I half limped, half stumbled through the snow, trying to blink away the stars in my eyes as Candy Cane led me up a lonely street.

For hours she navigated the streets for me, turning corners or leading me through dark, dimly lit underpasses that tunneled through the collapsed city. Every twist and every turn were detours she steered through with absolute confidence. It became apparent to me that she had been through that place countless times.

She led, and I followed closely in silence. I wasn’t exactly the kind of pony who reveled in small talk, so much of the walk up till then had been a quiet one. It seemed like she wasn't, either. Candy Cane would spare me a few curious, furtive glances every now and then, but besides that, no one said a word.

We were still just two strangers.

Our pace was beginning to slow, however, all thanks to my exhausted state. A wheezing breath erupted from my lips, and I stopped for a moment, falling to my haunches, too tired to continue onward.

Candy Cane heard the hoofsteps behind her stop, and swung her head around to see me lying there in the snow. She knelt next to me, and I heard her speak for the first time in nearly an hour.

“What’s wrong?” she said, her voice nearly a whisper.

“Just ah … heh …” I chuckled, face-hoofing tiresomely. “I’m just feeling a little under the weather, right now.” She gave me a worried, yet exasperated look. My bitter sarcasm was lost on her. Being hurt in any sort of way didn’t seem like a laughing matter to her. But it took a certain level of clarity to act like my usual self.

It felt good to know I wasn’t actually comatose.

She regarded my long, weary face with soft eyes. “That detour we took out of that sinkhole was rough …” she sighed, dabbing a hoof in the snow.

'My, she was a mind reader,' I thought.

After that stunt we pulled off to heave ourselves out of that hole in the ground … Goddesses. I never knew I could rock-climb.

“No-no, it helped get whatever blood I have left in me flowing,” I said, grinning at her as I lay at her hooves. My muscles ached and my eyes begged me to shut them closed. I nearly passed out in that sinkhole. I felt like passing out right then and there.

It was difficult to do anything after getting my ass beat in a brawl, getting shot twice, and getting my head torn apart by yet another magical burnout.

“We can’t stick around for too long,” Candy Cane said quickly and quietly, double-taking over both her shoulders. “This part of town belongs to the cafones.”

“Lovely,” I crooned, staring blankly at the snow. A yawn parted my cracked lips, and I winced as I inhaled a breath too large for my lungs.

I looked up, groggily. “Didn’t you hear them, earlier? They think we’re dead.”

She crossed her right foreleg over her left. “I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“Okay … but let me just lie here for a bit,” I groaned, the snow biting deep into my livid flesh.

'Sleep. I sleep here now.'

“Red Dawn, you shouldn’t be lying there …”

Her words passed through deaf ears as I lowered my chin into the pale. I clenched my eyes shut and shuddered violently. “Damn that’s cold.” My eyes fluttered open at the mare’s hooves. “It’s alright,” I murmured faintly as I shivered in the snow. “The cold reminds me that I’m still alive.”

She knelt beside me and laid a hoof on my forehead, muttering to herself. Her hoof was icy cold against the boiling surface of my flesh, and I shivered at her touch. The look she gave me suggested that whatever she saw was not good.

“What’s the diagnosis, doc?” I chattered through my teeth.

“High fever. Likely caused by your magical burnout.”

She pursed her lips, conjuring a glowing orb of light. Candy Cane cupped a hoof over one of my eyes and levitated the orb in front of the other. My eyelid twitched sluggishly, closing slightly, but my retina didn’t dilate.

A flat “Ohhhh …” seethed out of her lips.

At least when she found something bad she didn't berate you like Doctor Stitches did. Because what she saw in my twitching eyeball didn't seem too good either.

She exchanged hooves and tested the other. Candy Cane looked at me and clenched her jaw.

I groaned, “Isn’t it just wonderful being a glorified earth pony with a horn?”

“You just need to rest. Sleep it off. Just not here, Red Dawn.”

I sighed, letting my head roll back into the snow.

“Can … can you still walk?"

I shook my head free from the drifts, cringing as that only worsened my headache. "Sure,” I winced. “I can do you a few squats if you want, doc.”

