The Eternal Sandstorm, Trotson

Day 5

I had long remembered that horrid day.

A towering storm of irradiation, filled with horrid creatures found only in the wasteland’s deserts. A storm that took the lives of ponies when none were looking. A storm whose irradiated residents would piercing and kill even the best of armor. In a way, the fact I had managed to get ponies out of it alive was deserving of a medal. That we had entered it in the first place should have revoked it.

Twice now I had the chance to choose a better, safer exit from this damned city. Five years ago I was too panicked to make the better choice, and it led to the dead screaming in my ear. Screams that five days in this city had revealed were more than the trauma of a soldier.

Five years later, and I was once again staring at that same sandstorm. Me and four others dared to brave its body for what lay on the outside. The situation was different, as were the ponies, but the end goal was the same. We were leaving Trotson. We were leaving, and none of these creatures were dying. Not Gold, not Willow, and while I hated his guts I would make sure Sharpshot didn’t either.

Didn’t make staring up at the swirling wall of sand, irradiation, and ear-grating sounds any worse to look out. Immediately one of those annoyances had been dealt with thanks to the NB-2 armor, thick and heavy yet also extremely tight. It was a miracle that I was able to breath in it, but I wouldn’t look the gifts of highly advanced arcano-tech in the mouth. The NB-2 kept the irradiated air out, and that was a welcome blessing.

I never mentioned it, but I know how horrible radiation sickness was. When I left the sandstorm that day, five years prior, I had no idea what it was doing to my body. The same went for the other survivors. We all were quarantined, nursed back to rad-free health, and only then allowed home. Most of it was a blur to me, as was most things until my dear Anchor woke me from my trauma-ridden stupor days later, but the feeling was still there. I was thankful to have survived it… not everyone was.

Which made the sight of Willow Wisp, wings spread wide, exposing her face to the storm that had given me the worst illness I had ever dealt with in my life, irritating. Only irritating though. Gemini was… sweet and nice, but Willow was capable of listening to trauma without being burrowed on her own. It made her easy to talk to, like a friend.

Identifying Willow as a friend left that piece of me still clinging to the Enclave furious. That conflicting feeling was what kept the irritation in my heart lit. It stayed in my heart, where it was unable to boil to the surface. The appreciation for the unfortunate alicorn that had been born in the more accepting half of my brain kept it at bay. If not for her, that acceptance wouldn’t feel as okay as it did.

Thus the Enclave side of me added more tinder to the flames of hate. A cycle of love and disgust, the latter fed off the former as the former defended its existence from being consumed by the latter. It was an invisible war.

An inner war I was far too aware of. I wanted to hide from it, but couldn’t. Ignorance was stolen from me the moment the war started.

“The magical radiation feels wonderful,” Willow said. Her ears went from perked up to folded against her head in a flash. “It’s too bad the sandstorm means I’ll have to hide from some of that warmth.”

“Is there really something on the other side?”

Eyes turned to Gemini. Despite having her helmet on, each and every one of us sensed the fear in her words. I’m damn near certain she was shivering under that armor, and if she wasn’t it was rather impressive. Her head turned to each of us, moving her hooves dramatically to accentuate her nervousness. Since nearly everypony – save Willow Wisp for the moment – had their armor on, it was her best way to express it.

“Of course. More to world then one city,” Gold explained. He tilted his head at her. “Unicorn didn’t know? Odd.”

Gemini shuffled backwards. “I-I guess, but you get told by those around you that there isn’t anything out – that there isn’t any place safe to escape to – and it makes you wonder.” She turns first to Sharpshot, Willow, and Gold, and then to myself. “Before I find out, what is it like out there?”

“Tough question. Never really visited San Palomino proper on any missions; most of the time I was stationed in the Hoof or Neighvarro.” I motioned back to the sandstorm as I talked. “One was a more pleasant experience than the other. Anywhere you go, something in the wasteland wants you dead. Trotson, Manehattan, Luna-damned Canterlot, all with two hundred years to breed fantastic ways to kill you.”

“It’s not all bad though. You got your Friendship City and New Appleoosa type of places too,” Willow spoke up, covering her face back up. “Places safer but still somewhat dangerous. The wasteland is not the old world; you can’t call anywhere truly safe.”

Gemini’s head moved down, contemplating what she had heard before giving a nod. “That's still better than what I had before.”

Our attention once again turned back to the Sandstorm… or rather the rest of them did. I turned my attention to Dead Hooves, the spiritual unicorn joining in with the gawking of the great wall of sand before us. She did not speak to me, and I did not speak to her. I was thankful for that, because of all of the unsettling revelations she was easily one of the most unsettling.

I had a cannibal for an ancestor.

With a shake of my head, I looked away from the ghost and instead behind me… to her. Dead Hooves was fucked up, but she wasn’t out for blood. Bone Breaker was, and her spirit was watching me with a gaze that made my entire being feel weak. Looking away broke that feeling, but the knowledge she was there, watching and waiting made me more than aware of what, or more accurately who I might find inside.

“Gold, I’m guessing you’re aware of how balefire fossils work, right?” I asked the griffon. He gave me a nod. “Good. Anypony else familiar with them?”

Willow and Gemini considered a shake to be a clear enough answer. Sharpshot decided it wasn’t.

“If you could tell us what it is, we might be more prepared to deal with it,” He remarked, voice still holding echoes of hate from our conversation in the hallway. “Some kind of ghoul?”

“Worse. Far worse,” I answered plainly,an involuntary shudder passing through my body as memories long pressed down slightly surfaced. Skin melting off bones, screams of pain, blood, the constant ticking of radiation. I forced them back down. “I’d prefer not to explain. Gold can if he wants. Everypony, stay behind him and me. Stay close; we won’t be able to see shit until it is just in front of our muzzle.”

