Fallout Equestria: Crossroads

Chapter 2: Falling Out

"I'm really...mad at you. You lost Twilight's map table...it's like you don't even care you could get me into a lot of trouble!"

As Sunburst and I stood frozen on the cutie map, staring in unison at the wide-eyed gray unicorn mare not fifty feet from us, a single glaring question arrested my thoughts and bubbled to my lips:

“Are all ponies in the future that small?”

“THAT’s where your mind went?” Sunburst cried.

The unicorn mare shook her head and blinked at us. “I…must have soaked up too much radiation from that library,” she said in a squeaky voice as she began pacing back and forth. “Yeah, yeah that’s it. I’m not crazy or anything, no sirree. Just rad-poisoning.”

Radiation? I shouted, “Do you know what happened here?”

The mare stared blankly back. “Uhhh…”

“Ponyville,” I said, pointing my hoof. “What happened to it, where is everypony? Did Tirek attack again?”

The unicorn mare took a hesitant step back. “Are you with those raiders from the library?” Her horn ignited with an emerald shimmer that matched her eyes as she levitated a shoddy-looking piece of scrap metal out of her saddlebags and pointed it at us.

“Raiders?” I replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—can you just come closer? I can barely hear you from over there!”

The mare approached hesitantly, still aiming her scrap metal at us. “You are, aren’t you? All you surface ponies are so…” Her eyes briefly swept over Sunburst. “…Weird.”

“What, this?” Sunburst scoffed, holding up his cloak. “It’s a wizard’s cloak,” he announced. Then, slightly more defensively, “All wizards wear them.”

“They look like pajamas,” said the unicorn mare.

“They do not!” He looked at me with pleading eyes.

I shrugged. “Eh.”

“Grr.” He pointed his anger back at the unicorn mare, “You’re one to talk, pipsqueak! You look like you swam through a butcher’s dumpster!”

“You think I want to look like this? It’s not even mine, I took it off some raider’s corpse. It’s for protection.”

My breath caught in my windpipe. All of Sunburst’s indignation dissipated, and he deflated like a balloon. “C-corpse? Did you…kill somepony?”

I tried to swallow, but my throat had dried up. I became vividly aware that we were really not meant to be here, in this unknown place, alone with a strange and possibly dangerous pony. I held the scroll tighter in my grip, ready to use it if things went south.

She balked and lowered her gaze. That calmed my nerves a little; her defensiveness had left, and for a brief moment, she looked how I felt: scared.

“It was me or him,” she said, staring unflinching at Sunburst. “Th-that’s the way it is out here.” She didn’t look very convinced, but her expression quickly became one of confusion as she contemplated the two of us. “You two,” she said, lowering her metal. “You’re new up here, aren’t you?”

Sunburst and I exchanged looks. I cautiously answered, “How could you tell?”

“You’re clean. You look like you’ve had a bath in the last twenty-four hours. Are you from a Stable, too?”

“I’m sorry, a what? Are you asking if we came from a barn?”

“No, I said ‘Stable’.” At our deeply confused looks, she added, “Have you…never heard of Stables before?”

I felt Sunburst tap my shoulder. “Starlight, this is really freaking me out. We shouldn’t even be here. Can we just go?”

“It’s okay, Sunburst, just calm down for a second.”

“Do not tell me to calm down, Starlight! Look around us. Ponyville is in ruins, the Goddesses know what year this is, and that mare is clearly crazy!”

“I know, Sunburst, I know.”

“Please, can we just go home? I don’t like this place.”

The unicorn mare had tiptoed closer and was now standing at the table. “Look, I’m really sorry if I freaked you out,” she said. “From what I’ve seen of the surface so far, caution and doubt are effective companions.” She shook her head and laughed. “The first civilized ponies I’ve met, and here I am threatening to shoot you.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “With a piece of metal?”

“Oh, right, you’re in the same boat I was! No, this is something called a ‘gun’. Just watch.” She pointed the metal at a nearby tree and—

BLAM!

My heart leapt into my throat as an explosion issued forth from the tiny ‘gun’. Sunburst rolled clear off the back of the table with a shrill scream. It happened so quickly that I could be mistaken for it never having happened, save for the chipped and smoking hole that had appeared in the tree’s bark. As the ringing in my ears disappeared, the sound of the mare’s uncontrollable laughter came to my attention.

“Yeah, youheh-heh…you get used to tha-hahat,” she said in between hiccupping laughter.

“You were POINTING that at us?” I screamed.

“Yeaaaah, sorry about that,” she said. “I know it’s not a very good feeling staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, but like I said…” Leaning against the table, she held her hoof up to me. “Anyway, let’s start over. My name’s LittlePip.”

“Wow,” came Sunburst’s meek voice as he climbed back up onto the table. “It’s even in her name.”

“I’m trying to be nice here!”

I reached down and awkwardly shook her hoof. Despite the decrease in tension and our new friend, I was still hesitant to leave the table. It was a comfort to know that even in this frightening and strange world, there was something here that I recognized—a piece of life I desperately wanted to return to as soon as possible.

“It’s nice to meet you, LittlePip,” Sunburst said. “But we don’t really belong here, so we’re just gonna head out.” He swiped the scroll from my hoof and positioned himself in the center of the table.

LittlePip’s confusion was obvious. “What do you mean? Where are you—”

From the edge of Ponyville came a shout, “She’s over here! The mare from the library!”

LittlePip whipped around to meet the owner of the voice, a scrawny earth pony decked out in similar attire to her and holding a similar gun in his mouth. The armor looked too big on him; he was practically swimming in it. Behind him, more ponies appeared looking weathered and beaten, bloodied and scarred, but their eyes…they all had the same look in their eyes: mania. And they were headed straight for us.

Fear stabbed directly into my heart. I ripped the scroll out of Sunburst’s hooves and opened it. The table began to glow again as we were lifted into the air. I felt bad leaving LittlePip alone with the…what had she called them? Raiders? But this was her world; we didn’t belong. Thankfully, she looked like she was holding her own against the wave of crazy knocking on our doorstep.

She took down a few ponies in the front with her gun, levitating new projectiles into the chamber with precision. The device strapped onto her hoof was flashing and beeping. The way she aimed looked mechanical, automatic. She glanced briefly at us, and I caught her look of wonder and amazement at the magical energies swirling around us before she returned to the fight. She ran out of ammo and launched herself directly into the nearest pony, batting aside his sharpened metal pipe and sweeping his legs out from under him. Another pony ran up beside her with a wooden club, but she reached out with her magic and launched the sharpened end of the pipe directly into his throat, washing herself in his blood. She was like a storm in perfect motion.

Before I was sucked up into the portal, I watched her scavenge more ammo for her gun and turn on the remaining ponies who were firing at her from a distance; I was struck with the lasting sense to never get on this mare’s bad side.

