Chapter 21: Past (part 1)

While everyone else walked into the warehouse, I stopped in front of it for a few moments. It had clearly recently undergone some renovations, as the façade had some newer walls made out of a different material.

“Move,” grunted the unicorn slaver behind me, brutally poking my side with the butt of his rifle.

I wanted to smash his head in. What did that fucker think? However, the feeling of shackles on my front legs calmed down that desire fairly quickly, and I complied, taking a step through the door.

Inside the warehouse, the air was stale, with a strong smell of pony floating about. It wasn’t very aggressive, but it made the atmosphere feel heavy. In stark contrast, it was brightly lit, though not with any warm colours. The light was artificial, cold, and sterile. Even the concrete was a stark contrast with the outside. The snow felt cold but refreshing and soft, while the floor here was hard and uninviting.

Mumbles echoed throughout the warehouse, coming from a group of a dozen ponies watching us enter, though I felt like their gaze was primarily focused on me.

The rest of the slaves I’d come in with were aligned in a neat row to my right. One of the slavers, an earth pony mare, motioned me to get in line.

Behind me, one last slave entered, joining me and the rest. The slaver then walked up to each of us, taking the shackles off of everypony in the row. When she eventually reached me, however, she hesitated and looked over to one of her colleagues, who just shook her head. The slaver then undid the restraints of the mare who’d entered after me, before leaving the warehouse with the sound of a lock clicking closed.

While the rest of our group hesitantly dispersed, I simply sat down. I just didn’t want to bother with anything right now, especially not these kinds of ponies. Something about this place made me feel exhausted, or perhaps it was the trip that had taken so much energy out of me. My last year, spent enslaved in Fillydelphia, may have fuelled my raider spirit, but right now I just didn't feel like asserting myself. It could wait, at least for now; I doubted anyone would try to place themselves in the pecking order above me anytime soon.

This was exactly why it surprised me so much to hear a mare trot up. She was older, maybe forty years of age, and had a hide marred with ancient scars of bullet wounds and cuts. A long, deep scar ran across her muzzle, almost as if someone had tried to cut off the entirety of it.

“Hey there, lassie.” She spoke with a heavy accent that I didn’t quite recognise.

“Hey.” I really didn’t want to bother with niceties right now, but I couldn’t bring myself to attack an older mare on sight.

We stayed quiet for a short minute before I couldn’t take the awkwardness anymore. “So, did you want anything from me?”

“Not really. Just figured you might wanna ask some questions, given you probably don’t know anything about this place. I like getting on the new slaves’ good side, since my body ain’t what it used to be.”

I raised my eyebrow. If she was offering… “Guess I’ll take you up on that.” Maybe a more diplomatic approach wouldn’t hurt. After all, this wasn’t Filly, and there were less than thirty other slaves in the building. “Who’s everyone I should know about? Who’s the top dog?” I didn’t know whether or not I would be beating them into submission, or if I would be below them in the pecking order instead. The latter was less likely than the former, but I couldn’t exclude it entirely.

Much to my surprise, she let out a small chuckle. “I guess if you look at things like that… That would probably be me, though I don’t exactly rule by force.” That… would make things quite a bit more difficult for me.

Her mirth vanished as quickly as it had shown up. “As for your first question… Keep away from the big boss’s bodyguard, Guard Dog. Tall as a tree, thin as a stick, perpetually pissed off, smokes a lot; you can’t miss her, really. She’s usually in this warehouse reading some shitty pre-war novels, but she’s out for today. Cherry claims she’s a slave just like us, but that’s bull. She’s pretty much only here to watch over us. She’s just a low-ranking slaver and won’t hesitate to beat you if you talk to her the wrong way. Poor Crystal got quite fucked up just tryna chat her up.”

Ah, so she was the real top dog. Had a fitting name, too. “Didn’t you say she’s built like a house of cards? Why don’t you guys just teach her a lesson?”

The mare frowned. “I’d love to, but I doubt she would just let herself be beaten up by a bunch o’ slaves. She’d probably pull some unicorn bullshit, and we’d all end up punished.”

“Alright, I see.” The fact that she was a unicorn complicated things, but I had no doubt I could still have a shot at putting her in her place. “By the way, are Cherry and Crystal names I should remember?”