I didn’t wait to see what their response was, taking as confident of a step forward as possible. I heard everycreature behind me fall into line, Gold quickly making his way to my right side as Dead Hooves’ did the same on my left. With as confident a march as possible, we quickly drew closer to the beast of a storm before us. With each step, my heart got the tiniest bit faster.

All the while, Sharpshot did as I suggested and asked Gold for an explanation.

“So if they aren’t ghouls, then what are they? Balefire means necromancy is involved, but outside of that I’m getting jackshit.”

“Walking balefire generators. They are living, but not like you or me. More feral, but not animal. Look like behemoth made of bones.” A talon nervously clasped at the asphalt beneath him, desperate for something to cling to but finding nothing. “Terrifying. Will melt you. If ghoul or alicorn, will spear you. Only reason unicorn, pegasi, and I safe? Armor.”

“Ah, so just a bunch of really irradiated bones.”

“No. More than just bone. It’s–”

My eyes clenched shut as, in a single second, I was overwhelmed by the sound of sand hitting metal. Not just a couple flecks of sand that the stray wind had picked up, but a hurricane of particles moving so fast and so forcefully the only reason they didn’t dent the armor was their size. Something about the sudden shift in the storm’s volume as I went from outside it to within unsettled me. Something more than the soft – yet horribly constant noise – noise that made it up.

All I knew was that it was connected to the soldiers I failed. Any attempt to search those memories were disregarded, but not because it wasn’t importanted. The sound of nature around me left reminiscing impossible, like the villain of a horror novel that stayed in your mind before you fell asleep. Even knowing it wasn’t there, it felt like it was watching, waiting, grinning in anticipation for when you fell asleep. Both staved off sleep, but while one did it through fear the other did it through sound.

That constant noise, along with how much they had to raise their volumes to talk to each other, made listening to Gold's and Sharpshot’s conversation impossible. It didn’t matter, because I knew the things that awaited inside for me already. Though a piece of me wanted to pull my ears against my head in some vain hope of ridding the constant, overpowering mix of sand and wind in my ears, that was truthfully a horrible idea. I had to keep an ear open for the clicking of the suit’s radiation counter, but not for the general ticking; that had started the moment we entered the storm.

No, I was looking for a sudden, drastic spike.

With my more immediate vision nearly non-existent – barely able to tell there was a griffon to my body right, I found comfort in the MentaBuck’s map. It showed what the storm hid: the outer limits of Trotson. It allowed me some idea of the buildings around me, though I was certain none of them were more than pieces of collapsed rubble by now. What caught my eyes was the distant, northern outline of what was a major old world highway.

“Follow me!” I shouted over the storm. “And stay close!”

If I was lucky, the highway had a still standing access lane, was not broken, and was elevated off the ground. Was it really the best choice though? I told myself it was the safest place to be, away from the ground while still having something under my hoofs. The truth is that I had found a seemingly recognizable shape leading out of the sitting and had just gone with it. The sound of the sandstorm and the emotional turmoil that refused to settle in my mind made thinking about any sort of plan outside of “leave Trotson” hard.

The highway would have to be done, because everypony was following me. Whether some of them hated me or not, they treated me as a leader. I only wish I felt like it at the moment.

The turmoil inside me did not show in my stride, hiding behind a soldier’s facade for… someponies sake. I’m not entirely sure it was for myself, since thinking of soldiers – of the Enclave in general – left me confused and turned upside down.

“She’s still following us.”

My eyes turned to DH, the dead mare’s head consistently watching behind her. Following her gaze led me to see nothing. Whatever the storm showed was for her eyes alone. Uncertainty settled on her ghostly features, and it left me unsettled. Even without being able to see the pony in question, there was only one individual I imagined she was talking about.

“I figured she would leave me alone after we found out she…,” I shook my head, unable to say it. Nothing about Bone Breaker’s death felt right. “Never mind.”

“She isn’t going to listen to reason, I can tell you that from one conversation,” DH replied. She had no need to speak up, something about her supernatural nature carrying through the storm as if they were one. “Her anger and sorrow has consumed her ghost so greatly that there is nothing else in there. My attempt to tell her of what happened turned into her begging and then screaming at me to turn against you.”

“And you didn’t because…”

“Your family, Singing, whether you want to admit it or not. That is all the reason I need.”

Whether I wanted to admit it or not.

My mouth opened, but then immediately closed. I wasn’t ready to tell her just yet. Without much thought, I bottled my feelings up and continued to walk, a piece of me believing that, if I ignore her, Bone Breaker will simply go away.

Tick, tick, tich, tich, ticktickticktick-

I took three steps back and held a hoof out to Gold. The griffon instantly stopped, and with any hope the ponies behind us did as well. One second of increased radiation was all I needed to know what lay in front of us, even if the storm made the creature itself invisible. I took another step backwards, just to be safe, and then motioned to the right.

“Gold, you take the lead. We need to head around,” I ordered.

The griffon gave a quick nod to me. The ponies behind us were more perplexed, looking between each other as they begrudgingly followed along.

“I didn’t see anything, Singing.”

“Good,” I replied, momentarily looking behind myself at Willow. “If you saw one, then it’s probably too late.”

Twice more we had to change our route due to the sudden uptick in radiation, but the NB-2 armor was good enough to shield Gold, Gemini, and myself from the armor. We were also lucky to have never stepped into a fossil’s radiation zone for too long to actually grab its attention… as far as I was aware. What mattered was that we were safe, or rather that the others were safe.

