Death Valley

For perhaps an instant after bursting out of Midwinter’s house, Bitterroot exulted. She was out! She was free! She was-

-still stuck in Midwich Valley with vampires chasing her.

But Tallbush kept running. “C’mon,” he said, pulling her along. “Train. Can ride it away.”

What the hay, might as well. Bitterroot ran after him.

The train was sitting on a spur next to the coal breaker, where one of the hopper cars was receiving coal from a chute. The passenger car was sitting next to the station platform on the main line. “Need any help starting it up?”

“Not this’un,” Tallbush panted. “Willnae take a minute.”

“Great.” Thank goodness for newer locomotives; they’d never be able to get a normal steam engine running in time. Bitterroot looked over her shoulder. To her shock, there was no one there. Had they gotten delayed somehow? “Blow the whistle as you leave!” she yelled to Tallbush. “They’re not here yet!”

“Aye!” he yelled back. He galloped to the engine as Bitterroot clambered onto the rearmost hopper. It had already been loaded, so she tumbled onto an awkward bed of coal. Her limbs were shaking from adrenaline and her heart was pounding.

Coal rolled as the train lurched. Bitterroot got to her hooves as the whistle blew and squinted up the dark slope. Had any of them-? Amanita had, at least; the pony standing gormlessly at Midwinter’s front door had a horn. Bitterroot cupped her hooves to her mouth and yelled, “Amanita! Over here!” She spread her wings wide and waved to get her attention.

Amanita noticed it immediately and started galloping down the slope. Bit by bit, the train got faster, and with every second, Amanita had a little more distance to run.

She reached the back, but the train was still picking up speed. Leaning over the rim of the hopper, Bitterroot reached out a hoof for Amanita to grab-

Amanita moved to the side, galloped a little more so she was level with the rear ladder. With a smoothness Bitterroot normally didn’t associate with her, Amanita hooked a hoof around one of the rungs and easily swung herself onto the ladder.

Bitterroot looked at her proffered hoof and pulled it back, not sure whether she ought to be embarrassed or not. “…Huh.”

“I learned how to go trainhopping with Circe,” Amanita said as she climbed up. “Done it ten, fifteen times.”

“Huh.” Bitterroot looked back and her wings opened again. “Hey!” she yelled, waving her hooves. “Hey! Code!”

Code, recognizable by her small size, was running full tilt down the hill towards the train, digging at the ground like only an earth pony could. Her entire body was heaving and her mane was flying. She was still far away, but maybe she’d be able to catch-

Then a homunculus burst out of the house behind her, swinging an immense chain; Bitterroot heard it clinking even at this distance. Running after Code and flapping to close the distance, it hurled the chain at her.

Code was yanked off her feet as the chain wrapped around her neck.

As she thrashed like a fish on a line, the homunculus started reeling her in. “Code!” Amanita yelled. For a second, Bitterroot thought she was going to jump back off the train, but she managed to restrain herself. “Can- Can you fly to her?”

“Sorry! Bad wing!”

Amanita cursed under her breath. Behind the homunculus, Varnish strode out of the house, hideously smug.

Then the train passed into the tunnel and they saw no more.

Amanita screamed and hurled a hunk of coal at the tunnel wall. “We had six people in there,” she groaned. “Maybe seven. And it’s just us two that got out?”

“Er. Tallbush is… driving the train.”

“Three, then.” Amanita hung her head in her hooves. “Mother of…”

“Hey.” Bitterroot laid a hoof on her shoulders as the train exited the tunnel, entering full sunlight, a slope of trees on one side, a steep cliff on the other. “We did all we could. And I know that sounds trite, but there wasn’t anything else we could do. Sometimes, that happens, and-”

Something nagged at her brain stem and she looked up, squinting into the sun. A large shadow swooped over the ridge of Midwich Valley as it passed overhead. Half a second after Bitterroot wondered what was so large, it’d started plunging for the train.

“Oh, no,” she gasped. She got to her hooves on the uneven surface as the train rattled. She took a deep breath and shrieked at the top of her lungs, “TALLBUSH! THERE’S A HOMUNCULUS COMING FOR YOU!”

When she finally made it out of the house, aching and bleeding all over, Code was a bit miffed with herself that she hadn’t thought of the train. They needed a way out, after all. But when real danger hit, all that really mattered was surviving to the next second. Everything else might as well not exist.

It was already moving by the time she saw it. Based on the tracks… She angled her run so that she was aiming at where the train would be. Even if it sped up, she could make it. She scrambled down the slope-

Something slammed into her neck and swung around her throat. Her head was yanked to a halt as her body continued onward and she fell on her back. She felt the thing suffocating her: chain. Who used a chain for a weapon? She quickly looped the chain around her fetlocks and pulled to give herself as much slack as she could.

Which was good, because whoever threw the chain started yanking it in. Almost on instinct, Code kept her front legs tight so they were holding her weight, not her neck, and kicked with her hind legs to help push herself along. Then she curled her entire body in as much as she could, swinging her rear hooves up and over her head in a reverse somersault.

The second her rear hooves touched the ground, she dug in, coming to a jarring halt. She yanked the chain forward and whoever was holding it tumbled off her hooves. She hastily unlooped the chain around her neck and sucked in a deep breath, then spun around to see the other end of the chain.

The homunculus she’d prevented from taking Amanita was standing outside Midwinter’s door, picking itself up from the ground. The chain was still wrapped around one of its fetlocks. Code quickly twirled the chain to one side; the twirl traveled up the chain and its inertia knocked the homunculus off its feet again at the other end.

