I snarled and yanked the trigger back.

Crack!

The fury mare slumped into the snow with a ragged hole between her eyes. I growled through my bared teeth, blinking away the scarlet that peppered my muzzle. I stood there for a moment, the pallid snow swirls thickening, the wailing gales intensifying. The world slowed around me – and I stared into the darkness.

No gunshots. No flashes.

But I heard them. Blood ran down my face as I soaked in the familiar, psychotic laughter that echoed through my ears. It was them. The snow furies. I couldn’t see them. But they could see me.

There had to be dozens. Hundreds. All of them screaming their mindless, demented laughter.

‘… now you know what it’s like to die alone ...’

I brought a hoof to my scalp, running it through my mane as their laughter grew louder and louder – cackling from every direction … behind me, before me, my left, my right - inside my head - my thoughts -

‘HAHAHAHA –‘

Then nothing. No more voices. No more gunfire. Only the howl of the wind and the distant beat of my heart.

Through the blizzard I saw a faint, black silhouette standing in the twilit snowfall. The wind shrieked past its billowing black mane, as it hung its faceless head in motionless quietude.

The black figure stood there, engulfed in the violent snowfall, close enough for me to make out its equine shape, but too far to see its face – too far to see what made it equine. All I saw was its dark silhouette obscured by the unforgiving storm.

I watched and listened as the beating in my chest slowed to a frozen silence. All the sound in the world finally faded to a frozen silence.

The storm waned for the briefest of seconds.

And a ragged scarf billowed from its neck.

Slowly, its faceless head turned to face me.

‘I thought you loved me Red Dawn …’

I blinked.

The blizzard shrieked past me and a fury erupted from the storm.

“HAHAHAHAHA - HAHAHAHAHA!”

This time, I didn’t blink. I pulled the trigger twice. Twice he was struck in the chest. He stumbled, but he wouldn’t stop. His laughing wouldn’t stop.

“HAHA – I’VE GOT A PRESENT FOR YOU, BOY!”

He reared his head for a swing with his morning star.

“SHUT. UP!”

My horn plunged into him first.

I tackled the stallion to the snow in a plume of white powder. The blizzard intensified, my legs and his muzzle and the morning star clamped between his teeth all I could see.

He whinnied through a mouthful of rusted steel, laughing uncontrollably through his bloody lips. My hoof crashed into his throat and he dropped it with a retch. Then I slammed another hoof into his teeth. I didn’t even blink as he wheezed his blood into my face.

My hooves tightened around his throat, and even as he choked and clawed at his neck for air, there still echoed inside my head his immutable, demented laughter.

‘HAHAHAHAHA – HAHAHA –’

A scream thrummed inside my chest – and my pistol discharged a round that exploded out the roof of his skull. I stared down at him, watching blood and gray matter pool out of the hole in his head … listening.

There they were. Still laughing. They wouldn’t stop. They weren’t going to stop until they were all dead.

The snow whipped past me as I galloped towards the muzzle flashes of Candy Cane’s submachine gun. I found her ducked behind a slab of broken concrete. A fury lay slumped against it, his blood slowly turning to frost as the blizzard refused to relent.

I blinked.

His emerald eyes shot open, vomiting violet light from the tunnels that were his distended maw.

I leveled my pistol – and he was dead.

“Celestial shit …” I murmured as the gunfire wrenched me back to reality. I felt Candy Cane’s hooves grab my shoulders and pull me to my hooves as bullets screamed over where my head used to be.

“Where … where the hell did they come from?” I snarled at her, my voice barely audible over the howl of the wind.

“They must be wondering the same thing,” Candy Cane replied breathlessly. I listened to her words as she spoke louder than the voices that cackled around me, “I didn’t even hear them … see them … how did they know we were here?” She levitated her gun over her cover and let loose a staccato burst of fire.

None of them hit anything.

But a stray bullet exploded against the concrete before me. Chipped shrapnel nicked the flesh of our muzzles and I screamed, “THESE FUCKING SHIT HEADS!” I heaved my pistol over our cover and yanked the trigger back … screaming as blood ran down my face … every deafening CRACK overpowering the voices that fought for my attention.

But the muzzle flashes that blazed across from us behind the curtain of snow didn’t relent.

I could feel their bullets hissing past my mane. I could feel my pistol kicking inside my magical grip.

Candy Cane’s voice shook me back to reality.

“Red – stop firing!”

I clenched my jaw and ceased fire. It’s not like I was making much of a difference anyways. But the furies didn’t. Muzzle flashes bloomed dully in the snowstorm, the cascading snow swirls obscuring the furies – and us.

