The water level was rising. Bubbling. Boiling. My skin prickled. I could feel its heat radiating against my flesh.

A rivulet of sweat ran down my face.

I peered beneath the railing over the stable’s water purifier, staring into the churning, turbulent waters below.

‘Something’s wrong.’ A tremor rumbled through the catwalks. Engineer ponies froze on their hooves. I felt the metal beneath my hooves begin to shake.

Then the catwalks - the purifier - the chamber -

My entire world began to quake.

"RED DAWN!" someone shrieked.

Hearing my name, I jerked upright and slammed my head into the railing above me. I hoofed the throbbing pain beneath my cropped, red mane, a curse at the tip of my tongue.

But my curses were lost beneath everybody’s screams.

The brown of my coat was lost in a flood of brilliant white as a blinding flash engulfed the teardrop-shaped chamber around me.

Ponies screamed for their lives. The metal shuddered beneath my hooves. The catwalks that spiraled around Stable 91’s water purifier shook violently below.

I reared upon my hinds, covering my ears with my forehooves as sirens wailed over my muffled, pounding heartbeat. Every single console in the chamber was screaming for everybody’s - anybody’s attention. It was like the whole world was about to explode – the only world that I had ever known my entire life.

My eyes darted frantically to the rumbling water purifier at the center of the chamber. I cringed as my pupils contracted to the blazing outburst of another star gone supernova.

"Why the fuck is it doing that!?" I screamed against the howling sirens as I felt something wet trickle out my ear. In the ensuing chaos, hooves clopped frantically around me. Ponies rushed to flashing consoles and terminals. Others stopped to diagnose the engorged pipes that wove into the walls around us.

But there were too many pipes, too many terminals, and not enough ponies to fix them. We weren’t prepared for something like that – we weren’t prepared for so many things to come apart at once.

Because something like that was never supposed to happen.

Everybody dropped what they were doing and swung their heads back to the purifier. My pupils shrank in horror amid the scarlet irises of my widening eyes.

The machine let out an ear piercing shriek, and every single one of the pipes in the chamber began to rumble and screech.

I doubled over as the deafening metallic scream tore through my already ringing ears. I winced, darting my eyes left and right at the swelling weave of pipes that spiraled around us.

They popped and hissed with steaming jets of vapor.

‘Goddesses. We’re all going to die.’

If we weren’t going to be cooked alive, I was sure that the entire room was going to collapse upon itself.

A familiar voice shook me back into focus, calling my name from across the chamber.

“Red! I need you!” My ears perked at the mare’s voice. I swung my head over my shoulder and saw her slamming her hooves desperately into a flashing console.

The water purifier’s console.

The machine was about to blow, and she was standing right in front of it.

“DD, get away from that thing –”

An engorged pipe erupted in front of me. I ducked. Boiling steam gushed overhead and I threw myself to the floor, knocking the air out of my lungs.

The steam cascaded over me but not around me, and I thanked the First Law of Thermodynamics for working as it should have. ‘Now, if I could just crawl under this and –‘ another pipe blew out with a shower of shrapnel and boiling steam. A blast of hot air crashed into me – and I cursed as shrapnel bit deep into my barding. Again, the entire chamber quaked.

Explosions wracked the swaying catwalk underhoof as pipes ruptured and spewed all around me.

Again. And again.

The hot air was getting hard to breath – it felt as if my lungs were boiling from the inside out. I let out a ragged gasp for air I rifled through my saddlebags, wrenched out my breather mask and slapped it onto my muzzle. I took a deep, rasping breath of heavenly cold oxygen, crawled under the scalding cloud of steam, and galloped across the catwalk.

One of the pipes in front of me began to rattle and pop.

Boiling water spurted out of it like a punctured artery.

I slipped into SATS.

My PipBuck illuminated the world around me in streaks of gridded teal. SATS saw it first.

The pipe exploded, and shrapnel screamed towards me. But the shrapnel twinkled teal – and I sidestepped away as the blast wave erupted.

But that didn’t save me from the backwash. My left hind leg nearly cleared the blast –

I was so close.

But not close enough.

The moment I felt its searing touch, I yelped as an inferno engulfed my left flank and sent my nerve endings shrieking. The boiling splash soaked through my jumpsuit and split apart the flesh of my coat. It summoned up screaming blisters that throbbed with every beat of my drumming heart.

Within seconds, my leg gave up under me. I tumbled end over end across the catwalk until the unforgiving steel grating slowed my roll to a drag like brakes on a wheel.

