The fresh powder crunched beneath my hooves as we trotted through the empty street of a quiet, abandoned city block. Snowflakes swirled past me, lingering upon the fabrics of my winter coat and freckling it black and white.

We traveled for much of that day, or night – whatever the hell it was in this wasteland. My flashlight’s beam and Candy Cane’s magical light orb illuminated the dark path before us as we crunched through the snow.

At least fifteen miles out we walked, and the farther we walked, the emptier the city became. Summer Smiles was far behind us. The Palominos were far behind us.

Home was far behind us.

Even farther for me.

We were the only ponies that walked that road. And I was hoping it’d stay that way.

The farther we went, the deeper we descended into the recesses of the fallen city’s underworld.

Every step was a step deeper into the abyss.

Out of curiosity, every now and then, I’d pan my flashlight across the charred walls of some dilapidated hovel, in search of nothing in particular. Broken, empty windows twinkled in the light as I peered into the ruins inside. We passed by small shops, their roofs caved in, and supermarkets, picked clean by looters, and hotel lobbies, desolate and devoid of life.

I passed by ruin after ruin, until every store, every apartment, every tower that I left behind me became nothing but balefire-blackened walls and crumbling roofs.

It was all the same for miles on end. Nothing but destruction and a city that once was.

After almost an hour, my eyes began to glaze over. I was simply scanning the darkness for the simple sake of scanning. Nothing. There was nothing remarkable left to look at, thanks to the ponies and the zebras and their megaspells. They had destroyed everything, and left little to bury.

And yet, somehow, elsewhere in the wasteland, ponies were able to rebuild.

… but not there.

Not there.

The Inner City was a city of ash. A city of ghosts devoid of life. The lights and sounds of Outer Poneva were gone, leaving us there only with the quietude of a dead winter night. The minutes ticked by like hours as my mind wandered, bored. It strayed off beyond where my eyes could see, wandering, wondering why what little was left of civilization was so far behind us.

Why that place was so empty.

The wind began to dwindle and slow, and a soundless snowfall sprinkled over us in the chilling darkness. All I could hear now were our hoofsteps, my heartbeat, and the voice that murmured nervously inside my head.

Never in my life had I been in a place so … quiet. A place so unnervingly - so unnaturally quiet. There was nothing to distract me from the apprehensive thoughts that plagued my weary mind. Especially the thoughts that I did not want to hear.

In that utter silence, it was almost too easy to be lost in my own thoughts … my anxieties … my fears ...

We walked that empty, broken road alone. Alone. Alone.

Alone …

I wondered if we were truly alone.

The darkness hid watching eyes that neither of us knew were there. Illuminated by our precious light, they could see us … but we couldn’t see them.

I gulped, scanning the broken buildings and rubble as they passed me by, my flashlight cutting nervous swaths through the night. Frowning warily, I beamed my light through the window of some second story apartment, watching as the shadows parted before me like ragged curtains.

A pony with sunken black eyes stared down at me from the windowsill.

I blinked. And stopped in my tracks. ‘Wait.’ Chilling apprehension skittered across my features as I swung my light back and trained it upon the shattered, melted windowpane.

Emptiness. A black void peered down at me the street.

Nobody was there.

Somehow, I was happy to find that no … thing desired to humor my curiosity.

Half an hour later, we were far enough that the outer city’s twinkling city lights weren’t even visible. They were gone. All we had now was darkness. An eerie, undulating darkness that seemed to shake, rattle, and roll when your back was turned.

In the shifting twilight, my eyes began seeing shapeless forms worming beneath the pitch black curtain that circled around us. Shapes that crept and crawled through the night.

But we were still alone. I hoped.

But where there was nothing, I’d find something … something I didn’t want to find. My imagination stalked. It slithered. It chased after the ghosts that evaded my darting eyes. I panned my light across a collapsed building. But my sweeping motion slowed as my wary stare fell through the cracks and crevices of the building’s debris-strewn grave. Drawn in by their emptiness, I peered inside.

Flash.

A mangled face stared back.