“I’m a nurse, Red Dawn,” she said, somewhat annoyed by my pain induced quips.

With a foreleg and a swirl of her gray magic, the mare pulled me back to my aching hooves. We stood there in the snow in silence as she probably wondered what in the Goddesses’ names was she going to do with me. I was deadweight at that point.

She hung her head and let out a long, drawn out sigh. The irritation faded from her face as her eyes softened once more. Candy Cane touched my shoulder with a tender hoof, before pointing down the street. “Come on, we’re almost there,” she whispered. “I’m sure you’d prefer a mattress to a gutter full of snow?”

I squinted around me. I was standing in a gutter. I shifted my weight and felt trash and frozen filth crunch beneath me.

I sighed, smiled faintly, and peered into the mare’s gentle, gray eyes.

“Whatever puts me to sleep the fastest, I guess. That is, if hypothermia doesn’t get me first.” She frowned at that, but motioned me to follow her with a swish of her swirly red and white tail.

As we plodded through the snow-swept streets, the uncomfortable silence between us was beginning to settle in again. But that was alright, I was too tired to care in the first place. But Candy Cane’s gait slowed so that we were walking shoulder to shoulder.

“How long have you been out here?” she asked suddenly, glancing at me.

I thought for a moment. I wasn’t even sure … at that point it'd felt like I'd been wandering that wintry wasteland for months – no – years now. The bags under my eyes and my grime encrusted … everything … made me feel as if I had been away from home for an eternity.

In the stable, there had never been a day when I hadn’t had a shower, or three full meals a day, or nine hours of undisturbed sleep. It felt like an eternity since I had lived in the comforts of Stable 91.

I stared longingly at the snow that crunched beneath my hooves.

“Too long.”

Candy Cane hesitated, looking away for a moment. She parted her mane as it bobbed in front of one of her eyes. “You … you look like you’ve been through so much in such little time.”

I caught her looking at me expectantly in my peripherals as I stared onward and into the dimly lit street. “Ponies died, and I lived.” I gulped down the lump in my throat. “That’s all …” I muttered with grim uncertainty.

The mare turned her troubled gaze away from me and we slogged through the shifting drifts in silence. Candy Cane’s pace began to quicken, and so did mine.

Nearly ten long minutes later, she stopped in her tracks and we found ourselves standing before our final destination. The inn, I supposed.

“Is this the place?” I asked Candy Cane.

She nodded as I trotted up to the door. The inn was a quaint, cozy-looking two story building with windows that glowed with giddy, dancing firelight.

At least that’s what I imagined it may have looked like two centuries ago. A creaking metal sign hung over the door. Etched into it was ‘The Warmhearth Inn’.

Didn't look too warm to me.

As I walked up the icy, blackened steps, I peered curiously through the boarded up windows that swatted away any suggestion that there was life behind that door. I raised a hoof to its thick, battered wooden surface, and knocked.

A few seconds passed, and the only sounds that we heard were the distant wagons and the sound of hooves crunching through snow behind us. The only light that shined upon my face was a dim, flickering light bulb that was begging to be put out of its misery.

I felt the cold touch of snowflakes whisper across the back of my neck. Things were freezing up again. The wind sighed, moaned, and snow began to fall once more.

I didn’t want to be outside anymore.

Glancing over my shoulder, I mouthed to Candy Cane, if she was a hundred percent certain we were at the right place. The mare nodded.

So I knocked again.

This time, a speakeasy door slid open and two navy blue eyes narrowed back at me. I opened my mouth to speak, but the pony cut me off.

“We’re closed,” a mare told me, before the speakeasy door slid shut.

My face turned sour. I lifted a hoof to the door and knocked again. The speakeasy door opened once more.

“Hey! I said we’re closed, okay? So scram!” the mare shouted through the speakeasy door before slamming it shut.

I sighed, glancing over my shoulder at Candy Cane.

“Well isn’t she a ray of sunshine,” I muttered.

Candy Cane sighed, before she took my place and knocked.

“Goddesses – I said we’re closed –” a mare hissed, but her voice was lost on her lips.

She saw the mare standing next to me first.

