Darkness.

Behind us, the door slammed closed.

I had never known darkness such as that. The lights in the stable were only two blast doors behind me – and yet, as I gazed into the mouth of that black abyss, I knew that out there, they were so far away.

I flicked on my flashlight and gasped as the darkness parted.

“Goddesses … are you ponies seeing this?” Amber Fields trembled.

Bones. I saw bones. Too many to count.

Star Glint nudged a stray rib. “How many people you think died here?”

“Too many,” I heard Dew Drops murmur.

I took a step back and my hoof crunched through something brittle.

I looked down and the charred skull of a long dead pony broke like a porcelain jar around my hoof. I struggled against the urge to scream – looking elsewhere, somewhere that wasn’t littered by the bones of some dead pony.

I found no such respite.

All that remained were the shattered, howling jaws of ponies long dead. Their grinning skulls warning me to scurry back to the safety of my stable … the safety that they were never able to enjoy. Their jealous ghosts screamed at me to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the home that they had been denied.

I turned around and peered upwards at the door that loomed over me.

Hooves.

Black, hoof-shaped smears raked across its surface as far as I could reach. They … they scraped at the door with their hooves until their hooves were gored and worn to bloody stumps.

The door hadn’t been opened in two hundred years.

The door hadn’t been opened for them. I stood there, trembling in silence among their charred, frozen bones.

There they had lain… all this time.

This entire time we had never known. For our entire lives we had lived, sleeping and dreaming sweet dreams when just outside our doors was this… horror.

Hundreds of people died in that tunnel with food and safety only two doors away.

They were so close … but not close enough.

“Try not to look,” Dew Drops whispered, pushing me away from the mass grave.

But how couldn’t I? Even long dead, their bones still cried out for mercy - for some closure from the balefire annihilation that erased them from the face of Equestria.

Those people were the forgotten souls that our ancestors decided to leave behind. They were the souls we decided to leave behind. I wondered if my great grandmare knew. I wondered if she rolled around in bed at night knowing that she survived and millions did not.

I wondered if her Overmare knew that she condemned all of these people to burn.

My wandering, teary eyes came upon a charred, shattered skeleton too small to be that of a stallion or a mare.

“They had foals ...” I turned to find that the others were staring at me with shell-shocked eyes. “They had foals,” I murmured, nudging the delicate, trampled skull of a colt. Or was it a filly? I wondered how it died. I wondered if the people who crushed it beneath their feet even heard its screams.

A dying filly wailed in my thoughts.

“We need to get out of here,” I snapped, loud enough to turn heads.

Lightning Twirl started down the tunnel. “Don’t look back. We have to keep moving forward. There isn’t anything here for us to see,” she muttered, ash and dust swirling around her hooves as she trotted through the mass grave.

I flashed my light to the end of the tunnel.

‘Is that the end?’

I couldn’t tell. Only an empty stretch of abyss snaked beyond the reach of my flashlight. The dead paved a path of bone that we followed.

In the distance, the haunting moan of a frozen wind invited us onward. We heard its siren call and listened it as it promised us a water talisman and a return home to our families.

But the farther down the tunnel we walked, the colder it became. I began to shiver beneath my jumpsuit, the icy air slithering through my barding and gnawing at my flesh. My freezing, freezing flesh.

“Where’s the exit?” Box Cutter whispered, wisps of mist jetting out of his breather mask.

“We’re close, I think. Can’t you feel it getting colder?” Lightning Twirl replied, shivering as she led us through the tunnel.

I trailed behind them not wanting to see what waited for us outside, but, at the same time, pressing onward out of fear of being left behind. I feared what was outside far more than the frozen halls that stretched out before us.

Star Glint beamed his flashlight down the tunnel and we watched it pan across a partially collapsed archway.

“Thank the Goddesses,” I heard Dew Drops mutter. We trotted towards it. Our relief was short lived.

We were close enough to see the bones poking out of the rubble when we were blasted by a glacial breeze.

It felt as if we were planets away from home … because the world we emerged unto was nothing like we ever expected.

I ducked under the fallen archway and poked my head out of the tunnel. My eyes neither dilated nor contracted because the darkness didn’t give way to light.

We stepped out into the twilit snow beneath the shadow of an ashen, dead sky.

