Chapter 5: The Reason of Reasons

"Hey.......hey.........c'mon Ms. Arrow....." Dr. Silver came into existence along with the nurse and the hospital room.

"Ugh.." Artemis moaned. She did feel much of anything.

"You're safe ms. and your friend Aroma's going to be fine."

Artemis's thoughts remained jumbled and confused but she brought herself to sit up.

"What happened?" She asked.

"You landed here and passed out from blood loss. We were able to get you in here and start a blood transfusion. You had a nasty cut on your neck." Dr. Silver explained.

Now it all came back her. Old Olneigh, the hellhounds, the hospital, the flight back, the wound she got and those creatures. What hell were those things actually? Maybe it's better not to know.

"You said Aroma's okay?" Artemis began to get off the stretcher.

"Careful now, it's not a race." Sliver the doctor said easily helping her off the board. "Ms. Aroma's in the waiting room of the clinic." Dr. Silver noted.

Artemis walked out to the waiting room and found Aroma sitting patiently she became ecstatic when Artemis walked in the room. She ran to Artemis and gave her a big hug which Artemis returned with a pat on the back.

"Miss me?"

"I thought you weren't going to make it. I heard you went to go get my anesthetic and got hurt." Aroma answered sounding guilty.

"Well don't worry, I'm fine now." Artemis gave her a friendly smile.

"What was Old Olneigh like?" She asked. Dr. Silver and the nurse both turned to listen.

Artemis thought about all that was there. Those creatures were the most prevalent in her mind. "Fucking weird." Artemis answered. "But it is dangerous, don't send convoys there anymore." She added.

They thanked the doctors and paid their due, which pretty much exhausted their funds. They walked out of the Stable door and back into town. It wasn't as populated as Palomino but it was more of a community.

"I probably have some explaining to do don't I?" Aroma admitted.

Personally Artemis had forgotten that at the moment, but she decided to be nice about it. "Yeah. What was that, your attacker had a Stable GoE-EoHS jumpsuit on. What's going on?" Artemis asked calmly.

Aroma sighed sadly. "The experiment, I....I'm not the only stable pony out here. There are three, two I guess. Their part in the experiment is to hunt me down and kill me."

Artemis was shocked, things got stranger and stranger with her didn't they.

"Why would they do that?!"

"Because...the hunters are supposed to keep me on my hooves and on my mission, not to get lazy or distracted and if they kill me they get to go back in the stable."

"How long have you been out here? Why you?"

"Almost a week." She answered sheepishly. "We elect one pony to leave the Stable and be hunted. We do it every twenty-five years. It's a big deal there.....and I won the election." She looked down.

Artemis pictured Aroma's Stable plastered with posters telling the ponies who not to vote for. Vote for Aroma! She's the best equipped! Artemis imagined the Stable ponies reading these posters and feeling happy they weren't chosen. Then she imagined her parents worried that their daughter was chosen then her parents were crying as she was chosen and sent out of the Stable knowing they'll never see her again. That really pulled at her heartstrings, she lowered herself and gave Aroma a big hug.

"That's awful. I'm sorry."

".........It's okay. Besides you killed one hunter already." Aroma said masking her melancholy with a upbeat tone. Artemis could only smile at her. Aroma had a tough road to walk and she wasn't going to abandon her.

"We should get on the road. Caravans need guards don't they?" Aroma asked.

Artemis smiled. "Yeah. It'd be a shame if they weren't protected."

The duo walked down to a saloon. They hadn't ate for quite a while. Artemis sat down at the bar and Aroma followed suit. A brown coated older unicorn mare walked up and leaned against the bar. A half hour later Artemis was eating pieces of squirrel meat. She looked to Aroma who was examining hers.

"Something wrong with it?"  Artemis asked with a mouth full of squirrel.

"It's just, I've never ate meat. I don't know about griffons but ponies are vegetarian." She said distraught. Artemis shook her head.

"Plenty of ponies eat meat now. It's just necessary." Aroma looked hesitant she lowered her head to her food.

"Besides, you took a .308 to the gut. If that didn't kill your stomach, this definitely won't." Artemis smirked and took a swig of her drink.

Aroma grinned sheepishly and bit the meat and began to chew. A second later she swallowed. Another second and she opened her eyes. "That...that was....good!" She said stunned. "A bit rough going down but, excellent." She began to eat the rest of the food. Artemis just smiled.

~Later~

"What do you mean there are no caravans docked here! There's always traffic!" Artemis asked the dockmaster in a disgruntled tone.

"So, no caravans?" Aroma whispered.

Artemis turned from the dockmaster and shook her head. "Yep."

Aroma rubbed her chin. "Do we just go on the road ourselves?"

"I guess so. It will be weird not having a caravan to guard but we'd be able to move faster." Artemis admitted.

"Where would we go?" Aroma asked.

Artemis sat on her tail and plotted their next course of action. Then she came out of her thoughts. "Gryphondale." She muttered.

"What's Gryphondale?" Aroma asked.

"Gryphondale is the largest city on east coast of Equestria. It's the home of the Dreadsaw Legion."

"The Dreadsaw Legion?" Aroma asked.

