for everyone. Kreps’s pretty face was mumbling.

The storm kept messing around. Ray hardly inspected the car. Verdugo was still laying on its backseat. Like Kreps he was blabbering, but in his case fever was finding its way rather than pain. Bleeding, he did not seem to be wounded… More than he already was at least.

“Eh! Verdugo, Are you okay?” Ray risked himself.

“The child… this muted god-knows-who child stepped on my shoulder!”

Ray hissed, picturing how painful it should have been.

“Don’t worry you’re already a mess!” Ray teased him back.

“Go fuck yourself!” Verdugo added. “Where is he?”

Ray frowned, clueless.

“Who?”

“The child dumbass!”

“I dunno, I broke my glasses.”

Both of them sighed. This teen would give them unnecessary problems.
Maria called, pressing everyone to hurry. She was easy to get stressed. Ray opened the trunk of the car. He took out a tarp and walked toward the only girl of the group. He kindly covered her and Kreps, they were shivering in the cold acid rain.“Where the hell was that kid?” He thought.

Without his glasses he could not see anything. Relying on movements, which were hidden by the pouring rain, it was a nearly impossible task to fulfill.
But his ears caught a muffled sound, like two pieces of metal smiting together. Startled, Ray moved toward the source of the noise. Thunders rumbled once more and intensified as seconds passed.

It was fucking noon! And it seemed like a moonless midnight, with a personal tornado as a gentle godsend. But he did not care in the end. For three years, the earth had been messed up… Since the great uproar, everything had been upside-down. The “uproar”… what an uncanny, unfitting and petty name for incomprehensible events that leaded to the so-called apocalypse.

In fact, Ray remembered. It had been all due to a massive solar storm which had destroyed within a week each consumer or military electronics in the world… leaving everyone left stranded on a black-out Earth. Everybody tried to cope alone, while every mean of communication and transport had been pull out of service. This had leaded to chaos which rapidly had turned into a global civil war for survival and for the ownership of the last scrap of working gadgets. Some nuclear bombs had been dropped, but it had been uncommon.
Mankind succeeded in finding weapons and sowing conflicts and death in each corner of the Earth. The “Great Uproar” turned out to be the last “war” for everyone.

“Okay, back to the kid”, he thought, snapping out of it. The urchin was squatting on the box with a crowbar in his hands. Trying to… to open it.

“You!” Ray shouted, an angry grin replacing his emotion-empty face. “Don’t f’cking dare touch that shit!”

The tearful teen’s eyes stopped on Ray’s angry face. The kid’s weight was enough to blow up the lock. He fell on the grass and dropped the crowbar. They had not catch a glimpse on what was inside yet that green and blue sparks crackled and electricity tensed the ambient air.

“You’ve screwed us all!”

The blowing sound of thunder woke Kreps up, seeing the strange light he swore and grumbled from the pain. Verdugo escaped from the car. He could barely walk.

“Tsss... Don’t come close to it! Our good and kind leader can’t die from irradiation,” he sniggered, shouting to cover the dim noise of rain.

Ray answered back with an exasperated smile. He grabbed the kid and retreated to a safer area. The blue and green light was too intense; impossible to look at the box.

“At least we don’t have the trigger,” Verdugo reassured.

“Yeah that would be annoy…”

A gigantic bolt of lightning smashed the box and everyone felt an unbearable heat.
Everything went white.

π ϖ Ϙ Ω Ϙ ϖ π

Several heavy knocks echoed on the wooden door.

“Twilight… Twilight!”

Lightning was slashing through the sky. The rumbling thunder was shaking the houses’ and cottages’ walls of the small city. The wind struck the windows and ripped out the trees from their leaves.

“TWILIGHT!”

“What Rainbow!?” A voice answered from behind the door. “It has to be important. I was studying with Princess Luna on how to perform lucid dreaming.”

“TWI!!”

The purple alicorn grumbled and opened the door. Unlocking it would be a better description as an alien force pushed it in. A torrent of water crashed onto her face and flooded her hall.

“Okay, I got it… Come in.”

Rainbow Dash urged herself in Golden Oak Library. She closed the door with the help of Twilight’s magic. Rainbow was clearly anxious. She always had this face when she was tensed, visibly wanting to cringe in a corner, hoping to be forgotten.

“What… Rainbow?”

“I need your help! I can’t…”

“Okay, slow down… You’ve just asked me to…” Twilight arched her eyebrows.

“Yes, help me pleaaase!”

This was getting weird. First, like Applejack she was reluctant to ask anypony’s help. Second, she came to the egg-head seeking for help. Rainbow really had to be hopeless. Twilight Sparkle pinched herself.

“I must have messed up some teleporting spell and ended up to another dimension.”

“No, no! I need you!” Rainbow spelled as she understood Twilight’s disbelief, trying to laugh to ease the situation. “You’re the one mastering magic, and this tempest ain’t natural. I can’t put an end to it. It keeps reappearing! It turns me crazy!”

Twilight sighed.

“Here we go…”

Rainbow Dash huddled up.

“Okay Rainbow, I can consider that some storms are magic! But I am not a pegasus. This isn’t my job. I don’t even know how to calm down rain. Face it, sometimes you just have to wait. Cloudsdale may have forgotten to send you the information.”

“You don’t understand. Cloudsdale wanted me to clear the sky today. If I can’t fulfil my duty… I will… I will be forever rejected by the Wonderbolts. You’re an alicorn, you’re almighty! You must do something.”

Almighty? This was awkward. Twilight kicked herself, she should have recorded this. Her eye rose up to the ceiling. “Could she herself be this disappointing when she was not suppressing her own anxiousness? ”She thought. She came up with the idea it was a good topic for a letter to Princess Celestia. She snapped out of her thinking when Rainbow started waking her like a bartender would do with a shaker.

“Rainbow, stop shaking her like a Dragon’s tail! You’ll squeeze her brain out!” Spike remarked while walking down the stairs, yawning.

Spasms plagued Rainbow’s bottom lip. A tearful cyan pony nearly put her front knee to the ground, she begged her friend. Twilight put her hoof on her face.

“Okay, I’ll try!”

Rainbow jumped in the air, a smile on her face.

“Oh thanks you! Thanks, thanks!”

A dozen of knocks echoed on the entrance door.

“Again? For Pete’s sake! Who can it be this time?”

Four mares surged into the hall. The rest of the Mane Six showed up as wet as if they were getting out of a pool.

“Good Celestia! You surely have no manners.” Rarity said, buried under Applejack. “And you, would you please get your hoof away from my mane Fluttershy.”

“Oh my… sorry.”

