Starlight was gone when I woke up.

She’d been lying right next to me the whole night, cuddled up close. Despite lying awake for most of the night and sleeping fitfully even when I did drift off, I’d somehow missed her slip away.

I pushed myself up, looking blearily around in the dim morning light. Dusty was sitting a short distance away, drinking slowly from a cup and looking as weary as I felt. I didn’t get the chance to speak before he gestured with a hoof, already figuring what was on my mind.

I struggled to my hooves and slowly staggered my way in the direction he had indicated.

Starlight was sitting almost a hundred feet from camp when I found her. She was staring down at her PipBuck, her hoof resting gently atop it. She remained like that until she noticed my approach, her hoof slipping away as she looked back at me.

I drew up beside her. Despite my fatigue and the relentless worry that refused to leave my mind, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, looking back to her PipBuck. “Just thinking.”

I sat beside her with a quiet groan. “Oof… about what?”

“This,” she said, lifting her PipBuck a fraction before lowering it again. “And everything else I have, and us, and… yeah, pretty much everything.”

I grunted softly. “Sounds familiar,” I said, reaching up to habitually rub at my eyes. “I was so caught up thinking about everything that I hardly slept.”

“Yeah,” Starlight said, slowly nodding. “It’s just… we almost lost everything there. I mean, I’ve almost died a few times now, but this…”

I nodded and reached out a leg, gently looping a foreleg around her shoulders.

“Shit, we didn’t even know,” she continued. “We could have been stuck there the rest of our lives and not even known it. And…” She turned her PipBuck slightly, her hoof once again touching beside the screen. “And they took my PipBuck, and my Lancer, and… a-and I didn’t even remember them. I just… I forgot…”

Her breath caught, tears welling up in her eyes, but she fought them back. I gave a reassuring squeeze.

She sniffled, wiping at her eyes. “Just… the more I think on what those changelings did, the more… scared I am. These are all I’ve got from my mom, and I almost forgot them! It’s like I almost forgot her.” She shuddered, leaning into me, her eyes fixated on her PipBuck. My own concerns felt a little small at that moment.

“...Sorry,” she said, her voice raw. “It’s just, everything’s going to crap and I don’t have a clue what to do about it.” She paused, a frown touching her expression. “You know how when we met, I was working as a guard for that caravan?”

I nodded, thinking back to the ill-fated group.

“I was there because, you know… I wanted to protect ponies. I thought it was something my mom could be proud of.”

I could see where that thought was going, and gave another squeeze.

She let her forehooves fall, looking out across the rolling terrain. “How many ponies were in Serenity?”

My ears drooped. “Dozens. Some zebras and griffins, too.”

“Dozens,” she echoed. “Just as clueless as we were. And who even knows what Serenity is going to do next? How much worse...” She fell silent again, as if deep in thought. After several more seconds, she slowly drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “...I wish I was more like my mom. She always had a plan, knew exactly what to do. Hell, she recorded a message for me years before I was born. I don’t have that kind of… I dunno, foresight, whatever.”

“It’s a difficult situation,” I said, nodding. “Though to be fair, looking like you know what you’re doing in a difficult situation is often as simple as remaining calm and level headed when you have no idea what to do.”

Starlight was still and silent for several long seconds. I had just started to worry that I had offended her when the corner of her mouth crept up a hair, followed by the soft exhale of an almost-silent chuckle. “Okay, I know you’re trying to cheer me up in your weird buggy way, but did you seriously just say my mom had no idea what she was doing?”

I replied with a soft chuckle. “I’m saying that, from what I’ve heard from you, she knew exactly what she was doing.” I smiled. “Even when she didn’t.”

She gave a slightly more audible chuckle, and pushed my side lightly with her shoulder. “Thanks, I think.”

The smile slowly slipped away, until she was staring silently at her hooves.

“So… I guess the first part of that would be moving on instead of just sitting here moping, huh?”

I nodded again. “It’s a start, which is better than doing nothing. We’ve got a lot of traveling to do. That means a lot of time to think.”

“Wonderful,” she grunted, then heaved a deep sigh. “Sorry. Done moping. You think you’ll come up with something?”

I resisted the urge to grunt, myself. “Maybe. I’ll certainly be thinking about it the whole time.”

She stopped and looked at me, really looked at me, as if she had just realized that I had been a part of the conversation. “...Yeah, I guess you would be, huh?”

“Yeah.” I forced a wry, half-hearted smile. “Like I said, it’s a difficult situation.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. We stood in awkward silence for a few more seconds. “I guess we should get going.”

“Probably.”

We returned to our tiny camp. Minutes later, we climbed into the motorwagon. I had the back seat to myself. I strapped myself in, and Starlight started driving.

Despite the jostling, I fell asleep within minutes.

The motorwagon tore across the wasteland.

I could easily fly faster than it, but I lacked the endurance of the tireless machine. As such, it traversed the barren land more swiftly than I could have done by wing, and far faster than my land-bound companions could have managed. Miles rolled by as the vehicle creaked and groaned and rattled, leaving a long trail of dust drifting away behind us.

