Dear Diary,

Today was mostly smooth sailing. And by 'smooth sailing,' I mean that it had rained heavily last night, dousing everything in rain, but other than that it was rather uneventful. Last night's rainfall had flushed away most of the slush from the last snowfall, and the temperature was warm enough that there was no more ice.

Going to the seafood place last night was a mistake, since we all woke up feeling sick and queasy. So for breakfast we just traveled southward a few blocks until we found a convenience store and ate there.

We continued our incessant trek south, which was thankfully uneventful. The lack of bandit attacks or other travelers made us seem like the only ones in the city, which created an eerie feeling. It was made even more eerie when we reached the intersection with Colgate Blvd, where there was a large cemetery on the right side of the road. The tombstones alone would have made the scene feel eerie, but there were also large piles of corpses throughout the grounds, each accompanied by a hole. Some of the holes had been completely dug while others had only a few shovelfuls of dirt removed. In addition to each hole there were also the mounds of dirt that had been removed from the earth to create the hole, which had become soggy from the rain but somehow had not turned into complete mud. Little weeds growing from the mounds indicated that they had been dug some time ago, perhaps shortly after the bombing.

The whole site appeared to be a half-finished mass burial for victims of the bombs, but the diggers were nowhere to be seen, having left their shovels in neat little piles and their bulldozers parked off to the side, as if they had finished their work for the day and intended to come back tomorrow. Only they hadn't come back and the job was left incomplete. Either they had all succumbed to radiation poisoning, or they had collectively just said "fuck it" and started focusing on their immediate survival instead. If so, then I completely understand their point: in a world like this, why waste your time honoring the dead when you can squeeze a bit of fun out of your short and pitiful life before you too become a corpse like them?

Speaking of expiration, we had lunch at a fast food restaurant today. Well… what was a fast food restaurant. All of the meat had gone bad, so the only thing we could eat were the buns. Seriously, the whole push towards ‘never frozen’ beef back before the war has ended up backfiring, since now there’s a ton of meat at nearly every fast food joint that’s just been wasted. In a world without functioning supply chains, that just makes it inconvenient to those of us who are just trying to survive. Then again, there’s no electricity for the grills, so un-thawing frozen patties would have been completely useless.

It was also about now that we saw the first signs of recent pony activity in a while. Across the street there was this huge mall which I suspect must be a raider hideout. How do I know this? Well, many of the streetlights in the parking lot had mutilated corpses hanging from ropes, and a trail of blood leading towards one of them suggested a recent kill. However, we chose not to go inside to investigate because we’ve been making good progress and I didn’t want to waste time getting killed by psychopaths.

Shortly after, 82nd Street terminated and rejoined the freeway. It was about time that we changed roads and started going east. A short trek later, we found ourselves on the bank of a large river, traversed by a narrow bridge.

However, the bridge was guarded by a unit of gatekeepers who had fortified themselves in a position on the hump at the top of the bridge, so we hid behind the corner of a building to plan our course of action. Charging it would be throwing ourselves into a hail of machine gun fire, walking up and asking them to let us through nicely would have been suicide, and trying to swim across the river, well... that would just lead to zombification. I don't know which of those three is worse.

"Did either of you happen to pick up a sniper rifle?" I asked.

Both of my companions shook their heads.

"Okay... Grapevine, how good is your aim?"

"Ah played softball in high school."

"So... pretty good?"

"Ah dunno... our team never won a game."

"Are you fucking serious?" I gawked. Then, regaining my composure, I asked, "Okay, but do you think you could hit them?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Okay, then here's the plan: Grapevine will throw some grenades at them, then we'll go up and charge them. It's not ideal, but we don't really have any other options."

So Grapevine threw a few grenades, but they all missed. Half of them exploded several yards short of the gatekeepers, and the rest just fell into the river. She threw some more, but her luck was no better. She was about to throw another when I stopped her.

"Okay, that's enough grenades," I said. "Now we just have to go ahead and charge them."