Once everypony was back on her hooves, they gave Twilight a scared look. She was fulminating; she had been disturbed from her studies. Princess Luna which inhabited her dreams this night had been sent back to her bed in Canterlot in the most informal way.
Rarity gazed at Applejack whose hooves were muddy. She huffed and went outside to wash them off.
Each pony started talking at the same time.

“Needhelpattheboutiquethefieldsaredrowningtheriversbursttheirbanksandthreatentheanimalsandthemarshmallowsdon’tliketobewet!!!”

“Stoooop!” Twilight shouted as her mane turned into flames and her eyes went from her natural colour to blood red.

Everypony gave a step back. Their faces were marked by fear. It took few seconds to Twilight to calm down.

“Okay, I guess that you all have some deal with the storm?”

Rhetorical question of course.

“The wind broke through my windows! My Carousel Boutique is absolutely devastated!” Rarity burst into tears, an art she mastered eons ago.

“The dam ain’t protecting my fields… they are flooded!” Applejack emphasised.

“Mr. Bear asked me if you could…” Fluttershy tried… her voice unable to rise over the unreachable one decibel limit.

“The basement of Sugarcube corner where I store my dear cupcakes is under water!” Pinkie added. “They are excitedly, unthrilledly unhappy!”

Pinkie’s mane uncurled as if Rarity had straitened them. Staring back and forth at Rainbow Dash and her four other friends, Twilight sighed.

“Alright! I’ll do something.”

She stepped outside. Rain instantly slapped her in the muzzle.

“At least I’ll try…”

Coming back inside, she went upstairs. After having the windows opened, she forced the barrier of water and stood alone on the balcony. Everypony was looking at her.
Her eyes went as white as thousand suns and arcs of electricity surrounded her horn. She was muttering something but the sound of pouring rain made it incomprehensible.

Light enshrouded Twilight. She started levitating.

“Okay let it go!”

Lightning struck her horn. Flung through the air, she knocked down her friends as a bowling ball would have done with pins.

“Ow! I didn’t expect that!” Twilight complained, rubbing her forehead.

“What went wrong Sugarcube?” Applejack asked, helping Fluttershy to get back on her hooves.

“I need more power I think. ‘One does not command a storm so easily’.”

“What?” Rainbow Dash enquired about.

“Star Swirl the Bearded tried to master storm magic while he was still living, but he didn’t succeed.

He wasn’t a pegasus.”

Twilight gave a sarcastic stare to Rainbow who looked down. Using her magic again, she brought the Elements of Harmony out of nothing. It was a small trick Celestia had given her.

“More power! Put them on, you’ll help me.”

“Isn’t that a bit… dangerous,” Fluttershy hunched under Twilight’s bed.

“I don’t know. It’s the first time we’ll use them this way… And I wonder if we’re allowed to. I wouldn’t like to mess with mighty beings’ schemes.”

“Ain’t nobody got time for that! Let’s do it.” Rainbow proclaimed. She wanted to make the tempest stop once and for all.

Everypony put their respective Element on and stood on the balcony… Except for Rarity and Fluttershy… Was it the deluge or the frightening thunder? They had their reasons.

Once again, Twilight eyes glowed. Colourful strands of light slowly hooped the levitating group, wrapping each pony in a warm and peaceful embrace. Rarity gasped as the levitating spell brought her outside. Each strip of colour merged above Twilight’s head, forming an unbearably glowing white ball of pure energy.

A hiss came from the sphere, it vibrated and blew up. No shockwave came from it, only a white flash which blinded each of the Element bearers.

When everypony had recovered their eyesight, they could see an absolutely amazing spectacle.

“Is it me or everything is stuck in motion?” Rarity reckoned.

Indeed, every rain drop had stopped… dropping, stuck into the air like if time had been frozen. Twilight swept the motionless downpour with her hoof. She printed her movement in the water, leaving void in the passing. At least ten bolts of lightning were crossing up in the sky.

Everypony in the town went outside. From her balcony, Twilight could see Lyra, Bon-Bon, the mayor. Even animals got out of their nests, burrows or hideouts.
The Mane Six were dazed.

Twilight moved into her bathroom, her friends in her hoofsteps. She turned on the tap. Water ran out.

“I haven’t stopped time… it’s just the storm.”

Everypony heard laughs. Outside Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Spike, quickly joined by Pinkie, were digging in the unmoving rain, hollowing out tunnels like miners in a mountain.

Suddenly, a humming noise intensified, going from inaudible to unbearable. The air was vibrating, blurring like if static was placed on top of reality. Colours seemed to be washed-out. The earth started rumbling.

Suddenly a sole bolt of lightning showed up. It was gigantic. It could have been a god’s deed. For each witnesses it seemed like somepony had drawn out a monstrous sword and sliced it through the air. The white beam collided with the “Dragon’s pit”, the mountain where a red dragon had taken a nap three years ago, until Fluttershy kicked it away.

The impact was apocalyptic. The lightning exploded on the walls of the mountains, shattering the peak in thousands of parts. Bits and pieces flew through the air, crashing all over the valley. A huge rock had been flung into the middle of the city hall square. It sufficed to spread utter panic all over Ponyville.

From her position, the Mane Six minus Pinkie, who was using her pinkie sense to dodge the falling rocks, saw a coming shockwave. A hard slap and few messed up manes later; dust had invaded each street of the city…
Everypony stared at Twilight.

“Eh… Eh… I might have over-done it.”

Rarity raised an eyebrow at Twilight’s bad poker face.

“At… at least it’s not raining anymore.”

Twilight was right; through the dust she could see the sun at the zenith of its arc. The stormy clouds had been swept away by the blast wave.

In the distance, one could hear the sound of one hundred crashing rocks.

Author's Note

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Long Description:

Apr. 2014 - Sweat, Flesh, Blood, And Bones - 1. Where The Rocks Pour
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Apr. 2014 - Sweat, Flesh, Blood, And Bones - 1. Where The Rocks Pour

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When the blast shattered the Dragon’s den peak, hundreds of boulders, debris of all aspects and volutes of dirt scattered over Ponyville’s and Canterlot’s valleys; covering the region of thick and chafing greyish clouds. The atmosphere blackened.

The muddy fallouts concealed the sun for hours and the concerned ponies panicked as darkness was casted upon the Realm of the Two Sisters. Terrorized, some of them shouted that Nightmare Moon had returned.

In no time, Cloudsdale came to Canterlot’s rescue. But even with the common effort of everypony, it took a long time to chase the smoke away. The ambiance was prone to spread terror, deceit and thoughts of ill-omen into the minds of the surrounding inhabitants.