Code glanced over her shoulder. The train was gone. Ah, well. Back to the homunculus; Varnish was standing behind it, not wanting to get too close to her. The expression on his face was one that had been smug and self-assured just a few moments ago, before reality intruded. “Stay down,” he snarled. “I already beat you once.”

“I’m an earth pony hopped up on divine ley lines.” Code wiped down some of the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth and grinned. “I can do this all week.”

“So that’s how you want to do it?” Varnish pointed at the homunculus and jerked his hoof upward. “Go to the train. Kill everyone on board.” Without any other response, the homunculus spread its wings and flew, still with the chain wrapped around its fetlock.

But once it was a good distance above the ground, Code yanked. Physics said the homunculus would win and carry Code away. Magic told physics to stuff itself and the homunculus slammed into the ground with a force a pile driver would envy. Code was moving before it could get up, galloping to close the distance. The second it was standing again, Code whirled around and bucked it right in the head.

It is rarely appreciated just how hard ponies can buck. The sheer power of that backwards kick, even without the augmentation of earth pony magic, can hit about two thousand pounds per square inch, roughly equivalent to getting hit by a carriage going twenty-five miles an hour, focused into a much smaller space. In short, what happens when you get bucked in the head by a pony is swift and simple.

Intracranial-cerebral impact, tissue disruption, rapid hemorrhage, blood pressure drop, cerebral contusion, neurological collapse, things cease, lights go out. All within a few instants.

Unfortunately, the homunculus’s lights were already out. The fact that it was still moving was irrelevant. Although Code’s buck had sent it tumbling and left a literal crater in its skull and twisted its neck beyond what a pony was capable of, the homunculus got right back up and wrenched its head around to look at her with audibly cracking bones.

Oh. So that was how it was.

“You really don’t have a chance,” Varnish said. He hadn’t moved to press his advantage or force Code to fight two opponents at once. “You can’t kill what’s already dead. So make it easy on yourself. Just lay down and-”

“Lay down? For you?” Code snorted. “I had to carve an entire alphabet into my flesh. There are two hundred and five bones in my body and I’ve got every single one of them to pick with you.” She flicked the chain like a whip. With something that heavy, she couldn’t crack it, but it got the point across. “Let’s dance.”

The train was on a slight upward slope and swaying in that way trains do, almost totally smooth but not quite. Fine for when you were walking through a passenger car. Not so much when you were squinting against the wind and crawling across a field of loose coal. Amanita struggled to stay upright; every step seemed to dislodge the ground beneath her and send her sprawling. Bitterroot had it better, somehow. She wasn’t even flapping and she could practically trot across the car with a strange, wide gait. She wasn’t waiting up and Amanita would’ve told her to keep moving if she had been.

The gap between any two hopper cars was easy enough, even in these conditions, and Amanita cleared the first one without difficulty. By the time she reached the second gap, she was getting somewhat used to the lack of steady ground beneath her. Bitterroot had already jumped from the fourth hopper onto the first boxcar by then and kept running-

The boards caved in beneath her. Amanita sucked in a breath, but Bitterroot had already evaded the hole and kept running. The sight made Amanita pick up her own pace so they could at least stick together. When she reached the spot where Bitterroot had fallen, she spared a glance at the boards. Old and rotten, especially right there. Maybe Tratonmane had built their own rolling stock.

The boxcars were much easier to handle than the hoppers simply by virtue of having flat roofs. Amanita galloped across them and clambered down the second one’s ladder to the flatcars. Currently empty, probably stocked with lumber when the time came; upright posts on the sides would hold in logs. Bitterroot had already reached the locomotive and was talking with Tallbush. As Amanita got closer, she began to make out words.

“-never saw it?” Bitterroot asked.

“Nay,” Tallbush said. “Nair saw nothin’.”

“Huh. Okay, you stay here, keep the train moving.”

“Aye.”

Bitterroot jumped back to the flatcars and trotted to Amanita. “Tallbush says he never saw the homunculus, but I know I saw it dive, and-”

The train shook and Amanita fell to the ground, bits of wood peppering her from behind. The car rattled in ways that had nothing to do with the train and, half on instinct, she rolled onto her back and raised her head. A homunculus had smashed a hole through the boxcar and was galloping towards them.

There was forest on one side of the track. Amanita reached out blindly with her magic and hurled the first thing she could grab across the train. What she got was a fallen branch, not particularly bulky, but plenty large enough to tangle hooves. The homunculus tripped in its charge but was back up in an instant, shaking itself off. Once it was still, Amanita actually recognized it; it was the homunculus that had been watching Bitterroot’s cell, with a gray head and dark red- Oh.

Bitterroot herself seemed especially shocked. “You were playing dead?” she yelled.

The homunculus grinned and nodded.

Amanita ripped another branch from the side, but the homunculus’s horn glowed and a shield blocked it easily. The thing didn’t even flinch, just spread its wings and pawed at the ground.

Amanita swallowed. She could barely fight. How was she supposed to fight an alicorn?

Code’s gaze flicked between Varnish and the homunculus as they slowly tried to flank her. The homunculus was stupid and could potentially stay down with enough punishment. Varnish was marginally less stupid but probably wouldn’t stay down without sunlight, a rare resource in Midwich.

Hmm. The homunculus was stupid enough to not respond to her. Varnish, however, could possibly be goaded. Worth consideri-

The homunculus yanked on its end of the chain. Code dug her hooves in, reached into the earth with her magic, and yanked back. As the homunculus stumbled, Code gave a harder yank, pulling it over to her. A quick twirl, and she was able to get the chain off the homunculus’s leg. Full control over it was nice.