Before me was a desolate, frozen field of blackened trees that reached their grim claws to the clouds for a sun that would never come. Mountains of snow and crag fields of two hundred year old ice that would never melt smothered the lifeless earth as far as my eye could see. The wind moaned, and I shivered as a flurry of snow blew through my legs.

That was it. That was the world outside.

Our ancestors left all of that behind. For us, they left a lot of nothing behind.

‘This was it … this couldn’t be it …’ I kept telling myself. ‘This can’t be Equestria …’

As I stared across that frigid no-one’s land, I began to doubt whether there was anything left out there. Whether there was anything left for us.

For anybody.

The snowfall thickened as I took several trembling steps further into the twilight, my friends following close behind me. I peered upwards and my eyes glazed over.

The sky.

The world around me fell away from my paralyzed hooves as I stared skyward into desolate infinity. I shrunk beneath the crushing weight of the dark, nebulous clouds that loomed over us.

I tried to tear my gaze away – but vertigo overcame me.

I fell into the sky.

The earth disappeared beneath my hooves, and everything around me tumbled end over end as I dropped into the clouds.

The world turned white – and I careened muzzle first into the snow drifts. I laid there shaking uncontrollably with my mask in the snow as I swallowed the bile that gurgled in my throat. In my daze, I could hear ponies shouting after me through the ringing in my ears.

Hooves wrenched me to my knees and I gasped for air, my radmeter clicking softly. I looked up, and Box Cutter hauled me to my four hooves.

All around me, the others collapsed to the snow.

I saw Dew Drops dry heaving into the drifts.

Star Glint hoofed his mask and vomited into the ice.

Amber Fields shook her head furiously into her hooves.

For some of us, it wasn’t the vertigo that was making us sick. It was the hopelessness. The despair.

“The sky ... I never thought I'd ever see it,” Lightning Twirl murmured, her wings fluttering weakly a few feet above the snow. “This can’t be the same sky my ancestors soared.” She reached out into the dark clouds with a trembling hoof. “It can’t be … it just can’t …”

She was lied to her entire life. We all were.

The murals of the blue skies and the white clouds she admired growing up within the whitewashed halls of our stable were lies. All of them. They were all lies.

I dragged my dark eyes to the sky once more. I saw, in the distance, a black speck peering down at us from the top of a broken hill. A snow swirl blew across my eyes, and when I blinked, it was no longer there.

Then I hoofed my mask and puked into the snow.

I wanted to turn around and never look back.

Or up.

The sky had coagulated into a thick, impenetrable ocean of darkness. I was glad I couldn’t tell whether or not it was still there as I shined my flashlight down upon a path we decided to follow. We wandered through a forest of ancient, gangly trees, six different hoofprints trailing behind us.

For nearly four days we trekked and slogged through the snow with not a single ray of light to touch our faces. The sky had gone from a murky gray to an opaque black, and not once did the sun show itself.

In this nightmarish world there were only varying degrees of night. I stared grimly into the shadows knowing that I might never see the light of day or feel the warmth of a home ever again.

My PipBuck, every now and then, in a land I could barely see, would alert me that I had entered a new zone. How it could have possibly ever known that that particular area was known as the ‘Crystal Highway’ was beyond my understanding. There was no sign of a highway anywhere, let alone crystals. I looked down at the century old permafrost that concealed so much of the landscape.

If there was ever a highway, we wouldn’t be following it.

Our flashlights cut amber swaths through the shadows as our misty breaths reminded us that we were still alive. Exposed to the elements, our bodies began to slow and wear down while the snowfall only intensified. Around us was a forest of disintegrating stumps, uprooted trees, and half fossilized trunks. They drowned beneath the snowfall, clawing at the surface for air with gnarled, broken fingers as they suffocated beneath the shifting, white tides.

The wind moaned a haunting tune that chilled me to the very core. My soul felt like it was going to freeze over.

I shivered, not from the wind that blasted at my barding, but at the unnerving emptiness of that place.

Whatever life that had existed there once had been choked out of existence two hundred years ago. I wasn’t expecting to see anything that moved except for the hooves beneath us.

For five grueling hours, we trekked through the snow without rest. We probably walked more in the last three and a half days than we ever did in our entire lives.

We’d trudged almost endlessly through the gloom for the last few days with only a two or three hour breaks in between. The last time we remained idle for more than five hours was the day before when we found refuge inside a cave. That cave was an entire day behind us, with no form of shelter visible for miles.