We were about to jump out from behind the corner and charge them, but then I noticed that the gatekeepers were all riled up for some reason. I'd expect them to be on edge after being targeted by a bunch of grenades, but they were all running around their little encampment in random directions with their guns aimed in front of them, yelling battle cries, like they were NPCs in a video game that knew someone was out there but didn't have the sense to figure out what direction they should be looking in. Then two of them left the fortification and began charging down the bridge in our direction.

Their tactical folly led us to a rather fortuitous change of plan: instead of charging immediately, we ambushed the two just as they passed our position. They were stunned by our sudden attack, giving us a split second where we could shoot them again. Then they took another second to aim their guns at us, so we shot them again, killing them before they even had a chance to fire back. Then we charged the bridge, facing considerably less resistance than we otherwise would have from the distracted guards, who seemed to be looking for us in every direction except the one where we actually came.

After making quick work of the gatekeepers, we spent a few minutes looting some supplies from their camp before continuing on our way. Surprisingly, there wasn't much, but food is always useful and our ammo and grenade supplies had been heavily depleted back at the airport.
On the other side of the river lay the community of Lake Oneighgo. It was a wealthy suburb, evident in the architecture of its buildings, the proliferation of trees, and the snobbish attitude of everyone from this place I've ever met. I had a lot of contempt for this place because of the latter, but admittedly I have never really visited here. The three of us were somewhat taken in awe by its beauty-- or former beauty, given the state of the world-- and moved at a much more leisurely pace than I would have preferred.

We walked along a tree lined avenue in the middle of town. This, I presume, was the main commercial street, as it was wide and contained several upscale boutiques and coffee shops. Though somewhat damp and crawling with mold and mildew, the town was relatively well-preserved, having been shielded from the bomb's blast by the presence of a large hill to its immediate north.

We casually looted the stores as we went, but to our dismay they had already been looted, so we eventually just stopped our looting altogether and just pressed westward. Then the shops ended and it began a residential section shrouded in deep forest. Despite being de-leaved, the trees filtered much of the natural light, creating a dark environment that was only made darker by the beginning of the sun's descent below the horizon. Here there was a fork in the road, and we had to choose one route over the other.

“So which road should we take?” I asked.

“Um… maybe the north one?” Grapevine suggested.

“No, we should take the south route,” Dmitry said.

“Why the south road?” Grapevine asked. “There’s more trees, so we’re likely ta get ambushed there.”

“But the south one goes by the lake, so there’s less ground to get ambushed from,” Dmitry responded. “Besides, the north one goes by the country club.”

“But the lake’s a better place to build a raider camp,” argued Grapevine. “Won’t we be more likely ta get ambushed if we go towards the camps?”

“Not necessarily,” said Dmitry. “If we’re quiet, we could sneak right under their noses. And how would the lake make a better site for a camp? It’s probably radioactive.”

“Yeah, but that’s where all the expensive houses are,” said Grapevine.

“Raiders don’t give a damn about property values,” said Dmitry. “Only the most trafficked routes to raid.”

“Sure they do. They’re the best places ta loot. And live. Ever think that raiders might care about luxury too?”

“Luxury? They’re common criminals! What do they care about fancy houses except the joy of defiling them?”

“Comfort, quality of life, a nice place ta live… they’re also bigger so they’ve got more room to house their big raider families.”

“Raider families!?! Raiders don’t care about families! They only care about themselves!”

“With all that that drugged up sex, they’re bound to start havin’ babies...”

“And what are they gonna do with babies? Abandon them? Rape them? Eat them?”

“Babies are cute! Maybe you changelings see them as disposable…” She paused to think of a good term to use. “...sex cucumbers, since you have so many of them, but to us ponies, babies are special and need to be protected.”

“There you go with race again. And no, not all of you think babies are special. In all my years of law enforcement, I’ve seen way too many cases of filicide, most of them committed by filthy mud pony mares like you!”