That was the last I saw before Sunburst and I were once again speeding down the tunnel at breakneck speed. Images flashed by just like before, but…something was wrong.

The images were scrubbing forward: we were going even further into the future!

“No!” I screamed. “Go back, damn it!” I stretched my hooves out, reaching for the edges of the tunnel to try and slow us down. My hoof pushed right through the edge of the tunnel like water and came into contact with the pictures.

A blinding light filled my head so suddenly that I barely had time to scream in pain. Now the images were flashing on the insides of my eyes. I closed my eyelids, but I could still see them. No matter what I did, I couldn’t look away!

The pain ceased—much to my relief—but the images remained, and there was nothing I could do but watch as they etched their figures into the depths of my memory.

The mare we had just met appeared in all of the images. I watched as she was shot and nearly killed by a pegasus; then they became travelling buddies. She saved a charcoal unicorn from what looked like some sort of camp of slaves and slavers. I saw how she fought and killed a dragon, how she escaped from Phillydelphia (half of which had somehow been turned into a slave-driven hellscape), how she ventured into the iraddiated and magically devastated ruins of Canterlot, how she defeated a giant alicorn monster (who vaguely resembled Trixie for some reason), and how she took control of a tower and defeated a pegasus army. Finally, I saw her sacrifice to stay inside the tower.

Despite my current state of panic, I was struck with awe. The mare whom we had just met moments ago, scared and alone in an unfamiliar world, had become its greatest hero in a matter of minutes.

Up ahead the tunnel opened up, and we slowed just enough to spill onto the wet grass without breaking our necks. Cold rain splattered my skin, soaking me within seconds. Mud caked my aching underside and weak hooves. Overhead, the portal closed with a wink.

Sunburst groaned beside me on the ground. “Couldn’t you have designed the spell to be a little gentler?”

“The spell…” I groaned. “We went forward again.” I picked myself up, shivering as a light breeze tore through. The mud squelched under my hooves as I paced to gain some warmth.

I looked around us, and saw the exact same surroundings we had just left behind: Ponyville in ruins and no castle. Only now it was worse thanks to the torrential rain.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” Sunburst whimpered. He reached down to pick up his glasses, flicking a speck of mud off the lenses and letting the rain clean them the rest of the way. “But I was worried that would happen. You designed the spell to travel forward. In other words, it’s hard coded into the scroll. You can’t just travel backwards without rewriting the entire thing.”

Just then, it hit me. We were standing on grass and mud. I snapped my head around in every direction, slipping in the mud as I turned violently but kept my hooves under me.

“Where is it?” I gasped. I whirled around, searching our surroundings. We were in the same spot as before: just on the outskirts of town, right where Twilight’s castle should have been. And now, the only trace of her castle left to prove its existence was gone too. “Where is the map?”

Sunburst was attempting to wipe mud off his cloak. He only succeeded in smudging it further into the blue fabric. “You still have the spell, right?”

“Where is the table?” I shouted at him, panic rising in my chest. I looked down. Is it in the ground? I dug my hooves into the mud, shoveling it out. It had to be there.

“Starlight,” Sunburst said, placing his hoof on my shoulder. “Starlight!”

“I-it has to be here! It has to be!”

“Starlight,” Sunburst cooed, his voice strained with concern. “Why do you need the table? You have the spell, right? Right?”

I stopped digging; there was no point. Panting, I looked up into his searching, sky-blue eyes and answered, “You helped me repair it, Sunburst, you should already know: the spell doesn’t work without a catalyst.” Now I was searching his dawning expression, silently pleading for him to tell me I was wrong. “Without the table, we are stuck here.”

I couldn’t read his flat expression, but I didn’t need to.

“No…n-no, we can’t be…we just have to find the table, right?” He whirled around on the spot, searching the surrounding area. His wet hair swung around like a mop. “It should be here, we were just on it, weren’t we?” He spun frantically, a wild look on his face. I felt my stomach drop as I watched him scramble in the mud, just like me.

“Sunburst.”

“I-It’s here! It’s in the ground.”

“It’s not there.”

“IT HAS TO BE.”

Taking shuddering breaths, he turned away, stumbled a couple of feet, then carefully lowered himself back down into the mud. His body rose and fell as the full realization of what I’d said hit him.

“Did…did we leave it? H-how—?”

Without the table, we could never go home.

“It’s ok, Sunburst, take deep breaths.”

He was hyperventilating, wheezing on each breath.

I softly rubbed his back with my hoof. “Sssshhh, just take a deep breath. Come on, do it with me.”

His eyes didn’t leave the grass in front of him, but he began taking smoother, longer breaths and stopped wheezing. He began shaking his head and muttering to himself.

“Why, why, why, why…?”

Suddenly, his eyes shot directly into mine, eyebrows furrowed and mouth twisted.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Starlight?” he snarled.

The look in his eyes made me recoil slightly in fear. “Wh—what—”

“Don’t give me that.” He smacked my hoof away and stood up. “You just had to bring me along, didn’t you? Did you even think about what would happen?’

“You helped me!” I cried, finding my own anger. “You’re the smart one! You’re the one who fixed the spell, how did you not figure it out?”

“I knew it was dangerous all along! I thought you knew too; I never expected you to actually use it.”

“Of course I was going to use it, why else would I ask for your help?”

Sunburst seemed awestruck. “Do you have any idea the years of study and research and experimentation that go into the creation and perfection of new spells? Especially spells that change the very fabric of time and space itself! What were you thinking? I…”

A burst of sardonic laughter escaped from him. He sounded one step away from breaking into a fit of manic tears. “I just don’t get it, Starlight. Why did you do this to me?”

An icy breeze cut through the air, but I barely felt it from the heat of my embarrassment, hot blood flushing to my cheeks. I could have sworn the rain was steaming off my head. I wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to go.

“Well?” he asked. “Why? Why did you bring us here, what could possibly have been so important that you had to go and trap us in this hellhole of a future?!”

I bit my lip. This was not going to sound good no matter how I put it.

“I—” I took a shaky breath. “I wanted to see how my life panned out so I could make all the right decisions.”

Sunburst just stared. “You…” He searched my face endlessly. I felt my cheeks blushing again. “You put our lives in danger so that you could cheat?”

“N-no, it’s not—”

“You wanted to know all the answers ahead of time. And cheat on the test of life.”

Well, when he put it like that…

“That is so…petty! And cheap! And foalish! Goddesses, it’s so…stupid!” He laughed again, but I heard no mirth in his voice.

There was something else he wanted to say, I could see it: words were inching their way up his throat, sitting on his tongue, waiting to be spat into my face, but he swallowed them.