She quickly spun wildly around, sweeping the chain wide all about her. She didn’t feel any impact from Varnish; hopefully he was distant as opposed to smoky. Her hasty swing left her stumbling slightly on the incline. Next order of business: level ground and better footing.

She looped part of the chain around the homunculus’s neck and swung it over her shoulder. Keeping the alicorn off-balance was a good idea. She shuffled down the slope, dragging the homunculus as roughly as she could manage. It pumped its wings and thrashed its legs and wildly fired off magic in every direction, but it all bordered on random, no real strategy or tactics. The sort of “fight” she’d been able to win handily decades ago.

The air behind her buzzed. She blindly whipped some of the slack of the chain around and was rewarded with an impact and a curse. She bucked backward; bones crunched. Ah, predictability.

Something tangled in her hooves and she collapsed. The homunculus bumped to a stop and started grabbing at the chain. Code quickly yanked to try to take up the slack, but the homunculus had gotten just enough of it off that she just unwound the chain and she tumbled back some more.

Varnish pounced onto her from behind and wrapped his front legs around her neck. Fighting against the instinct to breathe, Code staggered to her hooves, jumped, and bucked. She didn’t hit anything, but the motion was enough to throw Varnish off her back. She rolled away, pulling the chain with her, blindly swinging it to give herself some space. When she was back on her hooves, Varnish and the homunculus were both looking coldly at her, moving in opposite directions to strafe.

One of them needed to go down. She could only hold them both off her for so long. Her eyes locked on the homunculus. That one. Her skin still burned and bled with the runes she’d etched into it, slim connections to the Deormont’s power. Maybe, if she could just squeeze a little more out…

Code swung the chain around, focusing on the circle the end made. It was clean, it was everchanging, it contained nothing but herself and the chain, it was perfect. The air began thrumming; it sounded like the chain moving through the air until you listened closely and realized it was too melodic. The bounds of magic grew syrupy.

Electricity liked metal and the ground. The zebras used metal to channel electricity. Lightning always tried to get to the ground as soon as possible. So with a bit of circle-opened earth pony magic and some leftover help from the Deormont, Code gave the iron links a little kick in the opposite direction.

And the chain began shedding lightning.

Electricity crackled and spat around her as blinding light raced across the valley floor. Her bones buzzed and the hairs on her coat stood up. Varnish yelped and jumped back; the homunculus did not. Code whipped the chain around towards its legs. The homunculus tried to jump over it, but Code gave the chain a tiny upward flick and entangled it anyway. Immediately, the smells of crisping hair and burning meat filled the air as the homunculus spasmed.

Another flick and Code whiplashed the homunculus down into the ground. It didn’t move at the impact, but Code galloped up to it, drawing up the chain’s slack with her, still swinging it to keep Varnish back. The homunculus still hadn’t moved when she reached it. Maybe it’d finally had too much, but Code was taking no chances. She looped the chain around its neck and pulled the loop tight with all her might.

The chain was blunt, but it was strong, and Code was stronger. The homunculus’s head was crushed off with a ripping of flesh and a crunching of bone.

Up the slope, Varnish gawked down at her. In the sparks’ last glints, Code grinned and twirled the chain.

One down. One to go.

The homunculus wasn’t moving. Probably waiting for them to make the first move. But Amanita didn’t know a thing about fighting, so she didn’t know what the first move was.

The cars rattled as the train chugged on.

“Screw it,” muttered Bitterroot. And before Amanita could respond, Bitterroot was charging.

The homunculus immediately flared its wings and reared, waving its hooves to protect its face. Bitterroot stopped early, keeping her body low, and scrambled to one side. The homunculus pivoted to protect itself, exposing its side to Amanita in the process.

“Screw it,” muttered Amanita. She charged as well.

The moment the homunculus glanced at her, Bitterroot bit one of the homunculus’s spread wings and yanked. It stumbled, overbalancing completely when Amanita hit it in its midsection. She was immediately on top of it, stomping with all her might, wherever she could.

But the homunculus didn’t seem the least bit fazed. A downward sweep of its wings dislodged Bitterroot and got it into the air. A casual spell to the chest hurled Amanita to the side. She threw out her legs and somehow managed to grab one of the upright bars before flying off the train altogether. Her shoulders ached from the sudden stop.

The homunculus turned its attention to Bitterroot, loosing a bolt of magic as it spun around. Bitterroot was ready, ducking under it easily. She tried to get closer to the homunculus and land a hit, any hit, but another flare of magic forced her back. Another stab forward, another retreat back, close, far, close, far, again, again. From the way her good wing was rustling, her bad wing was limiting her movement options. She couldn’t even move to the side much without falling off the train.

Amanita grabbed the upright bar in her magic, yanked it out of its housing, and, the instant she had an opening, swung it at the homunculus’s head. It impacted with a satisfying smack, but all it got her was the homunculus’s attention. Amanita tried swinging again, but the homunculus blocked it with magic of its own, then sent the bar spinning off into the distance with a shove.

The homunculus ran towards her. Amanita reared, ready to bring her hooves down on its head, but it reared, too, grabbing her legs and pinning them against its chest. Amanita pulled backward to try and escape its grip, but when the homunculus released her with a shove, she overbalanced and tumbled onto her back. For a moment, the homunculus towered above her, hooves over her head. Amanita rolled to the side.

