I stared down at my hooves as I sat in the back of a rumbling trailer.

I was getting to Poneva after all.

In shackles.

I sat on my haunches, chained to an overfilled, cramped cage with six shivering, miserable ponies like me trapped within. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to imagine myself like one of them.

They didn’t either.

It had been hours since I was taken. We rumbled down that long stretch of highway at a steady pace, as fast as their makeshift, jury-rigged autowagon could take us.

This, sadly, was yet another thing that Night Sky was right about. Slavers. I should’ve stayed with them. Ponies like me didn’t last too long out there, I came to realize. It’s why my friends didn’t last long. It’s why I wasn’t going to last long if I didn’t make it out of there soon.

As bleak as my situation looked, the only thing running circles around my head was – ‘how the hell was I going to get out of this?’ I lived to see my friends die, and walked away from certain death three times so far. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

It was my choice to pick up where my friends left off when the fucking wasteland stole them away from me. I could’ve chosen to tell Night Sky to fuck herself and just crawled into that grave I dug for myself. But I didn’t. If even that choice was taken away from me, I was already dead. Night Sky told me I didn’t get to choose the easy way out.

But if I was going to die, I was going to die saving my stable. Not for those ponies. Not for those fucking slavers.

I looked up and Sugar Rum, the mare that beat my skull in with her carbine, was watching me behind her blue goggles.

I shot her a baleful look that promised death. Sugar Rum held my burning gaze for a few heartbeats. She wasn’t smiling, but I wanted to tear her fucking face and her stupid goggles right off. With a snort of icy air, she turned away, panning her flashlight across the road.

I grinded my teeth together and eyeballed the autowagon’s backseat where they threw my bags. I narrowed them at the black shape of my holster.

My hooves wriggled helplessly against my shackles.

“Think we can sell any of them to Red Eye?” one of them asked, sitting inside the autowagon with a hoof resting casually on one of its steering levers.

The mare sitting next to him with the battle rifle just chuckled.

“Nah. Red Eye needs backbreakers. Not these poor little shits,” she scoffed, glancing over her shoulder and meeting my eyes.

I just glared at her.

“The plantations’ll take ‘em. East Eden’ll take any of ‘em. Hell, I think we can even make a comfort horse outta that one girl back there.”

My eyes finally wandered through the steel bars. I shouldn’t have looked. What I saw made my blood boil. The ponies within were battered and bruised. Some had black eyes. Others had bumps on their heads or patches of coat missing. One of the mares had a bloody, blackened behind. She was lying on the wagon floor with glassy eyes, not staring at anything in particular.

“Sunny Days would love her.” She hefted her battle rifle, leaning over her car seat at the other slavers. “I know we did.”

The fuckers just burst out laughing.

I clenched my teeth, glaring at the slavers with eyes that promised murder. One of them saw me and just kept laughing. They didn’t give two shits about what I thought of them as they drove the wagon through the debris-littered highway. But they were still shitheads. I wanted to see them burn for what they were doing to us.

I pinned my ears back, shaking my head as their boisterous laughter made my heart race. They just kept laughing at that poor mare. Laughing at the mare who was lying at the bottom of cage, broken and ravaged.

All but one of them.

“Come on Sugar Rum, I saw you looking at her pretty little flank!” Rifle Mare chuckled, grinning from ear to ear. “We all know you’re a filly-fooler!”

Sugar Rum kept staring over the sideboards at the jagged cliffs.

I kept staring into the cage. I couldn’t look away. Those ponies … they …

Each had a collar wrapped around their necks – wired collars that blinked with a pulsating red light. My expression darkened as one of the ponies met my eyes.

“What the hell are those things?” I murmured.

“Bomb collars,” said a mare with bandages around her chest.

My eyes widened. Horror flashed across my face.

“Goddesses … w-what did they do to you all?”

For several heartbeats, nopony answered. An earth pony in tattered snow barding pushed past the others, limping to the cage’s bars. “Took me while my daughter and I were scavenging for food,” he answered, faintly.

