FALLOUT EQUESTRIA: RISING DAWN

Chapter 2

Into the Darkness

"It is our only hope. To open those doors, we may die. But to remain here, we WILL die."

Darkness.

The buffer zone door had closed behind us and in that instant we were shut off completely from the rest of our kind in these black halls.

Never had I known darkness such as this. The lights in the stable were only two blast doors behind me. Yet here, I gazed into the maw of an abyss and knew that out here, they were so far away. It was all around me; there was not a single mote of light in the frozen shadows of whatever underworld we had entered.

I flicked on my flashlight and gasped as the darkness parted.

"Goddesses … are you ponies seeing this?" Amber Fields asked, shuddering.

Bones. I saw bones. Too many to count; too many and yet not enough to form a whole skeleton.

Star Glint nudged a stray rib. "How many ponies died here?"

"Too many." I heard Dew Drops murmur.

I took a step back and my hoof crunched through something brittle.

I looked down and the bone white cranium of a long dead pony broke like a porcelain jar around my hoof. I stymied the urge to scream and struggled to look elsewhere, somewhere that wasn't littered by the bones of some deceased pony.

I found none. All that remained were the shattered, howling jaws of ponies long dead. Their silent, broken maws warned me to turn back to the safety they were not able to enjoy. Their envious, infuriated ghosts screamed at me to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the home that they had been denied to settle.

I looked behind me away and saw the black trails that smeared the surface of the stable doors as far as I could reach. Images of ponies clawing desperately at the door with their hooves until they were gored and worn to bloody stumps flashed before my eyes as I stared, shaking violently at their crushed, disintegrating remains. They had tried to claw their way in as the balefire flames consumed them. Hundreds of ponies had died in this tunnel with help and safety only two doors away.

They were so close, yet so far.

"Try not to look." Dew Drops whispered, pushing me away from the mass grave.

How couldn't I? Even long dead, their unhallowed bones still cried out for mercy - for some solace from the annihilation that erased the memories of their existences from the face of Equestria. These ponies were the forgotten souls that ponykind had decided to leave behind.

My wandering, teary eyes came upon a skeleton too small to be that of a stallion or a mare.

"They left them here to die." I turned to find that the others were looking at me. "They had foals … they had foals …" I murmured, nudging the delicate, trampled skull of a colt. Or was it a filly? I wondered how it died. I wondered if the ponies who had crushed it beneath their hooves even heard its screams.

The horrifying wail of a dying filly echoed in my thoughts.

"We need to get out of here." I said, loud enough to turn heads.

Lightning Twirl started down the tunnel. "Don't look back. We have to keep moving forward. There ain't anything here for us to see." She muttered, ash and dust swirling around her hooves as she trotted through their ashen graves.

I flashed my light to the end of the tunnel – was that the end? I couldn't tell; only an empty stretch of abyss snaked beyond as far as my eyes could see. The dead paved a path of bone that we followed.

In the distance, the persistent haunting moan of a frozen wind beckoned us forward. It was as if the souls of the ponies who had been burned away in the balefire apocalypse were trapped in an eternal purgatory, howling together in endless suffering. We heard the siren call and followed it as it promised us a Water Talisman and a return home to our families.

The touch of the frozen air slithered through the fabric of my barding, and I shivered under my skin, stepping over pony remains that I dared not disturb. They deserved rest.

Here, I knew now, that warmth and comfort had been luxuries that we, the 300 ponies of Stable 29 had taken for granted.

"Where's the exit?" Box Cutter whispered, wisps of mist jetting out of his breather mask.

"We're close, I think. Can't you feel it getting colder?" Lightning Twirl replied, leading us through the tunnel.

I was trailing behind them not wanting to see what lay for us outside, but, at the same time, trotting forward out of fear of being left behind. I feared what lay outside far more than the frozen halls that stretched out before us.

Star Glint beamed his flashlight down the tunnel and we watched it pan across a partially collapsed archway.

"Thank the Goddesses." I heard Dew Drops mutter. We trotted towards it and our relief was short lived.

We were close enough to see the bones poking out of the rubble when we were blasted by a glacial breeze. It was as if we were being touched by the hooves of death itself. We were planets away from home, for the world we emerged unto was nothing like that which I had expected.

I ducked under the fallen archway and poked my head out of the tunnel; my eyes neither dilated nor contracted for the darkness had not given way to light.

This place - this wasteland - was a snowy abyss. Before me was a bleak, frozen field of blackened willows that reached their grim claws to the sky for a sun that would never come. Mountains of snow and crag fields of 200 year old ice that would never melt smothered the lifeless earth as far as my eye could see. A flurry of snow blew through my limbs and I shivered against its chilling touch.

Was this the heirloom our illustrious ancestors left behind for us to inherit? No, this couldn't have been the Equestria we learned of in the books. There was not a single thing magical about this bleak perversion of ponykind's homeland. There was an ubiquitous insidiousness that seemed to lurk in the shadows of the lifeless hills.

The snow storm seemed to intensify as I took several trembling steps further out of the tunnel, my friends following close behind me. I glanced upwards and my eyes glazed over.

The sky.

I looked up and the world around me seemed to fall away from my paralyzed hooves. I stared wide eyed and skyward into infinity. My legs began to tremble beneath me; I felt incredibly small and helpless beneath the weight of the dark, ashen clouds that hung above the frozen earth.

I tore my eyes from the dark canopy of balefire fallout and an overwhelming sensation of vertigo overcame me. I fell into the sky.

The earth disappeared beneath my hooves. Everything around me tumbled end over end as I dropped into the clouds.

The world turned white and I crunched muzzle first into the snow drifts. I lay there with my mask in the snow, swallowing the bile that rose to my throat. In my daze, I could hear ponies shouting after me through my ringing ears.

Hooves wrenched me out of the snow, and I gasped for air, my radmeter clicking softly. I came out of the snow, Box Cutter smacking my cheeks with his hooves. I saw Dew Drops in the snow, dry heaving. "The sky will be the end of me!" she hissed.

Star Glint hoofed his mask and vomited into the ice. "Glllhuh …

"The sky .. I never thought I'd ever see it." Lightning Twirl deadpanned her gaze to the everwinter skies. "This can't be the same sky my ancestors soared." She murmured with an anguished sigh, fluttering a few feet above the snow. She stared into the clouds. "It just can't be." The mare sobbed softly, a frosty mist trailing behind her tail as her breather discharged.

The murals of blue skies and white clouds she had admired and known her entire life within the confines of our stable were scrubbed away by the bleakness of the winter.

The expectations I had built over my lifetime had been shattered the moment I stepped out that door. But out here, they were ground to a fine, glassy dust and poured into my eyes to blind any hope I had ever held for the world above.

This wasn't Equestria, the glorious land of magic and wonder that the Goddesses of the Sun and Moon had presided over. I panned my ghastly eye holes into the sky once more. In the distance, a black speck seemed to be watching us. A snow swirl blew across my eyes and when I blinked it was no longer there.

Then I hoofed my mask and vomited the contents of my stomach into the snow only for it to solidify in seconds before my bloodshot eyes.

I wanted to turn around and never look back.

Or up.

---

The sky had darkened to an obfuscated black expanse. I was glad I couldn't tell whether or not it was still there as I illuminated my flashlight down upon a path we had decided to follow. We snaked through a forest of ancient, gangly dead trees, 6 different hoofprints trailing behind us.

In this land, there was only night. I stared grimly into the shadows knowing that I might never see the light of day or feel the warmth of a home ever again.

My pipbuck, every now and then, in a land I could barely see, would alert me that I'd entered a new zone. How it could have possibly ever known that this particular area was known as the 'Crystal Highway' was beyond my understanding. There was no sign of a highway anywhere. I looked down and thought that it might have been buried several feet beneath my hooves in century old permafrost.

If there had ever been a highway, we wouldn't be following it.