“Candy Cane ..?”

I shifted on my stool, a rickety, neglected old thing that creaked underneath me, like the floor underhoof. A fine layer of dust had settled upon the lonely bar I sat behind. Resting my legs upon the counter, I kicked up a small cloud of dust that roused from my cracked lips a sneeze.

Behind it on a long rack were rime encrusted bottles by the dozens. Most were empty. There wasn’t a single drink in that place that could relieve even the most lightweight of drinkers in the inn’s deplorable state.

Sniffling, I heard hooves clop upon the creaking wooden boards behind me. The innkeeper passed by a cold hearth – lonely and unlit as she made her way, sluggishly, to the bar. Candy Cane, who sat next to me, rubbed her hooves together briskly for warmth, glancing wishfully at the empty fireplace.

Even inside, it was still cold. The bite of the northern wind was trying desperately to penetrate the walls of that place. It scratched again the boarded up windows like an animal begging to be let inside.

The innkeeper trotted past me, but not before shooting a careful gaze my way. The mare regarded me – the stranger – with apprehension, noticing the gun holstered around my chest. My presence was making her edgy. I probably should’ve stowed my gun away.

“I’m really sorry you have to see me like this, Cane,” the mare began, still keeping an eye on me. “Sorry to see my place like this. A lot’s changed since I saw you last … the last time they took you, I …” she paused, pursing her lips. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

Candy Cane smiled. “It’s been too long, Summer Smiles.”

Summer Smiles sighed as she closed her eyes, and hugged her, squeezing her tight. Letting go, the mare turned her eyes to the floorboards.

“Heh, well I don’t smile so much anymore.” Summer Smiles sighed, brushing her blonde braids with a hoof. “The inn’s been closed for nearly a month now. The cafones’ve been stepping up their game, and making us lose ours.” She shook her head before resting it upon a hoof. “It’s gotten so bad that my sister and I have been living from bottlecap to bottlecap.”

“What happened to your savings?” Candy Cane asked.

Summer Smiles glared at the bar’s counter-top. “It’s … we’re … the cafones upped their prot taxes. I’ve been using it to pay them. Though, most of it was used up when my sister lost her job and had to find a new one.”

“That’s awful … why do they keep doing that?”

Summer Smiles snorted, shaking her head. “They don’t need a reason to, they just do.” She spat, “Bastards … all of them.” The mare noticed the bitter look upon my face as they spoke of the gangster menace.

Those Palominos were sucking the life out of that town.

The two sighed. Candy Cane looked all around her at the unkempt walls, her gaze falling upon the dusty staircase that led upstairs.

"How are the girls? Your sister?" Candy Cane asked.

Summer Smiles hesitated for a moment, no doubt watching me in her peripherals. With one eye on Candy Cane, and another on me, she leaned forward and rested her hooves on the counter.

"Doodle and Hops have gotten bigger since you last saw them,” Summer Smiles said, proudly. She chuckled. “To me, it's like they haven't grown older at all. Same Doodle, same Hops.”

Candy Cane’s tired eyes flickered with cheer. "What about Hops? Her ... legs?"

Summer Smiles shook her head. "She was born that way, Cane. There's no healing genetics."

Candy Cane clenched her jaw, her ears drooping.

Summer Smiles looked at her hooves. "You disappeared for two years. Doodle and Hops always wondered where their Auntie Candy Cane went. I could never bring myself to tell them what happened to you ..." the mare said, softly. "I really never thought I'd see you again."

Candy Cane sat there in silence.

"They'll be glad to see you, Cane," she added, touching her hoof. Candy Cane salvaged a smile out of that. It felt a little warmer in there seeing her face light up like that.

"What about your sister?"

She glanced at the door. "She hasn't been around, lately. Went off on an assignment ... she's still out there. I don't know where, though." Her brows furrowed with impatience. "If she doesn't come back soon, I won't have any more caps left to put food on the table. And I can't leave the inn to find work ... not if it means leaving Doodle and Hops behind."

“It just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?” Candy Cane murmured.

