“Mommy?”
“Shh, keep quiet sweetie, you need to keep your voice down.”
“But… But Daddy hasn’t come back yet.”
“It’s okay Buttercup, it’s all going to be OK.” The older mare holding onto a shaking fillies form, her body pressed hard against the wall, with her hooves shielding her daughter’s eyes. The room was covered with burns and ash, pieces of wood hanging on by a small amount of fibers. A thin veil of pink tinted light shone through the window, the sound of screaming emanating from outside.
Dandy, the older mare, held onto her daughter tighter. Dried tears stained the fur under her eyes, giving her distinct black rings under her eyes. Behind her back lay her limp wing, the appendage having been damaged when trying to escape the carnage that the end had caused.
How could this have happened? They said that Equestria was safe. That there was no way that the URS could ever do anything to the Empire. Why had they lied? Left them all to die at the hands of that… that thing!
Gulping as she saw something begin to seep through the broken windows, she looked to her daughter, a new wave of tears beginning to form.
“Buttercup… Sweetie, can you sing me your favourite song.”
“But mommy, why do yo-”
“Please, just sing for mommy.” Dandy interrupted the young filly.
The pink smoke had gotten to them by now, the first gasp of the gas filling Dandy’s lungs. It burned. Worse than and sort of hellfire you could imagine. But that wasn’t the point. The more Dandy breathed in, the less chance it had of reaching her daughter.
Buttercup took a few seconds before nodding slowly.
‘Hush now, quiet now
It's time to lay your sleepy head
Hush now, quiet now
It's time to go to bed’
Dandy coughed a few times, a splatter of blood hitting the floor shortly after. It felt like the pink smoke was slowly dissolving her insides, each breath grinding like barbed wire.
“K-Keep going, please…” Dandy nearly begged, her voice becoming raspy from the strain.
‘Hush now, Quiet now.
It's time to lay your sleepy head.
Hush now, Quiet now.
It's time to go to bed.’
Her eyes where becoming heavy now, the splatters of blood had now become a fountain emanating from her mouth and nostrils. There was a faint sound of laughter coming from outside, a horrible, distorted laughter that had no business belonging to anypony.
‘Driftin' off to sleep.
Exciting day behind you.
Driftin' off to sleep…’
Buttercup heard a sudden gasp, before she was left in abrupt silence. Her mother’s arms had become limp around her, and with a little shifting, Buttercup was able to look up. And she wailed out a cry that could be heard for a decent amount of space away.
War.
War never Changes.
After years of friendship and prosperity, the values of pony kind became lost to the deep desires of greed, lust and corruption. All the things that made Equestria so harmonious, was lost in an instant, consumed by Hellfire Bombs and Dark Spells.
But it was not, as some had predicted, the end of the world. Instead, the apocalypse was simply the prologue to another bloody chapter of pony history. For mare had succeeded in destroying the world - but war, war never changes.
In the early days, thousands were spared the horrors of the holocaust by taking refuge in enormous underground shelters, known as Stables. But when they emerged, they had only the hell of the wastes to greet them. One of these underground fortresses was Stable 27. Imprisoned safely behind the large Stable door, under a mountain of stone, generation after generation has lived without knowledge of the outside world.
Here, we meet Torchlight, a young Unicorn Mare, who has never thought anything of the outside world… until now.
A good way to describe the maintenance department was to compare it to a black hole, it was something that looked interesting, but you would never get near to. It was just rotten luck that it seemed that Torchlight was the one mare you was sent straight for the event horizon. It wasn’t that she hated the job; truthfully, she enjoyed the peace and quiet. But there was simply a point where you got sick of staying down below the bottom levels, away from everyone.
The soft blue light of her pip-buck gave an eerie hue through the darkness as she tried to repair a malfunctioning generator. Normally, she would have waited for one of the lower workers to come and fix it, but it just so happened to be directly fed to the Overmare’s office. Apparently that drunkard couldn’t stand a flickering light with her hangovers.
“It would do the tramp some good, sober up once in a while.” Torch grumbled absently, floating a pair of plies in the right place, cutting into a wire with a snip.
Still, it was hardly the Overmare’s fault that she had become a drunkard; it was a rampant problem in the Stable. For whatever dumb reason, somepony had decided to overstock on Alcohol making equipment, and cut down on water purifiers. It resulted in 6 Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000’s to 2 Water Purifiers, when the ratio should have been the other way round.
So that’s what the ponies of Stable 27 drank, Cider, and pretty much that exclusively. Water was withheld for those who had gone overboard on cider, and special occasions. If you didn’t like Cider in the Stable, you had to stomach the stuff.
Torch had tried to keep herself in moderation, too much Cider having the effect of making her magic rather… unpredictable in nature. She was sure that one colt was still stripped green and pink.