Our flashlights cut illuminated swaths across the shadows as our misty breaths reminded us that we were still alive. Exposed to the elements, our bodies began to slow and wear down while the snowfall only intensified. Around us was a forest of disintegrating stumps, uprooted trees, and half fossilized trunks. They looked like they were drowning under the snow, clawing at the surface for air with gnarled, broken fingers as they suffocated beneath the shifting tides.

I shivered, not from the howling wind that blasted at my barding, but at the unnerving lifelessness of these pale barrens. The wind moaned a somber requiem that chilled me to the very core; my soul felt like it was going to freeze over.

Whatever life that had been here once had been strangulated out of existence 200 years ago. I wasn't expecting to see anything that moved except the hooves beneath my five other friends.

We had been trotting through the snow for several hours now. My legs were sore and I felt like my body was going to give up on me at any moment now. We'd trudged almost endlessly through the gloom with only a few half hour breaks in between. Amber Fields stumbled and collapsed as Lightning Twirl pushed us eastward in a direction we thought would lead us to Poneva. Box Cutter helped her to her hooves, the pegasus pony only pausing momentarily for the mare to catch up. I could hear Amber Fields's sobs behind me as I trudged deeper into the frozen snowfall.

We had to keep moving, she had said. We couldn't stop, she said.

Every minute we spent out here exposed to the unforgiving elements, the snow storm intensified. It was getting harder and harder to see more than 20 yards ahead of us. My flashlight's beam was waning through the snowflakes, warping and reflecting against the flurry of white specks that swam across my field of vision.

Were it not for my pipbuck, I wouldn't have known it'd been almost eight hours since we'd left our stable. There hadn't been any sign of light; no hint of whether or not the sun or the moon had been hanging over us. I thought that perhaps when the balefire bombs fell, the planet had been thrown away from the guarding light of the moon and the warmth of the sun.

I stumbled through the white drifts, my hind legs giving in to the burning sensation of fatigue that pulsated through my muscles. I panted heavily, wisps of vapor trailing out of my filters. I wanted to just sit here and wait until my muscles stopped spasming. But out here, blood that isn't circulating isn't going to circulate at all.

A grayish magical field swirled around me and Dew Drops helped me to my hooves. I leaned against her, catching my breath. I couldn't tell what she was thinking behind her balaclava and oxygen mask, but I hoped she didn't think any less of me. I wasn't sure how much trotting I had left.

"You're fine, Red. Just catch your breath; we can make it." She whispered.

I squeezed my eyes shut, exhaling. "Why do you sound so sure?" I wheezed, taking a few weary steps through the snow.

She, my shoulder to lean on, trudged onward through the snow as I leaned against her.

"Because it's all we've got to hope for." The blue mare said softly, "because if we don't…" she stopped for a moment and I nearly slumped to the snow. Dew Drops shook her head, not wanting to finish. I met her gray eyes briefly before the mare trotted forward, her scarf billowing behind us in the chilling breeze.

By the time we came across a reminder that pony life had existed here once, it had become so dark that we would not have been able to see anything past our muzzles without our flashlights.

A bent, half buried sign that reflected dully under our beams spoke to us more than anything out here had ever said since we emerged.

"City of Poneva, 20 miles." Lightning Twirl read out loud, scraping away a layer of rime with a forehoof. She tapped her pipbuck and swung her flashlight due east. "I think we're on the right track, if my pipbuck isn't just spouting off bullshit my way."

"20 fucking miles." I muttered.

Star Glint exhaled loudly and leaned wearily against the sign only to have it crumple into the snow with him. He shook himself of the powder that clung to his barding and sighed as the snowfall scattered more across the fabric, "Let's just find the damn thing and go." The stallion grumbled.

"How do we even know there's a Water Talisman out there?" I asked, grimly. We had seen nothing but snow and ice for the last eight hours. At this rate, I wasn't sure we'd find anything left, let alone Poneva city. I was hoping to see a few ruined buildings here and there, maybe a fence. There'd been no sign of civilization until now. "We've been our here for hours now, and the only thing that changed was this fucking sign here." I growled, nudging its bruised, melted frame.

"Just keep walking." Lightning Twirl stated, her voice flat as she followed wherever her flashlight shone. "We can't waste any more time –"

I sighed a jet of air through my mask. "We may not even be heading in the right direction. How the hell do our pipbucks know that this really is the Crystal Highway? I'm not seeing any crystals anywhere."

"As long as we stay on the highway, we'll follow it." The mare replied, "This highway has to lead somewhere … if we follow it, we'll get somewhere."

"Somewhere." I muttered, stopping for a moment to lean against a burned disintegrating tree trunk. I beamed my light lazily across the trees, not looking for anything in particular.

I flashed its yellow beam skywards and saw only a canopy of ghastly branches. It was remarkably unnerving; the shadows of my friends played against the trees like ghosts. They were getting further and further away and I started forward, swinging my beam from left to right.

For a moment, as it passed between a pair of trees, a pair of teal orbs flashed back at me. I frowned, panning it back. It wasn't there anymore. Now my mane was itching and the flesh under my barding was beginning to tingle.

I hurried away, not looking back.

"You ponies see that?" I huffed softly, crunching through the snow.

They all turned to look.

"It wasn't a sign that said 'stable stec, this way' was it?" Box Cutter asked, hopefully.

I shook my head. "I think I saw something." I murmured, unsure. Looking at them imploringly, I added, "Or somepony."

Star Glint panned his flashlight across the trees. "There's nothing here but us." he said, shining along the path once more.

I shrugged, Dew Drops looking at me worriedly.

Lightning Twirl shivered, "I don't care, let's just keep walking and stop looking back -"

Somepony screamed. I whirled around and saw Amber Fields fall through the crumbling earth. The snow fell away and she disappeared beneath a snow drift. I galloped to the ground she had been standing in and I heard an audible thump at the bottom of a dark hole at my hooves. Amber Fields shrieked in agony, and my stomach churned as I expected the worst.

The ground had caved in and given way to what looked like a bear den, if the pictures in our textbooks had been accurate.

I shined my light inside and saw skeletons buried within beneath Amber Fields's heaving chest. I shivered and saw that the bear skulls had an extra set of jaws.

Amber Fields whined as one of her hooves was began to swell to a point that made my stomach churn. I shouted her name.

"Goddesses!" The mare cried through the howling wind, "I - I think I twisted my ankle!" She screamed, hoarsely. Good, at least she was still alive.

"We're getting you out, Amber! Stay with us!"

The mare began screaming once more. "What the hell are these things?" She croaked, thrashing through the bones.

"Those might have been bears at one point." I replied, focusing my magic around the golden coated mare. A red and gray glow surrounded her and we slowly lifted the pony out and set her down a foot away from the sinkhole.

"Is she okay?" Lightning Twirl shouted, her voice becoming barely audible in the intensifying blizzard.

"Twisted her ankle," I shouted back, supporting the mare with my magic as she limped painfully across the snow.

"We can't stay out here - the snow - it's getting too thick!" Dew Drops screamed as the wind blasted across our rime encrusted bardings.

I was beginning to panic. A whiteout was approaching, and the snow was piling up around us as we lingered. We had to keep moving.

"Stay together, we're going to make it through this!" Lightning Twirl screamed. I held Amber Fields tight and wrapped a leg around Dew Drops's neck. The frozen wasteland opened its maws and threatened to swallow us whole.

I shouted soundlessly in the blizzard, pushing past a wall of powder that piled up in front of my very hooves.

"Twirl! Star! Box!" I cried out into the storm. No response. "Where the fuck are they!?" I asked, shaking the snow out of my goggles.

"I-I can't see - I can't see!" Dew Drops shrieked, hoofing at her mask like her life depended on it.

"It's a whiteout DD, don't let go!"

Amber Fields was sobbing, her limp rocking us back and forth as we stumbled through the snowstorm. The mare was slowing us down.

"I can't go on like this, Red!" Amber Fields screamed, her voice barely audible as the wind shrieked through my ears. Its howl was that of a thousand screaming voices coalescing into a single, anguished moan. The dead demanded we join them.

"Don't let go Amber, don't let go!"

"Hold! ON!" I shouted, my muscles burning.