Maybe my mind was making things up, or perhaps the wind was messing with me, but I swore I heard voices. Voices that didn’t belong to Sharpshot or DH or Gold. Voices that seemed to have no owner. It put me on edge and made me more desperate to get out of here as soon as we could. The knowledge that Bone Breaker was likely still following me, and who might be waiting within the wind made my heartbeat quicken.

Thank Luna I had a helmet on to hide my fear.

After a time, we arrived at the access lane for what I now knew was Equestrian Highway 66, at least according to the MentaBuck. Reading any of the signs was impossible due to rust and low visibility. The latter was so bad that all I could gander from an immediate look was that, as I had predicted, the highway was off solid ground. At least I felt pretty certain that was the case, considering the access ramp went up.

Forgoing language for a simple wave of my armored hoof, I stepped in front of Gold and ushered everycreature over to the ramp. My eyes looked over absolutely everything, the question of what laid ahead enough to keep any voice in the wind out of my ears. The sight of overly rusted carriages and pieces of crumbled road helped significantly there. The idea the road might collapse underneath me was simple enough that the sound of the storm couldn’t break it.

“None of the original color remains on any of these things,” Dh said, tapping on with a hoof. My mind figured it couldn’t be too far off of what tapping the side of a cloudship sounded like, and played its best approximation of it in my head. “I’ve never seen one of these working. They needed, what, gas or steam to work? The train here to Trotson runs on the latter.”

“Not sure, and not important,” I replied, far less sure of myself than I wanted to sound. “Keep moving. If we keep moving, they won’t find us.”

DH’s face turned contemplative as she looked at me. Clearly she had heard the uncertainty in my voice, but she didn’t push further. I was thankful for that; whatever my tone had caused me to ponder could wait till I was able to think again.

Up and up we went, until the incline turned into a steady, straight road. Highway 66 was reachable, and it provided a nice easy path out of the city for all of us. With it, though, the mind was subjected to the aftermath of a long forgotten carnage. A carnage brought by the final days.

In an age long past, ponies would be setting their sights upon the Trotson skyline on this highway. With it being one of the larger cities it only made sense that, on the final day, many ponies might have come to visit it, and likely bore witness to the end of the world. The evidence lied in overturned, smashed, carriage piles. I felt my hoof crush down on something as I took my first step onto the highway. The victim of my accidental attack was a skull.

“These are remarkably well preserved,” Willow replied, picking up another bone I didn’t recognize. She inspected it as if it belonged to some ancient creature that pony-kind had never seen. Though, ancient might be the right choice to describe the ponies of a better era. “Must be the balefire energy doing it.”

She was likely right. Even the one I had crushed under my hooves didn’t have any signs of mold or other decay. The sand and balefire had worked as one, preserving the remains of the pony, even if those remains were so scattered one would never find every piece of it. Perfect for balefire fossils to turn into its weapons and armor.

“Rhapsody.” I turned from the bone I had shattered to Dead Hooves, who looked up and down the highway with her ears pinned. “Is there a siren in the wind?”

I shook my head as we started moving again. DH scanned the surroundings before scurrying to me, the look on her face hinted at something that was best described as dread. She seemed certain something was wrong with the environment, but the radiation counter in the NB-2 was ticking at the same rate as usual. There was no balefire fossil to worry about.

With a steady, but rather slow pace (the wind was far stronger than I remembered), we marched further and further along. More scattered bones across the ground, more rusted carriages piled up or blocking the way. The latter was little to no work for Sharpshot, Gemini, and Willow, and the ear grating sound of sand hitting my armor muffled the screeching of rusted metal. What holes there were on the bridge were easy enough to spot and avoid, making for a smooth experience.

Which is probably why, after twenty minutes of walking, the world threw a curveball at me.

It is not often I find definitive signs that point to the wasteland itself being alive, like some believe it to be. Most of the time it was easy enough to choke up to coincidence or inevitability. Ponies who never got the mental health help they needed degraded into barbarism, betrayal of trust, the ravenous hunger of one of the land’s many mutated wildlife. All just mentioned is easily chalked up to being at the wrong place at the wrong time, or a frayed string snapping.

When the sounds of a siren climbed loud enough to pierce the storm, I found one of the few true examples of the area around me being alive. Everycreature stopped, staring back at where we had come from. I turned around completely, then took a step back in search of what was possibly making that noise.

When the sound of the siren started to fade, I thought the strange happenings had ended. Instead the siren’s wail started rising again, but it was no longer alone. Panicked, incoherent voices started to pop up, along with the sound of auto carriages whizzing by. Panic turned into scream, the roar of carriages ending with a horrific class of metal against metal.

“Rhapsody?” Willow called out telepathically. “Is that what a balefire fossil sounds like?”

I shook my head, refusing to turn back to face her. The sound was familiar, but it wasn’t because I had heard in the storm before. No, I had heard it merely a day ago, talking to the spirit of a young filly who had perished alone. The same siren wailed in the nearly incoherent voices that had filled my head upon touching her.

A siren I was now certain belonged to one event: the dropping of megaspells on Equestria. We were hearing a remnant of the last day. What had taken place on this highway as ponies desperately fled for the nearest stable.

Most, if not all of them, were likely dead.

“K-keep moving!” I ordered with an uncharacteristic stutter. DH caught it immediately, her earlier concern growing. As I started to turn around to continue walking, I restated my command. “I don’t know what is causing it, so for the love of Luna keep mov–“

I nearly screamed as I faced forward, a petrified look of utter terror meeting my eyes. A stallion was there before me, translucent like DH and the aforementioned filly, but with none of the movement. Though his eyes were bearing into me, they clearly weren’t looking at me. They were focused on something else. Something far more terrifying than one armored pegasus.