I froze in my tracks. But it was just a strip of melted rebar trapped beneath the rubble.

I gulped, and kept walking, playing my light nervously across the city’s broken remains.

It was all too easy to shrug it all off. To just ignore it and keep walking. I kept telling myself that I was just seeing things – that was all. I was just seeing things.

But my thoughts … my anxiety wouldn’t leave me alone. My apprehensions screamed up and down a steep, slippery slope. I felt my muscles tense and my heart flutter inside my chest every time my light parted the black sea before me.

I couldn’t stop searching. Even when I didn’t know what I was searching for.

I walked past an empty doorway to my left, my light skirting the base of the walls around it. And stopped.

Candy Cane kept walking.

I stood there for a second, the charred, ruined doorway looming over me as I watched her walk away, her hoofsteps crunching farther and farther into the distance. My light remained trained on the snow as I felt the hairs on my coat stand on end.

The wind began to pick up again. Blowing through my limbs. Blowing into that empty doorway.

I turned slowly to face it. To peer into its inviting depths ... drawn into the mouth of that gaping abyss. I gazed through the doorway and into that shifting sea of darkness, waiting. Waiting … listening ... watching the shadows ripple and writhe before my eyes like a sea of worms wriggling beneath skin. I didn’t dare shine my light. I didn’t dare to part that rippling black curtain and look upon what was waiting for me behind it.

The horrors that were lying in wait on the other side.

I stared into the darkness. And the darkness stared back. The wind howled through my limbs, howling into mouth of that abyss.

The magic that wreathed my flashlight turned a dark crimson as I shrunk beneath the shadow of that empty doorway.

I lifted a hoof as the wind screamed into my ears and the inviting darkness drew me ever closer.

I put one hoof forward.

“Red?”

I snapped to and flashed my light in Candy Cane’s face.

She narrowed her eyes at me, shielding her face with a hoof.

“What are you doing?”

I didn’t answer her. Everything was quiet. So quiet.

I blinked my eyes vigorously.

“Please, try to keep up,” I heard her whisper, “I don’t want to be out in the open like this.”

I nodded, and started forward. But I stopped once more in my tracks. I looked over my shoulder, sparing one final peek into the chilling abyss inside that empty doorway.

But it was just an empty doorway.

I gulped. And hurried after her.

I fell in behind her, my flashlight and her light orb trained solely upon the road that ran on before us.

I decided, to put my fears to rest, that I’d simply stop searching. The city could have its damned darkness, it could have it all if it wanted for all I cared.

But in the back of my mind, I wondered …

‘… what if we weren’t alone?’

Candy Cane moaned faintly, rousing me from my ponderous state. She stopped in her tracks as she cradled her head in her hooves. Her magic flickered – and winked out, leaving us only with my flashlight’s glow.

“W-what happened?”

“My horn.” She winced. “I need to rest it for a bit.”

Candy Cane had been lighting our path with her magic for the past three hours. Her mental stamina was still weak from all those sleepless nights. I took a deep breath, and exhaled. I figured I’d give her a break.

“It’s fine. We should take turns using flashlights,” I said, twirling mine in the air with my magic. “Just point me in a direction and I’ll light the way.”

She breathed her thanks, and started onwards once more, a few steps ahead of mine as I cut illuminated swaths of light across the road. But no matter how bright my light was, it seemed to do little but squeeze desperately through the blackness around us.

That far from the outer city, Poneva was like the open drifts outside the city’s walls. My light was just a distant, wavering candlelight in a sea of darkness.

And all around us, it closed in. I felt its chilling embrace as it skittered its icy broken talons down my spine and I shivered with every trembling breath. Even colder and colder it became as we trotted into the remains of a skyscraper that had plummeted to its shattered grave in the death throes of the balefire apocalypse.

The twisted maze of concrete and rebar curled inward towards us as we entered. Melted and horrifically reshaped by the balefire, jagged spindles of black metal dangled from its twisted skeleton. A swish, and a brush, and a tap. Gnarled claws as cold as death itself skittered across my mane.