The mare stumbled, breaking my grip. And the wind dragged her into the night.

Amber Fields screamed until her voice faded away and I could feel her leg wrapped around me no more. "NO!" I stopped for mere seconds, looking back the way we came before the blizzard threatened to bury us beneath its unrelenting drifts.

My flashlight flew from my magical grip and everything went dark. Dew Drops's beam flashed wildly across the swirling flakes like static noise on a terminal screen. I wanted to turn back.

A dark corner of my mind told me that she was already dead.

I needed to be strong. I needed to survive.

I needed …. to rest.

The snow piled on top of me, in front of me, and around me. My tears fogged the inside of my goggles and I lost any and all ability to see. Never before, not even within the purification chamber of stable 29 had I feared death as much as I did now.

At least when you died in a stable, you had a body to cremate. Out here, we were going to be lost beneath the drifts, never to be seen again. Never to see the light again.

Seconds passed by, then minutes, then for what seemed like hours. The two of us pushed through the snow. My body had given up. Only my mind had the capacity to send its weary nervous signals to twitch my frozen limbs through the blizzard. My muscles burned and my heart drummed faster than I could breathe. Then I began to see stars.

- thump - thump - thump - thump – thump – thump….. thump …. thump ….

Shadows began to take me. I failed.

My arms slackened and Dew Drops threatened to slip from my barding. But instead, I slipped away from her. The wind took me, and I could feel myself being dragged through the snow. Rocks dug into my barding and clipped my ribs.

… thump …. thump … thump …

"…DAWN!" My head slammed onto solid floor.

…..thump – thump – thump -

Hooves tore my breather mask from my face and I took an agonizing gasp. Dew Drops's blurry, blood shot grays stared into mine and she pulled me to my hooves. I felt the metallic lip of a canteen push through my lips and the familiar taste of hard cider rushed down my throat.

I coughed, sputtered, and collapsed to the concrete floor.

Dew Drops's mouth moved, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. I tipped my glassy eyes to what had to be a ceiling over my head. Holes and breaches in both the walls and the roof above me sent cascading showers of winter flakes into the open room. Three other equine silhouettes were stumbling into the cottage behind her. I was too disorientated to care who they were at this point.

The sugar from the cider metabolized and the black tunnels around me faded away.

"- Fields?" I heard her asking me, "Where's Amber Fields!?"

I closed my eyes for a moment and I remembered her screams die away in the howling wind. I opened, and the others were staring down at me, masks off as their teary eyes bore down upon me with the weight of worlds.

"She's dead." I looked away, not wanting to meet their eyes. I could have turned around. I could have caught her. But I didn't.

She was already dead. "Goddesses …" I sobbed. "I told you, Dew Drops … I fucking told you." I wheezed. "Told you I'd get everypony killed."

Dew Drops deadpanned me, and trotted away with the rest.

I let my head roll against the blackened concrete walls of the dreary, ancient cottage, and let the darkness take me to a slumber I wished I would never wake from.

---

My bloodshot eyes fluttered open, and not to my surprise, they didn't need to adjust. Everypony was still asleep as I trotted through the burned out ruin. The blizzard had subsided to a thin layer of snow fall that might have made for a peaceful winter night had I not been standing inside the ruins of somepony's home.

The inside of the cottage had been worn bare by the elements over 200 years of unrelenting punishment. Parts of the brick house had already begun to collapse, and some sections, like what I assumed to be its dining room, had barred me entry with a fallen ceiling. Whatever personal belongings there had been that hadn't been locked up looked to either have been incinerated or carried away by the wasteland's frozen gales. Black outlines painted the walls and floor where furniture had been burned away by the balefire holocaust.

I trotted to a shattered, blackened window pane and stared out into the snow.

Dew Drops had told me that anything was possible as long as we had our friends. I imagined a golden pony mare wandering through the snow alone, helpless and lost, just waiting to die - abandoned and left for dead by the ponies she had thought were her friends. I turned my weary eyes low in shame and knew that her colt would never see his mother ever again.

And that I was the one to blame.

My shoulders began to quake with the force of my sobs. My body had given up, and Amber Fields had died because I wasn't strong enough.

I imagined the mare stumbling into the powder on her bad leg, her limps turning into crawls, and her crawls turning into stillness. She curled up in a vast, bleak field of snow – cold, alone, and dying – only to close her eyes and let the glacial touch of death finally take her.

The pale layers had risen several inches and nearly touched the bottom of the window pane since the blizzard ended, threatening to pour in through its shattered frame. I leaned into it and looked out into the gloom. I wouldn't say it was day, but it wasn't night either. It was bright enough to see the paleness of the snow without the aid of my flashlight. It was not as dark as it was … I looked at my pipbuck: four hours ago.

I scanned the gnarled tree trunks that surrounded the lonely cottage. A part of me hoped I'd see Amber Fields limping our way. I frowned.

A black silhouette partially concealed behind a withering trunk watched me from the distance. Squinting at it, I could see its distinctly teal eyes narrowing back at me. We stared at each other for a good five seconds. I was about ready to raise my hoof to wave at it when I felt somepony nudge my shoulder.

"What are you doing?" Box Cutter asked, tiredly.

I glanced over and back out the window, "I –" the silhouette was no longer there. "I don't know. I think I saw something."

Box Cutter was silent for a moment.

"Amber?"

I shook my head slowly, lowering my head.

"I saw the snow take her away." I whispered, my breath escaping my lips in a vaporous cloud. My friend trotted up next to me and stared out the window. "This can't be Equestria, Box. Nothing… nothing can survive out here. I can't even hope that Amber's still alive. I can't hope that we'll find the Water Talisman. Even if there were still any of them left, the land'll freeze over before we can even get near it."

I shivered and rubbed one of my forelegs with another.

"I'll tell ya one thing, this ain't the Equestria I read about in the books – that's for sure." He muttered with a wheezing chuckle. "Amber … Amber was out of the game when she fell down that hole." Box looked at me with his bloodshot eyes. It looked like he had been crying all night. I met his gaze, and he added, "No way anypony could've walked through a blizzard with an ankle like that, Red. It wasn't your fault…"

"I just hope she went out quick…" I trailed off. Maybe the snow buried her and she froze to death. Maybe the wind swept her off a cliff or … damn! That wasn't helping me. "I should've held on tighter. I just wasn't strong enough, Box. I'm tired, everything's so sore I'm not sure I can make the rest of the trek, and I think I'm seeing things now." I breathed.

He punched my shoulder with a hoof. "We have ponies waiting for us, waiting for you to come back home. If you give up, if I give up – If any of us gives up, the game's over." Box Cutter he said, swiping his hoof through the air. "If one of us goes … the others have to keep going. Like what Twirl said, 'just keep moving'. Don't stop, don't stop for just one moment, because if you go too…" He trailed off. Box Cutter shook his head, "There's still five of us left, Red. As long as there's still one of us going, as long as there's one pony still moving, there's still hope."

We leaned against each other for what felt like hours. I finally chuckled and said, "When you fell in the water and got stuck with that metal beam back home, you were grinning ear to ear like it was just a bruise." I bumped him with a hoof, "How do you do it?"

Box Cutter snorted a jet of cloudy vapor. The stallion shivered on his hooves and he looked out the window with glassy, bloodshot eyes. "It takes more than a sauna treatment and a paper cut to kill me, Red."

"You thick skinned son of a bitch…" I muttered with a smirk. "You must've been born without nerve endings weren't you." I stated, not asking. "Concussion and all, you still came to the meeting and volunteered. Didn't even know what you were volunteering for."

"I'm still feeling it, honestly." I said softly. "I get headaches every now and then, and that trek was pushing it."

I sighed, levitating out a canteen of stable cider. I took a swig, and passed it to him. "I never knew it'd be this bad." The stallion said, gripping the canteen with his teeth and tipping his head back. "To think our ancestors were all about friendship and harmony and all that ...they did all this, destroyed themselves."