“There are so many.”

The nameless spectral filly’s voice briefly caught me off guard as she appeared from nowhere. They had clearly caught DH off guard too… but the filly was only a prelude to the real terror. A terror that took the form of at least two dozen spirits, just as frozen as the first stallion. Some stared off in that very same direction at such great, unseen horror. Others fled in fright.

“These aren’t like any other spirits I’ve met,” DH whispered, her voice barely audible over the time-displaced calls of the megaspell siren. “What is… what is going on?”

Neither the filly or myself had an answer. We were both too frightened at this final, frozen moment of terror. It was like some ghastly 3D photograph of Equestria’s final moments as balefire descended upon them all.

Balefire.

“The balefire energy never faded. The storm must be keeping it active somehow, like an ash storm,” I stated. “It’s keeping them frozen in their moment of death. It’s probably played out so many times by now that…,” despite knowing it was the likely truth, the words still took far too long to leave my mouth. It was too terrifying a truth, “… there is nothing left of them. Their forms are here but their minds? Gone.”

“Gone?” The filly asked. She faced me with a look of horror, as if this was the first time she had ever considered the possibility of death. “You mean, they are dead?”

DH looked at me in hopes that I would take the question. I’m certain she saw my petrified stare, because immediately after she gave the spectral filly a nod.

So much was weighing on my soul already. Telling a filly she and everything around was gone was suddenly pushing myself way too far. Twenty-four hours ago, a more ignorant mare might have been able to do what I could not.

“Pegasus okay?” Gold asked, bringing my attention to the four living ponies watching me. “Memories too much?”

I shook my head. “It’s… too much to explain. W-we got to keep moving. Resting here isn’t safe.”

Before any of them were able to stop me, I started walking at a much faster pace than I had before. I needed to get out of here. I should have taken the train. Everything about this situation was becoming too much and the siren in my ears was doing nothing more than make the building anxiety within me worse.

Tick… Tick…

I didn’t care that I might have been leaving my companions behind; thinking about anything other than getting out of the storm was too difficult. The sounds of siren, along with sand hitting armor, had finally taken any attempts of rationality away.

I just had to go forward. Keep going forward till the sound is gone. Keep going forward till the spectral filly couldn’t find me. Keep going forward till I am safe from the past.

Tick… Tick… Tick..Tick.. Tick

The siren never stopped, and every look around me just revealed more spirits. The frozen faces of terror, the screams the wind accompanied each face with, every piece of their remaining being etched its way into my mind. When I looked at a new one, it didn’t replace the pony before. They just blended into each other, further distorting their mental image until what I saw wasn’t a pony. I’m not sure what it was but… the way their muzzle stretched, the deformation of the eyes, none of it was equine.

None of it was right.

Tick.. Tick.. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I didn’t stop walking until I collided muzzle first with a spirit I had somehow not seen. My entire body froze up as I felt the world blended together. There was nothing to focus on visually, just like when DH and I had touched the spectral filly the day prior. All I got was sound. Gasps, screams, pleads, all incoherent yet at the same time more clear than they had been previously.

All save for one voice, and two very simple sentences.

“Run! Run!”

“It’s okay. Papa is here. Papa is here.”

Ticktickticktickticktickticktickticktick.

I fell forward at the same time as the mindless specter I had accidentally come into contact with. It was too much. It was all too much. Being here was so much more than I ever should have thought myself able to handle. I was so encompassed by the siren that I never saw the shadow darkening my armor or the group of creatures, both dead and alive, that came up to me in worry.

Everything about them to their cries of worry (or annoyance, more likely) to their forms were impossible. The siren and screams had wounded me… but the cry of a father – a genuinely good father – left me unable to continue. The wasteland had done it. It had proved itself to be alive. It did it by destroying what tattered remains of pride and bravery I knew.

As if satisfied with the tartarus it had put me through, the siren faded, and the spirits likely did as well. It was only then some semblance of me came back, only for the first thing for me to hear being Sharpshot as he stomped on my armor.

“Oh for fuck sake will you just get up!”

“Hun please.”

“You think you're done? You think whatever the fuck is going on is enough for me to allow you to just crumple up and die. No!”

He stomped on me again, before suddenly using the power of both his body and telekinesis to lift me back onto my hoof. As I steadied myself, mind still trying to untangle itself from the horrors and events I had just taken part in, both of his hoofs reached for my helmet. Gemini moved forward to stop him, but Gold was both closer and faster to it by putting an armored claw on his hoof. The ghoul briefly looked at the griffon, the latter giving a shake of his head.

Boundaries set, he settled with a slap to the helmet… which he instantly regretted as he pulled it back with a visible wince. For some reason that was the sound that managed to rouse a reaction from me, taking a faltering step back as I looked at the group before me. Dead Hooves and the spectral filly stayed off to the side, but their faces of terror were the only ones I was able to make out.

In my state, the first thing that the helmeted and hidden faces of my living companions made me think of was disappointment. Then embarrassment at being near me. The final thing, and the one I mostly linked with Sharpshot, was anger.

“What the fuck was going on with you?!” He exclaimed. I took another step back, only barely holding in the urge to shrink and cower.

“I-I-I can- I don’t… spirits and….” I shook my head in hopes that it might help me speak. Instead it just made me aware of how much I could feel my heart pumping in my chest, as well as the way I breathed. “So much. Too much. I-I need to get out. Storm is making it har…”

Ticktickticktickticktickticktick

Completely oblivious to my somehow still heightening fears, Willow took a step forward. “Singing, you’ve been distressed since that siren started wailing. Are you really al–”

“We have to move!” I screamed out, lurching forward. “Have you all noticed? I fucked up. I couldn’t think and–”

The ground trembled. Both Willow and Sharpshot’s ears perked up, facing my direction. Those of us with power armor became far too aware of how rapidly the radiation counter ticked. Turning to face the highway’s left railing, I backed away.

