Fallout Equestria: Last Days

***

“Zoel. Sister. Your eyes. They wander. / Do tell this one what they ponder.”

Zoel blinked, her focus slowly coming back to her.

She shook her head. Her short cropped, striped mane shifted as she turned, bristles waving in the cool air.

“Forgive me, dear sister mine. / Nothing serious—mere thoughts benign.”

Zoel's eyes met the zebra mare who had called her name. The image of her elder sister, Zira, stared back at her, her black braids hanging down on either side of her face from beneath the red mane-tie encircling her forehead.

Zira replied with a nod, meeting Zoel's gaze. Zira's green eyes were piercing as always—her thin, gold hoop earrings dangling from beneath her ears as she moved.

Zoel watched them. For most missions, her sister would have dressed less conspicuously. But given the nature of the task they had been entrusted with, such dress had been permitted.

Zira motioned to the area around them.

“Good words these are, to my ear. / Stay sharp, my sister, and do not fear.”

Zoel nodded, watching Zira turn back to the other hunters. Six of them, including Zoel and Zira, were currently spread out against the back wall of the underground parking complex. The shadowed frames of the wagons and carriages parked around them offered ample cover.

Zoel’s eyes traveled down the back of her sister’s form.

Despite the dark, black stealth cloak she wore over her shoulders, the scars along the back of her sister's neck were still visible. Old scars. Many of which Zoel shared.

Zoel shook her head again, adjusting her grip on the rifle in her hooves.

She turned her attention back to the entrance of the parking complex. Their hunting party had been left to watch the back entrance to the maintenance tunnels that ran beneath the building. It was their job to ensure no ponies stumbled across them.

Zoel wiped the sweat from her brow.

Even now, she could hear them—the sound of carriages and ponies moving across the busy streets above.

She’d never been in a pony city of this size before. The buildings here dwarfed those of the village she had been raised in. The sheer number of voices she could hear at any given point in time was dizzying.

Zoel shook her head again.

If the enemy discovered their movements before their compatriots could finish, everything they had done up until now would be for nothing. They would hold the back line with their lives, if they had to.

A trickle of sweat ran down Zoel's forehead.

Failure. It wasn’t an option.

Zoel glanced down at her rifle, her eyes passing over the small, paper talisman she had tied around its stock—an allowance the elders had allowed her for this mission.

The black glyphs on the slip of paper were crudely drawn. The writing of a foal.

It had been a gift from their younger brother. The last gift he’d given them before he had been killed.

Zoel's eyes shifted back to Zira.

Even now, Zoel remembered the look on her sister's face when they had received the news. The look of rage in her eyes when the Equestrians had declared the massacre an “accident.”

The war had broken out soon after that. Zoel and her sister had spent those long years fighting at each others' sides ever since.

Even now, Zoel could still remember her brother’s face. His smile. His kind, innocent nature.

She watched as the paper talisman shifted in the breeze.

He would never smile again for them. Not for Zoel. Not for Zira.

Blinking again, Zoel’s eyes caught sight of movement. She realized she’d let her mind wander again.

Looking down her rifle's sights, she could see two figures emerging at the base of the stairwell near the parking ramp entrance. It was a pink unicorn mare and filly, the two smiling and talking with one another, a small bundle of shopping bags hovering in the air beside them.

Zoel’s eyes went wide, her gaze drawn to the filly.

She couldn’t be more than six summers old. The same age her brother had been when he was taken from them.

Zoel could feel her shoulders stiffen.

Her hoof tensed against the trigger—her eyes still locked on the smaller of the two figures.

Both were trotting in Zoel’s direction now. Toward both her and the rest of the hunting party at the mouth of the maintenance tunnel.

She could see the filly glance up at the mare's side.

"Can I come shopping with you next time, too, Mama?"

"Of course, dear. You're such a good little shopper these days. Mama is very proud of you."

The mare tousled the filly's mane. The filly giggled.

Zoel could feel another bead of sweat drip down her brow.

Her hooves were frozen in place.

Breathing was suddenly difficult. Her cloak felt tight around her neck. Her hooves wouldn't move.

Fchip! Fchip!

Two spouts of red blood erupted from the sides of the two ponies' heads, the mare and filly crumpling to the pavement below. The bags the mare had been levitating at her side dropped as well, groceries and papers spilling out onto the lot.

Zoel turned.

Zira stood on her back hooves at Zoel's side, the silenced pistol in her hoof still smoking at the barrel. The older mare's gaze betrayed no signs emotion, her lips drawn into a thin line at the end of her muzzle.

For a moment, Zoel could feel her shoulders tense.

Her sister’s piercing eyes looked cold. Dead. Empty.

Zoel tensed again as those same eyes shifted in her direction.

Zira blinked once—twice—her eyes returning to normal as she nodded toward the two fallen figures.

“With haste, sister—to their sides fast! / Ensure for us the danger’s passed.”

Zoel nodded, lifting her rifle from the hood of the carriage in front of her. Glancing back and forth for any other signs of movement, she drew her hood up, darting forward through the shadows.

She arrived at the sides of the two ponies quickly. Both the mare and filly were very much dead—identical bullet holes staring back at Zoel from each of their foreheads. Blood had already began pooling beneath their heads and necks, their bodies cold. Unmoving.

Zoel uncloaked, waving a hoof back toward her sister. She could see Zira nod to the other hunters, motioning for them to continue their watch as she started in Zoel's direction.