She shook her head. “Not really. I guess you might wanna know that Crystal is our resident nutcase. She doesn’t mean any harm, but she’s a bit crazy. Cherry is Guard Dog’s assistant, though he’s a lot more down to earth, but other than that he’s unimportant.”

I just nodded and didn’t add anything.

“Just another tip, though, and sorry if I’m poking my nose where it don’t belong… I can see that you’re tough, but it’s usually the tougher ones that die out here. They think that, compared to Filly, the overseers are lax and weak and then try to start shit. Ends badly, all of the time.”

I raised an eyebrow. “How bad?”

“Like sleeping outside in a snowstorm. You either survive it, or you learn your lesson. And if you don’t, you get to repeat it.”

“Noted.” At least it would seem that I wouldn’t have to live in fear of being stabbed in the back. “By the way, what kind of work do you guys end up doing here?”

“Oh, lots of things. Someone with your build would probably end up collecting metal scraps in the ruins, though.”

“What about the rest of you?”

She spent around a quarter of an hour going on everything she knew. At some point I must have blanked out, because I couldn’t remember everything.

I was a mare. That much was clear from the absence of any alien feeling between my hind legs. Instead, another part of me felt wrong. The pony whose memory I was watching was a pegasus. Thankfully, she wasn’t airborne, instead sitting on a sofa and looking out of a familiar window.

I was able to briefly enjoy the utter silence of the room she was in, devoid of any high-pitched ringing that I was so used to. “Hey, Zeph?” asked Arcane Spark, the mare I’d been expecting to be my host.

I felt myself turn my neck to look at her and make a noise in acknowledgement.

“I was thinking…” She levitated an envelope over from the kitchen table. “I got this letter, and it’s from the government. It’s been sent to every unicorn with a higher education degree relating to magic, apparently.”

My host raised her eyebrow. “And? What’s it about?”

“It’s a pamphlet for a program of theirs, called the Fount of Magic. Essentially, they’re looking for powerful unicorns to match together in order to create a new generation. One capable of stronger magic.”

“And you want to participate? I thought you didn’t want foals, Spark.”

“I’m getting to that, because there is a catch. We’re not allowed to keep the foal, as it will be put in special care to make sure it receives the best education possible.”

“But then… why? What’s the point? You’ve never really been the patriotic type, Spark, so I doubt that’s it.”

“Well, I have a few reasons. The first being curiosity. I’ve always wanted to experience pregnancy. I just know that I’m too focused on work to ever make a good mother.”

Zephyr nodded. “I can’t say it’s something I’m curious about, but that does sound like something you’d say. Well, that’s one of the reasons. What are the others?”

“Would be a good opportunity to take a break from work and spend it with just you. There’s an extra month of maternity leave included, which I would have to spend in a nice, secluded location where I wouldn’t need to worry about anything. You’d be allowed there, too, to keep me company. Just imagine, getting two months, away from everything. Pretty much like a holiday.”

“I see. You seem to have put a lot of thought into this… I’ll admit I can’t really say no to a two month vacation.” Zephyr chuckled.

Arcane gave her a bright smile. It was such a stark contrast from the mental image I had of her that it almost shocked me. “Yeah. Besides, no matter how much I try to keep my ego in check, part of me still wants to pass on my genes.”

I felt Zephyr shrug. “I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily your ego. It might just be a motherly instinct that even you can’t suppress.”

Arcane returned the gesture. “Maybe. In either case, it felt egotistical to have a foal just to pass on something of myself. Now I have other reasons, and I can help Equestria in the process.”

They fell silent for a moment, and I felt Zephyr crease her brow. A dozen seconds later, she said, “But wait, why did they only allow unicorns with degrees in magic to participate? I don’t think every powerful unicorn studied magic… And vice-versa.”

Spark shrugged. “Probably logistics. Sending a letter to each of the millions of unicorns in Equestria would be a pain, not to mention organising the testing for the volunteers. At least this way they’re restricting their efforts while keeping most of the results. From what I understand, it’s not restricted to magic graduates; in theory, any unicorn can go take the tests.”

“I guess that makes sense. I can’t imagine how much work it would have been just to get in touch with everyone in even just that small subset.” I felt her shiver at the thought.

“Yeah, me neither. Though I guess you have a better idea of just how much work that would involve, with your job and all.”