My jaw clenched. His filly was nowhere to be seen. “Your daughter …”

He looked at his hooves, then back at me with swollen, bloodshot eyes. He blinked furiously, shaking his head as they welled with tears. “They took me … and left her behind.”

I brought my trembling hooves to my face, my heart aching inside my chest.

“Why …” I asked. It was a question that didn’t need an answer. A question that couldn’t have had a real answer.

But they answered it anyways.

“Didn’t ya hear? East Eden can never have enough slaves,” another stallion croaked. He was missing several patches of coat. Curved scars lacerated his bare flesh.

I looked at him with grim curiosity. “What the fuck is an East Eden?”

The mare with bandages wrapped around her chest crawled to the metal bars. “They’re a plantation in Poneva. They need slaves to plow and harvest their fields.”

“They’re going to put us to work and work us to death,” growled the earth pony.

The mangy stallion shook his head. “That ain’t true. I heard they feed ya and put a roof over your head.”

“Bullshit!” the earth pony hissed. “They don’t give a fuck about any of us! Look at what they did to her!” He pointed a forehoof at the mare with the bloody flank. “And those bastards left my filly for dead!”

“Better than bein’ dead …” the mangy pony murmured.

My ears perked and my body went stiff.

“Three meals a day, and a bed to sleep in. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

My jaw dropped in horror as the mare slowly nodded in agreement. “Better than what I ever get … I scavenged everyday for something to eat before these slavers found me. Sometimes I’d go a few days or a week without something in my belly.”

A unicorn with a broken horn in the back of the cage turned his eyes low. “I’d do anything … anything for a bite. Just … something to eat,” he added, “I’m so hungry.”

The mare and the mangy pony nodded together, their wilted ears drooping pathetically.

“They’ll take care of us …” the mare whispered. “We’ll live. We’ll live …”

I stared at them with wide, bloodshot eyes. “What …?”

They all turned to look at me.

“WHAT!?” They cowered behind the bars with bleak, desperate eyes. “How are you okay with this!?”

None of the ponies said anything. Not even the earth pony. They were as beaten and hopeless as the frozen wasteland.

“You can’t be fucking serious?”

“You’re a stable pony,” the hornless unicorn began, eying my PipBuck. “You don’t know what it’s like out here … you don’t know …”

I closed my eyes, shaking my head furiously as he continued.

“You’re lucky if you eat once a day. You’re a king if you eat twice.”

“No. No … no – no.” I glared at the pathetic little pony. “This?” I said, pointing a forehoof at the mare with the bloodied flank. “This isn’t right. And nobody should be fucking okay with it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said a mare.

My ears jerked towards its source, and I slowly turned my head to face her. Sugar Rum was staring at me behind her blue goggles.

I trembled, a sneer tearing across my lips.

“It … doesn’t … matter?”

“East Eden’s better than out here,” Sugar Rum began. “Better than being dead.”

I started towards her – but my chains yanked me back. “You piece of shit … nothing out here is better than being dead.” I glared out into the distance. “I learned that the hard way when I left my stable … but you fuckers, you slaver pieces of trash make this world shittier than it already is.”

I stood to my hooves, pulling my chains as far as I could until I could see my ragged reflection in her goggles.

I whispered in a low voice, loud enough for her fucking ears to hear, “How do you live with yourself …”

Her goggles gave away nothing of the pony beneath.

Several long seconds passed until Sugar Rum finally replied, her voice trembling.

“It’s a business … you get paid … and when you get paid, you can put food on the table. If I don’t do this, my family will starve.”

“IT’S NOT WORTH IT!” I snapped. I remembered Night Sky – Gail – the village of burning zebras. I screamed into her face as if they were standing there before me. “It' s not fucking worth it! But you fuckers, you sick FUCKERS – that’s all it is to you, isn’t it!?” Sugar Rum turned her head away from me and stared off into the distance. My voice lowered as I craned my neck towards her.

“It’s just for the caps, isn’t it?” I grinned, mockingly. I glanced at the poor mare with the ruined flank, then back at Sugar Rum. “Look at me.”

She didn’t.

“LOOK AT ME!”

Her goggles turned shakily towards me like an unoiled machine.

