A day had passed so far of the storm, and it was just as loud, if not louder, than before. To take our minds off of it, Pumpkin had started to burn a candle from her saddle bag of pyromaniac pleasure and started surprisingly meditating while staring at it. Occasionally whispers of broken half sung sentences could be heard from her as if chanting to the alit candle... Some of the most interesting ones were...

"Burn burn burn... in a liquid ring of fire..."

"Hummm hummm.... this is nightmare night~!"

And last but not least...

"As darkness is, so to is light eternalllll..."

She seemed to look my way every so often when she saw I was looking at her, and it didn't take an expert in psychology to guess she was having fun with some minor mind games with me. After the first few lines, I stopped staring and decided to do something of my own interest as well. Well Mine and Roggars shared interest. As the tin can that we had emptied before was now being used for magic practice.

That being said, I was experimenting between the length, thickness, and location of the shadowy tendrils. Initially the shadowy appendages only really wanted to come out of my horn, but with practice and coaxing from the voice in my head, I was able to slowly push their forming buds away from my horn, and onto the back of my head. Roggar asked what I was doing trying to extend them instead of flat out replace them, and curiously I asked what he was talking about. He had replied with saying that space was an illusion created so that we could perceive reality, and told me that the tentacles didn't need to start from my horn.

From there it was more experimentation, as I tried to violate a rule I had been taught about traditional unicorn magic.Instead trying to focus spots around my sides. To my surprise and Roggars approving gaze, after the third try, the shadows formed, and then promptly slid off without proper grip to my body, landing as a dis coherent mass in the other wise candle lit space. Letting that bunch fade out, I began to experiment with the solidity of the shadows, and with Roggars instruction, had the shadows begin to cling to my armor, and eventually each other.

Roggars basic teachings of my umbramancy didn't stop there, however, but continued on. He then taught me how to form a more advanced shape than a single tendril extended, and with a bit of visualization and direction the shadowy substance I had conjured could take another shape, first starting with a single end, it split, halving its overall strength but with some more magical reinforcement the decidedly more solid mass of shadow eventually grew into a five fingered hand not to dissimilar to a minotaurs. It was thin and skeletal in appearance to an actual hand, but it was progress.

After that point I had promptly passed out of exhaustion, and the lessons were over for the day. Surprisingly, my unconscious mind didn't try to torment me with a nightmare or please me with a dream but was relatively blank and restful... When I next came to, the blizzard had finally died down, and next to me near a burnt out candle Pumpkin was similarly sleeping in our cramped quarters.I checked my pipbuck for the time, one half till five, otherwise known as four thirty in the morning.... I resolved to let her sleep, no telling how much we'd be able to get once we reached the empire. As it was likely either flooded with ghouls, raiders, snow hounds, or whatever else filled the Empire. A peaceful night of rest would probably the last thing we'd find there.

Since when was I so unoptimistic? Jeez.

Since there was time, and I felt mildly confident, I decided to practice more of my magic, not going through the super long and tiring process that forming a hand would be, but forming a tendril to try and push snow out from in front of our tent. I slowly began to extend the tendril, widening it to a more firm base, holding onto it with my upper legs as it stretched out, and began to shove itself into the snow wall that had form in front of, and around, our tent. It took some digging and some pushing, but after several minutes of struggle, the tendril managed to pierce a hole into the snow wide enough to see to the other side. A solid two meters of snow had covered us.

At first I began to push snow upward, meeting the resisting snow and pushing it upwards to try and pack it to a stable roof. The process was slow and arduous but it was beginning to work. Sweat began to form on my brow as I focused on my magic, tongue being held between my lower canine teeth and sticking out behind my left fang as I worked on the walls we'd need to climb out, perfectly aware of the fragile state of the snow. It wasn't being done all at once, every five to ten minutes I needed an equally long break to regain my breathe and start myself up again, but it was helping me refine my control of magic. It felt more like a physical exertion rather than a magical one actually. One that was getting a bit less and less exerting the more I practiced with it.

Once I had shoved enough snow to compact the sides and roof so that it wouldn't collapse and then some, I formed the shadowy tendril into a more traditional snow shovel and began pushing the remaining snow from the tunnel I had made. Another process that took two more hours of my time as shadow was neither strong or sturdy at pushing larger masses all at once, and it took time for my tendril to push enough from the other end of the tunnel to have enough space to push the snow out directly. By the time I was done I had to use some snow to wash the sweat off me and toss the resulting slush outside. It had been strenuous, but with the length of time it took to move all that snow, it was now a lot easier to form the thinner whip like stretches of shadowy tendrils, almost as easy as my old telekinesis spell had been. Also while not as easy, I figured as long as I had an anchoring point, the thicker lengths could also come into play. allowing me to lift and push masses a bit heavier than my own hooves could carry. I resolved to practice using it more regularly until I could figure out how to access my races more 'inherent' magic once more.