Instead of what he wanted to say, all he croaked was, “I can’t be around you right now.” I couldn’t say anything back, my mouth simply wasn’t working, so I just nodded. He picked himself up and trotted into one of the nearby buildings, leaving me alone in the downpour. I lowered myself into the mud. I barely even felt the rain.

***

I don’t know how long I sat out there—minutes, hours…Time just kept on moving. Before long, I was shivering uncontrollably. I clenched my eyes shut and tried to focus my thoughts on something else. What could we do? What were we even supposed to do? We were in uncharted, dangerous territory with no weapons and no concept of what dangers lurked nearby; not to mention Sunburst wanted nothing to do with me! Where could we go? What even occurred in this timeline’s past that caused it to end up this way?

As if in answer, the image of a mushroom cloud surfaced in my mind like a damaged film strip, splotched and burned but still visible. It made my head ache slightly and my stomach churn. Oh yeah, whatever that was, that giant explosion. The word “megaspell” swam up to the surface alongside the image. How did I know these things? Where was I getting them?

I felt helpless, alone, scared—dwarfed by the overwhelming odds stacking up against me. I remembered feeling this way only once before in my life: when Sunburst got his cutie mark. He was sent off to Canterlot, my best friend gone forever. My only friend.

Now here I was again, muddy and soaked. Alone. Miserable. I felt tears streaking hot paths down my cheeks and plopping onto my hooves. They stung worse than the falling raindrops. Once they started, I couldn’t stop them. My sniffles turned into heaving sobs. I buried my face in my hooves, hoping the sound wouldn’t carry. I knew I should have been keeping an eye out for more of those crazy ponies that attacked LittlePip, but I couldn’t bring myself to lift my head up.

That’s when I felt a sudden warmth drape over me. I knew I should’ve been paying attention! Now they were getting the drop on me. My head shot up, ready to run or fight—

It was just Sunburst, laying his cloak on top of me. I looked away.

“I-I’m sorry,” I gasped between sobs. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Sshhh,” he whispered, his own voice hoarse. “Come on, let’s go inside. You’ll freeze to death out here.”

“I-I’m sorry,” I repeated as he helped me stand up. I pulled the cloak tighter around me, doing little to calm my shakes and shivers as we walked inside the blasted-out building. Water poured through holes in the roof, forming rivulets that streamed down and out the doorway. He helped me over to a dry corner and we hunkered down in the small space. Even with Sunburst’s cloak and the protection that the walls provided from wind and rain, I couldn’t stop shaking. The cold was set in my bones; my teeth and muscles were clenched, struggling to calm my shivering.

Sunburst pulled me closer with his hoof. The guilt of having to be taken care of by him even after everything he’d said tightened around my heart like a cobra, but I did appreciate the added warmth. Slowly, my shakes and shivers ceased, and I felt myself drifting off into deep and fuzzy unconsciousness.

***

“Can Sunburst come out and play?” I asked, looking up at Sunburst’s mother standing in the doorway. She fixed me with a confused, somewhat sad expression.

“Oh, honey, didn’t he tell you?” she answered in an apologetic tone. “Sunburst left for Canterlot yesterday to attend a special school for unicorns.”

“Oh. When he comes back, then can he come out and play?”

“…I’m sorry, Starlight…he’s not coming back.”

……..

I was sitting at the dinner table across from Daddy, an untouched bowl of tomato soup sitting in front of me.

“Why not, Daddy? It’s not fair!”

“Sorry, Starlight, you’re not going to Canterlot. Sunburst’s parents thought it would be best for him to learn from the most gifted magic teachers in Equestria. As much as I want what’s best for you, we just don’t have the kind of income to—”

“It’s not fair!” I shouted back. I felt the tears coming again, my eyes already puffy from earlier that day. “It’s not fair.”

……..

“Glim-Glim,” Mom cooed softly just inside my doorframe. “The fillies from school are asking for you. Do you want to go play with them?”

I stayed under my heavy comforter, turned away from the door. I didn’t answer. They weren’t my friends anyway. I only had one friend.

Mom sighed as she approached the bed. “Ok, honey, that’s fine. But you can’t stay in here forever.” She brushed a hoof through my hair, clearing a lock out of my face. “Eventually, you need to just move on, okay?”

I still didn’t answer. He’d write to me…eventually. Sunburst would come and visit, or at least send a letter, or tell his parents to say hi…anything. He wouldn’t just forget about me…would he?

He didn’t…hate me, did he? Why else would he just leave me like that?

Stupid…stupid Sunburst! How could he…

We weren’t friends anymore. I hated that he never visited, never even tried to contact his best friend. I hated him.

More than anything, though, I hated the thing that took him away from me…his cutie mark…

***

“Could we rewrite the spell?” I asked. My voice was still weak, but my shivers had receded, along with the exhaustion of my earlier blubbering.

At some point the rain had stopped, and muted sunlight now broke through the gaping holes in the roof. After we had both awoken feeling slightly calmer and more grounded, I had turned my thoughts to more practical necessities. “I mean, I know it’s a highly complex array of spells, but would it really be that difficult to change a couple things to make it send us backward?”

Sunburst smiled sadly and shook his head. I had given him his muddy cloak back—it draped off his form like a deflated balloon. “I don’t think it’s that simple. That spell is like a house of cards: each incantation depending on the ones that came before it. Changing even the slightest one could bring the rest toppling down. Even with all our notes and books in Twilight’s castle, it would be just as much work as before—maybe even more. And we don’t have those.”

Right. All of our notes—Starswirl’s research, Twilight’s books and journals—were back in her castle, which didn’t seem to exist in this universe. “There’s something else we don’t have,” I added. “The cutie map. Without it, we can’t activate the spell.”

“And besides,” Sunburst continued. “Even if we could go back in time, how do we even know we’d end up back where we started?”

“What do you mean?”

Sunburst was pacing now. “Well, this isn’t our universe, right? In Starswirl’s notes, he mentioned multiple universes of possibilities. Changing one thing results in the creation of an entirely new timeline: a new universe.”

Multiple universes. “The multiverse,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“That’s what the, um…alicorn called it. A multiverse.”

Sunburst groaned. “Please don’t remind me about that. I don’t ever want to think about that place again.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about it though. “All those different paths…do you think each one was a different universe?”

“It’s possible. I mean, think about it: if every choice you ever made in your whole life branched off into multiple universes, all of which created even more branching decisions and timelines, all of that would add up. Now consider every single living organism in our known universe making decisions.”

“The infinite crossroads,” I said, trying desperately to wrap my head around Sunburst’s words. The image of the crossroads came to mind, its pathways stretching into oblivion. “It’s gotta be infinite, right?”

“I don’t know about infinity,” Sunburst said, his voice shaking, “but that number’s gotta be pretty high.”