Over the edge and off the train.

She hit the ground running and almost immediately had to jink to one side to avoid a tree. Snow flew as she slid in her efforts to start galloping from a standstill. Next to her, she barely registered the sound of wood splintering under the homunculus’s impact. The train kept moving, began pulling away from her. She let it put some distance between her and the homunculus, then leaped back on. Empty flatcars were especially easy for trainhopping: match speed and remember to stop galloping.

When she landed, the homunculus was about as surrounded as it could be: Bitterroot in front of it, Amanita behind. It looked back and forth between the two, its face as blank as ever.

Bitterroot pawed at the ground, standing low and spreading her wings. “Any ideas, Amanita?”

Why was Bitterroot asking her? Amanita’s mind went blank. “Uh…” Was waiting for the homunculus to move again the best choice?

The homunculus glanced at her again, eyes dark and doll-like. Those eyes flicked downwards and its horn started glowing. Almost on instinct, Amanita looked down as well to see if there was anything it was picking up.

She and the homunculus were on two different cars. Wreathed in the glow of magic, the lever on the coupling between them pulled up, undoing the link.

And the two flatcars separated. As the one still connected to the locomotive continued onward, the other began slowing on the track’s upward slope. In a panic, Amanita galloped the length of her car, jumped, managed to clear the widening gap. But the homunculus hooked a leg around her neck and hurled them back over with an almighty flap of its wings. They landed awkwardly, rolling tail over teakettle, but the homunculus wound up on top. And all Amanita could do was watch as the rest of the train rolled away, Bitterroot with it.

Seeing the homunculus uncouple the cars was a bit of a shock to Bitterroot. The ones she’d seen down in the lab had been mostly stupid, but this one… This one…

She was jarred from that shock when the homunculus jumped to the rear cars, taking Amanita with her. “No!” Bitterroot yelled. She broke out in a gallop and, with a flap of her wings, just barely managed to get back to Amanita’s car. Her bad wing screamed in protest, but she shut it down.

The homunculus was raising a hoof over Amanita’s head. Without any time to plan, Bitterroot just rushed it and slammed into it, jostling it off Amanita. But the homunculus immediately turned its wrath on Bitterroot instead, wrapping its legs around her barrel and hurling her back towards the front of the train. Bitterroot tumbled, slid, rolled off the end.

And somehow managed to grab onto the coupling with her hooves. By now, the cars were rolling back down the slope, and Bitterroot bumped along, trailing after it. Rocks in the trackbed caught on her furs and ripped small gashes in it, but she clung on. She nearly bit her tongue with exertion as she tried to pull herself back-

Suddenly, the homunculus was there. It stomped on her hooves and then she was tumbling to a stop down the tracks. Debris had scored dozens of little nicks across her body, but she barely noticed them as she raised her head. The train accelerated as it continued down the slope.

“Amanita,” she wheezed. Any pain in her chest was muted by adrenaline as she somehow got to her feet. “Amanita!” She galloped after the disappearing train, knowing how fruitless it was, galloping anyway. “Amanita!”

Strictly speaking, the chain was a lousy weapon. It was bulky, hard to move, unpredictable at times, and its damage wasn’t directed the way a sword’s or even a flail’s was. But when a chain was swinging, you still wanted to get out of the way.

Code advanced on Varnish, twirling the chain around before her. The circle wasn’t good enough to get lightning, but the rattling and whistling it made was more than enough to sound threatening. Varnish, immortal as he was, still backed up nervously.

It gave Code time to think.

Varnish: unicorn. Range. Horn. Take care of the horn, and it’d be easier to take care of him, at least for a while. Could he mist without his horn? Maybe not, but Code wouldn’t have been surprised if he could. Either way, she had her target. She wasn’t accurate enough to hit his horn with the chain, unfortunately. But she had the next best thing.

As she kept spinning the chain, she began untwisting it from around her fetlock. She suddenly swung the chain wide, right at Varnish’s midsection. As she’d predicted, he misted up and the smoke began flowing behind her. She quickly released the chain and spun around with a hoof out. Varnish reformed behind her just in time to be clocked in the face.

Varnish was large and Code was short, but she knew the right moves for that situation. But Varnish was just a bit faster than she was expecting, recoiling just a bit less than he ought. She kept trying to go for his horn and he kept managing to duck out of the way. He often tried to strike back, but he was all speed and no technique, easily swatted aside, the amateur. Whenever he moved backwards to get more space, Code refused to give him that space and moved forward. They moved down the slope towards the tracks in a flurry of not-quite strikes, bobs, and weaves, wind whistling around them.

As Code deflected a blow, she shifted from offense to analysis. Varnish wasn’t entirely stupid and seemed to be trying to go for a grapple. (He haymakered out wildly; Code caught his hoof on hers and shoved back.) Not quite as stupid as it might seem against an earth pony, if you could pull them off their leverage. (Code jabbed at one of his hind legs; even without pain, a broken leg could be useless, and he awkwardly scurried to avoid any crushing impacts.) Any tenth-decent fighter would know to bring their size to bear against hers. (She threw her head back to avoid an upward swing, sidestepped over one of the rails to avoid a followup jab that neglected to come.) So if she put her legs up and made them vulnerable like this-

Varnish hooked his legs around hers, pinned them to his chest and reared. Code was hauled off the ground; Varnish kept lifting her until they were muzzle-to-muzzle. “I really don’t know what you’re thinking,” he said, leering in her face. “You’re a mortal, a small one at that, and-”

Code was in range, so she headbutted him. Again. And again. And again. Something cracked. Not in her; earth pony magic meant her bones were stronger than his even as her head throbbed. She kept headbutting; Varnish cursed and tried to pull back. In doing so, he released her.

