Fallout Equestria: A Light Shining in Darkness

Chapter Four
“But in the end… Our choices make us.”

Umeme introduced me to his Frumentarii squad the following morning, Mashhad, Tahka, Q’osk and Ophia.

Jorqar Mashhad was the team’s sniper, a zebra/pegasus hybrid (keeping his wings under his cloak), and was easily the oldest stallion in the Outcasts at nearly eighty years old. His one remaining ear was pierced with an old gold ring that was engraved in a strange looking language that he referred to as Estori, the dialect of his tribe of the same name. His nose was pierced by a long black spiney quill and his few remaining teeth were sharpened into points as some kind of adulthood ritual from his tribe when he was twelve. He wore a lightened dark green combat harness over a military style overcoat of muted green wool and his wide brimmed dark leather hat was adorned by white bird feathers and dozens of serrated teeth from a sea animal he called a shark on a necklace. Since his aging body couldn’t handle the rhythmic recoil of the Outcasts’ assault rifles, he wielded a strange looking hoof made magical energy weapon with a wooden stock that had a crank on gears wired into the glass capacitor which generated the beam that shot down the barrel to a focuser attached to a focused emitter.

Tahka Tahkamata was the squad’s explosives expert and its youngest member, being just a year older than me and he seemed rather impulsive. He had thin and jagged stripes and a few notches in his right ear. He said he was from a town in the Heartlands before he followed trade caravans and gradually wandered to the Palatine. His armor was reinforced by blackened steel plates and a dozen pockets and satchels for explosives.

Q’osk of Q’ahn was the massive stallion from the other day and mostly acted as the squad’s heavy weapons expert and general heavy lifter. He wore a full suit of segmented steel armor that he had stained a dull matte dark green with black and brown spot camouflage over his uniform, complete with a fully faced helmet with a long list of what looked like names scratched on the side and wielded a pair of heavy barreled machine guns chambered for 7.62mm on the suit’s custom battle saddle. He called it Lorica Segmentata, I think, his heavy accent didn’t exactly help much. He wasn’t with the squad when they saved Prysm because he and another squad were sent to assist the neighboring Chukk-chukks with a Cockatrice nest.

Ophia was the squad’s second in command, the unarmed specialist and the only mare. Her eyes, twisted and convoluted stripes and glyph were all dull cadmium red instead of black or gray like pretty much every other zebra in the Castrum. She had an old long jagged scar line that started at her upper lip and ran up beside her nose past the corner of her right eye ending just above her brow. She wore a thick shoulder belt with a holstered compact machine pistol over her uniform, a pair of spiked ponyshoes and an older, clunkier model of PipBuck attached to her foreleg so her uniform sleeve had to be rolled up to her elbow.

Apparently she had to defeat several Outcasts including Umeme in wrestling matches to prove her worth to the General and even then it took the General’s late wife to convince him to allow her to join. I also noticed that nearly all of the zebras and ponies in the Castrum seemed to be avoiding her for some reason.

*** *** ***

We stood in line with hundreds of Outcasts at the Castrum’s cafeteria, the head chef Celia Chukk-chukk, an older Swampfolk earth pony mare with a cleft lip, was handing out steaming bowls of soup made from potatoes and a bit of pale meat from a creature called a Crawdad with a bread roll made of corn. Crawdads, as Celia explained to me, was a sort of local catch-all term for the mutated descendants of crustaceans that were native to the North Shore.

She took me around the back and showed me the ones that her helpers were roasting on a spit over an open fire pit, the creatures ranged considerably from the smallest ones being just about the length of my leg to the largest one being three ponies long. They had slender bodies covered in hard chitinous exoskeletons that were a mix of muted browns and greens, multiple legs, big front pincer claws, a pair of beady black eyes, and the females had worm-like sucker mouths and the males had a more alligator-like mouth.

According to the chef, they made for good eating because they were relatively easy to clean, they matured quickly, and spawned by the dozens from large egg clutches.

“What model of rifle is that?” I asked Umeme as we sat down at a table to eat, “I’ve seen the schematics of nearly every gun Ironshod made, but I don’t recognize yours.”

“Makes sense,” Umeme muttered, unholstering his rifle and showing me it.

“Maybe that’s not such a good idea, sir,” Ophia interrupted, glaring daggers of suspicion at me.

“Ophia, our ancestor’s designs are far from secret,” Umeme replied sternly, the mare backed off, but continued her glare, “This is the Type 36 Assault Carbine, it’s older and wasn’t as heavily used in the Great War as the Type 41s were, but it's much more durable and reliable, especially here.”

The carbine was maybe a couple inches shorter than a heavy assault rifle, the twenty round magazine was short, ribbed and curved. The ribbed gas system was built above the fourteen inch chrome-lined barrel connected to the tangent rear iron sight and an egg shaped silencer was screwed onto the muzzle below the raised hooded front iron sight.

I tried to read the markings on the left side of the magazine well, but they were written in Roamani, the main zebra trade language, but judging by the bullet outlines on the switch, the weapon likely had two modes, safe and fire.

“Okay, is it short-stroke?” I asked, the gas system of the heavy assault rifle was tied to a spring-loaded piston housed in the front furniture under the front iron sight.

“Yes and it’s only semi-automatic compared to the Type 41’s three round burst option.”

That answered that, “And your pistol?”

The stallion reached down and unholstered his weapon, “This is the Type 15 pistol, it was mostly used by tank crews and vehicle drivers early in the Great War, but it was mostly replaced with the Type 17s in the closing years.”

The pistol somewhat resembled the layout of a rifle with the ten round, detachable magazine placed in front of the mouth grip and trigger under the heavy slide with a tangent rear sight which lined up with the simple stick front sight. I took the pistol from Umeme and looked it over with my magic. Unholstering my own pistol I compared the muzzles and found my pistol’s bore was slightly bigger.

“9mm?” I asked, handing it back, Umeme nodded.

“How do the bullets explode?” I asked, remembering back to the campsite, “Specialty ammunition?”

“No, most of our weapons were enchanted late in the War with some level of environmental effect,” Mashhad explained, sitting next to me with a bowl of mushed up soup, “You may have noticed that most of us don’t have access to magic like you do, Kid, so we use gemstones to weave magic into an object, our invisibility cloaks have a gem that allows the fabric to wrap light around the wearer.”

“Okay, so where do you get the bullets?” I asked past a mouth full of soupy bread, according to the books I read they were pretty complex and I just couldn’t imagine somebody making them by hoof, at least reliably.

“Detrot is full of factories,” Umeme answered, Q’osk and Tahka sat across from us, “Some say nearly as many as Fillydelphia and some of them are still somewhat functional. Hell, the whole suburb of Gundalk is basically one big bullet factory run by a tribe called the Bullet Farmers.”

“Bullet Farmers?” I asked questioningly, surely you couldn’t farm bullets like you could crops… right?

*** *** ***

Once we finished up, Umeme took me up to the Armory to get me outfitted with a suit of proper armor. Arhem seemed less than pleased to be dealing with me again, but with Umeme at my side the tailor kept his thoughts to himself at least.

He instructed me to hold still as an assistant took out a tape measure and jotted down my measurements before entering the side room and returning after a few minutes with a box of hoofmade leather armor.

It looked like it was made from a combination of a sleeveless jacket and hardened leather hoofball equipment with a bandolier offering pockets for small objects like ammunition. The whole piece was made from dark brown leather and seemed to offer more protection than just my stable suit alone.

Umeme helped me put it on over my Outcasts jacket and my stable suit and helped adjust the straps.

“You could almost pass for a proper Wastelander now,” Umeme jokingly said, my cheeks reddened slightly as I thanked the handsome buck, “We’ll meet up in the Mid Rim in one hour, then we’ll leave for Dela Crow.”

*** *** ***

“Are you certain that you want to do this?” Saluem asked, wrapping a healing bandage around a cleaned scrape on a young colt’s shin.

I was standing in her hut’s doorway, waiting for Umeme’s squad to armor themselves so we could head out. The healer hadn’t said anything to me since last night so this conversation was slightly unexpected.

“I did say I’d do anything,” I answered, checking over my new armor and gear.

I contemplated taking my saddle bag, figuring that I could use the extra carrying capacity, but I also didn’t want it to get needlessly damaged. I decided to risk it and bring it with me. The colt thanked Saluem, hugged her, and left to rejoin his friends waiting outside.

She turned to me and asked, “Have you ever killed a person intentionally?”

The question caught me off guard, “I… no,” I admitted, Bitterchip didn’t count to me, I wasn’t trying to kill, just stop him.

“Swampfolk are raised on killing, when they get their cutie mark they are given a knife and go out to find an outsider to kill,” she placed her hoof on my shoulder pauldron, “Can you kill a child?”

I looked at her disgusted, did she really just ask me that? But I couldn’t help but think about her words. I didn’t really like being around kids too much, well… Yarn was passable, my heart stung slightly at the thought of my temporary apprentice. But that didn’t mean I wanted to actually harm them?

“Can you?”

“I have,” the mare quietly admitted after a pregnant pause.

I whipped around to look at her, my heart froze, “Really?”

She turned away from me as she spoke, “I couldn’t have been much older than Prysm and Lucius was not yet General. I was out with Kaldi and a friend of mine fishing for baby crawdads and catfish… when we stumbled across him.”

She took a moment before continuing, “He was a deathly malnourished earth pony with a rotting corn cob cutie mark, he was… so terrified of me the knife in his mouth wouldn’t stop trembling and tears flooded his eyes.”

Her voice broke and she almost sobbed before she spoke again, “I… I remember lifting my spear in my mouth and charging him. He stumbled back frightened and fell into some muddy water and… I… I thrusted my spear deep into his lumpy throat before he could scream out. I still… see his gurgling blood mixing with the water when I close my eyes.”

I took a tentative step closer and placed my hoof on her shoulder, she swung around tears threatening to drip down her cheeks. If she really had killed somebody and was haunted by the experience, well no wonder she detested violence.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-” I struggled to say, “I just-”

She brushed past me and stopped in the doorway before leaving, “Pray that you have the strength to make the right choice.”

I facehoofed, heart-to-heart talking wasn’t my strongest skill.

*** *** ***

The land that spread between the Inner Rim’s square walls and the Mid Rim’s more lumpy egg shaped walls made from the wreckage of dozens of pre-war vehicles called Sky Buses was cleared of all foliage and leveled for hundreds of shacks, huts, and tents that had been set up in a semi-haphazard town.

