Fallout Equestria: Homelands

By Somber

Chapter 16: Empty

“I will not rush off and do stupid things that get me or others killed.”

“Now your turn.”

“I will not rush off and do stupid things that get me or others killed.”

“Now together.”

“I will not rush off and do stupid things that get me or others killed,” Scotch and Skylord said in unison, their monotones matching perfectly as Charity stood over them. “How many times are you going to make us do this?” Scotch added as she frowned up at Charity.

“Until I’m sure you two aren’t going to rush off and do stupid things that get you or others killed. Namely me,” the unicorn filly said as she paced back and forth before them. “Now, one more time, and really sell it to me!”

“That’s enough,” Pythia said from the back of the Whiskey Express. “Scotch did what she did. He did what he did. It’s past. Rubbing their noses in it every time we camp won’t change anything.”

“It makes me feel better,” Charity scowled. “Since these communists refuse to pay their taxes.”

“You can’t tax for stupidity! You’re not even a country!” Scotch snapped.

“Blackjack paid her taxes!”

“Well, Blackjack was dumb!”

Charity stared at her sourly a moment. “Point,” she grumbled, then took a deep breath. “I just don’t want you to die and leave me being stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

“We’re not in nowhere,” Pythia said from her perch, “but we can see it from here.”

Scotch walked up to the tractor perched on the crest of a ridge, next to a large concrete platform half buried in dusty dunes. All around them were massive hills of sand covered in patches of yellow grass. Stray dust was imbedded in her mane and coat, and everything had the tang of salt, as if they were near the sea. Behind them rose tall brown mountains with broken tops, like jagged, decayed teeth sprouting from a giant misplaced jawbone. Just following the elevated concrete road had been a challenge, with dunes of dust piled up here and there. Occasionally they’d had to stop and shovel the silt to the side, letting the wind carry it away through the grass. It’d taken them a week to make it this far.

The Great Western Empty.

The dunes tapered off to a flat grayish tan plain that stretched out in all directions. There was no horizon, just a haze that seemed both near and far at the same time. A constant wind made snakes of dust dance over the ground before them, and in the distance ghostlike pillars twisted back and forth over the plain.

“The Great Western Empty (GWE) is the largest salt flat in the world, covering over one million square kilometers,” Majina read from an info-board display on the platform. Scotch frowned and joined her. The concrete platform was, she guessed, an observational platform. Rusted, salt encrusted telescopes pointed south next to displays. “Polished smooth by periodic rain and fine-grained silt erosion, the GWE is also the flattest surface in the world, with an average vertical deviation of less than half a meter.” There were faded pictures showing rain falling, the salt leveling out, and then wind polishing it smooth. “Receiving less than a centimeter of precipitation a year, is it also the driest desert in the world.”

“And we got to cross that?” Precious asked, jabbing a claw ahead of them.

“Well, we can go back the way we came, but that’ll just take us straight to Haimon and Riptide, both of whom want to kill us,” Pythia replied. “Or we can go three weeks west, take a pass and go into an area marked ‘dragon territory.’ There’s nothing east for a thousand kilometers. Not even a road.” She pointed a hoof. “Roam’s on the other side of that. We cross it, the Roaman Mountains, and we’ll be in the Capital Lowlands. After that, we try to find out where the Last Caesar’s personal shaman would be, and if they carried out the order to blind the Eye of the World.”

“Is that all?” Charity asked lightly, staring south into the empty with a sick expression. “Can we cross it?”

“I put a patch on that hole in the cylinder, but it’s not properly welded on,” Scotch said with a frown. “One good bump might cause it to delaminate. I constricted the pressure to that cylinder, but…” she sighed. “I don’t know. A million square kilometers of nothing?”

“Maybe they’re exaggerating. You know? Inflating the numbers? What’s the difference between a million square kilometers of flat and ten thousand square kilometers, right?” Majina asked with a nervous grin.

“Nine hundred and ninety-thousand square kilometers,” Precious answered.

“There’s a road,” Pythia said as she trotted over to another display. “Filling the Great Western Empty. The GWE Causeway was built in… hmmm… can’t make it out. At five hundred and fifty kilometers long in total, it connects the north and south edges of the Empty at Bridge Island, a rock that serves as a military weather station in the middle of the GWE.” She pointed to a grainy image of a black knob of stone in the middle of a white field. The GWE is also mined for salt, potash, gypsum, and gold.” Amid the glyphs were pictures of buildings built on stilts over long trenches carved in the sprawling flats.

“Gold?” Charity perked up at once. “Maybe this place isn’t all bad!”

Scotch walked to the next display. The sun had bleached it terribly, and the surface was despoiled by ancient graffiti. “Hazards of the Great Western Empty. Many travellers attempting to cross the GWE have become disoriented by the winds and obscuring dust, failing to carry enough water to reach the far side. Geomagnetic conditions have been known to cause disorientation in suck my dock–” She blinked, flushed, and peered at the glyphs, the last of which had been marred by vandals. “Okay. Um. It doesn’t actually say that.”

“I say we take our chances with dragons,” Precious said. “I mean, it has to be better than crossing that.” She gestured out at the faded illustration of the gargantuan salt flats.

The map of the Empty was roughly kidney shaped, with a longer, narrower western half and a wide, round eastern half. In between, where the salt flat was pinched, was the causeway leading to an island in the middle of the narrow. “Except that there’s no guarantee we’ll find enough coal to make it around. Or across,” Scotch said with a sick sense of dread. To salvage coal, they needed coal bunkers, and coal bunkers were rare enough in the affluent portions of the zebra lands proper, nevermind in the middle of nowhere. Twice they’d been forced to supplement their fuel with scavenged wood and sticks before finding an old abandoned inn with a coal bunker in the basement.

“Is there a town or anything on the map?” Scotch asked.

“There’s a mark on the north side of the causeway. Two crossed bones over a skull. I’m guessing that’s bad,” Pythia said, staring out into space and frowning. “What’s with all the shadows?” she muttered.

“Something wrong?”

“I’m not seeing us crossing the Empty. I can see futures where we’ve crossed it. We’re in Roam, but everything with us actually in the Empty is… just… gone.” The filly glowered at the salt flat. “I really don’t like this place, but every future of us going back has us getting caught.”

“What about dragons?” Precious asked. “If we go around.”

“We run out of fuel in five days and die of thirst in four,” she said, then stared at Precious. “After you eat us.”

Precious recoiled as if Pythia had struck her. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I would,” Skylord answered. “I mean, a corpse just rots if you don’t put it to use. Still, water’s water, and I doubt I’d get enough to–” Everyone was staring at him now. “What? I’m just saying that letting meat rot is a waste.” He clicked his beak. “Let me see that map!” he insisted, snatching the atlas away as everyone continued to consider his comment. “Bone Legion?” he said with a baffled look.

“You know the mark?” Majina asked. He nodded. “Who are they?”

He hesitated before answering. “They’re kinda a bunch of losers, actually. Not like the Blood or Irons. They lost their turf a century ago. They’re into a bunch of necromantic undead garbage. Not really useful against heavy artillery.”

“Are you going to have a problem with them?” Charity demanded.

“I’ve got no problem with Bones. I’ve never even met a Bone Legionnaire. They don’t get that far north,” he said, clacking his beak thoughtfully. “Whether or not they’ll have a problem with me is another story. Or all of us. For all I know they’ll just kill us all and reanimate our corpses for a song and dance number.”

“So we go in cautious and find out. Load up on coal. Get across,” Scotch summarized. Together, her friends trudged back to the road while the Great Western Empty waited.

A junkyard on the edge of the world. That’s what Scotch thought as they reached the northern edge of the causeway. She’d expected some kind of raised road, but all that met her eye was a line of large concrete cylinders five meters tall, spaced what she thought was a hundred meters apart stretching like a dotted line into the void. At the north edge of it, at the mouth of a muddy spring that trickled from the sandy hills, was a massive expanse of metallic decay. Rusting steam tractors. Rusting trains. Rusting cars. Rusting tracks. Rusting containers. What couldn’t rust was left faded by salt and warped by sun. Broken glass gleamed in the midday glare like fallen stars amid the waste.

And there were bodies. Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. Some lay draped over the containers, their hides encrusted with a layer of pale dust. Others were little more than heaps of bone. Some had been piled up in stacks while others lay as solitary mounds. One train car, inexplicably upended like a monolith had a skull and bones cut out of the metal making up its roof. Under it were a series of glyphs: “In death we serve.”

“Okay, this is right up there with Greengap for creepy,” Precious muttered as they pockety-coughed through the jumbled mess. She stared at a skeleton with pieces of metal tied to its ivory form. “I swear we’re being watched.”

Perhaps nothing was more disturbing than a large, faded red sign that declared ‘gift shop’ and a large arrow pointing at a squat structure where junkyard ended and causeway began. A neon ‘open’ glyph illuminated one window. Her E.F.S. didn’t have any bars on it, but she shared Precious’s apprehension. A creaking wind turbine didn’t do anything to settle her nerves with its regular ‘whoosh whoosh’ as the blades turned in the wind.

The gift shop was half an aged building, and half a dozen or so rusting containers converted into domiciles around one side, making a wind break. Then she spotted them. The Bone Legionnaires sat on their asses in the lee of building, their coats so coated with dust and salt that she couldn’t tell their tribe. Their barding appeared strapped together from scraps that would embarrass your typical raider. All of them appeared thin and hungry.

Yet, her E.F.S. was yellow. They chuckled and gave brown-stained grins, but didn’t make a move as they pulled up.

The door to the gift shop slammed open and out stepped the strangest creature that Scotch had ever seen. Its body was largely leonine, but it possessed a somewhat ponyish face with golden cat’s eyes. Blood red hair was pulled back into a long ponytail. A pair of wings sprouted from its shoulders. It was also easily twice the size of an adult pony.