I’ve been burned before, but boiled? The water soaked into my bleeding, burning coat and just kept cooking. Blinded by tears, I shook my body vigorously, showering a pair of fleeing engineer ponies with cooling, bloody water.

The boiling pain began to subside, but the bleeding blisters continued to leak crimson down my cooked, throbbing flesh. My horn flickered to life, and I yanked a health potion out of my saddlebags. I pushed my mask up with a hoof and dumped its contents down my throat.

I growled through my teeth as I pulled my breather mask back down and struggled to flex my stinging limb. The healing potion’s effect was not as pronounced or as immediate as I had hoped. I half limped, half galloped my regenerating ass to a console built into a, thankfully, pipe free wall.

I tapped its screen and punched in the buttons that controlled the vents above us. I dialed the fans to maximum and groaned with relief when the huge fans above the chamber sucked the boiling air into their spinning blades.

Luckily for me, that wasn’t the end of it.

SCREEE!

Metal scraped against metal – and the chamber convulsed, heaving me to the floor. Ponies hurtled over the railing as the walkway behind me toppled over and careened into the water below. If they hadn’t been impaled by the metal beams, they’d be fine.

I hoped.

I coughed and choked as I scrambled to my hooves, pushing through the dwindling smoke and steam to the muffled voice of a screaming mare. I spotted someone’s silhouette in the smoke, and knew it was her.

"Dew Drops, what the fuck is going on!?" I shouted over the deafening klaxons.

"I-I don't know!" she screamed back, warning lights painting her blue coat with flashes of red.

I squinted through the lenses of my breather mask, and galloped towards the mare.

“You need to get clear of that thing!” I screamed over the wailing sirens. “It’s gonna blow!”

My words flew past her ears as she pounded her hooves against the console’s screen, her breaths hissing out of her rebreather. "Goddesses – no, come on – come on!"

I skidded to a halt as the rumbling shell that housed the water purifier at the center of the chamber howled with an anguished mechanical wail.

There was a blue flash. I felt it in my bones and my innards as a seismic crash ripped through the chamber, hurling me to the floor in a heap.

The arcane machine erupted with a blaze of light like a star going supernova, tearing down the fans from the ceiling and shaking the metal beneath my hooves. I watched helplessly as more catwalks and screaming ponies plummeted into the waters below.

“DEW DROPS!” I wailed, scrambling to my hooves as clouds of billowing black smoke washed over me. ‘Please be okay, Goddesses, please be okay!’

I flinched – someone tumbled down a catwalk from on high. He screamed until his screams went silent as he slammed into the railing next to me and plunged into the smoke-filled darkness.

“Holy shit!”

I galloped blindly across the walkway, thick acrid smoke rushing past me. I leaped out of the smoke – and my heart fluttered with distant relief. She was still pounding her hooves against the console. Alive, but with ragged holes and lines of scarlet now trailing down her jumpsuit.

The mare fumbled with the system’s still working controls, stabbing her hooves fruitlessly into the console’s keyboard. With a dying hum, the purifier’s high pitched mechanical whine faded to a dead silence.

Dew Drops stood there, motionless as she stared at the smoking, ruined machine.

She pushed off the console and fell to her four hooves, turning sluggishly towards me with a shell-shocked look on her face.

“Red –” she began. But the terminal’s screen flashed - its controls arcing with electricity.

“DD, get down!” I screamed, reaching out to her with a foreleg as the terminal exploded, showering her with a hail of shrapnel. She pounced – and slammed into me. I broke her fall, knocking the wind out of my chest.

We thrashed blindly against each other's limbs until I managed to bite down on her teal mane and yank her to her hooves.

“DD!”

“I’m okay – I’m okay,” she stammered as she leaned into me, panting to fill her lungs with air. The mare lifted her head, and her eyes widened through her breather mask as she stared at the destruction behind me. “Goddesses …”

We both turned. I tore off my mask, and it clattered to the floor.

I swept my gaze across the once pristine, silvery, teardrop shaped chamber. It looked like a fucking tornado blew through it. The cobweb of interlocking pipes that ran across the ceiling and the curved walls around us were ripped apart from the inside out.

I squinted through the smoke as ponies dashed across the remaining walkways, plugging steaming pipes and spraying retardant into the rampant flames – all the while the sirens continued to shriek.

One pony galloped past me. Her jumpsuit was on fire. The mare hurled herself to the catwalk and squirmed, wriggled, and rolled until her jumpsuit stopped smoking. I called out to her, and she waved a trembling hoof at me – smoking – but okay.