According to Umeme, only Outcasts and Guests like me were permitted within the Core and Inner Rim. Hundreds of zebras and ponies were milling about doing chores, like repairing several large holes in the wall with steel salvaged from vehicles, or shopping at the market stalls that lined the six main ring streets.

I saw many different looking Wastelanders, many of them wearing armor or traveling gear and wielding pistols, submachine guns, rifles or shotguns.

I spoke with a few of them and apparently most groups were from the surrounding regions such as Haagenheim where the twin ruins of Whinnyapolis and St Haul were, The Divide where the ruins of Detrot laid half buried in irradiated canyons and caves, The Flatts where the casino city of Foaledo loomed as a shining neon monument to sin and greed, or the Tsardom where the ruins of Stalliongrad slumped on the banks of the Stallga-matushka. While others were from other places deeper in Equestria such as the Hoof a couple of months to the south and the Heartlands the better part of half a year to the southwest.

According to an older traveling merchant, she’d rarely seen living trees since coming up north. So living trees were rare in the world, interesting.

I saw a group of thirty or so ponies encased head to hoof in special hazmat suits made of thick brown canvas, padded leather armor stained black with grease, armored gas masks and helmets, and patches of a hippo with the words Hippocampus Energy on their sleeves, and seemed to be speaking through gestures made with their hooves.

I spoke with a mare who seemed to be their leader and found out they called themselves the Riggers, a collection of ponies and zebras who worked the ancient oil and natural gas pumps found throughout the swamp to sell to Baltimare and to the surrounding North Shore. I asked if it was a dangerous job and she explained that after twenty years on she’d seen over a hundred good workers die horrifically.

I shuddered at that mental image as I continued on.

There was also a group of pegasi, two were wearing asymmetrical uniforms that were cold gray with sky blue trimmings, black flat caps, fancy black respirators, and magical energy pistols in holsters. They were perusing the technology merchants with a stallion encased head to hoof in incredibly impressive glossy dark gray insectoid armor with matte sky blue highlights and carrying a pair of wicked looking magical plasma rifles under his armored wings that casted a light green glow.

I overheard a little bit of their conversation as they walked by.

“Honestly, Open,” the mare lightly scolded her companion, “How, in the whole of Equestria, could a damn star battery be in the fucking swamp of all places?”

“You never know, Goldy,” the stallion replied, brushing off the argument as their guard followed silently behind them.

I didn’t really pay them too much attention as I continued to peruse the stalls for another few minutes or so before a voice called to me.

“Excuse me, sir,” the pegasus stallion from before was staring at the golden Fifty-Two on my suit’s collar and my flank, “Would you happen to be a genuine Stable Dweller?”

“Uhh, yes?” I answered nervously.

“Does your PipBuck function?” he asked, gesturing to my foreleg, “May I see it?”

“Come on, Open, knock it off,” the mare said bitterly, catching the attention of a few people and vendors around, “No way he’s a Stable Dweller, probably just stole them from one of the abandoned stables down here.”

“Well aren’t you just a shining peach,” I muttered at the mare, who glared daggers at me, turning back to the stallion, “Yes, my PipBuck works just fine.”

“May I see it?” he asked again.

“Ok, but how about a trade first?” I asked after a moment of consideration, “I haven’t been outside for very long, perhaps you could tell who you’re with for a look?”

The pegasi exchanged glances before the stallion nodded, “Alright, I’m Open Cloud of New Cloudsdale and this is my research partner, Goldenstreak of Mount Reyns, we’re researchers with the Expeditionary Corp of the Grand Pegasus Enclave.”

I glanced up to the armorclad stallion behind them, he radiated a similar aura as Officer Crosshairs did, save for the small rabbit cartoon doodle on his left shoulder pauldron, but the armored scorpion tail with the wicked several inch long blade certainly made up for that.

“And this is Lieutenant Rayn of New Winsome Falls,” Open Cloud continued, waving a wing to the armored stallion, “She’s our guard for our mission.”

Ok, so the armored stallion was a mare, right.

Open Cloud lifted up my PipBuck and looked it over like it was a priceless artifact, which I supposed it was.

“Only a few days, but nearly a hundred miles already, impressive,” he murmured to himself, “Uhm, that’s interesting.”

“What is?” I asked, pulling my PipBuck back.

“Oh nothing, just surprised it’s in such good condition… considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Oh, just the Wastelands,” he brushed off my question, “Thank you for letting me look.”

I decided to not push the topic, “Ok, so what’s this about a star battery?”

“Back off, Wastelander!” Goldenstreak briskly shouted, shoving her pistol’s emitter into my muzzle, “It doesn’t concern you!”

Shit! My mind sped up to a mile a minute as I thought of what to do, when a voice lifted my heart a beat.

“Excuse me,” Umeme asked, the pegasi looked back at him and the ten Outcast guards with him, he was wearing his plastic cloak over his armor, “Is there a problem here?”

“Nothing that concerns you, zebra,” Goldenstreak declared, glaring at the stallion.

But Umeme stared her down like a disappointed parent, “Must I really remind the illustrious Enclave of the treaty, again?”

Treaty? What treaty?

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Lieutenant Rayn’s mechanized voice interrupted before Goldenstreak could say anything else, “We’ll move along, good day, Stable Dweller.”

“Fucking Enclave,” Umeme breathed harshly when they were well out of earshot.

“What’s their deal?” I asked, the guards dispersed about the crowds.

“Just,” he started, trying to find the right words, “All of their talk of bringing civilization to the Wastes, hogshit. We’ve guarded the Long Stretch for over a hundred years now, keeping the trade flowing to Baltimare. Then a few months back they came flying down from their paradise, claiming to have come to save us all from the hell they fled from? Bunch of fascists, the whole fucking lot of them!”

“Then why put up with them?”

He stopped in his tracks and whipped around on me, “You saw that power armor, you see what we have at our disposal, we fight drunken inbred hicks armed with lever guns and revolvers, most of them can barely comprehend basic fighting tactics like wearing armor. The Enclave though, if even a fraction of them are that well equipped then we wouldn’t last a few hours against them… not without serious sacrifices… unlike the Old Guard.”

He had a point. “Old Guard?” I asked, remembering that Tahka had mentioned the name before, “Are they an army?”

“Yeah, the Old Guard is Baltimare’s citizen defence force. Most powerful army I’ve ever seen. The First Emergence War against the Steel Rangers lasted ten years and ended with the creation of the Myre,” he murmured quietly, “The Second Emergence War only lasted ten days and ended with a truce, a treaty that says the Enclave isn’t permitted in Baltimare’s territories, save for an embassy in the capitol, and in exchange Baltimare has permitted them to operate in the North Shore. Never understood why.”

After seeing that impressive armor, I wondered what kind of army could fight against that?

*** *** ***

We stood in front of the Castrum’s main gate, twin double door gates connected to a long reinforced walkway with twin heavy machine guns squared up on the entrance from behind reinforced barricades.

A small number of people were there to see us off, Q’osk said his goodbyes to a similarly tall younger mare, she was sternly telling him something that made the stallion chuckle, hug her lovingly and kiss her forehead before donning his helmet.

Tahka was hugging a small colt with Celia, “Be good for Nana, Tyn.”

“K, Papa,” the colt chirped, “Bring me a gift.”

“Only if you’re good.”

“Stay safe,” Celia told Tahka, kissing his cheek.

“Hey,” he replied smirking, “It’s me.”

“Exactly.”

A little ways away Umeme was speaking with the General, “You know what must be done, Umeme,” The General spoke with an even tone, “Remember just find Kaldi, once you’re out Legate Eadayiy will go in with his soldiers and mop up the rest.”

“Yes, Father.”

The taller stallion grabbed his son by the shoulder and pulled him into a hug, “Be safe out there.”

Prysm came up to me, her green eyes looking rather sheepish, “Uncle and Auntie said I should thank you for trying to save me.”

“It’s really not a big deal,” I replied, a little surprised by this display of politeness.

Her eyes shifted to a robin’s egg blue and her cheeks blushed, she clearly wasn’t used to showing gratitude, “She also told me to thank you for going out to save Mama.”

I placed my forehoof on the filly’s head and ruffled up her mane a little, “Hey, your family's done me a pretty big solid, only right I repay it.”

The filly swatted away my hoof with a grumpy look and walked away as Saluem came up. I felt my cheeks redden remembering the embarrassing conversation.

“You might be needing these,” she reached into her saddle bag and handed me a roll of bandages, “Stay safe out there, okay?”

“Thanks,” I said, taking them, but her hoof lingered on mine for a moment longer than needed before we crossed the double doors and down the bridge to the Outskirts.

Between the Outskirts and the walls of the Mid Rim was a moat about ten feet wide and deep and the floor was covered in thousands upon thousands of long gnarly looking sharp spikes and tangled barbed wire made from rusty steel that loosely resembled thorny bushes. The muddy lands of the Outskirts were cleared of trees and underbrush for about a hundred yards or so revealing the thousands of white stone markers that spiraled out from the moat to the distant treeline with a series of paths cutting through to the main road. A few Outcasts were burying small clay vases in graves by fresh stone markers.

Mashhad stood by a small stone marker with an old looking curved knife leaning against it. The sniper had removed his hat and had it pressed to his chest standing in silence for a long while before placing his hat back on his head a little crooked and joined us before we continued down a four lane wide crumbling road lined with thousands of rusted skeletons of ancient pre-war vehicles called the Long Stretch.

According to Umeme, the Long Stretch was the remains of Highway Nineteen and was one of only two throughways connecting the Horseshoe Bay to the rest of Equestria before the Last Day when the Hayseed Swamp hadn’t been as far reaching as they were now. That gave me some pause, if the Swamp could spread then just how out of date were my PipBuck’s maps?

The day mostly passed by with very little of note as we traveled southeast through rotting swampland, I had noticed that the air wasn’t feeling quite as cold and stagnant to my coat as when I had first entered almost a week ago, maybe I was just getting used to it. I heard a great many animals off in the distant wilderness along with the rare gunshot echo. We found a few bullet riddled road signs,

Caution

Pink Flu Infected Area

Contact local Ministry of Peace officials immediately if you spot somebody with the following symptoms…

The rest of the signs were cut off by rust.

“Pink Flu?” I asked, cocking my brow.