Summer Smiles blew a puff of dust off the counter, sighing. “You think you’d get used to it, living like this.” Her gaze found its way to meet me. “You never do.” Summer Smiles made her way behind the bar, and tapped her hoof on the counter. “I’d get you two a couple of drinks, but …” she looked over her shoulder, sparing the empty racks a dismal glance.

“It’s okay. At least we’re out of the snow,” she said, softly.

"Out of the snow ... huh." Summer Smiles looked at Candy Cane strangely. "How'd you get out this time?"

"I had some help," Candy Cane said, smiling faintly.

Summer Smiles blinked, cocking her head at me. “Really? I’ve been wondering: who’s this stallion you brought into my home?”

“Of course you have, you’ve been watching him like a hawk since we got here,” Candy Cane chuckled.

Summer Smiles shifted nervously on her hooves. It’s not like she wasn’t making it obvious.

Candy Cane grinned. “Relax, Summer. He’s not going to bite your leg off.”

She scowled back. “Oh you know stallions … they’re good at biting, and leaving marks. Just look at my sister: two foals and a stallion nowhere to be found.”

I laughed nervously as Candy Cane hung her head. Summer Smiles wasn’t the only pony in the room that has had a problem with stallions. Candy Cane – more so than anyone else I currently knew.

“My name’s Red Dawn."

“Red Dawn ...” Summer Smiles nodded, studying the arcanomechanical device wrapped around my foreleg. "You’re from a stable, Red Dawn?"

"Yes ma’am," I nodded, stifling a yawn as I tapped my PipBuck with a hoof.

The mare cocked an eyebrow, perplexed.

"Heh, there are very few ponies around the wasteland with those things around their legs." Her voice turned sour. "I can imagine why," she added quietly, glaring at her disheveled, pitiful surroundings.

She imagined right. Beneath the earth, stable ponies slept in their stables while ponies like Summer Smiles and Candy Cane remained trapped outside, helpless and cold. I thought back, sifting through generations of Dawns and Roans, thankful that my great, great – great something grandparents had been chosen to live in Stable 91.

It began to occur to me, that despite the terrible things I'd seen so far, no one was luckier than stable-dwellers like me. We had lived in a stable for most of our lives while the world outside went to shit. I sighed. Better there than the wasteland, of course.

Summer Smiles asked, "So what's a stable-pony like you doing out here, anyways?"

"Just wanted some fresh air, I guess," I said, dryly.

She snorted, vaguely amused. "Are you one of those ponies from Stable 2? The one everypony keeps hearing about on the radio?"

That was the second time someone's asked me that.

"Uhh ... no. I'm from Stable 91, about sixty or seventy miles out from Poneva, I think."

"That's a pity ... Stable 2's the only stable I've heard of that hasn't let out anything but dust and skeletons." The mare folded her legs across her chest, looking sure of herself. “Something bad must’ve pushed you out.”

I nodded with a dry chuckle. "I've been told that a lot. We're going to be like the others soon enough, I think. Our water talisman broke. Now we've got two months to live. Well they, really. I ... we ... my friends and I - we left Stable 91 to find another."

Summer Smiles glanced at Candy Cane. There were only two of us, and only one of us had a PipBuck around our legs.

"Your ... friends?" she said, softly.

"They're dead now.”

The mare blinked, expecting me to say more. I didn't. All she got was an exhausted stare that pleaded to be put to sleep.

I hadn't told anyone what had happened that night. What had happened to my friends - how Star Glint was skinned alive ... how Amber Fields was blown to pieces ...

How they tore Dew Drops apart before my eyes.

The pain in my head, the anguish in my thoughts – they raked and scraped against the inside my skull, screaming for escape. So I grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and stuffed them back into the closet where they belonged.

A grim silence hung over the three of us as I sat there, unmoving.

Summer Smiles studied my weary eyes, and the grime that covered my face, and the blood that caked my chest. Candy Cane was about as bloodied as I was. But most of it was mine.

"You ... you two both look like you've been through hell."

I scoffed bitterly, hanging my head, "I guess that's one way of putting it."

“Well if you’re on this mission of yours, then what’re you doing with Candy Cane?”

She and I exchanged uncertain looks.