Every muscle in my body ached. I wasn’t sure how much further I could go. My friends weren’t faring much better.

Amber Fields stumbled and collapsed as Lightning Twirl pushed us eastward in a direction she thought would lead us to Poneva. Box Cutter helped her to her hooves, the pegasus pony only pausing momentarily for the other two to catch up. I could hear Amber Fields’ sobs behind me as I trudged deeper into the seemingly endless snowfall.

‘We have to keep moving,’ Lightning Twirl had said. ‘We can’t stop,’ she had said.

But every hour, every minute, every second we spent exposed to the unforgiving elements, the snowfall thickened. It was getting harder and harder to see more than twenty yards ahead of us. It didn’t exactly help that my flashlight’s beam was beginning to wane through the snowflakes, warping and reflecting against the flurry of white specks that washed against my eyeholes.

Were it not for my PipBuck, I wouldn’t have known it’d been almost ninety hours since we left our stable. There wasn’t any sign of light – no hint of whether or not the sun or the moon was still hanging over us. I wondered if the balefire bombs simply knocked the planet out of its orbit around the sun. Impossible, but it was the best explanation I could think of for the seemingly endless night.

It was … unnatural.

I stumbled through the ashen drifts, my legs giving in to the stiffening fatigue that threatened to keel me over. I panted to fill my lungs with air, jets of mist hissing out of my mask’s filters as I forced my legs to keep moving. All I wanted was to just sit there and wait until my muscles stopped spasming. But out there, warm legs that weren’t moving weren’t going to stay warm for long.

A grayish magical field swirled around me and Dew Drops helped me to my hooves. I leaned against her, catching my breath. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking behind her mask and balaclava, but I hoped she didn’t think any less of me. I wasn’t sure how much trotting I had left.

“You’re fine, Red. Just catch your breath … we can make it,” she whispered.

I squeezed my eyes shut, exhaling. “Why do you sound so sure?” I wheezed, taking a few weary steps through the snow.

She trudged onward as I wrapped a leg around her and followed.

“It’s all we’ve got to hope for,” the mare said softly, “Because if we don’t …” She stopped abruptly in her tracks and I nearly slumped into the snow. Dew Drops shook her head, not wanting to finish. I met her tired gray eyes briefly before the mare turned and walked on, her scarf billowing behind us in the wind.

We had to keep moving. So we did. Three more hours passed, and still the land was as desolate as ever.

By the time we came across a reminder that life once existed there, it had become so dark that we would not have been able to see anything past our muzzles without our flashlights.

A bent, half buried sign that reflected dully in our beams spoke to us more than anything out there had ever said since we emerged.

“City of Poneva, eighty miles,” Lightning Twirl read out loud, scraping away a layer of rime with a forehoof. She tapped her PipBuck and swung her flashlight due north. “I think we’re on the right track, if my PipBuck isn’t just spouting off bullshit my way.”

“Eighty fucking miles,” I muttered.

Star Glint sighed wearily and leaned against the sign only to have it crumble into the snow with him. He shook himself of the powder that clung to his barding and sighed as the snowfall scattered more across its blue fabric. “Let’s just find the damn thing and go,” the stallion grumbled.

I sighed. “How do we even know there’s a Water Talisman out there?” We had seen nothing but ice and snow for the last eighty-six hours. At that rate, I wasn’t sure we’d find anything left, let alone Poneva city. I was hoping to see a few ruined buildings here and there, maybe a fence. But there’d been no sign of civilization until then.

“We’ve been out here for hours, and the only thing that’s changed is this fucking sign here,” I growled, nudging its bruised, melted frame.

“Just keep walking,” Lightning Twirl droned flatly, as she followed the path wherever her flashlight pointed. “We can’t waste any more time –”

“We’re probably not even heading in the right direction,” I groaned. “How the hell do our PipBucks know that this really is the Crystal Highway?” I swept my hoof across the gnarled trees. “I’m not seeing any crystals anywhere.”

“As long as we stay on the highway, we’ll follow it,” she said, evenly. But not even Lightning Twirl could hide the palpable trembling in her voice. “This highway has to lead somewhere … if we follow it, we’ll get somewhere.”

“Somewhere,” I muttered, but my voice went unheard, lost beneath the moan of the wind. The snowfall thickened around us.

Lightning Twirl stood there quietly for a moment, as the cascading snowflakes washed over her. “We need to find shelter. Soon.”