Their conversation grew gradually more distant as their topic shifted, becoming less and less intelligible and more and more blurry.

The memory continued like this for a long while. I could make out only the occasional exchange of sentences on the topic of the Fount of Magic. As expected, Arcane had gotten in with no problem. “I can’t believe I ended up having to do it with my old Theory of Magic teacher. He’s well in his fifties!”

Over the many different scenes blurring together, eventually Arcane started getting noticeably larger, and the memories seemed to flow slower. Or maybe there were just more of them.

Eventually, the blur slowed down enough for me to make out my surroundings. I was standing in front of a large palace, entirely surrounded by lush gardens. They were shades of green I hadn’t even imagined could possibly exist. Colours so bright that I couldn’t believe they were on plants of all things. A gentle breeze hit me. In the sun’s heat, it brought a welcome freshness to my coat.

Leaves gently rustled all around me, accompanied by the shrill but quiet chirping of birds. It was a sound that I’d heard in many recordings in the stable. Experiencing it in the flesh was completely different; so much cleaner and full of depth.

And the smell. This wasn’t just the clean, pure, air like I’d grown so accustomed to since I had left Stable 4. No, there was so much more to it. So many different fragrances mixed in the air without being overwhelming. For all the things the wasteland did have, fresh flowers it did not.

For the first time in three years, I felt genuine wonder and amazement. The sun was one thing. Fresh air was another. But this? This was so far beyond anything I’d ever imagined! In that moment, it once again struck me just how damn much ponykind had lost.

What we’d gained was so fucking insignificant in comparison. Complete and utter freedom was great in theory, but when you were a pony like me, who’d only used said freedom to ruin her life and those of others…

I was just a stupid kid, thrown into the wasteland and believing I could do anything as long as I had a gun. I had a headcount higher than even most raiders. In fact, I essentially was one, or at least had been… No, I definitely still was; that attitude wasn’t simply something you forgot about. After all, so many of my kills were born from the simple thrill of taking another life, of seeing blood splatter in ways that I found oh so beautiful. I’d used necessity as a convenient excuse to commit atrocities whenever I felt like it.

Even now, I was using that same excuse to kill innocents, was I not? Skybridge was a perfect example of that. I claimed it was inevitable, and yet I’d had a great deal of fun murdering those guards.

Zephyr took a slow, deep breath, and I felt her face turn to a wide, serene smile. This was enough to calm the downward spiral in my mind.

No. It wasn’t the same. I had to remind myself how I felt before taking those drugs and after they wore off. I hadn’t killed anypony for my own selfish whims. I was no longer the same pony who had killed some scavengers and orphaned their foals, or the one who’d so eagerly massacred two ponies because I liked a rifle.

I was doing this for my friends, no matter the cost. But then, wasn’t that selfish too, in a way? I was placing their lives above others’. No, no, no. I shouldn’t think like that. It still couldn’t be compared to killing for fun.

The gorgeous view spreading out before me made me wonder… Maybe… maybe there was still a path to redemption for me. A path to a brighter future, where I could eventually forget the weight of my actions. After I was free, I would look to actively start… helping others. Not for my own benefit, but to maybe try and atone. It was what Candy would have done. And yet, instead of following in her path, I’d spit all over it in a selfish fit, in a childish attempt at avoiding any sort of responsibility. Just why did I have to stray from her shining light as my role model?

And then, when I would finally start feeling better, maybe once I’d have helped as many innocents as I’d hurt, I would find myself a nice buck. Not somepony like Crow, who had just been toying with me. Somepony like Blue Moon, and with a heart as good as Candy’s to keep me on the right track. Together, we could try to improve the wasteland, even if it was only one tiny thing at a time. We would do like that one DJ always said… what did he call it…? To fight the right fight? No, that sounded wrong.

As Zephyr approached the front door and knocked, I was slowly pulled out of my idealistic reverie. Sweet fucking stars above, what happened to me? Was the sight of a beautiful garden really enough to turn me so soft? There was no way we could ever get old Equestria back…

But maybe if we tried…?

The memory accelerated again, becoming another blur, albeit a much slower one than before. Arcane and Zephyr would go on daily walks in the gardens and spend days reading and talking at a table in the middle of them. I lost any last shred of my sense of time, torn between my own hopes and the dreamlike state of the gardens. In this infinite calm, feelings from my youngest years resurfaced. This sense of wonder, of foalhood innocence. A feeling like everything was possible. Like I could manage anything with enough time, effort, and guns.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t last forever.