“Welcome!” the lanky creature greeted warmly. “Welcome to the Great Western Empty Gift Shop! It’s been awhile since we’ve had travelers from the north.” Bowing before them, it continued, “I’m Asheput. It’s so nice to make your acquaintance.”

“Uhhh…” Scotch blinked slowly. This was getting away from Greengap creepy to a new kind of baffling weird. “Nice ta… meet you?”

“Ohh, it’s a sphinx!” Majina gasped. “I thought you were extinct.”

The creature looked at Majina a moment with an inscrutable expression, before giving a taut smile. “Oh, hardly. There’s some of us still around,” Asheput replied with a roll of her golden eyes. “I’m the proprietor of this establishment. Don’t mind the Bonies. They just hang around here. Good for dealing with troublemakers. Come in! We always love guests in the gift shop.”

“Okay,” Scotch said as they slowly climbed out of the wagon as the sphynx returned inside. “What’s a sphinx?” she asked in a whisper.

“They’re… um… part lion and part zebra and part eagle. Oh, and they live a really long time! Um… and I think they like riddles? There’s a few stories with them, but I thought they were long gone,” Majina said in a rush. “Oh. Um. And they tear people apart a lot. Apparently. When they can’t answer a riddle.”

“See, that’s the really important info! No riddles!” Charity admonished. “And no shooting!” she barked at Skylord.

“Honestly, I’d rather not waste the bullets,” he muttered, tugging at the chains binding him.

“Let’s see what crap she’s selling,” Charity muttered, stepping forward and into the gift shop. Scotch followed her, not sure what kind of crap to expect.

Surprisingly, the answer was everything.

Shelves of stuff. Racks of clothes. Bins of bullets. The sphynx trotted behind the counter and flopped down on a pile of a half dozen mattresses next to an old-timey cash register. A sign overhead read ‘1 imperio and answer my riddle: 10 imperios.’ Behind her, inside a glass case, were dozens of various weapons. All the other walls were lined with bits of strange salvage and sepia photographs in glass frames.

“I am having conflicting feelings about this,” Charity muttered.

“Sweet! They got clothes and stuff for dealing with all that dust and salt,” Majina gushed as she rushed over towards a stand where white cotton robes hung.

“Food!” Precious cried out, rushing towards a stand marked ‘Jerky’.

Pythia didn’t say anything, but trotted over towards a stand marked ‘maps’.

“Huh,” Skylord said before making his way towards the wooden crates of ammo.

Charity, however, just glared at the sphinx. “Okay. Answer my riddle. How?” she demanded, waving a hoof at the plenty around them.

“Well, you see little pony, people stop here and sell me things and I offer others to buy them–”

“Don’t give me that! Your location is literally on the edge of nowhere! You’ve got a generator, bullets, and food! How is it that someone hasn’t tried to take all this away from you? At the very least you have to eat!” Charity countered hotly, then balked. “Don’t you?”

“I like to eat, but I am evolved beyond the need to.” Asheput replied, grinning and flashing her bright and sharp teeth before hiding them behind a smug smile. “I also benefit from a combination of greatly diminished mortality coupled with a beneficial relationship with the Bone Legion. They find a variety of goods for salvage and pay them to me in exchange for a safe residence.”

Precious had stuffed a chunk of jerky into her mouth and then froze. She immediately spat it out. “That’s zebra meat!” she gasped.

“Really? How can you tell?” Asheput asked with an arched brow.

“I- You–” Precious stammered. “That’s not important! Zebra meat isn’t food!”

“I beg to differ. Anything that’s not sphynx meat is food to me. However, you chewed on it. You bought it. One imperio,” Asheput extended a paw.

“I- But- It–” She looked to Charity. “Help me out here.”

“You chewed it. You bought it.”

Precious tugged out her string of gold coins on a wire and slid the last one off. “Goodbye, Goldie McShiney! You were always such a good and bright coin!” she wailed as she hugged it to her chest. “I’ll never forget you! Somehow the Dragonhoard Clan will survive.”

“You name your coins?” Majina asked, slightly uneasy.

“Of course,” Precious sniffed as she lifted the next coin on the strand. “This is Guilder Von Jingly, a foreign count trying to bribe his way into the Dragonhoard Clan.” Then the next. “And this is Tinkles the Scarred. See the scratch on his face? He got it in a duel with the coin patriarch Aruum Grande.” Now everyone was staring at her and she jabbed a claw at them. “Don’t you judge me!”

“Judge you?” Majina gushed with a grin. “Tell me more!”

“Tell us less. Pay,” Charity quipped back as Precious passed over her coin. Then she glanced over at Skylord, whose jaw worked to chew something. The spat out jerky was nowhere to be seen. Charity just stared at him, her lip curling as she shrank away from him.

“What?” he asked around a mouthful of meat.

“That was on the floor. In her mouth! And it’s zebra!” Charity said, shrinking away from him.

“Tasty too,” Skylord said as he set a box of rounds on the counter. “I’ll take these, and how much for one of those automatic pistols? There’s no way I’m strapping a battle saddle over these stupid chains.” He reached up and gave the links a yank. As Scotch watched, it seemed to tighten on his frame.

“It’s not cannibalism. It’s just really gross,” Scotch reminded Charity, trotting up to the counter and reaching into her own saddlebags. “Here. I guess I owe it to you,” she said, extracting five gold coins.

Skylord rolled his eyes. “Thanks. Soon as I’m back at Irontown, I’ll pay you back with a nice freshly made gun of your choice.” He nodded to the rack. “You really should pick one up for yourself though.”

“Yeah,” Scotch said with a frown. “It’s just… not my thing. I mean, I know I should but it just seems wrong, you know?”

“Nope!” he replied. “The only thing that I know is there’s never too much gun. That, and I really want these chains off.” He gave them another tug, then looked at Asheput. “Hey, you’re a girl. Could you do be a favor and say you love me?”

“Excuse me?” The sphinx arched a brow.

“Just help me out here. Tell me you love me,” he said. “It’ll be cool.”

“You are such a pig,” Charity snipped, sitting and crossing her forehooves over her chest.

“I love you,” the sphynx stated, as romantically as reading off waste recycling instructions.

“I love you too,” the griffon replied, then grabbed the chains. “Whelp, I fell in love and she loves me. Guess you can come off now, huh?” He tugged the links. “Come on. We had a deal.”

“Um, Sky? I don’t think you should do that,” Scotch started to say. The chains shrank by several inches, cutting into his hide and feathers. Both hands went to his throat as his eyes bulged in alarm, pulling at the links that mercilessly dug in. “Stop! Stop!” she cried out in alarm, but the relentless links continued to strangle him. “If he dies, you can’t lock him in anymore. He’ll be dead.” The links slowly gave out, somehow replicating till there was enough slack for him to breathe again.

“I really don’t like this spirit,” Skylord coughed.

“My, how interesting,” Asheput murmured. “A censured griffon. However did you cross a spirit? You’re nearly as bad as ponies.”

“Blame her,” Skylord said, pointing at Scotch. “She made a deal and before I knew it I was all chained up.”

“Her? A deal, and no censure? But…” The Sphynx blinked her yellow eyes. “How interesting. Quite the fascinating riddle. I approve. In five hundred years I have never seen its like.”

“You’re five centuries old?” Majina asked, her eyes wide. “You must have thousands of stories.”

“None your tribe is interested in hearing,” Asheput replied with a wave of her paw. “You like stories of heroes and histories where your kind valiantly overcame monsters like me. Stories of genocide are far less palatable for your ears.”

“Wait,” Scotch lifted a hoof as Majina’s joy turned to horror. “What genocide?”

Asheput’s lips twisted in annoyance. “Once, the zebras were just one of many peoples living here. They were good folk. I’d challenge them with riddles, and devour those that failed my tests. They’d send their wisest and wittiest against me. There was respect.” She turned her eyes to Scotch Tape. “Then your kind started the war, and all respect was gone. You either served the Caesar’s ends, or you were butchered. I could hold my own against would-be heroes challenging their minds against my puzzles, but I could do nothing against entire battalions besides flee. There were so many different people here that were pushed to the Empty, relocated to land that couldn’t support them, to die out of sight and forgotten.”

“Tell me about it,” Skylord muttered, rubbing his throat.

“I can’t believe that,” Majina said, shaking her head. “Someone would have talked about it!”

“Typical zebra denial. You don’t like the truth so it couldn’t have happened,” Asheput snickered with a roll of her eyes. “As bad as ponies.”

“Word,” Skylord said, sitting and raising a fist over his head.

“My tribe would have talked about it!” Majina countered, but Scotch remembered how readily the elders had dismissed the truth about Blackjack and the Legate. She could understand Majina’s loyalty to her tribe, but Scotch was definitely skeptical about it.

“They didn’t. I am sufficiently magical to not need to eat or drink, or I would have joined the dead. I only wish that the ultimate cost of your stupid war paid had been reserved for ponies and zebras alone,” Asheput said, then took a deep breath, and adopted a cheery tone. “Now! Shall we talk about business?” Majina opened her mouth, but the sphynx broke out a long growl that silenced her.

It took a little bit of haggling from Charity, but they managed to get water, coal, food, and robes for each of them to protect against the salt and dust. A pair of goggles for the driver, a large canvas tarp, rope, and pole to make a tent they could all fit beneath. Skylord had his new pistol, which he rearranged into a hand grip rather than a mouth grip. Pythia got a map of the Empty and of the mountains beyond. Majina bought a book of riddles that seemed to mollify Asheput’s ire towards her. Precious lost ten more members of the Dragonhoard clan trying to answer riddles. She wept at what she called the ‘sphinxian slaughter’. Then Pythia won them back, though Asheput seemed a little skeptical at her instant, correct response. Then Pythia struggled to push the dragonfilly off her as she exploded in gratitude and embraced her tightly.

