"So why are we not shooting at each other?" Pumpkin asked again, once we had landed. Causing another round of hooves and claws to faces.

"Simple orange pony." Rinotto stated smoothly, his claw coming to rest under his own chin, "You need the tribes to get inside the castle. No surface entrances exist, and even that bomb of yours wouldn't leave a dent in light of what already has happened to this city."

"How so?" Pumpkin asked, looking doubtful that a high yield radioactive tactical bomb wasn't the solution to everything. Her current pride and enjoy was being held aloft in black smoke, as Sombra had a similarly made black claw keeping Pumpkin from reaching it. Like a kid in a candy store. Whatever pre-war candy stores even were. There was the occasional stick of chocolate but they tasted mostly like dirt after two hundred years, so I didn't see the appeal.

Rinotto took a nearby piece of rebar to drive into the snow and ice. Drawing a rough picture of the toppled tower, with grave authority continuing as if mid lecture, "Two bombs and it was the first one that broke the tower, and at point blank range it only took out its standing supports and the bottom two floors became fused into a solid mass of enchanted stone. In virtue to its design, when it did collapse, it didn't shatter, but rather tipped until it came to a sudden stop."

He looked us all over to make sure we were still following him on this, and continued on, "When the tower impacted, the bottom of it took the sudden motion violently, which lead to a situation regarding the town that it landed on being enchanted similarly, albeit to a lesser extent and those who lived there then became stuck inside their homes after the wreck. Think of it like this," he drew a picture of a small spiked top house underneath the tower, "When the two shielded structures collided it created fractures, and those fractures are your way in once excavated. But to excavate them..."

He drew the pictures of three different proportioned dogs around the picture. One of the thin set frames that had grown familiar with as this tribes attributes. The other two types of snow hounds revealed that one had thicker arm muscles and a more heavily bearded disposition while the last frame was more pear shaped. A triangle then was drawn connecting them together around the rough image of the Crystal heart intact, "You're going to need the resources of the scouts to find it, the warriors to guard, and the suppliers to fuel this endeavor."

"What does she need to do to get their cooperation?" Sombra asked, "Something extreme I bet?"

The elder Rinotto gave the former tyrant a weary look, "I would wish it otherwise, but to garner the approval of the tribes, this changeling will need to commence upon three very difficult tasks by the rules of tradition as stated by our ancestors."

"And that entails?" I asked, tilting my head as my mane obscured some of my vision, an old hole still providing a decent amount of vision to frame Rinotto.

"Each tribe has their own rules but it does have one constant rule. For us, the rules are simple." he raised his claws up, and began to unfold them one by one, "One. The trial must be completed by yourself. This rule is in place in all tribes to make sure the candidate is capable enough to stand for themselves."

"Makes sense," Pumpkin chimed in, as the rest of us nodded.

"Two," Rinotto continued on, "No flying, magic, or high tech devices." He rolled his eyes on the last one, "We need to be able to judge your ability by your own capabilities. Not through the use of unfair advantages such as flight, magic, or technologies such as stealth bucks, jet-packs, power armor, or power armored jet-packs. Melee weapons are allowed, but they shouldn't be necessary in our trial."

"You come across a lot of jet packs out here?" I asked out of confusion.

"Once. It ended messily." Silver chuckled nervously, "It got hit by a laser round and detonated... With the wearer still attached. Still finding bits of them around the place."

I winced.

"Thanks for giving our guests a mental image Silver." Rinotto rolled his tired eyes before continuing, "And rule number three, do not be discovered. The scouts test is going to revolve around your ability to sneak past security measures throughout the trial. Trust us on that you don't want to be found during this test."

"What do you want me to do exactly on this trial?" I asked. The old dog, gestured me over and pointed into the distance to a concrete hexagonal base.

"There, inside at its bottom level is a working computer terminal. The subsystems we have been able to access from the outside implies it still works, but we can't access it remotely due to security measures in place. Your job is to get inside, use the pipbuck attached to your leg to get the files, and get out without triggering any alarms. For the beast we call Shinoko sleeps within, and he is not one to be awoken unless you wish to die."

"Shinoko?" I asked, unable to comprehend the name. It wasn't equestrian, that was for sure.

Silver chimed in, "It is the word of the foreign horse who first alerted us to its presence. A short handed version of, if he translated himself correctly, 'Breath of Death'."

Rinotto patted the younger hound on the head before adding, "He called the creature, Shi no kokyū though we shortened it with time to something easier for the tongue. The creature itself is apparently an aberrant among ghouls around here. A minotaur who went feral and grew bloated and glowing from magical radiation."