Eventually, Arcane gave birth to a filly in perfect health, according to the doctors. When Zephyr nuzzled her, I felt a deep warmth throughout my entire chest, and it fuelled my dreams even further. One day, in the distant future, I would have a foal of my own. Maybe he would be born with some kind of mutation due to my taint poisoning. Maybe she would have other issues unrelated to it. Or maybe he would be completely fine. Regardless, he or she would be mine, and I would damn sure do a better job than my own parents.

Memories seemed to flow in a weird way. None of them were very precise. It was just a vague feeling of being in the same room as those two; only occasionally did a concise scene condense into something more than that. However, the feeling of warmth, love, and comfort were so strong that it didn’t need to.

This all came to an abrupt halt when the doctor stepped into the room. “Alright, so this concludes the first month.”

Zephyr glanced over to Arcane, whose expression had turned solemn. A few seconds later, I felt her stomach drop, her eyes widen, and her muzzle contort into a frown. “No…”

She took a few steps forward, but Arcane looked at her and motioned her to stop. “Zeph, please… We knew it would come to this. It hurts me as much as it hurts you.” Then, turning to the doctor, she added, “Please, make sure she’ll live a happy life.”

The stallion simply nodded as he wrapped the filly in his telekinesis. She stirred a bit in her sleep, but didn’t wake. Zephyr held out a hoof and opened her mouth but remained quiet. A moment later, the doctor and infant were both gone, and I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks. I heard Spark softly whisper, “Goodbye, Golden Aurora.” If my body allowed me to double-take, I would have. Her? But how…? Had the Stable-Tec executives pulled some strings? Had Arcane?

Before I could dwell on it, time accelerated slightly, and by the end of the day, they were back in Detrot. There, it sped up, once again growing blurry with the monotony of day-to-day life. The only difference was a certain constant lethargy to her body. Occasionally, things would slow down as Zephyr cried into Arcane's neck, talking about the foal.

Finally, the memory snapped into sharpness after another uneventful week. I found myself in a small, cold, rectangular room, a stark contrast to anything I had experienced through Zephyr's eyes for the past year.

She was alone with a stallion, clad in a clean white suit. “Hello, Miss Aurora. What brings you to my clinic?”

“Shouldn’t you know? I was told to come here to get my wartime stress disorder treated. That… you’re the expert.”

“I wanted to ask anyway,” he replied. “So, why don't you tell me about yourself? Has this always been an issue for you?”

Zephyr went on to explain what happened to her. When she was finished, she said, “Are you sure it’s WSD? The war isn’t really what I’m upset about.”

“Yes, yes. That’s quite common. All it takes is one event, and your entire psyche breaks down around it. You might have gotten used to it, but I doubt you would have had such a reaction to what happened in times of peace.” He looked at her and gave a reassuring smile. “Luckily, cases like yours are often very receptive to one of the kinds of treatment I can offer.”

“What would that be?”

“Selective memory removal. If you lose the catalyst for what caused your psyche to break down, of course you will be better. It’s by far the best treatment for cases like yours.”

Zephyr hesitated for a few moments before finally sighing and agreeing.

“Perfect. I can do it right now, if you wish.” She nodded, and he continued, “Great, I will need a signature though, since it is quite an invasive procedure.”

He produced a short legal document from his desk and floated it to her along with a pen. Zephyr signed it, and the stallion told her to take a deep breath and count down from ten. His horn glowed, and the memory abruptly ended.

I awoke with a mild start, my head was pounding, my mouth dry, and my ears ringing as usual. I noticed I wasn’t in my bedroom, instead lying on the sofa in Star Seeds’ office.

My mind raced through everything that I had just dreamed. Hah, me, get back on the right path and start a family? As if a glorified raider like myself could ever do that. I snorted. Even then, I doubted she would let me…

“Oh, you’re finally conscious. I was starting to worry you wouldn’t ever wake up.”

I groaned. I couldn’t tell which was worse, being alone with my thoughts, or being alone with him. “Why, how long was I out?”

“I don’t know when you went into the orb, but… between twenty and twenty-six hours.”