After my nap, I spent most of the time sitting silently in the back seat, gazing out the narrow gap in the armor beside me. For most of the trip, I was far too lost in thought to register the landscape passing by.

For all my thinking, I had come up with nothing. I slumped against the side of the vehicle, continuing to stare without really seeing, thinking without reaching any conclusions. I know Dusty and Starlight had both tried to strike up conversations, though that information barely registered with me at the time. I think I might have offered a few half-hearted replies, but I couldn’t tell you now what they had been. It seemed so unimportant at the time.

The only thing that did register was information that had some significant importance. In this case, it was Starlight during our short stop for lunch, when she checked on the power in the motorwagon’s spark batteries. They’d been fully charged when we took it from Serenity, and according to Starlight, should hold enough charge for two more days of operation. The spark packs we had in the cargo bay would probably be enough for a full charge, perhaps with a bit spare. Dusty mentioned wishing for a spark generator.

Then we were driving again.

The evening proved no more productive than the morning. Ideas formed, only to be immediately discarded. By the time the skies started to darken with the onset of night, I was probably spending more time mentally grumbling than I was on anything useful.

I mostly tuned out what happened around me as we settled in for the night. I know Starlight laid out her bedroll beside mine. I also know Sickle sat on top of Dusty; her improved health seemed to have enlarged her already significant libido, and further cemented my desire to tune out everything around me.

As we settled in for the night, I tried to comfort myself that we were at least making progress towards finding the remains of my hive. My mood led me to note “if they are still alive” with an extra helping of cynicism.

It wasn’t the best note to go to sleep on.

It was still dark when I woke, and Starlight was gone once again.

I could see the lump of Dusty and Sickle through the darkness, sleeping a few yards away, which meant Starlight must be on watch. Normally, that would have been the end of it. I would have closed my eyes and eventually drifted off again.

Instead, I heard the sound of her voice, barely carrying through the still night air. She was talking.

I lifted my head, looking to the nearby lump, just to make sure. Sure enough, that was Dusty half-hidden under Sickle’s foreleg and thoroughly dwarfed by the larger mare.

Which raised the question: who was Starlight talking to?

Thoughts of sleep were forgotten as I pushed aside my thin blanket. I quietly made my way toward the faint sounds of Starlight’s voice, my ears perked alertly to capture any sound, my eyes plucking details out of the darkness of night under the cloud cover.

I found Starlight kicked back atop a rock a short distance away, close enough to watch over our camp--at least, as much as pony eyes could do in that darkness--without disturbing our sleep. The soft glow of her PipBuck underlit her face with green. She was speaking into it.

“...was pretty impressive. But, well, it’s more than that. She’s helped me a lot. This last… what has it been, like, two months?” A pause as she pressed buttons. “Wow. Forty days. Heh, it’s been pretty crazy. But, yeah, I don’t think I would have gotten through it without her. I mean, she can be kinda weird at times, but, you know, ancient changeling super-spy. It’d be weird if it wasn’t weird. But she’s… she’s nice.”

I paused by a scraggly bush, watching and listening intently, and not daring to make a sound.

“It’s almost inspirational, you know? All these horrible things she has to deal with, but she’s still always there to help. She’s nice, and she’s smart, and she’s really good at what she does. She’s an amazing friend.” A long pause. “Yeah, I don’t know what other ponies will think of changelings, but Whisper’s a good one.”

Another pause. “...She’s also a nosy little sneak that likes to eavesdrop on ponies.” Her head turned, shooting a look of mock disapproval in my direction, though the look was spoiled by her smirk.

I winced, then slowly stepped out from behind the bush, giving an awkward and embarrassed smile, despite my concern over the situation.

Starlight held her smirk for a second before turning back to her PipBuck. “Anyway, I guess that’s a good start. I’ll have to record some more next time. So, until then… goodnight.”

She pressed a button on her PipBuck, a faint click sounding in the night. With that concluded, I spoke up.

“What was that?”

She gave a soft chuckle and shrugged. “I dunno. It’s silly.”

I continued to slowly approach, trying to force myself to relax. At least I kept my voice level. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” she said, leaning her head back. “...I was thinking of my mom, you know, because of all that stuff earlier. I got thinking about my PipBuck, and the recordings she made for me, and I just thought I should record something. You know, leave something of me there.”

She gently stroked a hoof along her PipBuck, then shrugged. “I tried doing like she did, but, I dunno, it didn’t feel right. Not like wrong, just… maybe a little cheesy, I guess? I couldn’t do it like she could. I couldn’t really figure out what to say, but I wanted to record something, so I figured, just start talking, see what happens. I guess it kinda turned into a diary pretty quickly.”

“A diary?” Of course that’s what she was doing. I let out a silent sigh, relaxing, though I did my best to hide my reaction.

“Yeah,” she said, setting her hoof down and leaning back. “Just kinda going over things, talking about what happened, you guys, stuff like that. I dunno, might just delete the whole thing later, or try recording it again a little more planned-out like, but…” She cracked a smile. “I think it helped. Like I feel better, just recording all that. Kinda like… I’m not my mom, but I’m doing my own thing, right?”