They were both still rearing when Code landed. She planted one of her rear hooves and used the other to swipe his own out from under him. As they fell, she twisted, and she landed on top of him. “Stop talking,” she snarled. She stomped on his horn, snapping it clean off. “You’re not nearly the triple threat you think you are.”

She hit him, over and over and over. Face, neck, legs, chest, everywhere was a target. Mostly his face. It was a stupid face. Beneath her magic, bones crunched, flesh pulped. She kept hitting. Whatever it took to incapacitate a vampire, she’d do that and more.

Then she stopped, panting, ears on a swivel. Varnish’s head was getting mulched, but he still managed to make something like a grin at her. “Surprised?” he gurgled. “Idiot. I know things you can’t imagine. You can’t kill me.”

Except that wasn’t the reason she’d stopped hitting. The ground beneath her was rumbling, and that rumble was getting stronger. Particularly in the rails…

Something echoed in the tunnel behind her and she rolled over, landing in the middle of the tracks, pulling Varnish across the rail.

The oncoming train rolled right over her and right through him.

The second Bitterroot flung the homunculus off her, Amanita was standing up. The homunculus seemed to be looking for her, specifically. Maybe just because she had the Binder. Her next course of action: put as much space between it and her as she could manage. Could she jump off? She looked to the side. No, the trees were too dense at this speed. The homunculus could probably fly after her, anyway. She ran for the back end of the train.

She didn’t know where she was going. “Away” was good enough. It was always good enough when you were in danger. She scrambled up the ladder onto the top of the boxcars. The last hopper loomed large in her vision as she galloped toward it and the lack of any further ability to gallop.

But when the homunculus jumped her from behind, the car’s rotten roof couldn’t take their weight. It disintegrated, sending them both into the boxcar. Amanita had the wind knocked out of her, but the homunculus flared its wings as it fell, so at least it didn’t fall on top of her. Wheezing, unsure whether the burning in her barrel was a broken rib, Amanit hauled herself to the wall and leaned against it to stand up.

Something clicked and the door she was bracing herself against slid away, nearly sending her tumbling out. Only a front hoof hooked around the door in a panic kept her inside as she dangled, back down, out of the car. She managed to hook her other hoof around the frame itself, got ready to pull in-

The homunculus was there, pushing against her chest and pressing her head back with its hooves to try and force her out of the train. Amanita screamed as she felt her joints stretch, but she somehow kept their grip.

The mountain loomed large to one side as the train approached it and the tunnel yawned ahead. Somehow, Amanita was able to register one thing: the tunnel was very narrow. So narrow that if she couldn’t pull herself back in, she wouldn’t be able to fit.

Panicking, fighting to breathe, Amanita grabbed the homunculus’s mane in her magic and pulled back. The homunculus’s head was wrenched backward, but too strong to be overcome by a grip like that, it otherwise didn’t move. The sunblasted thing was still expressionless. Lashing blindly, she kicked out its hind legs.

For maybe half a second, nothing was bracing it, and Amanita was able to pull herself two feet in. Then it collapsed on top of her; she was slammed to the ground and had the wind knocked out of her. As the train entered the tunnel, the wall streaked by inches from her head.

The homunculus picked itself up with a flap of its wings. Before it fell on her again, Amanita was able to roll away and out from under it. She pulled her head and legs in to avoid bumping them on the doorframe. The homunculus landed hard right next to her and turned, looking oddly murderous for something so expressionless.

The train hit the curve. Centrifugal force overcame Amanita’s stance and threw her against the wall, one of her hooves trailing out the doorframe. The homunculus nearly slipped out the door entirely before it slammed its hooves into the floor to make footholds; it dangled half in, half out of the train, still glaring at Amanita.

The boxcar lurched and suddenly Amanita was being thrown around like a ragdoll as the train tumbled.

Once the train was gone, Code lay there for maybe half a second, panting, before an unearthly din shrieked through the air, a rolling thunder that shook the earth and rattled the tracks. Metal screamed and the air rumbled like there’d been an avalanche. Given the source, there practically was.

Varnish could recover from being crushed in two, but Code couldn’t do anything about that at the moment. She galloped to the end of the tracks and winced at the view before her: the train had smashed through the buffers and crashed across the valley floor. Cars were bent and broken, coal was everywhere, and it was only by pure chance that no more buildings had been damaged. Had Amanita been in there? Given her luck, probably. Dead? Maybe.

A shadow flitted overhead and Code looked up. Chiropteri, two of them. Code’s ears folded back as she recognized Midwinter and Carnelian. Fighting was a lot harder when your opponent refused to stay down. But Code had just the thing for that. She sprinted back up the tracks, toward a certain tower.

Arrastra had told her about them. Bears had been part of the invading animals in the past, and Tratonmane had decided to overkill them. Ballista towers stood at key points across the town, ready to destroy any foe who intruded. They hadn’t been used in ages, but they were still maintained. And one of them was nearby, standing right at the upwards incline to the shelf.

There wasn’t a door on the wall nearest to Code, but that wall was jagged and rough. A combination of finding the right stones to hook her hooves onto and earth pony magic let Code haul herself up in moments, and she soon had an unrestricted view across all of Tratonmane.