It was just far enough for a large appendage made of bones to not grab me. I didn’t have names to give to any of the bones save for that which made up the appendage’s claws: broken ribs, turned into point. Instead it clutched the railing and used it to pull itself further up.

Daring to look away from it, I glared at the living creatures behind me. “For Luna’s sake run!”

“No need to say it twice,” Gold said.

He took off like a lightning bolt, followed by Gemini, and then Sharpshot. His wife’s awe at the creature's side momentarily caused her to step forward, but Sharpshot’s magic gripped her tail hard enough that he was able to drag her away from something she no doubt saw as a worthy challenge. That left me at the rear, and going against my own words I instead looked at the beast that was climbing up to meet me.

Attached to the appendage of bones, an inconceivable mass of bones, all broken and jagged. Inside it all, a ghastly green orb of pure necrotic magic could barely be seen pulsing like a heart. As the mass landed on the highway, the bone-claw it made rejoined its main body. In an attempt of intimidation, its bones instead formed into the pale imitation of a hellhound’s face.

Then with all its strength, that face roared at me. A roar that turned the screams of the time frozen specters around me into its own, making one long, harrowing banshee wail to end them all. I knew this scream well, it had haunted my dreams for years.

It was the scream of a balefire fossil.

It stood stock still, one thought going through my mind: make sure the others make it out alive. That meant this thing had to be slowed down, and I had a brand new toy I had the use of. As the head it formed melted back into its mass, I readied the Atomizer and aimed it directly at the beast.

“You… you think you can actually kill that thing?” I heard DH say from one side of me. I was too focused to pay attention to which.

“No, but if Synthesis was right.” I took a single, nervous step back as the beast of bone and balefire once created that clawed appendage, just barely missing my armor, “then this should definitely slow it down.”

The pull of the Atomizer’s trigger happened right as something grabbed my tail and dragged me backwards, causing my shot to go wildly to the left. DH and the spectral filly rushed to me as I was dragged a good yard or two back until I saw the rag covered hooves of Sharpshot. I looked up at him, and found he was looking back at the balefire fossil.

“In my defense, I thought you had gone back into your little mental episode,” he yelled at me. “Was trying to save your ass.”

“Attempt appreciated,” I replied as I reloaded the Atomizer.

The distance he had given us had given me the chance for another shot, but that was all this thing had. One claw turned into two, and with frightening speed the fossil closed in. Loaded, aiming at its body, and ignoring the slight glow of the ghoul next to me, I took my chance and pulled the trigger.

A mass of dark energy left the gun as soon as DH passed me, and I wasn’t going to stand still in case my plan failed. Turning on my hooves, I tapped Sharpshot’s shoulder. Neither of us wanted to know how big the blast radius was, and neither of us wanted to be close to the fossil when the shot impacted. An impact that came a mere second after accelerating into a gallop, the pull of something behind me nearly knocking me off my hooves.

Daring to look back as we ran, I expected to see the fossil grasping onto one of my legs. Instead I bore witness to it breaking the asphalt with its claws. A hole of pure nothingness swirled just behind it, some of the smaller and less tangled bones sucked into it. The core of the balefire monstrosity, however, seemed untouched.

Reality collapsed in on the hole of nothingness, unleashing a surge of energy that destroyed even more bones. Again the actual core of the fossil lay unscathed, so I looked back in front of me and kept on running. I ran and ran, dodging and jumping over carriages and other debris that tried to block our path. They may not have truly stopped us but they definitely slowed us down, and the fossil didn’t need to maneuver around them.

The sounds of metal being thrashed and more asphalt being broken signaled how much force its calcium-made and balefire-infused armor/weaponry was able to withstand. It shouldn’t have been possible to hear it with the storm, but the force in which it slammed the ground each time it cracked the road told me the opposite. Even worse, it was quickly getting louder.

“I’ll stop for a moment and hit it again!” I shouted over the tantrum. I followed it up by quickly reloading the Atomizer. “Don’t stop running. No attempts to save my ass.”

Sharpshot nodded. “Trust me, I don’t want to look at that… thing again anyways.”

As soon as he finished his unnecessary witty comment, I slammed a hoof into the ground and spread my wings. Lifting my other three hooves off the ground, I turned myself around on the ground like I was in midair. As if viewing my hoof-slam as a challenge, balefire fossil crashed its formed claws into the ground, cracking it with the ease of glass.

“Hey bitch, recognize these things?” I said with a flap of my wings. It formed that head again, this time snarling at me. “This ones for the soldiers you made sure never saw their home again. This ones for the Enclave!”

It raised one claw up, and I pulled the trigger. As it fell towards the ground, an orb of pitch black sored towards it effortlessly. I started flapping rapidly, letting the wind pull me away from the beast’s attack and nearly over the edge of the highway. I only remained on due to hooking my injured foreleg around the railing.

As I grabbed the railing, the orb impacted a bone. There was no explosion, which initially made me worried that the round had been a dud. Then, where the orb impacted, existence itself seemed to fold in, taking pieces of not just the bones surrounding its core, but pieces of the core itself!

A core I knew was nigh invincible. The screams of the dead returned, far more harrowing and unnatural than previously. Even with it managing to damage the balefire fossil’s core – particle upon particle of its being being torn away – it wasn’t enough to wipe it from existence.

A moment of calm hit as the miniature black hole stopped, pulled everything around me towards it, and I relaxed my hold on the railing. It proved to be another severe lapse of judgment in a day full of them, as a burst of energy suddenly bursts outwards, further destroying what defenses and weaponry the fossil had… as well as flinging me completely off the highway.

