I woke up screaming.

Forelegs pinned me to the cold metal frame of a rusty hospital gurney. I thrashed against their limbs, swatting them away and kicking my legs at the shadows that loomed over me.

“Get away you, psychos! GET THE FUCK AWAY!” I howled, batting away their invading limbs.

“FUCK YOU!” I lashed out with my hindlegs. My hooves connected with someone’s face. He stumbled away from me and disappeared from the tunnels of my hazy eyes. “Leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

“Hold him still!” a mare shouted.

Hooves grabbed my forelegs. They wrenched them away from me and slammed them against the gurney. Hard.

“No … NO!”

They were going to rip me limb from limb. They were going to tear my legs from my shoulders.

I writhed like a cornered, netted animal, screaming my throat bloody and raw.

One of my hooves tore free.

“NOOO!” I wrenched a pony on top of me. We rolled off the edge of the gurney. A mare with pink eyes screamed as I sent her crashing into the cold, concrete floor.

I didn’t care. I dragged my forehooves to her throat and squeezed. She kicked under me, suffocating.

“I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

Something metal cracked against my skull. I keeled over, blacking out for a second.

“Hold him - hold him down!”

I waited for the touch of a cold blade to slice through my bare flesh. I waited for the ripping, the tearing – but they never came.

They yanked my mouth open instead.

With my limbs pinned to the ground, I could do nothing as I felt the familiar taste of health potion dribble down my lips and wash down my throat. My head was spinning too much to care who was administering it.

I held out my limbs in feeble resistance. And for good measure, they cracked me across the skull again.

My consciousness left the building before I could scream.

My mummified body lay shivering on an itchy cot with a mildew-stained blanket pulled up to my neck. My limbs were splayed out underneath the blanket, and one of my legs hung limply from the edge of the bed.

I was alive. But I sure as hell didn’t feel like it. The flesh under my coat was bruised black and blue. My head throbbed as if I was beaten with a metal bar.

‘Wait,’ I thought, distantly.

If I remembered correctly … I was.

I groaned, tucking in my battered legs to my chest. My weary, bloodshot eyes swiveled sluggishly around the room. A gas lamp glowed dimly on a shabby bedside table to my right, its faint light hardly illuminating the room from end to end. Around me was a patchwork of corrugated scrap metal bolted together to hold the makeshift ceiling aloft. Outside, I could hear the moaning wind as it dragged its frozen hooves across the walls, trying to penetrate the walls of that metal hovel.

My right foreleg curled weakly to my chest. I gazed at my PipBuck, struggling to find the button to toggle its brightness. My weary pupils contracted. Four days. It had been four days since I lost almost everyone I loved.

“Welcome back,” a voice said from the darkness at the furthest corner of the room.

“Dew Drops?” I murmured, hopefully.

My ears drooped when a pony with a midnight blue coat and black bangs stepped into the light. Shadows played across her hard complexion. The mare looked like she’d seen better days.

“Night Sky.” She trotted up to my cot with a striped blue scarf slung over her shoulder. Dew Drop’s scarf. The mare held a small photograph in one of her hooves. She stared at the photo for a long while, eyeing me as I lay there. Night Sky closed her eyes and sighed, placing both at the edge of the bed between my legs. “You’ve a name?”

I closed my weary eyes.

“Red … Dawn.”

She nodded thoughtfully, glancing at my PipBuck. “You’re one of them stable ponies, innit,” Night Sky said, not asking.

I levitated the blue scarf to my chest, and ran a hoof across its blood-speckled fabric as gently as I would with Dew Drops’ mane. I let out a trembling sigh, cradling my head in my hooves.

I swirled a faint magical field around the photo and floated it to my eyes in silence. Dew Drops. Box Cutter. Amber Fields. Lightning Twirl. Star Glint. I gazed out the frost-encrusted window, and into the frozen wasteland outside.

“We found you in the drifts, half dead,” I heard Night Sky say, “You looked like you’ve been through hell.”

I stared at the picture of my friends as pain flickered across my glassy eyes.

“If this is hell …” I whispered, my voice trembling.