Then I noticed a bat pony slowly approaching from the southern route. She had been coyly eavesdropping on our conversation the entire time, and only now began to approach us.

"Take the southern route," she said. "There's a trading post on the lake just off Mulberry Street."

Since she seemed friendly enough and didn't look like a raider, we followed her advice, taking the southern route down towards the lake and taking a left at Mulberry Street. This brought us to a road lined with large lakefront manors, all of which looked abandoned. We approached the least dilapidated looking one, a relatively small one nestled among several trees, and knocked on the door.

Nopony answered.

We knocked again, but still no answer.

Then we knocked a third time, even harder, but we were met with dead silence.

“Huh,” said Grapevine. “Maybe we should try the rear?”

“No, we should get out of here,” said Dmtiry. “It might be a trap.”

“Well, maybe we should at least try,” said Grapevine. “Maybe they’re just busy.”

“Oh, and now you’re the one saying we should take the southern route!”

I thought about breaking it up, but it was the end of the day and I was too tired to intervene. Instead, I wandered over to the shore and looked out across the lake. A bright streak of orange light broke through the clouds and shimmered across the murky green water, creating a scene that was both serene and otherworldly. It was the kind of moment you wished could last forever... but, like life, it didn't-- it would all have to end eventually, just like the day, just like your life, just like the world around it. I knew in the back of my mind that staying here would make me a sitting duck for any would-be raiders, but I figured that I could just enjoy the moment for now, like the brief moment of calm in an unending storm that it was.

Then I spotted it: the soft glow of lights from one of the houses. They had just kind of blended into the scenery, as I had been so used to seeing electric lighting during twilight hours such as these. It's still taking me a while to adjust to this whole 'post-apocalyptia' thing, coming to regard the strange as normal and the typical as anomaly. The very fact that electricity, something which had been so ubiquitous throughout the world, was now a scarce commodity, was still taking some time getting used to.

But nevertheless, there it was: light. And among the lights I could see the faint outlines of ponies milling about.

"Guys?" I called out. "I think I found that trading post she was talking about."

The trading post had been set up on Emerald Head, a small island just off the shore of the bay, connected to the land by a straight wooden bridge just wide enough to drive a car across. On the island stood a modest villa, its walls plastered with off-white stucco and its roof a cluster of tightly-packed yet orderly terracotta tiles. The building was covered in a blanket of dirt and dust, and appeared to have taken quite a beating from the elements over the past year, but appeared to have taken no structural damage. It was shielded from the world by a cluster of oaks and pines which formed a thick ring around the perimeter of the island, rendering it seemingly impervious to anything the outside world could throw at it.

I could see why whoever built this house built it here, and why its current occupants decided it was the perfect place to set up shop: it was close enough to the major roadways to ensure they would get business, while feeling isolated enough that they didn’t have to worry too much for their safety.

That being said, they still took great precautions to ensure that nothing could harm them. The gate on the mainland side of the bridge had been reinforced with wooden boards, barbed wire, and automated turrets. A small shack had been built to house a pair of guards, who vetted all visitors with the same stern demeanor and unwavering professionalism you’d expect from customs agents.

“Oh yes, here at Emerald Head we keep everything under lock and key,” explained Shuffled Papers, a former customs agent at the port who now served as the settlement’s chief of security. “On this island, the Arstotzka family keeps everything under lock and key.”

Dmitry later explained to me that the Arstotzkans were an illustrious yet reclusive family of nobles who were rumored to have extensive dealings in the criminal underworld. Despite Grestin Arstotzka being one of the hardliner ‘law and order’ guys on the House of Lords’ international trade committee, his family’s company, Red Eagle Shipping, allegedly made regular smuggling runs throughout the world.

“On paper, we had numerous sanctions against Changica and a complete embargo against the Zebra Empire,” he said. “But in practice, arms, luxury goods, and money flowed freely between the three.”

