Fallout Equestria: A Light Shining in Darkness

Chapter Two
“I’m sure it’ll be useful later.”

Nothingness!

My first seconds on the Surface were an eternity of heart-breaking terror! It was an endless void! It surrounded me, suffocating me in a blanket of blackness! If I could’ve drawn breath I would’ve screamed.

But little by little my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness and my heart calmed down, my gasping lessening enough for me to breath properly, for me to feel rather foolish, for some reason my flashlight had flicked off.

Though in my defense I’d never seen true night before, not truly. Sure I’d turn off the lights to my room when I went to bed, but that darkness was isolated, just in my bedroom, even if the lights in the Stable went out, there were still the emergency glow strips on the floor and walls that could guide ponies to safety till the lights could be brought back.

This was very different. There was a bitter coldness in the air, it sank into my coat through my suit and bore smells so very alien to my nostrils, cold and damp and dusty. The sounds of small insects and the creaking of old wood carried on the wind, but what really stuck out to me were the sounds I couldn’t hear… the constant low rumbling of the Stable’s generator and the high pitched whine of the lights were gone, they’d been so constant, so overwhelming that I’d mistaken the Surface has silent in their absence.

I felt cold damp earth under my hooves. Though I couldn’t see very much in the darkness, I could see much further than I’d ever been able before, there were no walls to block my view. I stared into a nearly endless horizontal abyss that stretched out in front of me. I flicked my flashlight on and looked around.

Only for a whole new panic broke my brain and my legs gave out from under me, the beam of my light showed me an endless abyss of black and gray clouds as far as my eyes could see swirling and almost writhing like a slumbering eldritch beast so horrific it felt like my stomach was trying to claw itself out through my throat.

I clenched my eyes tightly and threw myself in the cold damp earth to keep what little of my dinner left down. After a long time the uneasiness passed and I finally felt reasonably well enough to get my hooves under me and look around.

I was in a very small courtyard with two crumbling buildings, the one I just came from was built into the side of a very steep mountain range and half of the other building had collapsed under the weight of large boulders. A rusty sign hung on the wall,

Bunny Den Mine
Property of Northern Equestrian Mining Services
An Orion Solutions Inc Company

There was that company again. I heard a ping from my PipBuck, looking down at it I saw the device was flashing with a large host of alerts. The map marker was churning up information and had already pulled up labels from the ether for my location: Stable Fifty-Two and the mountain range as the Applelachian Mountains.

There were also a small number of radio signals coming in, though Stable Fifty-Two’s had gone dark. My heart leapt slightly at that, if there were radios in this world then ponies had to be out there to maintain them, right? I couldn’t imagine Radmoles sitting at little terminals doing it. No that was silly. I tapped the first station on the list, hoping for something to prove that there’s pony life out there, only to be greeted by a series of clicks sounded through the speaker before I turned it off.

In the silence I noticed the very faint ticking coming from the radiation detector, a small feature of my PipBuck that I’d never really looked at, the little rainbow dial was ever so slightly edging from the green safe section towards the yellow warning section.

I looked out to the distant horizon line and noticed that the shades of gray were slowly starting to lighten in the past few minutes alone.

Perhaps Celestia still raised the sun?

I thought about what I was going to do, I couldn’t go back to Stable Fifty-Two and I couldn’t just stay here for the rest of my life, but I didn’t exactly fancy my chances of finding Mom by plotting off in a random direction. Especially since she had almost three days of a head start. And I wasn’t getting anywhere by just sitting here.

I plotted over to the collapsed building, maybe there was a map or supplies I could take, I pushed open the rusty hanging door and shined my light inside, the air was full of dust mottes and the walls were crumbling but looked strong enough to hold up so I stepped cautiously inside.

The first room was large with a number of rows of bunk beds with rotting old mattresses and footlockers at their feet. I walked through the rows looting the containers of their contents, save for a couple of clipboards, moldy cigarette cartons and a pristine coffee cup, most were empty, I did find a pornographic magazine titled Wingboner under a bed though, might be worth something. The second room was for storage, most of its contents were moldy or deteriorated well beyond use, but I did find a few rusty 45 Auto pistols and a couple boxes of bullets, thirty in all, a valuable find and a length of rope.

Putting them into my saddle bag, I left the building and stopped by the rusty fence and looked out at the swamps spreading out below me. There could possibly be pony life out there, but there could also probably be more mutants too.
It didn’t matter, I had to find Mom.

I pulled out my canteen and an apple and took a moment to eat and drink
summoned my strength and took my first steps down the dirt road.

*** *** ***

Daylight.