I pointed at the glassy-eyed mare at the bottom of the cage. “You see that? Is that what you do? Is that … that work … worth it? How’d you like it if somepony did that to you?”

The slaves were as speechless as the slavers. I didn’t think they’d seen anyone mouth off to a slaver like that before. Sugar Rum looked at her hooves, and muttered something incomprehensible.

“What?” I said, slowly, “What the fuck did you just say?”

“I-I … I …” she stammered, choking on her own words. Sugar Rum sniffled, bowing her head for one dark moment. Her blue goggles turned to face me, and I saw the hatred in my own reflection. “I … don’t care. I-I don’t care.” She stared off into the distance. “I don’t fucking care …”

I closed my eyes and hung my head.

She didn’t care. She didn’t. Fucking. Care.

I collapsed upon my haunches in silence as the wind howled around me. No hope. There was no hope for those ponies. No hope for the wasteland. If only the balefire had just done the right thing and killed them all.

“Hey …” someone whispered. I looked up and into the cage. The ponies huddled within parted aside. The ravaged mare was looking straight … through me. “Thank you … you’re right: this isn’t okay,” she said, distantly, “But there’s nothing … nothing you can do now.

“There’s nothing any of us can do now …”

I looked down at my hooves. Maybe she was right. I wasn’t getting out alive. Neither of us were.

My chains were cold, cold steel. No amount of pulling, yanking, or bitching was going to save me now.

From the darkness, several octaves higher than the moan of the wind howled a creature that sounded nothing like anything I had ever heard. Sugar Rum straightened out, levitating her carbine over the wagon’s sideboard, her ears perked.

I heard it again, a blood-curdling, unnatural howl that shook my resolve. It roared from the darkness like a demon hound screaming out from the gates of hell. I pressed my back as close to the trailer’s sideboards as I could, the slaves inside the cage huddling together in fear. Fear. I thought I knew what it felt like to have fear.

I swung my head in every direction, trying to find the source of that hellish howling. But another creature roared with it. And another. And another. From the darkness they howled in unison – from every direction. With each quaking second that passed, another joined the nightmarish cacophony.

Then I saw them. Goddesses. There were so many of them.

Rising up from the ridgeline’s jagged cliffs were a dozen black shapes in all. Each hunched silhouette was as large as a third of the wagon’s frame. Each hunched silhouette was twice as large as a full grown stallion.

One of the slavers jumped to his hooves, a machine pistol in his mouth.

“BLOODLETTERS!”

“STEP ON IT!” Rifle Mare ordered, banging her hoof against the wagon’s sideboard. “We need to get the fuck away from those things!”

The driver nodded, and punched his hindhoof into the pedal. The wagon’s engine moaned as we accelerated.

But that resistance – that unwillingness to sit there and die set the creatures off. The prey was escaping.

And they needed to feed.

With a deafening roar, a bloodletter bounded deftly down the slope and hurled itself towards us, claws outstretched.

But it crashed into the drifts in an explosion of gravel and snow. The autowagon groaned onward as fast as a horse could gallop. It was behind us now. But there came echoing through my ears a mad howl. The bloodletter blew through the snow shower – loping explosively toward us. Faster than us. It wasn’t done with us yet.

I saw its coat – as white as snow. It was closing in, now. I could see its hungry, soulless eyes. I watched it as it snapped its yellowed teeth and snarled through its frothing mouth.

Seconds crawled by as the accelerating autowagon screamed into my ears. Then the beast threw its head back. It unleashed a bestial shriek that drowned out our engine’s feeble cries.

Somepony thrusted a rifle barrel over my shoulder.

“PUT ‘EM DOWN! DON’T LET ‘EM GET CLOSE!”

I ducked as everyone scrambled to take aim.

Gunfire lit up the night.

Chunks of the bloodletter’s flesh blew off its body as the battle rifle’s high caliber rounds tore into it. It yelped, faltered – snarled and didn’t lose a single step as more of the immense, white beasts leaped into the fray. I covered my ringing ears with my hooves and watched helplessly as their wolf-like silhouettes bounded down the hills from every side.

We were being surrounded.