“This isn’t hell. It’s worse,” the mare said with a cold smile. “Welcome to the wasteland, Red Dawn.”

I stared at her with wide, teary eyes. Welcome back to life. I gulped a heavy lump down my throat. My lower lip trembled in denial. It was a nightmare, and I was going to wake up from it … I set the photo down on the blanket and my shoulders began to quake with sobs.

‘Wake up … please.’

I closed my eyes, listening to the chilling winds howl away outside the patchwork walls. I opened them and I was still laying on the same scratchy cot, in the same bleak hovel. I stared longingly at Dew Drops’ striped scarf, hot tears streaming down my cheeks.

I swung my legs out of the blankets and stood to my rickety hooves.

“And where the hell do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

“They’re still out there,” I croaked, pointing out the window. I made for what looked to be the door, but Night Sky stepped into my path. “My friends –”

“Are dead.”

“No!” I stumbled to get past her but she shoved me back with a foreleg. I snarled at her, “You didn’t see them! You don’t know!”

The look she gave me insisted that she’d beg to differ. My heart sunk.

“You go out there and I’m not gonna drag your sorry arse back.”

I glared at her, and took a step forward - only to cry out as agony jolted through my chest. I fell to the wooden floor in a heap. Blood seeped out of my gray bandages and pooled all over the floor around me.

I felt Night Sky clamp her jaws on my mane, but I twisted away, curling up on the floor.

“Now you opened up that bloody cut of yours again,” she muttered, rolling me over and tugging at the bandages.

I shook her off and tucked my legs into my chest. She stood over me, staring me down with her steely blue eyes. I sobbed and blinked away fresh tears.

“Why am I alive …” I whimpered, burying my head in my hooves.

“You’re lucky,” Night Sky whispered, sitting down next to me, “Not everypony gets to die in the wasteland. My crew patched you up. Though I nearly beat your brains out …” She turned her head low, glaring at me.

“You bucked one of my mates in the gobber, and tried to choke another to death. Look at you now, walking all over the place wrapped up like that. You aren’t so soft for a stable pony, aren’t you?” The mare chuckled, “Cor … no wonder you didn’t just snuff it.”

“What the fuck … did you just say?” I breathed, rising to trembling hooves.

“What?”

“No wonder I survived … I watched my friends die … and I ran.” I chuckled darkly, baring my teeth as tears ran down my cheeks. “Maybe I didn’t want to come back. Did you think for once that maybe I didn’t want to survive?”

She held my glare and stared back, unflinching.

“You’ve not a choice to just … die, Red Dawn.”

“Bullshit!” I screamed, “I walked out into that blizzard knowing I wouldn’t be coming back. You think I want to be here?” I cried, choking on my own tears, “Do you fucking think I want to be alive in this SHITHOLE?!”

Night Sky’s gaze did not relent.

She clenched her jaw and gave me a ghastly look. “This place might be a shitehole … but it’s all we’ve got left,” she said, softly. I looked down her chest and saw flecks of blood all over her tattered, bullet-scarred barding.

It changed nothing.

“I’m leaving ... and you’re not going to stop me,” I said, close enough to her muzzle to feel her shallow breaths.

I wiped away my tears and pushed past the mare, zipping up my barding and throwing on my saddle bags. I could feel her eyes on the back of my head as I limped out the door and staggered down a flight of stairs. Two ponies sat at a bar below. I hobbled past them to the door, and they looked up from their shot glasses, eyeing me irritably.

“The hell you doin’?” one of them growled, getting off his stool.

Night Sky poked her head over the railing. “Let’em go,” she said, simply.

The stallion snorted and returned to the bar, not even pausing once to glance over his shoulder. The mare sitting next to him followed me with her pink eyes as I made my way to the door.

I stepped outside.

And the storm blindsided me. Engulfed in frozen powder, I stumbled blindly through the snow, the drifts threatening to swallow me whole. I could just barely make out the lonely lights and the ramshackle buildings across the street as I plodded across the shifting, snowy dunes.