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said, stopping beside her rock. “And talking about things is a good way to deal with them.”

“Yeah,” she said again, then fell silent in thought. Eventually, she turned to me. Her expression had turned serious, maybe even concerned. “Maybe you should do that, too.”

“What?” I raised a brow questioningly. “A diary? I’ve never really seen the point. Besides, it’s kind of a bad idea for an Infiltrator to keep records of all their actions. Maybe in a secure location like the hive, but not a PipBuck anypony could take from me.”

She fidgeted a little, looking away for a moment before turning back. “I don’t really mean like that, just… I’ve been thinking…”

I frowned a little. Something about that seemed ominous. “About what?”

“Wellll…” She paused, biting her lip, before finally speaking. “This whole Serenity thing. Ponies have no idea what’s coming. They’re never going to see it before it’s too late, unless…” She must have seen my ears drooping, because she quickly added, “And I know, the whole secrecy thing helps you, too, but… I mean, ‘ending the reign of ponies?’ How many are going to suffer because of that?”

I sighed and sat down, slowly shaking my head. “I know, but… it’s not just me. It’s hopefully not just me. If there’s any more of my hive out there, any decision I make will affect them, too. I can’t just do that to them.”

“And what if Serenity takes over?” Starlight asked.

My ears were already hanging low. I felt like curling up in myself, but I didn’t speak.

“And how much worse is it going to be for your hive,” Starlight continued, “if all that ponies know about changelings comes from Serenity?”

“It’ll be bad,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” she said. “So… maybe it’d be better if you were the one to tell ponies about all that.”

“Look, I… I know. I’m trying to figure out some way of helping everyone, but… I don’t know how. Ponies…” I sighed. “...Yeah, they probably need to know. About Serenity, anyway. I just don’t know if that’s going to help.”

We fell silent for several long seconds before I added, “I’ll think about it. We’ve got until we’re done with Baltimare before it matters. I’ll… have something by then.

She slowly nodded, and after another moment of silence, glanced to her PipBuck. “I’ve got another half-hour on my watch. Get some more sleep, I’ll wake you up when it’s time.”

“I might as well take over now. You’ve got to drive. I’ll just take a nap in the back again.” I heaved a deep sigh. “Besides, I don’t think I could get back to sleep before you’d be waking me up again.”

Starlight slid down from the rock and stepped up to me, her expression concerned. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.”

She slipped in, wrapping me in a tight hug. We held that for a couple seconds before she drew back, her face passing right before mine, and kissed me softly on the mouth.

Between the weight on my mind and the unexpected action, I didn’t have the time to return the gesture before she was drawing back again. She looked to me with a soft, almost sad smile. “See you in the morning.”

“See you,” I weakly echoed.

She slipped by me, slowly picking her way back to the camp. I watched her go, until she settled into the camp itself. Then I turned, wings fluttering as I lifted up, landing atop the rock she had just vacated. I rolled to my side, laid down, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The night was seemingly empty, leaving me with nothing but my own thoughts, which was little comfort. I simply lay there, eyes scanning out across the desolate and uneventful landscape, barely visible even with my night-adapted eyes.

Guard duty was always dull, but this was by far the worst it had ever been.

I made the mistake of checking the clock on Emerald’s PipBuck. Only half an hour had passed. I suppressed a sigh and laid my head back. One fifth of the way there.

A couple minutes later, I raised the PipBuck again. I stared at the screen for a long time, my thoughts stuck in a formless haze of indecision.

I could come up with so many arguments for or against it, but to tell the truth, the deciding factor was that I simply didn’t have anything better to do.

I lethargically pressed a few buttons, creating and naming a new directory, and starting up a new audio file. The final press started the recording, and then… nothing.

I stared at the timer slowly counting up as I tried to come up with what to say. It was at thirty seconds when I finally managed to come up with something. “...Dear diary? Ugh, no.” My hoof stabbed at a button, ending the recording, and I quickly deleted the aborted attempt.

Soon I had a fresh file. Once again, I watched the time slowly work its way higher and higher. It got to two minutes before I stopped it again. Again, I started over.

This time, I just stared at the screen, the file waiting for me. I stared, and thought, trying to figure out where to even begin. Finally, reluctantly, I pressed the button to start recording.

“Well… I suppose if I have to start somewhere, it would be with the day I was... reborn.”

So that’s how I came to start making these recordings. A simple, reluctant tale recorded on my PipBuck in the middle of the dark and silent night. I didn’t do it all at once, of course. I didn’t even finish my first day in the Wasteland during that watch, and I ended up going back to touch-up some parts later on, but I got the bulk of it down.

There I was, stuck in a bad situation that was only likely to get worse, feeling lost, confused, and maybe even a little depressed, and I was re-telling what was probably the single worst moment of my life.

And you know what?

It helped.