I gulped, swearing under my breath. ‘How the fuck did all this happen?’

"It’s gone …” I barely heard Dew Drops whisper under the whooping sirens. “IT’S GONE!”

I blinked. Then my eyes widened, unsure if I heard her right. "Gone … gone? The whole thing!?" She just stared past me, pulling off her mask, her lips moving but not a single word escaping her lips.

“DD!” I shouted over the sirens, shaking her with my hooves. She blinked, and her ears perked. “DD! Come on!” The mare shook her head and hoofed her right ear with a confused look on her face. I groaned. "Would somebody turn that shit off!"

But my pleas went unheard as ponies scrambled past us. They battered broken consoles with frantic hooves and gawked at the smoldering machine at the center of the chamber – the smoldering machine that purified our stable's water and housed our stable’s precious arcane water talisman.

I roared with a voice that nobody else could hear. With SATS fully charged, my horn glowed red and I hurled my wrench at a console at the other end of the catwalk. It banged silently against the buttons and to my surprise, the sirens shut up. "Gone? The whole system!?" I shouted as the sirens became replaced with everyone’s screams.

She at least heard me that time.

"No – worse," she croaked as she stared at the smoking machine. "The water talisman. It's ... Gone."

My ears twitched. I couldn’t have heard that right. No. Impossible. I tried gulping down the lump in my throat, but it refused to go down. It was getting hard to breath.

I looked at her, unable to accept what I was hearing. I blinked. Then I blinked again. A horrible realization dawned on me.

“Celestia – this can’t be fucking happening …” I whispered, sweat trickling down my forehead. Without the water talisman, we wouldn’t be able to use clean water. Without clean water ....

‘Everyone is going to die.’

I turned my widening eyes to Dew Drops. “H-h... how? That thing is supposed to last centuries.”

"I don't know! I tried fixing it, tried shutting it off, but the purifier’s controls went haywire and the thing blew up ..."

I let out a trembling sigh.

‘We’re doomed.’

I looked at the smoking terminal in front of me and tapped my hooves uselessly against its still flickering screen. It flashed once, stuttered, and died.

I took a deep breath, wiping away the sweat from my forehead. As evenly as I could manage, I asked, "The stable ... how long?"

"What do you mean how long –"

"How fucking long do we have until our water reserves are gone!?"

"I-I don't know yet. W-we need to tell the Overmare!" Dew Drops hooked a leg around a mare who was running towards us. “Bubbles! Get the Overmare, get help – do something!”

She nodded, and scampered off to the exit. I started towards the smoking, metal ruin, but Dew Drops waved me off and gestured to my PipBuck instead.

I shook my head and attempted, with futility, to interface with the purifier’s systems. I wasn’t surprised. No response. “Nothing … shit!”

Dew Drops stepped forward. But her hoof slipped on a puddle and she thumped her face against the catwalk. She groaned, looked at her hooves, then at me, then at her hooves.

My horn flickered to life – and she glowed with a pink magical field that pulled her to her hooves. Overmare Peach Petals stood behind her, her horn glowing as she stared wide-eyed at the ruined machine behind me.

“I ran into her just as I was about to leave,” Bubbles muttered, hoofing her forehead as she trotted over. Following closely behind them were three security ponies who gazed at the destruction around us in disbelief. The blood drained from Peach Petals’ face.

"What happened here? How ... how did all this happen?"

I looked at her and glanced over my shoulder.

"The water talisman got fried, I don't know why, and neither does Dew Drops here," I replied, chewing my lower lip as I eyed my master engineer. You'd probably be expecting that someone two years younger than you would be your apprentice and not the other way around. Well, it might as well have been, because Dew Drops was gazing at the machine’s smoking remains - slack-jawed like everyone else.

She was supposed to be an expert on arcane devices; but she had as little of a clue as to how the water purifier blew up as I did.

"Can it be fixed? Goddesses, please tell me it can!" the Peach Petals begged, trying to hide the palpable trembling in her voice. She glanced around in desperation at the engineer ponies that galloped past her. "You, and you! You and you and you ..." Wherever her hoof jerked, a scrambling pony froze. "Find some way to fix this – now!" she commanded, the Overmare in her voice returning.

I winced at what I had to say, rewording it in my head to exclude a few unneeded ‘fucks’ and a ‘shit.’ But Dew Drops stole the words right from my trembling lips.

"Ma'am, the thing's fried, we can't fix it –"

The Overmare silenced her with a seething glare.