The secret to their success was their relationship with local customs officials, which was maintained with frequent gifts of imported vodka, cigars, and literal under-the-table cash payments. That, and them constantly ratting out smaller and less established competitors to the authorities. That way, the officials had a steady stream of arrests, making it look like they were solving the problem while secretly colluding with the biggest offenders.

Of course, we didn’t mention any of that during within earshot of the guards. We were, after all, their guests, and Shuffled Papers had been kind enough to show us around. The villa was nice, even if it was built with laundered money, and you had to admire the guards for their vision: a serene, safe paradise in the middle of a turbulent world where there’s no crime or drugs (ostensibly). The most important thing was the feeling of security, which ponies would pay a forehoof and a hindhoof for in today’s economy.

"Unfortunately, all of our rooms are booked," said the front desk clerk.

See? Perfect example. Even though it cost nothing to squat in a building or pitch a tent in somepony’s yard,

"Are you sure? Isn't there at least somewhere we can stay?" Dmitry asked. "The lobby perhaps, or the dining room, or even the maintenance shed?"

"I'm sorry," the clerk said, "But we can't do that. It's against our policy to house guests anywhere but a room, as the Arstotzka family does not want their estate to become a shanty town. You're allowed to stay until 8:00, at which time all visitors are required to leave. Until then, you're welcome to trade, wander the grounds, or finish up any business you otherwise have here."

It was delivered with the kind of blunt, matter-of-fact sentiment that you wish hotels and airlines and customer service reps in general would use whenever they try to beat around the bush, but always feels biting and hurtful on the few occasions it actually happens. Here we were told that, even though they clearly had the space to house hundreds of ponies, they were intentionally limiting themselves to a quota because it kept the place aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps the feeling of security also factors into it, seeing as it's a feeling carefully cultivated by controlling for many factors, but regardless, it still sucks to be excluded from such a wonderful place for a seemingly arbitrary reason such as "there aren't enough rooms" when there is clearly more that they have the power to do.

Well, rules are rules, and we weren't able to persuade the clerk to give us a pass. We spent the rest of the evening trading weapons we didn't need for more ammo, treating ourselves at the post's restaurant, and admiring the grounds on the island. The weapons we traded fetched a far lower price than I expected they would, with a .44 pistol only being worth 33 .44 rounds as an example. I would have expected a much higher price, since the rounds would be completely useless without the device to fire them, but the shopkeeper was pretty inflexible with his prices and all of the traders had retired for the day, so we had to accept. At least we still had the ammunition, which we could exchange for other things like ‘meal vouchers.’

It was about dinnertime anyway, so we just took the meal vouchers and whatever 5.56mm rounds we could get. Then we went over to the cafeteria, which had a rather limited selection mostly focused on meat and prepackaged food, but merely having access to food that was warm was an improvement over the last few days.

The gardens were somewhat overgrown and hadn’t been weeded in some time, but they were the most beautiful thing I had seen in a long time, especially at sunset. We took a few moments to admire the priceless beauty of it all, set against the backdrop of an orange-ish sky and the tranquil lake.

However, all good things must come to an end. We decided to leave while there was still a little bit of light lingering in the sky because we still needed to find a place to stay for the night. Grapevine thought she knew a shortcut, but ended up stranding us in a thickly forested park, with nothing but an overgrown trail to guide us. The thick canopy filtered out virtually all light, forcing us to use the 'night mode' lighting setting on our pipbucks for illumination. They made poor flashlights that couldn't light more than three hooves away from you, but it was all we had.

"Oh, great. Now we're stuck in the woods," I griped. "In the middle of the night."

"Well, we know who's sleeping on the floor tonight," Dmitry said.

"At this rate, we're 'all' going to be sleeping on the floor tonight if we can't find shelter," I replied. "Hold on-- listen."

We stopped and heard some branches cracking in the distance, and the faint traces of a voice. I turned off my pipbbuck light, and my companions quickly followed. We stood there, listening, as the sound of cracking branches and crunched leaves came closer and closer.