“Oh shit.” Not only did it pollute my head with stupid thoughts, but it also made me neglect my duties.

“Indeed. Now, if you would be so inclined, I would like to speak with Sonata.”

With my current state of mind, that order was quite welcome. The memory orb had clearly messed me up, emotionally as well as physically. I chose the simplest method and simply turned on my PipBuck’s radio. Before I could even pick a station, I found the corners of my vision growing dim, my body feeling more and more distant.

“Hey, Star,” I said as everything around me sharpened and the fog surrounding my mind dissipated.

“Good evening, Sonata.”

“You wanted to speak to me?”

He nodded. “I shall cut straight to it. Another caravan has disappeared. It should have been here last week, though nopony in the region appears to have seen it.”

“Ah, shit.” This was the third, out of four, that was lost over the past three months. That simply wasn’t a coincidence. “What do you think is causing this? Some unexplained field of radiation? Ghouls? Other environmental hazards? Can’t be, otherwise we’d know about them, right?”

“Indeed. I’ve even requested extra security for this one, and surely griffins would be able to avoid something as simple as that. Not even that was good enough.” He sighed, pausing for a moment. “I think we are dealing with an organised gang of some sort.”

“Could still be something else, but I think that’s a reasonable assumption. Are you going to send Iron and I?”

To my surprise, he shook his head. “No. I could request more guards and mercs and mount a frontal assault on the bandits, with Iron leading it. However, it would take a lot of resources to rat them out. We have no clue where they are, and it is a long way from here to Fillydelphia. It would take months, and likely many sacrificial caravans, to even figure out where they are hitting us from.”

“Then what? Fetch shipments with the airship? That would slow down work here in New Detrot.”

“Indeed it would, which is why I am considering no longer using that caravan route at all, at least for a while. The one leading west doesn’t seem to have this issue, so we could still trade for supplies; we just wouldn’t get any for free from Red Eye.”

But there was an issue with that… “How long would that last? We don’t have infinite reserves of caps.”

“Since the gem mine in Marey is almost ready, that would potentially be used to add a large cushion to our finances.” I knew that, but it still wouldn’t be enough, and had other downsides. “Even with that, though, I don’t think it will buy us more than a year. That should be enough to get rid of those bandits, but at the end of the day, it would likely still need to be done. It almost seems more beneficial to simply stomp them out now and deal with the upfront cost.”

“Ah, I see. I take it that’s where I come in? You want me to come up with something you haven’t thought of yet?” I still didn’t like that I was helping a slavemaster like him, but if I could help slaves in any way I could, I had to. Besides, despite his methods, his goals were genuinely amazing, and I couldn’t help but admire that.

He nodded, and I fell silent, thinking. There was an option at the back of my head, but it seemed so wrong that I refused to even consider it. Instead, I backed all the way up to the root of the problem.

We needed some additional economic power. We needed it in order to sustain our workers, but also purchase certain materials that were hard to obtain around here. We would also need to increase the amount of workers we had, and that also wouldn’t come cheap now that trips from Fillydelphia were out of the question.

One option we did have would be to sell the gems we dug out from the quarry. However, those were much more valuable to us than the caps we would get from them. After all, we would need a lot of them to produce the quality talismans we would need. Besides, we would need a lot more workers to get the mines operating at any profitable rate.

To make matters worse, it would be a dangerous endeavour, costing us a lot of our labour force. And with the current situation, our workers were one of our scarcer… resources, as much as I hated to think of them like that.

If we had a reliable power source already, we could just start producing our own food and selling it. That would not only reduce many of our costs, but it would grant us some decent income. However, that was the difficult part. The nearby dam, while it still stood, was in an advanced state of disrepair. We would need a lot longer than a single year to get it fixed, especially given the radiation levels there. Iron could get some work done on it, but even at a daily pace that just wasn’t fast enough. We would need a full team of engineers in hazardous material suits and a large quantity of Rad-X and RadAway to make it work. Or maybe some ghoul engineers.

My previous, horrible, idea crossed my mind again. Well, I might as well mention it, if only to brainstorm. “I might have thought of something…”

As I went on to explain it to Star Seeds, I realised just how twisted I’d become. No, this really wasn’t that bad. In fact, this was the right, even moral, thing to do. It just wasn’t a very nice thing.