Summer Smiles’ eyes narrowed at me when I didn’t answer. “How'd you meet her?” she asked, warily. “It’s not everyday somepony walks in with somepony like Candy Cane."

I felt the weight of Candy Cane’s stare upon me. She parted her peacoat's collar, folding it down flat so that Summer Smiles could see the matted, red coat beneath.

Her eyes widened.

"Your collar – i-its – it’s gone?"

Candy Cane smiled ecstatically.

"He saved me, Summer ... he freed me from the Scullion ... and he took the collar right off."

Summer Smiles’ eyes widened. “He … Goddesses …” she leaned over the counter, reaching out with a hoof to touch the matted indentation where her collar used to be. She rubbed the patch of fur, tenderly, stricken with disbelief. “How? You removed – you did that?”

I nodded, slowly. “It wasn’t easy," I said with a sigh.

“How’d you do it? I-I mean, how’d you make it past the cafones?” she stammered, breathlessly.

Candy Cane rubbed her bloody hooves together, tipping her head at me.

“We nearly died,” I told her. “Well, I nearly died. Those Palo … those cafones wouldn’t let up.” I explained how I snuck into the Scullion, then our confrontation with Grifter, and our flight from the brothel. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. When I got to that part about the sinkhole, she just about lost it there.

“You’re crazy.”

I chuckled at Candy Cane. “That’s exactly what I told her.”

Candy Cane looked away, smiling faintly.

“Though it’s because of her I’m still alive.” I pointed a hoof to my blood-caked chest as Candy Cane fixed her unassuming gaze to the floorboards beneath her. “One of those cafones got me. Candy Cane pulled the bullet right out."

I could vaguely remember the touch of cold steel worming around inside my gut.

“Barely,” Candy Cane said sheepishly, still staring at her hooves. “You almost bled out.” She played with her curls absent mindedly, frowning as she said, “I’m out of practice. It's been too long since I've had a patient, let alone somepony as wounded as you.”

I chuckled dryly, my grim expression belying the cheeriness in my voice. “We’ll be traveling together soon, so I’m sure you’ll get a lot of practice.”

Candy Cane chuckled dryly. “Then there’s going to be lots of roof hopping to do if you’re going to be traveling with me,” she smirked.

I wheezed out a nervous laugh.

“So, you two are traveling together?”

We turned to each other simultaneously.

“Yes … I promised I would,” she said, her gaze still upon me.

The other mare frowned at her. “I would’ve imagined you’d want to settle down after … you know?” Summer Smiles said, gingerly.

Candy Cane thought for a moment, laying her forelegs on the counter and resting her chin upon them. “Sure, I’m free. But what about the others? My friends? I left them behind, Summer. I don’t deserve to be free any more than the other mares at the Scullion.

“I have nothing else to do with my life, anyways ...” Candy Cane turned to me once more, saying, “Red Dawn wants to join the resistance. He wants to help us … and I want to help him save everypony else I left behind.”

Summer Smiles shifted uncomfortably on her hooves.

"I thought he was looking for a water talisman?"

I nodded. "I still am. And I found one ... or several. Well … not exactly."

I told her about my meeting with Sterling Sprocket and the promise he made me. She was about as surprised as Candy Cane was when I told her about my meeting with the World Tree’s head pony, and our deal.

And how the only way I could make it happen was to join the resistance.

Summer Smiles clenched her jaw, the idea of such a thing making her antsy.

“I want in. I can't just sit around and do nothing while my stable dies."

Candy Cane spoke up. “So do I. That's why we're traveling together. We need to find them."

Summer Smiles cleared her throat, scoffing. "The ... the Orphanage?" she asked, as if she didn’t hear that right.

Candy Cane narrowed her eyes at her, knowingly.

“We need your help.”

Summer Smiles’ eyes darted over to mine as a wave of realization washed over her face.

“So that’s why you brought him here …” she murmured. “You … you told this pony? He knows?”

“Yes –”

The mare leaned over the counter towards Candy Cane. “I really don’t appreciate that, Cane. They wouldn’t appreciate that. You know this …”

“I-”

“What were you thinking!?” She lowered her voice and glanced at the windows. “If word gets out that I was with the Orphanage, they’ll kill us all! And the fillies! I thought I could trust you!”

