Chapter 1: The Beginning

The decrepit road stretched on forever into the horizon. You could seldom hear anything besides the clanging of the brahmin's bell and the average wasteland noise, odd gunfire could always be heard in the distance. Someone was in a fight to stay alive but then again, everyone was. This was a war without end.

Artemis hovered a couple inches off the ground too lazy to walk. This client was not very talkative. She didn't mind the silence but she also didn't like the quiet, it was weird. Maybe she just liked to talk. She was escorting a caravan to Palomino, a small town in the middle of scenic nowhere. The client lead the pack, the dark gray colored stallion with a black mane. He was an older buck but he could afford more hired guns having run the trail for many years.

The Equestria that once was is now a poisoned corpse of itself after a conflict between the zebra nation that ended up annihilating both sides. To add insult to injury the weapons of war corrupted many forms of life, changed them. Turned them into hellish perversions of their pre-war ancestors. In some places the dead still stirred, restless and hungry. Artemis had seen plenty of ghouls, worked with a few actually. But feral ghouls that would hunt you down and eat the flesh from your bones, that terrified her.

Artemis drew her famas and stared down the sight....at nothing. Personally she was just making sure she hadn't been killed while she wasn't looking and this was some awful purgatory.

"What is it?" Grey asked pulling out his revolver from the holster.

"No no. It's nothing, I was just keeping alert." She said calmingly lowering her rifle.

"Oh. Well okay." He said holstering his gun.

"Yeah, I don't see anything." Interjected a dull green coated unicorn mare casually as she lowered her binoculars.

They continued on the lonely road.....

It felt lonely being the only griffon on this caravan. But then again it was work, it wasn't supposed to be fun. This put food on the table but damn if it wasn't boring. One time she was escorting a caravan and one of the ponies had a pipbuck, a little handheld computer/personal organizer but it could tune into radio frequencies and they got to listen to Djpon3. Djpon3 was an enigma to the ponies, they believe her to be some pre-war ghoul, super hero or bighoof kind of myth. Ponies are really gullible. In reality Djpon3 was a mare behind a microphone sitting in some hellhole bunker somewhere but she did play music so she wasn't all bad. No bighoof but a good pony and she did talk about the wasteland, giving news updates on what was happening. But Artemis was so often on the road she seldom heard her broadcast.

A couple hours on.....

Artemis had given up. The ponies were not talking, they all had somber expressions their faces. Luckily it was over. Their convoy reached Palomino as the sky became a fiery orange on the sunset. The story about the clouds was an epoch in and of itself but that was a story for another time. That didn't matter to Artemis, that was pony business really. Her business lay in her hand. A bag of caps, yes bottle caps. Damn ponies were strange. You'd think society would default to an item-barter system but no, it's bottle caps. Economics, even in a post-apocalypse world are still ridiculous.

"Thank you for choosing Artemis Arrow & Associates for your protection needs and remember us for future services." She chanted. It was her company's motto. Her business was humble, it just needed time to take off. But the Dreadsaw Legion dominated the economy in these parts.

The Legion is the dominant faction in the region. They're a brutal warrior culture. Their violent mannerisms make raiders think twice about picking fights with them. Raiders they set out  to exterminate are often found brutally massacred. They were crippling Triple A's chances of becoming big. Artemis snapped herself out of her train of thought. She tended to ramble in her mind when she was tired. She pocketed the caps and left.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 - Another Day Another Job Estimated time remaining: 8 Hours, 31 Minutes