And this was why that, in this exceptional situation, nopony witnessed some tiny and strange shaped shadows fall across the blackish sky.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Falling along, five featherless bodies were shaking their limbs in vain. Powerless, they screamed; the ground was approaching at an insane speed.

Having the time and a mind dedicated to reflection, they would have seen on their left horizon a strange chain of sharped mountains, bordered by a dense forest of dark green leaves, location where they were desperately heading. Long and impressively large rivers crossed this green sea.

They would have also seen hung onto a steep mountain a strange and magnificent castle of gold and silver.

However, staying alive was the unique idea agitating their minds at the moment.

Tearing down the air, they saw themselves closing to a lake dwelling in the middle of the strange forest. The number of feet separating them from the impact was lessening each second. The unfortunate and still conscious sky-divers held their breath.
They dipped into water. It felt like crashing into concrete, smashing… in the literal way.

Waves formed onto the lake as the five falling ‘birds’ sunk into at an astonishing speed. Seconds later, a wrecked four wheeled cage of metal crashed on the shores few meters away, bounced and finished its reckless race on the bordering beach.
Giving off fumes, the vehicle broke down and fell apart in thousands of pieces.

The waves faded away and the place recovered its former silent state.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

In the hours following the biggest, and certainly the coolest as said by a certain rainbow coloured Pegasus, explosion Equestria had ever seen, the two Princesses Luna and Celestia went to Ponyville to hear the account of the oldest sister’s most faithful student.
Dazed, they listened to the whole story.

“So you’re telling me,” initiated Princess Celestia, massaging her temple to make the report easier to chew on. “That you cast an explosive spell on the tallest mountain of Equestria in order to scatter away a magical storm.”

Twilight’s lips drew a strange shaped smile, swinging between a poorly executed poker face and an anxious rictus.

“Basically… no… I mean… yes, but everypo…”

Celestia and Luna covered their eyes with their hooves, disbelieving. Luna cut her off.

“Do thou understand how aberrant thy deed hath been?” She said with a mighty anger glaring in her eyes. “What if falling pieces of the peak had broken into the midst of random cottages? It could have killed ponies! This could have been pudh!”

Luna became more and more cryptic as her speech slept toward a very old equestrian dialect. She started grunting, spasms running within her neck’s fur.

“But, I tried that spell Celestia learned me month ago about cloud chasing.”

“It was meant to be a kind of fun spell we can use during parties to shape the clouds… not to make them go away. That’s a pegasus’s job…” Celestia pointed out with a stern voice after having pushed aside her sister. “And you used the Elements!”

“I ran out of power… And they were so intrusive and oppressing. Don’t punish me please…” Twilight squeaked, mentioning her friends.

She leaned toward her teacher, mumbling in fear and shame. Celestia and Luna let out a loud breath. The Princess of the Sun raised her head and start talking with a compassionate and friendly voice.

“You can’t solve everything with pure magic and power,” She turned and faced Twilight’s friends. “And you shall learn that forcing out advantages from your friend is not a worthy of and respectable behaviour.”

“We’re sorry.” Everypony yielded.

“Now go out and help everypony clear the chaos you’ve wreaked upon us.” Luna added after she calmed herself. “You will write a letter tonight to my sister… all of you. And Fluttershy…”

The yellow pegasus dunked her head in her shoulders when she heard her name.

“Lots of debris struck the surrounding forests. You should ask Zecora to help you searching for hurt or wounded animals.”

Fluttershy nodded, thanked the princess and went out with all of her friends.

“Huge explosion on second thought,” Luna remarked, a small smile printed on her lips.

“Maybe too huge… do you remember thousand years ago during our confrontation? We tore apart some fabric of time and space.”

“Yes, now you told it We remember. That was utterly amusing,” She giggled before Celestia sent her a clear message about the seriousness of the situation. Her stare glared daggers.

“And this is how we… I… had to fight this Shoggoth or whatever the name legends gave to it,” The princess of the Sun shivered.

“Tekeli-li!” Luna howled, startling Celestia who jumped on the nearest table as if she had seen a mouse.

“Stop… Stop It!” She yelled, her white and silky fur bristled all over her body. “We said to never talk of this again!”

Luna was still laughing when they came out of the Golden Oak Library. She stopped and arched an eyebrow. A huge boulder was standing in the middle of the street. Earth ponies were digging it out with pickaxes, making it easier to move.

“It’s nearly time to set the sun and raise the moon Lulu.”

“Don’t call me that way, it’s unnerving.”

“Everything is a fair game… Lulu,” Celestia stuck out her tongue, winking.

In the sky, the emissaries and forces of Cloudsdale were clearing the last remnants of the smoky clouds.

The moon had risen on Equestria and the stars were tingling above the tired lands. Ponies were going to sleep.

Luna was standing on her balcony. It was time for her duty. She stretched her legs and leaned on her couch. Her horn started glowing a bright cyan, throwing small sparkles all over her deep blue mane. Her brows slowly closed and she felt slipping away.

When she opened her eyes again, Luna was floating over her physical body. She had taken an invisible and ghostly shape. On this plan of existence, Luna’s view was shaded and blackened as was the environment. She looked at her hooves. Pure white light was exuding of her body whose contours seemed unclear.

In this sea of darkness where the remnant colours seemed to be distorted, she could see islands of pure blue light. Each was picturing a pony or any living being experiencing a peaceful dream. The light turned bloody when nightmares and fears were overcoming an unfortunate dreamer.
It had been this way for eons, and she did not expect this fact to change.

Levitating, she elevated herself over the lands. She reached the upper parts of the atmosphere. Millions of lights were glowing in the grim dark. The silent of space was overwhelming. She liked it. The common reality was a noisy, deceitful and disgraceful place to stride across. Here, in this deaf place she was whole, she was a true goddess.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Earlier…

Heads surfaced, breathing in loudly, coughing and swearing. Five strange forms swam aimlessly and clumsily to the beach where the car was dwelling, torn apart. Crawling in the sand, all the survivors felt the wet sand gluing to their hands, skin and clothes. Some spat and vomited the water filling their lungs.
The five had survived thanks to an ungodly luck. If the lake had not been here, they would have ended as pulp-like puddles on the ground.

The sun was low in the sky and dusk’s light was reverberating on dark and smoggy clouds miles away from here. The sky was a melting pot of shades of blue, deep purple and pink.

“Maria?” the hesitant voice of Ray asked. “How long it has been since we saw a nearly-clear sky last and… the sun?”

“Years…” She replied with a smile as she gulped out an ounce of water.

“Three hundred and eighty nine days.” Kreps specified and deadpanned: “At least we don’t have to see a burning solar storm.”

“Thanks egg-head,” Ray giggled as he passed away from exhaust, water was running from his dark brown hair.