Putting the last of the wires in place, she got to her hooves, dusting off the grime on her overalls. Going over to the control panel, she began to flick switches, until the soft hum of the generator began again. Smiling, she was about to leave when the thing gave a mechanical grumble, before it lost all noise.
Gritting her teeth, Torch trotted over to the generator. Turning to face away from it, she reared herself onto her forelegs and kicked back, hitting the generator square on. It gave a long creak before it began to hum once more.
“Good ol’ bucking method, works every time.” Torchlight nodded; a smirk as clear as the Stable lights on her face as she exited the maintenance department.
Turning on her pip-buck radio, her ears where assaulted with the sound of some rather drunk ponies reciting some pre-war song, something about smiling. Torchlight found such songs silly, especially in a Stable like this one. It didn’t help that whoever the stallion was who was singing was rather terrible. So terrible that it sounded slightly familiar.
Shaking her head, Torchlight rounded a corner, her eyes being given the full show of two young colts trying to choke each other with their tongues. Torchlight rolled her eyes, they were either majorly hammered, or complete rebels. Either way, if they got caught, they’d be in big trouble.
“Hey! You two!” She called, making the two young colts to jump and straighten upright quicker than a Wonderbolt. From their reaction, she deduced that they were the rebellious sort, which was super.
“T-Torchlight…” The colt on the right, Cider Shot, stammered out, stumbling along the way. The blue furred Pegasus Pony was shaking in his stance; his wings still semi-pomfed. His counterpart wasn’t much better, young Sketch, was looking at a rather interesting spec on the floor. The Unicorn was definitely the subservient type.
Cider Shot’s eyes narrowed slightly as he took a step forward, blowing out air through his nostrils in a threatening way. “You didn’t see anything… did ya?” He pressed a dark look in his eye… which only made Torchlight want to laugh.
Letting a smug look fall on her face, Torch looked at them both. “Oh, apart from when you were trying to eat his face, not much.” She was silent for a second, before she couldn’t take it anymore, and she fell over laughing.
“Ci-Cider, we should go…” Sketch pressed, looking worryingly at Torch.
“Yeah, I think we should.” Cider Shot agreed, and turned along with Sketch and began to leave.
“Hold it!” Torchlight shouted, her voice suddenly serious as she got back to her feet and trotted over to the two colts. They had both stopped in their tracks, but had not moved their heads. Getting in between the two, Torchlight looked at both of them, before sighing.
“You two know that kind of thing ain’t allowed around here, correct?” Torchlight stated, her head turning from each of them. They both nodded, suddenly feeling even more scared than before. “And you’re also aware that I’m obligated to tell the Overmare of this?” They nodded again, only this time not nearly as fast.
Letting a small smile grace her lips, she put her forelegs over the two colts’ shoulders. “Well, treat each other right, make sure that you keep things behind doors, and don’t ever change.” They both looked at her with wide eyes, which she just smiled warmly to. As far as she was concerned, you could do whatever you wanted with your life, and it wasn’t like it was hurting anypony.
“Bu- But, why?” Sketch asked meekly as Torch began to walk away.
“Not my place to interfere, as long as you’re not busting light bulbs, I couldn’t care less.” She shot a playful look at Cider Shot, before returning to her journeys down the corridors of Stable 27.
It was times like this, she liked not being around other ponies all the time, meant you were able to get a surprise more often.
There was a commotion in the atrium, something akin to a drinking game. Blinking, she rounded the corner to see two unicorn ponies trying to keep weights in the air while taking shots of Cider. It had been a popular game in the Stable for years, Torch’s father being a champion at the sport, something he made everyone remember when he had a few.
She supposed it wasn’t so surprising that she was dragged in as soon as someone had spotted her. Placed in the middle of the crowd, she was handed a shot of Cider almost immediately. Looking at the drink for a second, she took a deep breath, and gulped down the drink. Hissing as the strong drink slivered down her throat, she used her telekinesis to levitate the weight high in the air. And thus the game began.
With every new drink that was poured down her throat, the weight would feel as though it had doubled. By the time she had hit 6, she was feeling lightheaded. Looking over to the scoreboard, she saw she was only two behind the lead. Closing her eyes, she called out as loud as she could.
“Give me 3 at once!” The order was met with universal praise from the crowd, who got the drinks ready. Bringing the glasses to Torch, they shoved the drinks down her throat in quick succession.
The weight wavered, dipping a few feet for a second. The crowd let out an audible gasp as they saw the weight about to hit the floor. And it would have, had the Overmare suddenly come walking into the atrium screaming.
It was fast, almost too fast for Torch to realize what had happened. Turning to the source of the voice, she had accidentally launched the weight right at the Overmare. There was a sickening crack, and the body of the old mare hit the metal floor with a thud, blood pooling around her body.
It was at this point, that Torchlight fainted.