“You’re also going to want to buy insurance,” wheezed a voice from the doorway. In it stood the most emaciated zebra Scotch had ever seen. At first, she thought he was a ghoul, with his shrunken frame and coarse, scarred hide. His stripes were covered by rags and patches of leather. Bones were tied to the ends of his mane, and they rattled as he spoke. At first Scotch thought he was old, but that was simply the result of his weathered and cracked hide. He smiled, the skin at the corners of his mouth splitting in a bloody grin. “You’ll always want insurance.”

“Who are you?” Skylord challenged.

“General Ossius, leader of the Bone Legion,” he said, licking his cracked lips as he sized Skylord up. “An Iron. What, are the Irons branding griffons now?”

“General? Of what?” Skylord sniffed.

“Hey, moron. Remember what you started with the Bloods?” Charity snapped and jabbed his chest with a hoof. “Knock. It. Off.” Skylord started to retort, but she glared him into silence.

“Oh, I know. We’re pretty diminished from what we were,” Ossius wheezed, paused, and then cackled, “But we’re still around. Here and there. We never quite go away.” He then nodded his head to the sphynx. “Asheput. You’re looking well. Raking in the imperios? I saw we had guests from up north, but I didn’t expect…” He trailed off, his dull gray eyes narrowing as they locked on to Precious, “…this.” He finished with a gesture at the six of them.

“I get by,” the sphinx answered, actually smiling at the desiccated zebra. “How about you? Still playing with dragons?”

“Not much else to do lately. I hear things are picking up in the North. Might be a good time to harvest some fresh corpses. I hear Irons make excellent cadavers.” He leered at Skylord before licking his cracked lips again. “Nice chains,” he murred, eying him. Skylord set himself to fight, before the general emitted a dry chuckle. “But then again, Bloods are ten an imperio. Be good to get some raised and fighting.”

“Playing with dragons?” Precious asked, arching a brow.

Ossius stared at her flatly, then gave a cracked smile. “Oh yes. There’s nothing more satisfying than bringing low a powerful, wealthy, arrogant beast. You should try it.” he said, his eyes darting to Skylord before returning to Precious. “Though I must wonder where a… curiosity… like you came from.”

“Something I ask myself every day,” Precious answered with a sigh.

“Enough of the dumb questions. What’s this insurance and how much will it cost us?” Charity demanded.

Ossius licked his lips again. “Well, crossing the Empty is dangerous. Folks get lost. Folks get stuck. Folks die. You pay us, and we’ll see you across.”

“I can vouch for him. Most travellers cross with his assistance,” Asheput said. “He is a withered side of salted zebra, but he honors his agreements.”

Ossius gave a genial nod to her. “As for the price, it’s generally just ten imperios a head or a fresh corpse, but you’re two ponies, a star cursed cunt, an iron branded griffon, a dragon freak, and…” He trailed off as his gray eyes lingered unsettlingly on Majina. She immediately shifted behind Precious, and the general chuckled before announcing with feigned magnanimity. “So I’d say, with taxes and surcharges, a hundred imperios. Or a fresh corpse.” He scanned the six of them. “Any volunteers?”

“A hundred! That’s extortion! Who don’t you just rob us and get it over with?” Charity shrieked.

“And risk my soldiers and assets? Oh, no. No no no. That’s not how we operate,” he said with a dry chuckle. “Bloods and Irons may shoot and threaten, but Bones… we’re smarter than that.”

“There’s no way we can pay that, you moron!” Charity snapped.

“One fifty.”

“What?!” she shrieked again, her eyes wide.

“One seventy five,” he said and when she opened her mouth he added, “Want it to be a nice, square two hundred?”

Her answer was swallowed in a growl of frustration.

“All haggling aside, we can’t pay that, so we’re going to have to decline,” Scotch said evenly.

“Hear that, Asheput? They decline,” Ossius cackled and stomped a hoof. “Hooo. Alright. Guess I priced myself right out of the market. Shucks. Silly me,” Ossius said, then leveled his gaze at them. “You take care, now. Empty’s a right nasty place.”

He slipped out and Asheput murmured, “I’m pretty sure he plans to kill you. Ponies, an Iron Legion griffon, a Starkatteri, and anything draconic is more than sufficient aggravation.”

“Are you just going to let him?” Scotch asked.

“He doesn’t bother me,” Asheput said with a shrug. “We have our arrangement. I buy what his legion salvages, and we both live here. I try to get along with my neighbors. That’s just good business.”

“Right,” Scotch said, deflating a little.

“So…” Skylord said, staring after Ossius. “Would it be okay if we killed him before we go? Because, you know, we’re not his neighbors? And he’s an asshole?”

“Skylord!” Charity, snapped. “Do I need a water bottle or something?”

“What? I’m asking! You know, before I kill him.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Asheput said calmly. “It would be annoying to hear him bragging when his cadavers rose up and tore you to pieces.”

“Cadavers?” Scotch asked, feeling a little sick.

“Animated bodies. You certainly saw several of them as you came in, whether you recognized them or not.” She gave a little shrug. “Needless to say, he doesn’t want to risk his toys. He’s careful like that.”

A careful enemy? She didn’t like that. “Any advice crossing the Empty?” Precious asked.

“Stay on the causeway no matter what. If you lose sight of the cylinders, you’re lost. Don’t sleep in the lee unless you want to be buried in salt and dust. When you get to the middle, refill your coal and keep going. Don’t linger or explore the base. There’s no food or water there.”

“But there’s coal?” Scotch asked.

“They’ve four immense coal bunkers built during the war for refilling military convoys. Every few years I fly out, fill up, and bring some back here.”

“Does Ossius have any Bone Legion at the base?” Skylord asked her.

“There’s no food or water there, so I expect not. He’s gone with me the last two trips and I saw not a soul. If he does, they’re of the unliving variety.”

“Wait, wait, wait. There’s a simple solution here,” Pythia said, pointing a hoof at the sign overhead. “I just answer twenty riddles. Easy.”

“Very well,” Asheput purred. “Here’s my first one, Starkatteri. What happens to seers that cheat a sphynx?” Her paws clawed at the counter as she leaned towards Pythia, baring very sharp and pointy fangs.

“Uh…” Pythia blinked and took a step back. “On second thought, no. Nevermind.”

“Wise,” she purred. Her eyes shifted to Scotch. “Take care. Though there is nothing there, the Empty is full of peril.”

The rest of the preparations, Scotch kept a wary eye on the Bone Legion, but they didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. They even waved and called out ‘have fun on the Empty’ with lazy grins. If they were planning on killing them, they sure were taking their time. Skylord twitched with suppressed violence as he kept a constant eye on the Bones as they worked. She had to assume they had their own tractor hidden amid the wrecks, and planned to chase them down.

Oddly, it was Precious that seemed to draw the majority of their ire. ‘Widdle dragon pony’ and ‘Who fucked who to make that?’ and calls about making boots and jackets from her hide. It seemed positively juvenile. If they wanted Precious dead, why not just try and kill her?

Maybe they were going to do exactly that out on the Empty.

Still, why wait? And why her, over a pair of ponies? It made no sense. They topped off the water tanks and bottles, and made sure they had all the supplies ready to cross. Charity had finally gotten her wish: a second, smaller, two wheeled trailer picked from the junk. No one seemed to mind her hitching it up, so she declared finders keepers and proceeded to fill it with water from the spring.

“Hey, Scales. Who was more perverted? Mom or dad?” bellowed one Bone Legion from the comfort of their shade as Precious carried a sack of coal to the Whiskey Express.

“What is your problem? Leave her alone!” Scotch yelled back. For some reason, that just made them laugh harder. Precious, without her usual retort, rushed to where the steam tractor waited.

“Forget it,” Skylord said behind her. “They’re jackals, living off of scraps and carrion. Tormenting a filly is sport to them.”

“But it’s so stupid!” Scotch said as they walked after Precious.

“Of course it is, but they’ve got nothing else. They’re a dead legion, living on the edge of nothing. A joke. Losers. They’re not even risking killing her themselves. That’s how weak they are. That’s how much they’ve lost,” Skylord said, keeping his voice low.

Scotch gave a wry smile. “Speaking from experience, huh?”

“You saw Gunther and Gunnel. There were dozens more just like them. And my rook was better off then these losers.” Skylord gave a nod to the Bone Legion, who had gone quiet now that Precious was out of earshot. “You know why they’re here? Because that sphinx carved out a sad, lonely little spot, and they’re desperate for any place to call home. Because they’re too weak to make their own. If I hadn’t been taken in by Adolpha, that would be me up there, trying to make a filly cry, because I’d have nothing else in life.”

“Wow. That was… kinda deep for you,” Scotch admitted.

“It’s these stupid chains,” he quipped back, tugging at the links. “I swear, next time, you make a bargain with a spirit, you deal with the fallout.”

Scotch shivered as the scene of a filly transforming into a shark monster flashed through her mind. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

When they got to the cart, Scotch saw Precious’s eyes full of tears, her other friends standing awkwardly. She didn’t blame them. Last thing Precious would ever want was pity. “Those Bone Legion. What losers, right?” Scotch offered, giving Precious a grin.

Precious sniffed, wiped her eyes and then smiled back at Scotch. “Yeah. Total losers. We going?”

“Yeah. Let’s get going,” Scotch said with a nod. From the doorway of the gift shop she could see Asheput watching their departure.

With a pock and a wheeze, the Whiskey Express pulled out and travelled into the Great Western Empty.

This is astonishing, Scotch Thought as she drove the Whiskey Express across the salt, a cloth mask filtering out the worst of the dust that hissed against the metal. The only landmarks being the next concrete cylinder, and the next, and the next, stretching off into an endless gray haze. Yet the ground beneath was so smooth and solid that the chassis hummed with a strange, forlorn note over the pockety-wheeze of the pistons. A constant wind from the west had ribbons of white and tan snaking under the wheels, pushing them towards the cylinders. Even with the robe, she could feel the tiny grains striking her from the gusts.