By the time I reached the tree line the sun had crested the horizon filling the world with a brilliant pink-golden light before rising above the clouds and now was probably close to halfway through the sky filling the land around me with a dull sickly gray light, at least it was warming up slightly.

The trees (and I use that word very loosely) looked nothing like the trees from the picture books in Stable Fifty-Two’s School. These trees were blackened, knurled and twisting at odd angles with stilt-like roots holding them above the sickly green brown murky water on either side of the crumbling road. The millions of leaves blocked out much of the sunlight creating a heavy canopy of shadows and the air itself was damp and cold and reeked of decay.

I glanced down at my PipBuck, hoping to find a way around, but of course there wasn’t… I mean, there was, but it would’ve taken me many days, possibly over a week of walking and involved crossing a wide looking river that might have been flooded.

And I needed to find Mom as quickly as possible.

I took a swig from my canteen, taking a deepish breath and coughing on the foul smelling air for several moments.

“Well,” I muttered quietly, looking into the swamp, “Here goes nothing.”

*** *** ***

It was probably nearing midnight when I stopped to look for a place to rest and honestly my body would probably be screeching at me if I weren’t so damn tired. The swamp was even worse than I’d originally thought, the dampness was soaking through my suit and into my coat down to my hide, the air was almost stifling and was hard to breath at first, but gradually got easier and small flies kept biting at me leaving small welts and being just incredibly annoying.

Despite the discomforts I was facing, the swamp was actually kind of interesting. I’d spotted dozens of different mutated animals wandering around, small birds with squat beaks and multicolored feathers sitting in the branches above me, a couple of what looked like possums with multiple legs and three tails scurrying around in the underbrush and a frog the size of my head with six red eyes.

I pulled out my canteen and an apple, taking a swig and eating the fruit to silence my grumbling stomach. Finishing dinner, I looked around the space for a safe place to sleep, taking note of a particular tree low enough to climb up but high enough to keep out of range of the mutated animals.

I carefully climbed up the branches, found a sturdy looking one that held my weight, I tied myself down with the rope and slowly drifted off to sleep.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

“Are you certain?” a young sounding feminine voice asked, a hint of possible desperation lacing it, “Surely we still have time to-”

“I’m quite certain, my Honey,” a masculine voice responded, somewhat stoney and aged, but with a hint of warmness, “Please don’t cry, I know you’ll be prepared.”

“But we can’t lose you”- the first voice sounded a little more desperate- “I can’t lose you.”

“I know, Sweetie,” the second voice answered, “But just as summer must give way to autumn and winter…”

“I know, I know…” the first voice muttered like a child being scorned, “So too must death give way to new life.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

The world slowly slipped into my brain as I woke up, the coldness nearly froze me to my bones and my muscles were incredibly cramped. My eyes opened only to find a long mutated snake covered in thick fur instead of scales slithering over my chest, I very nearly had a heart attack.

Quickly thinking, my magic focused around my pistol and slowly pulled it out to not startle the creature. But the creature seemed to sense I was alive and it thankfully slithered off down the tree and into the underbrush. I released the breath I was holding in, I untied myself from the branch and carefully climbed down.

On the ground, I rubbed out the knots in my body and dug out my remaining apple and scarfed it down and pulled out my canteen to drink some of my water, only to get maybe half of a gulp at most.

Later on, I came across what looked like a pre war beaver, but it was nearly as big as me with thick green brown fur and large yellow tusks as big as my head jutting out from its mouth. The beaver was gnawing at a tree which collapsed over the road, the critter waddled up to a branch and dragged it off into the water.

My thirst and hunger were starting to get to me as I followed the same damn road for hours now, I thought I’d seen the same tree for the eighth time. Looking down at my PipBuck’s map hoping to get some level of directions… only to find that I’d barely covered any real amount of ground. I wiped the sweat soaking through my coat. I was getting very desperate and looking around for a place to sleep when I heard a rustling behind me, turning around something hard swung out and the world went black.

*** *** ***

There was a splitting pain in my head when I came too, I felt a hard crustiness on my brow trailing down my face to my jaw that must’ve been blood, a hard dampness soaking into my side and a heat source on my back.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked around, I was laying on my side on a small hill surrounded by watery marshland covered in tall grasses with sparse trees that I didn’t recognize and over my shoulder a thin trail of black smoke wafted up into the dark clouds high above me and the sounds of animals came from out in the distance. I shifted my hooves around, only to find they were caught on something, looking down I saw that my wrists and ankles were bound in old duct tape.

Suddenly a harsh sounding voice that spoke a thick strange sounding language came from behind me and I was sharply pulled over and I was muzzle to muzzle with the ugliest pony (if I could even call the mutant creature that) I had ever seen in my life.