Recalling how all of this started highlighted a perspective that I had allowed to slip away into obscurity but which seemed particularly relevant now. It was the perspective of facing some monumental challenge that I felt too small to handle. While that first recording hadn’t gotten past the first day, it sent me thinking on the day that followed; my brutal first introduction to the horrors of the Wasteland.

I had been practically helpless. I had little idea of where I was going. I had only enough love to survive a few days. I had no way to protect myself and nearly ran myself to death trying to flee a band of homicidal psychopaths.

Starlight saved my life.

She gave me a source of love to stave off the hunger. She gave me knowledge of the Wasteland. She gave me a measure of protection, strength, and versatility.

With another pony at my side, I could survive in the Wasteland. The two of us together were stronger than either of us alone.

Then two became three. With Dusty, we could thrive in the Wasteland.

Then three became four. With Sickle, we wiped out multiple raider gangs, ones far exceeding the group that had sent Starlight and myself fleeing for our lives.

Now there was a new threat looming. A threat vastly beyond us, one great enough that it was hard to even conceptualize of how to deal with it. One that might put every pony and changeling in danger. One that knew all about us, and had every reason to destroy us. The four of us wouldn’t survive Serenity.

But what about five?

And if not five, how about six? Seven? Eight?

With enough friends and allies, any threat becomes that much smaller.

Of course, Dusty was right; it wasn’t that simple. We had a distinct lack of allies to call upon. The largest settlement in the region had a bounty out for us. The settlements that were friendly to us would probably be eager to help their fellow pony, but be quite short on the resources to do so directly. This didn’t change any of that.

But it did highlight that this wasn’t some insurmountable challenge. It was simply a challenge we could not currently face. That could change.

Especially if we were to, say, find an ancient facility holding a group of experienced pre-war changelings in suspended animation.

Now that was a cheering thought.

The next day was spent traveling at a much more sedate rate.

We came across the first clumps of scraggly trees barely an hour after dawn. Another hour later, and the terrain had changed completely. We came rolling down into a valley to the sight of trees, clustered densely around a thin, muddy creek. Grass dotted the slopes, often yellow or faded, but still clinging to life in the rocky earth. As we followed the narrow ribbon of water, more spots of green stood out.

An hour later, we stopped. Green filled the horizon in a tangle, wild to a degree I had never seen before the megaspells. Plants grew everywhere, and though they often looked twisted and sinister, perhaps even warped by the magical energies of the megaspells, they were still green and alive. Long stretches of water crisscrossed through the foliage, splitting up the land into isthmuses and islands and producing a maze of water and plant-life.

According to our PipBucks, we had reached the edge of the Hayseed Swamps.

We spent most of the day driving along the edge of the wetlands, searching out the best route. Dusty spent most of his time with his nose to his PipBuck, navigating for Starlight as she slowly picked her way through the dense terrain. Several times we turned around, driving back a few miles to try a new route.

“We want to drive as far as we can get,” Dusty said, when Sickle inevitably protested turning around yet again. “A single hour of driving might be worth a whole day of travel on hoof.”

As evening arrived, we rolled along a low ridge that protruded out across the swamp like a peninsula. Starlight drove until we were well below the canopy, stopping in a patch of rocky ground. Dusty said it would be a good place to conceal the motorwagon.

We settled in for the night. Starlight laid her bedroll out near me, likely expecting me to lay my own beside hers, as usual, but I didn’t. Instead, I surprised her by lying down with her, snuggling in close and nuzzling into her chest. She was tense at first, caught off-guard and likely a little self-conscious, but she relaxed, gently resting a foreleg across my shoulders and tucking her head in close against mine.

In the morning, we started to pack.

“This is going to be a long trip,” Dusty warned as we gathered around the motorwagon’s cargo bed. “The terrain is rough, line of sight is short, and you can bet there’s going to be wildlife. We’ve got PipBucks, so at least nothing will sneak up on us, but we’ll have to stay alert.”

He lifted his foreleg, undoing the flap covering his PipBuck so we could see the screen. He showed the map of the swamps ahead of us, and beyond it, our destination. “We’re looking at probably a week to get through to Baltimare, maybe more. Worse, we have no idea what we’re going to find there. It could be completely intact, or just a glowing crater infested with raiders and ghouls. We don’t know if there’s going to be any safe-haven out there, much less any place to get supplies.

“The good news is, there’s plenty of water for the taking. I’ve got a little canteen filter. It’s not perfect, but it’ll get the worst crap out of the water. We might even luck out and kill some wildlife we can cook up. Starlight, you used to be a hunter, right?”

“Yep,” Starlight said with a quick nod. “I can clean and cook anything we come across.”

“Good,” Dusty said. “Hopefully we can make use of that, but we can’t count on it, and I don’t plan on testing whether the plants are as poisonous as everypony says. Search through the food we’ve got, grab the most calorie-dense foods you can find. Plan for at least three weeks worth, four if you can carry it. That takes priority over everything, even extra ammo.”

By the time we were done, I felt like a pack-mule. My saddlebags were about ready to burst. We’d managed to cram more than half of the food we had stockpiled into our bags. We started with dense foods, mostly oats and other grains, with a few happy finds like some tins of nuts, a package of dried fruit, and even some jars of peanut butter. Those ran out quickly, and soon we were back to the same canned and packaged food we’d been eating the whole time. The weight grew rapidly.