After a brief disagreement on the feasibility of the plan, he ended up accepting to give it a shot.

The forest had grown noticeably denser, our surroundings now almost as dark as night, even though it wasn’t much past noon. We’d been walking for a couple of hours since leaving Gluon Village.

That place had brought up surprisingly vivid memories, much more than when I first came back to New Detrot. Seeing that same shop, the one near which a ghoul attacked me, filled me with instinctual fear that I had to suppress. It was the first time I’d come close to dying, and it had clearly marked me, more than I would have believed or admitted.

Even before that, the walk through Inntation left me in a strange haze of nostalgia and regret. Fortunately, all of that was left behind when we split off from the road that led onto Foal Mountain. Instead, we started following this one, which led to a research facility deep in the forest, according to Star Seeds.

Cherry walked a few paces behind Gloria and I. She was one of the griffin Talons working under Star Seeds. The fact that he’d sent her with me as reassurance actually unsettled me more than it calmed any worries. He thought I could use the help, and that in itself was enough to make me unsure about this mission.

Worse yet, the forest itself was creeping me out. There had only been the occasional red bar on my EFS. Out of those, merely one critter had jumped out at us so far—it was some kind of weird, mutated giant feline. It had moved incredibly fast, but nothing that SATS’ predictive computations hadn’t been able to counteract.

However, what bothered me was the flora. It had started out normal. Brown, half-dead; the usual. Now, though? Some of it was colourful, brighter than what I’d seen in Zephyr Aurora’s memory. They didn’t look natural. Those plants didn’t belong in the Equestrian wasteland, and certainly not anywhere as dark as this forest.

Worse yet, the further we went, the tighter the road became. The vegetation seemed so determined to grow that it had broken off a lot of the asphalt on the sides. It was probably only a matter of time until the path disappeared entirely. If the forest continued to grow darker and its flora weirder, the path would probably be completely gone in some places. I could only hope that wasn’t the case.

That sliver of hope was soon crushed as the road abruptly stopped, replaced by a thick blanket of long grass, occasionally interspersed with flowers of colours that practically seemed to shine in the dim light. Everything here practically screamed poisonous.

I wore barding on top of thick, rugged fabric, so the grass wasn’t too scary to me. Gloria could fly between the trees, but Cherry would be in a rough spot. After a short discussion, he agreed to let me float him. He wasn’t too fond of it, but he understood he was better off not touching it. Plus, we had to be getting close to the facility, so it would only be a temporary measure.

Walking through the tall grass, I was still careful to avoid any and all flowers, moving in a zig-zag pattern between them. The grass was creepy enough on its own, but the flowers were oh so much worse.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp sting in my right hindleg. Looking back, I noticed a cut in my pants, a small stream of blood trickling out. I searched around for the cause of this injury, and it took me a bit longer than I liked to admit to find it. A small tree, made of crystalline spikes, stood among the blades of grass, well hidden by them. Its branches were almost perfectly transparent, visible only because of the way they refracted light. Keeping Cherry afloat wasn’t particularly difficult, but it did take some concentration, which was probably what caused this oversight on my part.

I levitated out a roll of bandage and haphazardly wrapped it around my leg. Such a small knick was hardly dangerous, but I needed to keep my leg isolated from the vegetation around. Focusing on levitating something as heavy as a pony while bandaging my leg wasn’t an easy task, but thankfully for Cherry, I managed.

Of course, there was always the risk that this plant had some kind of poison or venom on its… leaves? Spines? I had a few vials of antitoxin, but would that even work on whatever this thing was? As usual, safe was better than sorry, and I levitated out the bottle and drank its bitter contents.

I nodded to Gloria, and we continued on our way. At first, I couldn’t help but worry that such a small cut stung this much. Soon enough, though, I completely tuned out about the pain as I trotted on towards the pre-war research facility. My leg didn’t feel numb, and the pain was still there, just mild enough to remain annoying.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at our destination. It only came into view when we were about fifteen metres away from it. The reason for that was that the vegetation closer to the building was even denser than before. Vines blocked our passage, and trees were numerous enough to make our lives even harder.

So much, in fact, that we’d slowed down to a crawl while I ripped away the vines from a safe distance. Seriously, what in the starless hells was this place?