I just kept walking, not caring where I went – my eyes only opening once to find that the town’s lonely lights were far behind me. I whimpered, collapsing to my haunches. I reached into my breast pocket, and brought to my blood-drained face the only thing I had left to remember my friends by. My dead, butchered friends.

It hurt to cry. It hurt to stare at the photo I held in my hoof. It hurt knowing that they were gone. That they were all gone.

I blinked, and the world spun around me. I let out a shuddering breath, and slumped into the snow.

Days ago I was afraid. Afraid to let go of my precious life. My life at the stable. I could have died. Back home, I could have died a scalding, boiling death. I was afraid that I was going to leave them all behind. But instead, they left me behind in that frozen hell.

I failed them. One by one, I watched them all die. I watched them all die.

And I should’ve died with them.

I didn’t want it. Night Sky and her ponies gave me a second chance I never wanted.

“Anywhere but here …” I wept, “Goddesses … anywhere but here.” I shivered and quaked as the howling frozen wind blasted against my barding.

But I didn’t care.

‘I should’ve died,’ I thought.

We were supposed to find a water talisman together. Together.

‘We should’ve died.’

I tore my spade out of my bags and started digging. I stabbed at the frozen earth again and again, tears welling out of my eyes only to freeze ragged trails across my cheeks with every chilling, agonizing second that slaved by.

My legs went numb.

But I kept digging.

My magic flickered and popped.

But I kept digging.

My brain curdled inside my skull.

But I kept digging.

My body pleaded with me to stop. Every fiber of my being pleaded with me to stop.

But I. Just. Kept. Digging.

Not caring even as my heart began to slow. Not even as the shivering stopped. Not even as the dark tunnels closed in around me. I dug, and dug, and dug –

I collapsed into the snow, writhing with every laborious breath.

‘Give up. Just give up.’

I wrenched myself to my hooves with a grim resolve and speared my spade through the frozen earth once more. I wasn’t going stop digging until I hollowed out a grave for each and every one of my friends.

I couldn’t stop.

They deserved better.

I thought of them as I dug, their memories – the burden of being alive while they were not crushing me beneath.

With one grave finished, I buried Dew Drops.

One by one, I’d bury them all.

I dredged out another grave and moved on, tearing into the earth without a single pause. For them, I plunged my shovel deep and struggled to break the dark soil.

My magic flickered. Popped. And winked out.

A light bulb exploded inside my head as my brain tore itself apart. A blinding agony shot through every nerve ending in my body. I reared up on my hinds, howling as an inferno burned inside me, my spade tumbling to the snow.

But I slaved through the torment – bit down on the shovel's handle and kept digging.

I broke the earth. But instead, the earth broke me. I stumbled to my haunches, my spade crunching once more into the snow. I wailed Dew Drops’ name into the darkness. I screamed for the storm to take me to her.

If not to her, then … anywhere.

“Goddesses – anywhere but here!” I cried – and crumbled to the snow in a tangle of writhing, blistering limbs.

I took a shuddering breath and stared grievously into the sky. My pallid flesh was covered in sores that throbbed dully in my fading consciousness. I lay there, listening to my slowing heartbeat as the wind moaned a chilling requiem fit for a funeral.

A black figure clad in thick barding entered the blurry, veiny tunnel that were my eyes. The pony helped me to my hooves, and I leaned against its shoulder.

“What’ve you done …” I heard Night Sky murmur as she stared with wide eyes at the six graves I hollowed out of the earth.

I managed a few painful steps toward the final grave I dug.

The one I dug for myself.

“I need to finish this …” I wheezed, clamping my jaws around my spade’s handle and shambling toward the half-dredged hole.

Night Sky ripped the spade out of my mouth and swung it hard into my skull. Stars exploded in my eyes. My limbs slackened. I toppled to the snow in a heap, blood trickling down my forehead.

“That’s it,” she said, tucking the spade into her bags. “I don’t know you or your mates, but I’ll tell you this much: dying’s not gonna help anypony. Everypony that’s alive has lost somepony.”

I hacked out scarlet ichor, glaring at her.

“What do you know about losing shit …” I asked, darkly, my voice trembling.