Even more troubling was how curtailed the rest of my gear was. At least the PipBuck served every portable-terminal need I would have, so the only other mission-critical gear was my collection of cables and one of the mini-toolkits. Almost everything else got left behind, including, much to my unease, the datastore and all but one of the love crystals my queen had left for me. That one stayed with me; it was purely sentimental, but small enough that I figured it would make no difference.

Most of the remaining weight was made up by my weapons and ammunition. I was even tempted to leave my pistol behind to save weight, but it was too valuable of a tool to go without; I kept it strapped on, with its two spare magazines, and made up the weight by shedding explosives until I carried only a pair of grenades and a single explosive charge, plus the detonator and some spare blasting caps. I even went light on rifle ammo, with only a hoofful of loose rounds to complement the loaded magazines.

It was by no means an insignificant loadout, but I still found myself concerned at the prospect of possibly going for weeks without being able to rearm. I had learned well just how quickly ammunition could go in a firefight. Hopefully we wouldn’t need it, and if we did, hopefully whatever we needed it for would provide us with alternate equipment to get us through whatever came next.

I hefted my bags, testing the balance. After a moment’s consideration, I called up my magic. In a flash of green, I turned into a pony, broadly similar to my typical disguise but with additional muscle mass, particularly in the legs and back. Mindful of the terrain we would be passing through, I also shortened my mane and tail, styling them much like Starlight’s.

I shrugged at my bags, feeling the weight shift much more comfortably. Then I looked over to see Starlight weighed down by her own bags.

“You are such a little cheater,” she said with a poorly hidden smirk.

I merely grinned in reply.

“Don’t get too attached to that form,” Dusty said. “I want to make use of those wings. We’ve got the PipBucks for general navigation, but the foliage is going to cut sightlines to nothing. If we can get you up and scouting for us, it should make it easier to find a good path through here.”

My grin vanished, and I shrugged my shoulders to shake my packs. “You expect me to go flying with all this?”

“Short jaunts,” Dusty said. “You can leave the packs on the ground. We’ll just need you to pop up every mile or so to get a good eye on the area around us.”

I considered it a moment, and finally nodded. “Okay, I can do that.” It still meant more work for me, but I could hardly argue against the advantages. I was the only one of us who could fly, so of course I would get the job that required flying. Sensible enough, and it took only a tiny bit of love to add wings to my current form. I also returned to the gear I had stowed in the motorwagon, retrieving my binoculars.

Dusty took a bit of extra time to camouflage the motorwagon. An army-green tarp formed the base, and he gathered sticks, leaves, and vines to layer over it. He noted that most of them would wilt before we got back, but they would at least break up the silhouette.

With that, we set off.

The swamps stretched on, seemingly without end. My brief flights showed me a sea of twisted green stretching off to the horizon, broken up by tiny hills and larger lakes.

Below the canopy, we traced our way through narrow strips of dry land. Sickle ended up leading the way, plowing straight through any brush and trampling a path for the rest of us to follow. It started drizzling on the third day, and would continue off and on for the rest of our journey. My PipBuck clicked frequently, warning of the trace amounts of radiation carried in the rain that fell on us, or the minute amounts in the poorly-filtered water we drank. It was minor, small enough to not be a concern over our journey, but enough that we might want to find some anti-radiation medicine when we had the chance.

And then the red pips showed up on our E.F.S. displays.

Dusty organized us quickly. Starlight came forward, just behind Sickle, with her Lancer and Recharger at the ready. Dusty and I took up the rear, protecting their flanks, and hoping we wouldn’t need to use our limited supply of ammunition.

A minute later, a trio of dark, insectoid forms flew out from the brush just twenty feet from us.

My first thought was that these were changelings we were seeing, but even as Sickle roared and lunged forward, I realized they were not. They were bloated, massive flies, almost as large as a pony’s head.

Sickle smashed one with a kick of her hooves, and flashes of blue dazzled my vision as Starlight’s S.A.T.S.-aided shots plucked the other two out of the air. The whole encounter was over in a split second. The only sound that followed was the echo of the shots and the sizzle of a charred bug lying half-submerged in the shallow water.

Scenes like that repeated themselves endlessly over the next few days. We were constantly on-edge, our eyes glued to our E.F.S., waiting for the next attack. There were more of the strange bugs--some sort of mutated parasprite, according to Dusty--as well as a wild radhog, a badly decayed ghoul, some mutated plants that tried to eat Sickle, and a cluster of mutant vines that tried to entangle and crush her to death, only to find that their intended victim was stronger than them.

At least the radhog gave us some fresh meat to stretch out our supplies.

Guard duty, which had been so uneventful over all the time we had traveled with Dusty, now became a necessity. Instead of relaxing while keeping an eye out, we spent the whole time sweeping our view around, waiting for red pips to show up and flicking on the flashlight once they had. I couldn’t even work on my recordings.