I scratched at my mane, trembling uncontrollably.

Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …

“Red!” My distant eyes watched in slow motion as she reached for another magazine.

I listened to her voice … struggling to be heard.

“... how many … left …”

I shook my head, clenching my eyes shut and grinding my teeth.

“Red … how many … left!?”

“Too many …” I heard myself whisper.

Candy Cane’s voice echoed faintly through my wilted ears.

“How many rounds do you have left!?”

I shook my head vigorously, trying to shake the ghosts off my shoulders –

“RED!” she screamed.

“Four!” I growled. Four. I only had four left.

“They’ve got more bullets than we do. We either wait them out or let them come to us.”

“I don’t see any other way - do you?” I snapped.

Candy Cane paused, staring at me for a moment. “I have an idea.” She ejected her magazine, eyeballed its contents, then pointed a hoof at me. “I’ll keep their eyes down range. Go around them.” She grunted and loosed a burst of gunfire over her head – and the furies’ fired back.

The concrete exploded over our heads.

“Go! They’ll see me, but they won’t be able to see you!” I winced as rocks exploded an inch away from my forehead.

‘Red …’

I shook my head, trying to hear Candy Cane’s voice, trying to focus on her words as they spoke over the whispers that rose in volume like waves crashing against me.

“Red, let’s get going!” she screamed, her submachine gun flashing in my eyes.

‘Red Dawn …’

Candy Cane’s mouth opened –

“RED!” Dew Drops shrieked.

I tore my spade from my bags and made a mad dash into the storm.

Away from Candy Cane’s voice, their cackling only grew louder.

I heard, faintly, beneath their laughter, Candy Cane’s submachine gun rattle another burst. A few heartbeats later, the furies did the same. And every time someone fired, I saw a gun barrel flash back through the curtain of snow.

I could see them. But they couldn’t see me. I galloped through the storm, engulfed in the howling snowfall.

I fell upon the first snow fury, and sent my spade swinging toward her skull.

It broke through with a dull squelch – and stuck. I planted a hoof into her lifeless corpse and tugged – ripping it free. I stared blankly at the gore that dripped from its steel head. My jaw clenched.

‘You did this …’

“Please …”

‘HAHAHA –’

I galloped onward and found the next fury. This time, my spade ran through the nape of his neck, and he screamed, his rounds spraying wide as he flailed his forelegs through the snow, his hinds laying limp.

I saw his face one last time – contorted with a quivering, agonized grin – and I cratered it with a downward swing. I hadn’t even hesitated. I stood over him, my teeth bared, and my eyes widened, panting for my breath. Listening.

‘You’ve always wanted this …’

“Stop …”

‘But I can’t stop now …’

“NO!”

The world sped past me. I screamed, hurling myself into the storm – wrenching apart the frozen curtains with every hoof I threw over the other.

The fury swung her rifle to face me.

I swung my spade into her horn.

With a CLANG, and a dull crack, her horn shattered to pieces.

“HNNG – GAHHHH!”

The fury fell shrieking – floundering in the snow as blood poured down her face.

I stood over her, my spade raised high like a grim-faced executioner with another head on the block. I reclined into the eerie silence that washed over me amid her anguished screams … a screaming silence.

She clawed her hooves at the stump that used to be her horn, wailing in agony, her breathless cries resonating through every fiber of my being …

… drowning out the storm. Drowning out my thoughts.

I only raised my spade higher.

“Red, stop!” Candy Cane screamed, her hoof yanking at my sleeve. I blinked, my eyes darting back and forth as if I’d just woken up from a dream. “STOP!"

The magical field around my spade intensified. The fury curled up into a ball, whimpering and convulsing like a beaten animal.

“She’s finished,” I heard Candy Cane tell me. “There’s nothing she can do now.”

“There’s bound to be more of them around here, Cane.” I turned to her, my scarf billowing in the wind. “We need to kill her so she doesn’t come back with more of them!”

Candy Cane pursed her lips, kneeling beside the hornless mare.

“We don’t know that,” she said, softly. “You broke it right off,” she murmured, reaching out to touch the fury’s forehead. The fury recoiled from her hoof with a pathetic, feeble whimper.

I stared at the fury beneath me, letting her panting, agonized breaths echo through my ears. I felt a pang of satisfaction in my heart. A part of me wanted to send my spade crashing against her skull.

But it almost felt good watching one of those animals suffer.