Spread out on the shore, everyone was taking great delight in sinking their hands into the fine sand.
Maria tilted her head on her left. Not everyone was enjoying the situation… Verdugo was reanimating the kid, using his type of “kind” heart massage that only he had the secret. The child could have spat out his intestines that would have been unsurprising. Unlucky was a suited word in the end. It was the first time Maria paid attention to the young boy. He was very small and had suffered from malnutrition. His black hairs were badly cut and his face was bruised. He had been molested for weeks as old and new marks were placed on the top of each other.

Salty water came instead of the bloody organs. Trembling, the kid opened his eyes and looked at his saviour with a wandering stare.

On his own, Verdugo was also shaking. It was due to the pain running in the wound plaguing his shoulder. It was flooding blood again and everyone could see that how many times the injured man tried, he could not move his right arm. His limb was pitifully dangling, dragging along the sand when he was on his knees.

Three times, he palpated it with his working left hand, each time he frowned. And before Maria, Ray or Kreps asked him about it, he shouted in disbelief.

“It isn’t working. I can’t feel it beyond the wound.”

However he could still barely move his fingers. He kicked away angrily a scrap of metal which crashed in the lake’s water, drowning fast.

“Verd’, night is coming. Come here that I heal you up a bit.” Ray proposed as he got up, worries dwelling in his eyes. He cared about his friend.

Objecting, Verdugo surrendered when Ray, the leader of this group of stooges casted a stern and caring glance at the stinking and ugly hollow in his shoulder.

“Maria will be sad when she’ll bury your rotting corpse tomorrow morning.”

Verdugo acted as he had heard nothing.
The wound was naughty, but Ray tried his best to fix it without throwing up. Now the bandage was holding Verdugo’s arm tight to his pectoral, keeping it from bleeding out.

“It’s the least I can do, but we need to urge, we have no antiseptic for you.”

“I’m going to hunt something to eat. I’m starving,” Verdugo stated as a response, emotionless. “Take a look to the map with Kreps, I think it was on the back seat when the storm struck us.”

Ray’s mouth was hanging low. He tried to contest his wounded friend’s will to go hunt some wild animals, but Verdugo was as stubborn as a mule. And before he disappeared behind the bushes which marked a clear distinction between the dark forest and the beach, Verdugo called the only woman of the group.

“Maria, find the f’cking box and keep the kid from touching it… ever again,” Verdugo paused, pointing her with his finger. “Then give it to Kreps, it’s his own after all.”

He leaped silently in the forest after Maria had given him a long and rusty knife. She sighed, offended.

“He’s stupid,” Maria looked at the sky, searching for a sign which could have agreed with her.

“Insanely mad,” Kreps supposed, occupied to draw in the sand and curled up to avoid any pain easen the pain coming from his thorax.

“Nah… He’s doing his job. That’s what I ask him to. We must rely on each one’s skills remember,” Ray cut them off while he was trying to extract the shard of glass from his face, remains of his loved glasses. He glared at the forest’s edge. “And he will never change.”

Yes, he never changed and would never. Was he already a bloody killer before? They were all clueless. Only Maria could have known, she was the first to have crossed Verdugo’s blood smeared path. And the only one to have looked in the metal cylinder he was always carrying with him, and survived the aftermaths. As every random human, no one liked to be spied on. And Verdugo was an extremely spiteful person. What was inside the cylinder was as secret as what was lying inside Kreps’s metal box. However Maria had always stayed quite silent about it. She was afraid and also appreciative of him.

Maria always pictured Verdugo as a big brother while Ray saw him as a friend or an employee… It was depending of the time. Kreps on his own considered him as a colleague and a rival.
On the other hand, Verdugo had always been distant with everyone. He was always hanging away from them… but also from everyone. This applied to every situation, during the occasional peaceful meeting on the roads, during the trading with random voyagers or even during the deadly fights for survival, when he was not sinking a sharped edge in someone’s flesh. The exception was maybe Maria.

Ray and Kreps snapped out of their thinking.

“If I caught you stalking on me, I’ll make you eat your own balls,” The woman stated, staring evilly at her friends. “And this isn’t a joke. You eyeball, you’ll never see them all.”

Hiding behind the car wreck, she put off her clothes and dived into the lake. In apnea she examined the bottom of the huge loch where they fell into. She surfaced, breathed in and peaked again.

Kreps and Ray, afraid of their little fury, scavenged the remains of the car, avoiding casting a glance to the shore. Maria had always been modest; even more she seemed to fear people looking at her naked. She was a woman after all, usual target in the wasteland.

There was nothing much left around the car, speaking of functional things. They found one torchlight, wet matches, a lighter, a net, few meters of rope, two maps – one of Europe and another of the world – wet as well, and of course a large, heavy and indented metal box.
They struggled extracting it out of the car’s trunk.

Ray searched in his pockets, only to find wet dirt and few coins… He threw them in the lake. The key to the lock was missing. They sighed. During fifty minutes they tried opening it by force with an improvised crowbar, a rock and even Kreps’s head.
Nothing got done with it in the end.

“Hey, take that!”

Maria, now drying her long dark hair, threw them the key she had pull out of her jacket, hanging on the car, two meters away from her two male mates. Their tired and murderous stares fixed her. She laughed.
She had wrapped herself in a fabric, hiding her sickly thin body nearly entirely. Her skin was tanned, but time and a lack of sunlight had washed out her original tint.

In the box was tidied up half a dozen of weapons, knives and guns. Add to this armoury an old rifle, a shotgun, a long sword, two ice-picks and at least sixty or seventy cartridges of all sorts. Any witness would have a good insight of the group’s fire power. Wandering and stalking in the cities and abandoned military areas had always been rewarding, but also awfully dangerous. More than one scar was the reminder of such truth.
It would have been an even more impressive equipment if not all the weapons had been rusty and eaten up by time and climate. Moreover, most of the cartridges did not match with the present weapons.

The last part of the scavenging was to extract the useful components of the car, its battery, wires, lamps, oil and everything on what they could rely on in the future.

The sun had set at the horizon when Maria lit a fire. The warm was welcomed as everyone was shivering in the night’s coldness.

“Where are we?” Maria asked, looking at the map lying in front of everyone. It was written in German.

“Before today’s… incident, we were thirty kilometres away from Vienna,” Kreps showed with his finger pointing a position to the South-East of the city’s name. “We derived a bit from the chosen path because of the smashed roads. Remember we’ve passed the Alps ten days ago thanks to the Spring and,” he turned toward Ray. “You wanted us to go to…”

“Berlin,” Ray responded.

Kreps’s eyes brightened up.