One of the slavers beamed our path with the autowagon’s strobe light.

There was a flash of white – and I screamed as one of the bloodletters flung itself in front of our wagon. It squealed, and all I heard was a sickening crunch as the wagon flipped over – end over end – hurling away screaming ponies left and right -

The wagon crashed into the snow and the world around me exploded in a flash of violet magical fire.

The impact catapulted me violently into the air as the wagon smashed into a snow drift, throwing up showers of ashen powder. I thrashed my limbs through the air, the wind howling past my ears as I screamed for my life – and the chain around my fetlocks yanked me back down to the earth in a blur of flailing limbs.

I careened into the autowagon’s shattered frame, my forehead smashing through a ruined plank of wood. I stumbled to my hooves in a daze, blood running down my face.

All around me, ponies screamed. Only this time, it wasn’t a village burning.

Littering the snow were the broken remains of the slavers’ autowagon. The magically-powered engine was burning. And so was the driver. His motionless body, charred from the head to hoof smoked gruesomely in the wind.

Most of the others fared better, as the rest of them scrambled desperately to their hooves. One of the stallions burst through the debris, limping out into the open in the violet firelight. He looked at me. And I looked at him.

Then a bloodletter smashed into him.

It snapped its jaws around his throat and hurled him into the powder with a splash of arterial red. He didn’t even get a chance to scream.

I scrambled away. Screaming. Screaming as the creature tore into him, ripping from his ruined, mangled carcass a mouthful of bloody pony meat.

“Goddesses – oh my Celestia – Luna’s fucking grace!” I screamed as another bloodletter joined it and fought the other for the pony’s meaty limbs. There came a third, but it stopped, realizing that there wasn’t enough meat for the three of them.

A low growl rumbled inside its throat.

It saw me. It saw me. The bloodletter cocked its head and found the smell of my fear tantalizing.

It bared its wickedly sharp teeth and bounded toward me screaming for my bloody flesh. I turned and galloped away – but the chain yanked me back to the ground.

The bloodletter pounced. I felt its paws crash into me. It punched the air from my lungs and drove me deep into the snow, pinning me beneath it with the bulging, rippling muscles of its forelegs. I whimpered helplessly as I felt its claws dug into my barding.

It dropped its jaw, howled into my face, and snapped its teeth towards my throat.

I held out my hooves – and my chains shattered between its teeth. My eyes widened at my forehooves – free. But not for long. The beast snarled – spat out the broken links and dove back into me. I hurled my hooves into its throat and held it back with all the strength I had left … whimpering helplessly as I poured into my legs all the hope and desperation the wasteland hadn’t taken from me yet.

Its yellow teeth snapped a breath’s length away from my muzzle. Its black-veined eyes glared into mine.

It was too strong. I was just biding my time.

I was going to die.

It roared into my face, spraying my muzzle with ropes of thick, disgusting spittle. I smelled its breath. A breath that reeked with the stench of a vomit and rotting flesh. I could see chunks of ragged meat poking out between its teeth.

Pony meat.

I screamed.

With a nightmarish screech, the bloodletter threw its head back. The flesh of its muzzle throbbed. Swelled. Popped. Its lower jaw snapped wide open – torn and distended as its howls escalated into deafening, ear piercing shrieks.

Then its head began to twitch. It widened. And widened.

And its head ripped open.

It exploded outward – only its head didn’t come apart. With a gurgling hiss, a long, writhing proboscis erupted out from the fleshy hole that was its throat between its four dripping, quivering mandibles.

“HOLY SHIT – WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS THING!?”

The bloodletter rumbled a throaty growl, its fleshy gray proboscis widening to reveal rows upon rows of serrated teeth. It, about as long as my outstretched foreleg, snaked into the air as I held back the rest of its body with my faltering strength.

I bared my teeth and screamed helplessly into its snapping mandibles, trying to wrestle the beast off me. But my muscles were burning. It was getting closer. It was too strong.

And I was too weak.

I stared into its soulless, insatiable eyes. A web of black veins bulged and throbbed around its sclera. It pushed. And pushed. And pushed.

My legs wobbled, and ached.

I faltered.