My wings opened in an attempt to catch me, but the gales of the sandstorm saw it more fitting to toss me about like a doll. Knowing my options were either to plummet to the ground, likely breaking my spine in the process, or flailing about in some faint hope that I was able to steady my flight. As seconds ticked by, I did everything within my power to gain some manner of control as–

Magic rushed through me, centering on a point on the top of my head; my horn. The wellspring of power inside me is called forth. I gaze into the eyes of the pegasus before me. They are dull, filled with life but without will. It hurt to see, and it made me falter. I couldn’t do this to my step-sister. It wasn’t right.

So I stopped channeling, allowed the tears on my face to do the talking, and hugged her. I repeated again and again that I was sorry for nearly using her. She hugs me back and forgives me.

“We can’t change who we are,” she says. “We can only shift into a better version of ourselves.”

My body seizes, and where there had once been feeling from supposed limbs on my back was now nothing. My helmet felt both like it didn't fit and did at the same exact time, and a slight numbness briefly passed through my legs. All of it managed to briefly distract me from the fact I was currently airborne. I was airborne, my forgotten wings had gone limp, and because of it gravity found its hold on me.

I started to plummet.

Instead of trying to flap wings, I instead found my limbs flailing under me. I foolishly tried to conjure up that same feeling of magic, and it was then I remembered that I had no horn. My wings returned to me, but at that point it was too late.

The ground met my head, and black filled my vision.

“So you made it back home… just to end up back here. Back where you should have died with the rest of us.”

Those were the first things I heard when consciousness returned, though they didn’t register. My head felt like several bells were ringing far too loudly, and the sound of the storm made that ringing worse. Everything hurt, and my limbs felt both responsive and unresponsive at the same time. Even opening my eyes felt difficult, the light of either the MentaBuck or NB-2’s E.F.S. sending another wave of nausea and pain to my head.

A sensible pony would realize the concussion they suffered and not try anything stupid. Unfortunately that wasn’t how ponies with concussions liked to think, and right now that was me.

My hooves moved mindlessly, as if the nerves in my body were feeding them random and opposite signals compared to what I really wanted. Even if I did get one hoof under me, the hoof didn’t stay there. It felt like I was dreaming, but the way my head swam was too real for that to be possible.

“Take your time, Sergeant Major. We want to talk to our murderer face to face before shoving her back down.”

The words were clear, yet at the same time they didn’t fully reach me. Instead I focused on the fact the voices wanted me to get up, and get up I did. It took serious effort, but with time I had managed to get two hooves under me instead of just one. The third was easy, and the fourth hoof felt like a victory lap.

I was standing. Now to see who was actually speaking to me.

Head still ringing, I dared to open my eyes the tiniest amount possible that didn’t lead to my headache worsening. That proved to be not at all; the armor’s lights felt that intense to my brain. For a brief moment, my hooves moved to remove the helmet in a desperate attempt to free my horn.

… horn?

My wings snapped open, all feeling having returned to them. With the reminder of their presence, that nagging sensation I had a horn faded. I made the mistake of shaking my head, causing the bells within my brain to ring even louder. I stumbled back, hindlegs nearly buckling under me with how unsteady I felt.

“Singing… Singing Rhapsody,” I muttered to myself. “I am Singing Rhapsody. This headache is nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“Please don’t fuck with us, Seargent Major. We both know that landing wouldn’t kill you. The fossils couldn’t.”

This time I actually paid attention to more than just pieces of what was being spoken to me, and my body tightened up. Knowing how much it would hurt but not caring, I opened my eyes and braved the stinging it sent into my eyes. Even then it was impossible to open them fully, and I settled for half-open. It wasn’t as much as I had wanted, but it was more than enough for me to get a vague outline of the ponies – the spirits – before me.

Four pegasi, all dead, stood in front of me with amusement fixed onto their expression. An expression that was a flimsy wooden mask even a concussed mare like myself was able to see past. The amusement didn’t create a true smile, and the way their eyes narrowed and brow remained low told me it was hate that fueled their smirks, not joy. One stood closer to me then the rest, a white stallion with an odd mix of blue and green in his mane. I did not need to see his flank to know his cutie mark, given it matched his name perfectly/

“Domino.” I slurred, barely managing to catch myself as my body tried to take itself back to the ground. Though he was unable to see it, I smiled in an attempt to disarm the hostility in the air before me. “It’s… it’s been sometime. Good to see you again.”

My greeting only served to make the air of hostility before me increase, Domino’s smirk turning into a frown. He took a step forward. “I’m afraid the feeling isn’t mutual Splinter. I had hoped to never see your face, or that you would be just like the rest of us.”

One of the ghosts behind him took a step forward. I recognized her too, but then again of course I did. Every one of these pegasi were individuals I had failed. In this case the failure came in the form of a forest green mare with a barely seeable red and pink mane. She seemed to be on the verge of crying. I expected her to speak, but Domino continued.

“So you actually made it back, stayed alive. I’m not sure whether I want to congratulate you or not, considering those you killed.”

“Domino… Mistletoe,” I looked to the orange mare as I spoke, noting how her spectral form froze up. I then turned to the last two, stallion and mare; one with a dull brown coat with an equally duller brown mane and tail, the other a vibrant pink with a mane and tail of violet and a single strand of blue. “Hard Landing, Fair Breeze, I’m sorry. I don’t know if it’ll change anything but–”

“You haven’t changed, so why would it?” Mistletoe replied. Her words sent a freeze chill into my spine, making me the most still I had felt in my current state. Overly large, black tear trails went down her face, just the same as Bone Breaker. “Why Rhapsody? Why did you come back? When did you betray us? The Enclave? Everyone you loved and cared about?”