I groaned, "Great another glowing minotaur ghoul, and of the icy variety as well."

"You've run into another of the type?" The elder dog asked, looking surprised.

"Yeah, in an old prewar lab facility." I sighed, "There was a glowing minotaur ghoul called Bull Frown who I only beat from a forced magical surge at the last moment. From what I heard, he was working with someone called 'Doc Smiles' who is the cause of a lot of the brutish giant ghouls back in Vanhoover. Didn't think one of his brutes would have appeared over here."

"There's more than two of those things?" Silver asked, alarm clear as day across her face.

"Relax." Pumpkin snorted, "Despite their size, muscle mass, and regeneration factor, they very much can still be killed. Some prefer killing them with decapitation, I on the other hoof prefer point blank annihilation."

"Of course you would." Sombra rolled his eyes, "It's your solution for everything."

"Hey!"

"Getting back on topic." Rinotto Interceded, "This feral is still incredibly dangerous, and he is logged in the security systems as an ally. Trigger an alarm, and not only he, but the turrets around him will open fire on you." He reached into a pocket, pulling out a tattered, but folded piece of paper, "This is a copy of the password to get into the terminal. Keep it safe, and keep yourself even safer. Your companions are welcome to stay with us until the trial has ended. Otherwise, Silver will show you to the starting point. Come back when you've collected the information from the terminal."

"Wait, me?" Silvers ears went down, nervous at the sudden command no doubt.

"You brought her here," Rinotto chimed in, his aged eyes betraying a hint of poetic justice for a cultural misdeed, "Its only right you show your candidate where to go."

"Well, alright Chief..." Silvers expression dropped from nervous to glum, "If that's what you wish." She began to bound off, stopping only momentarily to gesture at me, "Come on, lets get going."

"Oh, and Silver." Rinotto called over as I trotted to catch up with her, "Do try to be back before dark, the Ghouls are restless after all the commotion so far."

He barked a laugh as a small whine escaped Silver and together we ran off. As we left I could faintly hear Pumpkin ask Sombra, "How long do you think until Aria ends up having to fight the big ghoul?"

Sombra snorted, amused, "Fifteen minutes into it."

"Thirty." Pumpkin chimed her estimate right after.

"Five!" one of the dogs added a third wheel to their conversation. More began to make their bets and I groaned my own annoyance as Silver and I moved at a steady pace away from the snowy hill that marked the scouts den. Barks and words aplenty fading away soon enough as seconds turned to minutes of nonstop motion. I swear to Celestia if this turned into a betting pool I'd...

I was actually unsure what I'd do to think of it. Probably ask for whoever betted that I wasn't going to cause a mess and give them a hug maybe.

The trip itself was relatively short, in comparison to most travels so far which was an honest relief since most journeys took a day or two at least to reach anywhere in the wasteland. But given that we were in a crumbling ruin of a rather tightly interwoven city built around what had once been a limited radius of protective shielding, that was a given. The military installation itself was notably on the same mid-layer defensive circle that we had set up shop in, only a few neighbors away. Which gave me a semblance that the city had been built like a multi-layered snowflake, each military installation planted on each individual tip. With around three layers of flakes total. Spanning around thirty six defensive installations in all if distance between them were an indicator. That was of course excluding any additional ones that were located outside the city, where the buried remains and tell tale signs of old trenches were left. Since I could neither make sense of where the hostile lines had begun against the crystal empire or where the empire itself had dug in thanks to all the snow near two hundred years had piled onto it.

So in mirror fashion, the installation came to no surprise to its layout when we initially spotted it. I could easily see the door from a few blocks away. Silver pointed it out, and after taking shelter in a nearby building told me she'd be waiting here for me to return once I had completed their trial. Gesturing me towards the facility, and waving goodbye to me as I left. Now came the hard part.

Given that if this facility was like the one my group had set up camp in, then there would be a sewer entrance somewhere down below, but I had neither the idea of how to reach the sewer from here or if it was still an intact passage to the entrance after near two hundred years. The previous experience had also shown it to be infested with ghouls of various sorts, and to be maze like. While I'd prefer to go in by the backdoor, the only viable choice was the front entrance as a result. That didn't however, mean I didn't have to play it dumb like a brute. While I wasn't allowed weapons, the scope of Ambush was still useful for spotting out distant targets.