"You still can!" Candy Cane pleaded with her. “If he was with them I wouldn’t be sitting here with you right now. If he was with East Eden, he would’ve hauled me over to their place.” Candy Cane glared at her. “I wouldn't have agreed to help him if I didn't think that he was a good pony, Summer.”

My heart fluttered at that. If only she knew the things that I did to get there … that mare I left for dead. I shot her in the knees and left her to die – and that blood brother I murdered with my bare hooves ... I murdered him. Both of them.

I looked at my hooves. The agony that lurked behind the closed doors of my mind was trying to claw its way out again.

A darker part of me told me that Candy Cane was just a stepping stone to saving my stable. That darker part of me told me that I needed her help; she would get me to where I needed to be … and that was it.

But I pushed it away, disgusted with its incessant murmuring.

Slowly but surely, my mind descended once more into a somber quietude.

I told myself twice and steeled myself for acceptance.

I wasn't a good pony. I was just a homesick pony with a home to save.

Summer Smiles caught the apprehension that haunted my eyes, and smirked. She wasn’t buying Candy Cane’s 'bluff' about me. I wasn’t either.

“I know he saved your life and all, and you might think you owe him something, but … you’d trust that pony with your life?” She asked, as if I wasn’t there. “Our lives? You might’ve just endangered my entire family –”

Candy Cane cut her off, “He went through hell to save me – he nearly died.” She looked away. “He did all of that for me … and he doesn’t even know why.” She turned to me but I avoided her gaze. “He was willing to help a complete stranger … there aren’t that many ponies like that around anymore,” Candy Cane said softly. “You know that. You’ve seen it.”

Summer Smiles nodded, slowly, her gaze still fixated upon me.

“I do,” she murmured. “I have …”

Silence hung over us as she tapped her hooves nervously on the counter. She eyed me hesitantly.

“I’ll … I’ll think about it, okay? If they find out … and they take me … I don’t know, Cane. Doodle and Hops won’t have anypony to care for them.”

“But … what … what about your sister? They're her fillies, after all.”

Summer Smiles shook her head.

“She hasn’t come back from her job yet,” she murmured, distantly. “Soon, my savings will run dry and nopony will be able to feed them anymore. She was the one paying the bills after all …” Summer Smiles stared past us at the door. It seemed like she had been doing everyday ever since her sister had left. “Sugar Rum’s been gone for almost two weeks now.”

I froze. Sugar Rum. Sugar Rum. Sugar …

'Goddesses.'

I remembered her. The screams, the sounds of flesh tearing. Then the pop. The simultaneous pop of half a dozen bomb collars.

And then there was a crack.

And she was gone. The mare, the mare that stayed behind to put down those tortured slaves left behind those three: her sister, and her two daughters.

'Why …' I asked myself, 'Why didn’t I recognize Summer Smiles until now?'

“Red Dawn?” I heard Candy Cane ask as the blood drained from my face. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“I …”

I inched off my stool, trembling, and stumbled to the door where I had left my bags. I lowered my head inside of them, searching for Sugar Rum’s family photo. The one she gave me as she bled out into the snow.

I returned to the bar, my eyes unable to leave that haunting photograph. I turned my distant gaze to Summer Smiles and her eyes darted to mine – then to the frayed, blood-caked photograph I held in my hoof.

“W-what’s that?” she asked … but she already knew.

I stared at the four ponies – the family whose smiling faces were frozen in time. Sugar Rum was sitting next to her sister, Summer Smiles, a blonde, blue coated mare, as she wrapped her forelegs around her two pale-coated daughters. Lowering it, I saw that Summer Smiles was standing alone.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

I said nothing as I gave her the photograph.

The mare stared at it desolately, her hoof trembling before her muzzle. She blinked and blinked, unable to look away. Unmoving, her eyes drowned silently beneath the horror that drained the blood from her face. They saw every speck of blood, every splatter of dried crimson that sullied the aged photograph.

The photograph of her sister. Her family.