“Oh, those, ignore those,” Umeme muttered to me, “Pink Flu has mostly died out by now.”

“What was it?” I asked, noticing that the group looked a little on edge.

“Nasty disease,” Mashhad answered, shaking his head, “First it makes you sweat and develop a nasty fever like any flu which leads to unexplained contusions and then boils, tumors and cysts start swelling through your body that start glowing a nasty pink and finally it reaches your organs and you die from internal hemorrhaging. Nasty.”

“Where did it come from?” I asked grimacingly.

“Nobody really knows,” the stallion answered, making a spooky noise, “But it mostly seems to affect ponies so I’ve heard some doctors from Baltimare have theories that it could of been spread through plants like Killing Joke or it could’ve been a weapon.”

“Killing Joke?” I asked, “Is that like Poison Joke?”

“Killing Joke came from Poison Joke,” Umeme answered, “Stay well away from any vines with glowing blue flowers.”

“Painful experience?”

“It flayed me alive for several weeks before Aunt Saluem could cure me.”

“Shit,” I grimaced, shuddering as a cold rushed up my spine.

*** *** ***

Nearing dinner time we came across a sickly looking pony that was slowly stumbling alongside the road. Umeme had us stop and Mashhad wound up the crank of his musket before lining up his shot. A scratchy beam of blue light loudly popped from the focuser and struck the pony squarely in their chest making them drop to the crumbling asphalt.

As we came closer I noticed a very foul stench and that the pony’s coat was molting away revealing large patches of blistered hide, its mane and tail were little more than wispy strands and the flesh that wasn’t burned by Mashhad’s musket was rotting or eaten by animals. The ancient military uniforms draped over the remnants of its thin body was little more than putrid moldy fabric pockmarked by centuries of neglect, combat and the Swamp.

I heaved up my breakfast and Tahka laughed at me, “Never seen a zombie, huh?”

“A what?” I whizzed, trying to get the taste of bile out of my mouth.

“Ghouls,” Ophia muttered, shaking her head.

“Folk that succumb to radiation and whose minds rot away leaving them little more than wild animals,” Mashhad mumbled, taking off his hat and pressing it to his chest, “Wastelands are full of them, out in the wilderness you can find herds dozens even hundreds strong that can overwhelm nearly anything.”

Umeme nodded, “I’ve seen them rip a young hydra apart.”

I forced myself to look down at the corpse wondering what their life must’ve been like to end up the way they were.

*** *** ***

It was very late when we entered Clearview, an Outcasts town surrounded by tall marsh grasses on the west bank of a small murky lake that was the main home of the Swampfolk family, the Kattayls.

The town was surrounded by a large makeshift wall made from scrap wood and steel, the main gate was decorated by a rampant zebra outlined by a gold sun and what looked like the tall marsh grass around the town.

“Hold!” the gate guard called, holding up his shotgun, “Name yer business!”

“Legate Amandla Orthius Umeme Octavius, this is my squad, we’re here on a mission to Dela Crow and require shelter for the night.”

The guards opened the gate and we walked into the town, close to a hundred Swampfolk were milling about doing odd jobs while about fifty Outcasts held the defensive makeshift wall. The town was made up of old buildings and houses on stilts repaired with scrap wood and sheet steel roofs, the general store was marked by a sign of three gold coins with a strange language and rough Ponish written below,

Madam Ponada’s Boutique and Inn

Umeme pushed open the door and we were greeted by the pungent stench of smoldering incenses and plants. The room was cluttered with items for sale, balls of colorful herbs tied with twine, bottles of strange glowing liquids, what looked like shrunken pony heads, cages held mutated animals and pieces of bones with words scribbled on them in multicolored wax.

At the back of the shop was an elderly looking Swampfolk mare with a crazy knotted mop of a mane that tumbled down to the ratty shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders, and dozens of charms and pendants hung on necklaces around her thin neck.
Mashhad tapped a strung up bell and the Swampfolk glanced up from her old book, it took her a moment to spot us in the clutter.

“Jorqar Mashhad,” Her deep blue stained lips twisted into a grin revealing crooked yellow stained teeth, “Was wondering when you’d wander back into my neck of da Swamp.”

“Evening, Andia,” the stallion smirked, kissing her outstretched hoof, “Do you have any spare rooms?”

“Just two,” she said, trailing her hoof down his shoulder, “But you stay with me.”

We marched down the side hallway and went to our rooms, Umeme and Ophia and Tahka, Q’osk and me, Mashhad went off with the mare.

The room was small with one sagging bed, a fat candle burned in a bowl casting shadows across the room with a small screened window was open and let in the cold air and sounds of the town and the Swamp beyond.

Tahka and Q’osk gave me the bed, but the sogginess and apparent small insects made me decline the offer and instead slept on the floor with the two stallions. The cramped position made my body hurt and the pleasurable moans and cries from the room above made it hard for me to sleep.

As I laid there I started having second thoughts about what I was doing. Sure I needed to find Mom, but was I justified in involving myself in the Outcasts’ politics?

*** *** ***

The following morning we continued down the road and maybe around mid morning we came across a couple trade ponies on a covered wagon being pulled by a strange two headed cow.

The leader said they were headed to the Castrum and further up to a town in Baltimare called Inner Harbor. Umeme questioned them about Foalbanks activity in the area and the leader told us that something had attacked a caravan further down the road. After wishing them safe journeys we continued on for another many hours before we came across a bullet riddled road sign adorned with strung up old dolls, moldy teddy bears, plastic pony mannequin heads and the rotting corpses of mutated animals that once said,

Delacroix-10 miles

But now was covered in stenciled crossed revolvers and new words in Ponish and a strange looking written language in bright orange paint,

FOALBANKS LAND
FUCK OFF!

“Well,” I muttered mostly to myself, “They’re certainly to the point.”

“This way,” Umeme directed us off of the road to a very narrow hoof beaten path that led into the trees, “It’s not far off now.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, falling in behind Ophia with Q’osk bringing up the rear.

“There’s an outpost nearby, they should have a boat.”

We continued through the trees and tall grasses for another few hours before the trees opened to reveal a small shack made of scrap wood and rusty steel on the muddy banks of a small scum covered alcove of a large murky lake with a rotting dock. A Swampfolk wearing a tattered quilted coat and holding a hunting shotgun sat in a rusty lawn chair by a sputtering smokey campfire in a pit with what looked like a large dog that growled at us.

Umeme went up and spoke with the stallion for a bit while the rest of us hung back.

“Hey, Ophia,” I asked the mare quietly, “What’s with your red stripes?”

“Hey, Stable Dweller,” she muttered quietly, “What’s with the bloody nose?”

“Ophia, no,” Mashhad, Tahka, and Q’osk interrupted.

“He’s just so-” Ophia started.

“He couldn’t have known,” the elderly stallion calmly shot back, glaring her down.

Couldn’t have known? Couldn’t have known what?

Ophia glared at me for a while before she spoke, “Survive this fight and I just might think about telling you, Stable Dweller.”

I nervously nodded, the way she spat out the words Stable Dweller made my spine chill. Umeme waved to us and we sat down around the fire, the stallion passed around some wrinkly apples that tasted like bitter wet saw dust. I nervously glanced down at the large dog/tree thing, it’s body was made up of twigs, shredded black tree bark, green leaves and vines, and its eyes glowed a sickly light green yellow. I found the creature extremely unsettling.

“Who da Stable Dwellah?” the Swampfolk asked in heavily accented Ponish, “Ya sed id jus be yer group.”

“Nask,” Umeme replied dryly, “He killed Bitterchip.”

He glanced at me lumpy mouth agape, “You-”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“A Stable Dwellah?”

“Yes,” I muttered again.

“Bout damn time somebody took dat bastard,” he muttered approvingly, “Din’t tink id be a Stable Dwellah.”

“Nask, is the boat ready?” Umeme interrupted, getting the conversation back on track.

“Yeah,” Nask answered, pointing to a rusty boat tied to a post of the dock.

“Alright,” Umeme said, the group stood and stepped over, I followed.

Getting on, Nask untied the boat as Tahka and Q’osk took the oars and we pushed off and headed to the distant bright lights and smoke trails across the lake.

*** *** ***

Crossing the lake took a very long time, as I floated out Light and held it at the ready, Saluem’s words floated in my mind again.

Could I really do this? I looked down at the murky water and thought it over, I did say that I’d do anything to find Mom, but could I really kill someone intentionally? From what I’d seen and heard of the Foalbanks they attacked any outsider or enslaved them. If I killed them then I could possibly make the Hayseed Swamps a little bit safer and the General assured me that he would tell me where Mom may have gone when we saved Kaldi.

I made up my mind.

“Umeme,” Mashhad muttered as he scoped out the lights on the approaching shoreline, “I count five sentries with a half dozen on the walls.”

“Right, you know the drill, we’re here for Jackchip and Aunt Kaldi,” Umeme whispered, “Q’osk, stay with the boat. Mashhad, get up high and do what you do best. Ozzy, you’re supporting Mashhad. Tahka, get on Jackchip’s boat and destroy it, your way. Ophia, you come with me.”

“Umeme,” Ophia started, “I thought-”

“Plans change.”

There was a noticeable pause before the group nodded as we touched down on the shore a ways up from the fenced in town. As the others got to work, Mashhad pointed a hoof at a very tall tree as his wings extended out from his coat and the elderly zebra pegasus began to scale it. I gulped hard and slowly started to climb after him. My armor felt heavy and I nearly fell a couple of times when I nearly stepped on a few small animals, but after what felt like an eternity, I finally made it up to Mashhad’s perch.

“Good to see that you’re in good shape,” the elderly sniper whinnied.

I grimaced, we were about thirty maybe forty feet off the ground and a bit above the tree canopy. The cold winds chilled my bones and it took all my concentration to not fall off. I wished I still had my rope to tie myself secure.

“Here,” Mashhad said over the wind, he held a small metal cylinder from one of his coat’s inner pockets, “Can you use a spyglass?”

I shook my head, taking the device in my magic and floating it closer, it could extend to about ten inches or so with two glass lenses on either side.

It’s simple,” the sniper explained, “you extend to full length and look through the smaller lens.”