I wondered what Star Glint said to them before they skinned him alive. I wondered if he begged. I wondered if he pleaded for his fucking life. We were helpless to stop those monsters … but now … that fury was helpless to stop me.

All it would take was a single swing. I would even make it quick, even if that sack of filth didn’t deserve a frozen metal grace.

“Please …” the mare whimpered. “I don’t wanna die …”

“Shut up,” I growled, jabbing my spade into her chest. “Don’t you know what these fucking monsters do, Cane?”

I turned and felt Candy Cane’s gray eyes stab into me like cold steel. “I know full well what snow furies do … Red,” she whispered. “You haven’t seen half of it.”

We gazed at each other for too many heartbeats, my voice wavering beneath her chilling stare. “You were fine with me killing them earlier,” I began, tipping my gory spade at her. “What makes this any different, now?”

Her eyes relented, and she blinked them close.

“Red …”

“SHE’S A SNOW FURY!” I screamed.

“I kill because I have to, not because I can.” She pointed a hoof at the bloody, quivering, babbling mess at our hooves. “That’s what makes us different from them.”

I stood over the fury, my spade still enwreathed in my magical grip. The fury flinched, shielding her face with trembling hooves. And through a crack between her forehooves, I watched the black veins in her sclera recede.

The fury … the mare beneath me whimpered.

“Please … lemme go, you’ll never see me again, I promise …”

I closed my eyes, a trembling breath hissing through my lips. I heard her giggling at me. I heard her insane laughter echo through my ears.

My eyelids flew open, and I saw her face – neither grinning nor laughing, but contorted with agony.

“Let her go, Red …” I heard Candy Cane tell me. “She’s finished …”

The cadence of my pounding heartbeat slowed. My conscience beckoned me.

I tucked the spade into my bags.

“Go,” I heard myself say, softly. The mare looked up at me with wide, teary eyes.

“I said … GO!”

She scrambled to her hooves and stumbled away from us. The mare fell once, before hauling herself back to her fours and disappearing into the storm.

A trembling sigh escaped my lips as I bowed my head, still as a corpse as my mane and my scarf billowed like tattered fabric in the wind.

I felt a hoof rest upon my shoulder.

“Red … ?” Candy Cane began, but the wind stole the words from her lips.

I just shook my head and shrugged her off, closing my eyes as the blizzard howled mercilessly into my ears.

‘Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …’

“Come on,” Candy Cane said, her face and voice difficult to make out as the cascading snowfall thickened. “It’s getting worse. We need to get out of here.”

Were it so easy.

Even sitting still, my heart raced inside my chest. Beneath the shadow of a vast, collapsed parking garage, the darkness shifted and swelled. In it I could make out figures – but with every blink, they flitted away. Nothing but ghosts haunting my weary eyes. To close them would accomplish nothing. They were still there, slithering beneath the shadow of my eyelids.

Slithering in the darkness.

Outside, above several thousand tons of concrete, beneath the wailing winter, I could still hear them. Laughing at me.

It hit me, then. They weren’t laughing at me because I was weak, or because of the hatred that was simmering inside of me. No. They were laughing at me because I was a victim.

I had always been one.

Even with my gun smoking and standing alive among the dead – I was still a victim.

I sat there in the rubble and detritus, blank-eyed and shrunken to a slouch beneath the noisy quietude. The laughs rang out distantly – miles away. But I could still hear them, laughing their mocking laughter … Dew Drops among them – giggling about how I thought that I slaughtered my friends – how fucking hilarious it was when I put that carbine in my mouth and opened wide.

I would’ve done it. I would’ve ended it all.

I clenched my jaw so hard I nearly popped it out of its socket.

They all seemed so real. I wanted them to be real. After Dew Drops’ death, every dream, every thought I had of her was one wishing she was still alive. I got what I wanted – and to my disgust … I got more.

The darkness knew just how well it could wrench apart that scabbed over gash in my heart. I may not have given it what it wanted … but I knew, and it knew that it had still won.

While it wasn’t easy to get used to the cold, it horrified me that I felt that it was becoming easier to get used to the wasteland. The dreary lifelessness. The empty streets. The death. Around us lay scattered a shallow graveyard of ancient motorwagons. Among them I could make out the faint silhouettes of equine remains – pulverized beneath massive boulders of concrete that had fallen upon them when the streets above caved in.

Having had a taste of a normal life – as normal as it could get – among friends, ponies that I loved and grew up with … I only hated the world around me even more. I hated the snow furies. They did this to us. They did this to me. I hated the snow, and the cold, because they kept me shivering and awake when my mind wanted to drift away.