A trembling hoof touched her sister’s frozen smile, her eyes darting to the door, and back, to the door, and back.

Summer Smiles finally met my numb gaze, her eyes widening and her chin quivering.

“Why … w-why d-do you have this?” she croaked, her voice faltering.

I looked at the floorboards, and she knew. Goddesses, she knew. I opened my mouth once more, but couldn’t find the strength to say the words I needed to say.

She slammed a hoof into the counter.

"WHY DO YOU HAVE THIS!?”

I hung my head, shaking it as beads of cold sweat formed upon my forehead. Again and again, I heard the resounding gunshot that took Sugar Rums’ life.

CRACK ...

“Sugar … my … my sister …” Summer Smiles lowered her quaking hooves, clenching her eyes shut as she held onto the counter for her dear life. “Goddesses, please …”

Candy Cane sat there unmoving, mouth open but unable to give voice to the horror that was fighting its way to her lips. She looked at me with teary eyes, unwilling to accept what she was hearing. “You don’t mean she’s …”

I just nodded my head.

The mare froze. She froze as if she were staring into the headlights of an oncoming wagon – staring through me, through the door – searchingly. Searching for the sister she refused to believe was lost.

Then it hit her. It struck her. Mangled her. Tore her apart.

“No …” she whispered, her shoulders quaking. She stumbled backward into the empty bottles behind her, running her trembling hooves through her mane as she stared upward into nothingness. “No … no, no, no, no …” Summer Smiles lowered herself to the counter. “Why …” she cried.

“WHY!? Her foals – Goddesses, what about her foals!” Summer Smiles clenched her eyes shut, trying to suck back in the tears that refused to stop pouring. But it was in vain. “She can’t be … dead … my – my sister … my only sister. She’s … dead …”

I hung my head low, her sobs echoing through my ears and shaking me to the core. It had happened so suddenly. One second, Sugar Rum was next to me – and the next she was curled up in a pool of her own blood. The bloodletters … the wasteland, it stole her from her daughters – her sister – just like how it stole from me almost everyone I loved.

The sound of a filly’s voice broke me from my rapturous state.

“Auntie? What’s wrong?” a girl asked. I turned and, looking down at us from the top of the stairs at the other side of the room was a filly, her coat an alabaster white.

'Goddesses. No.'

Summer Smiles struggled to compose herself. She couldn’t tell them. Not now. The mare wiped her bloodshot eyes vigorously, her breaths coming in and out as broken sobs.

“Doodle – go back to your room,” she told the filly, struggling to abate the trembling in her voice.

The filly looked at us, terrified. Another pair of eyes peered over her shoulder, and I found that another pony was clinging to her sister’s back.

“Who … who are they?” the other asked in the same voice.

Summer Smiles croaked, “Hops …”

“Auntie –”

“GO BACK TO YOUR ROOM, NOW!” she screamed, and the twins scrambled back upstairs.

Summer Smiles slammed a hoof on the counter once more as her anguished grimace ran wet with fresh tears.

“Damnit … I shouldn’t have done that. The last thing they needed to hear was that … Their mother’s dead, for Celestia’s sake. I need to be strong ...”

Candy Cane clenched her jaw and tried to swallow tears of her own as Summer Smiles threw her legs around her and cried into her mane. She pulled her close and squeezed her tight, weeping until their cries died away into shuddering sobs.

I looked away, unable to watch.

“What happened to her?” Summer Smiles choked. “How … how did she … how did she go?”

I eyed Candy Cane and hesitated. Sugar Rum was a slaver. I wasn’t sure what she’d think if she knew Sugar Rum was a slaver … she never would’ve befriended those ponies if she’d known.

But I relented. Summer Smiles deserved to know, whether or not Candy Cane liked what she was going to hear.

“She and her crew … they … they picked me up. Chained me to the back of their wagon with the other slaves …”

Candy Cane slowly turned her teary gaze towards me, her embrace loosening for a moment as her ears perked, unsure if she heard me right. She nearly let go and dropped Summer Smiles' head onto the counter.