And another gray cylinder. Another. And another. Some were marked, but the dust and salt had scraped away the glyphs so much that she couldn’t read them. And another. Another. No horizon. No sky. Behind them, the mountains and gift shop had disappeared completely. There were only the concrete cylinders. Another. And another. And another.

It was dulling. Mesmerizing. Surreal. Only the clock on her PipBuck informed her any time had passed at all. It was as if the Whiskey Express were idling in place, and the world itself was turning beneath her wheels as the hours passed. And another. And another.

Then she whizzed right by a wrecked tractor, passing the metal by less than a meter. A bolt of adrenaline shot through her. How had she missed that? Glancing over her shoulder, she watched the wreck disappear into the haze behind her. It was as if she’d been asleep… but she hadn’t, had she? She stared ahead, noticing other wrecks here and there, many astonishingly far away from the pillars, like ghosts on the edge of the void. It’d only been a few hours, right?

She checked her PipBuck. Five hours! At once, she became aware of the ache in her shoulders and rump. Her growling stomach. Her parched mouth. Her need to go to the bathroom! There was no sun, just that the dust was slightly dimmer in the late hours. How had she missed so much time?

She pulled into the lee of one of the pillars and slid off the seat, her legs protesting the action. She crawled back to the canvas covered trailer. “Hey! We were wondering when you were going to stop!” Majina said as they pulled her inside. “You look terrible!”

“Water,” she croaked.

“Here,” Majina said, passing her the bottle.

“How’s it going?” Precious asked. “Is it night yet? Can we get out? Stretch our legs?”

“Yeah. I guess we better,” she said, coughing. This dust wasn’t doing her lungs any favors. “Potty break.”

They made the far side of the pillar into a rest stop, but no one remained out in the wind long. “How long till this stops?” Scotch asked.

“Never,” Pythia answered.

“Never? It can’t blow all the time!” Scotch protested.

Pythia gave her a condescending look, before explaining. “The Empty is so big that the trade winds funnel through it constantly. West to east on this side. East to west on the south side. The flats generate twisters and windstorms that can rage for months. Even years.” She tapped a square of text next to the diagram on the map she’d purchased. “There’s calm regions in the center, but it’ll be a while till we get there.”

“You want a break from driving?” Precious asked. “No offense, but you look like a giant salt lick.”

Scotch frowned, thought better of it, but, in the end, just couldn’t help herself. She lifted a hoof and gave it a long, firm lick and grinned. Mmm! Salty! Of course that immediately prompted her to take a drink of water. Then she took another lick. Another drink… Mmm, licking salt definitely ill-advised till they got to the far side, she thought, but if they found a bunch of fresh water on the far side, she was going to go nuts! “I’m fine. Just give me a few more hours. Tomorrow, someone else can drive.”

After everyone had relieved themselves, she took four bottles of water with her, strapped the goggles down, and resumed driving. The wind and the hum nagged at her, lulling her back into a trance. To prevent that mindless state, she studied the wrecks that they passed. Most had escaped much corrosion; their noses pointing north towards the gift shop. Once, she spotted something tumbling in front of the Whiskey Express, and broke abruptly. A torso struck the pillar and stuck there a moment, rattling like a tumbleweed before slipping around the cylinder and disappearing into the billowing haze.

Okay. Time to call it a night. The light had dimmed to the point she couldn’t make out the next landmark, so she pulled up next to one and moved into the trailer. After a drink and a snake, they lay together under the tarp, listening to the howling wind, the snapping tarp, the trailer’s springs groaning as the wind gusted against it. Soon as she felt herself nodding off, something hard would ping against the trailer, causing her to jolt awake. In the silence, eyes boggling, she wondered if perhaps the Bone Legion was coming in the middle of the night.

Scotch shimmied up to Pythia, turning on her PipBuck light and shielding it with her body. Pythia lay with eyes open, staring at the tarp as it thrashed. “Hey,” Scotch whispered. After all, Precious’s snoring signified that at least some of her friends were asleep. “Hey, what’s the future look like?”

She didn’t answer a moment, swallowing before murmuring softly, “I can’t see it.”

“What?” Scotch blinked in bafflement. “Nothing?” She shook her head slowly. “How? Why?”

“I have no idea. I’m blind, and I’m terrified more than I’ve been in my entire life,” she whispered hoarsely. “If you don’t mind. I’d rather not talk right now.”

What could Scotch do besides click off the light and fail to go back to sleep.

The next day, Precious and Skylord took turns driving, creeping along to avoid losing the landmarks. There were more wrecks now. A thick band of derelicts left to slowly wear away under the wind’s onslaught. Some were smashed up, but others appeared to have been left to collect dust and sand in tear-shaped drifts that threatened to bog down the Whiskey Express. More than a few had desiccated corpses still clinging to steering wheels or dangling out of dust-choked windows. Not even Charity suggested stopping to search them. Majina bombarded Scotch with riddles, and when she’d exhausted the books, started over with a new victim.

Another night of pretending to sleep. Of staring up at the tarp as the wind jerked and rippled it. Of Pythia staring at her maps, desperate for the smallest hint of guidance.

The third day, Scotch drove again. There were fewer wrecks here, but there was a building, sitting off to the side of the causeway. At first, she thought that maybe they’d reached the middle, till she slowed and got a better look at the blasted structure. Wind screamed through gaps broken in the steel walls, and silent construction equipment sat frozen in the dust. She nearly tumbled into a ditch chewed into the ground by a massive scooping machine. Its upraised bucket looking like a petrified, primordial monster that did nothing to soothe her progressively fraying nerves.

For once, she wished the Empty was a lot more empty.

The fourth day she spent in the trailer as Precious drove. The wind had died down enough to take the tarp off… not that the Empty was any less, well, empty. Still, they could count the concrete blocks as they swooshed by. The gray, horizonless world continued in all directions, the sun just a dim spot in the featureless gray haze overhead. There weren’t even ruins anymore. No riddles. No jokes. Just the pockety-wheeze of the Whiskey Express.

On the fifth day, they were in trouble.

“This patch is leaking.” Scotch rechecked the hole Riptide had punched in the cylinder. “It’s already starting to corrode, and we’re losing water,” she said as she rubbed the edge of the patch, her hoof came back smeared with brown.

“We can put some of our drinking water in the tank, but what about that patch?” Charity asked. “Can you fix it?”

“I couldn’t fix it property back in the woods. You think I can do it here?” came Scotch’s sour retort. “I need a blow torch to properly seal it up. Even then, this patch is so brittle, it’s not going to last.”

“Hello, dragonfilly here,” Precious said with a grin. “Have breath, will travel.”

“But what are we going to seal it with?” Scotch asked, scraping the patch. Even more corroded metal flaked away. “This salt is a nightmare. If the patch is this bad after four days, there’s probably corrosion on the cylinder too.” What do we have? Scotch secretly doubted they could patch it with steel. It just needed too much steady heat, and the salt would make it brittle. “Copper? No.” Then she blinked. “An imperio. We can seal it with gold.”

“What?” Precious cried out. “Melting down a helpless gold coin? You monster!”

“It’s that or we die when the water tank drips empty.” Scotch dug out a gold coin from her own saddle bags. “Here, use one of mine.”

Precious took it and held it in her claws. “Why, it’s Duke Drachma of Drachmatonia, come on weekend holiday to the seaside while secretly pining for a lost love.” Everyone just stared flatly at her. “What? You can’t just give me a gold coin and not expect a story from it!”

“What’s a drachma?” Skylord asked.

“What happened to his lost love?” Majina asked, breathlessly.

“What the heck is wrong with all of you?” Charity snapped.

Scotch took it back before Precious could wed it to the rest of her clan, carefully worked the edge of the coin into the crack, and backed away. “Blow.”

“Goodbye, sweet Duke. May you be reunited with your lost love in the golden afterlife,” Precious sniffed, then knelt down and blasted it for several seconds.

“This is pathetic,” Charity muttered.

Scotch used a can of beans like a hammer. The gold was soft enough that between blasts and hammering they managed to squeeze it into the crack. Not ideal, but it might get them through a few more days.

They climbed back into the trailer, and with the familiar ‘pockety-pock’ back, the Whiskey Express started rolling again. “Hey, you okay?” she asked Pythia, who hadn’t even gotten out of the trailer.

“I couldn’t do anything. I can’t see anything. If I had my sight, I would have known the seal was going to fail,” Pythia said as she stared out at the void. “I hate this place. I wish we’d gone around.”

“Well, we knew this place messed with your sight, but we couldn’t have guessed how bad,” Scotch offered. “And wasn’t going around ‘running out of coal and being eaten by Precious’? Ouch, by the way.”

“At least that I could see coming. This place is wrong,” Pythia said with a shiver.

“Who do you think it is? Blocking your sight, I mean?” Scotch inquired.

Pythia glanced at her. “You know how I talk about shadows in the future? Well there’s other ways to blind a seer. Like if something so so horrible you don’t want to see it, you can block yourself. Or if there’s a lot of really toxic spirits about, the spiritual contamination is like a fog.” She squeezed her eyes tight. “This is like… like someone seared my eyes out with a hot poker, and they’re digging it around inside the socket.”

She scooted closer and put a hoof around her. “Hey. We’re okay. We’ll get out and you’ll start seeing again. Then you’ll be the know-it-all before it happens and we’ll be frustrated trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Pythia slumped against her. “So this is what being normal is like? Not seeing yourself dying all the time?”

“Um, I guess?” Scotch muttered, flushing a little.

“It’s so strange. I never knew how you could stand it,” she replied. “I’ve always known things that are going to happen. What terrible things could happen to me if I wasn’t careful. Every threat. Every hazard. Now…” She shook her head. “It’s kinda nice.”