Night Sky’s eyes narrowed with icy malice. She unzipped the lower half of her barding and it fell away before me.

My heart almost stopped.

“Too much, I’m afraid,” she replied softly, shivering through clenched teeth and wiggling the stubs that used to be her wings. I eyed the scarred flesh over what was supposed to be her cutie mark, a symbol of a lightning bolt branded over her mottled flesh. She zipped on her barding and bit my mane, yanking me to my hooves.

“I’m … sorry …” I rasped weakly.

Night Sky gave me a cold stare. “There’s no giving over. You might think you’ve a choice to die, but out here, you’ve not any other choice but to live. Because there isn’t anything out here that’ll just let you curl up and snuff it – that’d be too easy.

“There’s never an easy way out. There’s no mercy for the weak, and there’s never rest for the weary ... all you do is live, and while you’re still alive, you do everything you can to stay alive.”

My eyes fluttered closed as she pushed me onto her back and hauled me back to civilization.

Another day passed.

I woke up in the same cot. This time, the gas lamp was shut off, and the window was shuttered closed. I didn’t want to look outside anyways. Not anymore, at least.

I shivered inside my now completely bandaged coat. Every part of me, even my ears were wrapped in wool. I rolled over, wincing at the sharp pain that jabbed into my shoulder. I shifted my left hind leg and heard the clinking of empty health potion bottles at the foot of my cot.

I could feel my blisters healing. But without a super healing potion from my stable’s clinic, my time spent bandaged up was going to be a relatively lengthy one. My scabbing flesh itched underneath, and I fought the urge to scratch.

I sighed, tucking in my legs in search of warmth. I found none. But I did find Dew Drops’ scarf lying next to me. It was one of the only things I had left to remember her by. I reached out with my magic – and liquid fire erupted inside my skull.

My magic flickered and popped.

Then nothing.

My head flopped back against my pillow.

With teary eyes, I bit my tongue and held back a scream. Seconds passed as I squeezed my eyes shut and waited until the pain subsided to a dull, persistent throb. I lay there, staring at Dew Drops’ scarf, tears rolling down my cheeks.

With a shivering foreleg, I hugged it close, running a hoof across Dew Drops’ scarf. My eyes glazed over the flecks of dried blood that peppered its soft fabric. I sighed and hugged it close, nuzzling it with a tenderness that made my heart ache.

Nothing I could do could bring her back.

I lay there thinking about them. My mom, most of all. I wondered what she would’ve thought if she learned that I gave up. That I let the wasteland win.

No. I knew that my mother’s expectations weren’t the only things that mattered. 294 stable ponies were still counting on our return … my return. Every hour, every day I wasted away out there was one day closer to the end of their rations.

I knew then that the lives of 294 other ponies hung in the balance. It didn’t make me feel any better knowing that I was the last hope for my stable. Every other pony that stepped out that door died.

I was all they had left.

I, the unfledged engineer pony who, when he was younger, didn’t know what end to screw in a lightbulb, was all they had left. There was only one way you could screw it in!

I heaved a bitter, self-deprecating laugh and stared up darkly at the ceiling.

“You’re all fucked.”

I snorted, slumping against my unfluffed pillow.

As I lay there, I knew: saving my stable was my mission, and my mission alone.

I never worked alone. Even during the afterhours at engineering, Dew Drops usually waited for me to finish whatever I was doing before we both left. Sometimes I’d find her sleeping under some piping or laying on the floor next to my busy body.

Never. Work. Alone.

The always told me that. And yet there I was ...

Alone …

I wrapped Dew Drops’ scarf around my neck.

I swore on the graves of my friends that I wouldn’t stop until I finished what they started. There was a hole in the ground next to them, waiting for me - but until I was six feet under, I swore that I wouldn’t give up. Not on them. Not on my stable.

I limped over to my bags and bit down on the lip of my last health potion, tipping my head and downing it in seconds. I sighed, feeling my flesh tingle as the potion did its work.

Didn’t feel good enough, but it’d have to do.