I shook my head wearily as the others started forward. I stopped for a moment to lean against a burned, disintegrating tree trunk, narrowing my eyes through the snowflakes that rushed past me.

I beamed my light lazily across the trees, not looking for anything in particular. Nothing but snowflakes and dead trees. I flashed its yellow beam skywards and saw only a canopy of gnarled, ghastly branches. A jet of mist seethed out of my mask as I swept my light back to my friends to illuminate the path before us. Their shadows played against the trees like ghosts as they staggered wearily through the snow. I shivered and trotted after them, swinging my beam from left to right as their voices and flashlights became more distant,

For a moment, as it passed between the trees, a pair of teal eyes flashed back at me. I frowned, stopping for a moment and panning it back.

It wasn’t there anymore.

My eyes darted to my Eyes Forward Sparkle – my PipBuck’s proximity based IFF indicator. No red blips. Nothing. I hurried away, not looking back.

“You guys see that?” I huffed, crunching through the snow.

They all turned to look.

“It wasn’t a sign that said, ‘Stable-Tec, this way’ was it?” Box Cutter smiled hopefully.

I shook my head. “I think I saw something,” I murmured, chewing my lower lip. “Or someone.”

Star Glint panned his flashlight across the snowswept trees. “There's nothing here but us,” he said, shining it along the path once more.

I eyed Dew Drops worriedly. She pursed her lips and held my apprehensive gaze as the wind moaned and heavy snow collected upon our shoulders.

"Alright guys …” Lightning Twirl turned wearily, a long sigh hissing out of her mask. “The snow’s getting worse out here. We need to keep moving and stop looking back -"

Someone screamed. I whirled around and saw Amber Fields fall through the crumbling earth. There was a keening shriek – then an audible thump.

“What the fuck!?” I rushed to the place where she had been standing earlier – and nearly hurled myself over the edge of a pit. I scrambled away, snow and rocks tumbling into the darkness as the earth crumbled beneath my hooves. I found my footing and peered into sinkhole. Amber Fields writhed painfully at the bottom as snowflakes showered over her.

"Goddesses!” she cried out, the wind drowning out her voice. "I - I think I twisted my hoof!"

I clenched my jaw, swinging my head left to right. I watched as the storm swallowed up the trees around us.

It was coming.

I rushed over to the pit, shined my light inside and saw the immense skeletons lying beneath Amber Fields's heaving chest. Bears. Or they used to be. I shivered when I saw that the skulls had extra pairs of jaws.

Amber Fields’ eyes widened. "What the hell are these things?" she screamed, thrashing through their contorted bones.

My horn glowed with a scarlet sheen. "We're getting you out, Amber!” But she didn’t hear a word I said as the wind shrieked into our ears.

Dew Drops bowed her head, and a red and gray glow surrounded her as we lifted her out and set her down in the snow.

"How bad is it?" Lightning Twirl shouted over the howling wind.

"She twisted her ankle!" I shouted back, holding the mare upright with my magic as she limped painfully across the snow. Snow that piled taller and taller with every second we stood idle.

Lightning Twirl shook her head furiously.

“Fuck!”

"Twirl – we can't stay out here - the snow - it's getting too thick!" Dew Drops screamed as the wind blasted across our barding.

“You don’t think I know that?”

The glow of our flashlights dwindled and waned through the snowflakes that showered over us. I couldn’t see more than six feet in front of me as the world around us faded to black and white.

Lightning Twirl was but a silhouette in the snowfall. "Stay together, we're going to make it through this!" I heard her call out to us.

The wasteland shrieked – and a gust of frozen wind crashed into us.

I watched as Lightning Twirl’s outline sunk into the darkness.

“Twirl!” I screamed – but only the blizzard screamed back. “Shit …” I glanced around. To my left, Dew Drops’ dark shape huddled close. To my right, Amber Fields lay curled up beside me.

“Twirl!”

She didn’t answer. And neither Star Glint nor Box Cutter were in sight.

“SHIT!” The snow was going to devour us whole.

“Red?” I barely heard Dew Drops say.

My ears perked.

“Red, we need to get moving!”

Amber Fields moaned. “Where? Where do we go?”

“I … I … Twirl – where’s Twirl?” Dew Drops’ head swung from left to right as she squinted into the howling darkness. “Where are the others? Where the hell are they?!”

I felt their eyes fall upon me.