If only I had just ignored the scarf … if only I had just turned away … they … she would still be alive ... But I killed them. And I would’ve killed myself, too …

Staring at Candy Cane as she rummaged through an arbitrary pile debris, scavenging for Goddesses knew what, I pictured … I tried to picture that that mare was Dew Drops, instead.

Candy Cane met my gaze briefly.

Her lips tore apart – violet light vomiting from her distended jaw. My hoof jumped to my holster – and when I blinked, it was just Candy Cane milling about.

Picking through the detritus, Candy Cane gathered trash from the remains of a crushed motorwagon. Carrying it back, she formed a small pile before us and lowered her head, her eyes clenching shut as sparks leapt and fizzled from her horn. With a dull flash, the trash ignited, and a small fire burned bright enough to light the broken earth beneath our hooves.

With a trembling sigh, she slowly lowered herself to her bottom and sat next to me.

She bowed her head to the small, flickering flame and held her shivering hooves over it.

It wasn’t warm.

But it lit up the parking garage adequately. Ancient motorwagons lay strewn about, overturned, cratered, or buried beneath the rubble. I squinted through the darkness and saw a bony hoof poking out from beneath one.

I blinked, and for a moment, I saw the hoof shift through the rubble, clawing for the surface - drowning in the darkness. I blinked again, and it was just someone’s charred remains. Shaking my head, I fixed my gaze upon a place where the light could not touch. It was better that way. Just like how it was better if I’d not known if the wasteland existed, outside ‘91’s door.

I found it difficult to not stare directly into the darkness. It was all around me, and when I closed my eyes – it was still there. I was afraid. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of the dark. What lay behind that curtain of obscurity wasn’t the Olden Pony looking for her rusty horseshoe. There were far worse things lying in wait.

Far. Worse. Things.

Candy Cane leaned forward, and winced, grunting softly as she clutched her chest. My ears twitched at her voice, but my blank stare did not leave the darkness beyond the campfire’s dim glow.

“It’s quiet, here.”

It took me a moment to register what she said. Several more to realize it was her speaking. My eyes remained fixed into the pitch blackness beyond the light of our campfire.

“Red, what’s wrong?” I said nothing. “You seem different.”

My voice broke the silence. It was gravelly and desiccated as if I’d just woken up from a deep slumber. “What do you mean?” I asked evenly, a near-imperceptible waver in my voice.

Her ears shifted at that. She must’ve noticed.

“We’re alive,” I whispered, still staring into the darkness. “That’s all that matters.”

Candy Cane looked away, sadly, lowering her gaze to the firelight.

“No … it’s not,” she whispered, hauntingly, a soft sigh … or was that a sob – punctuating her words. She looked up at me … and I felt her eyes boring into my peripherals. I met them, her haunted, chilling grays. She just stared, her lips parted open as if she wanted to say more.

Candy Cane’s tired eyes lingered upon my blank stare. Several seconds passed before she turned away, her head pivoting like an unoiled, rusty machine. Her ear lingered, still fixed in my direction.

I said nothing. My ruined mind could find nothing to say.

It could find nothing but the darkness that terrorized it like a disturbed colt pulling the legs off a spider. Like a weary, tortured animal, I laid my head down between my hooves and stared into the fire, watching it flicker, wavering and weak.

All I had to do was to blow it out like a candle. A rogue breeze was all it took to extinguish its light. We weren't too different. We were just playthings … we were just fucking toys in the clutches of something greater. Something … evil.

It didn’t want to kill us.

It wanted to torture us.

It wanted us to suffer.

Once more I tried to imagine Dew Drops’ face. Her cool gray eyes … her velvety blue coat … her tousled teal mane … her soft face and gentle smile. But instead her eyes flashed at me with emerald hellfire. I felt my limbs freeze over. I knew that that thing wasn’t her. And yet all I saw behind the shadows of my eyelids was a monster.

‘Don’t you love me, Red Dawn? Hahahahaha …’

I shook my head vigorously. Her voice … its voice … nothing but a disembodied, chilling cackle from the darkness. A laugh devoid of pity. Devoid of mercy. Devoid of equinity.

I remembered the crazed doomsayer I encountered in the Outer City not too long ago. I thought she was full of shit. I thought it was all a fucking joke.

She said that she saw the darkness.

So did I.