She hastily cranked the windlass to notch the ballista, looking for- There they were. Midwinter and Carnelian, circling something like vultures. There was a rack of bolts next to the ballista, all wooden with sharpened points. Code put one in place and, licking her lips, brought the ballista around to aim.

Amanita’s head was spinning, but the rest of the world wasn’t. That was something. She groaned and, in spite of not being quite sure which way was up, somehow managed to pop upright even though literally her entire body ached, even submerged beneath an ocean of adrenaline. Part of her head burned as well. She touched it and winced; a long, thin gash was running across her face, from the end of her muzzle to someplace below the ear. It wasn’t bleeding too badly, but she’d probably need to get it looked at. The inside of the car was even darker than the rest of Midwich, but she found it in herself to light her horn.

The boxcar was lying on its side, and sitting at an angle. There hadn’t been much inside, but it’d all been thoroughly tossed around. Parts of the boxcar itself had been ripped off entirely in the impact, leaving holes on the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor. She could probably crawl through some of those holes. A particularly large, misshapen object was lying next to her. She turned her light on it, and- Yeeg. The front half of the homunculus, smashed in two by the door closing. It wasn’t moving, so maybe that had been too much for it, thank goodness.

Her head was still swimming and the awkward, cramped-ish space wasn’t helping her at all. Amanita stood up and tried walking to one of the holes, but her left front leg was behaving strangely and she couldn’t feel it. She raised it to her face to get a better look at the damage, but she couldn’t see it because her leg was gone.

Her leg was gone.

Her leg was gone her leg was gone her leg was gone.

She was looking right at her forearm and above where her knee had been there was just a ragged stump of flesh and blood and bone and-

Blood. It was like a kick in the head, jarring her out of her shock at the fact that her leg was gone. Blood. Bleeding. Tourniquet. She needed a tourniquet because her leg was gone. Arteries shriveled and clamped down to minimize blood loss when a limb was severed, but she could still bleed out because her leg was gone. Rope. Cord. Fabric. Anything she could tie around the spot where her leg was gone.

She began rooting through the remains of the carriage, patting everything down, frequently stumbling as she repeatedly tried stepping on a hoof she didn’t have anymore because her leg was gone. By some miracle, she found it: a coil of thin rope, perhaps for securing boxes. It’d work as a tourniquet because her leg was gone. Taking one end in her mouth, she wrapped the rope around the spot where her leg was gone a few times. She wrapped the other end around the fetlock that wasn’t gone and tugged as hard as she could. As the loop tightened, her leg twinged where it wasn’t gone.

A twinge wasn’t painful enough. She twisted another coil around her fetlock and yanked.

She knew it was tight enough when she nearly bit through the ropes as she screamed.

Nearly hyperventilating, not bothering to hold back tears, Amanita fumbled with the ropes, manipulating them with a combination of hoof, horn, and mouth. Somehow, she managed to get herself tied off without losing most of the tightness. When she was done, her wound was dripping sporadically rather than gushing. It’d have to do.

Her pace was awkward because her leg was gone, but somehow she managed to get out of the boxcar. The train had flown off the tracks, off the shelf, and now its remains were strewn across the valley floor, cars mangled, coal scattered. They weren’t much more than a hulk in the dark of Midwich, but they were impossible to miss. In particular, the passenger car was very nearly destroyed entirely, smashed to bits by the rest of the train. The tracks on the shelf pointed out over the space between Tratonmane and the valley walls, but they’d smashed through at least two houses, cleaving the backs off completely. Maybe more; Amanita couldn’t tell from this angle.

She held her breath and listened. No screams of pain. No screams of anguish. Maybe she wouldn’t need to resurrect anyone. As if that mattered at this particular moment. A few worried ponies were beginning to gather around, muttering to each other. Amanita started making her way towards them for lack of anything better to do. She didn’t know how she was going to explain anything, but-

Something in her mind made her look up. The sky was bright, and against that brightness, Amanita could see two chiropteri circling.

It was like a fresh shot of adrenaline. Amanita didn’t even know if they were Midwinter and Carnelian — it could’ve been any chiropteri, especially in this town — but she refused to believe differently. She hobbled into the town proper, feeling awkward on three legs. She wanted to run, she wanted to gallop, just get as far away as possible. In her broken state, a hobble was all she could manage.

She staggered between houses, down the nearest street. The Ash loomed before her in the dark. She looked up again. The chiropteri were still circling. One of them detached from the other and lazily spiraled downward. Amanita was soon able to pick out details. Midwinter.

As fast as she could muster, Amanita made for the nearest building. It’d provide more shelter than the streets, at least. She staggered into the town hall and kicked the doors shut. Every little bit would help. She entered the sanctuary with her heart threatening to break out of her skull. The tourniquet on her bad leg seemed to be holding. Now she just needed to-

She heard glass shattering. A moment later, Carnelian strode from the library, grinning too broadly. “Hello,” she said, brushing glass shards from her mane.

There was a door to the side. Amanita took it and was confronted with a set of ascending stairs. Her gaze followed them up. Bell tower. Hardly ideal, but she’d take it. She started climbing.

Her head spun as the stairs spiraled. How tall was the tower? She couldn’t remember. Not important at the moment. Keep moving.

Wood shattered below her. “That’s a bad idea!” Midwinter called up. “There won’t be anywhere for you to go!”

There was barely anywhere for Amanita to go now. And given the choice between certain death and uncertain death, she’d take the uncertainty, thanks. She kept climbing, up and up, passing windows in the walls as the staircase coiled. The bell was getting closer and closer above her as she ascended.