Okay. So maybe everything wasn’t terrible in the Empty after all.

On the fifth day, the dust finally ended, and they emerged from it like from a fog bank stretching endlessly east to west. Before her lay an endless expanse of white, punctuated only by the gray blocks. There wasn’t a wreck to be seen, nor a ruin. Just white and blue in a line that stretched from horizon to horizon. They took a moment to emerge, and even squandered some of their precious drinking water to wash away the dust.

“There’s something in the salt,” Majina said, peering down. The salt up close resembled dusted glass. Majina wiped the surface with her rag as they moved closer for another look.

At a body.

The zebra was almost perfectly preserved, so much that it seemed he was asleep rather than entombed. Aside from a slight withering from desiccation, there was little sign of decay. “There’s another,” Precious noted, pointing next to him.

And another. Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. Many were species Scotch couldn’t identify. “How’d they get down there?” Charity asked.

“I think that’s water down there,” Scotch said, pointing at tiny bubbles of air under their hooves. “It’s like ice, only salt. They’re pickled.”

“Well, at least I won’t starve,” Skylord chuckled, getting flat looks. “What? It’s not my fault I’m above you on the food chain.”

“I wouldn’t,” Scotch warned, stomping on the salt. “It’s pretty thick, but in you punched through, you’d be pickled.”

“Plus eating salted meat in the middle a desert isn’t exactly a genius move,” Precious scoffed.

Skylord just smirked at her. “You thought of it too, eh?”

Precious’s eyes popped wide in shock. “What? No! Eew! I mean, who knows how long it’s been down there!” She gave a nervous laugh, rubbing the back of her head.

“Where did they all come from?” Charity asked, sparing them all from the salted corpse eating topic.

“You heard the sphinx,” Majina answered. “Zebras drove them here to die.” She closed her eyes. “I wish the ponies had killed us. We deserved it,” she said as her tears added to the salt below.

“Majina, you aren’t to blame for this,” Scotch reminded her.

“No? It wasn’t the pony empire, Scotch,” she said and she wept. “I thought coming here would be great. A good story. But instead there’s just nothing! Nothing but example after example of zebras being horrible to each other. I hate being zebra!” she spat, the empty void devouring her words as quickly as the ground took her tears.

“Majina,” Scotch said, moving to her and giving her a hug. “We’ve met lots of good zebras too. Just because some were horrible centuries ago doesn’t mean it’s bad to be a zebra.”

“I hate this. I hate this place,” she whimpered.

“It’s fine, Majina. We’ll make it fine,” Scotch promised her.

With the dust gone, and the cylinder seal holding, they could really speed things up. The enormous wall of dust fell away and soon it was just them speeding along the flat. Oddly, the air wasn’t that hot. She supposed the white ground reflected the sunlight up rather than heating the earth. With everything clear, the trip became almost enjoyable.

Still, it was hard to forget that there were countless bodies under their wheels.

“Why do you think they did it?” Scotch asked Pythia. “Drove them into this wasteland? Why not just shoot them?”

“It’s a very clever way to avoid censure,” Pythia answered. “If you kill people, it leaves a stain. You can demolish the buildings and raze the grounds, but the murder crystallizes in that moment and seeps into the earth. Drive people into a wasteland they can’t survive in, and who are the dead vengeful against? The official that gave the command? The soldiers that put them into the train car? The civilian that let it happen? Everyone? No-one? They die, and that poison has nothing to fixate on.”

“So it just goes away?” Scotch frowned, aware that she was talking about shamany stuff, and not wanting to ruin the moment.

“Nothing just goes away. It’s here. We’re probably driving over an ocean of spiritual poison, but who cares? It’s the Empty. It doesn’t matter. A huge spiritual waste dump.” She paused, pursing her lips, then adding, “I’m not talking as a shaman. Any scholar could tell you this.”

“Right,” Scotch said with a smile, then looked at the salt flashing past beneath them. How many people had the zebras driven here to die? Did Asheput know? Did anyone? “So what can be done about it?”

“Done?” Pythia blinked at her, then slumped against her again. “Typical pony. There’s nothing to be done. You can’t fix this. No way to blast it with friendship. It just is. Like the Empty. Like the world.”

Scotch held her thoughts silently, frowning as she mulled that over. Was it better to accept something horrible you couldn’t change, or to want to change something for the better when you couldn’t? She didn’t know the answer. Didn’t know if there was an answer, and so she sat silently as they slipped deeper into the Empty.

That night, they saw the stars.

All the stars.

It wasn’t as if she’d never seen stars before, but never like this. The sun set, and the moon was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the salt flats glowed with starlight, enough that they could have pushed on through the night, had they wished. No one thought of it just then. No one spoke as the clear, dry air was filled with millions of points of light. Pythia wept as she gazed up at the heavens in awed rapture, an unexpected, hitherto-unseen wonder spread out above them all. A great river of light stretched from east to west, and in it were countless other points. It was one thing to see the stars through a tiny window in a rocket but this beggared that experience.

Scotch had always thought of the night as a blackness punctuated by only occasional motes of wan, feeble illumination. Candles in the darkness. Now she had to wonder if it wasn’t the other way around. That maybe the darkness wasn’t stronger. That when you saw things clearly, there was so much more light in the universe. She put one hoof around Majina, the other around Pythia, and held both of them closely, silently.

They didn’t waste the opportunity to travel at night, but they passed under that starry vault with less speed, five of them splayed out on their backs in the trailer as Skylord, who’d summed up the experience as ‘yeah, they’re stars’ got to drive.

“How is that thing floating in the air?” Majina’s question was the first sign of the island. It was an ugly black triangle in the middle of pristine white, seeming to hover above the horizon.

“It’s a mirage,” Skylord explained with a bored tone, and got several blank looks. “What, have you never looked down a hot road on a sunny day?”

“The Enclave didn’t let us have many hot and sunny days,” Charity countered. Skylord didn’t elaborate much as they approached the mysteriously levitating rock. It took several hours before the rest realized a mirage was little more than an optical illusion. The closer they drew, the lower it dropped till it reconnected with the earth.

And the closer they got, the less she liked it, slowing down the approach. Just like at the gift shop, there was a virtual junkyard, only this one was exponentially larger and comprised almost half of striped military vehicles. A train sat buried up to its axles in salt alongside the spur of dark, volcanic rock. An almost ironic sign stating “Great Western Empty Weather Station” sat in front of the massive collection of vehicles and weapons.

“So, think there’s a Bone Legion garrison hanging out there? Cadavers ready to tear us to pieces?” Scotch asked.

“I don’t know. I kept expecting the Bones to catch up to us, but there’s no sign of them,” Skylord said, peering north. “Maybe they’re here and were alerted by radio?”

Scotch checked her PipBuck, but there was only static. “No idea. Let’s just be careful,” she warned as they came to a stop at the outskirts of the weather station.

“Aww, and I’d planned a song and dance number,” Precious whined.

But even before passing through the gate, it was clear something bad had happened here. The road was littered with bodies. Both the bodies and vehicles had been stripped. Yet as they moved further in, there were also piles of cast-off clothes, barding, and other apparel strewn everywhere. Civilian steam tractors were just parked every which way next to huge, hulking military vehicles that pointed strange long, skinny box-like contraptions east. There were dozens of them. Maybe a hundred, or more, their empty crates all lifted towards the sky. All empty.

So many bodies, like the gift shop but worse. They lay in drifts, tossed into heaps, or scattered around the rock. And for the first time in weeks, Scotch heard the slow ticking of radiation from her PipBuck. Her mane crawled as she kept looking around for the source, but found nothing.

“What the hay happened here?” Scotch wondered aloud.

“No! No no no!” Charity snapped, levitating up an old clipboard and thwacking her with it. “Last time you asked that you went for a swim in a water monster. No! We are finding coal, finding water, and then leaving! Especially if there’s radiation here. How bad?”

Scotch considered. “Pretty bad. Maybe that’s what killed all these people?” Still, what was the source? There weren’t any balefire bombs here. “Let’s find the coal bunkers.”

“Found,” Skylord answered, pointing at four enormous, blocky structures. Far more than would ever be needed for a ‘weather station.’ Next to it was a large, round tank that she supposed had been the station’s water supply. They trotted past piles of bodies. The four bunkers were each thirty feet high, with a mechanical feeder vehicle parked nearby. A pair of train tracks obscured by tractors confirmed the fuel had been brought here and then loaded into each of the bunkers.

They moved to the first and found the lever that opened a manual chute. It took three of them hanging on the bar to open it.

Nothing.

“It’s empty,” Skylord observed, and rapped hard on the heavy metal, the steel booming ominously.

So was the second.

And the third.

“No, no, no!” Charity muttered. “I knew it. I knew that feathered cat shyster was up to something! There’s no coal here! They get people to come out into the empty, they run out of coal, and die here! Then they take their stuff off the corpses.”

“There’s one more,” Scotch said, rushing around to the last bunker and sliding to a stop.

There, painted on the side of the bunker, were the glyphs, ‘Bet you wish you’d paid the insurance now, huh?’ Below it was the same manual lever.

With the biggest, sturdiest padlock she’d ever seen.

“No, no, no!” Charity repeated, rushing up to it and beating it with her hooves. “Pick it. You can pick it, right?”

But Scotch had never seen a lock like this before. It didn’t just have one spot for a key, but two, and there was a combination dial in the middle. The metal loop was almost five centimeters thick! What the heck was this thing supposed to be used for?

“You!” Pythia rushed to Precious. “You’re part dragon! You can chew it off, right?”

“Are you kidding? I eat gems. Gems are delicious. Steel breaks my teeth!”

“Shoot it off! You can shoot it off, right?” Charity asked Skylord, pleading. But Scotch instantly knew that was likely futile as well. The padlock could double as a bludgeon, and from the scarring and scratches, it seemed shooting it off was a decidedly unoriginal idea.