My eyes would dart upward and find nothing but the tangled innards of the razed skyscraper playing against the tips of my cropped mane.

My hooves crunched against the snow, then the gravel. The howling winter winds blew far above, but the icy teeth of the stagnant, frozen air around us sunk deep into my barding.

I exhaled a trembling breath as our winding path became smaller and smaller. The tunnel squeezed and tightened around us, suffocating us in that shrinking, frozen pit until we were muzzle to tail, coat to concrete. We crawled with our bellies dragging across the ancient rubble.

Minutes passed as I stared into the swirls of Candy Cane’s tail. Then my light began to fade. Its yellow beam dwindled like a dammed stream, the shadows threatening to suffocate us all.

It flickered, sputtered, and choked.

Then died.

Utter darkness washed over me.

“Come on …” I murmured, banging my flashlight against the tunnel walls. I shook it back and forth, its yellow beam winking in and out, trying desperately to penetrate the blackness.

The tunnel flickered before me, the shadows giving way for a single desperate second as I struggled to turn it back on.

Then nothing. My heart raced inside my chest as I fumbled with my useless flashlight - lost, blind, and utterly helpless in the dark without the glow of my precious, precious light.

My blind eyes darted uselessly from left to right. Useless and helpless in the dark.

We were trapped. Sitting ducks.

They could see us. But we couldn’t see them.

The air was getting shallower. I gasped with frantic breaths as my flashlight slipped out of my waning magical grip.

Then a draft of frigid air whispered down the back of my neck.

“Are you okay?” Candy Cane asked as my hooves scrambled through the darkness, feeling the frozen earth for my flashlight.

She sounded like she was only a breath away from me.

“I-I don’t know. M-my light went out,” I stammered. My right hoof found its prize and I battered it against the tunnel walls. But it was no use. “What the fuck … these are supposed to be fresh batteries.”

“Just follow me,” she whispered, “According to the map, wherever we go, this particular tunnel leads to the same place. We can’t miss it if we just keep going straight,” Candy Cane told me, her voice speaking from somewhere in the impenetrable darkness.

“You … you sure about that?” There was a short pause before Candy Cane let out an amused snort. “Ah what the hell … of course you are. I’m right behind you,” I said, nervously.

My ears perked. I listened to her hooves scrape against the walls around her as she felt her way through the blackness. So long as I could hear her, I wouldn’t stop crawling.

I paused, my ears listening to Candy Cane’s shuffling hooves. Though I couldn’t see her, I knew that she was still close by. I also knew that I still had my PipBuck. Stopping for a moment, and listening to her make her way down the tunnel, I swore under my breath and I tucked my flashlight back into one of my pockets. With several blind button clacks, I hoofed my PipBuck’s interface.

To my relief, the screen flicked on, illuminating the swirls on Candy Cane’s tail with its teal light. I frowned at them.

She’d been stopped in front of me the entire time.

“You good?” she asked me, her eyes gleaming over her shoulder.

“Yeah, a-at least my PipBuck’s -”

Static washed over my PipBuck’s screen. Its radio flicked on - vomiting incoherent static noise into our ears -

Then its screen went black. And so did my light.

“Fuck!”

“Red Dawn?”

“I-I’m fine. J-just fuck it,” I hissed. “Let’s just keep going.”

I wanted to get it over with.

Without another word, Candy Cane shuffled through the rubble. I followed blindly in suit as the tunnel squeezed around me, battering my ribs, clawing at my barding, raking my bare, shivering flesh.

In utter darkness I crawled, my breaths getting shallower and shallower in the absence of my PipBuck’s guiding light. It was impossible … the stagnant underworld air seemed to grow even heavier, pressing against my chest as my breaths came out as nothing more than strained gasps.

But somehow I was reassured by the sounds of her hooves digging through the rubble close by. I bumped into her tail and apologized. Candy Cane shuffled faster in response. Realizing just how dearly I wanted out of that hole, she quickened her pace.

I followed her hooves wherever I heard them, and stopped whenever I heard them stop.

