The end of the world came with a realization, with a single click in the brain that finally acknowledged the obvious. It came sooner for some ponies, centuries sooner, but inevitably for all.

The train is never coming back down those tracks.

The tracks in question were terribly rusted, but the best maintained out of the dozens of similar rails running parallel, a streak in an expansive rail-yard. Ancient boxcars and engines lay abandoned on the other rails, immobilized by age, of vastly differing construction and quality. A ramshackle wooden abomination with several small guns bolted to it was dwarfed by a long, sleek flatbed with a massive and equally sleek weapon built into it. It was a scene of great waste.

The only movement in the whole area was on top of the only reasonably intact building in sight, an old two-story guard shack solidly built and in decent structural shape despite its obvious age. The recesses in the thick concrete walls for windows were boarded up, but the earth pony standing on the roof had a clear view of area, for what little that was worth. The stallion, wearing a tattered overcoat and tattered wrappings, hunched under a dull steel helmet, surveyed the railyard with tired eyes. His weapon, a bulky rifle with a crude bolt-action and oversized stock, was propped up against the parapet beside him.

The train is never coming back down these tracks.

He sighed, started for the exposed stairwell, then paused and took a final glance around him. Past the railyard was a sorry landscape, the foundations of long-decayed buildings dotting a dead earth, Ice covered almost everything, from the railyard to the ground beyond it. The only thing not crusted with ice was the lone set of tracks that had dominated the stallion's thoughts, thought not because of any maintenance. This ice was as much of a relic as the long-suffering train cars in the railyard, a holdover from the last big freeze. That had happened when the stallion was still a filly, but the temperatures hadn't come down enough since then to melt any of it, not once. Almost everything was as it had been centuries ago, for that.

The stallion sighed again, and trotted down the stairs to the second floor, where the telegraph line had a receiving station. That, too, was a relic, a makeshift wire that had been buried under the rails when they'd been layed down a hundred years ago. It was a wonder it still managed to function, and as much as the stallion wished the electronic communication systems of the past still worked, when an earth pony could talk to another across the entire Confederacy with a voice and without having to pass the clicking message down seventy different relays, at least the telegraph worked. Barely. He still hadn't been able to contact the Appleloosa Citadel, or anything east of it.

He sat down at the desk, and tapped out a message out of sheer habit. There was a tank factory a little to the west, at the end of the functioning tracks. The last train carrying the small, ugly war-machines on its flatbeds had gone by a week ago, and food was running short. The trains, supposedly, came every other day. Now, though, no tanks were rolling east and no coal for the factory was going west. Something was amiss.

BARLEY IRONWORKS he tapped out, ARE YOU THERE

The reply came back nearly instantly, which was highly unsettling to the stallion. The factory had so few workers, there was never anypony actually in the telegraph office. He usually had to wait a few minutes until somepony hurried off the lines to respond to the buzzing coming through the factory's PA system.

RAILYARD A3 the factory was saying, WE WERE WAITING

We?

STATUS he quickly replied, hoof shaking slightly.

THERE IS NO FUEL - WE ARE EVACUATING - GOING NORTH

The stallion blinked. NORTH TRULY

NORTH YES - USING LAST TANKS - FINAL BATTLE - HAVE YOU RECIEVED ORDER FROM COUNCIL

NO

SAME - BUT THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE TO GO - NO CONTACT WITH APPLELOOSA CITADEL - WILL YOU COME

He appreciated the effort, but the factory was fifty miles away. One could not simply walk that distance.

LITTLE FOOD - UNABLE - WILL STAY he tapped out, swallowing hard.

GOOD LUCK the factory said simply.

FOR THE CONFEDERACY

So that's it, then.

The stallion closed his eyes, imagining the factory workers scraping together every bit of food and lashing containers of gasoline to the tanks, ready to join what remained of the Earth tribes continue the battle up north. North was where Unity City was, the capital of the Earth Confederacy and seat of the Grand Council - it was also the first and most intense front of the whole war with the pegasi and unicorns, near the middle of Equestria and straddling the territory of both enemy tribes.. And by the sound of it, north was where the final battle would be fought.

Of course, it was suicide either way. The stallion held no illusions about the end of his ancestor's war that was finally here, the outcome of the terrible struggle; the propaganda no longer had any effect on him. Perhaps it never had. Nopony seemed to believe anymore, the only thing besides grim fatalism was that consuming hatred. He'd felt that, too, until a year of his life had been wasted in this guard shack.

His mind, swirling with thoughts of the end and his life's end, clicked. Who said he had to die in this forsaken building?

I'll die outside, looking at something new.

The stallion grabbed his rifle, slung his near-empty pack over his shoulder, and trotted for the outside stairway He paused as he opened the door, blinking at the rush of cold air, and glanced at the wall near him. A map of Equestria hung there, ancient and ragged; on it, most of the land was crossed out with red scribbles. All of the pegasi and unicorn lands were treated that way, but too much of the Confederacy's lands were forsaken by the map.

He gripped a marker in his mouth, and hurriedly crossed out a clean region. Barley Ironworks was displayed prominently on it. There was very little land left occupied, and none of it to the east. He'd go that way, and die in peace. He'd survived his year on the front with blind luck; he'd perish with a conscious choice. Not that he could avoid it . . .

The stallion walked out, taking a breath of frigid air.