"Somepony's coming," I whispered. "Let's get off the trail."

We crouched down behind a bush and readied our weapons as the noises came closer and closer until I could clearly make out what it was: the voice of a young pumpkin-orange unicorn mare, singing something, and the faint sound of music…

Then she emerged: she was, indeed, a young mare. And she was, indeed, singing the lyrics of some stupid pop song. The muffled sound of music was audible from the headphones blaring it into her ears, and she came jogging down the path, seemingly oblivious to the immense danger that she was putting herself in. And she was dressed in sheepskin boots, black yoga pants, and a hot pink sweatshirt. She kept jogging towards us, and I was desperately hoping that she would take no notice of us and pass by, but then she stopped. Right in front of us. Apparently she had dropped something. She looked around, then knelt down to pick it up. She found it, but then Grapevine had to sneeze.

The mare looked towards us, picked the thing up, then stood up straight and looked at us more closely. For a while she seemed curious and confused, but suddenly her face lit up in delight.

“*Gasp!* Like, OMG! Bullet? Is that really you?”

“Silver, do you know her?” asked Dmitry.

“Yes,” I groaned. I had suspected it might have been her, but seeing her face and hearing her voice confirmed who it was.

“I knew her from school.”

“It’s been, like, soooo long!” she said. “We have to catch up sometime over coffee.”

“Silver, why don’t ya introduce us to yer friend?” asked Grapevine.

“She’s not my--” I said, but was cut off by the new pony, who promptly introduced herself as Pumpkin Spice, then yammered on about herself and her dog for quite some time.

It took almost forever, but we were finally able to stumble our way out of the woods... partially. We found the end of one of the trails, which led us into a neighborhood that was heavily forested, but at least had paved roads. It turns out that paved roads are really important when wandering around in the dark because they sort of tell you where to go. The only question left is which paved road to take when you come across an intersection. That part alone made it seem like nothing had changed, because we were still groping our way through the dark trying to find a way out.

Eventually we did reach a major street and were able to keep going. With the navigation thing taken care of, my thoughts began focusing on some seemingly more mundane matters, like the bitch we had just picked up. Damn, she was annoying. And when I say she was annoying, I mean that literally every single aspect of her fucking irritated the shit out of me! Everything about her: her body, her clothes, her voice, her personality, the life she led, that fact that she was all upbeat as hell about everything... but most of all, the fact that my 'friends' seemed to actually like her! I mean, we just dumped another filly like this, only to end up with another one who's even worse! Pumpkin Spice makes 'Katie' seem tolerable by comparison, no joke!

Anyway, there were some practical concerns that lingered in the back of my mind while this whole thing was going on, but I put them on the backburner so I could mentally bitch about petty high school girl drama. Pumpkin Spice's loud and obnoxious voice rambling on and on about the most insignificant trite wasn't just a threat to my sanity, it was also a threat to our group's safety. I mean, here you had four ponies wandering around in the dark, guided only by Stable-Tec's shitty excuse for a flashlight and a vague sense of direction, with a whiny voice broadcasting our presence for miles. We were sitting ducks just begging to get ambushed. The fact that we were on or near a major caravan route only heightened the chance that we would come across a group of bandits eventually. Bandits who, despite Spice’s seemingly magnetic personality, couldn’t be talked out of a fight.

This point eventually came to the fore when we got near the freeway. Despite passing by several buildings that would have served as adequate shelter, Spice insisted on sleeping somewhere with beds. Come to think of it, we could have just gone into any of the houses back in that neighborhood, but I guess we were so concerned with finding our way out of the woods that we chose to ignore that option. Also, knowing Spice, she would have objected to breaking into a building, or anything that would have violated a pre-war code of morality, even though you could make a pretty convincing argument that any notions of ‘morality’ got thrown out the window after Littlehorn. Yeah, I realize that this contradicts the point I made two chapters ago about feeling guilty over trespassing, but when it’s getting late after a long day, sometimes you just want to lie down on the first bed you come across.