Scotch examined the lock closer. The hole in the lever had been crudely cut to accommodate the larger lock, but it still had at least three centimeters of metal on both sides. She hung on the bar, checking how it flexed. If they broke the bar free… but no.

“Do you still have those explosives from the collars?” Skylord asked.

“Erm… yes?” Scotch said, looking up at the container. “I’m just a little leery about blowing things up around containers full of flammable coal and coal dust. I doubt those others have been cleaned out. Plus, I’m not entirely sure how to detonate them safely. I don’t have a radio detonator.”

“You can try, though, right? Right?” Charity begged.

“Let’s… leave that for plan B,” Scotch said weakly.

“Smart fucking bastards,” Skylord muttered. “No wonder they didn’t want to fight. We get stuck out here and die of thirst. They come in and take all our stuff.”

“Do you think Asheput knew?” Majina asked.

“Oh, who the fuck cares?!” Charity insisted. “I knew. There’s no way she has that kind of selection honestly. Not on the edge of nowhere! Soon as I saw her shop I knew.” Her magic gripped the handle and she groaned as she tried to pry it with her magic. “Come on! Please! I don’t want to die!” she screamed, nearly hysterical.

Then Pythia hugged her. The filly froze in shock, trembling. “I know,” Pythia said as she held her firmly. Charity’s face twisted up a moment before she cracked a sob, her magic winking out. She slumped against Pythia and sobbed loudly into her shoulder. “I know. I know,” she repeated.

“What? What does she know?” Majina asked, with a desperate little smile. “Maybe we can find some coal elsewhere? Or some water at least?” She looked out at the salt flat, as if a pile of coal would magically manifest itself for them. “Maybe?”

But Scotch knew it too. This place was a death trap. They didn’t have enough coal to get back. If they stayed here for too long, the radiation would get them. If they left, they’d die out in the Empty, days from anywhere. And the Bones would pick their remains clean.

“Let’s look, anyway,” Scotch suggested.

Skylord clambered up to the top of the bunker, chains clanking against the side. There was a lid, but it too was locked, and there was no way Scotch could make it up that high without thumbs. So they started to search the buildings, but it was clear they were going over searched ground. Most of them held nothing more than piles of bodies from travellers that had been stranded here as well. A few still wore clothes, and she was surprised to note the ones in the bottom were dressed in ragged uniforms. There were several more locks like the first on crates or doors altered to hold them. Anything valuable had long since been looted. They managed to pick up some cans of food inside a barracks, but no water. Even the toilets were dry.

Scotch’s rads were inching towards caution territory, so they withdrew back to the Whiskey Express. All they’d discovered was what the locks had originally been used on: those strange, empty cargo containers pointed at the sky. One tracked vehicle was still locked, half tilted into a ditch, which explained why it hadn’t been used. The huge lock dangled from the cover. She had no idea what a MBLBLFRMSSLLNCHR-003 was, but apparently it needed a really big lock.

And there were dozens of the damned things.

“How much coal do we have?” Scotch asked.

The unicorn, having composed herself, spoke with a tone of doomed resignation. “Enough for one more day of travel. Maybe one and a half if we’re lucky. It’s five or six to make it all the way back north, and then we’d just be stuck back where we started.”

“Maybe we can find other stuff to burn,” Precious suggested. “I mean, I do breathe fire.”

“For hours on end?” Skylord asked, skeptically.

“I don’t see you suggesting anything useful!” Precious snapped.

“Please, don’t start,” Majina warned, sounding hear tears herself as she begged, “Tears and shouting isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“I doubt we’re going to get much distance burning old uniforms. In fact, it looks like most of those were locked up by the Bones, for that reason. We could spend a few hours trying to collect every scrap we can, but the radiation will take us out.”

“Radiation. Feels like home,” Charity muttered.

“I wish I knew what it was from,” Scotch mused.

“You always want to know dumb things like that. I want to know how we can get out of here. The math doesn’t look good.”

“We can wait for the Bone Legion to show up. Ambush them. Take their coal,” Skylord suggested, looking at the others. “What, you can’t object to me killing them after they pulled this.”

“No, I just don’t think they’re coming any time soon. Every bullet we fire is one less for them to collect. They’ll take our stuff. Take the Whiskey Express.”

“Is there anything shaman-ish you can do? Like at Greengap?” Majina asked her.

“I have no clue. Those spirits, they were tossed into a swimming pool. Their rage was focused at Haimon and the Blood Legion. Everyone that died here… they just died. I don’t feel the same thing I did at Greengap.” She looked over at Pythia, who shook her head as well.

“Then it’s time for plan B,” Skylord said, looking at Scotch. “Worst case, you blow up all the coal and the Bones are fucked. We’re not going to wind up any more dead.”

Scotch took the bomb collars and wracked her brains for everything Daddy had told her about explosives. How they worked. Detonators, wiring, and batteries. It wasn’t hard getting copper wiring, and they found a battery in one of the strange military vehicles.

Rather than put the explosives on the side of the bunker, she wrapped it around where the lock and lever met. It might blow the lever off, but they could rig something to open it. They strung out the wires to a corner that would provide some cover and tied one end to the spark battery still in the collar’s housing. “Okay. Hope for the best. Three. Two. One…” And she touched the other wire to the other battery lead.

From around the corner came a sharp ‘crack’ and pop, then the sound of metal and concrete pinging off the building shielding them. She trotted out as the smoke cleared. There was the formidable lock, still untouched.

Lying on the ground. The lever itself had been bent almost completely around like a pretzel, but the lock was gone! In fact, she could see a little stream of black coal trickling out the hopper!

“Woo hoo! We did it! We’re gonna live!” Charity cheered, rushing Skylord and giving him a tight hug. “It worked! It worked!” And she rushed towards the hopper.

Just as Scotch’s E.F.S. lit up with red bars. A mound of bones, one that they’d picked through, suddenly assembled into an equine form and lurched at Charity as she drew near to the ruptured bunker. It lunged for her, bones clattering as they ground against each other, held together by some kind of necromantic force. The eyeholes in the skull glowed with a cold violet light, and a glyph was now illuminated on the skull’s forehead. Charity fell back as bony hooves stabbed at her.

“Oh no you don’t!” roared Precious, taking a deep breath and unleashing a plume of flame at an advancing skeleton. It strode right through and brought its hooves down on her with shocking force and speed. She ignored the blows, embracing the bony body and trying to snap its spine. The body just flexed as it continued to pummel her face.

Skylord squeezed off rounds as fast as he could, but the bullets just fractured and split the bone. “How do we kill these!? Just tell me how to kill them!” His wild fire chipped off corners of skulls and ribs, but did nothing against the advancing skeletons.

Scotch looked around. Dozens. Maybe even hundreds of bones all animating and advancing towards them, and fast. “Run!”

“No! The coal!” Charity wailed.

Majina lunged at the one wrestling Precious and grabbed the skull, yanking hard. With a snap of purple magic, the skull came free and the bones clattered limply around Precious. “I got it! Just pull their heads off!” she said triumphantly. Then a dusty succession of vertebrae shot out of a pile of bones and reconnected to the skull. Another. Another. In seconds, a spine had reformed, and legs and ribs started to attach as well. “Don’t pull their heads off!” she shouted as she threw the bones away from her. They landed, and almost instantly reassembled themselves. Skylord shattered the femur of one with well-placed shots, but the bone just tumbled to the ground and a fresh, unbroken leg bone flew out of another bone pile and attached itself to the skeleton.

Scotch grabbed Charity. “Run! We’ll work something out!”

“We just worked something out!” she wailed. Scotch, not willing to argue the point, ducked her head, scooped her up on her back, and carried her away from the bunkers.

Soon as they set hoof on the salt, the bones halted their advance, turned and moved back into the ruins. The clicking stopped. Everything stopped but the silence, which only mounted as they shared a look.

They were, without a doubt, screwed.

Go back, and maybe they’d make it. Or maybe they’d end up like those hundreds of abandoned tractors. Go forward… who knew how far they’d have to travel?

The most dangerous thing about the Wasteland was the size of the damned place. “Can you fly in, scoop up some coal, and bring it back?”

Skylord pumped his wings, the chains on them clanking. He didn’t have to answer aloud; his scornful gaze said it all. The chains she’d put on him were now keeping him grounded. Their death was her fault.

“We can try and be sneaky,” Majina had offered, but every attempt at a stealthy advance roused the bones the second they stepped onto solid rock. Whatever necromancy animated them also seemed to give them an innate sense of the living.

That left shamanism.

She didn’t know what to expect as she put Xarius’s horrid Bacchanalia mask on… it looked like she was trying to wear a wrench on her face! Then she took her long and slow breaths. Relax. Let yourself see them. Yet, something felt odd. Though a sickening sensation grew in her gut, still she pressed on. There had to be spirits here. There just had to be.

Then she looked up at an all-too-expected sight. A silent wave of dust rolled towards them, stretching from horizon to horizon. The white clouds roiled with ferocity, as if the Empty had finally decided to snuff them out for good. None of her friends saw it coming, fixated on the base or maps or her. She pointed a hoof, tried to give warning… but nothing. And so the wall of salty dust slammed into her, and blew her away.

I’m still alive? She hurt too much to be dead. She felt as if she were floating, felt the trickle of dust and a throbbing pain in her temple. Her goggles were a solid field of salt-caked white… but she couldn’t hear anything. Was she deaf? Slowly she rose, powdered sand and salt sheeting off her body. No, she couldn’t feel any wind either.

She pushed the mask up, staring into a world of gray. Gray ground beneath her. Dirty gray clouds overhead. Gray dust slowly drifting down from the clouds.. All else was dead quiet.