I did as instructed and my view was a little clearer. From my perch and through the spyglass I looked out over the town on the island, really it was little more than a small number of old buildings and homes lining a single crumbling street with a tall leaning brick building, a church, on the opposite side. A couple dozen trailer homes, as Mashhad called them, made up the outer walls forming a loose semicircle that opened to the lake where an old looking paddle boat was moored at a guarded dock. The main gate bridge was guarded by a couple of Swampfolk lounging around at a smoldering campfire.

I noticed a couple of weird shimmerings, like steam wafting from a pipe, behind the guards and without warning both guards were stabbed under their lumpy jaws by Umeme and Ophia who then dragged them off in the darkness before creeping across the metal bridge into the town. I looked around the walls some more and eventually spotted another shimmering headed toward the crumbling docks and the boat. Tahka grabbed a guard and dragged her back into the murky water. Another guard must’ve noticed the noise cause he was cautiously walking over the rail where his friend was just a moment before. Tahka swooped up from the water and stabbed the guard’s throat and dragged him off the boat before pulling himself over the railing and disappearing from my sight.

“They’re in,” Mashhad muttered, lowering his musket, “Now we wait for the fun to start.”

I nodded and lowered the spyglass, taking a moment to examine my surroundings. I noticed that after the almost stifling decay of the swamp floor the air up here was almost too clean. I looked around to get my bearings, even with the spyglass it was too dark for me to see any great distance south but I did notice a couple of faint lights coming from behind me far to the northeast.

“So, tell me Kid,” Mashhad muttered as he cranked his musket creating a dull blue ball in the glass chamber, “What’s life in a stable like?”

“Pretty monotonous really,” I muttered, watching the blue ball quiver and squirm about in its glass cage, “Apart from the Radmoles attacking, it was safe.”

“Anyone special there?”

I swallowed hard as I thought about Cobalt, the way she hesitated before she shot at me and her tears as the Door closed shut, “Probably not anymore.”

“Right,” the sniper mumbled quietly, “I won’t pry, Kid, know that pain.”

There was a very long silence after that as we sat up there.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked, wanting to break the stillness.

“Oh, I’ve been with the Outcasts since the General’s father’s father let me in, General Amandla Pyrite Floren Quintus. I probably wasn’t too much older than Umeme.”

“Yeah?” I asked, “Where’re you from?”

“My tribe’s from Zanzebra, it was a region of tropical islands that had very little connection to the Caesar of the Last Day, not like that saved us from being invaded multiple times. We were scattered across the Celestial Sea shortly following the start of the Great War and we’ve continued on as merchants and pirates.”

“My father was a pegasus that visited the Farasi port city of Casabronco where he met my mother who was a pirate at the time. They had fun one night and months later I was born in a pirate settlement in the western Dragonlands called Whore’s Gash. Long gone now.”

“What happened to it?” I asked, glancing down at the town.

“I don’t know, I believe that a sea dragon drowned the place.”

“Sea dragon?” I asked, very puzzled, “I thought dragons flew.”

“I’m sure they do, but sea dragons aren’t the flying ones, they’re said to be more like giant snakes nearly a mile long living in the deep seas eating whales and giant squids.”

“Wow,” I muttered, thinking about a monster miles long, I shivered.

“Yeah, and Seaponies sing songs that hypnotise sailors and they take their seed to keep their queen full,” Mashhad chuckled.

I was taken aback for a second before glaring at the old sniper, “So, you’re just fucking with me now?”

“Not really, Kid. Sea dragons did exist once, but not anymore. Their bones can be found occasionally out along the coasts and something did destroy Whore’s Gash, but I think it was actually poisonous gas from some underground sulfur pits upwind from the town. The Dragonlands are full of them, volcanoes and lava lakes, or slavers attacked and hauled them away somewhere.”

“Why would anybody want to live there?”

“Oh, the dragons love it, Kid, see their lands weren’t bombed during the Last Day so there’s very little radiation or monsters.”

We must’ve been up there for close to a quarter hour talking quietly before Mashhad changed the subject, “Just a friendly bit of advice, Kid, I know you’re just doing this to find your Stable’s doctor and all, understandable, she seemed like a nice enough mare when I spoke with her. But maybe you should also consider finding a place to settle down out here, Hell, the General’s gonna make you an Outcast on the spot when we find Kaldi and Saluem is unwed.”

“What?” I asked before nearly a full minute before I comprehended the words, “Wait, what?”

“I saw the way she looked at you when we left, Kid, I’m old enough to know when a mare sees a buck she might like.”

“S-she’s a bit older than me,” I deflected, trying to focus on anything else.

“When you get as old as me, Kid,” Mashhad laughed, “You may find that age is just a number.”

I felt my cheeks redden as I looked away and focused on a very interesting branch. I wasn’t going to think about the sniper’s joking words or about the way Saluem’s nice hips swayed as she walked, the way her pretty blue eyes and sweet smile lightened my heart a little, the way her very lovely scent made me think of sunshine, and I most certainly wasn’t thinking about what her bare body must’ve looked like covered in sweat as we-

‘Fuck,’ I thought catching myself mid fantasy, ‘I’m a little hopeless, aren’t I?’

Don’t answer that.

KA-BOOM!

Suddenly a thunderous explosion down in the town ripped me from my thoughts, the paddle boat was a smoking inferno.

“Here we go, Kid,” Mashhad cackled as he shot a couple of Foalbanks.

BZZT! BZZT!

I got out Light and took aim at a mangy mare who was galloping along the walls with a sawed off shotgun in her mouth. As I lined up my sights my PipBuck pinged an alert and the world slowed to a near crawl as my Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell activated. Percentages popped up over the mare’s body parts, showing me where I’d have the best chance to hit. I chose to target her chest, time corrected and the bullets fired.

BLAM! BLAM!

As the bullets sliced through the cold air the first two struck just ahead of the mare, but the third struck her glowing cyst swollen neck, causing her to tumble off the edge down into the murky water twenty feet below.

“Not bad, Kid,” Mashhad shouted over the beams he popped off, killing a few more Foalbanks before he holstered his musket and started to float down to the shore, “Come on.”

I holstered Light and grabbed a hold of the stallion, we drifted down to the tree base and ran up to the gate where Q’osk was firing his machine guns across the metal bridge, Mashhad flew up to the top for a better perch.

I brought up my Eyes Forward Sparkle, a compass spell on my PipBuck that would tell me the direction of anypony relative to me with yellow markers meaning they were neutral and red markers meaning they were hostile. Right now there were seven targets dead ahead. I’d only used the spell a couple of times before, but now I noticed that the marker on Q’osk was green giving me his and Mashhad’s names. I glanced up to Mashhad and noticed that he was marked by green as well but his marker didn’t tell me how high up he was.

“What the?” I mumbled to myself, but was interrupted by Q’osk.

“With me, Stable!” the massive stallion shouted past his helmet and his battle saddle’s trigger, “We clear the town!”

I followed behind him as we crossed, the massive stallion steadily marched forward seemingly unfazed by the bullets that bounced off and dented his armor while Mashhad exchanged shots with snipers on the roofs.

“Irrumator!” Q’osk shouted in between firing his machine guns, bullets ripping through a Foalbanks taking cover in a house.

“We’s eatin’ good t’night!” a skinny stallion up by the church cackled as he shot off his lever action rifle.

Time slowed as I took aim at him, three bullets tore into his chest and one bullet sparked on his rifle. I felt a sharp sting on my foreleg just above my PipBuck and I targeted a second mare covering behind a dumpster holding a lever shotgun in her hooves, I fired a round that blew a small chunk of her head away painting the wall behind her. I fell behind Q’osk to reload Light, as I racked the slide back I spotted a third stallion coming up behind us with a couple of bottles of black liquid with lit rag corks in his mouth.

“Ya done fucked up, Drylandah!” he hollered as he was about to throw the bottle, “Dis is our land!”

My S.A.T.S. was still recharging, I reflexively shot off a couple of rounds at him and nicked a bottle. To my surprise the black liquid went up in flames barbecuing the stallion’s face. He shrieked, stumbling in the mud and ran over to a metal barrel by a house and dunked his head in it causing steam to bloom around him as his limp body crumpled in the mud.

When the smoke cleared, fourteen bullet riddled or burned corpses littered the town street.

Catching my breath I looked around, but I didn't spot any more enemies in the range of my E.F.S. I rolled up my sleeve to check and saw some blood starting to seep out of a shallow graze. I took out the roll of bandages from my saddle bag, tightly wrapped the wound and rolled down my torn sleeve. I’d need better armor if I was going to be doing this frequently.

“Check this house, Stable!” Q’osk shouted, pointing an armored forehoof at a ranch house, “I will cover you!”

I opened the door and vomited into the muddy street as the pungent stench of decay invaded my nostrils. Inside the room was a gruesome scene, six children were tied to soiled mattresses and chained to the old wood walls, they were stripped of their clothing, stained in filth, and obviously they’d all been raped.

“Holy fucking shit!” I hissed to myself.

A scrawny colt weakly glanced up at me, I was horrified to see that his lips had been crudely sewn shut by red thread.

“It’s gonna be ok,” I tried to say through the pungent air, “We’re gonna save you.”

The colt weakly blinked before he glanced over his shoulder at a door in the corner. My E.F.S. told me that there was someone inside, holding Light at the ready, I cracked open the door and peered inside. A bloated stallion was lounging in a rocking chair snoring, the bloody severed head of a filly with her mouth lodged on to his lumpy cock and swollen balls while her limp body was laid on a nearby moldy mattress with a sickening mixture of blood and glowing jizz dribbling from her hindquarters. I pushed the door open and stepped in. Carefully wrapping my magic around the filly’s head, I lifted her off and put her to the side with her body. Silently I pointed Light at the stallion’s genitals and pulled the trigger.

BLAM!

The stallion jumped up screaming and grabbing at the pulpy remains of his crotch as he slumped over on to the floor. He glanced up at me as if just now noticing that I was there he pitifully whimpered something that sounded like a curse.

“Suffer,” I muttered as Light drowned out his words.

BLAM! BLAM!

I carefully picked up the filly’s head and body before I cut the other kids free, but only three of them were still alive, the colt and two fillies (one zebra) followed me out. Tahka had come up from the docks still soaked from the lake, he and Q’osk were turning over the bodies in the street, and his name came up on my E.F.S., but I didn’t pay them any attention.

“What’re you doing, Kid?” Mashhad asked, looking at the children.

“I’m saving them,” I muttered bitterly.