He was probably an earth pony, much bigger than me and the entire right side of his head and face were covered in massive, swollen, crusty, almost certainly cancerous cysts and lumpy, glowing pink boils that ran down his neck and bulging shoulder to under his heavily patched flannel shirt and black leather jacket down his swollen foreleg to his clubbed forehoof, I noticed a pair of crossed revolvers stitched into his sleeve with orange thread. His filthy mane and coat were all mangey and it looked like he was infected with lice and hadn’t bathed in months, possibly years! Judging by the stench that was raping my nostrils. He glared down at me with a single beady sickly yellow eye and he gave me a stomach churning grin of sparse crooked teeth that were yellow and black with rot and rancid charred breath.

The mutated creature slurred his strange language over his shoulder to another equally ugly pony (again, if I could even call her that) seating on a log by a smoldering campfire. The mare was impossibly lanky with knobby legs and a pair of wings with molting feathers, her mane and tail were incredibly wispy and equally mangey. She wore a matching black leather jacket with a similar crossed orange revolvers over a ragged filth stained dress that looked several sizes too big on her impossibly malnourished frame and had what looked like an ancient lever action shotgun in her skinny, knobby forehooves with a couple cloth bandoliers with shotgun shells slung over her shoulders and I spotted my saddle bag beside her. The mare cackled something to the stallion as he stumbled back to another log across the fire, he picked up a double barrel shotgun and slurred something back, most of the words were unintelligible to me save for two, possibly a name, Red Eye.

As the two conversed I looked around the clearing and found that I wasn’t the only captive, there was a small pony a couple of feet away with their back to me and was probably sleeping, judging by their side moving up and down.

“Hey,” I whispered, they didn’t move or maybe they were just ignoring me, “Psst, hey?”

The pony still didn’t move, I glanced at my captures before shifting my body around enough to scoot myself a foot or so closer to them, focusing my magic as best as my hunger and thirst deprived brain would allow and tapped their shoulder, “Psst, hey, are you okay?”

The captive’s ears perked up and they shifted around their head slightly to look at me, it was then that I noticed a few things about them…

First, the captive was a filly and probably very young too, maybe Yarn’s age. Second, she had incredibly startling eyes, a dull brown at first, but then they visibly shifted before my eyes to an amber that almost glowed in the firelight. Third, along with her hooves, her muzzle was duct taped shut so she couldn’t speak, so she might not have been ignoring me before. Finally, she was a unicorn, but her mane, bloodied and bruised coat and tail were all filthy off white with dull gray, curling stripes…

She was a zebra… unicorn… thing…

Before my mind could think up a more considerate and tactful question such as, “Are you okay?” or “What are these monsters?”

My mouth instead screamed the least tactful question possible, “What the fuck are you?!”

The filly however must’ve been expecting the question because she rolled her eyes and rolled over and went back to ignoring me and thankfully our captures didn’t even acknowledge our existence.

After close to maybe an hour, a distant splashing came from the water and a very faint light cut through the grass and reeds and fog. A rusty boat came splashing up to a molding dock at the base of the hill and tied off before joining my captures. The five new ponies were just as hideously mutated, all had ratty patchwork clothing and similar archaic guns and they all seemed to know my captures because they greeted and laughed and passed around weird looking food and drinks. My belly grumbled loudly at the sickeningly sweet smell of the cooking food.

A sickly malnourished looking unicorn holding a 44 Magnum revolver in putrid blue magic glanced over at me and asked one of my captures something and their response made them grin a mouth of rotten teeth. A large bloated mare with a lever rifle chuckled something dreamily as she swayed her incredibly lumpy flanks around in what she must’ve thought was seductively, but all of her bloated fat rolls made me want to heave at the excessively repulsive monster. An equally bloated stallion with a caravan shotgun slurred something at the mare smacking her flanks, she giggled and pulled the stallion down the hill away from the campfire and soon there were loud pig squeals coming from their direction.

I tried, very unsuccessfully, to ignore the noise, thankfully after a few minutes they stopped.

The stallion who grabbed me earlier stood and the group got up and started to pack up camp, he stepped over to the filly and to my absolute horror, he started molesting her.

“The fuck is the matter with you?!” I shouted, straining against the duct tape, abruptly startling the stallion and getting the attention of the group, “Get the fuck away from her!”

The stallion grinned at me with those blackened teeth like I was insane, “What?” he suddenly slurred in a thickly accented and broken ponish as he continued groping the filly, “Is jus a zigga.”

The group broke out into mad cackles in their language, one threw a moldy wrinkled apple at me, at least I think it was an apple.

I stared at them in horrific disbelief, refusing to believe my ears. Was this world so impossibly damned and broken that this was seen and accepted as normal?