"I don’t care!” she snapped. “You need to find something. Find something …please try to find something. Just. Try.."

"I-I … we'll try ... ma'am," Dew Drops eeped. I looked behind the Overmare and across the catwalk behind the door she came from, a small group of terrified ponies had begun to gather.

“They’re not supposed to be here,” I murmured.

The Overmare and her retinue rushed towards them. "Everybody calm down, the situation is under control. Return above floors and I will let you know personally once this ... issue has been resolved ... and I promise you, it will …" she trailed off, her voice fading away as she herded them as far from the door as she could before it slid shut.

Calm. It was hard to stay that way when the very thing that kept us alive was gone. The Overmare’s presence created an air of doomed silence. Though my ears perked at a few scattered, retching curses that someone hissed here and there, everyone wasn’t so focused on trying not to get cooked alive anymore. They were instead more focused on trying to do what the Overmare ordered them to do.

‘This is going to be a lot of work.’ I let out a trembling sigh as my entire body shook. The future looked grim. Without a water talisman, my stable’s days were numbered.

I heard hooves clop against the catwalk next to me. Dew Drops took a good look at me. She gasped when she saw my scalded, bloody hind leg, her grey eyes widening.

“Luna’s grace …”

I nodded weakly. “I can fix that,” ‘Somewhat,’ I wanted to add. The blisters had stopped bleeding at least, but the flesh was raw and stinging. I levitated two more potions from my bag and downed them one after the other before I spoke. “But the purifier … what about the purifier?”

Dew Drops shook her head, hanging it low.

"Yes. It can be fixed … of course it can be fixed. But the water talisman? It’s not even there anymore," she murmured, staring at the smoking wreck.

I closed my eyes shut and just shook my head. "How long do we have?" I asked again.

She scrolled through her PipBuck's interface, narrowed her eyes at the screen, and shrugged. "A few weeks – a month or two maybe? Depends on how fast we consume our reserves.”

An orange engineer pony with her apprentice in tow approached.

"DD we need another talisman," Amber Fields said, her short yellow mane glistening and dripping with water. She was one of the ponies who fell into the water below. I thanked the Goddesses that my friend wasn't dead. She lifted a reflective sliver of scrap metal and held it out to us in her hoof. "This is all that's left of ours."

"We need to get the others," I said, cradling my head in my hooves. "We need to find some way to ... I don't know – purify our damned water!"

The other mare's apprentice groaned, giving voice to the thoughts that were running circles in my head.

"Don't you get it? We're fucked, fucked I'm telling you! Our water’s gonna get contaminated –" A hoof struck her muzzle, cutting her off.

Amber Fields glared at her sniveling apprentice and nodded at Dew Drops. "We'll find a way ... we have to," she said hauntingly, before dragging her apprentice away with her by the tail.

I cradled my head in my hooves, trying to formulate ways we could possibly filter and purify our water. Talismans casted, multiplied, and sustained spells several fold. ‘All we’d need is a ton of gifted unicorns to … no. Maybe we could just jury-rig a filtration device using the stable’s… no, no, too inefficient.’

I hung my head, dismally. We would not be able create something with the scale to support the needs of three hundred ponies.

We didn’t have the room – the supplies, or the materials to build anything new within our stable. The stable where the last of ponykind had thrived in for nearly the last two centuries. Soon, all of that would be gone. All because of one talisman.

We were doomed. I knew that for a fact.

I felt someone wrap a leg around me and squeeze me tight. I knew it was her. Dew Drops rested her head on my shoulder as we stood there in silence, watching the broken machinery around us smoke with dreary eyes.

With a trembling hoof, she swept out of her eyes a lock of her tousled mane. “At least we’re alive …” I heard the mare whisper.

I frowned at her, saying nothing. For a moment, the stinging sensation on my leg faded away as I eyed the ragged shrapnel wounds on her blue coat. I narrowed my eyes at her, my horn glowing with a scarlet sheen. She nodded, clenching her jaw as I dug the metal fragments out of her hide.

“What you did earlier … that was stupid of you,” I began. “You could’ve had more than just shrapnel in your coat. That machine was beyond saving the moment it started tearing the chamber apart.” My brows furrowed and I clenched my jaw. “You could’ve died.”

Dew Drops sighed, bowing her head. “I needed to at least try, Red,” she replied, softly, wincing as I pulled another bloody sliver of metal out of a ragged hole in her jumpsuit. “If I didn’t give it a shot, I never would’ve known it wasn’t possible.”