The only indication that she was still there were the dragging sounds she made as she crawled through the rubble.

I felt the tunnel wall dip away from me to my right.

Exhaling sharply, I leaned left and hugged the wall closely, afraid I’d fall into some icy pit that I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t see.

But close by, Candy Cane’s hooves continued onward, and so I followed them without question. I followed them because I didn’t want to be left behind. I didn’t want to be left behind, trapped and alone in that suffocating, frozen tunnel.

I felt and heard rocks crumble away from the roof and tumble to the earth.

Then the shuffling stopped.

A few feet in front of me, she whispered, her voice trembling.

“R-Red Dawn?”

“Cane?” I managed, squinting through the darkness uselessly.

All I saw was blackness. But I could hear her voice, and feel her fear.

“I’m stuck,” she whimpered. “I-I can’t move …”

“Shit.” The tunnel must’ve caved in and pinned her tail to the ground. “H-hold on, I can’t see,” I hissed, trying to find her tail, her leg – something!

But my blind hooves only crunched through the frozen earth.

“Help me …” she begged. “Please help me …”

I swung my hooves through the air frantically, inching forward, hoping I’d find her. With a loud clang, my PipBuck banged heavily against a pile of debris, and to my surprise, its display flickered on and illuminated the tunnel before me.

My heart skipped a beat.

She was gone.

Nowhere to be seen.

I whispered, shaking uncontrollably.

“C-Candy Cane?”

Her faint, familiar voice echoed faintly down the tunnel in the distance, far beyond where my eyes could see.

Then my PipBuck flickered once. Then died.

Darkness swept over me. I froze upon my hooves, petrified and in the dark as a chilling, nagging sensation skittered down the back of my neck. It was fear. Fear of what awaited me in the dark.

Hooves shuffled through the gravel behind me.

“Red Dawn …” a voice rasped, close enough to my ear to feel its frigid breath upon the back of my neck. My trembling breaths became shallow gasps.

“Help me ...”

My heart leaped inside my chest.

I hurled myself away and bolted, tearing through the gravel as if my life depended on it. Rocks crashed into my ribs and slammed into my skull and tore at my mane.

The temperature plummeted. Something dragged through the gravel behind me.

“CANDY CANE!”

She didn’t reply.

I opened my mouth to scream her name once more –

A ragged gasp escaped my lips instead.

Heavier and heavier. The frozen air crushed my lungs and choked away my frantic breaths. I batted at my leg, struggling to turn my PipBuck back on as I wheezed for air that wouldn’t fill my lungs.

‘Come on – come on – turn on, you son of a –‘

Icy talons dug into my mane. They didn’t let go.

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move. But I could hear its wheezing, ragged breaths as it clawed and flailed through the gravel behind me.

Chills slithered down my spine as a suffocating silence fell upon me.

A frozen breath wheezed against the back of my neck.

I screamed. I wrenched my head away and barreled down the tunnel, shrieking my throat raw into the darkness as the darkness chased after me –

Then I ate a mouthful of tail.

“Hey!” I heard a mare cry out as I ran my head into her hind leg and fell on my face. My PipBuck flashed in Candy Cane’s eyes.

Candy Cane swished her tail across my face. “Yow! Watch where you point that thing!” she cried.

“WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU!? Shined my light in front of me and you weren’t …” I lifted a hoof and my eyes gravitated to my PipBuck’s glowing teal screen. “And … and you weren’t … there,” I trailed off. I gulped and realized that my goosebumps had subsided. The usual wasteland air was permeating the tunnel once more.

Blinking profusely, she came to notice my baffled silence. Her muzzle scrunched up and she narrowed her eyes at me.

“I thought you were right behind me?” she murmured, blinking.

“No - you left me behind,” I hissed.

She shook her head, insisting, “I asked you if you were okay, and you said you were fine. I heard you crawling behind me ... so I just kept going.”

I froze, the blood draining from my face.

‘Help me …’

I turned to her my haunted stare.

“Cane … Cane that wasn’t me.”