Again, Maria would have liked to know why but a rustle in their back cut off their discussion. With his poorly sharped and broken knife drawn out, Verdugo was carrying a big animal. Blood from the flank of the thing was running on his grey rags.
The animal seemed like a big rodent, a very large rat with a small tail.

“What the hell is that?” Maria asked along with Kreps. Utter disgust could be read on their face.

Troubled stares welcomed him and his catch.

“It’s a coypu,” Verdugo replied with a raised brow. “A kind of beaver if you want to know the details,” He insisted. “There is lots of life around here, bears and stuff.”

“Is it… eatable?” Ray pouted.

“Will see.”

Annoyed, Verdugo fixed Kreps who was holding the map.

“Are you sure we’re still in Austria? I thought it was around Vienna that a chemical bombing has been performed by Russia or whatever... years ago.”

“I guess, I don’t know what the storm did but we got catapulted…” Kreps noticed blasé.

“We ain’t dead, that’s the first miracle,” Verdugo looked askance at Maria. “And the box? What about it?”

Maria’s jaw dropped. She raised her hand in a desperate and useless attempt to explain herself. No sound came out of her mouth. An amused smile cleared her face.
Verdugo, on his own tried to join the palms of his hands in a praying gesture, only to see his right arm was still not working. It added a straw to his current overloaded burden.

“What I’m gonna do with you all...” He whispered.

Ray, felling a conflict forthcoming eased the tension, pretending it would be easier to search for the dangerous box in the morning.
They grilled the dead animal and eat it up in silence. They first threw up. The taste was revolting, a mix between mud, fat and bitterness. It was like biting through sludge.
They ended up with a remaining hunger, assiduously clinging to their guts, and with an awful bellyache.

Later after the unsavoury meal, Maria came to see Verdugo’s state. He was lying in the frame of the car, complaining on the last available seat. Whatever the position he took, the pain was driving him insane.
Seeing Maria getting into the wreck he turned over the opposite side. He was still angry at her.

“Oh come on, stop rolling your dumb eyes.”

“You know if it wasn’t you I might have ripped off your neck.”

“I know, but I’m your sister after all.”

“You’re just my foster sister, “He emphasised on ‘foster’. “Remember that I didn’t sign for this. And I don’t want them to know,” He pointed Kreps’s and Ray’s sleeping forms near the fire. “I took care of your pretty ass since I raided that bandit camp three years ago.”

“I was fourteen years old, I was a burden, but you still kept me. And Ray and Kreps ain’t blind… C’mon admit it, you like me!” She teased him up.

“I like you because you’re the only one here that I can have a good fight with. Ray is too preoccupied in getting in touch with his parents again to endanger the cohesion of the group and Kreps… well he’s the egghead. He has his own strange plans. And I don’t hit the one who can repair my knife.”

“Eh you’re so stupid that I want to believe you do it on purpose!” She giggled. “You would like to do a Baraka.”

“It’s been a long time indeed. But I think my right arm won’t let me perform such… unfeminine sport,” He replied ironically.

Maria gave him back his spooky smile. This contest they had invented was indeed pretty dangerous, deadly sometimes.

“I’ll beat you again as I did over the ten last games, filthy barbaric!”

“Will see that. Tomorrow we head to the North-West. We gonna see if Vienna is still standing there.”

They paused, a long silent settled between them. Verdugo finally faced Maria, plunging his stare in the nut-brown eyes of the girl.

“Did you ever go there?” Maria asked genuinely.

“Nah! But it is said it is… was a beautiful place. An’ you?”

“No… Before the uproar I never went out of Spain…” She remained silent for several seconds. “Oh wait, I got something for you!”

She dropped a heavy case on Verdugo’s knees. She had hidden it behind her jacket the whole time.

“Where… you shitty liar!”

“It landed in a bush not far from the beach. Kreps saw it when he went pissing earlier.”

“Take this thing away from me…” Verdugo protested in disgust. “… And us, that’s a dangerous shit.”

“Yeah, yeah… You sure that’s radioactive?”

“I already said it’s Kreps’s box, I’m only the keeper. And he is the engineer, he should have kept it.”

After being casted away, Maria left Verdugo to his unsteady sleep. Before coming back to her warm couch near of the fire, she dropped the case in the water. ‘It is said that liquid can reduce radioactivity, right?’, she thought.

Sleepiness took over the camp as the moon was at his height.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Luna was wandering around in her night sky. Looping and free as she never felt before, she moved carelessly over Equestria and the lands beyond. Sometimes, when a bright sphere was turning red, she was slowly closing and with a kind touch of her hoof spread peace in its heart.

She liked this dawdling carefree spirit state. She could hear the stars twinkling above her head.
And each time she went here every night, it was always feeling like her first time. It was an unending and everlasting discovery.

She moved to the Bad Lands. She giggled when she sent a tiny spider in Chrysalis’s dream, only living creature the Hive Queen was scared of, ‘oh the irony’ everypony would say if they knew the truth. But Luna always kept this secret like a Pinkie Pie’s promise to herself.
She went to Warclaw, the griffon capital across the see. There she gave her most devoted salute to the Griffon Imperator which was dreaming of his youth.
She floated to the North where, as she found out that Shining Armour and Princess Cadance were having the same hot and sweaty dream, she linked their thoughts and dream for the night.
She also guided this old dragon in the Deep South which was desperately searching for the best position to fall into slumber.

She started coming back to her balcony, as the sun would rise within the hour. But she found herself attracted by a certain region of a certain forest. There, sleeping near of a lake, five spheres were shining along. These beings of light were absolutely different from what she had ever seen and experienced before.

In fact, each species has its own orb’s shape. Ponies’ was perfectly spherical when Griffons’ was a bit oval. And these five throbbing shapes looked like broken shards. Luna could not definitely call these… orbs.

Her curiosity being aroused, Princess Luna took a deep breath and put her hooves on the first shard, she bring it closer to her horn until they touched. A small bolt of lightning joined them both, and Luna sunk into the dream.

The place was a bright, magnificent and delightful meadow of yellow wheat. The wind was slowly brushing through the field, printing evanescent shapes on the tops of the crop. The breeze was carrying smells of fresh out of the oven bread and croissants as a dash of sugar and honey filled Luna’s mouth and lungs.
She longley breath in.

It was beyond describable. It was similar to standing into the greatest bakery a world would ever possess. She was into heaven or at least she thought that she had found what Alicorns’ Paradise could look like, feel like, taste like and of course smell like.