“Red …” Dew Drops murmured.

I said nothing as I heard muffled screams emanating from the darkness. My ears perked. The screaming stopped.

“Red!”

“I-I don’t know … I don’t know!” I clenched my jaw as the two shivering mares stared at me in hopeless silence. They didn’t know either. “SHIT!”

All I knew was that the storm was going to bury us alive. I hooked a leg under Amber Fields’ shoulder and pulled her to her hooves. “Come on – come on!”

I held Amber Fields tight as Dew Drops wrapped a leg around me. I shivered, staring through my frost-raked eyeholes into the storm’s howling maw.

The wasteland’s icy jaws were closing around us.

I gulped – and we waded into the blizzard.

Minutes dragged by like hours as the wind threatened to drag us away. We didn’t even know where we were going. ‘Anywhere but here,’ I thought. ‘Anywhere but here …’

But we weren’t going anywhere.

The wind drove us back mercilessly with every step we took. It shrieked into our ears and slowed our trots to stumbles. I couldn’t even hear myself think. I couldn’t even see past my nose as the blizzard drowned out the world around me. It heaved crushing snow onto our backs – weighing us down – wrenching us to the earth. I lifted my hoof – and dragged it through the snow as I struggled to sink it in front of me.

Amber Fields screamed, and collapsed into the ashen drifts.

“My leg – Goddesses my leg!” Dew Drops and I huddled around her, the wind screaming past us as I glared into the snowfall.

All I could see was white.

"I-I can't see – I can't see!" Amber Fields cried, clawing at her mask. “RED!”

“I’m here!” I told her, shaking the mare. “We’re here!” She wrapped her hooves around me and Dew Drops, and screamed into the storm.

“I’m sorry … this is my fault … my leg – I-I’m so sorry!”

“NO!”” I screamed, shaking her with my hooves. “We’re not dying out here … WE’RE NOT FUCKING DYING HERE!”

“Goddesses … w-where are the others!?” Dew Drops cried once more.

My eyes darted from left to right. I couldn’t even see either of the mares whose legs were wrapped around me.

I lifted my head and called out into the blizzard. "Twirl! Star! Box!" No response. "Where the fuck are they, Goddesses DAMNIT!?”

Only the wind shrieked in reply. It blasted us into the snow. We cowered there beneath the storm, screaming our throats raw as we held onto each other for our lives. There was nowhere to go when you couldn’t see a foot in front of you.

But we had to keep moving. We had to keep moving somewhere or the wasteland was going to swallow us whole.

With a suffocated cry, I forced myself to my four hooves, yanking Dew Drops and Amber Fields back up with me. Amber Fields sobbed, her limp rocking us back and forth as we stumbled blindly through the unforgiving storm. It bore down upon us, wearing us down, weathering away our strength to go on. My muscles began to ache. My legs threatened to buckle beneath me. But Amber Fields beat me to it as her legs gave way – and she dragged us back into the snow.

"I can't, Red!" Amber Fields cried, laying there as the storm drowned out her voice. “I can’t!”

I clenched my eyes shut and roared against the blasted wind, hauling her back to her hooves.

"Hold on, Amber,” I screamed. “HOLD ON!”

I squeezed her tight – and dragged the two mares with me. I fought through the unforgiving wind as it crashed against my face, and snow heaped around my legs. I wailed for my aching muscles to keep going – to break through the blizzard – but they screamed back, pleading with me to collapse even as my mind whipped my trembling legs onward.

But every hoof I planted in front of me was heavier than the last.

Weaker and weaker. Shallower and shallower. I gasped for ragged breaths that wouldn’t fill my lungs.

“DON’T LET ME GO, RED!” Amber Fields begged, “PLEASE – DON’T LET ME GO!”

"HOLD ON – HOLD ON!" I screamed, my muscles burning - my strength dwindling…

I felt her begin to slip away.

“RED!”

I swung my head around to face her, and found her watery, bloodshot eyes.

“AMBER, DON’T –”

She lost her footing and stumbled forward –

And the wind dragged her away into the night.

Amber Fields screamed – and she was gone. She was gone.

"AMBER!" I stopped for mere seconds, looking back the way we came only for the wind to catch me in the chest like sails on a boat. The wind hurled me into the snow.

“AMBER!”

My flashlight flew from my magical grip and everything went black.