I shook my head. “You know more about arcane constructs than our entire shift combined …”

“Exactly … that’s why I was there,” she insisted.

I glared into her soft eyes.

“No … DD. We can’t afford to lose you,” I whispered, my voice trembling.

Dew Drops cocked her head at me, watching me quietly as I stared at my hooves.

“We? Or you?”

I avoided her gaze, digging through her coat.

“Red …”

I pulled the last sliver of metal out of her hide. She shook herself briskly, wiping away the tears of pain in her eyes.

Dew Drops met my gaze. I just sighed and wrapped a leg around her as we gazed at the ruined metal pipes that drooped limply above us.

“We can fix this …” she whispered. “We have to ...”

The sounds of hooves clopping our way drew our attention away from the destruction around us. I saw a stallion with a gray coat and a messy brown mane stumble toward me, head hung low.

"Box Cutter!" I said, calling out his name. He looked at me wearily. "Are you alright?" He staggered closer until I could see the deep gash on his chest.

The answer had to be no.

He just smiled faintly, rocking back and forth on his hooves. I trotted up next to him and he leaned against me. His jumpsuit was dripping wet; he must have fallen in with Amber Fields and the others.

"Fine and dandy, Red," he chuckled. “Just got banged up a little bit.” Box Cutter sighed, waving me off, “Yeah, I’m good – nothing I can’t handle: applebucking mares bang harder than this.”

I smirked – then noticed the bump on his head.

"No, you're not.”

“Oh yeah?” He snorted, “You look pretty messed up yourself."

“It’s superficial.” I grimaced at my crimson hind leg. “Nothing I can’t fix with a few healing potions,” I added, painfully. Goddesses, did it sting.

“Nothing you can’t fix huh …” He sighed, shaking his head. “Can we fix … this?” he asked, looking all around him.

I glanced over at Dew Drops who was staring blankly at the water purifier. Box Cutter slumped against me when I didn’t answer.

"DD, help me get Box to the clinic … I think he has a concussion." I waved a hoof in front of his face, but Box Cutter’s eyes just stayed hazy and unfocused.

“DD?”

Her ears perked, and she nodded slowly. Dew Drops cleared her throat, and said to the ponies of Shift C, who were milling about with shell-shocked expressions, “Everypony, listen up!”

The engineering ponies turned to face her. “Start repairs on the water purifier and plug those pipes. Re-divert the pumps to the reserves; work until the next shift arrives. Until then … just … do something.”

Dew Drops levitated out a trio of health potions, giving them to Box Cutter to drink until the gash in his chest stopped bleeding somewhat. I nodded at her thankfully because Box Cutter was too out of it to do it himself.

I lifted one of his legs over my shoulder. Dew Drops cocked her head at me. “Can you give me a hoof?”

She took one look at my scalded leg and shook her head. “You aren’t carrying him with that,” she told me.

“Right …” I nodded.

“C’mere, Box Cutter,” she grunted as I lifted one of his legs over her.

He moaned as the gash on his chest scraped against her jumpsuit. “Fuck – fuck – that hurts!”

“Oh shush,” Dew Drops smiled. “I know it’ll take more than that to hurt you.”

Box Cutter laughed weakly – and cried when I finally heaved him onto her back. Dew Drops didn’t waste another second as she paced to the clinic and I limped after her. Moving that fast wasn’t going to help my leg, but I needed to see my friend through.

We left the dark, damp confines of the engineering level, its pony-sized piping and grated floor turning into gray tiles and white-washed, concrete walls.

We trotted – or at least I tried to trot through the halls, our gaits quickening as earth ponies and unicorns watched us with worried eyes. Their conversations faded to an uncertain silence when they saw the bleeding stallion on Dew Drops’ back, and the ruined hind leg that I dragged behind me. Everyone we passed stopped to stare. I just pursed my lips and tried to turn my limp into a trot.

My ears perked at the sound of wings flapping through the air.

A flock of young pegasi were trailing after us.

“We shouldn’t have come this way,” Dew Drops said softly.

I tried not to make eye contact with the others. “Why not?”

“Look at them – they’re scared.”

Just when I thought my leg was finally going to give up on me, a pegasus in security barding landed in front of us a yard away.

“DD – oh shit! Is that Box Cutter?” Lightning Twirl raced towards us. “The hell happened? I mean, I heard the explosions and everything,” she said, blowing a rogue strand of her wild white bangs out of her eyes. There was a short pause as Lightning Twirl eyed the gathering crowd of murmuring ponies around us.