"And this is the land the stables are supposed to open their doors to. I don't think the stable'll ever be ready for what's out here. I can't see ponies ever living here in a million years. White walls are better than white outs, honestly." I said, taking another drink before passing it to Box Cutter. The cider burned going down my throat, but the pain assured me that I was still alive.

"Amen to that, brony." He tipped his head and frowned. Box Cutter held the canteen upside down. "Least my headache's gone."

I laughed grimly, "Dying'll make it all go away." He chuckled along with me, but I wasn't kidding. I reached into my satchel bags and gave him a few painkillers which he swallowed them dry. "You should try to get some more rest. Your head might swell up and explode or something."

Box Cutter nodded, trotting away from the window. I stood there for a few moments in silence. Under the quietude of the snowfall, I heard somepony sobbing a few doors down. I followed the mare's voice. I followed Dew Drops's voice to a small room that'd somehow held against the passage of time.

I peeked my head through the doorway and, beneath a somber veil of darkness, I saw Dew Drops lying next to the skull of some long dead pony. The deteriorating half buried skeleton lay crushed beneath a collapsed section of the cottage's wall. Dew Drops was laid out across a charred, wooden floor, her quivering nose touching the skull's pale, weathered muzzle.

Her bags were scattered all around her and an empty canteen of what I assumed was cider was a hoof's length away from her anguished lips.

I started cautiously towards her, calling her name. "DD?" I whispered.

She just laid there and sobbed unresponsively. The mare's eyes were closed but beneath her eyelids, her eyes swiveled rapidly as if they were in the middle of REM sleep.

I sat beside her, watching the blue mare weep. Dew Drops must have been asleep, I thought, running a hoof through her disheveled teal mane. I lay down next to her and looked at her worriedly. Her cheeks and brows were squeezed into a wretched, miserable grimace.

"DD, are you okay?" I whispered, shaking her softly. The mare wouldn't move.

I bit my lower lip and trotted around her, looking for some sign as to why she was acting like this. On the other side of her body, closest to the wall, was a strange blue orb a breath's length away from her face. Rivulets of tears streamed by and under it.

"What is this …?" I murmured, eyeing its shockingly lustrous surface. Whatever this thing was, it had somehow survived Equestria's fall.

I reached out with my magic to levitate it away from her, sure that it was the reason behind her feverish state. A red magical field wrapped around it, and almost instantaneously, I felt a numbing sensation surge through my body.

My limbs slackened and the last thing I remembered before I blacked out was the skull's sunken eyes staring at me with its hollow, dead eyes.

-=======ooO Ooo=======-

I exhaled a contented sigh. I peered out the very same window Box Cutter and I had been looking out of only minutes earlier and it struck me that the trees were that of a very lively shade of green.

My bright eyes admired a day's worth of gardening, floating a clear glass of lemonade to my mouth to take a long, well deserved drink. The tart, freshly squeezed citrus juice swam down my parched throat and I smacked my lips with a satisfied "Whew!"

"Flash, you are going to love what I did to our garden." I said out loud. Suspended in front of me was the same blue orb that I'd seen earlier. "I hope you get this before the Princess ships you back to Canterlot."

Outside, a well-trimmed lawn of verdant grass stretched across the front yard. It was sculpted by a cobblestone path lined by pots of pink begonias and stalks of balsams that ran a snaking path down to a red picket fence at the other end of the yard.

I grinned proudly at a newly planted evergreen sapling that formed the centerpiece of my front lawn. My horn tingled wearily at the sight of the shovel that had been planted on a mound of dirt underneath its immature branches.

On a table beside the window a radio played a gentle tune that brought a smile to my lips as the sun shined through the window and onto my face.

'Sompony's sleeping

Through a bad dream

Tomorrow it will be over

For the world will soon be waking

To a summer day.'

I leaned against the window, admiring the mare's heartwarming lullaby. Her silky sing song echoed hauntingly in my thoughts and I played the song over and over again…. somepony's sleeping … through a bad dream ….

My mind spun in circles; the world around me seemed … alive.

"That was Sweetiebelle's Summer Days!" A mare's voice said as the song faded away. "Boy do I love that song – really gets me in the mood to sit out, sip a glass lemonade and watch the day pass by! This DJ Pon3 wishing you sunny days from Equestria!"

"Way ahead of you, buddy." I said dreamily, taking another sip. Wait. Those weren't my lips moving. "Here's to summer days, Flash!"

The sound of laughing children pulled my attention to the front lawn as a trio of foals galloped after each other across the cobblestone path. One of them, a colt, tipped over one of the flower pots in a carefree game of tag and its contents spilled across the stone path.

My eyes widened. "Boys!" I called out to them. I pushed off the window and raced outside, the colts and one filly tumbling over each other in the grass.

"Boys!" I …. no, she – t-the … mare? I was so confused. I …. I was a mare! "And here comes our monsterfoals."

I trotted outside into the afternoon sun. My … her emerald coat turned a brilliant white as she trotted out of the front porch and into the warmth of the sun.

A cool breeze caressed my soft, spring green mane. I hoofed the yellow lily tucked behind my ear as I trotted toward the rampaging foals.

"Boys, please – you might hurt yourselves –"

One of the colts squeaked as his leg clipped a rose bush. I rushed towards him as he whined, plucking the thorns from his hide with my magic.

"Spark Sentry!" I shouted, raising my voice.

He stopped immediately. "Sorry, mom." The earth pony colt sighed as his brother and sister trotted up to us.

I narrowed my eyes at him, "It's not safe to be running around in the garden, there're too many thorny bits to hurt yourself with!"

The colt glowered at his grinning siblings as I brushed his tawny coat with a hoof. "There, let's go inside and get you some bandages."

The three looked at me, at each other, and at me again.

"Tag, you're it!" The youngest of the three nickered and they scattered.

"Hey! Fresh Fields! What did I say about running in the garden!?" My eyes darted around, and I sighed. "Flash, where are you when I need you to coral these out of control kids!" I said out loud. "Get back here!" I let out an exasperated sigh, shaking my head. "Well. I tried. I tried, Flash... but..."

Then a smile crept slowly across my face. I sprang to my hooves and whirled on the blue maned pegasus filly who was galloping away from me as fast as her small legs could take her.

I slowed playfully as I caught up, the filly's voice cracked as she shouted, "You'll never catch me!"

"Spring Song, you stop right this instant!" I shouted, laughing. "Just wait till your father sees this!" I said mock angrily with a sly grin. She veered through a garden of equine shaped bushes. I ducked under a stray branch and pounced on the filly as she slowed to make a sharp turn around a bush sculpted to look like the Goddess Celestia.

The small filly squawked, flapping her wings uselessly like a flightless bird before she ducked out of the way. My eyes widened and I ate a mouthful of leaves. Ouch.

"Wrrhhphrl!" I nickered, shaking the leaves and twigs out of my hair. "Pwa, pfft!" I plucked a bitter tasting leaf from my tongue, grinning. "You slippery little filly!" I got to my hooves and charged after her, my long emerald mane billowing behind me as I closed in. "This is what happens when you marry a military pony! He gives you fighter foals!" I said hysterically.

I snapped my jaws closed and bit down on her mane, yanking the filly off her hooves. Spring Song dangled from my mouth as my horn glowed and caught her younger brother in a verdant emerald field.

"Goshoo!" I cheered, the pegasus filly in my teeth beating her wings in futility.

"Oh come on, that's not even fair!" Fresh Fields pouted, folding his arms across his chest as he floated towards me.

"Un 'ore to go!" I said through a tuft of blue hair.

"Mom! Put me down!" Spring Song screamed.

"Nuh' 'il I find your buther!" I proclaimed, grinning. I looked around the yard and frowned mischievously. "Now, where ish he?"

I took one step forward and the world around me flashed green. Then my ears popped.

A heartbeat later and windows in the cottage shattered. I whirled the foals away from the window behind us and shielded them with my body. Broken shards of glass flung into my green hide sending sharp spears of pain through my nerves. I cried out through Spring Song's mane and lowered the screaming filly to the trembling grass.

The two whimpered as the sky darkened with green fire. Above the tree line, a plume of black clouds erupted to the skies in the distance.