I remembered the alicorn, too; how could I not? Its size had been inconceivable, its towering purple robes unimaginable. The crossroad dimension was one thing, but the being who oversaw it, watched over it…I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine that level of consciousness, that plane of existence. It was probably the closest to “god” that a being could become.

And it had spoken to us—no, pleaded with us.

I beseech you, Starlight Glimmer. Those words sent a massive shiver down my spine.

“You ok?” asked Sunburst. I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. The alicorn’s words…they filled me with anxiety, a kind of pressure I had never felt before. So many questions flooded my consciousness, but they all echoed the same sentiment: What was my purpose? What evil was the alicorn talking about? How was I supposed to find it, much less defeat it? Why didn’t he tell me more??

Why me? Twilight and her friends were the Elements of Harmony, not me. Sunburst was a magic scholar, not me. Even the alicorn had said I broke the laws of time when I almost destroyed Equestria, so why was I the one sent here? Was this my punishment? Was the universe finally bringing down its righteous retribution upon me?

“Grahhh!” I cried. Without thinking, I lashed out with my magic towards a massive chunk of cement and threw it against the wall, smashing it to pieces. Sunburst nearly jumped out of his cloak.

“Goddesses, Starlight! What’d you do that for?”

Panting, I replied, “Sorry, I’m just so frustrated! I don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing, or how we can even begin to get home. It’s just…it’s hopeless, isn’t it?”

Sunburst sighed. “The way I see it, the only way to return to our own time and universe is to change the past to be exactly like the one we know. But this universe is completely different from our own, in more ways than we can probably imagine. Changing every single thing, preventing the consequences from occurring…even if we could learn this timeline’s past, rewrite the spell, and find the table…I mean can you even imagine going back and changing everything so that it all happens correctly? It’s just…I can’t…” He sat back, defeated, pulling his cloak tighter around him as he fell into troubled silence.

The situation was solidifying in our brains; reality was sinking in. We were stuck here, with no conceivable chance of getting home. All we could hope to do was sit here and wait for one of those raider ponies to finish us off quickly.

You can’t stay in here forever, honey.

Eventually, you need to just move on, okay?

“Start small,” I whispered.

“Hmm?” Sunburst picked his head up. “Did you say something?”

“Don’t look at the bigger picture right now, it’s too daunting,” I said, finding my voice. One-by-one, the pieces were sewing themselves together, my thoughts building a linear progression of events and steps. I locked eyes with Sunburst and shook my head: “If you so much as glance at our odds, you’ll lose all hope of ever getting home. So, start small. Start with something you can feasibly accomplish.”

“But what can we do, Starlight? Where do we even start?”

“We don’t know anything about this universe, but it’s not like we’re starting from scratch.” I held up the scroll. “We have a blueprint, right here.”

Sunburst shook his head. “But my notes—”

“This is still Ponyville,” I argued. “Those ponies, the ones that attacked LittlePip, they mentioned a library. And if I’m right—if what I’m thinking is true—then we might be able to find some helpful resources after all.”

“What makes you so sure?” Sunburst asked.

I smiled. “Follow me.” I cantered over to the door.

“Starlight,” Sunburst said. I looked back. He hadn’t moved to follow; his face wore a pained expression. “There’s something I need to say first.” I halted my trot.

“What is it?”

He rubbed his arm nervously, clearly working up his nerve. I waited patiently.

“After what you did…I don’t know if I can trust you anymore.” I could hear the finality in his tone, despite the uncertainty in his body language. I had expected to hear this speech from him, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. “We need to stick together, so I’ll come with you. But when this is all done—whether we get home or not—we’re through. Got it? I don’t ever want to see you again after this.”

I nodded; I had expected this, but if I let myself accept it, then I would end up right back in the same place I was before: alone, miserable, dead to the world. I couldn’t let that happen, not when he was depending on me.

I matched his gaze. “Then let’s get home.”

Ponyville was unlike I had ever seen it. Now empty of bright-colored ponies, the place felt eerie and unnatural, even without the rubble and ruins of buildings I had just seen fully in-tact yesterday. There was Sugar Cube Corner, its ginger-bread roof crumbling apart and caving in; the cupcake-shaped tower had crashed to the ground some time ago, the supports rotting and bent. The stalls of the market I had just seen the girls in now sold only dust; some had been overturned, others completely dismantled for their parts.

As we walked through the winding pathways of the ghost-town, we spotted remnants of life: old firepits, ashes scattered and washed out by the elements; tents knocked over and trampled, any supplies that may have once been in them pilfered; bottles and trash strewn about. Most prevalent, though, were the blood stains: painting the buildings, decorating the stone paths, coloring the lifeless lamp posts. Whoever occupied this place last must have been either very unfortunate or very cruel.

We passed the pawnshop, the sign on front had been painted over with—you guessed it—blood. It now read “HornyVille”.

I glanced over at my companion. He was taking in the town too, and from the look on his face, I could tell he was taking it just as well as I was. Which was to say not very well. His face was pale as his wide eyes darted frantically around. He clearly didn’t want to see any of this, but his nerves were too active to let him relax. So, he took it all in, just like me, letting every single gruesome detail etch itself into memory.

Look, Sunburst, there’s a lot you don’t know about me. I…I did some bad things. Terrible things.

Sunburst didn’t know that I had time travelled before. I mean, sure I mentioned it to him once, back when I reunited with him in the Crystal Empire, but he had clearly forgotten about it. When I showed him the time travel spell in Twilight’s castle, it was like his first time hearing about it.

He also didn’t know that I rewrote Equestria’s future and nearly destroyed the entire world. His trust in me was already so low…what would happen if he found out he was stuck in another universe with a supervillain?

I hadn’t realized I was staring at him until he looked my way. I quickly found interest in a passing cloud.

Actually, the clouds were pretty sparse today. That was one thing we had going for us at least: clear weather. From the look of things here on the ground, everything just felt so…bleak. Not for the first time, I wondered what cataclysmic events could have led to such a future as this? I almost didn’t want to find out.

Cloud…mushroom…cloud…

I shook my head. What was that? A strange sensation came over me, like I was on the verge of remembering something. It was on the tip of my tongue, at the edge of my recollection…a flash of green…guttural screams…

It was gone.

I felt uncomfortable all of a sudden, like I was being watched. I glanced around us, but there was nothing but the dilapidated setting of a worn-down Ponyville. The sunshine helped to cheer me up a little.

“Starlight, look!” came Sunburst’s voice beside me. Disturbed from my reverie, I shook off those confusing feelings and turned my gaze to the object of Sunburst’s attention. “I think you were right.”

The building directly in front of us looked unlike any other surrounding it. A giant tree towered over us with a watchful gaze, a door set into its trunk and windows carved out of its bark. A balcony sat in its gnarled and twisting branches. From the pictures I had seen in Twilight’s room, I recognized this tree.