“As we were heading up to Poneva, we were ambushed by bloodletters. They … they butchered everyone.” I bit my lower lip, shaking my head. “Sugar Rum stayed behind with the slaves. She gave me that photo … she wanted me to tell you that she went out a … a good pony.”

A ragged sob forced its way through Summer Smiles’ lips, and she broke down into tears once more, burying her face into Candy Cane’s chest.

“A good pony?” she whimpered, as Candy Cane squeezed her gently and ran a tender hoof through her mane. But she made no attempt to hide the horror of betrayal that was creeping across her face even as her friend wept into her hooves.

I nodded, solemnly. “The other slavers ran away. They left the slaves to die in their cage. The bastards left them to the bloodletters so that they could escape.” Their horrifying, blood curdling cries echoed distantly inside my thoughts. I cupped a hoof around my mouth.

“A bloodletter got her …” I remembered her throat, the grisly scene replaying itself over and over in my head as I touched Sugar Rum’s pale, bloody cheek.

“She was dying. She stayed behind with the slaves as those monsters tore them apart, and … and she put them out of their misery.” I finally met Summer Smiles’ bloodshot eyes, struggling to hold her gaze as I forced myself to continue. “Then Sugar Rum did herself out … before the bloodletters could.”

Summer Smiles whimpered into Candy Cane’s peacoat as she brushed her mane with a shaky, uncertain hoof.

“Summer … I didn’t know Sugar was … a slaver,” Candy Cane murmured, her voice trembling.

With a shuddering sob, the mare pulled away from her, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you … please - please please ... you have to understand ... We needed the caps – we needed to feed our family!” Summer Smiles sniffled pitifully as she rubbed her eyes with her hooves. “She was a good pony … a good pony until the end, Candy Cane. She never liked her job ... she hated it! But it was all we had ... it was all we could do.”

Candy Cane exhaled a breath she had been holding in. She shook her head, her curly mane tumbling over her teary eyes. The mare wasn't sure what to think, and for several long seconds, she sat there unmoving as Summer Smiles stared at her pleadingly. To my surprise, she took Summer Smiles’ hoof in hers and squeezed it tight.

“I … I know she was,” Candy Cane whispered, her voice trembling. “She was the pony who found me half dead in the snow when I first escaped.”

I lowered my eyes to the floor. She had been standing right next to me. I had tried to save so many people that day. But I didn’t. I couldn't.

“I’m sorry … I should’ve seen that animal coming,” I began, but Summer Smiles cut me off.

“But she chained you to a wagon!” She looked away, ashamed.

I shook my head.

“It wasn’t like that. I knew she was different … she wasn’t like the others. When they captured me … she .... she didn’t look like she could do it ...

“She killed a bloodletter that was going to eat me alive. I owe her my life.”

Tears began to well up in my eyes, but I fought them off, steeling myself as I clenched my jaw, tight.

Summer Smiles struggled to wipe her cheeks dry, her tears refusing to wane. “It’s … I’m just glad somepony was able to tell me. Usually ponies just disappear here, and nopony ever hears from them again. For the last two weeks I thought she was going to be one of those ponies … lost, and nobody knowing how she died.”

The mare found the strength to reach over the counter and touch my hoof. “Thank you … for telling me. At least now I know how she went out. About what she did right.”

But utter hopelessness returned to her voice, and her eyes turned low. “Without her, we won’t be able to pay our dues. We lived off of her paychecks …” She cradled her head in her hooves. “And nobody comes here anymore, not with those Palominos sweeping up the streets.”

Summer Smiles sat hunched over the counter, her eyes bloodshot with tears. “I don’t know what I’m going to do … the foals … Goddesses, the foals.”

Hooves banged against the door behind us.

We shot to our hooves as Summer Smiles turned pale and stared, wide-eyed at the front door. We watched it in an uneasy silence as the seconds began to tick by.

Then knocks came again, as assertively and insistently as the last.

Summer Smiles staggered to the door, wiping her eyes furiously with the sleeve of her winter coat. She sniffled once, glanced over her shoulder, and told us to get out of sight. So we hid behind the counter as the door creaked opened.

I peered around the counter, my brown coat barely discernable in the darkness behind the counter.

'Son of a bitch.'

Black hats.