We huddled closely around my PipBuck’s light in an alcove in the rubble. I found myself glancing over my shoulder every other second – back at the tunnel we’d put behind us. Even with Candy Cane beside me, there was an eerie, unforgivable fear that lingered in the back of my mind.

Fear of the dark.

Because the darkness hid eyes that I couldn’t see.

I clenched my jaw and stared down the broken tunnel we had emerged from. From the frozen, suffocating darkness we’d crawled out of.

I had never been afraid of the dark.

Back at ‘91, I always knew what was behind those shadowy curtains.

But out there … it was different.

Those shadowy curtains hid more than what I wanted to know.

Candy Cane was convinced that I’d been behind her the entire time. Convinced that it was just the debris that had raked my scalp. Convinced that I was simply hearing things, and that the claustrophobia was just getting to me.

But fuck! I’m a damned engineer – I spent my days crawling through pipes, sticking my head through pipes, getting my hoof stuck in pipes!

I wasn’t. Claustro. Phobic.

I shook my head. After all those skull taps … those burnouts … maybe the damage was more inside than out. Maybe I really was losing it … maybe ...

Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me again.

My PipBuck’s light flickered and my heart hammered inside my chest.

No. My muscles tensed and my ears perked as I heard the echo of rocks crumbling away in the distance behind us. As the echoes faded away, only our breaths – only my shallow breaths made the slightest of sounds in the heavy silence. I gulped and let out a trembling sigh, watching as the heavy cloud of mist lingered in the frozen air.

The cloud shifted before my eyes.

"Red Dawn?" I heard Candy Cane whisper.

I turned, and she was snacking on an apple.

"Y-yes?"

She stopped chewing for a moment, her right cheek bulging with apple chunks.

"Hm?"

I cocked my head at her.

"What?"

Candy Cane swallowed and cocked a brow at me.

"What?"

I snapped, glaring at her, "You said my name!"

"No, I didn't," she insisted, before taking another bite from her apple.

I sighed, shrugging, bringing to my face my trembling hooves. I rubbed at my eyes, my ears pinned against the sides of my head. I exhaled a long, and drawn out breath. I clenched my jaw and watched as my breath slowly dissipated into nothingness.

"Fucking shit ...” I murmured, shaking my head.

Maybe I was losing it. Maybe … maybe …

Candy Cane inched closer so that we were shoulder to shoulder, and leaned against me. I took comfort in knowing that she was there, sure that she was there. I could feel her shoulder on mine. She was there … she had to be.

Finishing her apple, Candy Cane swept aside a pair of apple cores, the remains of our snack, as she pulled the map out of her peacoat.

My PipBuck rocked back and forth as Candy Cane shifted the leg it was attached to across the gravel at our hooves, laying down the map Summer Smiles had given us.

In its teal light, she tapped a hoof against a seemingly arbitrary quadrant on the map.

“We’re here,” Candy Cane began. Eyeing the mausoleum of ruined concrete around us, she nodded to herself. “This should be the old Sparkle-Cola tower,” Candy Cane told me, her breaths coming out as wisps of chilled air.

“Sparkle-Cola?” I frowned, squinting at the map.

“An old soda company.” She sighed, “They were one of the leading soda brands back in the day.”

I dug a hoof through the rubble at my feet.

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” I chuckled, grimly.

She tapped the map once more, and to my shock, it came apart.

“Fuck the what?” I gasped, my eyes widening.

Candy Cane shook her head, “It’s alright. It’s supposed to do that.” With both her hooves and her magic, she pulled the map apart – piece by piece.

“What the – stop that! Celestia, you’re ripping it!” I cried.

“Shush. It’s fine, Red, really.” Candy Cane took the six irregularly cut pieces and pasted them back together – good as new, much to my disbelief. “Orphanage ponies carry these maps in groups; they’d split up the pieces among each other so that if one of them got captured, the enemy would only have a piece or two of the whole map.” She levitated the aged sheet of leather before my eyes. “That way nopony’d be able to find all their hideouts.”