After ten minutes of observing the entrance and making sure there was no other hostiles like the strange ghouls wandering about, I made my way towards it. Avoiding a security sweeping turret by crawling around and over it before entering as it gazed primarily at the front. Sneaking along the ceiling and trying my best to ignore dozens of worn military garbed skeletons of various species as they were crowded around the entrance of the door. Some having died looking like they were desperately trying to go back inside, others like they were trying to go outside. Some of the skeletons had been pushed aside long ago by some unknown person. One particular unicorn had been crushed between a now since long nonfunctional pressurized door, their bones snapped and crushed into a flat line by the doors former power. I resisted the urge to gag at the last sight, what a way to go.

As I progressed there was a large amount of similarities to the structures lay out, like someone had just copied and rotated a section of the city multiple times as the layout was very similar to the temporary camp. Twisting hallways however began to change as I got down to the next level. Reactors and Barracks had swapped, and what I had remembered as a way to the central command offices had instead lead to a long since looted armory. The only signs of it having been what it was being several smashed lockers and a broken bench, as well as a weapons rack that was long since in desperate need of repair. Several broken pad locks just confirmed my bias, as I pushed open the locker revealing an old suit of Crystal Guard armor, kitted out for proper warfare rather than ceremonial. I would claim it but it was old enough that upon touching it, it immediately fell apart from disuse, age, and rust. I was kind of disappointed, as it looked like it was once heavy armor. Wait it fell... with a loud clang.

Alarmed I threw myself back onto the ceiling and curled my tail so it was laying its tips against my chest. As sure enough, a heavy series of thudding began to shake the room as a large monster of a Balefrost Brute charged into the room. It was a lot like Bull Frown, a minotaur a bit smaller height wise than Bull but far more muscled and wider set. Well muscles was the wrong term, his muscles were unhealthy, bulging with tumors with each vein glowing a bright blue that was the unnatural energy where alongside infecting the veins; glowing ice like crystals were sticking out of the skin like an icy cloak of daggers. The Ghouls face was distorted in a perpetual look of anger and pain, his eyes long since dissolved into an unseeing white milky mess. White-blue clouds of radiation blew out of his nose, freezing the area around his face like an over sized mustache. Constantly breaking off and reforming with every movement and breathe. The brute sniffed around the lockers and growled, taking random swings at the benches and bending the door where the suit had fallen among shattering and denting the surrounding steel walls as if they were but cardboard.

Slowly through the noise I crawled back out through the doorway, continuing further downwards as the sounds of mutated flesh and ice smashed against metal repeatedly. Both from the sounds of it being broken and bent. There were quite a few things that I put on my list not to get hit by, and that just made the top five. As for not being discovered, it was rather easy to continue on. Several hallways featured turrets that were either destroyed beyond repair by their angry inhabitant, or frozen over in ice in the case of one immobile one. There were only a few intact turrets that weren't damaged beyond repair, two ceiling ones as I made my way down to the second floor, which lined the main hallway but were easily avoided by ducking into a side room which had turned out to be a barracks.

The barracks were once well lived in, but their current state denoted that this was where the balefrost brute slept. Bed frames and mattresses were smashed and bent together in a lopsided nest that reminded me of a picture of a birds nest that I'd once seen. Only one side of it was completely open, as to let its inhabitant enter and exit the nest with its low ceiling limit. Cautiously I noted that the ceiling above it was filled with hanging icicles, as well as the floor and surroundings around the nest. the nest itself glowed dimly in the lightless room and as I crawled along the ceiling I noted that all the lockers for various soldiers gear were crumpled, destroyed, or in one case full of bones. I left by crawling through the other end of the barracks where another doorway was waiting, and passing around behind the turret, being careful not to touch it.

The third floors stairs were almost completely encased from ice, and had I not been able to climb walls or fly, it might of been a major problem. As is there was barely any room to squeeze in, as though the brute had really wanted no one to go down here. Even crawling around on the ceiling of the staircase downwards, it was a chore not to scrape my back along the jagged lines of frozen earth. Dimly I saw that there was a few ruptured pipes which had once been the source of the liquid, and was glad that after the first three floors the frozen water veered off into a deadend. The reason for the blocade then had to be reevaluated as there was a unicorn skeleton down here, which was leaning against it and with it a small data log. I loaded it into my pipbuck for a quick read. Not wanting to stay any longer than I had to but maybe there was something else of use on it.

Not sure when rescue is going to come, that monster was clearly out of his mind. Its been about two days since the damn thing showed up out of nowhere, just when we were getting the power working again as well. Burnt out my horn trying to stop it from murdering everypony, but that means little considering I don't have a thawing spell worth a damn to handle all this ice. Not that I would want to move it, probably only thing keeping it from crushing me like it crushed Screwtop. Celestia, I can still see that thing yelling and whaling on the ice. It stopped a while ago, but it came back with the leg of my same said crushed friend. It was chewing on it. Like it was a snack, or some sort of reel of cotton candy. Had I anything in my stomach, I'd of vomit it at the sight of the blood trickling down its chin as it gave that malicious satisfied grin.