In a heartbeat, my limbs slackened. It fell upon me.

I shrieked as blood splashed onto my face and onto my chest. It tore into me, ripping me open. I lay there screaming – bleeding out.

But the blood wasn’t mine.

The mutant abomination let out a dying shriek and slumped on top of me with a dozen ragged holes pouring blackish blood out of its head and throat. I wrestled it away with a faint groan, and saw Sugar Rum’s carbine smoking.

She lowered her weapon and flung my belongings at me. I looked at her, painted in thick, steaming blood. Sugar Rum nodded once, levitated her gun, and continued firing. Two of the remaining slavers galloped towards her, unleashing their automatic weapons upon the bloodletters as they stalked toward us.

I slipped on my holster, threw on my saddlebags, and wrapped Dew Drops' scarf around my neck. Somepony screamed behind me, and I whirled on my hooves.

‘Goddesses … no.’

Three bloodletters circled the cage, snarling … biding their time knowing that their prey was lying helplessly upon a silver platter before them. All they had to do was pounce.

The ponies huddled together inside. Trapped. They were but a single corpulent breath away from a gruesome end.

“HELP! SOMEPONY HELP US!” the bandaged mare begged.

“GET US OUT OF HERE!”

“The cage!” I pointed a hoof at the ponies that were cowering within. “We need to help them!”

The slavers looked the other way. Sugar Rum galloped towards me.

“The key – find the key!” she screamed.

I panned my PipBuck’s light across the snow and spotted something shiny. I kicked my legs towards it - and a howling bloodletter landed in front of me.

It thrashed through the drifts.

I watched as the key disappeared beneath the shifting snow.

I lost it.

I lost.

“NOOO!” I cried as I yanked the trigger back. It crashed into to the snow and slid to my hooves in a trail of gore.

Dead.

Like the slaves.

I turned my head and saw the bad go to worse. The ponies screamed as a bloodletter wrapped its jaws around one of the metal bars and yanked. The cage slammed into the snow on its side, pinning the creature beneath and hurling the ponies on top of it. They landed against the bars in a shrieking heap, and the bloodletter’s head split open, snaking its writhing proboscis through the bars.

It ripped into the mangy pony’s throat.

The veiny proboscis tore off a huge chunk of flesh – stripping flesh from bone, and he collapsed against the metal bars at the other end of the cage. Within seconds, the bloodletters outside tore him apart through the bars in a gory frenzy of snapping teeth. He screamed in silence, his throat shredded to the bone as they broke his legs and ripped them off through the bars.

I shook my head vigorously, a cold sweat pouring down my face as the sounds of bones breaking, of flesh tearing – of their gurgling cries for help yanked me underwater. I drowned in their agony, lowering myself to the snow and cradling my head in my hooves, closing my eyes and wishing there was something I could do. Something.

I tried to do something. I tried to help them. I tried to shoot those monsters. I stood to my hooves and yanked the trigger back. My bullets plunged deep, but did nothing as the beasts shrugged them off, unfazed in their enraged, mindless state.

“Dear Celestia … SOMEBODY HELP THEM!” I pleaded in desperation.

“Fuck ‘em,” the slaver mare with the battle rifle shouted back.

I froze.

“WHAT?!”

“FUCK ‘EM! Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

“YOU MOTHER FUCKERS!” I roared, swinging my pistol to face them. Then I heard the ravaged mare inside the cage scream. I turned. My eyes widened as the bloodletters tried to pull her through the bars. They couldn’t. They tore her head off instead, lapping at the fountain of blood that splashed all over their white coats.

As I stood there watching, the slavers turned and galloped away.

Everyone except Sugar Rum. We stood there and watched. We watched the feast.

The bloodletters tore into those defenseless morsels, devouring them alive – their shrieks dying beneath the beasts’ nightmarish howls. Whoever hadn’t already died pleaded for death as limbs tore, bones broke, and entrails spilled. The earth pony fell to the bottom of the cage, clutching his eviscerated innards as proboscides fought against his gory forelegs in an effort to yank away his intestines.

I started towards them, and paused.