Then she rose slowly to her hooves. Immediately, she pulled out one of her water bottles and took a drink. She would have liked nothing more than to slug it all down, but she didn’t dare. How far had she been carried? How far could she be carried from her friends by the wind? Were they out here too? She called out their names, but the void swallowed her rasping voice.

And why was a dragon looking up at her?

She screamed, her voice thin and drawn out in this empty place, before she realized the beast in the ground under her hooves was far too still. The dragon was colossal, as large as a building, floating in the brine under her hooves. Zebras. Ponies. Thousands. Millions. Silently entombed in a sea of cloudy salt.

She stared down at them and whispered, “Help me. Help us. Help my friends.” Nothing. “Please. I’ll pay anything,” she begged them. “Take me. Censure me! I deserve it! Just save my friends!”

Nothing. They hung there, silent and still, like flies in amber.

Her friends. She had to find them, weeks on foot, from any semblance of sustenance with only a few bottles of water. She didn’t even know which direction her friends lay in! She checked her compass, to at least give her an idea of her bearings.

‘North’ spun slowly around her, waving back and forth as she stared at it in her E.F.S.

She knelt over. “I’m going to die. We’re all going to die.”

“Everything does,” came a rasp in her ear.

She jumped to her feet and spun around, staring into the salt that swirled and fell like ashes over her body.

Then she spotted him.

The Dealer.

The desiccated pony slowly approached, the ragged ends of his coat dragging over the salt. His tattered brim hid his eyes, but not his smile. His withered lips peeled back further into a ghastly rictus. “So here you are,” he said as he sat. “All alone. About to die. Just like Blackjack.”

“I’m not Blackjack.” Scotch did her best to stare him down.

“Could have fooled me,” he replied. “Though, maybe you’re right. Maybe you aren’t like her, following your friend around. Trying to help Pythia.” He rubbed his chin. “Maybe you’re more like your father.”

She felt a hard chillness spear through her as she froze in place. For seconds she was paralyzed, unable to do anything but stare at the smug skull. “You don’t talk about my father,” she whispered, trembling in rage.

“Now him, he knew how to die. Gloriously stalling Horizons going off, buying time for the rest of you to survive,” the Dealer said as he sat, his hooves pulling out a card from his coat. Her father, speared by ten swords, pinned to the ground as he struggled to work a terminal.

“Shut up!” she screamed and charged him. He exploded into a sheet of dust as she stamped through him, coughing and hacking. Her chest burned as she fell back on her rump in the dust. “I never wanted this.”

“Never wanted?” rasped the voice in her ear. “Never? You begged for this. ‘I want to be like Blackjack.’ Remember?”

“No,” she muttered, standing and facing him again. “I’m not like Blackjack. Or Daddy.”

“Glory then?” the Dealer said, pulling out a card showing the gray pegasus, two spilled cups at her hooves as she wept. “Lacunae?” He twisted his hooves, showing the solemn, and someone fearful purple alicorn with five coins in the dirt before her. “Rampage?” Another twist, and she stared at the mare abandoned on the moon, her eyes two bleeding masses of gore, nine swords hemming her in and trapping her on the luminescent dust. “Boo?” The blissfully happy, ignorant mare appeared dancing on the edge of a building.

“None of those!” Scotch rasped, coughing.

“Well, I need to know who you are before you die. It wouldn’t be fitting for you not to be a face in my deck,” he said as knelt before her, raising her chin with a bony hoof.

She stared under his hat at the empty, black sockets of his eyes. “Who are you?” she whispered. “Are you a spirit?”

“Nobody important,” he replied.

“You were that one pony trapped in EC-1101. I saw him,” she said. “He was a soldier that got his soul stuck in the program.” Dealer didn’t answer. He just smiled, his hooves working the cards. “You’re not that pony. You’re something else. What? What are you?”

“Always with the questions,” he murmured back. “Don’t you get it? This isn’t about me. It’s about you. Who you are, here, at the end.”

“I’m not dead yet,” Scotch said, heaving herself to her feet.

“Are you sure about that?” Dealer asked, pointing a hoof down at the dragon’s corpse. At all the bodies.

She didn’t look. She didn’t dare. “Yes,” she shouted back at him.

“So persistent.” He frowned, and she counted that as a win. “Who are you?”

“I’m… I’m Scotch Tape.”

“And is that all?” he countered, slowly leaning towards her so close she shrank back. “A flimsy bit of plastic tagging along stuck to Pythia’s endless story? Hanging to a group of friends far more special than yourself?”

“I’m a shaman,” she added.

“Ah. I have a card for that,” he said, pulling out of his coat one with a filly that was half shark, half zebra gasping for water on dry land, crushed under three sticks. “Is that you?”

“No!” she backpedaled from him, tripping over her hooves and landing on her rump. “I won’t end up like that.” She hunched over, coughing and retching. “I won’t. I– ack…”

“Wait. I think I have your card right here,” he said, pulling it from his sleeve. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see it!

Black tar began to drip from her mouth. It pooled like thick ink, staining her hooves, spreading and smearing as she retched more and more, her lungs burning. The salt shattered like glass, and she fell into a sea of black tar, pulling her down to the rest of the bodies. “You better decide. I won’t be patient forever. And you’re certainly not gonna last that long.” His cheeks split in a grin that went all the way to his ears.

As she disappeared, he threw the cards in her face: a griffon chained to a two wheeled cart being pulled to his doom. Majina dangling by a hoof, wrapped in barbed wire. Precious as a horned monstrosity, fresh blood slathering her maw. A zebra skeleton draped in Pythia’s cloak. Charity buried up to her neck in gold coins as more tumbled down upon her. And her, in a mask, riding a blind dragon, its mouth spewing gouts of green flame while a single yellow star shone above her. Then the cards disappeared into the sludge, as did she, plunging deep into an endless pitch-black ocean.

“Gah!” she gasped, her eyes snapping open, coughing and retching hard. Her lungs blazed with every breath she sucked in, gulping it down with such force she feared she might have cracked a rib. She was in the trailer, the Whiskey Express pocketying its way across the salt flat with Skylord behind the wheel. She stared at her friends, who scared back at her. “What happened?”

“You fell asleep and we got tired of waiting for you to snap out of it,” Charity replied sourly.

“You left? But how did you get the coal?” Scotch asked in bafflement.

“We didn’t,” Charity answered, spitting out the reply.

“But I… we… what?!” Scotch demanded, her mind racing to catch up.

“What other choice did we have?” Charity snapped. “Let ‘Wild-Fire’ Skylord waste another hundred rounds? Watch Majina nearly get her head ripped off running from trailer to trailer? Or maybe listen to Pythia whine about not seeing the future where we all got the coal we needed?” She jabbed a hoof at Scotch. “Did your shamany nap come up with a solution?”

“No,” Scotch admitted, coming to the sick realization that they’d failed.

“Which is what we figured when you didn’t wake up after an hour. So we left. We’re screwed. We’re going to die, but at least we’ll die closer to the south side than we will if we stayed until the Bone Legion wandered in.”

Scotch Tape deflated. She really couldn’t blame them, given she hadn’t expected that… whatever it had been. Vision? Rather than continue to argue, she looked around at the endless white and the distant rock behind them. “We’re going south?” she guessed from the sun being on their right.

“It’s away from the Bone Legion, and one direction is as good as another,” Pythia answered. “You were out for hours. What did you see?”

“Something. An old… something. I don’t know if it’s a friend or enemy, but I don’t like him,” she said as she rubbed her temples. “I think he’s a spirit, but if he is, I don’t know what kind. And he really seems to like messing with me.”

“That you can see him at all might be reason enough,” Pythia mused, but Scotch shook her head.

“There used to be a pony that called himself Dealer that lived in Blackjack’s PipBuck, like mine,” she said as she lifted the hoof computer. Four sets of disturbed looks. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. That wasn’t even in the top five of weird stuff that happened around her!” She took a deep breath, coughed, and struggled to catch herself. “He was a pony though. When Blackjack disappeared one day, she left her PipBuck behind. I put it on, and I met him. He talked about what happened to her when she left. Lancer confirmed it,” she said, glancing at Majina. She bowed her head at the mention of her brother, who’d at one point done his best to kill her and her mother. Though they’d reconciled, awkward just didn’t cover it.

“We were on an airship, heading to where we thought Blackjack had gone, when a balefire bomb went off. I had my back to it, and we were really far away, but everything lit up like you could see everything perfectly for one second. And I was looking at the Dealer and…” She paused, trying to put it all together. “And there was a second Dealer there. Like… like the pony’s shadow. He didn’t say anything, but he just looked at me. Like… I dunno, like he was thinking of bad things to do with me. Then the balefire bomb’s light faded and he disappeared. I don’t think the pony Dealer knew what was right behind him, but it saw me.”

“Pyromancy,” Pythia mused, now getting her share of odd looks. “It’s a form of divination. Fire burns away lies and exposes the truth beneath. It illuminates the hidden.” The odd looks doubled. “Look, it’s magic anyone can do if you know how. That balefire bomb had to be the mother of all pyromantic divinations ever. It let you see something that normally couldn’t be seen, and once you see it, they see you.” Pythia abstained from saying ‘I told you so.’

Of course, she’d seen him one more time before coming to the zebra lands, but she didn’t talk about that. Didn’t even like to think about it. “Anyway, all he did was mess with me. I couldn’t do anything to help us.”

“So then we’re screwed,” Charity murmured. “We’ll run out of coal in a few hours. The firebox will be cold a few hours after that. We’ll be hundreds of kilometers from anywhere, with as much water as we can carry. If we’re lucky, we’ll end up stranded on the far side of the Empty, or just blown away in the wind.”

“We might be able to make it out,” Majina said with a feeble smile. “Don’t give up hope.”