"Dear Celestia …" I murmured, watching the mushroom cloud expand across the distant landscape like a tidal wave of darkness. Goddesses. This is how it all ended.

Then came the aftershock. The ground quaked beneath my hooves. Fissures opened up around us, swallowing the garden piece by piece. The sapling that the mare had planted earlier disappeared in a maw of shattered rock and soil.

The earth split beneath me and my hooves slipped.

I screamed, pushing the foals away from me as I tipped over the edge. A green magical field enveloped me and I righted myself, dragging myself away from the fissure as the earth yawned and moaned.

The cottage rumbled and shook; the roof caved in and its walls collapsed from the inside enveloping us in a suffocating cloud of dust and detritus. Debris surged around our hooves as we fled from the collapsing cottage.

I gathered the two foals close and looked at them pleadingly. "Where's your brother?!"

"I-I don't know! I saw him running to the shed!" Spring Song stammered.

"Stay close to me, okay!" I wheezed, leading the foals out of the expanding cloud and away from the shattered earth. The skies darkened to an ashen black, the balefire fallout blocking the sun's rays for the first and last time.

"Spark Sentry!" I shouted hoarsely, but the missing colt didn't respond.

Dusk stretched across the land, and my shadow melted away into the ravenous darkness. My eyes darted all around me, and I saw only a long stretch of road that led north towards the billowing mushroom cloud in the distance and an endless expanse of evergreens that expanded in every direction.

We were in the middle of nowhere.

My eyes fixated upon the ruined cottage and my body began to tremble. I wondered if the mare knew she was going to die. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide as she hugged her foals close, shielding them from a cloud of debris that swelled from the front porch that began to sink into the earth.

"Spark Sentry!" I cried out again, and I hoped to the Goddesses that he'd reply or come running out to see them.

Silence.

My horn sparked, lifting them both onto my back and we raced to the cottage. I screamed at her to stay outside of the collapsing cottage, but she couldn't hear me. I glanced over the horizon and saw a blinding wave of green annihilation burning a swath toward us at the pace a fire burns through parchment.

She just wasn't willing to lie outside, curl up and die. I felt a deep rumbling resonate through my bones as the world flashed outside.

The forest blew away in a wave of balefire flame that scoured away the grass, leaves, flowers – everything outside the cottage's walls burned away as the mare ducked with screaming her foals behind the kitchen counter. Green flames splashed around the cottage's brick walls and burned its wooden components to ash.

The inside of the house turned into a searing furnace of pain. Anguished tears were streaming down my cheeks as I squinted through a curtain of black smoke.

I shielded the two foals, my coat singeing as the fires threatened to roast me alive. Only a mother's unrelenting will to protect her children kept the mare going.

I couldn't watch this. I only imagined them burning alive, and I cursed her for taking them inside the crumbling ruins. But dying was the least of her worries. She seemed to have something else in mind.

My amethyst eyes stared into the green flames and they stared back. I gazed with teary, contracted pupils at a room beyond the balefire conflagration and gathered the foals onto my back.

I leaped over the flames, landing at the edge of a balefire flame that singed the tip of my green tail. I winced at the bite of the heat that radiated from the conflagration. I looked up and saw that we were now in the room I had found Dew Drops in earlier.

I lowered my chest to the floor and let the foals hop off my back.

My horn glowed and the floor opened up a hoof's length away from me to reveal a ladder that led to a basement. I lowered the foals into the room below. I looked down the shadowy chamber below and knew that she was only forestalling the inevitable. It was the only place inside and outside that hadn't caught flame. Below the concrete foundation they'd be safe.

For now.

Even up here, the smoke suffocated me with every anguished breath I took. Soon, I thought grimly as the mare levitated her colt down the hole. Too soon.

"Mommy!" Spring Song whimpered.

"Stay down there, I'll be back – I promise!" I wheezed, turning my back to the basement before closing it behind me. I pulled myself out of a window, and looked outside. The fissures and patches of grass surrounding stone path leading to the shed flickered before my eyes.

Nothing stopped me from galloping through the billowing smoke and radioactive fire. Tears evaporated. My mane burned away. My mind was reeling, convulsing from the burning torment that enveloped me. My tortured nerve endings erupted with white hot agony as my once supple emerald coat flaked away and fed the flame.

Blisters popped and my body told me to die. But the mare kept going even after her coat had completely burned away. I bucked the door down and found Spark Sentry cowering underneath an overturned wheelbarrow.

He screamed.

"It's your mother! It's me … Spring Fresh!" I said approaching him as he whimpered. My blackened flesh was nothing the young colt would ever recognize. "Son! Come on, I need to get you someplace safe!" I said. He cried, shaking his head.

"Dad was right! H-he knew it was going to happen! Now we're … you're …" I levitated the trembling colt, threw him over my back, and galloped as fast as my dying body could take me. "What about you!?" he asked, but I didn't answer.

I wrenched open the basement door and lowered him into the darkness. I raised a hoof to follow them down -

Then I felt something slam me to the floor. Then nothing.

Bricks and debris tumbled over me as the wall collapsed, burying everything below the lower half of my body it and shattering my spine. I howled in agony at the nerves that hadn't lost feeling, my broken hind legs twitching uncontrollably under the rubble. The mare's foals screamed, crying for their mother. My horn flickered and died as my consciousness ebbed and flowed. Dark tunnels began to form around my eyes and I began to take my dying breaths. I reached a trembling hoof across the trap door only for it to stop at the basement's edge.

"Mom, please don't go!" Spring Song cried out to her, reaching out to me with foreleg not long enough to touch my own. If only she could hold them one last time …

Blood trickled through my teeth. My eyes began to glass over.

"Stay down there … you'll be safe ..." I sobbed, "I love you … I…." bloody tears streamed down my cheeks. "Your father and I will come back for you … I promise … don't come out until I say it's safe."

The foals whimpered silently as the light faded from my eyes.

"Mommy …"

I smiled tenderly, craning my neck so that I could see them for the last time.

"It's going to be okay; don't come out, it isn't safe out here anymore." I rasped, choking through the black smoke that hung above the floor. "J-just close your eyes and … go," I took a dying gasp for air, "… go to sleep." I choked on my words, tears streaming down my cheeks. "And when you wake up your father and I will find you."

The three foals stared up at me from the darkness, their eyes glistening with tears. Spring Song struggled to reach me, fluttereing her wings and, to the mare's widening eyes, taking flight for the first and last time. I lowered my head and wept sorrowful tears of joy.

"Spring Song … don't look back. Spark, Fresh … take care of your sister." The oldest of her foals, Spark Sentry, pulled her back down, kicking and crying.

My hoof caught the basement door's latch.

"Mommy, no! Don't go!" Spring Song wailed, her voice growing farther and farther away as black tendrils twisted and curled around the closing tunnels of my sight.

"NOOOooo … !"

I pulled the latch down and the basement door swung closed.

With a moribund moan, I slumped to the floor, a puddle of my own blood pooling around me, seeping through the debris that trapped my broken limbs. I stared at death's door, the black tendrils giving way to a light that drew me away from my mortal coil and all the pain and suffering that licked at my trembling flesh. My body clung to life, but it would not linger for too much longer.

"Flash … Flash Sentry … I tried." I said, pushing a blue orb to my face with a trembling foreleg. My horn began to glow as I poured into it all the magic I had left. "They're safe now … I hope you made it out alive. I couldn't save myself. I told them it's going to be okay. I … hope you're okay. I love you." I said with a finality that shook me to the core.

"Sompony's sleeping…" I crooned, singing Sweetiebelle's lullaby in a haunting tune I'd never forget. Blood trickled through my teeth as I struggled to formulate words. Shadows danced upon my face in the gleaming fire light. "…sleeping …through a bad dream … tomorrow it will be over…"

"… for we will soon be waking … waking … way ..."

-=======ooO Ooo=======-

My own eyes opened. I blinked away a glassy rivulet from my eyes and Dew Drops's watery grays gazed down at me.

"You saw it too?" she asked as if she'd seen a ghost.