It was Ponyville’s Golden Oak Library, clearly past its prime. Its twisted and overgrown branches were devoid of leaves, the tree’s massive roots clawed its way out of the surrounding soil, and the bark was much drier and more wrinkled.

Just like everything else in this town, the Library had lost its magic.

“This should be impossible,” I said, shaking my head. “Tirek destroyed this place.”

“It seems that in this timeline, Tirek never attacked,” Sunburst posited. “It’s possible he never even really existed! We don’t know how similar this timeline is to ours, or where they diverge. There’ s so much we don’t know…” His voice trailed off, but I could sense him getting overwhelmed again.

“But the important thing,” I cut in quickly, “is that Twilight’s treehouse remains intact. Hopefully, her books are too.” I patted his shoulder, an unavoidable smile betraying my features. “We just might be able to find Starswirl’s notes in there.”

Sunburst slinked away from my touch, coughing into his hoof to cover up his discomfort, but I noticed. This really was going to take a while to get back to normal. “Or at least some scholarly journals that can help us reconstruct the spell.” He pushed his glasses up on his muzzle. “There’s only one way to find out.”

I nodded, feeling embarrassed as I lowered my hoof back to the ground. “Let’s go.”

Pushing away awkward tension and steeling ourselves, we stepped inside to find…

Well, I’m not really sure what I was expecting.

Perhaps the word “library” had been misleading. Silly me! It was an honest mistake to think I would find books in a place like this.

We stepped into the hollowed-out trunk of the treehouse to find…nothing. It was barren, empty, deserted. The life and warmth that I had only seen in pictures before had long-since been sapped from every inch of the now dry and chapped wooden room. The shelves carved directly into the walls were occupied only by dust. Not even a single scrap of paper had been left.

I took a deep breath…and let it out. “Okay,” I started carefully. “That would’ve been too easy, anyway.”

“I guess I’ll check upstairs,” Sunburst sighed as he trotted away.

I was actually a little surprised by this place’s cleanliness. Whereas the rest of the town’s general theming screamed “Raider Chic”, the walls of the library were spotless.

I began searching as well. Through a nearby doorway, I entered what appeared to be a kitchen, or the remnants of one. Pots, pans, knives, utensils, anything that could feasibly be used to cook was gone, but there remained a fridge, oven, and island in the middle. Strangely, the island was covered in tools: hammers, screwdrivers, rulers, levels, even a couple rolls of duct tape. Was somepony planning a renovation?

Then I noticed the buckets spread around the room. Some were turned over, but the rest were filled with still, cloudy water. Rags hung off the sides and in piles nearby. It took me a while to realize this was yet more evidence of previous residents of this place. It looked like they had gotten up to some heavy-duty cleaning, but why? What was the purpose when the rest of the town looked like…that?

All that work, and they were nowhere to be found. What happened to everypony?

“Uhh, Starlight?”

“One sec, Sunburst,” I called back, taking a closer look at one of the buckets. The natural lighting from outside didn’t help very much, but I could clearly see that the water in the buckets wasn’t just cloudy. It was dark, dark red.

“Starlight!” Sunburst’s voice was now filled with panic. “I think you should come right now!”

I ran into the main room and froze. We were not alone.

Sunburst stood at the top of the stairs, staring at me with wide, frightened eyes. Behind him stood a pony holding a much longer gun than what LittlePip had been carrying. The moment he laid eyes on me, he pumped the handle, producing an ominous “chk-chk” sound. Sunburst flinched.

“Oh, you didn’t tell me your friend was so good lookin’, wizard-boy,” the stallion said in a rough voice. “You holdin’ out on me?” He pressed the barrel against the back of Sunburst’s head.

“Please, please, just let us go!” Sunburst whimpered.

“Aw, but you just got here. At least give me a chance to show you a little ‘raider hospitality’.” The pony leaned in closer to Sunburst’s ear and stared straight at me. His grin widened. “Don’t you worry, little buddy. I’ll let you watch.”

I reached out with my magic and pushed the gun’s barrel to aim above Sunburst’s head. The stallion’s smile disappeared as he instinctively pressed down on the trigger. The resulting blast was like a miniature cannon; even from across the room my ears were ringing.

“GAAHH!” Sunburst cried, clutching his ears as he curled into a ball. I ripped the gun out of the pony’s hooves and turned it back on him, cocking the barrel just like he had done.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I ordered. “We’re going to leave through the door. If you even think of following us—”

He interrupted with a sudden burst of laughter. Sunburst scurried down the stairs, still clutching his ear.

“You’re a fighter, ain’tcha?” the raider rasped through clenched teeth. “Ohh, I’m gonna have fun with you.” He slinked slowly down the stairs, one step at a time. “You don’t even know how to use that thing, do you?”

I levelled the gun at his head. He took another careful step, like a panther stalking its prey. “Stop!” I shouted. “I swear to Celestia I’ll shoot you.”

Another step. I squeezed the trigger with my magic.

Click.

The raider took off down the stairs, lunging for me. I tried to move out of the way, but my body was too lethargic. He tackled me and we went rolling onto the ground. I tried to use our momentum to roll on top, but Goddesses he was strong!

He stopped me from rolling and pinned my hooves to the ground with his knees, pushing his face inches from mine. This close, I could smell the sweat rolling off of him, the bitter stench of his labored breathing. A scar ran diagonally across his face, from forehead to chin. It must have been infected because it appeared milky white and surrounded by red, puffy skin. I gagged at the sight of it.

In his crazed and bloodshot eyes, I saw my own dead body reflected back. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die.

In blind panic, I squeezed the trigger on the gun with my magic over and over.

Click! Click! Click!

The sound of sharpened metal filled the air as he unsheathed a dagger nearly as big as my hoof with a serrated edge. “I was gonna have fun with you,” he spoke in a low tone. “But now, I really just want to hear what your screams sound like.”

I struggled to slip my limbs out from under his knees, but he only pushed down harder.

“P-please…don’t…”

The knife hovered over my eye. I felt the cold tip against my bottom eyelid like a red-hot cattle brand. The pressure against my eyeball was excruciating; panic rose up fast.

Without thinking, I swung the gun with as much strength as I could muster in the grip of my magic. The gun’s thick wooden handle connected with the raider’s skull with a dry crack, sending him toppling over. I scrambled out from underneath him and found my footing, panting hard as I levelled the gun at him again. No point: he was still.

The silence was impenetrable, only intruded upon by my heavy breathing, and the thrashing drumbeat of my own heart.

Sunburst was cowering in the corner. “Is he…did you…”

“He was…he was going to cut out my—”The words caught in my throat, and I collapsed on the ground, shivering. My magic grip weakened, and the gun clattered to the ground as my shaking gave way to tiny sobs. That feeling of the knife pressed up against my eye, the simultaneously hot and freezing cold blade…it brought with it a fresh wave of chills all through my body. Oh Goddesses!