I managed to open my eyes a little more, an uncertain breath filling the helmet of the NB-2. “You know? Then you’ve been watching me?”

“Why would we? We didn’t know you were here until a grounder told us,” Domino replied, his attention turning from me to somepony at my right. “I almost feel pity for the poor thing.”

I followed his gaze, and the frost Mistletoe’s questions had placed over me thawed. I tried to step back as I looked to see Bone Breaker staring at me, rage and hatred contorting her ghastly expression into something near incomprehensible. I fell backwards, unable to tear my eyes off of… whatever it was she was becoming. The face didn’t belong on a pony, it didn’t belong on anything. What in tartarus was her rage doing to her?

“You remember the stories about windigo’s, Splinter?” Domino asked me. I couldn’t answer; Bone Breaker’s expression had me in its grasp and kept my vocal chords from doing anything. “Spirits of ice, filled with hate and nothing else. I can’t help but wonder, is it possible for us to become that? But then again, they also disappeared when the mega spells hit.” He finally turned back to me, stepping in front of Bone Breaker and freeing me from her grasp. “Still, what you have done to this mare. Death truly does follow you, doesn’t it?”

“I didn’t know this would happen to her,” I replied. It sounded more like I was about to plead for my life, and considering my head had found itself between my front hooves its quite possible some part of me believed the end was near. “I didn’t even know she was going to die. She’s a mother Domino, and for a g… grounder,” Why was that word so hard to get out now? I had been saying it my whole life, “she was a good one. I didn’t mean to do this to her, to her son.”

“And yet you did. Just like you did to us,” Fair Breeze replied softly. She hadn’t moved, staying next to the still silent stallion staring at me. “Which leads back to Mistletoe’s question. Why Rhapsody? Why did you abandon the Enclave?”

“I didn’t!”

I hadn’t meant to yell, and a small part of my brain called myself a liar as soon as I did it. Didn’t make the harsh wince from the spirits before me any less immediate, Domino specifically taking several steps back as my head suddenly surged forward. The action hurt, but it had been the most in control of myself I had felt since before getting the results of that heritage test.

“You know I’m a dashite, but in my heart I still yearn to protect my home. You call me a traitor, but you use that name on the wrong ponies.” Despite the struggle, I managed to lift myself under my own power once again. “Four pegasi came down here with secrets they shouldn’t have, and I already got proof from the pony truly responsible for killing that they have a piece of it. Those secrets could hurt the ponies I love, and the family you still have up there.” I nudged my head upwards into the sand-riddle sky. “That is why I came down here. I didn’t abandon the Enclave, I martyred myself.”

I dared to take a step forward, doing my best to keep my voice both powerful and neutral. It was strange, having all this strength suddenly come surging into me after hours of self-doubt and questions, but it felt good. Despite everything that had happened, hearing myself talked down upon – to have what faith I still had remaining in the Enclave tested – still angered me.

The moment made me realize that it didn’t matter how I was born, because I was where I needed to be. For the sake of my family, my fellow soldiers, the council, and all the ponies who no doubt would hate me if they knew who I truly was, I had chosen to fight. The protection of the citizens I had once served depended on me; this was not the time to let questions of who I was get the better of me.

That would remain for later, when I was back with Willow. I had to keep pressing for now, regain control of the discussion that up to this point had been entirely one-sided. I may not have been as good of a politician as Ironsight or Harbinger, but I was on the high council. You don’t get that high up unless you can hold your ground in an argument.

“Hate me. Despise me. I understand. I’m sorry I got all of you killed. That never should have happened.” If they were surprised at my words, none of them showed it. They just kept staring. “But the past is the past and I can’t change it. What I can change is a possible course to our home’s destruction. If you still love the ponies up there – the ones you cherish, and that I foolishly led you all to never be able to see again – I ask that you believe that much. For the good of pegasi all across the sky. For the good of the Enclave. I beg you to accept that much.”

In any other situation, I might have been convincing. To a hippogriff, zebra, unicorn, or any other manner of surfacer, that most definitely would have been enough. I’d seen Ironsight win ponies over with less, both in words and truth, and while I wasn’t as good as him I certainly wasn’t terrible. That alone allowed me to feel confident about my words, until I remembered one small detail.

Bone Breaker had told them about my brand. They knew I was a dashite, and as the realization dawned on me that everything I had said was for nothing all four spirits put those feelings into an expression. The one most clear to read was Mistletoe, lips curving downward to an unnatural degree. She was an oil puddle waiting for a match to set it to flame, yet she was not the one to ignite.

That honor belonged to Hard Landing, who I hadn’t even seen move until he was right in front of my face. More than any of the other ponies present, his expression was mixed with both hate and fear in equal measures. The former was directed at me, but the latter? It was directed at something else.

“Rhapsody,” he replied, propelling the name from his lips like it belong to a demon more than a pegasus, “how fucking delusional are you? Do you think we’ll buy your lies as much as the grounders down here?”

Before I was able to respond, three things happened. The first two were connected with each other, with something in Landing’s expression glare changing without physically showing and this… warmth growing in my fur. Not the kind of warmth you get with a blush or baking under the sun, but more like the beginnings of a fever. A fever that I recognized as not being normal.

I briefly checked the radiation counter on both the NB-2 and the MentaBuck just in case the former had been damaged from the fall. Both read zero, which only made the fact I recognized it even worse… especially as it slowly seemed to creep as Mistletoe’s stare gained that same quality Hard Landing’s had.

The third thing that kept my muzzle shut was Domino choosing to speak.