Given that we had finally come across some suitable beds, I was pretty excited, and I presume the others were pretty excited as well. But then disaster struck and our hopes were dashed.

It didn’t come all at once: at first, it was manageable. Dimly illuminated by torches, I could see a group of griffons on the overpass just past the hotel, and they didn't look friendly. However, they weren't looking in any direction in particular, and seemed to be too engrossed in a heated argument among themselves to notice us. As long as we turned off our flashlights, moved slowly, and didn't make any noise…

"OMG! Is that, like, a Burned Bean? It's been soooooo long since I've had a mocha!"

Damn it. She found a coffee shop across the street and galloped towards it like a puppy whose owner has just come home from work (I guess you could say Burned bean has made her its bitch, ba dum tsss!). And, while I think having coffee this close to bedtime is counterproductive and stupid, I normally wouldn't mind if it weren't for those griffons on the bridge, who had heard her exclamation and stopped arguing.

"Let's get them!"

These guys were a little bit harder. Armed with assault rifles and leather armor reinforced with metal plates, we had to duck into the bushes in front of the Burned Bean to avoid getting sprayed with bullets. After their first charge, we engaged in a little firefight: not my preferred activity before bed, but we didn't really have much of a choice, did we? Sadly, they were much too strong for us to hold back, and we eventually had to retreat. I swear, they must have been on drugs or something to have been that obstinate against our defense.

We ran across the parking lot of the shopping center where the Burned Bean was, trying to zig-zag out of the path of their bullets. They probably had extended magazines or something, because at this point I hadn't seen them reload even once. I ducked behind a parked car for cover, then remembered that these things were highly explosive and would probably blow at any time, so I had to dash between cars to avoid the fire while getting out of that parking lot before the whole thing went up in flames.

The parking lot exploded in a magnificent chain reaction just after I got to safety. One car after the other, it was truly a spectacle of physics that would have been enjoyable under any other circumstance. Although it did get rid of most of the griffon raiders, one still survived, emerging from the wreckage covered in orange flames but otherwise appearing as if nothing had happened. How anyone could survive an explosion as big as that without serious injury or third degree burns was beyond me, and could be described with only one word: legendary.

This ‘legendary’ griffon was also frenzied, as blowing up a bunch of cars to kill him and his friends obviously wasn’t very nice (even though they were the ones who hit the cars, not me). In his infinite rage, he chased me down the street. All I could do was run, occasionally turning back to take a few shots at him or ducking behind a tree to avoid a spray of bullets or grenades. It took a while, and a lot of running, but I finally felled him with a well-placed shot in the neck (thanks, SATS) which may have cut through his jugular vein.

The sputtering beat fell to the ground, clutching his neck with its talons and coughing up blood. But the talons were sharp and just cut its neck, making him lose even more blood. It was absolutely pitiful. Dmitry and Grapevine, who I presume had been providing support from behind, came over and the three of us solemnly stood over the fallen griffon.

“Is there anythin’ you can do to, umm…?”

“No,” I replied. “It cut pretty deeply into his neck and probably pierced his throat. Barring some kind of crazy spell, I’d say he’s pretty much dead.”

Then Pumpkin Spice waltzed over, levitating a mocha and not bearing even a single scratch from the battle.

“Hey guys, I’m back. I went in but there was nopony there and the lights weren’t on so I thought it might be closed, but they didn’t have their ‘closed’ sign up so I thought maybe they were open but just doing something in the back so I rang the bell but nopony came so I went in the back and nopony was there so I thought maybe they were just on break so I just used my coffee roasting spell and left the money on the counter, and what happened here?”

She abruptly stopped and looked down at the griffon, who had stopped moving and bleeding and was now, for all intents and purposes, a corpse. Spice looked at Grapevine and Dmitry but they just looked at each other. Then she looked at me. I looked down at the beast and simply said,

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

It was definitely getting late and we needed to find shelter, especially now that the sky was now pitch black and it was getting really cold. During the fight we had also lost our sense of direction, and ended up going north even though I told them that the hotel was to the south. We quickly stumbled upon a grand white building with several spires jutting out of it.