“We’re just here for Kaldi and Jackchip, Kid,” the elderly sniper started almost a little too rehearsed for my liking, tilting his hat down, “Their lives-”

“I’m! Saving! Them!” I shouted, slamming my hoof down hard enough to crack the dirty road with each word, getting Tahka and Q’osk’s attentions, “I don’t give a flying fuck if you all have a problem with it, I’m not leaving them here to suffer at the hooves of these monsters!”

After seeing first hoof what these Swampfolk did to outsiders, I no longer saw them as ponies. No these were parasites festering in the body of a dying beast. And I was going to kill them all.

“The General will have strong words, Kid.”

“I don’t fucking care if he even goes back on our deal, at least I’ll know I did the right thing,” my heart was thumping in my ears, “besides, plans change.”

Q’osk stepped up to the zebra filly and took off his helmet, the filly’s bloodshot eyes widened seeing that the stallion’s stripes matched her’s, Q’osk then asked her something in a strange sounding language and the filly nodded verimently.

“Mashhad,” Q’osk started, turning back to the sniper, “She is Zencori.”

“It doesn’t matter, Q’osk,” the sniper rebutted, “You’ve been banished for a year now-”

“She is Zencori,” the stallion interrupted, staring down the sniper, he berated him for several moments before finally stopping.

“Where’re you from?” Tahka asked the other filly.

She timidly got up and reached out her foreleg mimicking holding up something.

“Friendship City?” Tahka asked, a little shocked, “You’re from Manehattan?”

“Mashhad,” The fighter turned on his squad mate, “We need to help them.”

The sniper looked like he was near his wits end, “Tahka, I know you’re-”

“We can still clear the town and besides, plans change.”

I could’ve kissed Tahka… if he didn’t reek of swamp water.

Mashhad stared at his squad in disbelief for a long moment before finally saying, “I won’t stop you, Kid, but I won’t defend your choices either.”

“Fine,” I muttered looking back at the kids.

The colt was busy looking over the smaller filly who had fresh looking circular burns where her glyph should’ve been.

Tahka got out his knife, “I can cut those stitches for you.”

They looked up at him scared for a moment before the zebra filly took a reluctant shaky step forward.

“Hold still, please,” he requested as he carefully slipped the knife tip between her thin lips and slowly sliced the thread one by one, “Almost done… and there.”

The filly’s lips parted as the last thread was cut, she looked up at him very sheepishly, a lot like how Yarn first looked at me.

“Can you speak?” I asked.

The filly shook her head as she opened her mouth slightly revealing that most of her tongue had been cut out and the stump had been haphazardly cartorized. I looked at the other two who both nodded.

“Great,” I muttered as Tahka cut the threads from the other two, “One more reason to hate these monsters!”

Not that I really needed one.

“Where’re your parents?” Tahka asked the kids.

A filly pointed a forehoof at a building across the street, a mare’s bullet riddled body slumped against the wall beside the door with a lever gun.

“In there?” I asked, the filly nodded.

“There, Mashhad,” Tahka said, “We find their parents and bring them back to Clearview or even the Castrum, simple.”

*** *** ***

Tahka and I entered the building as Q’osk and Mashhad watched the kids outside. The building had rows of miss-matching tables covered in platters full of foul smelling and grilled meat and fat sausages, all leading to a door on the opposite wall. To my stomach’s growing disgust I realized this was the cafeteria.

I took a step inside and three blips suddenly popped up on my E.F.S. as something whizzed past my ear.

“Git outta muh home!” a mare shouted, overturning a table knocking over the platters and spilling the gorey food on the floor.

“Ya done fucked up, ziggas!” a stallion shouted, jumping up from behind a table with a fucking shovel in his mouth as a second mare with a sunken chest brought out a shotgun revolver.

The first mare reloaded a lever rifle and took a second shot at Tahka. Backpedaling out the door, I pulled up Light and shot off a few rounds into the table, two of the rounds splintered the old wood but the third and fourth clipped her head as I hit the floor. Tahka concentrated his fire on the stallion running up with the spear, the first explosion took off his hooves causing him to stumble and slam into a table and the second ripped through a chunk of his neck.

The second mare dropped her shotgun as she backed up from her cover and tried to make a run for the door, “Chop!” but the last rounds from Light’s magazine stopped her dead in her tracks.

I picked myself up from the floor and reloaded Light, looking myself over, I noticed that a bit of blood was seeping through my bandages.

Tahka carefully crossed the room and stopped at the door, “Ready?”

Suddenly a fourth blip appeared and the door slammed open nearly hitting Tahka, a hulking stallion as big as Q’osk wearing a bloody apron with dozens of knives and cleavers came charging out wielding a long bloody knife in his mouth. His forelegs, shoulders and neck were all swollen nearly three times as normal making him look like a wall of muscle covered in rough scaly cysts, massive glowing pink boils and pustules.

“CHOP! CHOP!” the stallion manically shouted.

I reflexively held up Light and shot him twice in his swollen chest, but he kept up his charge colliding squarely into my chest knocking the wind out of me and breaking my concentration on Light. A sharp splitting pain shot through my side as I hit the floor hard, the bone handle of the stallion’s knife was sticking out from under my armor.

The manic chef loomed over me with a sickening grin of rotting teeth, “Choppity chop.”

“Ozzy!” Tahka shouted as he threw himself onto the chef’s back, knocking him to the side into a few tables.

“Choppy!” the bleeding chef shouted in shocked anger, grabbing a knife and trying to slash at the zebra riding him.

Even though Tahka almost danced around the bigger assailant, the chef definitely had strength on his as he bucked his hind hooves into the soldier’s gut causing him to spit up blood.

“Choppy choppity chop chop,” the chef slurred with gut splitting cruelty passed the knife clenched in his teeth.

Ignoring the seven inch blade lodged deep in my innards and the screaming pain in my mind, I feebly grabbed at Light, but suddenly Mashhad grabbed the pistol and shot the chef’s flank.

“CHOP!” the cannibal shouted, dropping the knife and turning on the sniper, eyes flaring.

The sniper emptied Light’s magazine into the chef’s side, but somehow the chef remained standing, if only barely. The stallion glared down the sniper like he was no more than the slabs of cooked meat around us.

“Just fucking die!” I shouted.

The chef didn’t say anything… instead he just stood there unflinchingly, Tahka slowly got up and Mashhad pushed on the stallion, after a tense moment… he collapsed in a bloody heep.

“I think he did, Kid,” Mashhad handed me Light and helped me to my hooves, we staggered out to a smaller building a couple of doors down.

“Careful, Kid,” the sniper said as he helped me onto a bed before leaving.

He came back shortly with a couple bottles of a bubbly bubblegum pink liquid and a roll of bandages in his mouth. In the absolute gray washed misery of this hellhole, the healing potion looked almost comically out of place. The sniper carefully helped me unzip my armor and my suit exposing the bleeding wound to the air.

“Ready?”

I nodded and he yanked out the knife. Whiteness flooded my vision and I think I heard a distant voice screaming in agony before I blacked out.

*** *** ***

When I came to, Mashhad had finished wrapping bandages around me and the healing potion bottles lay empty on the floor.

“You good, Kid?” the sniper asked, patting my shoulder.

“Yeah,” I groaned sitting up slightly, “Thanks.”

“Maybe you should take a moment to rest.”

“No, we still need to find those kids’ parents.”

“They’re dead, Kid.”

I looked up at the sniper for any sign of joking, but he was stoney faced.

“Tahka found them while you were out, skinned and hanging up on meat hooks in that room that chef came from.”

I nodded and looked around the room, it was small with a few dirty beds and medical equipment scattered around. Faded pre-war posters hung on the walls, one of them showed a mare wearing a coat like Saluem’s tending to a fallen bloody soldier while a second offered covering fire from some target with words below the scene with the same pink butterfly and red cross,

Join the Ministry of Peace today and make a difference!

Another poster showed a battleworn soldier with a machine gun holding out a hoof to the viewer with a group of gears and sparks in an apple outline bisected by a sword,

Don’t let them run dry. Buy war bonds today!

Tahka was speaking to the kids a couple of beds down and Q’osk stood guard at the door.

“Hey,” I cocked a hoof at the hulking guard, “You said Q’osk had been banished, why?”

“Yeah, well you see, Kid, you know how the General has his guards watching him?”

I nodded.

“Well, the Caesars had something like that, guards called the Praetorian Order. During the Great War, Praetorians were some of the best soldiers the Caesar had at his command, sending them on sensitive missions that normal soldiers aren’t equipped for. From what I’ve heard, a Praetorian might’ve been responsible for destroying Manehattan during the Last Day.”

“In any case, Praetorian recruits train their whole lives for even a chance at standing by the Caesar's side and once they’re chosen, they serve till their deaths. Because there are only thirteen at any given time, if a recruit wants to be a Praetorian they must kill the one from their tribe to take their place.”

Holy shit, that was… unexpected.

The sniper glanced at Q’osk, “Q’osk served for nearly fifty years, the longest any in the Order has ever served in its almost one thousand year history. He killed a hundred challengers and outlived three Caesars, but finally one day the current Caesar ordered one last challenger to take Q’osk’s place. Upon seeing the challenger though, he refused to fight, so he lost, but then his challenger refused to kill him.”

“Why?” I asked quietly.

“Because she couldn’t bring herself to kill her father.”

I looked over to Q’osk, remembering the mare he’d spoken with back at the Castrum. I couldn’t imagine being forced to kill my family.

“So, Q’osk and Q’ale were both banished and they found their way through the Wastes to us last summer.”

We sat in silence for a while before something suddenly exploded outside bathing everything in orange light, Mashhad jumped up and ran to the door, “A signal flare!”

“What?” I asked, getting up and stepping to the door, a ball of orange light burned in the sky above the town.

“Kid,” Mashhad grabbed me by my shoulder, “We have ten minutes tops before dozens of Foalbanks and Spirites know what else comes galloping out of the woodwork.”

Shit.

*** *** ***

Tahka stayed in the clinic with the children while Q’osk, Mashhad and I ran up to inspect the church, gunfire and explosions came from inside. Q’osk bucked in the door and Mashhad and I filed in only to find the entrance had a single dead Foalbanks with a revolver slumped against the blood covered double doors.

My E.F.S. flashed five more red markers and two new green markers with names, Umeme and Ophia. But Ophia also had her vitals and her body was outlined in my vision.