“I doubt you know the full length of the suffering we’ve been through. You managed to live through it, after all,” I tried to take a step back, but as Fair Breeze’s gaze gained that supernatural hold over me, the heat finally reached fever levels; a really, really bad fever at that. My hind legs, both from said fever and the concussion, gave out under me. “We are more than happy to make you aware of it. Just stay still.”

“Dom… Domino please I… I… what?”

That little moment of clarity I had when I had told them of my commitment to the Enclave fell away as Domino’s eyes gained that same power. The way my eyes blurred it was hard to tell I was falling until I hit the ground, a sensation that felt like being thrown against a brick wall at mach one. Everything was warm, too warm in fact, as if my body wished to burn into flames. It didn’t, the coals inside just getting worse and worse.

Earlier, a siren, the sand hitting my armor, and the ghastly screams of ponies long dead had taken my thoughts away through overstimulation in terror. I started to feel something similar happen here, but it wasn’t because of the wasteland. My entire body felt unusually heavy, my chest rising more dramatically as I took laboured breath after labored breath. I was aware and not at the same time, and everything seemed to shut down…

…

… and then my jaw opened in a sudden, silent screaming.

They had timed the switch of my torment perfectly. The worst fever of my life was lessened and replaced with something going through my chest, stomach, and gut at the same exact time. The moment my brain nearly shut down from a false experience, the real one took its place. A rapidly advancing death from radiation sickness was replaced with my body being ripped open by a beast I hadn’t seen.

I felt something oddly cold leave the points of impact. Even with my brain working at nowhere near full capacity I knew what bloodloss felt like. Yet the fact it felt cold rather than hot was deeply concerning. I tried to move my eyes, but the sickness doubled and brought me back into a state of least resistance. I just laid there, thinking that surely this, this experience was real…

…

… but of course it wasn’t.

This time I did scream. Sickness turned into a painful, sizzling sensation all across my skin as I realized that I hadn’t been impaled thrice over either. No, that initial heat I felt became a personal inferno. My eyes widened as best they could, positive I was burning alive in my power armor and trying desperately to get it off. Get it off and roll on the ground to put the fire out. Get it off, and truly expose myself to the radiation of this tartatus-damned sandstorm.

Instead all I did was thrash about like a pony having a night terror. There was no coherent word, though I’m certain Domino and the others knew I was begging them to get my suit on me. They didn’t, and without the blurriness the first false experience brought I saw the look on my face every time my flailing head looked in his direction.

Contempt. Pure, simple contempt.

He was enjoying seeing his supposed murderer suffer, and while none of it was truly comprehendible at the time I hate to say I can’t blame him. To see the one who ruined your life squirm for you? That was my most selfish reason for accepting a dashite branding.. All of it was hell, and twisted, and fucked like very few other things could be considered fucked. Yet I understand on some morbid, terrifying level why.

From there everything just… blurs together. Accelerated radiation poisoning, skewered and left to bleed out, burned to near death by the fire portion of balefire. It was a cycle, and one they had seemingly rehearsed and readied. Whether any of the others shared Domino’s happiness at seeing me suffer was unknown. I’m not sure how long I was put through it, or how many times they looped back to that start of the sequence.

All I remembered was being so tired that, even with them changing from one former of torture to the other, I was fading into a state of mental nothingness. It was so strong that even the hope it would end was kept from me.

Yet somehow, it did.

The clearing of the fog wasn’t revitalizing, nor did it give me strength. Mental and physical exhaustion weren’t something the equine body was able to bounce back from unless adrenaline hadn't been allowed to set in. When the torment abruptly ended during yet another session of false radiation poisoning, I just laid there. No ability to question who saved me, no ability to question why they had stopped. I was on the verge of falling into a deeper sort of sleep. The kind between death and the sleep we experience every standard night in our lives.

Though my vision was a blur, I was able to make out a form standing over me. All that presented itself to the blobs I associated with Domino and Hard Landing was half blotted out by a streak of tan. A more conscious Rhapsody would have put the dots together. I wasn’t thar Rhapsody.

“Repeat after me,” it said. It wasn’t a request or a suggestion, but a demand. “You won’t hurt Singing Rhapsody.”

The blobs that were my torturers tried to speak. The voice spoke up again, but this time harsher and even more demanded.

“Repeat after me: you. Won’t. Hurt. Singing Rhapsody!”

The first demand made something in my brain click, but the second locked the pony’s words into place… though ‘words’ didn’t feel accurate. It was more like a law had been coded into my brain like the prime directive of an old world machine. It didn’t matter so much to myself at that time, but it wasn’t me the law was actually pointed towards. It was for the blobs that made up Domino Effect, Mistletoe, Hard Landing, and Fair Breeze.

Blobs that disappeared right after this mare had spoken law.

Nothing made a lot of sense after that; all my senses were numb and I was minutes away from passing out. What I was able to make was the pony before leaning over, and starting to make a shoving motion at me. I think she was trying to move me, get me up, but I didn’t have the energy to do it. From their motion blurred into motion, and in it all only two things stood out.

Two new blobs showed up, colors mixing together between them to the point it was recognizable. Everything was just masses of color, nothing made sense. All I knew is that I felt some form of relief at seeing these colors, and it allowed me to drift off.

Sleep took me over.

…

…

…

“Dead Hooves?”

…

…

“Dead Hooves?!”

…

“Dead Hooves!”

“Dead Hooves, wake up!”

Author's Note

And with that act 1 – and our time in Trotson – comes to a close. I hope you've all enjoy this first stage of Rhapsody's journey, as strange and wild as it may get at certain point.

I will see you all in act 2; in San Palomino.