The darkness was real. The darkness was alive. And whenever I tried to think about the ponies I loved … I …

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About her. The taste of death on her tongue. The smell of rot in her flesh. Her cold blood as it dripped onto my face.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her. How she wouldn’t stop – how … how I couldn’t stop. How that monster took advantage me ... And to think that that was what I wanted Dew Drops to do to me. I couldn’t even believe it myself … to think I actually wanted … that …

… that I wanted to feel her hot breaths upon my flesh … and feel her tongue wrap around me … to force her down with my hooves. To hear her gag – hear her whine for breath. To release her – so that the air that would fill her lungs would not be the only thing to come.

Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …

My legs began to shake. I lowered my head to my trembling hooves, my mouth moving but no words escaping my tongue. Disgusting names spun twisting circles around my weeping conscience, convicting me – judging me – punishing me.

‘You pervert … you … you fucking freak …’

Was it true … ? Was it? ‘I’d never … I …

‘No …’

I tried to deny the whispers that suggested that – that somewhere – somewhere in the blackest regions of my conscience, there lay buried a twisted fantasy … where I wanted it … and more.

A fantasy where I wanted to defile the face of that lovely mare. I couldn’t have … I couldn’t have wanted to hold her down and fuck her brains out …

But the voices kept telling me I was wrong.

‘NO!’ How could I want to do that to her … the mare I loved … the mare I grew up with. Dew Drops … my teacher – my friend – my lover. How could I ever think … think to ruin my Dew Drops?!

But I was wrong. My body told me I was wrong. My body wanted her to tear open my trousers and give to me with her cold, rasping tongue, and her slick, chilling insides the fantasy it had hungered.

And all the while my mind had screamed at me to stop – my heart screamed at me that it was wrong.

And yet a part of me still wanted it.

She was a corpse. Reanimated by darkness … by evil in the image of my Dew Drops.

‘She was a corpse.’

A gasp – loud enough only for me to hear, wheezed out of my lips. I fought the urge to vomit, to hurl and retch away the pallid butterflies in my chest … the wretched twist in my putrid gut … the disgusting, unholy fantasies that gurgled inside my head.

I almost … I almost said yes.

I wanted to cry … but all I felt was anger. A boiling hatred that bubbled and popped inside of me. No longer could I think of her as the pony I loved … she was gone … and it was all its fault. The greatest insult to injury. A salted wound that had just begun to scab over – was now oozing and festering with infection.

The wasteland destroyed my friends.

Then the darkness destroyed their memories.

There weren’t any more tears to shed …

All that was left was hatred … for Dew Drops’ twisted grin, the brutal rasp in her voice, the sickly, unholy glow of her half-lidded eyes. What she did to me … what it did to me … I only wanted to make it pay.

It made me a victim … in the false safety of my own mind … I was victimized. On my own terms. Behind the safety of my own walls.

My hoof slid to my holster as I scraped at my pistol’s safety.

Click. Clack. Click.

The wasteland – the darkness – whatever the fuck it was, wrenched away from my hooves almost everything I loved. The wasteland killed them. Then the darkness killed them again.

On. Off. On.

My hoof curled tightly around my holster. Someone was going to pay … pay for the guilty, disgusting fantasies, and the putrefied memories that, in my thoughts, rolled over in their shallow graves. I wanted to find something tangible to blame. Something that could bleed.

Something that wasn’t myself.

Hahahahaha … hahahahaha …

Snow furies.

“You did the right thing, Red,” I heard Candy Cane say.

I bowed my head away from the firelight, a veil of darkness hiding the hatred that burned in my eyes. “The right … thing?”

A twisted, lopsided grin stretched across my lips. “Letting that – that fury walk away? That was the right thing?” I stood to my fours, my hooves trembling beneath me. “I wonder,” I whispered, “I wonder how many people she’s killed? I wonder how many people she’s butchered … and we just let her walk away.

Candy Cane peered up at me.

“And That was the right thing to do?”

The mare was quiet for a moment as she averted her gaze to the crackling campfire.

“She … she was begging for her life, Red.”

I only laughed.

“Would she have done the same?” Candy Cane stared into the fire, jaw clenched. “Would she have let you walk away?”

There was a long silence as the frail firelight danced dimly across her grim face.

“No,” I said for her. “She would’ve fucked you with your horn while you were still alive!”

She shook her head and whispered, “It doesn’t matter …”

I felt my heart leap inside my chest.

“What … did you say?”

Candy Cane finally turned to face me. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, louder this time.

I snapped.

“It. Doesn’t. Matter!?” My muzzle came within inches of hers. “Those … animals killed my friends – and – and you’re saying that it doesn’t … fucking matter!?”

The mare stood firm, her voice even. “I never said that.”