My eyelids fluttered closed and I nodded slowly. My coat felt as if it were still charred and stricken with deathly rigor mortis.

I was alive.

"What was … that thing? How?" I sighed shakily.

Dew Drops pushed the orb away with a hoof.

"It's some kind of memory orb," she replied. "Let's you experience the memories of other ponies."

I looked at the small blue orb and wondered how it could have ever survived this long. I pushed myself upright and saw Spring Fresh's crushed, lonely skeleton. "That was how it ended, wasn't it." I said, not asking. I let out a trembling breath that turned into a cloud of misty vapor.

"How could anypony deserve … this?" She asked, sweeping a hoof across the blackened floor and wind worn walls. "How did it ever come to this?" The blue mare asked, tears pouring down her face. "The foals, Red … the foals …" Dew Drops reached for the basement door and her hoof hesitated.

I stood to my hooves and gripped the latch with my magic. I gave her a long, weary look. My chin trembled with suppressed sobs as I lifted the basement door open. I flicked my flashlight on and descended into the darkness below.

Amongst the dusty, fallen cabinets and the ancient debris I saw what I already knew. Huddled in the shadowy corner was a trio of skeletons, their limbs tangled together in a hug. I turned away, dropping my flashlight as tears streamed down my cheeks. The bombs had spared no one. Not even the innocent had been spared. War was truly hell; it was indiscriminant in its destruction. There was no respite for the young and helpless. These were the souls ponykind had left behind and forgotten. These foals were the children of the damned.

I heard Dew Drops's hooves clop next to me before she trotted silently to the dusty corner. I watched as she, with solemn prudence, floated each of their small, curled up remains onto a dusty tarp that we found on the floor. Like a funeral procession and with our heads hung low, we carried their tattered bones into the snow.

With a small shovel I'd taken out of my bags, we dug through the snow until we unearthed the blackened soil beneath.

---

Dew Drops and I stood solemnly over the black mounds we'd dug out of the frozen earth, her blue scarf flapping in a wintry breeze that sprinkled their graves with fresh snow. With some effort and help from Dew Drops' magic, we levitated a blackened gravestone and drove it into the ground among three others.

The largest of the broken headstones belonged to Spring Fresh. We had buried her foals next to her. We'd given the mare a burial I knew she would have wanted; she and her foals would never be separated ever again. I hoped that we had brought them peace.

One day, I hoped, their graves would see the dawn of a summer day.

---

We sat by a burned out window, listening to the wind. Her forelegs were wrapped around me as we rested our backs against the wall underneath the windowsill. It was still dark outside. I wondered if it was like this all the time in the wasteland; we were bathed in an eternal, wintry twilight.

It was dark in the small, blackened room we were sitting in. It overlooked what I thought was the remains of the cottage's backyard. The view from the window could have been beautiful once, had the world been not a dead, frozen wasteland. From the charred outlines of small furniture, I figured that this must have been one of the foals' rooms; it was down a hall near the master bedroom where Star Glint and Lightning Twirl had taken for their own.

Other than the occasional giggle and the moaning wind, the night was a rather quiet one.

"DD?" I asked, softly.

"Red?"

"Are we going to find a Water Talisman?"

She rubbed one of my forelegs tenderly.

"Yes."

I nodded, slowly.

She turned her head to look me in the eyes. "Don't make Amber's death be in vain, Red." Dew Drops added. "We're not done yet." Her words echoed hauntingly in my thoughts. "Don't give up on our Stable."

I exhaled a cloud of mist and hugged Dew Drops tighter. She sighed, tucking her head under my chin.

"I won't." I whispered, brushing her soft mane.

"Promise me."

I stared down at her gray eyes, my expression rife with funereal uncertainty.

"I promise." I added, forcing a grim smile.

In the darkest corner of my mind, I kept telling myself that that was a hollow promise.

---

I woke to the sound hoofsteps in the snow. My eyes shot open and I darted around me. To my left, I saw that Dew Drops was slumped against the wall, fast asleep. My horn glowed and I levitated my carbine to me.

I hugged it closed, listening to the sound of crunching snow. They were close, and my heart was pounding in my chest.

I slowly inched my way up the wall, trembling with every second that passed. I was afraid of what I might see. Outside the window, a dark mass with a flashlight was moving across the backyard.

My own light flicked on and brought the silhouette to the light.

"Star Glint?" I whispered, relieved.

The stallion turned, giving me a strange look.

"Don't shoot, I'm just gonna take a leak." He whispered back.

"Goddesses, you scared the shit out of me." I whined, "Don't stay too long out there."

"Yeah, I might freeze my bits off." Star Glint chuckled, before trotting off once more.

I slid back down the wall and curled up next to Dew Drops. My eyes closed once more and I went back to sleep.

---

"Where is he?!" I heard Lightning Twirl scream.

I jumped to my hooves, waking Dew Drops who had been resting her head on my shoulder. I looked outside the doorway, "What the hell is going on?" I called after her.

The pegasus stormed out of the master bedroom wide eyed and with her battle saddle bit clenched between her teeth.

"Star Glint? Where the hell is he?" She demanded, hysterically.

"He's missing?" Box Cutter asked, rubbing his eyes as he trotted out of his room.

"Well no shit, he's standing right here isn't he?" Lightning Twirl snapped.

I raised a forehoof. "Twirl, calm down."

"Calm down?" She narrowed her eyes at me. "Star Glint is missing, and … and you want me to CALM down?"

Dew Drops followed me outside into the hall.

"Where'd you last see him?" my marefriend asked.

Lightning Twirl glanced over her shoulder. "We were sleeping in our room and I heard him leave, said he needed to take a wicked piss." She breathed, pacing on her hooves.

I blinked. "I saw him last night…" or, whatever night amounted to in this wasteland, "… saw him walking out to the backyard."

The pegasus's eyes widened at me, "You … you let him go out by himself?!" She yelled, pointing a trembling hoof at me.

"I-I thought he'd be fine –"

"We just lost Amber in a blizzard, and you think that Star Glint'll be fine walking out there by himself too? Have you lost your fucking mind, Red?"

I took a step back, fear creeping across my face. "I-I told him to not stay out there too long –"

"Goddesses, Red, you got Amber killed and then you let Star trot out there on his own!" She screamed, her face turning red.

I bit my lower lip, my heart drumming against my chest.

Dew Drops smacked Lightning Twirl with a hoof. "How dare you, Twirl?" she hissed, "It wasn't Red's fault, okay? And don't you dare bring up Amber either! None of it was!" Though I wasn't sure I could believe that.

Lightning Twirl growled, grinding her teeth together. She looked about ready to kill me. Had I lost Dew Drops, I wasn't sure I'd be feeling any different if our places were reversed. I sniffed, and looked at my hooves. Had I … had I killed another one of my friends?

"Fighting each other won't solve any of this," Dew Drops intoned, her voice hoarse. "Let's go; let's find him. He couldn't have gotten far."

I looked outside, and it was still dark. I wondered how long it'd been since I'd seen him. We hefted our gear and loaded our guns. I trembled beneath my barding as I zipped my coat closed and slipped my balaclava and mask over my muzzle.

I watched Dew Drops packing her satchel bags. She paused for a moment to meet my stare. She pursed her lips, reaching over to touch my foreleg. I looked down at my hooves once more as she pulled on her mask and trotted out the door.

We followed Lightning Twirl to the backyard. It was an open field of snow. I beamed my flashlight across the drifts and saw a faint path of hoofprints snaking through the powder.

"Everypony stay close." Lightning Twirl said, loading rounds into her battle saddle.

I hoped to the Goddesses it'd never come to that. I was shaking uncontrollably and my mane was itching. I gulped with apprehension and followed the ponies into the dark forest. We followed them up to a tree not far from the cottage, and saw that the hoof prints ended here. Yellow snow puddled around the tree, and Box Cutter chuckled.

"Guess he wasn't kidding when he said he had to piss."