Wait. Why wasn’t Midwinter coming up-

“Amanita.”

Her stumble was even more awkward with her missing leg. Carnelian was coming down from the top landing, grinning disarmingly, cutting off any chance of escape that way. “You ought to stop running,” Carnelian said. She took her time, taking each step with deliberation. Or maybe just panic-extending schadenfreude.

Her breath racing as she slowly backed down the steps, Amanita looked at the windows; too small for her to fit through. Down the tower shaft; Midwinter was casually ambling up the stairs. For a brief second, Amanita considered jumping down to the floor, past Midwinter, but it was high enough that she’d probably break her remaining legs on landing. She was sandwiched between two vampires.

She needed a miracle.

It was a simple fact of life: it was hard to shoot pegasi. Code tried following Midwinter and Carnelian across town with the ballista, but they were just a hair too fast for her to properly aim at them, even if she had perfect light. She kept following them as best she could. They only needed to slip up once.

When they dropped below the roofline, Code cursed to herself. She was ready to pack it up and sprint after them, but she gave it another few moments, just in case. And, as luck would have it, Carnelian popped up above the chapel again, winging to the bell tower standing above the roofs. Unfortunately, she descended into it before Code could get a clear shot.

The glow of magic pierced out of one of the tower’s lower windows. Then another, higher up. Another, higher still… Amanita, climbing the tower? Maybe. Code kept the ballista aimed. Gradually, the light climbed up above the roofs. Then it suddenly came to a stop as, presumably, Amanita ran into Carnelian. But it didn’t go out; she was still alive. It slowly moved downwards, bobbing around awkwardly.

A pony stepped into view in one of the windows, looking down the staircase. Wings. Carnelian. The light in the window illuminated her quite nicely.

Code angled the crosshairs, the crossed circle, breathing slowly, not letting herself rush. The ballista seemed to be pulled in the proper direction, even small adjustments coming smoothly. The distance was far, but she knew how to aim. There was Carnelian… There was her heart… There was adjusting for bolt drop…

There was the opportunity.

“Gotcha,” Code whispered.

The entire tower rattled with the force of the ballista’s TWANG.

Half an inch thick, four inches thick, it doesn’t matter. A wooden stake to the heart is a wooden stake to the heart.

“Really,” said Carnelian, “it’s best if you let us-”

The bolt smashed through the window like divine lightning, hitting her square in the side. Amanita briefly caught her exploding into flame before the bolt’s inertia carried her with it out the other side of the tower and blew a massive hole in the wall. Amanita didn’t even have time to flinch. For a long moment, the only sound was a stray rock falling and Amanita’s shocked breathing. If that wasn’t a miracle, she didn’t know what was.

Then the wall groaned and the tower started leaning.

“What’s going on up there, Carnelian?” Midwinter called up.

Down: bad. Amanita hobbled up the stairs to where Carnelian had been standing as the tower lurched around her and more rubble fell. The hole in the wall was immense, so out she went, onto the slanted roof. It was almost too steep for her to stand on, especially with only three legs, but she somehow managed.

The tower groaned again and the lean got steeper. Amanita scrambled across the roof, nearly slipping more than once as she knocked shingles loose, trying to put as much space between her and the tower before-

One of the walls finally gave way and the tower keeled over, seeming to move in slow motion. When it slammed into the roof, its impact rumbled throughout the valley, and Amanita finally lost her grip and slid. Slick tiles zipped by beneath her as she fruitlessly clawed for some sort of purchase and was battered by rubble.

She fell off the edge of the roof and flailed in the air for a fraction of a second before hitting the ground on her back. Her nerves shrieked for an instant before adrenaline suppressed them. Dazed, not able to even groan, Amanita lay there on the ground, panting, waiting for her energy to come b-

The bell tumbled over the roof edge.

Amanita yelped and rolled to one side, curling up as much as she could manage. The bell slammed into the ground behind her with an almighty BONG, shaking the very earth hard enough to send her an inch into the air. Upthrown dirt and snow splattered her all over. She was jarred from her ball as she fell back down and her neck was limp enough for her head to bounce against the ground.

Then quiet and stillness.

Wait. She wasn’t deaf, was she? No, she could hear ponies yelling and the remains of the bell’s echo cascading up and down Midwich. It really was quiet. Huh. Her legs shaking violently, Amanita got to her hooves. The world was reeling beneath her, but she somehow managed to stay upright.

“Amanita!”

Midwinter was standing on the top of the roof with her wings spread. “You, of all ponies, should know better.” The air thrummed around her and lightning blitzed through her veins as her necklace glowed sickly. “Never fight a necromancer in a graveyard.”

She swept her wings downward. Amanita felt a rotten chill run through the air. Something intimately familiar. Necromancy. Enthrallment, specifically. It slithered around her, through her, down into the ground. The whipcrack sound of something breaking. The frozen ground beneath her vibrated like a violin string. The earth all around her churned.

And the first corpse’s head broke out of the earth.

Amanita yelped and shuffled back. The body was shriveled, decayed, its eyes rotted away and its coat missing in chunks. Blackened skin clung to bones and withered muscle like shrink-wrap. Its movements were awkward, jerky, those of a machine on the verge of a breakdown. Still it moved, stumbling towards her.

Yet in the moment, it was just one. And Amanita had developed a spell for this, hadn’t she? Quick enthrallment reversal. The structure of the spell was still clear in her mind, burning like a torch underground. As the zombie shuffled forward, she shuffled backward, weaving the spell together. Once it was done, she let it fly.