I opened the doors and was greeted by a very grizzly scene, the skinned hides and severed heads of dozens and dozens of ponies and even a few zebras were pinned up on the walls like sick trophies, thousands of lit candles were melting on the windowsills of the six large broken windows of stained glass frescos of long dead mares.

The slaughtered corpses of a dozen Foalbanks littered the room, some were slumped against wooden pillars holding up a balcony or behind makeshift barricades. A mare was thrown screaming over a balcony dozens of feet up and cracked her head open on a wide stone basin in front of a pair of statues of two mares that had long horns and wings illuminated by the orange light from the signal flare pouring in from a large hole in the ceiling. The mare on the right was made of polished white stone with a blazing sun cutie mark while the shorter one on the left was made of polished black stone and had a crescent moon.

“Celestia and Luna,” I whispered as I approached the statues of the Goddesses.

Why were they here of all places? And why were they so damn clean? I stared up at the two goddess sisters who gave their lives to try to protect my ancestors, I wondered if they were truly watching us or if they’d really abandoned us.

I quickly pushed the thought from my mind.

“Kid,” Mashhad got my attention, nodding to a door behind the statues.

We entered a small back room that was full of supplies, a couple dozen boxes of food, a few drums of water, three dozen racks of guns (mostly revolvers, shotguns, and lever action rifles) and dozens of crates of different ammunition. A bullet riddled bloated mare was slumped in front of a barred door by a steep staircase with a smoking lever shotgun.

After a quick glance around I took a step inside.

BEEP…

What’s that?

BEEP…

I looked around for the source of the sudden sound.

BEEP…

I looked down at the floor and spotted a small orange disk just to the side of the doorframe, a red light was flashing at an increasing speed.

BEEP… BEEP BEEP BEEP!

A Frag Mine!

I dropped Light and focused my magic around the beeping disk and quickly frisbee threw it over my shoulder into the main room just as Mashhad pulled the door shut seconds before it exploded.

BOOM!

The force tore the door off its frame and myself along with it. I was thrown clear across the storage room and slammed into the opposite wall with the door fragments collapsing on top of me, “Ugh!”

Despite the fact that my ears were ringing and my knife wound was buzzing, I was far more shocked than injured. Slowly cracking my eyes, I blinked out the dust before stiffly getting up on my wobbly hooves. I shook off the dust and rubble, thankful for my armor.

I looked around for Mashhad, a few of the shelves had been knocked over spilling their contents on the floor, and the elderly sniper was collapsed under one of them. I didn’t need my E.F.S. to tell that he wasn’t doing very well, the large gash in his side under his wing said enough. I grunted and heaved trying to lift the shelves, but I couldn’t budge it even with my magic.

“What happened?” Q’osk was standing in the open door frame looking around, “I heard an explosion.”

“Help me lift this,” I grunted.

As Q’osk stepped over I stepped aside and grunting with some effort propped the shelves up on his shoulder. I grabbed Mashhad by his collar and dragged him out before Q’osk dropped it, the floor dished slightly under its weight.

CRACK!

“Can you handle this?” Q’osk asked.

“Yes, I’m not a doctor, but I should be fine.”

Q’osk nodded and returned to the main room. I pulled off Mashhad’s coat, pulled out my flask and poured what water remained into the gash. I focused my healing spell into the now cleaner wound, slowly beginning its work stitching up the torn flesh. As I wrapped him in my bandages, I hoped he would survive long enough to get proper care.

I grimaced, my medical skills were somewhat lacking compared to Mom and Grandma as I pulled the coat over the stallion and he cracked open an eye and looked up at me, “Kid?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”

Looking around I found Light still by the door frame, stepping over I picked up the pistol and to my surprise it not only looked unharmed by the damage around me it looked spotless. I felt an odd tingling at the edge of my consciousness, like somebody was tapping on the opposite end of a very long table.

“Kid?” Mashhad’s voice tore me back, I looked over my shoulder, “I said, find Umeme and Ophia, we need to get out of here. Go, Kid!”

I held Light at the ready and quickly climbed the stairs, ending up on the corpse ridden balcony over the main room, below me Tahka had brought in the kids and Q’osk was busy dragging out a few of the barricades.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” I called down.

“We will not leave in time, so we must prepare!” the stallion shouted back.

“Tahka, Mashhad is injured in the next room.”

The stallion nodded and I turned my focus on crossing to the door without stepping on the corpses.

“WHERE IS SHE?!” Umeme’s voice shouted just past the old wood as I pushed it open.

The small room was bathed in orange light, a clean bed tucked in the corner with a quilt made from flannel triangles and a scoped lever action rifle leaned against it with a holster bandolier. The walls were decorated by ancient photographs of long dead ponies and the heads and pelts of exotic animals.

In the center was Umeme and Ophia and… I can’t really say what I was expecting the Foalbanks’ leader, this Jackchip to look like, but somehow I wasn’t expecting the elderly unicorn leaning back in a wheelchair. He had the same cancerous pink cysts, glowing pustrals, and lumpy tumors covering his sunken body as the rest of the Swampfolk here and his horn had a long jagged crack causing it to slant at an odd angle. His black leather jacket hung on his thin shoulders and the pelt of a zebra covered the stumps of his missing hindlegs like a cruel blanket.

“Tell me where she is!” Umeme shouted, grabbing the stallion by his jacket’s collar.

“Ya ziggas broke inta muh home, murder muh kin,” the stallion wrapped gray magic around a clay jug with a cork top, “And now ya have da gaul t’ make demands of me?”

“Umeme, we don’t have time,” Ophia interrupted, placing a hoof on Umeme’s shoulder.

“Ya’d best listen t’ ya whore, zigga!” the stallion cackled.

Umeme’s forehoof struck the stallion’s muzzle with a hard crack, a couple of blackened teeth scattered across the floor.

“Umeme!” Ophia shouted, grabbing him by his forelegs and pulled him back before he could do anything else, I stepped forward to the stallion and stared down at the pathetic creature.

He wiped the blood from his muzzle on his limp jacket sleeve and glanced up at me, “A Stable Dwellah, whatcha doin’ with dese dumb ziggas?”

“Looking at a pathetic leech,” I felt myself say.

“Got some bite in ya?” The stallion cackled again, “Bitterchip’ll break dat outta ya when he gits back.”

“Bitterchip?” I asked, the orange light faded and sputtered out leaving the room mostly dark, “Oh, you mean a really ugly rapist, yeah, you might be waiting for a while.”

“Whatcha ya say?”

“I killed him.”

The stallion stared blankly at me for a long time before it seemed to dawn on him, “YA WHAT!”

A sudden wave of magical energy slammed us back against the walls, shaking the room violently, I couldn’t move! The stallion drew out a long bladed knife as he magically wheeled himself up to me, pressing the blade into my neck. I felt a trickle of blood!

“YA MURDERED MUH BOY?!” the stallion roared, horn flaring with energy, “AH’MA RIP YA LIMB FROM LIMB AND SKIN YA ALIVE!”

He grabbed my foreleg and twisted it around dislocating it. I strained against the magic and pain slicing through my shoulder before spotting Light on the floor by the bed. Focusing my magic as best I could, I slowly pointed the pistol toward the stallion.

“Not so fast,” my heart froze as the stallion took note of what I was doing.

His magic overwhelmed mine and brought up Light and pressed its muzzle into my brow hard enough to draw blood, he grinned cruelly as he telekinetically pulled the trigger. My life flashed passed my eyes.

CLICK!

But nothing happened.

Jackchip looked down at Light in disbelief, he checked the chamber finding it loaded. He tried to murder me again, but the pistol clicked again and again. He racked in a fresh cartridge and fired again, only to hear more clicks.

“Da fucks wrong wit dis piece of shit?!” he bitterly shouted, looking down the barrel.

Thinking quickly, I focused my magic on the trigger, I thought a prayer to the Goddesses, and pulled.

BLAM!

The stallion’s head exploded into bloody chunks painting the window, his magic popped and we collapsed to the floor. My foreleg hung limpy at my side and I struggled to catch my breath. Ophia stepped over, carefully grabbed my foreleg and twisted it back into place the pain gradually lessened. Umeme glared down at the corpse and pumped a couple more rounds from his pistol into it, he picked up the zebra pelt, rolled it up and carefully placed it in his saddle bag.

“Let’s go,” Umeme muttered, picking up his rifle and brushing past me.

“Wait, what about your aunt?”

“Kaldi’s not here,” Ophia answered, handing Light to me.

“What?” I asked, taking my pistol, “You mean after all this?”

“We never guaranteed she’d still be here, it was an educated guess.”

“Then, we wasted our time?” I solemnly asked.

The mare didn’t answer, instead she followed behind Umeme. I looked over at the rifle beside the bed, picking it up and inspecting it. It was in amazing condition without any rust and used a caliber called 45-70 based on the bullets in the bandolier holster and the four small boxes beside it, each had a six pointed star with words on it,

Silver Star’s 45-70
20 rounds.

I slipped them into my saddle bag before slipping the bandolier on and adjusted it to fit better and slipped the rifle into the holster at my side above my saddle bag. I had a strong feeling I was gonna need a stronger weapon than just Light if I was gonna be fighting more tonight.

My PipBuck pinged, it labeled the rifle as a Brush Gun.

*** *** ***

Though Umeme walked to the stairs wordlessly, I had a strong feeling that he was beyond furious.

“What happened?” Tahka asked as we entered the storage room, “Where’s Kaldi?”

Umeme brushed past him and the kids without a word with Ophia following.

“Jackchip’s dead,” I answered.

Mashhad groaned as he stood up, “And Kaldi?”

“Not here.”

The sniper lowered his hat, “Spirits guide her.”

“Well, at least we can get the kids back,” Tahka half-heartedly muttered.

As we left the room to join Q’osk, I noticed a rustling sound behind me when I reached the doorframe. Glancing around the destroyed room I couldn’t see what it was so I stepped back and flicked on my E.F.S. a couple of yellow blips flickered to my right behind some crates with red triangles painted on them. I heard some more rustling sounds as I pulled out Light and stepped up. I wrapped a crate in my magic and pushed it aside finding the source.

A small colt struggled to hold up a large revolver in his mouth and a small filly sat trembling in a puddle that smelled like piss.

“Are you two ok?” I asked.