Lightning Twirl and Dew Drops glared at him through their goggles. "Sorry…"

I looked around, beaming my flashlight across the gnarled, gangly trunks that slithered out of the snow. My beam caught something.

"I saw something!" I blurted out loud, trotting after it.

"Red! Get back here!" Lightning Twirl shouted after me.

"Star Glint!" I shouted, calling his name. My voice echoed loudly through the hollow, black forest. "Star Glint! Where are you!?"

The ponies trotted after me, beaming the tracks I was leaving behind as they fought through the snow to catch up. My flashlight panned against a tree once more and saw dark mass peaking out at me from behind a tree.

"Star Glint, quit fucking around!" I said, my voice trembling. I raced towards it and looked around and saw nothing there.

My friends were a long ways behind me now; their flashlights were glimmering a few yards behind me, but I would not relent. I needed to find Star Glint.

I beamed my flashlight across the contorted branches once more and caught two teal orbs staring back at me.

"You son of a bitch!" I roared, galloping after it. "Who the fuck are you?" The eyes disappeared behind a tree. The forest was blurring around me as I pounded through the snow. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO STAR GLINT?!"

"Red!" I heard somepony say, but her voice was getting farther and farther away from me.

My flashlight flickered and I stopped in my tracks. I saw Star Glint trotting through the woods to disappear behind an icy boulder. "St-Star?" I asked, shaking. No response. I gulped a lump of apprehension down my throat and started forward.

I rounded the corner, flashing my light across the snow.

Dear Celestia.

---

Lightning Twirl, Dew Drops, and Box Cutter huddled behind me. Nopony said a word as we looked across the snow drifts.

Blood.

There was so much blood. It trailed over rocks, stumps, and beyond where our flashlights could illuminate.

"Everypony …" Box Cutter whispered. He didn't have to finish his sentence as he tongued his battle saddle bit and craned his neck, wracking the weapon's charging handle. We did the same.

I levitated my carbine and flipped its safety off, then tied my flashlight to its grip. I pulled open the breach and saw that it was loaded. I felt like my shaking would drill me into the snow and through the earth.

Lightning Twirl stumbled through the pale, following the trail of blood. We saw deep, continuous lines that gouged canyons into the snow and patches of bloody hair littering the crimson trail, but still no sign of Star Glint. My filters were pumping out a constant stream of vapor as I hyper ventilated. I'd never seen so much blood in my entire life. It felt like my heart was going to burst through my chest.

We followed the trail at a pace that made it seemed like we'd been out here for centuries. It dragged on and on, and I couldn't even see the cottage from here. The forest seemed to be closing in on us. The charred remains of foliage became less sparse. Dead branches clawed at my barding as we trotted further and further into the darkness.

The blood lead through and … and over … and around a ruined stump. It was as if somepony had tried clinging to the blackened stump only to be dragged away. Lightning Twirl unfurled one of her wings in front of our path, and stopped in silence.

She exhaled a cloud of vapor and she glanced back at us, hesitating. The mare pushed through the brittle foliage. The branches broke against her barding and we trampled them beneath our hooves, following her to the clearing.

Box Cutter tore off his mask and vomited into the snow. I blinked. And blinked. And blinked again. This had to be a dream. This was a nightmare and I was going to wake up from it. I closed my eyes, clenching them shut.

When I opened, the skinless, mutilated mass was still lying in the snow at my hooves.

Lightning Twirl screamed, falling to the snow, cradling the flayed corpse's head in her hooves. The mare pulled off her mask, reared her head to the clouds and wailed into the night, her tears mingling and melting the layer of frost that had begun to form over the corpse's pink, frostbitten flesh. She hugged Star Glint close and let out a banshee wail that disturbed the dead, unnerving silence that permeated the frozen wasteland.

"Who the fuck did this!?" Box Cutter screamed. "Who. The. Fuck!? You sick fuckers!" He cursed, stomping his hooves into snow. "You fuckers killed Star Glint!"

Dew Drops pulled her mask off and broke down in tears. She fell to the snow and buried her muzzle in her hooves, crying tears that froze as they streamed down her cheeks and into ashen snow.

Box Cutter clamped down on his battle saddle's bit. "You mother fuckers! Show yourselves!"

A twig snapped behind us.

I whirled on my hooves and beam my light into the foliage. A gold coated pony was approaching us. She trotted towards us on precarious legs. Then I saw her limp.

"Amber Fields?" I asked. I shined the light up her body and my eyes widened at what I saw. The mare was blind folded and gagged. Her flank was red with blood and her coat was adorned with random gashes that had long stopped bleeding. Her satchels were bloated with round objects that poked out of the black fabric.

Her mouth moved but all that came out was a muffled cry.

"Amber!" Box Cutter trotted towards her.

Amber Fields shook her head, screaming at him through her gag. Streaming down her cheeks and through her blindfold were streaks of dried blood.

"What … what the fuck?" I asked, taking a few hoof steps towards her.

"Nnnph … nnnph! Snnnnff brrrrrkk!" She cried, sobbing through her gag as Box Cutter pulled it off. "It's too late now … I tried to die … I'm so sorry …" The mare whispered.

Then the night lit up in a white flash. I stumbled backwards and fell into the ashen drifts as a pillar of gore and detritus blew out of the cratered soil. Box Cutter was thrown back off his hooves, screaming before he crunched into the snow.

He held up both his forehooves – they were gone. Only bleeding, ruined stumps remained as he roared in agony.

Wild demented cackling erupted from the darkness. Black forms burst out of the snow around us. I hefted my carbine, pointing my flashlight beyond the crater that had once been Amber Fields.

A pony.

It … it was garbed in thick barding that would have been white had it not been stained a disgusting mixture of brown and red. My light flashed over the frostbitten flesh of its muzzle and staring back at me, behind a pair of cracked goggles, were glazed, yellowed eyes that promised me a horrible, bloody death.

I watched it, frozen in place. I remembered the night at the shooting range.

It was just a target. Just a target.

It was a pony.

"Red ... ! RED!" I heard Dew Drops shouting at me. Her voice was muffled in my ears, my senses focused on the pony that stared at me across the clearing. The blood drained from my face.

"WE'LL CUT YOU UP GOOD!" The pony cried out madly, before galloping towards us.

I aimed my carbine and fired. The weapon burped a burst of 10mm rounds that peppered the thickly barded pony through the chest. It let out a hysterical, giggling death rattle before stumbling forward and crashing headfirst into the snow.

Several silhouettes charged out and into the clearing, blundering through brittle foliage or stomping recklessly through the snow carrying bloody cleavers and knives in their mouths.

Box Cutter dragged himself out of the snow drift with an agonized grunt and bit down his saddle bit.

The night lit up in an epileptic cacophony of yellow flashes, gunfire, and ecstatic squeals of delight.

His pair of submachine guns flared to life, spitting out a torrent of lead that ate through the barding of a charging psycho pony. It reared on its hind legs before a stray bullet blew its brains out the back of its head.

"DO YOU WANNA SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE ON THE INSIDE!?" A psycho pony mare screamed at me as she galloped through the snow with a sharpened scalpel held in her magical grip.

I slipped into SATS. In between two heartbeats, I tagged everything between the mare's barded neck and frothing muzzle and pulled the trigger. She caught the first bullet through the throat and stumbled, blood erupting from her neck in a splash of crimson. The bullets made their way up her face and the burst tore the damn thing off in a fountain of skull fragments and gore.

My heart skipped a beat as the pony's cratered skull crunched into the pale drifts.

I'd killed two ponies.

"You'll pay for this!" Lightning Twirl screamed, wrenching me from my trancelike state. Her wings unfurled and she launched herself into the air, lancing tracers through the charging psycho ponies.

Dew Drops screamed. I whirled on my hooves and galloped towards her as a pony sunk a dull knife through her barding. The psycho pony tore the blade out of her and reared its head back for another stab before I jammed my carbine into its chest and sunk the trigger back. Half a magazine's worth of lead erupted into the pony's chest cavity.