I pulled out my armored security barding and laid it out on the dusty wooden floor. I gazed longingly at the numbers that were stenciled onto its right shoulder pad: 91.

A long and drawn out sigh wheezed out of my lips as I stared at it for several long seconds.

‘Home,’ I thought, solemnly, ‘I’ll make it back. I have to.’

I shrugged on my barding, zipped it closed and trotted over to the door, fumbling with the doorknob. It was difficult trying to get used to walking around without my magic.

I pushed the door open, and peeked outside.

Down the hall were three more rooms. Their doors were open, so I assumed everyone was downstairs. I slowly made my way downstairs, the wooden boards beneath my hooves creaking with every step. The smell of alcohol and bitter cigarette smoke made my nose wrinkle as I poked my head over the railing. Sitting around a table and sharing drinks were Night Sky and two other ponies.

She blinked and caught me in her peripherals.

“Cor blimey,” the mare chuckled as the other ponies turned to see me. “Look who it is.”

“You better not be thinkin’ about runnin’ again, ya lil shit,” a gruff pony with an eye patch growled, tipping a shot glass to his lips. The ash-colored earth pony downed it and took a puff from a cigarette he held between his teeth. My ears perked at his drawl. Different, and much harsher than Night Sky's.

I frowned. There was a distinct bruise on his muzzle. He must have been the one I bucked in the face.

‘Good,’ I thought, ‘From the looks of him, I bet he deserved it.’

“Well come on mate, we were just talking about you,” Night Sky said with a smile.

“I bet you were,” I muttered, leaning against the railing the entire way down.

I settled down on an empty barstool among the three other surface dwellers. A mare slid to me a shot glass of vodka across the table. I looked at her nervously. I remembered her pink eyes. She was the mare I tried to strangle to death a day ago.

“No hard feelings, I hope?” I said, with a wry grin.

The unicorn snorted, nodding her head once, one pink eye hidden behind a curtain of her untamed purple mane.

“We’ve all had the urge to choke a bitch. Can’t say I haven’t done that to anypony else sitting here. Well, except you, of course,” she scoffed, staring at me with what I hoped wasn’t a promise. “Everypony calls me Sprinkles. What about you?”

I wrinkled my brow at her strange vocabulary.

“Red Dawn,” I said, nervously. I glanced around the narrow rectangular room and saw that it too was made of a mixture of wooden planks and corrugated metal. There were a few round tables stood here and there, but most didn’t have enough chairs around them to sit the number of ponies that were drinking at our table.

Inside the fireplace at the far end of the room, a stack of blackening wood glowed warmly, making the room somewhat more pleasant than the one upstairs. It might have been a tavern at some point, but given its emptiness, I figured that they must’ve taken the place for themselves.

Stenciled on the wall above the bar’s counter were the words ‘Rough Riders,’ reinforcing my previous assumption. I wondered for a moment who those ponies were and what that place was. Ever since I woke up there, I hadn’t even bothered to ask where the hell I was.

“This some kind of town?”

Sprinkles nodded. “Guess you can say that. Dusktown’s a caravan stop for travelers heading up north from New Appleloosa. Total population of forty three ponies and one griffon.” The town sounded rather quaint for a post-apocalyptic safe haven. “Every now and then we go out to escort caravans heading up north.”

I cocked an eyebrow. To me, the thought of there being more people living in that winter wasteland was shocking. “You mean … there’re others?”

They looked at me like I said something stupid. The gruff earth pony snickered, taking a long drag from his cigarette.

Night Sky just snorted. “Forgot you’re a stable pony. Aye. Sure there are. Though not everypony’s as welcoming as us here in Dusktown,” she chuckled bitterly, shaking her black bangs out of her eyes. It sounded like there was more than what she felt comfortable to talk about.

I looked out a window by the door and saw that the storm had settled down. The silhouettes of thickly-barded equine shapes milling about made being alive in this shithole a little less disheartening. I reassured myself that if there were people still alive out there, then there was still hope for finding what my stable needed.

“What with all the Red Eye and Unity bollocks, we haven’t seen too many caravans coming up here lately. The North’s got its own problems. We don’t need any of any mad southerners coming up here and making things worse,” Night Sky added, pouring herself a glass of whiskey.