“Bullshit!” I hissed. I grinded my teeth, glaring into the darkness. “It’s all their fault …” I whispered, my eyes clenching shut as their laughs resonated through my ears. “Those animals killed them … and they would’ve killed me too …” I bowed my head and added, in a voice only I could hear, “They should’ve … but I won’t let them.”

I turned, slowly, staring my distant eyes through hers. “I used to wonder why I made it out of there alive … I used to wonder why me – out of all those ponies – made it out alive.” I gazed into the dying firelight as it wavered against my bloodied, grime-encrusted face. “Why … Goddesses … why?” I asked her.

She just stared back in silence.

“I wonder … I wonder if it was so that I could make them pay …”

Candy Cane took a deep breath, and slowly shook her head. “That mare … she didn’t kill your friends,” she said, softly. “She didn’t kill your friends, Red.”

“No. But that fury will kill us!” I snarled as she continued to shake her head. “She would’ve killed us ... and if we don’t stop them first, it’ll be our pelts that’ll be keeping them warm when the Tempest comes!”

“You don’t know that,” she whispered. “You broke her horn … she was beaten – useless. She wouldn’t have even been able fight back.”

A bitter chuckle wheezed out of my lips.

“Why are you being so naïve? They’ll come back with more, and they’ll murder us both!”

Anger flashed across her face.

“You don’t know that!”

“And you don’t know that either! I’m going to laugh my ass off bloody when they come back and rip us to pieces! You should’ve let me put her down when I could!” I snarled, stomping a hoof into the ground.

“AND FOR WHAT?!” she snapped. “So – s-so you can get your revenge? How does killing her – unarmed and useless accomplish anything?”

“It’ll save. Your. LIFE – AND MINE!”

Candy Cane grew quiet, her ears wilting as she stared at her hooves in the heavy silence. I could hear her shallow breaths hissing out of her trembling lips.

“Save … save us from them?” She looked up at me in horror. “What about us? What about us, Red?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? What about when we become just like them!?” She demanded with wide, pleading eyes, “What then? What in Equestria would’ve made you different if I’d just let you knock her head off while she begged?”

“Not a dead pony,” I shot back.

“It would’ve made you a murderer!”

I threw my head back and laughed as if that was the funniest damn thing I’d ever heard.

“I already am, Cane!” I grinned, holding out to her my forehooves as if they were covered in blood. “And if it saved my life … if it saved yours, I’d do it again!”

“NO!”

She curled her hooves around my shoulders and shook me. Hard.

“It’s. Not. Worth it.”

“Cane –”

“IT’S NOT WORTH IT!” she screamed into my face. “I’ve lived in this fucking wasteland my entire life - and I’ve seen enough.” She jammed a hoof into her chest. “I’ve seen enough! I … I watched as furies murdered my family … I saw them rape my mother while they slit my father’s fetlocks and made him watch.”

The waning firelight crackled and popped.

“Why? Why did they burn my village to the ground? WHY DID THEY BUTCHER MY FAMILY?”

She uttered a violent sob, her trembling hooves tightening around me as she blinked away the tears that welled up in her eyes. Candy Cane’s head slumped forward into my chest, rocking me back and forth with her shuddering sobs. “Why, Red …” she whispered, clenching her eyes shut. “I’ll never know. Furies don’t need a reason for the things they do. They do it because they can.”

She yanked me by the collar and glared into my eyes with her bloodshot grays. “I’m not like them, Red. I won’t be like them. I kill because I have to, not because I can!”

Her grip loosened around my shoulders, but she lingered close. I could feel shallow breaths against my face.

“You don’t know … half the shit I’ve seen,” she whispered, “And if you expect me to do the same things I’ve seen ponies do in this tartarus …” Candy Cane let me go. She turned away from me and clenched her teary eyes shut.

“I’d rather die.”

I bowed my head as we stood there in silence.

“Cane …” I murmured.

Hooves crunched behind me.

“Then die,” someone whispered.

My heart skipped a beat.

A shallow gasp escaped my lips as a hoof curled around my shoulder and spun me around.

I found myself face to face with the black-webbed sclera of a grinning snow fury. The fury’s horn glowed – and I shoved him back into the darkness.

“Son of a …” I rasped, stumbling away, as their broken grins and ragged hoods and wheezing gas masks stepped into the waning firelight. My back hoof crunched into our campfire.

Everything went black.

“GET THEM!”

Someone curled a hoof around mine.

In a heartbeat, I found myself running.

Hooves pounded after us as Candy Cane’s light orb and their flashlights flickered to life. All I saw before us was rubble and debris as a dozen beams of light cut blazing swaths through the dark tunnels that were my eyes. Candy Cane’s head swung back and forth, searching the rubble – frantically – for something my eyes couldn’t see.