Resting in a recess of the field, surrounded by the warm cereals, Luna was savouring the moment when she heard laughter. Brought by the wind, the giggles flooded Luna’s mind as she sought for its source. On the top of the recess was toddling a strange, small creature.
Standing on two limbs, it was chasing a butterfly. Its hooves which in reality ended with hands similar to those of a dragon were devoid of claws. The cute creature was trying ineffectively to grasp the tiny blue and red insect.

The creature’s mane was composed of a long dark coiffure contrasting with the golden colour of the field. She had absolutely no fur. Her bare skin was pale. The wind was blowing, making her hairs fluttering.
Her cries and giggles echoed in Luna’s mind. The little, armless and lovely creature was running away.

“Child, wait!” Luna asked, raising a hoof toward what it looked like to be the dreamer.

Unfortunately no answer came from the running being as it started fading beyond the top of the hill. Luna launched herself in what appeared to be the dreamer’s tow. She ran for few minutes as if the hill was far higher than it seemed to be.

The child was on her knees, holding a teddy bear. But Luna could not have cared less about it; she was stricken by an unfair spectacle.
An ocean of burning buildings of every shape stood before her. The smoke was raising high in the sky. The smell of baking was suddenly chased away by the one of roasting and rotting flesh of livings. Her ears were flooded by thousands of screams.
Luna could not keep herself from crying.

“I always wanted a pony,” the child genuinely said, picking up Luna’s attention. “But mommy and daddy…” She hesitated. “…aren’t here anymore to gift me one.”

She grabbed Luna’s fur with her small and chubby hands and stared in her tearful eyes. Her look was earth-shattering. The child’s brown eyes were amazingly moving.

“Miss, do you know where are my daddy and mommy?”

The dream ended abruptly.

Even in this ghostly plan, Luna caught herself crying, her? Having tears rolling on her cheeks in this dimension where she was an absolute god? It was unthinkable. Even deeply-moved, her curiosity was still excited. And what she saw was quite amusing. One of the lasting spheres was flickering back and forth from blue to red.
It was titillating. She repeated the same procedure, came closer to the strangely shaped dream and dived into it.

It was pitch black. Luna was without a doubt walking on something but she could not see the ground or the ceiling. In fact she first thought she was blinded.
There was nothing but blackness… and her. The princess could see herself distinctly but once it was not her, she was blind. Her horseshoes echoed as if she was walking on a marbled surface.

She hit her head against an invisible wall. Lifting her up, she groped for what she crashed into. Luna felt the wall at the end of her hoof. She gave a little bang.
She jumped back as she saw a white wave spreading upon what she just knocked, embracing the structure then fading away. For a second, Luna saw a corner appear few feet away from her.
She got an idea.

Jumping high in the air, she fell heavily on the ground. This time, bigger white waves sprawled on a far longer distance. She saw two buildings standing in front of her.
She started running, thundering her silver horseshoes onto the ground, flooding this strange dream of her white shockwaves. A hollowed and silent city started shaping and blooming under her hooves as she headed to a monstrously large square. In its centre stood a gigantic fountain. Unfortunately, no water was filling its pond.

Silence came back as Luna stopped stomping the ground, but the edge of the buildings did not fade with this sudden stop. The white contours of the constructions remained. A deafened black and white city was circling the Princess. She was reluctant to say if she was feeling at ease or not.
There was absolutely no sound…

A… a jingling? A jingling reverberated throughout the city.

”When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon…”

Luna turned around. Far away from her, deep inside the shadows of a skimpy street, a floating and bouncing jawbone loaded of sharped teeth was closing in. The jingling intensified. Another bouncing jaw appeared, creeping out of the next street. Another came up, and a new one showed up, again and again until Luna found herself surrounded by these monstrous breeds of a mind she did not know or imagine to exist.

Stress filled up Luna’s mind, the fear crawled within her skin, climbing back up her limbs and her fur and gaining her chest. Luna felt like a sharpened and cold talon had tightened her beating heart and with its claws was trying to squeeze it out. Shivers ran through Luna’s mane.
She felt a void of love, of this good feeling of happiness inside of her mind. Everything had been replaced by utter panic. Her terror was so high it made her unable to move an inch. More than just feeling her heart tightened, this… was like having a hand crushing her inner being, and trying to rip off her soul out of her thorax. Never again she wanted to feel that way. It was unbearable.

“Make it stop! Please!!” She implored.

The jaws stopped, circling Luna and the fountain. Ready to strike and aiming at the throat, they were all drooling… waiting for her to move.
A strong hand grasped Luna’s neck. She was forced to turn back.

A muscled entity was staring at her, trying to understand something out of Luna’s range. He looked like and differed also from the first dreamer. He was not that tall. Well he was way taller than a random pony but Luna was clearly overcoming him in height, thanks to her horn. But the strength the creature was delivering outmatched everything Luna had faced before. Worse, she was unable to fight back when her opponent was only using one arm.

He was strangling her, his grasp was too powerful. Luna’s glance ran over his head, a skinny and plate head with a small black mane on its top, two dark green eyes and a mouth loaded of dental plaque. His skin was tanned and covered of scars. His chest was muscled, but the starvation made him look like a skeleton. What captivated the princess was that monstrous hollow at the level of his right shoulder. The wound was disgusting to watch, but no blood was flooding out.

“You’re hurt?” the princess hissed in pain.

Luna tried to ease the situation, losing any sense of manners. Sweat of stress rolled on her face.
Her interlocutor was not amused. He released his suffocating grasp and forced Luna to bend, pushing her onto her knees. His stare was frightening.
He started talking.

“My… my… my. What do we got here? I really am becoming insane,” The surprised creature laughed swiftly, ruffling the mane on his head.

Drawing out a long knife he jabbed her with its point. She shrieked.

“What a funny shape you’ve got here.”

Luna was bemused. He was a… lucid dreamer. That was unexpected… dangerously unexpected. Few ponies were actually able to perform such experience, and Luna always avoided those dreams. In fact, the orbs of each dreamer had to turn a slightly green when they was starting a “lucid dive”. The looping changes of colour of the creature’s shard had deceived her.

“My beloved subject, we shall let thou at thy dream as our duty forbids us to intervene within those who awaken in the sleepy Limbos.”

The creature laughed. It was a frank laugh, something he had not performed since… for a long period.

“I really am mad. First time my own dreams tell me that kind of crap.”

“We are the Princess of the Night, keeper of the dreaming realm. Thou violent creature hast an impolite behaviour. Shall We punish thy deeds tonight, bringing nightmares to thou?”

At her last words the creature frowned. Luna started regretting her sayings when the monster’s face distorted in a strange grin.

She tried to break the link between her and the conscious dreamer. Gob-smacked, she witnessed her powerlessness to escape from this ethereal place. The creature looked at the pond, anger could be read on his face. He sighed.