“Red and Unity what?”

“Slavers and alicorns. You don’t want to be traveling on your tod. You might get chained up and put to work up north at East Eden or south by Fillydelphia. And if you’re a unicorn … well, like I told you earlier, there’re worse things than death if you come across somepony talking about Unity.”

“A-alicorns? Like … like the Goddesses?” I asked hopefully.

The unicorn stallion laughed at me in his harsh, gravelly voice.

“There ain’t no goddesses out here, boy. Celestia and Luna’ve been dead for a looong time.”

I glared at the stallion.

“Fuck off …”

He sighed, giving me a crass chuckle before puffing on his cigarette. I wanted to take that thing and shove it down his throat.

I shook my head. What I needed was something to calm my frayed nerves. I focused my horn, clenching my jaw as I tried to levitate the shot glass. I groaned at the sharp pain that shot through my skull.

“Damnit.”

“It’s called magical burnout,” Night Sky said, glancing at the shot glass that refused to budge. “You work your magic too hard, and you… well, you burn out. Can’t use your magic till you rest up.”

‘Son of a …’

“How long till I’m better?”

The mare shrugged.

“Maybe a few days? It all depends on you.” Night Sky leaned over the table. “Don’t be a fuckwit and do something daft. You should be fine in a few days, I’d imagine.” She narrowed her eyes at me and added, with a tinge of irritation, “Considering that stupid shite you pulled off last time, you probably shouldn’t even be down here walking around.”

“I don’t have time to just sit here,” I muttered.

Sprinkles cocked an eyebrow at me. “What are you doing outside of your stable anyhow?”

“Come to say hello to the ponies ya fucks left behind?” the unicorn stallion growled, baring his teeth.

I glared at the bastard. “Better down there than up here,” I muttered.

He snorted and opened his mouth, but Night Sky cut him off.

“Shut your gob,” she sighed, knocking the stallion with a hoof. “Bone Charm had it rough when he was just a lad."

The stallion snorted, giving me a look that promised a bucking.

Well he sure had a charming personality.

I held my glare as I craned my neck, biting the glass and tipping it back. The vodka burned as it washed down my throat. I let out a shivering snort as my insides warmed a little.

“What does it matter to you ponies?”

Bone Charm thumped his hooves on the table. “We didn’t save your ass for nothin’, stable colt. Nopony but you’s stupid enough to walk out into a storm like that. It’d be dandy if I knew why I had to waste twelve of our healing potions on you.” The gruff unicorn stallion snorted cigarette smoke into my muzzle.

“Then you had to walk out into the snow and try to get killed, again.”

I snapped, leaning over the table to look him in the eye. “If it were up to me I’d go back, sit behind that door, and forget about everything outside.” I folded my forelegs across my chest. “Anywhere is better than here ...”

He sneered, “Go down south, hell, go anywhere on this planet and it’s all the same.” Bone Charm chuckled. “And if you didn’t know, stables all across Equestria've been opening up and nopony’s been coming out alive. Soon, I bet your cozy little hole won’t be so different.”

I fought to keep my composure. “I don’t care about this place … I don’t care what you think about me, and most of all, I don’t care about you. I stepped outside and I knew why we never opened our doors to let anyone in – because nothing outside those doors was worth saving!”

He wore a challenging smirk, saying, “Then why don’tcha go home? Scurry back into your hole and lock us out again. I lived forty years of my life here washin’ my hooves in blood just to survive, and you waltz out of that warm stable and bitch and moan, and threaten to kill yourself just because life just got a little harder for your hooficured hooves. I’ve lost too much to have a single sliver of pity for you, boy.

“And the last thing we need is another mouth to feed. So dream your sweet dreams in that stable of yours while we scrape on by up here!”

I stood up from my stool, knocking it over. “Listen here, you son of bitch –”

Night Sky slammed her a hoof on the table.