What have we gotten ourselves into?

I wiped my eyelid, checking for signs of a cut. My hooves came away bloodied. Only then did I begin to register the sharp stinging on my cheek, each new tear bringing a fresh wave of pain.

“Is…is my face okay?” I asked between sobs.

Sunburst didn’t reply. He was still staring at the floor.

“Sunburst!”

That shotgun blast so close to his ear must have really shocked him. He reluctantly picked his gaze up and levelled it at me. Even from across the room, I could see the color drain from his face.

“Ohhh, I don’t…” He mumbled, clutching his head in his hooves. He seemed very dizzy all of a sudden. “So much blood.”

I closed my eyes, trying to still the rapid beating in my chest. I stood up on shaky hooves and managed to hobble into the kitchen. My nerves were still shot from the sudden rush of adrenaline, but I just took measured breaths to try and calm them.

Staring down into one of the cleaner buckets of water, I looked at the pony staring back. Blood smeared one side of her face, making tracks down her chin and dripping off like crimson tears. The source of the blood was clear: a large gash, curving from just below her eye socket down to the edge of her chin. As I watched, new tears formed in her eyes and travelled down into the gash, sending a fresh wave of stinging pain through my throbbing head.

Breathe, Starlight. Breathe.

Never before in my life had I sustained such a wound. From the looks of such a deep cut, I knew that it would remain forever, a reminder of the horrible decisions I had made in trapping us here. We might eventually find our way home, but now, I would never be the same.

I think I left behind a crucial part of myself back there in that kitchen. A part of me that had been there since childhood, who stuck with me even when Sunburst left, had grown alongside me and stuck it out even when I was going through rough times. Unblemished, unchanging, she still saw herself as the same little filly she was when she came into this world. She was now just a reflection in a pool of murky water, looking back at me with sad eyes. I steeled my own.

By now I had gotten my breathing under control and felt my heart rate slow. I picked up a filthy rag in my magic and blasted it with a disinfecting spell. The dirt and grime were eliminated, and it glowed white, as if brand new. I touched it gingerly to the side of my face, dabbing off the blood and tears that had become somewhat dried and crusty at this point.

Without all the blood, it looked so much better; less horrifying and more…hardened? Battle-tested? Maybe the scarring wouldn’t be as bad as I thought! Maybe…hopefully…

I came back out into the main room. The raider and gun were right where they had fallen. The only thing missing was…Sunburst.

I heard the scuffing of hooves upstairs, the bumps and bangs of doors being opened and searched. He wasn’t very subtle, but at least he was being thorough.

Hooves trembling, I approached the raider and checked for a pulse. As much as I hated even the thought of touching this vile creature, I don’t know what I would’ve done if he was dead. He probably would have deserved it, but…I didn’t want to be the one to do it.

LittlePip’s words echoed in my head: It was me or him. That’s the way it is out here.

He was breathing. I felt a huge weight off my shoulders. I was glad he wasn’t dead, but if we just left him like this, what would stop him from following us?

Sunburst sulked down the stairs without saying a word. He was clearly still shaken from earlier.

“Here,” he said, extending his hoof out to me. He held a small pile of bandages, colored with grime and spotted with blood. “They’re the best I could find.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, picking them up in my magic and applying the same disinfectant treatment as the rag from earlier. Now how to stick them to my face?

I looked to the raider, still out cold.

“One more thing, Sunburst.”

He started out of his reverie. “What?”

“Could you grab me a roll of duct tape from the other room?”

***

We walked in silence for miles. There wasn’t much for us to say to each other. After what had happened in the library, Sunburst had become strangely silent, unwilling to offer much in the way of conversation, and giving short answers in reply.

“What do we do now?” he asked, his first utterance in hours. We were walking down the only road that had led out of town, out into what looked like open wasteland. Something in the atmosphere had clearly changed the environment—it all just felt really off.

The dull green shades of wild grass danced in the wind like ocean waves. What struck me most about the landscape were the splashes of color here and there: streaks of yellowed grass snaked in random paths like electric tendrils, sickly yellow trees dotted the landscape, their branches drooping and twisting like licorice. It looked like autumn, only diseased and rotten rather than natural and majestic.

“Well, Ponyville isn’t the only town in Equestria,” I answered, inspecting the shotgun as we walked. “There’s gotta be libraries in other places, right?”

Sunburst had disliked the idea of bringing such a dangerous weapon with us. It’s just a deterrent, I’d told him. I promise I won’t use it. I really hoped that would be true. I had found some shells in the raider’s pocket and stored them in my saddlebags. I remembered the way he had pumped the gun’s barrel and tried that now. It gave slight resistance, but as it moved a spent shell ejected out of its side. I looked in the compartment that the shell came out of. There was another one nested in, probably ready to be used.

I had made a nifty little strap out of some of the rags back in the library, allowing me to sling the gun around my shoulder and let it rest comfortably on my back.

“And what makes you think they’ll be any different from this place?” Sunburst asked, turning on me. “What if there are no books left in this world?”

“You saw the same things I did,” I fired back. “The images in the tunnel: we know LittlePip met plenty of civilized ponies, and that towns of them exist nearby. We just have to find them.”

He didn’t seem convinced. “Look,” I continued, “this is still Equestria; I know my way around these parts. This road leads us toward Appleloosa. From what Applejack told me, Appleloosa is a pretty resilient community. If something bad happened in this timeline, I’ll bet they weathered it somehow.”

“And if not? If that place is just as dead and deserted as Ponyville?”

“We’ll go to Phillydelphia, then. Or Manehattan. Canterlot! Just don’t give up, alright? This is just the beginning.”

Sunburst sighed. “Alright.”

As the two of us fell silent once again, we approached the entrance to a small forest. I felt relief at finally having some cover from the open terrain, but as we drew closer, I began to feel a sense of discomfort deep in my gut.

The greenery here was…anything but green.

Bright orange and purple foliage grew in large clumps, sprouting out of the ground and out of tree stumps and trunks. Grass pushed up through the detritus like leftover confetti, spotted with weeds and budding flowers. Bushes like pimples dotted the forest floor. Lavender vines climbed up the trunks of the nearby trees. Even the tree bark somehow naturally formed a shifting kaleidoscope of hues: blue, fuschia, salmon, emerald, all fusing together through gradients like an alien sunset.

It didn’t seem dangerous. At least not yet.

Sunburst had noticed it too. “Wha…how…why—”

“Don’t ask me.” As we entered the woods, surrounded by the gawdy colors, I was briefly reminded of Ponyville. But nothing in that town had ever seemed so grotesque, so…wrong. The candy-colored surroundings did little to ease my nerves: they just served to make me feel even more alienated from this world than before.