“Here are two options that are yours to choose. To wake up from a dream, you know that either you have to kill the dreamer,” he smiled again. “Or, you have to wait until the dreamer has finished his business down here.”

The creature waved at the steady jaws waiting to leap on Luna and him. They replied with a cacophony of laughter and clinking.

“So, here are the so-called choices. On the first hand you decide to kill me in the most horrendous way you could imagine…This is your…” He sniggered. “so-called punishment... Time to see if my own dreams are interesting.”

He drew out a bloodied and broken knife then placed it in Luna’s trembling hoof. Her stare was swapping between the suicidal monster and the bladed weapon.

“… or you wait until I wake up while you’ll be devoured by my over excited sprawling imagination, with me as a spectator.”

He snapped his finger, which made Luna focus.

“The choice is yours,” He said with dryness. His grin was skanky. “You have the choice, you rebellious dream of mine.”

Luna was aware that the dreamer thought she was a dream. Sometimes, the lucid dreamer was fighting to keep themselves awake within here. This kind of situation was rare but absolutely dangerous for watchers like Luna.

Now she was quivering, unable to understand the reasoning behind the monster’s saying, behind the choices she was given. She stared at her mind tormentor, she was going to ask for mercy, but the outcome came to be different as he became aware of the princess’s next sentence.

“Wrong answer!” He sadistically said.

Kicking the knife away from Luna’s hoof, the creature drew out of the blackness a sword and aimed toward Luna’s neck. The blow was fast and clear. The floating jaws leaped on the two shapes facing them.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Luna escaped her sleeping state and howled with a deep and hissing breath. She started groping nervously around her neck, her shoulders and her chest. They were nothing, no blood, no flesh dawdling around, nothing.

Sweat streamed on her body as she regained her senses. She was still on her balcony, shaking. Celestia was standing in front of her, worries casted in her eyes. Her breath was heavy and loud.
Three guards were circling the princess in a security perimeter.

The moon had set and the sun had already swapped with its place high in the horizon, Celestia had taken initiatives.

“Lulu, you’ve worried us all. We couldn’t wake you up! What happened?”

Still feeling around her skin she started talking with a trembling and blabbering voice.

“Deep in the Everfree, they were five dreamers, I’ve explored two of their dreams,” She hissed, her eyes insanely wide opened. “The first one was disturbing, sad. But the last one…” She started crying. “The dreamer… he trapped me inside. It was scary. I never felt that way before…”

Luna leaped into Celestia’s hooves, searching for reassuring warmth while bursting into tears. She had forgotten about her etiquette. Only fear was bathing her mind. This already new situation shocked the three guards. Powerless in front of this pathetic play, Celestia asked for privacy. The witnesses drew back out of Luna’s room.

“Then it… that unknown creature… it… he talked to me and asked me two things I couldn’t do,” She squeezed her head between her hooves. “And he… he had that tremendous sword. He slashed me!”

The last word came as a screech, Luna was grinding her teeth. She stared into Celestia’s eyes, grieved and astray.

“I… I died down there… for the first time in my life.”

Luna cringed in her sister’s hooves. Celestia tried to give her a sisterly hug. But her sister never really stopped shaking. This play was earth-shattering, pitiful and unnerving.

The Princess of the Day called back her guards.

“Contact the Element Bearers! They have to find these five sparks in the night. Tell them to go in the Everfree Forest. Make sure they bring them back here,” She paused. “Nopony will ever harm my sister again nor will endanger my little ponies’ security. I want to know how they are. Bring them back here… peacefully.”

Celestia was visibly infuriated. The look of her crying sister was clearly an unbearable spectacle to watch. What did Twilight’s explosive experience have brought to this world? She looked toward the Everfree Forest far away in the horizon.

₰ ϡ ϗ φ ϗ ϡ ₰

Maria yawned, stretching her body. She looked around and saw she was the first to wake up. She had made a strange dream. But as usual she could not remember it clearly and soon this memory would fade away.
She laid on her back for basically twenty minutes straight, waiting for the sun to rise from behind the mountains standing high in the East. And then it showed up.

The sun was biting her skin. Two days of full sunshine was too hard to bear for somebody who had not seen it for more than a year. But on the other side, it was relieving. It reminded her of her old country, bathed by the warmth and the sunshine. A place once beautiful and where living was cheerful and carefree.
She decided to take a peak in the lake’s clear waters. Refreshing was the only word which popped in her mind.

She surfaced. Something was afoot in fact. She now remembered that at the east of their position, they should not be mountains. They had already passed the Alps she kept saying, it was weird. She had to ask Kreps, but tickling the sleeping geek was like playing with amorphous goo… basically useless. A roaring plane could carpet bomb his ass that it would not even make him move a hair or arch a brow.

Once she went out of the water, she instantly wrapped herself in the same fabric than the last evening. She dried herself as fast as possible.
She looked at her back and put on her clothes. She jumped onto the top of the wrecked car, making his inhabitant grumbling in his sleep and cast a glare around her. She expected the sun to warm her up.

It was a magnificent beach positioned in a vast clearing of the surrounding forest. From her location Maria could see fishes swimming around the shore. She cursed the world for not having a line.

Speaking of the forest, it seemed inscrutable. The thick foliage of thousands of trees was hiding the sun from the lower part of the place. Maria was not claustrophobic, but thinking about wandering into that place was not giving her the best feeling.

She gasped.
Something had grabbed her leg and had thrown her on the sand. She screamed like a scared bird as she fell onto the ground.

“And bang you’re dead!” Verdugo scorned.

“Fuck off man; you’ve beat the shit out of me!”

“Yeah, it’s fun.”

“Your death will be long and painful!”

“And would you be so kind to tell me how?” He deadpanned.

She thought with a finger on her lips. An idea came up.

“If I kick up your ass during the next Baraka you’ll tell me what you were doing before the Uproar.”

“My little dear,” He sighed. “You can know about Ray, Kreps, this child,” he pointed the so-called kid, still sleeping on his handmade couch of sand. “But you know that I don’t want to talk about something which does not matter anymore.”

“Chicken?” She imitated the animal.

Verdugo was slung to the quick. He did not like to have his honour flouted that way.

“Okay, this is on!”

When Ray opened his eyes, he witnessed two furious noisy acquaintances fighting over a matter way ahead of his preoccupations. He rubbed his eyes before taking one of the last remnants of the beaver. He liked so much a cold rotten and sickly tasting meat as breakfast. But the hunger was driving him insane. He chew air, masticating the thick and dried saliva between his cheeks.

He called out loud the two demons to stop their fight right away. They groused before bending to his demand and joined him around the cold feast.