Magic was simply too useful for me to ignore or delay. The wasteland was simply unforgiving to ponies who wasted or didn't utilize all of their assets that they had. The world was made into one that was kill or be killed, mainly due to the desperate circumstances the end of the war between ponies and zebras had left us all in. My mind briefly wondered what had happened to the other nations, or if anywhere in general had escaped the apocalypse that had happened. My education hadn't covered the various international incidents between Equestria and other nations, only the general knowledge about the races that had often immigrated into Equestria as well as the ones that had lived there for time immemorial.

My momentary wandering of the mind had caused my tendril to vanish again back into the shadows it had came from. The shifting form of Pumpkin told me that she was awake, and that she had been watching what I was doing for a while. As she stretched, and rolled herself out of her sleeping bag I was already packing up. The silence was only broken with the exchanges of 'good morning' as we pushed against the tent sides to compact the snow on the other side enough to collapse the tent safely and pull it out of the tunnel I had made through the snow. Breakfast had consisted of a relatively colder can of pre-cut peaches, a rare treat that put us in higher spirits on the go.

I took note on how Pumpkin used her wings to hold her can of peaches on the go, and wondered briefly before discarding the idea to use my own wings in such a fashion as well. Membrane lacked the same amount of elaborate control and muscle strength that pegasus wings had, trading strength for more versatility and maneuverability. Changelings got the ability to stop suddenly and change directions of flight without requiring turning while Pegasus ponies got a lot more speed in direct lines and curving angels. Though even if I wanted to emulate pegasus wings back when I had access to my changeling magic putting those big clumsy wings over the thin delicate frames of my own was like trying to flap a giant paper fan for lift.

These sort of thoughts continued on inside my head as we progressed closer to the Crystal Empire. Though a few more miles over when we were getting a better sight of it, I decided to spoil myself of the surprise and looked down Ambush's scope to get a better view. What I saw was surprising from this distance. A giant wall seemed to divide a quarter of the city from itself from my view. Additional details were still murky at this distance, as my scope was meant for Ambush's shooting ranges instead of several dozen times its standard effective shooting length. On my side I could of sworn I felt Cloak grow warmer in its sheathe as I studied the empire, but a second check revealed it to be a trick of my mind as the weapon was just as cold as the rest of my oil treated metal equipment.

The sun was also something that took a lot of getting used to. The cloud cover had become a fact of life acting as a constant shade keeping the sun directly off everypony. But while those clouds were almost constantly covering every inch of the sky out here the clouds were much more sparse except for the occasional advancing snowstorm. Whenever it wasn't snowing the sky was clear, presenting the ever daunting giant light in the sky that was the sun. Shedding its heat and starting to melt the snow that the sky had laid about the place. It was growing increasingly easier throughout the day to spot the radiation craters as water tended to flood to the lowest point they could find, creating small cold pools of water here and there along with slush. Honestly I preferred the cloud cover. At least that didn't make me feel hot in my clothes and left everything at a comfortable level of bright without being blinding. The sun reflecting off the snow made me want a pair of sunglasses and a hoodie to get the sun off.

My hat had become rather torn to shreds after everything it had gone through over the last week and without another one to provide the materials to patch it up. I was torn between taking it off to preserve what was left of it or leaving it on to protect what little it could between me and that giant ball of fire that was way too bright. Briefly I wondered how the majority of pegasus ponies lived with such a bright thing above their head all the time. The moon and nighttime stars were pretty cool though.

Despite my constant observations I had started to get bored. I couldn't ask the age old question of 'are we there yet' because we already had the objective in sight, albeit distantly, and I also had the map. Which killed a lot of the fun to be had. Eye spy couldn't exactly be played either since most of the other things in sight was the endless amount of snow or the occasional snow filled ruin of a house or building. Having an actual quiet day without a lot of action, noise, or learning something of great importance was something I just wasn't used to. But then again I had expected to be attack constantly out here, but then again under the constant threat of freezing to death, raiders and Aqualights wouldn't exactly find much in the way of staying alive here. Meanwhile the more technologically advanced factions like the steel rangers had been either wiped out or found more important objectives than trying to rediscover the lost empire's ruins.

Stark apparently had a market for oils considering he was the one who had supplied the ones that I was using. Though who else bought this kind of oil was unknown to me. Maybe Grey had known, but he was... Damn it... My chest was tightening again around the word but my mind forced it out. Grey was dead. I had to accept that, and stop flinching! Returning to the original train of thought. I'd have to ask around sometime that I found actual talkative ponies that weren't crazy cannibals or feral ghouls if they knew Stark to get some idea how influential his oil business was in this frozen north wasteland.

Towards early evening we finally had made enough distance that the next hilltop gave us a clear view of the Empire we had been approaching. To my surprise that wall that had divided a quarter of the city wasn't the wall that I thought it was.

It was a giant collapsed tower.

Xp Footnote: 65% until level up.

Next Chapter: Chapter 47: Getting into Town Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 43 Minutes