It went on for a little while, as the writings grew more desperate, and I forced myself to put it down and away in order to search the rest of the dead unicorn. Turning up to my surprise, a card key and employees badge alongside a very old 10mm pistol and no rounds of ammunition left inside it. I pocketed the pistol, even while it was as useless as a rock at the moment, a rock still had a use in distraction, and moved along. As I entered the next hallway I was met with a scene of carnage, as the unicorn before me had taken apart all the turrets they could, to try and make some sort of amalgamate super-turret but failed before they could do all the wiring apparently. I was glad for that, well not that they died and failed, but that they hadn't made a super-turret for me to deal with and that they had as a result stripped the security from this floor at least as I continued my search. Way down here was an armory, already looted. As well as a big fancy door with a card reader as a lock.

Following my hunch, I slid the recently acquired badge through and the door hissed upward about a foot before it began to fall again. Quickly I caught it, and slid the pistol into the path of the door so that I could lift it again without it locking on me. In this room was an office, with a terminal and small desk. Sitting at the desk was a skeleton of another pony, this time with a hole in the head which was caused clearly by their own pistol. This one a revolver whose parts had long since rusted to bits from age and lack of maintenance. I sneaked my way over, taking out the faded slip of paper that I had been given for the password, and logging in. The terminal itself was filled with a large amount of files, which I began to download into my pipbuck, while I waited, I decided to do some snooping myself and opened the second to last file, noting that the last one was a suicide note and ignoring it.

Military Report: Omega Event
We were first given awareness to what we would be calling the beginning of the end today which marks eight days until Nightmare Night. We thought it was going to be another day of war between our two fronts, as both sides were ineffectively wailing on the city barrier with artillery for the period of five weeks now, and constant infiltrators and sappers were being sent and captured by both the south-western Equestrian forces and eastern Zebra forces. Both sides occasionally erupt in skirmish raids against each other now and then but it was only served as an agitator for both of them. Previous reports from our northern Yak allies had returned with messages of still maintained neutrality and it was looking like the situation was going rather grim as Prince Shining Armor had to announce half rations at the week before due to the continued siege upon our city. It wasn't until today did we learn just how grim both sides had become with war. As of 3:37 am central time, the east coast of Equestria no longer exists, and as we are learned over the following hours, the rest of both our Equestrian and our Zebra enemy nations are now a devastated wasteland. The majormost threats leading up to this event was the Zebran deployed megaspell which resulted in a giant creation of rock and stone to the north of the city.

Our own catastrophe struck us about an hour into the mutual annihilation. A Zebra infiltration team managed to sneak a Balefire bomb through our sewer system to directly beneath the crystal heart before detonating it at 4:25 am in the morning. All attending security staff was killed by the blast, but the Crystal Heart managed to pull a miracle, at the cost of it cracking and the shield falling it managed to contain the blast and only immediate security personal alongside the infiltrators were killed. Shortly after this first explosion, both Zebra and Equestrian forces rushed the city, where a three way fight occurred all at once. In the span of half the hour we had an estimated 20,000 casualties and more beside when the next disaster struck. When the bombs had been falling across both nations they had also both sent weapons of mass destruction to the Empire. At 4:58 am in the morning, the Equestrian megaspell hit, decimating what remained of the populace in a blizzard flurry strong enough to outshine Wendigos of old and all contact with other military forces have been lost.

There are currently reports of no other survivors from the megaspell blizzard, and as magical radiation seeps its way through everything, we've suffered. The second spell when it hit, shattered the already fractured crystal heart, causing it to overload and detonate, shards flying in directions that no one left alive can figure out. We know one flew upward into the tower above it as the blast was what caused the once mighty tower to fall, but aside from that we must assume that the life of our city has been ended.

Without the crystal heart there is no hope. If you are reading this. I'm sorry. We have failed the Crystal Empire.

A shiver ran down my spine, as the ramifications of what this nameless dead pony had witnessed sunk in. Complete destruction and hatred from both Equestria and the Zebrican Empire. Both so certain of the others destruction that they would rather both destroy every bit of land they could. The pieces were here that after the first bomb went off to take out the Crystal heart, that they would rush to take the city itself. But neither side had predicted the other thinking in the exact same way, and when they did throw the proverbial point of no return... They left behind yet another city of the dead, dying, and diseased in their wake.

For once I was glad I was alone, for now, I began to cry.

Xp Footnote: 40% Until level up.

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