“I had a weird dream,” Ray said. “I saw you Verd’. You were wearing a ballerina outfit.”

Maria spat the chewed beaver out of her mouth, laughing out loud.

“Ah… ah… ah. I hoped I gave you a boner. ” The concerned party replied with a fake laugh and irony.

Maria raised her voice.

“I dreamed about a girl, me… I don’t remember, but I saw a blue and black unicorn in my dream. I felt like crazy. Unicorn? That’s silly…” Maria guffawed when she remembered some random parts of her dream.

“You’re becoming too soft woman! Bad habits are coming back,” Verdugo teased her, his voice seemed hesitant. “One step further and we’ll have to build you a kitchen to remain in.”

“Nah… just a moment of distraction. And you Verd’, did you dream?”

He stood up, pretending to examine his badly bandaged and oozing wound.

“Yeah I dreamt but that’s none of your business.”

Ray and Maria fixed each other with a worried look. Ray gave her a shrug. She applied the palm of her hand onto her forehead.
Ray often asked himself if this man who had helped, saved and defended him and his group so many times was nothing but a grieved hollowed body that did appear in the following of the apocalypse to keep them alive, like a guardian angel…

Few minutes later, the muted kid and Kreps had woken up and were voraciously, but with a pinch of disgust, eating the last drops of the beaver. But in fact, nothing could undermine the hunger of the group at the moment.
Maria was trying to catch fish bare-handed, task nearly impossible though while Verdugo was walking into circles at the opposite side of the beach.

Ray was surprised and worried about the kid. He did not talk, never told his name and seemed to be reluctant to have anybody moving closer to him. He was like a scared animal… a frightened pet which was always keeping a safe distance with its “masters” but was forced to follow them in order to survive another day in this world.

He was young, very young; maybe ten… twelve years old.
One of his incisors was missing, a milk tooth probably and he had numerous scars running on his face. He had black hairs and his skin was scarily ghoulish. Strange, he had amazingly light blue eyes that pierced from side to side whoever stared into.

His clothes were torn apart. With a hint of compassion, Ray tried to find a way to give him decent clothing. But he found himself also wearing remainders of such items. How long had it been since he last saw himself in a mirror?

He looked toward the lake. The temptation to look at his reflection was teasing, but he did not want to see how ugly and wrecked he was. When he was gazing at Kreps or Verdugo, what he was seeing was two walking bag of bones whose faces were covered of unclean beard and scars, with shadows under their eyes.

Reaching his chin, Ray touched a rough mass of filthy hair and a small bald mark, his neck scar. He sighed.

Maria was his sunshine, always radiant even if she was skinny as hell and that she had developed no breast at all… thanks starvation. But she was always smiling and joking around in the group. Maybe she was the only thing keeping him and everyone sane from the madness of the post-uproar world.
He would have not been able to keep up without her around. Did he love her? He did not know. But what he was sure of was that he would defend her at all cost… because ‘light must not die’, he thought.

Verdugo came up with a clever invention. He had cut two long and resistant stick of wood. And with an intertwining of ropes, he made of the heavy metallic trunk where every weapon was resting something barely transportable. It required two strong pairs of shoulders to be manoeuvred. The case weighted nearly one hundred pounds.

“Okay, who start the tour?” Verdugo asked.

Everybody started whistling.

He, in spite of his injured right shoulder, and Kreps started carrying the heavy case as Maria was leading the tow, the “radioactive” box in her bag. Everyone was carrying a heavy pack on their back and even the soundless child was participating in the exhausting manoeuvre, wearing the wet blanket Maria used to dry herself.

Ray was desperately deciphering the map written in German, which was not a language he was mastering at all.

“Neu… Neusi… Neusiedler See. If this is the lake we’re going along, we’re at twenty… thrity miles from Vienna. If we go straight to its north we’ll find…Neu… Neusiedl am… Oh fuck! Why German names are so unpronounceable!”

Kreps laughed.

“No seriously that’s annoying!”

“You want to swap spaces,” Kreps asked, panting heavily.

Ray got muted and gave himself a minute of reflection. Ray got hold of himself.

“Okay, if we find that f’cking city we could find a road to Vienna. But if we don’t, we have to go to the North West. Should be easy no?”

He said this expecting a global nod from each of his companions. But everybody was focusing on not stepping on a devilish root which could make them fall. The forest was thick and Maria had to cut through with Verdugo’s knife. Weird and stressing sounds were popping intermittently. Branches cracked under everyone boots. And the lack of animals’ cries, howls and presence evidences was another straw on the camel back.

“Remind me to never come here again please,” Maria asked with a trembling voice. “And… Verdugo, don’t you say yesterday that you saw animals?”

“Yes… yesterday…”

A distant howl echoed in the forest, the first and macabre proof that something was still living in this remote place of Europe… But was it really Europe? The trees were slightly different. The sky was different. Everything looked similar, but also deeply changed. Everyone had witnessed that the colours were more vivid, flashy, or smooth, they could not find words to describe this impression. Kreps supposed this was the sunlight’s influence. They had stared to a greyish environment for so long their eyes had forgotten the true meaning of colour.

The sun was high in the sky and the group enjoyed each pause in the few clearings they passed by. It was relieving. One had to enjoy the little things a great mind said someday.

The trekking lasted for hours and the sun was low in the west now when they finally found something.

“Hey look! Here is the city!” Maria shouted as she cleared a way through a vast area where wild grass and wheat was growing chaotically.

On the other side of the field was standing a huge and abandoned construction of stone.

“In a few miles you’ll be able to admire an antic castle of whatever the fuck it could be era,” Kreps ironized, mimicking the voice of a low quality GPS.

It was indeed an old and remote place whose walls had been undermined by the time. No window was still standing intact and the area seemed to have been unvisited for eons.

“Okay,” Ray stopped everyone before they went out of the safe cover the forest was offering them. “Take some weapons out, we could encounter bandits and we have wounded peoples.”

He stared at Verdugo and Kreps who was both wounded and had grumbled all along the way. Ray and Maria had to swap with their position dozens of times during the walk. Kreps had a rib cracked and only Maria’s nimble fingers made him able to surpass the pain. Verdugo’s state was way more worrying. He had fallen several times on the way. The wound was infected and fever had started running through his veins. Within hours he won’t have any strength left to move and it will be the end of the trip for him. And this, Maria could not let it be. She would like to be more useful but she had to fight her friend’s fierceness and proudness.

Ray spoke to the mute boy who was hiding behind a tree.

“Look, I know you won’t talk, you won’t let us come close to you, I don’t even know if you understand us, but please… stay close and don’t make a silly move.”

They all stared at the castle and peered into the meadow waiting in front of them.