All I could see was Dew Drops’ light flashing wildly across the swirling flakes like static noise on a terminal screen. I wanted to turn back. I wanted to go back for her.

But a dark corner of my mind told me that she was gone.

Gone.

I needed to be strong. I needed to survive.

I needed … to rest …

The snow heaped on top of me. In front of me. Around me. My tears fogged up the inside of my goggles and I lost the ability to see. I lost the will to see. The wasteland’s icy grip tightened around my legs as the snow piled higher, and higher – swallowing up my hooves and trapping them beneath the shifting, black tides.

At least when you died in a stable, you had a body to cremate. But out there, I feared that we were going to be lost beneath the ashen drifts, never to be seen again. Never to see the light again.

Seconds passed by, then minutes, then what felt like hours …

My body gave up.

Only my mind, with its dwindling will to survive, forced its nervous signals to twitch my frozen limbs through the unrelenting snowfall. My heart pounded faster than I could breathe. My muscles strained and struggled to move – to fight –

My muscles went stiff, and agony shot through my legs.

I stumbled – and fell. I felt Dew Drops yank my foreleg – trying to pull me back to my hooves. But I couldn’t …

Through the dark, veiny tunnels of my eyes, I saw stars.

- thump - thump - thump - thump – thump – thump ... thump …. thump …..

Darkness began to take me. I was done fighting. I was done … Amber Fields … I let her go … I …

I let go.

My legs slackened and Dew Drops threatened to slip away from me too. But instead, I slipped away from her.

I closed my eyes – and the wind dragged me into the howling darkness.

… thump ……. thump …………… thump ………………

“…….. DAWN!”

My head slammed onto solid floor.

… thump – thump – thump -

Hooves tore my breather mask from my face and I took an agonizing gasp. Dew Drops’ blurry, bloodshot eyes stared down into mine and she wrenched me to my hooves. I felt the metallic lip of a canteen push through my lips and the familiar taste of cider rushed down my throat.

I coughed, sputtered, and collapsed back into the snow-swept concrete.

Dew Drops’ mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I tipped my glassy eyes to what had to be a ceiling over my head. But snow cascaded through holes in the roof and the walls around us. I watched faintly as three other silhouettes stumbled inside.

The cider metabolized and the black tunnels around me faded away.

“- Fields?” I heard her asking me. “Where’s Amber Fields!?”

I closed my eyes for a moment and I remembered the way her screams died away into the storm. I opened them, and saw the others staring down at me, masks off as their teary eyes bore down upon me with the weight of worlds.

“She’s gone.”

I looked away, not wanting to meet their eyes.

“She’s gone …”

I could have turned around. I could have caught her. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

She was already dead. “Goddesses …” I sobbed, “I told you, Dew Drops … I fucking told you … told you I’d get everyone killed.”

The light faded from Dew Drops’ eyes, and she shambled away with the rest.

A trembling sigh seethed out of my lips as I slumped against the blackened concrete walls of the dreary, ancient cottage.

I closed my eyes and let the darkness and my sobs choke me to a sleep I wished I would never wake from.

I woke to the wind as it shrieked and battered the walls around me.

“We can’t stay here for too long – we have to keep moving!” I heard Lightning Twirl shout, faintly. I rolled around, too tired to stand, too tired to think, too tired to … weep. I turned my ears away from sound of Box Cutter’s sobs, Dew Drop’s shouting, and Star Glint’s hooves pacing across the ruined concrete.

“Twirl – Amber is DEAD!” Dew Drops cried. “We’re tired, Red nearly died, and we’re going to die too if you keep pushing us!” she screamed, her voice hoarse.

Lightning Twirl groaned, the sound of hooves pounding across rough concrete crashing against my limp ears.

“I’m sorry, DD … but the longer we stay out here, the more likely this fucking wasteland’s going to kill us - just like it killed Amber!” Lightning Twirl shot back. “We’re running on borrowed time. We don’t have enough rations to last us more than two weeks! So what the fuck do you expect us to do, wait here and let the snow bury us!?”

Dew Drops sobs echoed through my ears. I curled up tighter, tucking my legs into my chest as my friends fought and argued. The wasteland was tearing us apart. It was tearing me apart.

There was a long silence, only Box Cutter’s muffled cries audible beneath the howling wind.

“Twirl …” I heard Star Glint say, “DD’s right … if we keep going like this, we’ll burn ourselves out. We’ll be weak and we’ll be worse off in the snow. We can’t survive unless we rest.”