The kids didn’t answer for some reason, instead the colt stared up at me with mixtures of what looked like anger but mostly fear while the filly pressed her face into the colt’s shoulder. In the dim light of the room I finally noticed something very wrong about them, they had small tumors and cysts ebbing just under their coats and manes.

Lowering Light, I stared down at the kids trembling below me, they were Foalbanks!

A thought struck me in that moment, despite how many stallions and mares we’d killed here, I hadn’t seen a single Foalbanks kid!

Saluem’s words flooded my mind again, the way she had nearly cried when she confided in me. All of my anger toward these parasites faltered as the filly started to sob into the colt’s shoulder, did these kids really deserve the same punishment as the rest of their family?

Or would it be even worse to leave them alive to fend for themselves alone? What were their crimes?

I glanced over my shoulder and after making sure I was alone, moved the crates back covering up the kids.

“Stay quiet,” I muttered and turned to leave.

Only to see Ophia standing silently in the door frame glaring me down.

“Uh… Something wrong?” I asked, trying my best to not appear suspicious.

The mare stayed silent as she glanced from me to the crates, a shiver sparked up my spine as I realized she knew what I was doing!

“What did you find?” the mare demanded, pointing a forehoof at the crates.

“Uh, there was some medical supplies I used on Mashhad, I thought I could find some more.”

“Leave the supplies here,” the mare ordered me in a low voice, “The Foalbanks sometimes poison what they’ve stolen to kill desperate Drylanders. We need to prepare.”

With that, the mare turned and left, I slowly released a breath I hadn’t known that I’d been holding in when she was out of earshot.

When I stood in the main room, I glanced back at the statues of the Goddesses, “I suppose I couldn’t blame either of you if you really have abandoned us.”

*** *** ***

Outside, Tahka was busy moving corpses around the street in odd places leading up to the church, Q’osk was setting up barricades at odd intervals, Mashhad was checking sightlines while Umeme and Ophia were talking.

“It’s not your fault, Umeme,” Ophia whispered, placing a forehoof on his shoulder, “We’ll find her.”

I stepped up to them, “What’re you doing?”

Umeme stiffly turned to me, “Where were you?”

I blinked a couple of times at the sudden outburst, “Supporting Mashhad, like you told me?”

“Umeme,” Ophia interrupted, standing herself between us, “He isn’t to blame.”

“Then go help Tahka,” the stallion muttered, his face flushed in anger, “enough to worry about without those damn kids.”

I shook my head as I walked down the street to Tahka, “What’re you doing?” I asked cautiously this time.

“Traps,” the stallion explained as he planted a frag mine in the mud and carefully dropped a corpse over it, “Raiders do stuff like this all the time in the Heartlands.”

“So how does it work?” I asked as the stallion prepped another mine, “You move the corpse and set off the explosive?”

“Right on the bucks,” the stallion muttered as he moved another corpse into place in front of the cafeteria.

“How long have you been here?”

“With the Outcasts?” the stallion zoned out for a second before answering, “Maybe a decade now, definitely before Tyn was born.”

“What did you do before?” I levitated a corpse as he planted the land mine.

“I was in a gang down in Manehattan, we would hit travelers mostly and this one time I rigged up a baby carriage with explosives and Maddyx had the idea of putting a dead foal and a recording of crying to seal the deal, we killed some dumb mare with it.”

The stallion chuckled to himself for a while before I continued, “Why did you stop?”

The stallion looked up from the mine, “I saw one of your Goddesses.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you what, if we survive this I’ll tell my life’s story over some drinks.”

“Sounds fair.”

I sat down by the clinic and prepared myself, I opened the brush gun’s loading gate and chamber, upon seeing the magazine tube under the sixteen inch long hexagonal barrel was empty I loaded in bullets one at a time counting each one, by the end I counted eleven bullets plus one in the chamber.

The group got in position and prepared their weapons. I held up the brush gun and looked through the scope. The swamp beyond the bridge had gone unnervingly still, I felt my heartbeat thump in my ears. Suddenly a signal flare shot up and a ball of orange burned in the sky as a wild howling shot through the trees.

“Get ready!” Umeme shouted.

I looked through the scope again and saw dozens and dozens of shadows illuminated by the flare cautiously approaching Tahka and Q’osk’s positions. Just as the first of the Foalbanks reached Tahka’s traps, he set them off.

BOOM! BOOM!

Fire and rubble and mangled bodies flew up across the bridge and Q’osk got up and fired on the horde as they fell back. The Foalbanks charged the bridge, and we opened fire. The brush gun kicked into my shoulder with every S.A.T.S. aided shot, the 45-70 rounds were almost thunderous compared to Light. I fired all twelve shots and struck six targets but only killed four, quickly reloading the gun I racked the lever and took aim at the horde. I fired all my shots again and killed seven targets this time. A few shots hit my barricade and I ducked down and reloaded.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

More of Tahka’s traps went off slightly slowing down the horde, Tahka jumped over the barricade with Mashhad who then fell back to Umeme and Ophia’s barricade. I covered Q’osk as he ran up to my own barricade, four more Foalbanks collapsed and were trampled by those behind them. Q’osk had just reached me when I noticed something flying up behind the stallion, striking him and sending me flying back.

BOOM!

I felt my body slam into the mud, tasted blood in my mouth, and every inch of my body burned and protested, my eyes flew open and I looked around. Through the fire and smoke I thought I saw Tahka grappling in the mud with a Foalbanks for a shovel spear, Umeme might’ve been covering Ophia from a flanking group, I swore I heard the crackling pop of Mashhad’s musket return beams with a sniper on a roof and I know I saw Q’osk lying a ways down from me.

I pulled my stubborn hooves under me and dragged my limp body through the mud and blood and over the mangled corpses of slain Foalbanks.

“Q’osk!” I felt myself shout, shaking at the stallion but he didn’t respond, his armor had caved deeply into his side where he’d been struck by that explosive.

“Run, Stable!” the stallion weakly grunted, “I am dead weight!”

“No, think about your daughter!”

“Run!” he weakly shouted before he slumped in the mud.

A red heat flooded my vision and something heavy thudded in my ears making the world nearly silent as everything slowed to a near standstill.

I unhooked one of Q’osk’s machine guns from the battle saddle, grabbed the grip in my mouth and glared down the charging horde of filthy parasites as they reached the bridge. These filthy parasites who raped, murdered, and even ate anyone who wasn’t one of them.

“CELESTIA AND LUNA GANG RAPE YOU ALL WITH THEIR HORNS!” a voice shouted as I bit down on the trigger.

I didn’t even aim, I just held down the trigger as a silent hornet storm of lead ripped into them. Blood, innards, and mangled bodies flew every which way. I don’t remember how long the storm lasted, a minute maybe just shy of an eternity, but the machine gun eventually ran out of bullets and the barrel was left glowing a bright white, smoking in the cold air.

I released the gun, my vision and hearing slowly returned as the world sped up back to normal. As exhaustion and blood loss finally slammed into me, I willingly embraced the darkness.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

I felt an odd weightlessness as I opened my eyes and looked around, I was sitting on a chair in a featureless space. I stood and the chair vanished.

“Who are you?” a surprised voice asked behind me.

Whirling around I spotted a middle aged looking pegasus mare dressed in an old but well cared for looking Enclave uniform with three silver stars on a black patch on her collar.

She was sitting behind a desk with a terminal and a framed photograph of a pair of colts flanking a younger version of the mare sitting before me. She was holding a clipboard with papers in her forehoof, she looked up at me incredibly confused. Her heavily silver streaked dark fuschia mane was long and pulled into a tri braid that was tied off with an old red ribbon and pulled over her shoulder. It complimented her light lilac coat and light cerulean eyes.

“How the hell did you get in here?” the mare shouted briskly, pulling out a 45 Auto pistol, “Guards! Guards!”

“What?” I asked, looking around I wasn’t in the space anymore, against all probability and I still question how this exactly happened, I was in an old looking office room, glancing out a window to my side and saw a sprawling ruined cityscape overgrown with foliage and streets flooded with dark water.

“Lieutenant General! Ma’am, are you alright?” A couple of swift bangs came from the door behind the desk before it slammed open and three pegasi guardponies wearing matching uniforms burst in and drew modified magical energy rifles at me.

“Shit!” I shouted, diving out of the way just as three orange beams popped and scorched the place I had been mere seconds before.

I reached to pull out Light, but to my horror I was unarmed, just my stable suit. In my moment of confusion, one of the guards popped an orange beam that hit me squarely in my shoulder.

BZZT!

I screamed in agony as the orange beam melted through the leather of my suit and roasted into my flesh, leaving a nasty smell in the burnt air and the mare and her guards were on top of me in another flash of orange light.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

My eyes shot open and I looked around frantically, I wasn’t in the office anymore, I wasn’t surrounded by pissed off soldiers anymore.

No, somehow I was back in Dela Crow on one of the beds in the clinic. The blaring pain in my shoulder was gone and I felt fine. Even if that was a crazy dream, it felt far too real.

“You’re alive,” Umeme was sitting in a chair beside me, “Had us worried there.”

“Umeme?” I asked, sitting up on my elbow, “What happened?” My body felt far better and I noticed Mashhad and the children were sitting about the room, “Where’s Q’osk?”

“We won, that’s what happened, but… we lost Q’osk,” the stallion admitted solemnly, “His wounds were too deep for the sparse supplies here and he wouldn’t have made it to the Castrum.”

“What?” I asked, noticing the shape hidden under a bed sheet, I felt a strange hollowness stab my heart.

“We found a wagon, so we’ll bring him back for a proper burial… and for Q’ale to say her goodbyes, of course.”

“I’m sorry-” I tried to say.

“No,” The stallion held up a hoof, “This was my doing, if we’d just looked for Aunt Kaldi instead of wiping out the town, Q’osk would still be alive.”

There was a hard pain in his voice and a weariness in his eyes. “We leave in an hour’s time,” He helped me up, “Thank you for being there with him in his last moments, Ozzy.”

My heart wanted to help him, but my brain couldn’t think of anything to say that might ease the pain of his squad mate’s passing.

I took the hour of peace to look inside a side room, it had an old desk with a couple bookcases full of ancient rotting books and a terminal. Between the shelves of one of the bookcases was a locked case of thick glass with the bones of a pegasus skeleton inside. The name Dock Fair-in-height was written in an old black marker below the lock.