I nodded. “The water–”

“The water purifier overloaded. T-they’re fixing it as we speak,” Dew Drops stammered.

“DD –”

She cleared her throat. “Box Cutter fell and well …”

“DD –”

“He’s making a bloody mess all over my jumpsuit,” she finished. Dew Drops pursed her lips at me as I frowned at her. She gave me a sideways look, her eyes darting around at the herd of ponies that were staring right at us.

“I’m still conscious you know ...” he muttered as he laid limp on her back.

“Listen,” Dew Drops began quietly, glancing over her shoulder, “Box Cutter has a concussion, I think.” Lightning Twirl’s violet eyes widened at that. “We need to get him to the clinic.”

She trotted over. “I can fly him there. I’ll use the aerial access tunnels – it’s much faster,” she offered. Dew Drops nodded at me – and I transferred him to her back. He groaned painfully when Dew Drops' jumpsuit brushed against the gash in his chest, smearing blood all over her back.

“Red … come on,” she murmured, blood dripping down her chest and pattering across the white floor beneath her.

“Sorry – shit – sorry,” I winced, trying to lift him onto her back. When I finally got him on, he hugged his forelegs around the base of her neck.

“Hold on tight or you’ll fall off,” Lightning Twirl said, unfurling her wings.

Box Cutter nodded faintly. “Yeah, yeah, that what you tell your boyfriend?” Lightning Twirl just snorted and took off, Box Cutter screaming about his head hurting.

I shook my head, exhaling a long sigh of relief as Dew Drops and I – and the ponies around us watched the two disappear into a hole in the ceiling.

“He’ll be alright,” I heard Dew Drops whisper. She gulped, looking down at the specks of blood on the floor under her hooves, and the red smeared all over her jumpsuit. The mare turned her head, and found that everyone was staring back at her. “We’ll be alright,” she said, louder.

I closed my eyes for a moment. “Yeah … alright,” I murmured, scratching my mane as everyone went back to minding their own businesses now that my bleeding friend was nowhere to be seen.

I looked over my shoulder down the hall and saw that the engineering level was far behind us. Away from all that destruction … everyone else was going back to doing their thing.

They didn’t know. It’s not like the purifier hadn’t broken down before. We always fixed it back up, and they’d always have their water running again.

But they didn’t know.

We trotted through the living quarters on the way to the clinic. Lining the walls were their wide, circle shaped doors, decorated with photos of the ponies within and their families. Fortunately, the explosions downstairs weren’t enough to shake those photos from their doors. Inside we could hear voices emanating from within, laughing without a single care in the world.

High above our heads hung poofy cloud-shaped cushions – perches for the pegasi. Farther above my head I could see the pegasi quarters. My mother lived up there. The entire pegasus tier was painted sky blue with murals of great cloud cities from before the war. Cities that probably didn’t exist anymore.

Everywhere I looked, ponies had tried to cover up the boring walls around us with murals painted by artists from generations past and present. There were rolling hills of green, and purple skies; fields of gold and shimmering blue seas. There were amber sunsets, and moons gleaming white against starry night skies that stretched across the walls as far as I could see – none of which the ponies who painted them had ever seen.

If only we could’ve just painted murals over the ruined pipes at engineering. Maybe then we all could’ve just pretended that none of it ever happened. Maybe then life would’ve just went on without our water talisman.

A herd of fillies and colts ran past us, laughing at each other in a game of tag, breaking me from my trancelike state. I tore my gaze away from the murals that I had walked past my entire life. One of the fillies slowed, staring at my now scabbing leg as she trotted past.

I felt the stinging sensation return to my flank. I cursed under my breath, and kept limping, the clinic an elevator ride away. We just had to get to the damned elevator.

I sighed as we passed by open, dome-shaped rooms where ponies lounged on couches or cushions, eating dried carrot chips while listening to live music from a cello, guitar, and violin. The soft hum of the yellow ambient lights above me calmed my nerves. I almost wanted to forget that the water talisman was broken.

None of those ponies even knew.

Maybe it was better that way. Maybe. Upstairs, you couldn’t really tell anything was wrong at all.

Down in our stable, several hundred feet underground in a bomb shelter built two centuries ago and spared from the balefire holocaust, I imagined life to be just about as comfortable as it was up on the surface before the bombs fell.

It was as if ponies had lived there since the beginning of time.

But if there hadn’t been so few of us down there, I would’ve believed that notion.