The zombie collapsed unmoving immediately. Amanita couldn’t help grinning to herself. She wanted to poke at the corpse and see what, if anything, had been left behind.

But in that time, more zombies had clawed their way free of the dirt. Either they were recently dead or the chill of Midwich had preserved them, but there were dozens, far too many for her spell to handle. Amanita staggered for the exit to the graveyard. Zombies lunged for her; they were slow and clumsy with rigor mortis and incoordination, but there were so many of them. Every time their cold hooves scraped against her coat, Amanita felt another pang of terror at being dragged down by numbers. She kept pushing, shoving them aside and moving for the exit with a single-minded determination.

Then, at some point, she broke free and was out of the graveyard. Sheer exhaustion was threatening to hold her legs down and keep her from moving. How long had she been running? It couldn’t have been that long. But she struggled to even think. The rumble of zombies still sounded behind her. All she could do was move forward.

The Great Ash materialized out of the dark. Her brain churning, Amanita shambled towards it.

Code knew she’d hit Carnelian, but she didn’t spare herself a moment of satisfaction. She immediately began turning the windlass to notch the ballista again. If there was even a chance of hitting Midwinter-

She could hear the groaning all the way across town. The dim silhouette of the bell tower lurched. She could see the glow of Amanita’s light scurry out, scramble across the roof, illuminate the tower as it keeled over as if in slow motion. Then she couldn’t see the light anymore. The bell pealed across the valley like it was tolling for a funeral.

Still Code ratcheted the windlass and forced her feelings down for the moment. There was only so much she could do. The rope clicked into place, and… Oh. Midwinter was standing right there, right on the roof in plain view. Code grabbed another bolt-

A blast of magic plowed up through the tower from the inside like an avalanche, annihilating the ballista. Below, Varnish screamed various invectives and uncreative names at Code. She reflexively hurled the bolt down on the off chance she could hit him.

No dice. She was greeted with another curse and an arcane buzzing in her coat. She hurled herself over the ramparts a second before another magic missile exploded up through the tower, blasting the landing to pieces.

Shocks ran up Code’s legs when she landed; she forced them back out. Amanita probably needed her. She was close to the ledge, so she leaped down, over the cliff and onto the ramp. She turned down main street to gallop northward-

Right as she was tensing her legs, a shield cut her off as it went up. It was massive, a good fifty feet across, and completely surrounded her on all sides, even taking in some buildings. And just inside the perimeter, Varnish was stalking down the ramp towards her, head hanging, eyes wild and livid. “You. Are not. RUNNING FROM ME!” he roared.

In spite of all her aches and pains, Bitterroot galloped the whole way down the tracks. She beat her wings to gain some speed, but her bad one still kept her from flying. She ran until her muscles burned and her heart felt like it was ready to give out and she couldn’t take another breath and then she kept galloping. She yelled for Amanita all the while, yelled until her throat was hoarse, yelled even though she never got a response.

She emerged from the tunnel feeling like she was a poke with a feather away from falling apart completely, held together only by adrenaline and fear. She couldn’t see the train. She continued galloping down the tracks, screaming. By now, Amanita’s name somehow both held no meaning and was the only thing that had any meaning.

As Bitterroot continued down the tracks, she began noticing things in the dark. A spare plank of wood, a shard of metal. Bit by bit, they grew more and more frequent, larger and larger. And when she reached the end of the tracks, where sheer inertia had annihilated the buffers, she almost felt her heart stop. The remains of the train had slid what looked like halfway down the valley, land turned to mulch in their wake, buildings torn open, cars tossed around like they were toys. Bitterroot had seen pictures of train crashes before, but they didn’t capture the carnage before her. Any chance of Amanita’s survival grew slimmer the longer she looked at it.

But. If Amanita was still alive, she’d be in there. Bitterroot tensed her legs-

Behind her, a crack of magic and, “Muffin!” Something stabbed her in the back of her neck, bringing her to her knees, and a terrifying numbness spread through her.

“Well.” Arc sidled in front of her, grinning a terrifying off-white smile. “You’re quite the test tube today, aren’t you? Ha!”

Midwinter watched Amanita stagger to the Great Ash and collapse, body heaving. All she’d needed to do was accept their offer, and now… such a sunblasted waste.

The question of what she’d do after this was niggling at her. She’d never gotten around to asking Arc how much amnestic he was making. It might be better to just wipe Tratonmane out and let the princess pick up the pieces. Stay in the North, find another isolated village, offer plumbing services…

But, one way or another, she needed the Binder back. The full one, not this decade-old version that barely let corpses shamble.

Amanita still hadn’t moved from the Ash, but she was sitting upright. Midwinter shook her head. She directed the zombies around the Ash, cutting off Amanita’s escape, and dropped onto the ground, not even bothering to open her wings.

“Amanita,” Midwinter called out as she strode towards the Ash. “I must commend your efforts, truly. You have fought bravely and well and demonstrated a keen mind. But you saw for yourself: I was decapitated and I’m still here. You have been struggling ever since you lost a mere leg. You are surrounded and outnumbered. How do you hope to improvise your way out of this?”

Amanita lifted her head. Blood was still dripping from the gash across her face and she was cradling what remained of her bad leg and her every breath was labored and one of her eyes was swollen shut. Still, she grinned rakishly as she wheezed out, “The tree’s dead.” And she held up the Binder.

The ground began to rumble.

“…Oh, fuck me,” Midwinter breathed.

And the first roots burst from the loam.