"They're an army. They rule the San Palomino pretty much." Aroma cringed

~The two gathered their supplies and headed out on the road.~

"Oh hey I almost forgot to ask." Aroma broke the silence.

"Hmm?"

"Can I have my pipbuck back?" She squeed.

Artemis chuckled and unlocked the computer.  "Hehe, yeah. I'll admit even though it doesn't look very stylish that EFS saved my life." She tossed the pipbuck to her.

"Well, when you put it that way it's more likely you'll be saving my ass when we're in a fight so...why don't you hold on to it. At least until I'm more experienced." Aroma threw it back at her.

Artemis smiled. "If you say so. We all need that person to drag us out of the fire once in a while." She reattached the pipbuck. On a closer examination she saw that the machine had picked up a new radio signal. 140.16. It didn't have a name, out of curiosity she activated it.

"Krzrrshk...." the radio was static until just as she reached to turn it off. "This." A violent cough hindered the voice. "Is Ether Voice me and my gang were ambushed by legionnaires, we have wounded and need desperate help. Please if anyone can here this, help us. We're at the old barn off the long route 34, this message repeats." Artemis simply stared at the pipbuck with a confused expression.

"Well, we're gonna go help her aren't we?" Aroma looked concerned.

"Uh, I don't know. It was hit by the Legion, it's gonna be nasty Aroma. There's a good chance that-!"

"We still have to try, if somepony needs help then we're just as guilty as the Legion if we ignore their cries!" She interrupted.

Artemis rubbed the back of her head. She had always lived her life to fulfill her goals, not to undertake some side operation. "C'mon we're on route 34. You can probably just fly and see it from here. Please." Aroma asked.

"Maybe this would be good for her. Let her see what the Legion's like." Artemis thought to herself. "Okay. But be warned it will not be pretty." Artemis warned. Aroma nodded excepting the rewards and consequences.

Off the R34 they came upon the remnants of Ether Voice's encampment. "It's a raider camp." Artemis scowled.

It used to just be an average farm but the old skulls impaled in the spikes of the iron fence were the past residents. Before being evicted by this gang. "Goddesses. How could somepony do this?" Aroma whimpered. Artemis didn't loose her scowl, she kept her eyes trained on the broken windows of the barn and house.

"The war poisoned ponykind more deeply than any venom ever could. Ponies have unleashed a darkness in themselves that they will have to wrestle with until the end of time." Artemis told her. Tears gathered in Aroma's eyes.

"W, why?" She muttered. "When did it all go wrong?" Artemis sighed.

"I personally believe it was the technological revolution before the war. It unleashed the dark side in ponies, brought out the worst in them. On that day, ponykind lost something, that spark. And now we're here, that darkness grew stagnant and laid waste to the land."

Aroma just looked down. "You needed to see this, this is only the front gate but we'll go back." Artemis patted her back as she began to tear up. As Artemis walked away Aroma whispered to her.

"No, not yet. We have to save Ether Voice."

Artemis turned around and opened her mouth to speak but Aroma began to walk to the house. Artemis hovered to her side, famas in one hand. The house was littered with spent magazines, bottles and blood stains. The door creaked open and the interior was worse than the exterior. The home was riddled with bullet holes and several dead bloodied stallions.

"Why are the bodies all stallions?" Aroma asked.

"Prisoners. Wives. Slaves." Artemis answered.

Aroma grimaced at the idea of being at the mercy of cruel legionnaire ponies.

Inside the living room was a bloody totem signifying the Legion's presence. A bloody cracked pony skull lay in the middle of two olive branches.

"Damn, it is Legion. They may have been raiders but no one deserves this." Artemis lamented. Aroma walked around the hallway and into the kitchen.

A shriek pierced the air and Artemis jump out of her thoughts and flew to the kitchen. "Aroma!" She yelled aiming her famas around the kitchen. She found Aroma looking aghast at the table. On the table was a pony. He or she had been bound to the table by their limbs. He or she had been brutally tortured before having their face cut off and their skull removed while they were still alive. The emblem in the living room. It was this pony's skull. Aroma vomited in the sink and laid there looking weak.

"Let's...find Ether Voice and leave...forever." She chocked out.

They searched around the upstairs and found an abandoned ham radio. The one Ether Voice had been using.

"This cough cough cough is Ether Voice me and my gang were ambushed by legionnaires, we have wounded and need desperate help. Please if anyone can here this, help us. We're at the old barn off the long route 34, this message repeats." It sputtered again. Aroma reached and turned it off.

"Ether Voice is dead." She said solemnly. "Artemis, if everything is so bad." She turned to her. "Then what's the point in going on?"

Artemis sat down and looked for the right words. She wanted to tell her.....to tell her why we go on.

"We persist because, because you just have to. You have to be strong, the wasteland will throw every atrocity it has at you. But you've gotta stand strong and not let it break you." Artemis thought she sounded inspiring but truthfully she felt kind of ridiculous. It was true you had to be strong in the Equestrian Wasteland but she didn't want to turn into a lame blowhard. She wanted Aroma be strong but she also needed to think realistically.

"Now c'mon. Let's get back to the road." Artemis said confidently.

Next Chapter: Chapter 6 - Brutality and Civility Estimated time remaining: 8 Hours, 5 Minutes