Her light orb flickered to black.

“CANE –” I shouted – then someone shoved me to the ground with a crunch – hooves stabbed into my chest – sharp bits of concrete scraped against my hide as hooves stuffed my back into a wall.

I bucked my hooves, but they were only met with cold, cold concrete. I couldn’t see. ‘My PipBuck! If I could just –’

My horn scraped against the rubble and my magic sputtered and popped.

‘FUCK!’

I wriggled helplessly, the muscles in my hinds tensing for another buck - and someone’s legs wrapped around me. Tight. There came a breath upon my cheek as I heard Candy Cane whisper, “Be quiet,” as the snow furies whooped and shrieked, their flashlights flickering outside through the strands of her curly mane.

I stifled the gasps that were wheezing out of my lips, and winced at the numb, throbbing sensation in my chest. Slowly, as the seconds that felt like minutes began to tick by, an inexplicable, dull pain welled up inside of me. The pain soon became agony as I felt something warm soak into my jumpsuit from the inside out.

It was only until I felt Candy Cane’s peacoat brush against my chest that I realized …

‘They stabbed me.’

“Oh … f-fuck …” I murmured, my eyes widening.

“Be quiet!”

Candy Cane pressed her cheek against mine as she wedged herself deeper into the crevice. Panic coursed through my veins as my breaths came out as ragged gasps.

‘They stabbed me – they fucking stabbed me –’

Candy Cane clapped my mouth shut.

But it wasn’t enough.

There was a flash. And she screamed.

“HAHAHAHAHA!”

A snow fury yanked her tail and dragged her away from me – screaming.

Candy Cane’s light orb winked to life and I saw the horror and resignation that flashed across her face. I reached out with a hoof, wisps of red light flickering across my horn.

“NO!” she cried out – not at them – but at me. “DON’T! IT’S NOT WORTH IT!” Candy Cane dug her hooves frantically into the rubble as they fought against her thrashing limbs. “NO!”

I met her eyes for the last time.

“IT’S NOT WORTH IT, RED DAWN!”

Then a hoof crashed into her skull, slamming her face first into the concrete – and her light orb winked out with a splash of scarlet. Then the world cut to black.

All I heard were their laughs, cackling behind the curtain of darkness as they left the broken stage. I listened as their voices echoed through my hollow, concrete coffin. I listened until all I heard were the voices in my head.

Laughing. Mocking me with their deprecating laughs.

‘You did this … hahaha … hahahahaha …’

I closed my eyes and let out a trembling sigh.

I wanted to laugh with them. To laugh my ass off bloody, and tell her I was right – that they would come back for us. To kill us. To flay us alive. And as I dragged my bleeding self out of that hole, with my PipBuck flashing across the rubble, I saw that she wasn’t there.

All that was left was the other half of the map, trampled beneath half a dozen hooves – splattered with Candy Cane’s blood.

I stood there, staring at the pieces of frayed paper. Trembling. Even as blood trickled out of my chest. ‘Not again.’ Those two words played across my thoughts. Repeating like a broken record.

Not again. Not again. Not again.

A magical field lifted up the bloody scraps of paper, floating them weakly before my eyes as they wavered, tracing every line of blood, every speck of scarlet that was soaking into its frayed, crumpled surface.

‘Snow furies … they …’

No. ‘Not again …’

My aura dwindled and whined. Then nothing. The pieces fluttered into my trembling hoof. I gazed numbly at the hoofprints that were stomped into the broken earth. I tucked the pieces away, and lowered myself to the floor, reaching out with a hoof to touch the crater that Candy Cane’s face had made when they stomped her skull in.

I lifted my last health potion to my lips and downed it, tossing it aside with the rest of the shit that lay heaped around me. I checked the rounds in my pistol. Four left.

“Fuck …” I hissed, pounding a hoof into the earth. “FUCK!”

I wanted to blame her. She should’ve let me knock that fury’s head off. I wanted to give her a cruel smile and laugh in her face, and tell her that it was all her fault. But there wasn’t anyone else to blame.

She was gone.

I clenched my eyes shut, flicking my pistol’s safety off.

Snow furies.

It wasn’t too difficult to track them. Neither was it too difficult to find them. All I had to do was follow the blood. The ancient night was still young, and the blizzard had calmed to a ragged, incessant breeze. I poked my head over a slab of melted debris and saw them.

A camp full of furies.