“Quiet, ladies. You bastards get in a fight and I’ll mop your arses across the floor,” she snarled. “So what’s your story, Red Dawn?” Night Sky asked – no, she demanded. The mare cocked her head and leaned across the table.

I grinded my teeth together and sighed.

“… our Water Talisman broke,” I said bitterly. “So five other ponies and I went out to find another.”

The gruff unicorn whistled, and chuckled, “Whew! Damn was I right about that.” He puffed a ring of smoke my way. “It’s only a matter of time ...”

Sprinkles poured me another glass and slid it across the table to my hoof.

“We found you by yourself, so I guess the others that came with you are …“

She caught my grim stare and fell silent. I downed the vodka in silence as the Sprinkles fidgeted with her hooves. ‘Awkward.’

“Well if it makes you feel better, we cleaned up those furies afterward,” Night Sky said, folding her forelegs across her chest. “Us and another group teamed up and wiped ‘em out.”

“It doesn’t,” I muttered.

“Wasn’t supposed to. What matters to me is that we get paid,” Bone Charm said, knocking his hooves together.

I was starting to hate that pony.

“What are you guys anyways? Mercenaries?”

They nodded in unison.

Sprinkles replied, “Mhm. We picked up a contract to put a dent in the snow fury population around these parts. I say we fucked them up pretty good.” She smiled, somewhat. “Maybe now we’ll have more visitors around here.”

I thought for a moment, shivering at the memories of the psycho ponies erupting out of the snow. “Snow Furies ...” I sneered, “That what they’re called?” Psycho ponies frothing at the mouth flashed before my eyes.

Night Sky nodded. “Aye. Though you might hear southerners call the bastards ‘raiders,’ but they’re hardly the same. They’re called snow furies. They like burying themselves in the snow to surprise anypony that comes their way. They’re a bunch of grotty cunts that ambush caravans or traders down by the Crystal Highway and all the way down to Poneva –”

“Poneva?” I blurted out, interrupting her.

Night Sky lifted an eyebrow.

“What about it?”

I looked down at my shot glass, both my forelegs supporting me over the table. “Word is, in my stable, an old Stable-Tec facility was built there. We were heading that way to find a water talisman.”

Night Sky chuckled, “Well good luck, I mean, I don’t think there’re many people feeling charitable about their water talismans these days ...”

“It’s worth a try,” I muttered, my voice trembling. “It’s our only hope.”

She snorted. “If you say so,” she said skeptically, getting up from her chair.

“What do you know about Poneva?”

Bone Charm put out his cigar and folded his legs across his chest. “Well I’ll say that there ain’t no Ponevan that’s done me good in my lifetime.” The unicorn stallion snorted, “’Cept pay me caps.”

“I wouldn’t do you any good if I was a Ponevan,” I muttered.

“Fuck you just say?”

Sprinkles leaned over the table. “Listen, kid, Bonehead here isn’t kidding. That city's no good. They’ve got all sorts of bad ponies you don’t even want to know about.”

“You make it sound like I’ll get eaten by a dragon or something.” I scoffed, tapping my forehooves together.

They looked at me with hard eyes. Not even a chuckle. ‘Okay, that didn’t sound too good.’ Night Sky returned with a few flat slices of bread from a loaf that didn’t rise.

“What’s this talk about dragons?”

“Red Dawn here wants to go up to Poneva,” Sprinkles said, gnawing on a slice.

My eyes lit up. “Can you take me there?”

She thought for a moment, and shrugged. “If you’re planning on staying there, you’re on your own, mate. But we’re heading up that way to turn in a few contracts.”

I smiled, something I hadn’t done genuinely in what seemed like forever.

“That’s great –”

“But we’re not going there any time soon. If you want to go, you’re going to have to come with us to finish whatever contracts we’ve got left before we turn in.”

I frowned, pursing my lips. I had nowhere else to be, and I didn’t know anyone else.

“Whatever gets me to Poneva in one piece,” I said, finally, with a drawn out sigh.

Bone Charm barely suppressed a chuckle. “Wait till he sees the bloodletters and snow devils. You’ll be regretting coming up here soon enough, stable colt.”

My expression darkened.

“I already am.”