While the swamps seemed quieter after dark, only a single night passed without us waking to the sounds of gunfire. Even accounting for the amount of ground we covered, it seemed like an impossible number of predatory creatures.

It was like that for an entire, grueling, nerve-destroying week.

Then it got worse.

As we neared the coast, dry land had become more and more scarce, and our progress slowed even further. There were times we stopped for an hour while I flew around, trying to find a way for my companions to proceed. Any thoughts of swimming were adequately quashed when something several times the size of a pony quietly cut through the water, the jagged shapes across its back sending out ripples before disappearing beneath the surface once again. Once the ripples had faded, the only sign of its presence was the red pip in our E.F.S.

It followed us.

Throughout the day, as our dry paths narrowed, it lurked at the edge of detection. Every time we thought it was gone, that red pip would return a few minutes later, in a different direction.

I was convinced it was hunting us.

Then, late in the evening, it appeared in front of us.

The lone path I had found us crossed a narrow isthmus of dry land, only twenty feet across and obscured with vines and brush. The water beside it was choked with reeds, pond-scum, and even a fallen tree. If we hadn’t known to look, we might have not seen the pair of eyes lurking just above the surface, surrounded by jagged scales.

“It’s a cragadile,” I said.

Dusty had his rifle leveled at the tiny part of the creature that was visible to us. “What in Tartarus is a cragadile?”

“A big aquatic lizard, basically,” I said. “Tough hide, predatory, lives in swamps and rivers.”

“Well it can just stay in the water,” Sickle said as she strode forward.

“Sickle, wait!” I called out, stumbling after her. “They’re still big and--”

Of course Sickle hadn’t stopped. The creature judged that she was close enough, and surged forward. Immediately, everything was wrong. It didn’t run low to the ground to snap at her. The water seemed to explode as it surged upwards on powerful hind-legs, terrible claws flashing as it lunged forward.

The air split like a thunderclap as a dazzling line of red struck the creature in the side. It stumbled, its side torn up and smoldering.

Then it regained its balance, raising its claws again. Granted, it had been a glancing blow, but it had shaken off a hit from Starlight’s Lancer and kept coming.

Sickle met it mid-windup, ducking her head to slam her helm’s horn into the creature’s chest. It grabbed at her with its huge foreclaws, and Sickle bellowed out. Then they were both on the ground, twisting and thrashing.

Starlight finished reloading her Lancer and leveled it, but had to hold her fire. Any miscalculation would strike Sickle, instead.

Blood was starting to flow heavily, and Sickle was cursing. They rolled over several times as the creature tried to haul her back into the water, but Sickle fought back. One of her forelegs rose and plunged down, striking at the creature’s side again and again. By the second strike, her hoof-blades came back bloody.

The pseudo-cragadile quickly lost strength as she continued to stab. When the claws finally fell from Sickle’s side, she reared back, jerking the blade-like horn from the creature’s chest. She snarled incoherent obscenities as she placed one hoof on its chest, and started stabbing and hacking at its neck. Blood ran down her sides; the creature’s claws had pierced through her armor, leaving deep rents in the steel.

“Whisper.” Dusty’s commanding voice drew my attention away. He stood beside me, but facing our rear, his rifle raised and his eyes alert. “Get airborne. Find us high-ground for the night.”

“Okay,” I said as I shrugged off my packs, then glanced back. There were two red marks on my E.F.S. “Are those--”

“Yes,” he replied. “One by the tree-roots, one by that thick patch of reeds.”

Looking closely, I could see the eyes protruding over the surface some thirty yards away, narrowed and staring at us. They were waiting, evaluating.

I found us a small hill that put a small distance between us and the water. Dusty took the time to clean and dress the wounds across Sickle’s sides.

“I’ve had a lot worse,” Sickle grumbled, not even flinching as Dusty sutured one of the deeper cuts.

“Claws, swamp-gunk, and who knows what else,” Dusty had said. “You might be big and tough and stubborn as all hell, but it’d be a pretty sad end to go out to an infection.”

She grunted, as if agreeing. When Dusty was done, he roamed around our campsite, cutting away brush to open our sightlines. Sickle, meanwhile, spent a short time pounding out the damage to her armor before kicking back to sleep, using the mutated cragadile’s head for a pillow.

When Starlight woke me for my turn at watch, she met me with a serious look, and silently pressed her Lancer into my hooves. I nodded.

That night was spent looking in every direction at once.

The red pip appeared, and I flicked on the flashlight. The beam seemed feeble in the oppressive darkness that surrounded us, and illuminated only the closest trees. I couldn’t see whatever lurked out there.

I glanced around, sweeping my E.F.S. around to make sure nothing was approaching from some other direction.

A minute later, the red pip disappeared. I turned off the light once more.

Some time later, the pip would return, and the cycle repeated again.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so happy for the muted gray glow of a Wasteland sunrise as I was that morning.

A few hours after dawn, as I scouted the terrain ahead, I saw the ocean.