Dozens of them. But it didn’t look like they were there to stay. In the wavering torchlight that lined the perimeter and lit up the center of their camp, I saw wagons parked here and there. Upon them and around them were cages, boxes, piles – some empty, some full of looted valuables or garbage.

Others were full of bones.

Others were full of discarded, frost-bitten meat. Others … others had ponies in them. They stood there, heads bowed – defeated as the snow furies circled them, poked them with machetes, or barked disgusting remarks through the cold, steel bars.

There lay limp a silhouette under several pairs of legs. I knew it was her.

They hadn’t killed her.

Yet.

I knew how they operated.

My eyes flicked to the discarded scraps of meat and bones that lay strewn about, and the torsos and skulls that were mounted upon gnarled spikes.

I drew my pistol, and counted. One, two, three, four –

Then stopped. Of course. There would be more furies than I had bullets. I pounded a hoof against the charred concrete that concealed me from the glow of their torchlight.

Without her … I knew I was lost. She had been … nice enough to leave me the other half of the map. She knew I wouldn’t be able to save her by myself.

She knew that she was finished the moment they dragged her away.

I shook my head, rubbing my eyes furiously with my hooves as I slumped into the wall behind me and slid to ground with a muffled crunch. Even with the other half of the map, I was still lost. I looked up into the vicious, melted spires of rebar and cooled, molten concrete that rose up above me. Then back at the map.

All I saw were numbers, quadrants, and planographic symbols that meant nothing to me. I didn’t even fucking know where I was. But Candy Cane did. This time, I couldn’t save her alone. I was lucky I didn’t die the last time.

I gazed longingly at her still form. I didn’t even ask her about what happened to her at the Hub. I didn’t even ask her if she was okay, or how hard she fell the last time we got separated. I … I didn’t even ask her if she was okay.

That mare … that mare trusted me with her life. She went out of her way … she threw away her freedom and resigned from the prospect of settling down just to help me. To help me. And I didn’t even ask her if she was okay.

I took her for granted. The last mare I took for granted was dead.

I needed her. Goddesses, I needed her. She deserved better. So did many other ponies who’d entered and left my life … and she had only just entered mine. Whether she liked it or not, she had stepped through that door.

And for the short time I knew her … I wasn’t going to let her leave. Not like that.

My only friend.

‘You keep her safe, Red,’ Summer Smiles’ voice echoed through my thoughts. I did. I had kept her safe like I did with my dead, dead friends. I cradled my head with my hooves, rocking back and forth as anger and guilt boiled inside of me.

Those fucking snow furies … not again. ‘Not again.’

There were simply too many of them. But either way, without her, I was screwed. I’d never find my way back to the Outer City. I cupped a hoof over my PipBuck’s screen to dim the glow and stared at its map.

I looked around me, and uttered a defeated sigh.

It looked like it was calibrated to give me the layout of the city before it collapsed and folded upon itself. What roads, bridges, and sidewalks there were before, were no longer there.

I’d never make it back alive without her.

My eyes squinted through the darkness back the way I came, tracing the hoof trodden, bloody trail that snaked through the snow. We’d left those furies we killed earlier behind and all their belongings where they’d fallen. They had guns.

And I could use a resupply.

I heard the creaking whine of the cage’s door being swung open. I peered over the rubble and watched as they dragged out a pony, screaming and begging for his pathetic life. They circled him like predators, hungry for blood and carnage.

I watched a fury break rank, and toss the pony a club as she brandished her own. She taunted him with insults until he found the rage to lash out. The furies cheered when her club cracked against his ribs. They cheered when he struggled to his legs only to have a kneecap shattered from another brutal swing. They cheered again when she brought it down upon his skull.

Pulping it.

I gulped, casting my gaze away from the carnage. Then they went back to the cage and retrieved another, tossing a mare into the ring.

‘Luna’s grace. They're going to murder them all.

‘They're going to murder Candy Cane.

I turned, and hurried down the ridge.

I needed to find a way.

I needed her.

I figured that even if I died trying, I was going to die anyways.

I spared a glance to the twilit sky, watching the black, nebulous storm clouds as they loomed over me. A snowflake fluttered down from above to land upon my nose. I snorted, as several more began to fall upon my face. The wind was kicking up again.

Soon, the tracks leading back there would be gone.

I lifted my PipBuck to my muzzle. Clack. On my map, a blue X winked over my current location. I’d need to find my way back to the Morale Hub.

I paused for a moment, and glanced over my shoulder at the torchlit camp. Maybe those damned furies weren’t worth it.

But Candy Cane was.