It was no use. They were already dead. The beasts snarled and barked as they fed. I listened to the squelching of shredded pony meat. The disgusting pops of disarticulated bones. The gurgling cries of the dying ponies as the bloodletters devoured them alive.

I heard everything. Listened to everything as their screams echoed in my thoughts, clawing at the white walls of my conscience – staining them red … cracking the walls with every vicious, hungry snap.

I reared my head to the sky, yanked at my mane with my hooves, and screamed for Luna’s grace.

Everyone I tried to help slipped away from my hooves. Everyone.

With a whooping screech, one of the beasts leaped towards us. It pounced upon Sugar Rum, clawing through her throat with its razor sharp talons in one fell sweep. She stumbled backwards upon her hinds, her forelegs wrapped around her throat, blood spurting through her hooves.

I said nothing, numb as SATS guided rounds through the bloodletters head until my magazine clicked empty. Sugar Rum collapsed into the snow, her lifeblood melting through the powder around her.

I fell to my haunches beside her, and held out my hooves. She just swatted them away, shaking her head.

“You …” I whispered.

“Sorry – I’m sorry ... the shit I've done ... the ponies I've killed ... you’re right … not worth it,” she choked, blood running down her lips. She hoofed one of her chest pockets, and pulled out a frayed slip of paper, holding it out to me with a bloody hoof. It was an aged photograph of a golden yellow pony, a mare with braided blonde locks, and two pale coated twins.

“Take it … please …” she rasped. I slipped it into one of my vest pockets, nodding gravely. Sugar Rum lifted her blue goggles and pulled off her hood, revealing the golden-coated pony underneath. She gazed up at me with her watery blue eyes as the light within them began to fade.

“The slaves …” I began.

“I’ll take care of them …” Sugar Rum croaked. She levitated a small tube, and flipped it open. A detonator. “Go. If you find my daughters … my sister … tell them I-I … I went out … a good pony.”

I nodded. Shell shocked. I touched her cheek with a forehoof as tears welled up in my eyes.

I stood to my hooves and started forward … but I hesitated, glancing over my shoulder. Sugar Rum sat up, firing her carbine into the night.

I turned and kept going, no longer wanting to look back as I chased after the two remaining slavers. They hadn’t gotten far. I saw, splattered across the snow, a stallion, his carcass nearly pulled apart into two, and his viscera spilled across the melting drifts. Around him were two dead bloodletters, their cratered heads painting the snow red.

The other mare was on the ground, wrestling with one of the beasts.

“Help!” she begged as its proboscis chomped down on her shoulder and tore out a chunk of meat.

My horn glowed. My pistol lifted into the air. But I hesitated.

A part of me just wanted to keep running. I watched as she struggled, entranced. I felt it again. The darkest corners of my mind whispering to me. Telling me to run.

‘Why …’ I thought. ‘Why should I help you?

The night lit up for a brief moment with a resonating crack, silencing the dying screams behind me. Then a single gunshot echoed into the night.

My ears rang as I clenched my eyes shut.

‘Why …’

Only the bloodletters remained. I exhaled a shaky breath and opened my eyes.

SATS fixed me a firing solution. Bullets plunged into its coat, tumbling through its chest and exploding out the other side. It paused to scream, and the mare bucked it off her.

She scrambled to her hooves and broke off into a full on gallop, bloody hoofprints trailing behind her.

“C’mon, c’mon!” she shouted. I followed.

The road disappeared behind us as we scrambled up a steep hill of broken asphalt. We approached an ancient recharging station, with an aged, blackened sign that vaguely read ‘Mane 7-Eleven’. Not too far behind us, the bloodletters closed in.

Rifle Mare bucked open the door and we charged in, not caring what might be lying in wait within. I slammed the door behind us and scrambled inside. The mare pushed a half-disintegrated shelf in front of it, bits of blackened miscellanea spilling from its shelves as we heaved it into place.

For good measure, we heaved against the door two more – but even then, we were only delaying the inevitable. Outside, our horrible deaths awaited us. We were going to be eaten alive by those mutant abominations. The door rattled and quaked, the wooden barrier threatening to snap. It splintered and tore open, and the enraged, black-veined eye of a snarling bloodletter glared back at us.