We pressed on, eager to finally be near our destination and away from the waterways, with their lurking dangers that continued to trail after us. I think Sickle was the only one not concerned; she still carried the creature’s severed head on her back, a gruesome trophy and, if we were very lucky, a warning to dissuade any further attempts.

The smell of salt grew in the air as we traveled.

That afternoon, we emerged from the foliage into a narrow strip of sand, filled not with plants but with the great, skeletal remains of ancient ships. Most had rusted away to scrap, or had perhaps been stripped for salvage. Only one, a warship, remained upright and relatively intact. The small turrets had been stripped bare. Only the larger cannons remained, though they looked like they had rusted to uselessness long ago.

But what really caught my attention, as we cautiously moved past those great hulks, was the wreckage of smaller boats. Tiny things, completely unsuited for long trips on the sea, and incredibly simple; plain metal troughs with an engine at one end and a ramp opening at the other end.

Dusty caught my look of curiosity. “What are they?”

“Landing craft,” I said. “Which is a little odd. I thought Equestria stopped using them after the Raptors entered service, but this looks like they were conducting a landing. Perhaps some sort of exercise?”

“Unless these are zebra boats,” Dusty pointed out. “Did they use anything like these?”

“That would have made the news for sure,” I said as we walked by one of the craft in question, canted slightly in the shallows and eaten through by rust. Any markings had long since been lost to the elements.

Passing a couple more landing craft and rounding a small, sandy ridge, we finally caught a glimpse of Baltimare.

The silhouettes of ancient towers broke the horizon like giant skeletons of the old world. I raised my binoculars, peering out at our destination. From that distance, still many miles away, I could just make out debris hanging from the tall structures. Thin strips hung between the towers, like great vines.

A giant bay lay between us and our destination, and around its rim, the tangled vegetation grew from flooded land, as if the end of the swamp and beginning of the ocean was more of a vague suggestion than a real, tangible thing. That continued right on to the city itself; what had once been streets were now water, leaving the towers that broke the surface as monolithic islands.

“What happened here?” I wondered aloud. I had expected burned-out buildings, but not a half-flooded city.

Dusty stepped up, scoping out the city with his own binoculars. “I wonder if the zebras hit it with a seismic megaspell? Something like Trotsen? Though I would’ve thought that would take down the towers.”

I merely grunted. For having been alive when they were created, I found I had fairly limited knowledge on the variety of megaspells that might have existed.

“This might complicate things,” Dusty noted. “Hopefully those offices you’re looking for are above the surface.”

“I can turn into something aquatic, if necessary,” I said, though I frowned as I said it. “Given the colorful wildlife we’ve already found in the water, I’d prefer to avoid that.”

Dusty gave a dry chuckle. “Well, we’ll know soon enough. We’re almost there.” He looked to me. “Find us a path.”

I nodded, slipped off my pack, and took to the air.

Progress was even slower from there. Almost everything was water, with few stretches of dry land to be found. Eventually, I guided us a bit further inland to a faint, plant-choked ridge that ran almost the whole way to Baltimare.

We were about three miles away from the city when I flew up to get one final view of the terrain ahead, hovering just above the canopy. It looked simple enough; simply follow this ridge all the way down, and a short trip across a narrow isthmus that connected to a portion of the city still above the surface.

It was only then that I caught glimpses of something out-of-place. In the chaotic tangle of wild plants, the geometric shape of straight edges caught my eye. I raised my binoculars, peering out at it.

Just visible between the trees was a palisade of decaying wood and rusted metal. I followed the line it suggested, catching glimpses of the structure through narrow gaps in the foliage. The roof of a crude building poked out beside a dead tree, gray and sagging. Then I saw the tower, simple and rickety. Inside, a pair of binoculars were pointed straight at me, clutched in the talons of a griffon.

For a long moment, nothing happened. I just hovered there, as if, by not moving, I might disappear.

Then the griffon moved one of its taloned hands from its binoculars and gave a slow, hesitant wave.

Uncertain of the situation and lacking any better idea of what to do, I gave a tentative wave of my own. Then I tucked my wings in, plunging below the canopy once again.

I landed heavily enough that Dusty immediately looked my way. “Trouble?”

“Not yet,” I said, before realizing how ominous that must have sounded when coupled with the speed of my return. I quickly clarified. “There’s a settlement ahead. Couldn’t see much, but they’ve got a griffon on watch, and they saw me. So, from here on, I’m a pegasus. Other than that, same cover story.”

Dusty arched an eyebrow. “Cover story?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Remember? Grew up on a farm, read lots of books, parents died, etcetera. Hmm. And all I knew about the Enclave is that they’re bad ponies. That should work.”

Starlight hummed. “So, like, were your parents from the Enclave, or did they always live here, or… or what?”

I started to quickly piece together a backstory, but within a few moments I realized the main problem with it: it was too much detail in too short of a time. “We’ll say my parents were pegasi, but let’s leave it at that. If they ask something about my past that isn’t already covered by my previous story, just say you never asked or direct them to me. Keeps things simple.”

“Assuming they’re not outright hostile,” Dusty said. “You saw a griffon, right? Just the one?”