I nodded, narrowing my eyes at the six pieces that hovered before me.

“Clever bastards,” I murmured, admirably. No wonder no kne knew where to find those ponies, because it was so difficult to track them – even with their own Goddesses-damned map.

Candy Cane nodded, setting it back down against the rubble at our hooves. She traced her hoof across its surface, stopping at each circle indicating the location of one of many hideouts in their network of clandestine cells all across Poneva city.

“The thing is, is that not all of their hideouts are in use at any given time. If anything, they remain as resupply points, doors locked and openable only with a key.”

“Which we don’t have,” I muttered, swearing under my breath.

She pursed her lips. “For all we know, the next hideout we stop at might just be a weapon’s cache.”

I cocked a brow at her, rather irritated. Yet another setback.

“It wouldn’t matter, because we wouldn’t even be able to get inside.” I face-hoofed, mumbling, “Summer Smiles didn’t tell you where to go, exactly?”

“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “Summer Smiles hasn’t worked with them since Sugar Rum had her babies.”

My jaw dropped.

“Are you … shitting me? For all we know the map might’ve changed!”

She sighed, brushing her mane out of her eyes. “I hope not. But if it hasn’t, then it doesn’t mean that we won’t find them, it just means we might find a cache. We’d just need to try every hideout we come across.”

Candy Cane looked up from our map, and added, with faint optimism, “We’ll find them eventually.”

“Wooooonderful,” I droned flatly, running a shaky hoof through my mane.

She pointed to a nearby quadrant on the map, directly adjacent to ours.

“Yes, wonderful indeed. We’re rather close to one, fortunately.” Candy Cane tapped her chin. “If we can get out of this hole and cut through the Ministry of Morale hub, we should be able to get to their hideout.”

“You make it sound so easy,” I said, trying to conceal my apprehension with a pained smile.

She gulped. I took that as a no.

“I’ve been out here a few times, but not this far out into the Inner City, Red.” She huddled close to me, glancing over her shoulder. “It isn’t safe out here.”

I scoffed bitterly, “When is it ever?”

She rubbed one of her forelegs with a hoof. “You don’t know, Red … you don’t know what’s out here.” Her voice lowered to a dark, ominous tone. “The closer we get to ground zero, the worse things get. The more dangerous it gets.”

When we were outside, about an hour ago, I noticed that there weren’t too many free standing structures in the Ponevan skyline.

“Not much survived when the bomb came.” She gave me a stern gaze. “But whatever the balefire didn’t kill … we need to steer clear of it.” Candy Cane drew her submachine gun, flipped the safety off, and chambered a round.

I drew my pistol as well, and did the same. Candy Cane swirled her silvery magic around Summer Smiles’ map and pulled it apart, levitating to me one half and keeping the other.

“Don’t lose it.” Candy Cane hesitated for a moment, eyeing her hooves. “If we get caught … you need to destroy it … okay?”

I gulped as I held my half gingerly in my hooves.

“Caught by what? We’re nowhere near any of the plantations or their dogs,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t answer.

But she did.

“By whatever is still crawling around out there,” Candy Cane said simply.

She got to her four hooves and led me through yet another partially-collapsed tunnel with a black, opaque hole at its end – our exit. Another. Partially. Collapsed. Tunnel. It was something she seemed completely used to. Me? Not so much. The last thing I wanted was to get pancaked by a cave in.

But getting crushed by rocks was the least of my worries. Especially not in that forsaken place.

I paused for a moment to replace the batteries of my flashlight. They were completely drained. I started after her, checking my pistol and ejecting its magazine to eyeball the rounds loaded within.

“Red Dawn?” someone whispered, close enough to feel its glacial breath against the inside of my ear.

Chills skittered down my spine. Dense trails of mist seethed from my lips with every shallow breath I took.

I shook my head.

My horn glowed wearily and I slid my magazine home, making my way toward Candy Cane who was waiting for me – halfway down the tunnel.

Behind me, I heard the faint sounds of crumbling rocks shifting underhoof.