Zoel glanced back down at the bodies at her hooves, her eyes slowly drifting back to the smaller of the two.

She could feel the tightness in her chest return.

The filly’s glassy eyes stared dimly forward—her lips faintly parted. Her yellow mane and pink coat were spattered with blood. A small, stuffed rabbit lay at her hooves where it had fallen from her grasp.

It had a small, blue bow with a nametag attached to it, the lettering on the tag written in the messy hoofwriting of a foal.

Zoel’s eyes shifted to the talisman on her rifle. Back to the motionless filly. She could feel a small, sinking pit forming in her stomach.

What were they even doing anymore? Had she and her sister not been fighting to prevent the slaughter of more innocent lives like this one? Or had it all been for vengeance? Blood for blood? Lives to pay for lives lost?

Zoel closed her eyes. She didn't know anymore.

The image and voice of her younger brother—laughing, smiling—echoed through her thoughts.

She shook her head.

She didn't know anymore. She didn't know.

Was what they were doing right anymore? Was what they were doing truly protecting their own?

She shook her head.

She knew the Equestrians were their enemies. She was not so naïve as to hold hope that they weren't. Their Princesses spoke of peace, but the actions of their citizens and soldiers said otherwise.

She had seen some of the villages their forces had laid waste to.

Burned. Smoldering. Corpses of the young and old there reduced to ash. Countless other foals like her brother, silenced. Never to stir again. Never to laugh. Never to smile.

The elders said the Equestrians were tainted. Greedy. Corrupt. That their worship of the Nightmare Demon would lead the world to ruin. That, if they were not stopped, the fighting would never cease. The taking of innocent lives would never stop.

Zoel’s eyes fell onto the filly once more.

But at what cost did it all come? This filly had done nothing wrong. Instead, she had been taken, like her brother, at the hooves of someone she’d never met in a conflict she knew nothing about.

Zoel could hear hoof-falls come to a stop beside her. Glancing down at the bodies, and then back at Zoel, Zira offered her a nod.

“Fortunately for them, it would seem, / the end came quickly, as if a dream.”

Zira nodded again, placing a hoof on Zoel's shoulder. Her elder sister offered her a reassuring smile—the sort of smile Zoel remembered seeing on her face when they were young.

It was different, somehow, though. Too casual. Too relaxed. The Zira she had known from before the war would never have smiled like that with a dead mother and foal bleeding out at their hooves.

The Zira before her now, however, nodded again, patting Zoel’s shoulder.

“Fret not, sister, the time is near. / Soon our salvation will be here.”

Zoel nodded slowly. Taking a breath. Steeling herself.

This was for her sister. Her clan. For all the young foals like her brother in zebra lands.

This war would not end on its own. If they failed here, the killing would only continue until there was no one left. Zebra or pony. Adult or foal.

Zoel could see Zira glance back toward the other hunters, her own eyes moving to follow her sister's gaze.

She could see one of the hunters listening to the whispering talisman affixed to his ear, raising his hooves over his head in a circle a moment later before nodding back toward the maintenance tunnel behind them.

Zoel could see Zira’s eyes widen at once, an almost fanatical smile breaking across her sister's muzzle.

Turning back to Zoel, Zira lifted her hooves to Zoel's shoulders once more, meeting the younger mare's gaze.

“Sister! Sister! Do you see? / The time is at hoof for you and me!”

Zoel tensed as Zira leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Zoel's and closing her eyes.

“At long last, our road, we’ve paved—”

Zoel could feel Zira's hooves wrap around her shoulders, her sister's voice dropping to a weak whisper.

“—now our brother’s memory will be saved.”

Zoel stood in the midst of her sister’s embrace, her hooves firmly locked in place beneath her. Her eyes passed back over the pink mare and filly at their side. The spreading pools of blood beneath them had begun to mingle, bathing the pavement beneath them in red.

At the side of the unicorn mare, Zoel could see a small stack of developed photographs that had fallen out from one of the bags.

One rested on the top of the pile amidst the lake of blood, the image of the mare and filly along with two others—an older, gray pegasus stallion and a younger, gray pegasus mare—staring back up at her.

For a brief moment, Zoel could see herself and her siblings in the picture—Zira and herself standing on either side of their brother in between—the vision fading as she blinked.

Reaching up with her own hooves, Zoel returned her sister’s embrace. She could hear the rising voices of the other hunters behind them, a general sense of excitement building in the air.

The pit in Zoel's stomach, however, hadn't disappeared.

She glanced down at the rifle at her side, taking in the sight of the paper talisman once more.

A memory drifted back into her mind. One of her brother's face when she'd awoken from a bad dream of her own when they were young.

"Sister? Sister? Are you alright? / Did something happen to you tonight?"

She smiled softly at the small talisman. Her brother had been shaking when he'd asked her that. He'd still been afraid of the dark, back then.

She shook her head, whispering toward the small paper.

“Fear not the darkness, little brother, fear not the moon—“

Her eyes shifted back to Zira, her elder sister's hooves still wrapped around her neck.

Zoel closed her eyes.

The voices of the other hunters had grown louder. She could hear a crackle of spiritual energy echo from the maintenance tunnel. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand on end.

She whispered to the talisman once more.

“—Just wait for us, little brother. We’ll be with you—”

There was a blinding flash of white light.

"—soon."

***