“I could only see a watch tower and the outside of some walls,” I said. “Could be any number of ponies or anything else in the settlement.”

“I’m tempted to bypass it.” Dusty rolled his head to gesture to his bags. “We’ve got plenty of supplies to make the trip.”

“Except they know we’re out here,” Starlight said. “Besides, I could use a real bed for once.”

“And I could use a good fuck,” Sickle chimed in. “Since Dusty’s gone all super-prude again.”

“Somepony had to be on watch and un-distracted,” Dusty shot back. “And I’m not planning on walking into potential danger just because you want to have sex with half the Wasteland.”

“Only half?” Sickle said with a grin, followed by a chuckle. “And shit, Dusty, you really think anypony’s dumb enough to fuck with us?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Sickle laughed. “Yeah, and how many of those fuckers are still alive, huh? You worry too much.”

Eventually, it was settled that we’d at least approach the settlement and see if it looked friendly.

It was almost an hour later when we arrived. From just inside the treeline, our E.F.S. highlighted almost a dozen contacts, none of which were hostile. Poking forward a bit, we finally laid eyes on the decrepit little settlement.

The crude walls were in terrible disrepair, with rotting wooden poles crudely lashed together with rusty wire. A few places were reinforced with metal signs tied onto the poles. Many sections of the wall bore heavy scarring from blades or claws. It was hard to tell if the way the wall bowed and sagged was due to shoddy construction, the wear of elements, or from patching places where the wall had been breached.

The tower itself, a simple box lashed to a long-dead tree, was directly over the gate. The griffon I had seen from before was still up there, and was joined by a trio of zebras poking over the wall. All appeared armed, though only half of those arms were guns. One of the zebras held a spear, while the other carried a bow.

They saw us almost immediately as we stepped out from the trees. The griffon sat up a bit straighter, then raised her talons to wave. “Ho, there!” she called out, though the rifle leaned against the side of the tower shifted as her other hand gripped it. “Who the heck are you?”

“Travelers,” Dusty called back. “We--”

“Travelers?” the rifle-armed zebra cut in, his accent thick. “No pony travels here. Why have you come?”

The griffon frowned down at him for the interruption, but said nothing.

Dusty called out again. “That’s kind of why we’re here. I’d always heard nopony comes this way because of the swamps, so we thought the place might not have been scoured clean like everywhere else. Didn’t expect to find any folk out this way.”

“And we didn’t expect to see any travelers,” the zebra replied. “Are you telling us you came all the way through the swamps to get here?”

The bow-armed zebra had stiffened, then leaned over and urgently whispered to the rifle-armed one. They conferred a moment, casting glances our way.

“We did,” Dusty said. I noted that he hadn’t advanced any further. “It’s not the most friendly of places, but manageable with some caution.” He paused, looking down at the wall. “Looks like it’s pretty rough around here, too.”

The rifle-armed zebra turned his full attention back to us. “It is,” he said, his tone quite serious, and raised a hoof to point. “Metal pony. Is that the head of a swampclaw?”

Dusty opened his mouth to speak for her, but Sickle ignored him. “Is that what these fuckers are called? Then yeah, guess so. Bitch tried to claw me up, so I cut its fucking head off.”

The zebra stared at us silently, while the two beside him whispered to him, eyes wide and ears perked. Finally, the zebra who had been speaking to us relaxed, his rifle lowering to rest against the wall. “I think we might want to talk. Come in.”

“Thank you,” Dusty said, though he hesitated a moment before advancing.

The other two zebras continued to watch with a mixture of fear and excitement. The gate rattled and thumped as a pair of zebras, clearly visible through the gaps, unlatched and dragged it open. Up above, the griffon grinned happily. It was a little unnerving, but my E.F.S. ensured me that none of them were currently hostile.

I could see Dusty felt the same. Though he kept his posture mostly relaxed, even turning his head to look around, I noticed that his muzzle remained low, close to the grip of his rifle.

Beyond the gate were a meager hoofful of shacks, made from whatever scrap they had scrounged up and clustered around a muddy central clearing. By now, the entire place was easily within range of our PipBucks, which revealed maybe twenty beings living there. Many had turned out to see the visitors approaching the gates; thin, weary zebras, watching with wary eyes. Children peeked out through vacant doorways and past parents. A few of the adults carried melee weapons, mostly spears. Most were unarmed. Everything smelled of dampness and decaying wood.

Dusty continued to look around as we passed through the gate, but his expression had lost its hardness.

The griffon had started climbing down the ladder from the tower, her weapon slung across her back. I could see it clearly now, a crude but powerful-looking large-bore pipe gun. More interesting was the rifle belonging to the zebra who had been speaking to us. The zebra guard had hopped down from their platform, and as he approached, his rifle slung across his chest, I could see it was a zebra military rifle. It was old, patched up, and adorned with trinkets, but in apparently good condition.

The zebra in question stopped before Dusty, looking him square in the face for a second before sighing. His ears drooped a little as he raised a hoof, offering it to Dusty. “Welcome to Dawn,” he said. “...or what is left of it.”