I glanced over the books, many of them were volumes of something called The Canterlot Journal of Health, about pre-war medicine, techniques for surgery, and applying healing spells with a great number of notes written in the margins. Another book was called L Weber’s Guides to the Horseshoe Bay and the Hayseed Swamp which was about the local plant life and how they could be used in medicine. Flipping it open I found a message written on the inside cover,

Doctor Fahrenheit,

I always knew you’d have a glorious future ahead of you, I mean, Head Researcher for the Ministry of Peace? Especially so soon after ending your stay at Meadowbrook Memorial up in Baltimare, marvelous, simply marvelous. I expect to hear amazing things from you.

Doctor Brierberry

Of all the books that caught my attention though was a gray tome with a black pony skull on the cover, opening it to the cover page I read, The Wasteland Survival Guide, North Shore Edition. By Ditzy Doo.

I levitated the books that were in the best condition off the shelves and carefully placed them in my saddle bag, three in total. Saluem would make the best use of these no doubt and I still had my two hundred buck debt to her to consider.

I turned on the terminal, most of the information was corrupted beyond retrieval, but there were a hoof-full of entries in the whole list I could access, one toward the top was dated about a year before the Last Day and the last one was dated decades after.

Terminal of Doctor Fahrenheit, Former Head Researcher of the Ministry of Peace

Entry 1

I’m going to die here, aren’t I?

I’ve practiced medicine for almost fifty years now, I’ve single-hoofed save hundreds of soldiers in her Highnesses armies and had a Ministry’s worth of funding to experiment with, now I’m stuck in some backwater town full of inbred Pajun Creole hics in a fucking swamp trying to deal with Pink Flu while the rest of my fellows are busy with the MoP!

All because some fucking no name intern from some pathetic rock farm town had the absolute gaul to feel offended when I had ‘allegedly’ asked her out on a date and claimed to authorities that I ‘supposedly’ took ‘liberties’ without her consent?

The fucking cunt and her friend were even grinning when they fired me!

Funny how life fucks you.

If there’s any justice left in the world, Peachy Pie will suffer!

The Mayor, Drawchip, has been very accommodating yes, but the old geezer still thinks that leeches can cure Tuberculosis!

I’m going to die here, aren’t I?

At least I won’t have to listen to Redheart bitch anymore.

Entry 142

Apparently, Hippocampus Energy is building pumps to get at the oil and natural gas deposits all over the Swamp. A lot of towns and families are furious. The Knifes, the Packers, the Onions, the Chukk-chukks, the Lyres, the Ballery, the Leathernecks, and now even Mayor Chips have requested that I assist them in taking down the company to save their land from a possible disaster like down in Fillydelphia and over in Detrot.

My knowledge of Prench Creole is mostly academic and he didn’t like my answer that I’m a stallion of medicine and not a soldier, but he did accept it.

I know that coal prices are steep and Equestria needs the infrastructure if we’re going to win the War, but I’ve seen Hippocampus’ track record for employee injuries and environmental problems. What could Mayor Rumble be thinking?

Entry 150

I heard the army’s setting up a pow camp somewhere south of here.

Entry 193

My understanding of Prench Creole was mostly academic curiosity, but over the last few months of exposure to the native speakers, most of who have little experience with speaking Ponish, my vocabulary of the unique hybrid language has expanded enough for me to converse with my patients.

From what I’ve found, the language is a hybrid of a few different sources: its basis is Prench, spoken by the settlers of New Horseleans who spread across the Hayseed Swamp establishing the Kingdom of New Prance before it fell to Mareidian and was brought into Equestria. Then Ponish and various zebra dialects heavily influenced the grammar and spelling. Making the language very distinct from modern Prench.

Entry 211

This is it then.

I just heard the news. First New Horseleans was wiped out, then Detrot apparently collapsed into its mining tunnels, then Whinnyapolis and St Haul both got hit, and now I’m hearing that Canterlot, Fillydelphia, and possibly even Manehattan all got hit too.

Redheart, if you’re somehow still alive, I never got the chance to say how sorry I am that I acted like such a cunt during the divorce. I just wasn’t ready to be a father.

I wish I could see you one last time.

Entry 289

A large group of zebras came by today, Mayor Chips was on the verge of having a heart attack.

A soldier, Amandla Darius Tertius, spoke for the group claiming that they had come from the Turtledove Detention Center. They had been traveling for days and have sick/wounded with them and needed shelter and supplies. Mayor Chips allowed them a single night and allowed me to treat those I could.

I spoke with them as I worked, from what I could understand, my understanding of their different dialects is limited, most of them are civilians running away from the Fires of Daybreaker that are still consuming their homeland or their parents had been Equestrian citizens that were accused of treason by the MoM and were imprisoned at the detention center with actual soldiers.

Darius confided in me that his grandfather, Amandla Umeme Primus, had fought in one of the Battles of Stalliongrad and had been saved by the first megaspell.

Entry 3108

Mayor Chips died last night, one hundred and thirteen is a rare achievement now. His grandson, Applechips, is going to be named the next mayor… Pink Flu might finally be gone now….

Entry 4097

Still no word of any surviving cities, the Heartlands is still far too irradiated to go much further south than the edge of the Applelachian Mountains… have gotten a few sparse radio signals from New Horseleans and possibly even from Baltimare, but nothing too concrete…

Entry 5673

Why were we spared?

Cloudsdale… Canterlot… Manehattan… Fillydelphia… Stalliongrad… Trottingham… Detrot... Chicoltgo... New Horseleans... Whinnyapolis and St Haul…

We’re just shy of eight hundred miles from the border, so why didn’t they use a megaspell against us?

Why were we spared?

Entry 9040

I’m feeling weaker and weaker by the day now, I wanna believe it’s radiation sickness, but I know that’s bullshit. I’ve tried to write as much helpful information as I could for them to survive in this broken world.

This is Doctor Fahrenheit, formerly of Cloudsdale, signing off.

As I closed out of the terminal, a pain shot in my chest. I glanced at the skeleton in the bookcase, maybe I should just let the past be the past. I left the room and pulled on my gear, Light and the brush gun felt more comforting now.

I stepped out onto the muddy street and looked around, Umeme was talking with Nask by the bridge, Tahka and Ophia were dumping Foalbanks corpses into a smoldering fire in front of the church that sputtered black smoke into the early morning grayness and digging graves for the dead kids.

I stepped into the church and went to the storage room, I moved the crates and to my relief the Foalbanks kids weren’t there and the barred door had been left ajar slightly. I let out a breath, hopeful that they’d find safety.

I turned to rejoin the others and found Ophia standing in the doorframe.

“Did you need something?” I asked, nervousness lacing my words.

“I knew you’d be weak,” The mare growled as she crossed the room, “I knew that you wouldn’t be able to do what was needed.”

I quickly thought of drawing Light on her, but Umeme would’ve killed me, “Look, killing adults who made the consious choice to murder and rape is one thing, but never ask me to kill a young child, if that makes me weak, then so be it.”

“Do you think the Foalbanks spawn into existence like the demons of ancient fairy tales?” the mare asked in a low voice, grabbing my collar and pushing me back against the wall, “Where do you think Jackchip came from?!”

“Did… you kill them?” I asked hesitantly.

The mare shook her head, “Didn’t need to, timberwolves will make short work of them.”

“Are you Kids behaving yourselves?” Mashhad’s voice interrupted, the sniper stood in the doorway along with Umeme, Tahka and the kids.

“This doesn’t concern you, Mashhad,” Ophia bitterly spat.

“Ophia,” Umeme crossed the room and placed a hoof on her shoulder, “Stand down.”

“No!” the mare’s voice cracked slightly and her grip on my collar loosened, “Q’osk would still be alive if he-”

“Ophia,” Umeme calmly insisted, the mare released me and pressed her face into the stallion’s shoulder and started to cry, the room fell silent and the mare’s weeping was the only sound for a long time.

I noticed a bumping sound coming from the other side of the wall with the bookcase, I flipped on my E.F.S. and noticed a blip behind it. Pushing the bookcase out of the way and opening the door I peered inside and saw a wall of cramped jail cells, the blip was in the last cell in the corner.

I flicked on my flashlight and shined its beam into the cells. My flashlight lit up the bloodied body of a dark gray unicorn stallion huddled in the corner, he was covered in the same cancerous cysts and glowing tumors that all of the Foalbanks had. He lifted a swollen foreleg nearly three times normal, the glowing tumors across his upper body split open and dozens of eyes of every color glared at me.

I screamed, jumping backward against the wall, “What the fuck are you?!”

“Ya got water in da brain?” the Swampfolk growled, slamming his body hard against the cell door making it shake, “Shut off the fuckin’ light!”

“Kid?” Mashhad stood in the doorway, “What happ-wait, Argus?”

“Mashhad,” The stallion looked over at the sniper and the squad, “Ah should’a figured dat ruckus last night was y’all.”

“What’re you doing here?” the sniper asked.

Argus leaned back from the door and looked away, “Ya know why.”

“Where did they take Aunt Kaldi?” Umeme asked.

Argus closed many of his eyes and hung his head, “Sturmkaller.”

Who?

“The Regulators?” Ophia muttered as the group slumped at the news.

Who?

“Shit!” Umeme shouted, slamming his hoof against the cell door.

“Who’s this Sturmkaller?” I finally asked, “And who’re the Regulators?”

The squad looked up at me for a long time before Mashhad spoke, “The Regulators control the Old Circle north of the Swamp from Neightick, they used to be like us keeping the road clear and the trade flowing between Baltimare and the Twin Brothers, Whinnyapolis and St Haul.”

“A few months ago though, a pegasus calling herself Sturmkaller killed the previous leader, everybody who didn’t agree with her, and turned the rest into slavers,” Umeme continued, “We have an agreement with her to live and let live, she doesn’t disturb us, we don’t disturb her.”

“No way we’re getting Kaldi now,” Tahka muttered.

There was a darkness that washed over the group.

“What about me?” I asked, the squad looked up at me again, “Well, you all can’t go to this Sturmkaller, but I’m not an Outcast, I could go in, find Kaldi, and get her out.”

The group looked amongst themselves for a long while before Umeme stood and placed a hoof on my shoulder, “I cannot possibly thank you enough for this, Ozzy.”

“Just keep your end of our bargain.”

Level Up: Trait Acquired: Wild Wasteland: Maybe you’re suffering from a blow to the head or the Wasteland is starting to get to you… I’m sure it’s nothing… too worrying… for now.