Thankfully, the concrete entrance to the lab was relatively free of plants, and I could just barely make out the large sign that read “Moonlight Research”. However, the building’s walls were almost entirely covered in vines. The red accents all over them made them look particularly creepy.

Gloria landed in the entranceway, and I levitated Cherry—who was very happy to finally be on firm ground again—over before finally hobbling over there myself.

The glass door was broken off its hinges, and I was thankf—

Wait, when had I started to hobble? I tried putting most of my weight on my back right leg, only to bite my lip as a wave of fiery pain shot out from it. That definitely wasn’t good. That plant had to have some kind of toxin on it.

“You alright there?” asked Cherry.

“Sweet fucking Nightmare above, my back leg’s on fire. Feels like it’s been shot with a fifty-cal.” Exaggerating a little wouldn’t hurt. “It musta been that star-damned plant.” Now that I was no longer pressing down on the hard floor, the pain was subsiding, little by little, though far from enough for my liking. “Fuck me, this hurts.” I grunted and bit my lip. “I was fine a second ago, shit’s musta gotten to a muscle or something.”

Frankly, I had no idea what I was saying. I was just trying to distract myself from the hellish agony in my leg. Finally, I decided to take off the bandage… only to find it soaked in blood. Almost instinctively, I detached my medical pouch and opened it next to myself as I lay down on my left side, keeping my aching leg in the air with my telekinesis.

Unwrapping the bandage as fast as I could, my entire world stopped for a moment when I saw what lay underneath. Jagged crystals poked out of my calf, spreading up until about halfway to my knee, and almost all the way down to my hoof.

My skin was completely shredded, and I just knew this wasn’t simple surface damage. Those spires were much too thick at the base for that.

I sat there and stared for stars knew how long, Cherry’s concerned voice barely registering. “Iron? What’s wrong?” Then, he must have moved closer, as he suddenly screamed in horror before quickly being shut up by Gloria.

That, however, was enough to snap me out of my horrified daze. I levitated out two syringes of Med-X, emptying one into my leg. I hesitated briefly about using the second one, but when I saw another crystal spike slowly pierce my flesh, I realised I would really need it.

I took a deep breath, trying my best to calm down. This thing was growing inside of me, and my only option seemed to be to remove it. This was going to suck.

“Ch-Cherry, can you please get me something to rest my leg on? I’m gonna need all my focus. Whatever you do though, don’t touch the crystal bullshit.”

“You… don’t need to tell me that twice.”

I waited there for a few agonising moments, time seemingly stretching to infinite amounts, before he eventually came back, carrying a rusted metal chair on his back. He placed it in front of me, and I let the side of my leg rest on it.

Now that I no longer needed to focus on keeping it afloat, I went to work. First, I tried snapping one of the branches off. It took more effort than expected, but was still feasible, at least with my skill with telekinesis.

I started breaking off straight pieces of crystal and pulling them out, more and more glad for the Med-X coursing through my body with every spike I yanked out. What worried me was that I occasionally ripped out a more jagged piece, large chunks of flesh still attached to it. I was in too much of a hurry to check each and every bit of the foreign body before pulling. I could feel it growing inside of me. I needed it out!

The razor-sharp needles were deep in my flesh, so much that I was starting to worry I would never manage to get rid of all of them. And yet, I kept working, unwilling to die like this.

However, the more I removed, the more it hurt, and the more force I had to apply to remove some shards. My leg was in tatters, I was sure I could see the occasional bit of bone, and I didn’t understand how I was able to think at all. Even with the Med-X, the pain should have been debilitating. I heard a gunshot, but through my concentration it was so distant.

Eventually, the shards started getting rarer, and I had to dig around with my magic in the shreds of my leg to find more. I poured an enormous amount of energy into my telekinesis, making sure I could feel every single square centimetre it contacted.

As I dug around, I saw large areas of exposed bone among the torn flesh. I searched for stars knew how long, desperate to make sure nothing of this vile stuff was left. Finally, it seemed I’d gotten them all.

On the ground, a large, red pool had formed. Realising just how much blood I’d lost, I finally floated the healing potion to my lips, long-term consequences be damned. My vision was swimming and darkening by the second. I was cold.

Somewhere far away, somepony called my name. My heart was beating faster than it ever had, every thump echoing in my ears like a manic drum. The healing potion fought its way back up, and I didn’t have the strength to stop it. Then, nothing.