Pumpkin Spice gasped.

“Like, OMG, this is the temple, guise” she said in a hushed, reverent tone.

“Great,” said Dmitry. “Can we go inside?”

“Well… nonbelievers aren’t really allowed into the temple,...” Pumpkin Spice said, “...but since you’re with me, I’m sure you can come in as guests!”

The building was surrounded by a large green wrought iron fence. I tried to open the gate, but it didn’t budge.

“Huh,” Grapevine said. “Doesn’t look like they’re accepting any guests right now.”

“That’s strange,” said Pumpkin Spice. “It’s always open.”

“Have you even been here in the past eleven months?” I asked sternly.

“Nope, not since October 20th,” she replied. “I kinda need to work on attendance. I can’t believe I missed last year’s Hearth’s Warming service. And this year’s Bunny Day service. And the annual bake sale!”

“No need to worry,” said Dmitry. “Already got the lock open. It was kind of a flimsy one, too.”

Pumpkin Spice gasped in horror.

“You could have just knocked!” she cried. “You didn’t have to break in!”

“But...” said Grapevine, “...the door’s all the way over there!”
“Okay, well, you still could have called them. Somepony would have picked up the phone and opened the door.”

“But we don’t even know their number!” Grapevine exclaimed.

I couldn’t tell if Grapevine was simply humoring her or if she was that stupid. But it seemed pretty obvious that Pumpkin Spice had become either profoundly ignorant of the world around her, or profoundly delusional. I mean, she was always an idiot at school before the war, but now she’s straight up denying reality. Now, I could give her the benefit of the doubt that this is just some bizarre coping device, but that would imply she has even a shred of self-awareness.

Anyway, after a little bit of drama and an offhoof remark about Changelings being natural-born thieves, Pumpkin Spice took us into the temple. Now, I think believing in magical sky fairies who will solve all of your problems if you worship them enough is bullshit, but I couldn’t help but be awed by the splendor and majesty of the temple. If I was going to pray, this was certainly the place to do it, with the white walls, regal furnishings, and faint rays of light beaming down from the windows above. To Pumpkin Spice’s dismay, she couldn’t find anypony anywhere inside, remarking that it was very unlike the staff to completely vacate the building. However, I think this is a good thing. If any ponies were going to occupy this place today, they would very likely be the type who would take pleasure in defiling it.

The only problem with sleeping here tonight was that we couldn’t find any beds. I suggested just sleeping on the pews since they were long enough, but nopony else wanted to because they were hard and even the slightest noises echoed throughout the room in the main prayer hall. So we kept looking around until we came across a place called the ‘Celestial Room,’ which had couches, and decided that it would do. Mysteriously enough, I found another one of those blue puzzle pieces wedged in between the cushions, like somepony was trying to hide it there. I quickly stashed it into my saddlebag before anypony could notice.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, I thought about that most celestial of ponies, Princess Celestia herself. Was she still alive, in some form or another? Probably not, since Canterlot surely got glassed during the war, but what if she still existed in some spiritual form out in the aether, watching over us? Guiding us? Could the rumors I heard back in the stable about her ascension to godhood have any truth to them?

Personally I have always admired her sister, Luna, but what chance is there that she could be out there too, still existing in some form or another, in spite of all the zebras’ attempts to destroy her?

Level up!

Level 6: Wasteland Noob

Demolition Expert’s Apprentice: You’re getting pretty good at blowing things up, but you’ll still need some training before you can become an expert. Do 20% more damage with explosives.

Stats:
Ponies Led: 3
Puzzle Pieces Collected: 3
Price of Silver: 13 bits per Troy Ounce

Status Ailments:

Mild Food Poisoning: -1 Endurance. Could resolve itself or get worse, depending on your endurance, rest, and actions. Curable with antibiotics.