“Star … not you too,” Lightning Twirl sobbed.

“Twirl, we need to rest,” Dew Drops begged, “This is killing us…”.

I heard Lightning Twirl’s hooves shuffle across the floor. There was a long silence as the wind moaned outside.

“Okay … okay we’ll stay here, for now … until we’ve rested up and the blizzard’s blown through. Then we’ll get a move on again.”

‘Thank the Goddesses.’

My bloodshot eyes fluttered open, and not to my surprise, they didn’t need to adjust. Everyone was still asleep as I wandered through the burned out ruin. The blizzard had subsided to a thin layer of snowfall that might have made for a peaceful winter night if I wasn’t standing inside the ruins of someone’s home.

The inside of the cottage was worn bare by the elements over two hundred years of unrelenting, wintry punishment. Black outlines painted the walls and floor where furniture was burned away by the balefire holocaust.

Parts of the brick house were already beginning to collapse, and some sections, like what I assumed to be its dining room, barred me entry with a fallen ceiling. Whatever belongings there that weren’t locked up looked to either have been incinerated or carried away by the wasteland’s frozen winds.

With my carbine slung over my shoulder, I trotted to a shattered, blackened window pane and stared out into the snow.

Dew Drops told me that anything was possible as long as we had our friends to help us. I imagined Amber Fields wandering through the snow alone, helpless and lost, just waiting to die - abandoned and left for dead by the ponies she thought were her friends. I turned my weary eyes low in shame and knew that her husband … her colt would never see his mother ever again.

And that I was the one to blame.

My shoulders began to quake with the force of my sobs. My body gave up, and Amber Fields died because I wasn’t strong enough.

Because I wasn’t strong enough … she was gone.

I imagined the mare stumbling through the drifts on her bad leg, her limp turning into crawls, and her crawls turning into stillness. She curled up in a vast, bleak field of snow – cold, alone, and dying – only to close her eyes and let the glacial touch of death finally take her.

I clenched my jaw and shook my head, unable to shed anymore tears. I stared outside the window, watching the snow fall.

The snow had risen several inches and nearly touched the bottom of the window, threatening to pour in through its shattered frame. I leaned against it and looked out into the gloom. I couldn’t say it was day, but it wasn’t night either. It was bright enough to see the paleness of the snow without a flashlight. It wasn’t as dark as it was … I looked at my PipBuck: four hours ago.

I scanned the lonely, twilit trees that surrounded the lonely cottage. A part of me hoped I’d see Amber Fields limping our way.

I frowned when I saw something else.

A black silhouette peeked out from behind a withering trunk, watching me from the distance. Squinting at it, I could see its teal, pupiless eyes narrowing back at me. We stared at each other for a good five seconds. I was about ready to call out after it when I felt someone nudge my shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Box Cutter asked, wearily.

I glanced over and back out the window, “I –”

It was no longer there.

“I … don’t know … I … I think I saw something.”

Box Cutter was silent for a moment.

“Amber?”

I shook my head slowly, lowering my head.

“I saw the storm take her away,” I whispered, cradling my head in my hooves. My friend leaned against me and stared out the window.

“This can’t be Equestria, Box. Nothing… nothing can survive out here. I can’t even hope that Amber’s still alive. I can’t hope that we’ll find the Water Talisman. Even if there are still any of them left, this fucking wasteland will freeze over before we can even get near them.”

I shivered and rubbed one of my forelegs with another.

Box Cutter sighed, hanging his head. “I’ll tell you one thing: this isn’t the Equestria I read about in the books – that’s for sure,” he muttered with a wheezing chuckle. “Amber … Amber was out of the game when she fell down that hole.” Box Cutter looked at me with his bloodshot eyes. It looked like he had been crying all night. I met his gaze, and he added, “No way anyone could’ve walked through a blizzard on a leg like that, Red. It wasn’t your fault …”

“I just hope she went out quick…” I trailed off. Maybe the snow buried her and she froze to death. Maybe the wind swept her off a cliff or …

I shook my head.

“I should’ve held on ... I just wasn’t strong enough, Box. I’m tired. Everything’s so sore. I’m not sure I can make the rest of the trek, and … and I think I’m seeing things now,” I breathed, letting my eyes wander off into the twilight.