I tried to take my mind off of it. There were more important matters at hoof, anyway.

“Have you ever been in a fight before?”

Sunburst looked taken aback. “Do I look like much of a fighter?”

“Point taken.” I levitated the gun off my back. “Here.”

He backed away. “No, Starlight! I don’t want anything to do with that death machine!”

“You don’t have a choice, Sunburst. If we get into another situation like back there, I need to know I can count on you to help me.”

His eyes flicked back and forth between me and the gun between us. “But he…that thing almost took my head off.”

I couldn’t hide the disgust in my reaction. “You’re really gonna stand there and complain to me about what almost happened to you?”

His eyes glanced momentarily at the bandages on my cheek before taking sudden interest in the ground at his hooves. With a begrudging neigh, he gingerly lifted the gun in his own telekinesis and turned it around, inspecting it. “How do you use this?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” I said, levitating the extra shells out of my bag and giving them to Sunburst. “But I think you load these into this compartment here, and then you have to pump the barrel before you can shoot it.”

He tried pumping it, but it wouldn’t budge. Seriously? He could lift his weight in books, but he couldn’t pump a rusty barrel?

It finally gave, and the resulting chk-chk sound gave him a small smile. He glanced at me, and I smiled back as he slung the gun around his shoulder. Now I knew he could at least defend himself.

As we continued our trudge through the strange forest, my thoughts turned to the giant alicorn we had met at the infinite crossroads.

The Watcher. I still trembled inwardly at the experience of being in the presence of such a powerful being. His words hadn’t left my mind; they bounced around, ringing in my ear, reminding me of some greater purpose:

The Time to fulfill your destiny has come at last…You must stop the spreading darkness threatening to consume the Multiverse, or else we are all of us doomed.

No pressure. Everything the Watcher and those other voices had said created so many questions in my mind that I could barely focus on answering one before another appeared to take its place. What darkness was he talking about? Where was I supposed to find it? How was I supposed to stop it? How was I supposed to save the Multiverse when I didn’t even know where I was??

I only had one clue to work with, and that wasn’t saying much. One of the other voices had mentioned an “Alpha timeline”, which I assumed was the one the Watcher sent us to, the one we currently found ourselves trapped in. I wondered if there were other timelines of this world, different in subtle but drastic ways. What exactly made this the alpha?

My head began to thump in pain, each throb feeling as though it came from the gash on my cheek. I shook the questions away, too many to think about at once. I didn’t even know where to begin. Luckily, something way more pressing came to my attention that dwarfed those confusing thoughts.

I heard…music? Somewhere nearby, the sound of an upbeat polka melody floated gently to my ears. I could tell Sunburst heard it too because he was looking all around us for the source.

“What is that?” he asked.

The sound came closer. Finally, I noticed a bobbing silhouette just ahead of us. It was a flying object, no bigger than my head, that seemed to flit around in obvious glee.

“Is that…a parasprite?”

No, it looked like a parasprite. But as it came closer, I noticed the glint of metal, the tinny sound of music coming from its speakers, and the antennae poking out of its hull. It floated past us, going back the way we had come. Sunburst and I looked at each other with equally confounded expressions.

“I don’t even want to know.” This world just kept throwing me for a loop. Between that and all the questions brought on by the Watcher, I was getting exhausted.

Daylight was rapidly diminishing. Who knew what kinds of dangers came out at night in this world?

“We should set up camp for the night.” I slowed down, searching nearby for fallen trees to camp under.

“We need to keep moving.” Sunburst ventured ahead.

“We’re exhausted, we need to rest,” I countered. “We’re not going to find a way home overnight.”

Sunburst kept moving forward. I trudged after him. “Sunburst, if we run ourselves into the ground, we’ll never find a way back. Besides, all this foliage will do us good. Shields us from the open, makes it harder for us to be spotted.”

A voice directly behind me cut in. “Doubt that.”

I whirled around just as a cloud of bright dust blew into my face. I coughed and backed away, my eyes and nostrils burning. I heard Sunburst cry out, and then a gunshot, followed by the cry of another pony. I picked my head up and looked around us.

My vision was blurry, and every movement I made felt like I was moving through molasses. Sunburst needs help! I tried to move, but time seemed to skip forward as I was suddenly lying on the ground. I tried to look around but my head felt heavy, and the world was spinning.

“Wwhaa thee heeeeellll,” I slurred. Strong hooves held me down, overpowering my dazed struggling. “Geroff mee, you azzholez!”

I reached out with my magic, but the strength to conjure up even the simplest telekinesis seemed to escape me. No matter how much I pushed myself, nothing but feeble sparks emanated from my horn.

“Careful, watch out for his gun!” one of the ponies cried out. Sunburst was fighting back! A body was laying on the ground near him, unmoving. He swung the gun around like a club, keeping his attackers back, but they quickly closed in on him. With a crazed look of terror, he pointed the gun at one of them and pulled the trigger. It clicked. He had forgotten to cock it.

The ponies tackled him to the ground, sending the gun clattering out of his reach. As I watched, I saw him reach out with his magic to try and pick it up again, but one of the ponies on top of him slammed a hoof into his horn.

“GAAH!” Sunburst cried, his magic cutting out immediately as tears streamed down his face.

“Suuuburst!” I cried. “Le him goooo, you fuggin’—”

I was met with my own deterrent: a hoof across the face. Thankfully, they hit my non-injured side.

“Shut up, bitch.” The pony holding me down pushed me harder into the ground, mashing my face into the dirt. Every breath was a challenge as I coughed and sputtered.

A green earth pony stepped calmly into my view. A cloak rested over his form, similar to Sunburst’s only black and emblazoned on the back with the image of a large, open eye, blood red in color, and a single tear dripping from its duct. He bent down to get a better look at the body lying a couple feet away from Sunburst. As his face entered my field of vision, I noticed his right eye was covered by an eyepatch, adorned with the same crimson decal.

The pony growled. “He killed Meringue!” He spun around to face Sunburst. “You’re going to pay for that.”

He gestured to his lackies, who picked Sunburst up onto his knees, holding his hooves out to the side. Sunburst’s eyes were wide with fear as he struggled against their grasp. “Please, I-I didn’t mean to—"

Eyepatch turned his back to Sunburst and bucked. Hard.

Sunburst doubled over as far as he could go, still held up by the other ponies. He gasped multiple times, trying and failing to gulp down air. I could see the panic in his tear-stricken eyes.

Eyepatch wasn’t finished yet. He pulled Sunburst’s head up by his hair and slammed a hoof into his face. Blood immediately gushed from his nose like a fountain, bringing with each desperate gulp of air a wave of hacking and coughing as he struggled not to drown in his own blood.

He hit him again. And again.