He gurgled out a maniacal cackle through a mouthful of blood, pirouetting on his hind legs as he tumbled to the now scarlet snow. I felt hooves buck me off my own and I fell to the snow. A giggling psycho pony pounced on top of me, pinning me on my back before I could roll out of the way.

"I bet you're a pretty one," She hissed, licking at my wheezing filters. She tore my mask and balaclava right off with her hooves and chortled with glee, "YOU'D LOOK BETTER WITHOUT A FACE!"

She reared her forehooves to stomp my skull in before a feathered blur crashed into her. Lightning Twirl and the psycho pony tumbled through the snow in a flurry of hooves and spurting blood.

"Twirl!" I shouted after her as Dew Drops pulled me to my hooves.

The pegasus screamed wildly and she stomped her hooves as hard as she could into the mare's chest, burying her in the snow before launching herself into the air once more. Her battle saddle flared midflight as her wings propelled her away in spiraling twist.

"You fuckers! Stay. Away!" I heard Box Cutter shout. With blood trailing behind him, his hind legs pushed himself backwards through the snow drifts. The psycho ponies seemed to take the crawling as some kind of invitation to their sick games.

One of the ponies leaped through the air only to be driven back by a barrage of SMG fire. Another knocked past the falling corpse before his masked face exploded in a shower of pink giblets.

Dew Drops and I trotted forward, firing our carbines into psycho ponies as they charged through the bushes trying to tear our hoofless friend apart in bloody melee. Box Cutter cursed when his battle saddle clicked dry.

We covered him with flashes of 10mm rounds that held the monsters at bay for the time it took for him to return to his stream of curses and automatic weapons fire.

Then something white hot punched through my body above my collar bone and out the other end. I stumbled back only to see muzzle flashes erupting from behind the bushes.

"Get to cover!" Lightning Twirl shrieked as she dove into the canopy.

I dropped to my chest, crunching in the snow. Dew Drops fell back behind a tree trunk, firing her carbine at anything that moved. Blood leaked into the pale where I lay, but I clenched my jaw through the pain and screamed, firing until my magazine ran dry. I took a brief moment to slam a fresh magazine home and wracking the charging handle back.

It was all the time they needed. Even with Dew Drops's sporatic fire, her suppression was half as effective without another carbine. With us cowering in the snow, they threw themselves at Box Cutter until his magazine ran dry.

Lightning Twirl swooped down, legs outstretched to pull her friend to safety, only to get peppered with bullet holes before retreating to the canopy once more.

"Box! No … no!" I cried, rising to my hooves only to get clipped by a burst of rifle fire. I howled as I threw myself down to the snow once more and witnessed Box Cutter getting dragged away by a pair of blood smeared psycho ponies.

He screamed, digging the stumps that used to be his forehooves into the snow with futility, leaving behind a glistening trail of crimson that disappeared behind a veil of cackling darkness.

The psycho ponies cheered when my best friend's screams died away and galloped after me, firing their guns wildly into the air. Bullets blew holes through the snow around me and I got to my hooves, firing my carbine as I backed away from them.

I felt the white hot kiss of lead rip through my barding and out one of my legs. Tears welled up in my eyes as I slipped into SATS and tagged three ponies for death. Head, chest, legs.

I knocked the closest psycho pony off his hooves when the shot bore through his skull. The next stumbled in front of me to catch a burst of lead that gored her chest cavity. The last blew out her knees and she laughed before eating a mouthful of scarlet powder.

"Red, look out!" I heard Dew Drops scream as a pony thrust the barrel of her rifle into my face. I swatted it away with a hoof and it discharged a three round burst a breath's length away from my left ear. Now with an acute ringing dulling my senses, I side stepped into another pony's machete, cutting myself across my chest. I cried out, firing my carbine wildly in a wide arc that launched the machete pony off his hooves and only mildly frustrated the other.

She snarled through her frothing lips before her jaw tore off in a flash of yellow tracers. Hooves planted the mare into the snow as Lightning Twirl barely stuck the landing. The mare's black barding was riddled with bullet holes and a sliver of blood trickled down her mouth as she turned to face me.

"Go!" I opened my mouth to protest, but the mare cut me off, "I'm sorry Red, I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier … now go! I'll hold them back! Just fucking go!"

I stood there frozen on my hooves before she launched herself back into the air. I watched as the psycho ponies arced their gunfire to the skies. Dew Drops and I turned and ran as I cried frozen tears.

I glanced over my shoulder to see several tracers spear through both her wings. She shrieked in a burst of feathers and blood before plummeting out of the skies and into a mob of ravenous ponies. Her screams were barely audible over their frenzied cheers as she disappeared under their falling blades.

"Twa-hirl!" Dew Drops wailed, pounding her hooves through the snow.

"Godesses, they're gone!" I cried as I raced behind her.

"Don't stop for anything!" she screamed as we galloped into the woods with no direction in mind. Anywhere but here! Please, Goddesses, anywhere but here!

Then the snow erupted in front of us. They'd been waiting for us.

Dew Drops shrieked as the three psycho ponies leaped on top of her. She charged through the middle, knocking one of the ponies to the snow and trampling over her underhoof. But one jerked her tail back and another wrapped her blood slicked forelegs around her throat.

"DD!" I screamed, aiming my carbine only to have it bucked out of my magical grip. My horn flared and I dropped it. I roared and reached out to her with my hooves. I knocked the psycho pony's hooves away and tried to yank her back. She howled in agony as the pony behind her bit down on her tail and dug his legs into the snow.

"YOU LET HER GO! YOU MOTHER … MOTHER FUCKERS!" I levitated a rock and threw it at the biting pony's skull. He let go with a skull cracking pop and Dew Drops dove towards me.

I met her tearing gray eyes for a single, fleeting moment as both our hooves touched. Then the mare beneath her hugged her chest and pulled her down with her, before sinking her teeth into Dew Drops's foreleg. Then I felt somepony buck me in the chest.

And I watched as my hooves slipped away from her.

My horn glowed as I fell back, trying to envelope her in a magical field before the pony who'd bucked me swiped a hoof over my horn. My focus abated and I screamed, flailing my forelegs after her as my magic failed me when I needed it the most.

Instead of pulling her with me, I tore the blue scarf from her neck and another pony leaped on top of her.

"Run! RED! RUN!" She shrieked as one of the ponies crashed her forehooves into her ribcage. "DON'T LOOK BACK!" her voice called out to me as the sound of tearing flesh and screaming washed away my resolve.

I did all I could have done.

I ran.

Hoofsteps plodded behind me. A psycho pony raced after me, laughing hysterically.

"I'LL FUCKING SKIN YOU ALIVE!"

My forehoof caught a gnarled root and I crashed through the snow to a grinding halt. I felt hooves land on top of me, pinning me to the ground. I didn't have enough fight left in me; I whimpered and cried. I looked up and saw Star Glint grinning back down at me.

The pony was wearing his skin.

My eyes widened as the unicorn pony drove a blade down to my stomach. I threw my hooves out in front of me and caught it an inch above my chest as the psycho stallion pushed and pushed.

"BLOOD! AHAHA! BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD!" He screamed, glaring at me through Star Glint's coat.

I roared, lifting a rock from the snow. I cracked it against the pony's skull and his magic wavered. I forced myself up, gripped the knife in my teeth and slashed it across the stallion's throat. Flaps of Star Glint's skin gave way to his carotid artery.

The psycho pony giggled through a mouthful of scarlet, arterial blood spilling from the gash in his neck and down his chest. I tucked my hind legs in and launched him off me, crying as his warm lifeblood spurted all over my face. I stumbled away, sobbed, and ran.

Tears streamed behind me as I wailed into the night and their demented laughter faded in the distance.

I galloped into the darkness, black shapes blurring past me.

I ran, and ran, and ran.

The balefire winter worked against me, closing in on me with a curtain of blinding snow in an unforgiving blizzard. I powered through it, not caring where I went. I plowed through the snow that buried my hooves. I forced my way through the white out without so much of a single shit given.

And I collapsed in the storm.

Footnote: Level Up.

New Perk: Snap Shot - +5% accuracy in S.A.T.S. with every attack queued