“Shit! These things are fucking strong!” the mare screamed, backing away from the barricades. The door bucked inward once more with a jarring slam, and one of the shelves fell over in a heap of shattered wood and metal, kicking up a shower of ash from the floor.

The slaver turned to look at me, levitating a pistol from her holster.

“If we make it out of this, I’ll let you go.”

My expression darkened. We were going to die, and that was what she was thinking. To her, I was still just another slave. She left them behind for dead – for bait so she could escape, and didn’t give a single shit.

And I knew that she would do it again – to me … just … to save … her skin.

She … she cared only about herself. I stared at her with a disturbing calmness that would have frightened me if I was looking in a mirror. I shivered once beneath my barding.

Then nothing.

In that moment, the bestial roars outside, my heaving chest, my pounding temples – they all faded away into a grim silence.

Cold black paint trickled down the pockmarked walls of my conscience. I let the floodgates part.

I decided that only one of us was going to make it out alive.

I learn from my mistakes. I don’t make the same mistakes twice. And you know what?

Good things happen to bad ponies.

“W-why are you looking at me like that?”

I slipped into SATS.

Her knees snapped beneath her like wooden planks with satisfying, wet cracks.

She let out a horrifying scream as her pistol discharged into my kevlar vest.

I felt nothing.

I watched with an icy stare as she crumbled to the floor.

“Y-you SON OF A BITCH!” she wailed as I spun around and ran the other way. One of the shelves went down in a deafening crash of splintered wood. She crawled across the floor with her useless forelegs and leaned against the final barricade, holding it against the door for her dear life. Outside, the monsters rammed their bodies against the door behind her.

“NO! Don’t!”

I galloped away from her. I didn’t lose a single step.

“DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!”

She was sobbing now.

“PLEASE!”

I didn’t look back. The doors smashed open and their carnal, bestial roars echoed behind me. They tore into her, the sounds of her flesh tearing – her bones breaking … they crashed against my ears like waves on a seashore as the bloodletters ripped her apart.

Limb. From. Limb.

I bucked down the backdoor and galloped out into the snow, the mare’s frantic, gurgling screams dying away behind me. My hooves pounded into the drifts, kicking up showers of powder as I ran for my life.

My life.

I ran until the Mane 7-Eleven disappeared behind me in a under a blanket of thick snowfall. For what seemed like hours, I galloped on until my legs gave out beneath me and I collapsed into the snow. Out of breath, I wheezed for air, filling my lungs with biting cold oxygen that reminded me that I … I was still alive.

I struggled to my hooves and looked up. A sign. I beamed it with my PipBuck’s teal glow.

Welcome to the City of Poneva.

Population 5,390,000.

I stared up at the sign in disbelief, my breaths coming in and out as coughs. I held out my forelegs and hugged the sign’s metal posts, gasping for breath. I wheezed, fell to my haunches and threw up acid, because I had nothing left to heave. I slumped to the drifts, curled up into a ball, writhing as my stomach churned and my head spun.

I inhaled deeply and exhaled, my trembling breath slowly dissipating into the frozen darkness.

A wide grin slowly stretched across my face.

“Ha … ha …” I breathed. “Hahaha ... hahahaha ...” I closed my eyes, threw my head back and laughed. I whooped with maddening hilarity until my cackles turned to chuckles, and my chuckles turned into cries.

I choked on my trembling sobs as warm, fresh tears welled out of my weary eyes. I wept into my hooves, my tears mingling with the dried crimson that splattered my face, turning red, and seething down my cheeks in dark rivulets.

I sat on my haunches in the snow, staring off into the distance, my heart racing, my lungs heaving, and my body shuddering.

The huge, towering skyscrapers of Poneva rose up above the dim suburbs and into the clouds, lights and distant signs twinkling into the night as far as the eye could see.

‘I made it, Dew Drops, I made it.’

‘I’m alive. I won.’

That was all that mattered.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Mare Killer - In combat, you do +10% damage against female opponents. Outside of combat, you'll sometimes have access to unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex.

Author's Notes:

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