No! I refused to even think that, these weren’t ponies, these were monsters!

I whipped around looking for something, anything I could use when I spotted a somewhat large rock by the water. I desperately tried to focus my magic around the object, but it barely budged under the pathetic glowing.

“Luna dammit, Ozzy,” I bitterly spat at myself, my face turning red and sweaty from the strain.

The rock slowly trembled and partially lifted up an inch or so from the muck, it was considerably heavier than gun parts or an empty footlocker. My breath came in shallow gasps as my brain struggled through the foggy blackness creeping in on my vision to hold up the rock, the effort in my deprived state threatened to burn out my magic, then the filly and would be helpless to these monsters.

“GET FUCKING HELL AWAY FROM HER!” I roared, a fiery blaze flooding my mind and summoning the last bit of my strength, I threw the rock at the mutant, the momentum carried it through the air slamming into his shocked face.

CRACK!

In the near silence of the camp, the impact made a very loud wet cracking sound as the mutant crumpled back into the muddy grass twitching, his bloody face was crumpled inward like wet cardboard, his jaw hung open useless with his few remaining teeth scattered around.

A mutant shot up shrieking as she brandished her rifle at me. This was it then, I was about to die, I was gonna be murdered by these horrific mutants. I closed my eyes slightly when I suddenly spotted a series of ghostly shimmers in the distance.

PFFT!

Suddenly the side of the mutant’s head exploded, drenching her friends in dark sickly blood, her body fell back over the log.

The seconds stretched out into hours as the camp erupted into a frenzied cacophony of hellfire as the mutants shot up with their guns to fight the silent attackers, a mutant shouted out a single word before a string of explosions riddled his sunken gut spraying the fire with blood and sickly rotten innards before he fell into it, sending up a shower of chard wood and burning embers into the air. A skinny mutant’s legs were shot out from under her with a third explosion ripping off her lumpy head. A pair of mutants’ chests exploded causing them to topple over each other.

When the smoke cleared enough, there was only one mutant left, the skinny unicorn holding the 44 Magnum. His legs shook under him, he quickly grabbed the filly by the back of her neck, yanking her up roughly and pulling her back to the fire.

“GET OFF OF HER!” I felt myself shout, but the mutant paid me no attention.

He started molesting the filly’s body, bending her over a log and pulling out his lumpy cyst covered cock. He was going to rape her!

“Ya ziggas wan’ her back?!” he shouted at the attackers in broken ponish, rubbing his cock against her crotch, “Ya fuckers can have her when Ah’m finished!”

There was a long stretch of silence before a long scratchy beam of haunting blue light sliced the cold air with a thunderous pop striking the stallion’s face.

BZZT!

He crumpled back, his body disintegrating into a pile of ash before he hit the dirt. The filly slowly got up and sat on the log.

My hearing slowly returned to me as the campsite fell into complete silence, not even the animals could be heard. My suit was drenched in wetness. From where? I'll let you imagine.

“Hey?” I called to the filly, “Can you help me?”

But she ignored me, I looked around for anything sharp to cut the bonds with when suddenly the shimmering lights returned and four ponies materialized from the cold air around the camp. Each one wore a strange plastic hooded cloak over suits of dark green armor, the one behind the filly had a weird looking assault rifle of some kind at his side and held a long curved knife in his scarred muzzle.

“Get away from her!” I shouted, the pony cut the bindings from the filly, he sheathed his blade under his cloak and pulled down his hood revealing that he was a zebra. He kneeled down and hugged the filly tightly.

“I’m sorry, Prysm,” he quietly whispered in an almost loving way.

“It’s not your fault, Umeme,” she whispered back, she glanced around at the other ponies, “Thank you all.”

The ponies pulled down their hoods revealing that each one of them were zebra, three stallions and one mare, one wearing a large brimmed dark leather hat and holding a strange looking magical energy rifle with a glass chamber glanced at me.

“What about the Stable Dweller?” he asked in heavily accented ponish, “Think he’s related to that other one?”

“Other… one?” I asked.

The filly let go of her savior and plotted up to me cautiously, her small horn faintly glowed with a rainbow kaleidoscope of colors. My body suddenly felt tired, all of the aches and pains dissolving, but this didn’t feel natural like falling asleep, she was using an anesthesia spell to knock me out!

“Hush now, quiet now,” she sang softly, magic glowing brighter and brighter filling my vision, “It’s time to lay your sleepy head.”

I struggled to keep my eyes open, to fight back, but without my magic I quickly succumbed. The last thing I heard was the filly as she sang softly.

“Hush now, quiet now, It’s time to go to bed.”

Level Up: New Perk: Horse Sense: You gain additional 10% more whenever experience points are gained.