“Stoppit!” I screamed. “Please, stop!”

Eyepatch pulled away and the ponies dropped Sunburst, leaving him curled up and heaving. His whole body shivered as he was wracked with sobs of terror and panic. One of his eyes was swollen shut and purple. I wanted to crawl over and comfort him, but with each struggle the hooves only held me tighter.

Eyepatch held his hoof out. A pony ripped my saddlebags off and handed them to him. He rifled through my stuff before retrieving the one thing I wished he hadn’t: the scroll.

“Nononono,” I repeated in a drunken slur. A hoof bashed the side of my head, sending a flare of pain through my skull. Despite the pain, one thought burned fiercely in my mind: we cannot lose that spell.

One of the ponies who had attacked Sunburst whispered, “Sweet Celestia…”

“Overcast was right.” Eyepatch sounded astonished. “They were right where she said they’d be.”

“How did she know?” asked another pony.

“Does it matter?” Eyepatch snarled. “We did what she asked, got what she wanted. Now, she better hold up our end of the deal. Come on, let’s get back to camp.”

“What about them? What should we do?”

Eyepatch reached into my saddlebags with a wicked smile on his face and pulled out the roll of duct tape.

I began struggling against their grip again. “Please, we need that spell—”

A hoof bashed the bandaged side of my face. I screamed as a whole new wave of stinging pain dulled all my other senses by comparison. I felt wet streams running down my face, dripping onto the ground.

A few minutes later, the ponies left in high spirits. They had gotten what they wanted.

Sunburst and I were left on opposite sides of the road, our hooves taped together in an uncomfortable hogtie and our mouths taped shut. Sunburst’s back was turned to me, but even in the dim light of dusk I could see his body shaking from here. I tried to scoot closer to him, but I could barely move an inch. He needed help, needed comfort, but I couldn’t reach him.

I tried screaming for help, but the tape covering my mouth seriously muffled my voice. I doubted anypony outside of a 100-yard radius could even hear me, much less help. We were trapped here until somepony happened to come along. How long would that be? What if they weren’t friendly?

Night was here now. My eyes quickly adjusted to the dark, but I could only barely make out Sunburst’s silhouette. Beyond that was inky blackness. I couldn’t even register the bright hues of the forest anymore. The night was silent, save for the buzzing of a few insects. I only sat there, staring at Sunburst’s back, as if I could somehow make him feel better through sheer willpower. I could make out the soft rising and falling of his body, hear the soft whimpering on each wheezing breath. How badly did Eyepatch wound him? At least he was still breathing.

I became aware of a shape floating in the air, just beyond Sunburst. How long had it been there? It looked like the parasprite robot from before, only it wasn’t acting like it. Instead of bobbing around, it was completely still; instead of playing polka music, it was eerily silent. It just stared…watching us…

Almost as soon as I noticed, it bobbed away, down the road and out of sight. Any hopes I had of asking it for help were dashed. How could it help us? It was just a mindless robot.

“Welll, what the fuck do we have here?” came a terrifyingly familiar voice from the darkness. I looked in the direction of the voice.

Another group of ponies came within eyesight, but these weren’t just any ponies. They wore spiky leather armor, decorated with gore and blood.

Raiders.

At the front of the pack, the pony from the library swaggered up with a massive grin. “Came to get my shotgun back from you fucks and teach you a lesson in manners. And would ya look at this! You’ve gone and trussed yourselves up for us. How kind of you.”

Sunburst cried out against his gag and tried to scoot away, but just like me, he couldn’t move.

“Aww, look how excited he is to get started,” said one of the other ponies. “You weren’t kidding, Scarface. I think we’re gonna have fun with that one.”

“Right? Doesn’t he just look like such a little bitch?”

I closed my eyes and mustered up all of my concentration. The wooziness from that powder they blew in my face earlier had worn off by now, so I just needed to push with all of my effort.

Sparks erupted from my horn, and I felt the block slowly giving way. My magic was building up. Almost there!

Scarface planted a kick directly on my horn. The sensation of a shard of glass being lodged directly into my brain exploded from my forehead. I screamed in pain, every bit of concentration I had built simply melting away as my entire world became searing, blinding pain.

“What’s wrong, cat got your horn?” he taunted with a crazy laugh. He ripped the bandage off my cheek, and I felt the night air brush against the tender skin of my wound. “Look at that,” he mused, pointing to his own infected, pus-oozing scar. “Just like me.”

Another cackle filled the air as he threw a clump of dirt on the wound, mushing it around. I screamed as it burned, trying to shake him and the dirt off. I tried my magic again, if only to just cleanse the wound before it got infected like his! Please, anything but that!

His eyes were drawn back up to my sparking and quivering horn. “Maybe I should start by cutting that thing off. You’ll be much easier to handle that way.”

My eyes shot wide with fear. He wouldn’t…he couldn’t!

Turning to address the group, “Hey, someone grab my shotgun.”

I pulled desperately against the tape on my hooves, praying to Celestia for the strength to rip it off and gallop far away from here.

It held strong.

I searched for any other option, but none revealed themselves to me. Scarface pressed my head into the dirt and held it there, levelling the shotgun at the base of my horn.

“MMmmph!” I tried to wriggle my head out of the way, but he held it there like a vice. I cried and shook, trying to scream through the gag to please stop!

He cocked the barrel. He knew what he was doing. An icy calm passed over my body as I braced myself, aware that this was going to happen, that nothing could stop it from happening.

What did I think was going to happen? In a world like this, why did I ever think we stood a chance at going home?

Boom!

Torrential gunshots ripped through the silence of the night, berating my eardrums. I flinched and screamed at the sound, but a distinct lack of pain caused me to realize that my horn was still intact. I opened my eyes to see Scarface’s blank, surprised stare right back at me. I pushed away his lifeless body and looked up to see hellfire raining above me.

Some of the raiders were struck by the wave of bullets, ripping their bodies to shreds and painting the ground with showers of blood. A couple dove to the sides, taking cover behind the nearby trees. The sound of maniacal laughter rose to my ears, but it wasn’t coming from them.

I looked to the source of the bullet storm, and what I saw nearly broke my currently fragile mind.

Standing in the middle of the road, bracing against the force of the two giant guns attached to either side of her saddle, was the last pony I ever thought I’d see with such heavy weaponry. The guns’ barrels spun rapidly, and the light from the bullets exploding out of them lit up the pony’s face like a ghostly apparition.

Trixie grinned from ear to ear, her eyes blazing with passionate glee. She looked brown in the dim light, but it was her, my best friend! I could have cried; I was so happy to see a familiar face. Not to mention one that was saving me from getting my horn blown off.

It must have been too much for me; after everything that had happened that day, I didn’t blame myself. The world around me disappeared as my vision turned black, and I passed out.