He punched my shoulder with a hoof. “We have ponies waiting for us – waiting for you to come back home. If you give up, if I give up – If any of us gives up … the game’s over,” Box Cutter said, cutting his hoof through the air. “If one of us goes … the others have to keep going. Like what Twirl said, ‘just keep moving’.

“Don’t stop - don’t stop for just one moment, because if you go too …” he trailed off. Box Cutter shook his head. “There’s still five of us left, Red. As long as there’s still one of us standing, as long as there’s one pony still moving ... there’s still hope.”

“Hope …” I muttered, closing my eyes.

We leaned against each other for what felt like hours. I finally chuckled and said, “When you fell in the water and got stuck with that metal beam back home, you were grinning ear to ear like it was just a bruise.” I bumped him with a hoof. “How do you do it?”

Box Cutter snorted a jet of cloudy vapor. The stallion shivered on his hooves and he looked out the window with glassy, bloodshot eyes. “It takes more than a sauna treatment and a paper cut to kill me, Red.”

“You son of a bitch …” I muttered with a smirk. “You must’ve been born without nerve endings weren’t you,” I said, not asking. “Concussion and all, you still came to the meeting and volunteered. Didn’t even know what you were volunteering for.”

“I heard my friends. Couldn’t let ‘em join without me,” he grinned, weakly. Box Cutter sighed, hoofing his forehead. “I’m still feeling it, honestly. I get headaches every now and then, and that trek was really pushing it.”

I sighed, levitating out a canteen of stable cider. I took a swig, and passed it to him. “I never knew it'd be this bad,” he said, biting the canteen with his teeth and tipping his head back. “To think our ancestors were all about friendship and harmony and all that gooey stuff ...”

He shook his head, staring out in the ashen drifts. “They did all of this. They destroyed themselves."

I sniffled. "It’s hard to believe people actually lived out here once. I can't see anyone ever living here in a million years. I wouldn’t … fuck it. White walls are better than whiteouts, honestly.” I took another swig before passing the canteen to Box Cutter. The cider burned going down my throat, but the pain assured me that I was still alive.

"Amen to that, brony," he tipped his head and gulped. Box Cutter pulled the canteen from his lips and frowned, holding it upside down. "Least my headache's gone."

I snorted. "You should try to get some more rest. Your head might swell up and explode or something."

Box Cutter nodded, stumbling away from the window. I listened as his hoofsteps fade away into the breeze. I stood there for a few solemn moments in silence. The wind quieted down, and I heard someone sobbing nearby.

‘Dew Drops.’ Her sobs spirited me to her. I following her muffled voice to a small room that somehow held against the passage of time.

I peered into the empty doorway. In the dim glow of her PipBuck, I saw Dew Drops’ trembling silhouette lying beside the skull of some long dead pony. The shattered, half-buried skeleton lay crushed beneath a collapsed section of the cottage’s brick wall.

Dew Drops was lying across the charred, wooden floor, her quivering nose touching the skull’s pale, weathered muzzle. Her bags were scattered all around her and an empty canteen of what I assumed was cider was a hoof's length away from her anguished lips.

“DD?” I whispered.

She didn’t say a word as her shoulders convulsed with quiet sobs. The mare’s eyes were closed but beneath her eyelids, her eyes swiveled rapidly like she was in the middle of a dream.

Or a nightmare.

I laid down next to her, running a hoof through her disheveled teal mane. I couldn’t blame her. We went through a lot that day. I curled up next to her, gently nuzzling her cheek with mine. But she wouldn’t stop sobbing. I closed my eyes, resting my head against hers, her shoulders rocking against me.

I wanted to help her, somehow. Somehow, I wanted to comfort her, even though all I could give her were hugs and words.

But hugs and words couldn’t bring Amber Fields back. I forced my tears away, and watched her, helplessly.

“DD?” I began, rubbing her foreleg. The mare wouldn’t move.

On the other side of her body, closest to the wall, there was a strange blue orb a breath’s length away from her muzzle. Rivulets of tears streamed by and under it.

“The fuck is this?” I murmured, eyeing its surprisingly lustrous surface. Whatever that thing was, it miraculously survived whatever that cottage didn’t.

I reached out with my magic to pull it away from her. A red magical field swirled around it … and I felt a numbing sensation surge through my body.

My limbs slackened and the last thing I remembered before I blacked out was the skull’s sunken visage staring at me with its hollow, dead eyes.