“Hope,” Charity stated with a glower, “is for morons. You have any idea how many Crusaders I watched die still clinging to hope? If you don’t have the food to eat, the water to drink, or the medicine to stay healthy, you die. Hope doesn’t figure into it. Hope isn’t going to fuel that fire. It’s not going to magically lift us out of the Empty. It’s nothing but a warm and fuzzy lie.”

Majina’s eyes glimmered wetly as she looked at the unicorn and repeated in a whisper, “I still have hope.”

“Don’t say it,” Scotch snapped at Charity.

Charity glared at her, then slumped. “Doesn’t matter. We’re doomed.” And she curled up, pulled her blanket over her, and fell silent.

“We’re not doomed. I can breathe fire. That should help a little, right?” Precious offered. “Please, tell me I can help a little,” the dragonfilly begged.

Scotch was skeptical, but kept quiet. Gouts of dragon flame were not steady, consistent heat, but it might buy them an hour or two. She offered Precious a smile. “Yeah. Sure. Absolutely.” Majina smiled, but Pythia just gave her that vaguely disapproving look. “You don’t know it won’t help,” she pointedly stated to the Starkatteri filly, who conceded with a shrug.

There was nothing to do now but wait. Wait to run out of fuel. Wait to run out of water. Wait to die.

Four hours later, they poured the last of their coal into the firebox.

Four hours after that, Precious was on her belly, blasting the firebox with green flame.

An hour later, the Whiskey Express gave its last pock and rolled silently across the salt flat. The wheels kept turning for a time, the salt softly crunching under their tread before they came to a stop. Every bottle they had was filled from the water tank. Wordlessly, they piled up as many supplies as they could carry. The southern dust band was barely a gray fuzz on the horizon. How many days on foot would they take to reach it? How many days to cross the blinding dust and salted winds?

Scotch brought up the rear, unable to quite part ways with the tractor just yet. This was wrong. There was no way to cross all this on foot, even with the supplies they carried. Yet what else could they do? There was no choice. Like in Carnico. Like in Greengap. On the Abalone.

The Abalone…

She stared at the Whiskey Express, then looked at the canvas sheet that Precious dragged behind her, then at the billowing dust.

“Girls!” she cried out at them, getting four bewildered looks and one annoyed glare. “Come back! Quick!” They wearily trudged over. “I got an idea” And she shared it.

Charity summed up her thoughts: “This is stupid, but so’s trying to walk out of this death-bowl, might as well be trying something original and stupid.”

Unfortunately, her plan had one problem.

“Push!” she demanded, trying to shove forward while coughing, her chest burning with exertion. All six, Pythia included, shoved hard against the tractor. The wheels rolled slowly south, crunching the salt crust under its wheels. The water tank had been drained, scavenged, and then left behind. Even with just the trailer, the Whiskey Express wasn’t a feather. They all had to shove the tractor and trailer along.

Pythia pushed and shoved right along beside Scotch, even if she wasn’t close to being as strong as Precious, Skylord, or Majina. Even Charity seemed to have more oomph than Pythia, but every shove by the filly made it easier on all. Still, Pythia kept tripping over the hem of her cloak, or having to deal with the hood falling in her eyes. Finally, to Scotch’s shock, she undid the clasp and threw her cloak off into the trailer behind them. It was the first time Pythia’d never been uncovered in front of everyone, as far as she knew.

And Scotch had to admit, not covered by her cloak – okay, also not covered by her cloak – Pythia was pretty cute. They’d been in the zebra lands a while. Her legs were longer and more awkward than what she’d imagined when they’d met in Hoofington, and her mane grown out a bit. Her stripes were thin, vertical and sharp, and also framed her flank very nicely. The star shaped glyphmark gleamed in the bright sunlight. Scotch hadn’t even known she had one! Despite everything, Scotch couldn’t help but smile as she looked over her.

Pythia caught the look, her yellow eyes narrowed in bafflement, then popped wide as her cheeks immediately flushed. “I was sick of tripping on the dumb thing. Stop looking at me like that,” she muttered as she shoved hard against the back of the tractor.

“Like what?” Scotch replied, feigning innocence.

“Like… you know like what!” Pythia snapped.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Scotch said with a grin.

“I… you… we are not having this conversation!” Pythia insisted. “I am not… we are not… we’re not!”

“Honestly, I don’t care if you two bang like rabbits but could you please hold the flirting till the rest of us don’t have to listen to it?!” Charity snapped.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing more,” Skylord countered.

Ah, friends. Who else could ruin perfect moments like this?

Two days and many breaks later, they’d pushed the tractor to the edge of the dust storm. Scotch was too tired for shenanigans both nights, and really wasn’t sure if Pythia really was interested or not. She thought she was but… ugh…

In 99 it was easier. Sorta. Out here there were all sorts of rules that she didn’t quite know and Pythia seemed to take offense at even a cursory oogling. She missed Rice River.

When she felt the first tugs of wind on her mane, it was time to put her plan into action.

They carefully lashed the wooden tentpole to pieces of metal scavenged from the water trailer, making a five meter tall mast that they tied to the Whiskey Express. Then they rigged a boom, and turned their canvas tent into a mast. The canvas flopped in the breeze. “This is stupid. It’s not going to work,” Charity announced.

An hour later, the sail filled stiffly, but still the Whiskey Express didn’t move. The metal frame just twitched in the wind. They all took a drink out of the water stored in the boiler. “It’s not working,” Charity observed, sourly.

Then, as they pushed the tractor into the blowing dust, Scotch stopped pushing, but the wheels kept turning. The ropes that Precious and Skylord pulled were going slack. In spite of the weight of the tractor, the wind was pushing it along.

“It’s working,” Scotch murmured. Her face cracked into a grin, dry lips splitting. She didn’t care one bit. “It’s working!” She jumped up into the tractor and turned to her friends, holding out a hoof. “Climb on in.”

To be fair, she’d only had a few days on board a ship, but she’d also had Majina with her, and the filly was already calling out nautical commands as they moved over the flats with only the sharp hum of the wheels turning below them to indicate that they weren’t plowing through calm waters. The wind pushed harder and harder against the sail, and at one point the band all climbed onto the left side of the Whiskey Express to keep it from tipping over. Even then, the left two wheels lifted completely off the ground as they raced along even faster than they had with coal! She had no idea how fast they were moving through the gray void of dust, since Majina had the goggles and the steering wheel.

To her shock, Pythia laughed hysterically as they swept along. It was insane. One good gust could wipe them out, and yet who cared? They were all fools standing at the edge of a cliff, dead either way. Why not dance over the precipice?

When it got dark, they pulled down the sail and put it over the dust-covered wagon. Hope, as much as Charity hated it, had returned.

Two days later, they reached the wrecks. Hundreds of them, so many they had to slow down to avoid ploughing into them and becoming wrecks themselves. These were larger tractors, and they likely had gone farther before running out of coal. They took advantage of the shelter offered by the hulks to get out of the wind and rest. The abandoned trailers were slightly more comfortable than their own, so they took a moment to get the dust off, eat a sand free meal, and push on.

Scotch caught Pythia in an enclosed trailer, the filly brushing the dust off her body. “I’m going to bathe for hours once we find some water–” she said, then met Scotch’s eye and went bright red. “I thought you were Majina. I hate not having my sight out here. I don’t know how you–”

Scotch kissed her. It wasn’t a real deep, hard kiss. Just a smooch, the kind she’d give any filly in 99. An ‘I like you’ kiss.

Pythia jumped away as if she’d touched a live wire. She fell back, staring up at her. “What the hell was that?”

“What?” Scotch asked with a frown. “I just thought you looked cute and wanted to give you a kiss. I thought it’d be the only way I could give you one without you seeing it coming. What’s the matter?”

“The matter?” she gaped at her and rose, scowling. “I- You- Me–” she sputtered and took a deep breath. “You don’t kiss someone just to… just to kiss them! You just don’t.”

Stable 99, the Chapel colts, Vicious, and the Carnilians would beg to differ. “But you like fillies. I’m a filly. I like you!” Scotch protested, “so what’s the matter?”

“The matter is… I…” She trailed off, looking a little haunted. “I’m not sure why I like fillies. I’m not sure if I like you that way. I…”

“Not sure?” Scotch sat down listening in some concern.

“Scotch… I don’t know why I am the way I am. I’m… I’m not like you! You live your life and everything you do is you. But my life is in the future… and the past. Every innocent kiss… I see the horrible breakup. Or the tears. Or worse. And if that poster is right, I travel in time too. I’m messed up enough and then you come and spring a kiss on me… honestly, you’d have been better off bucking me in the face!”

“But…” Scotch sat hard and shook her head. “I don’t get it. And I want to get it. I want to understand. I want to help you.”

Pythia’s pain showed clearly on her face as she stared back. “I… want you to help me,” she said, her voice low as if confessing some horrible, personal disease to Scotch. “I want to make sense…” She paused and bit her lip. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“Kissing me is a mistake?” Scotch asked.

“Doing anything is a mistake,” Pythia said, sitting and hugging herself tight. “Doing things just leads to trouble. I don’t want to do something that hurts me. Or you.”

“But you want to?” Scotch confirmed as she moved next to her while being careful not to actually touch her. If Pythia was like Daddy… a great gulf of shame welled up inside her.

But to her immense relief, Pythia smiled a tiny little smile. “It’s… intriguing,” Pythia admitted. “I’ve thought about it. But I’m a mess. I… I’m not like you.”

“Like me?” Scotch blinked.

“You… do things. Like in Rice River. You and Vicious just… did it. Like it wasn’t a big deal. How? I can’t wrap my head around how two ponies so different, with so many different issues, just do what you did. I can’t. I’m not even sure who I am, let alone who I want to share my body with. Or how to do that if I ever do,” she said, conflict clearly evident on her face as she rolled her eyes a rubbed her shoulder. “And that’s a big ‘if’, but sometimes, I wish I could. Be like you, I mean.”

“Well… you just… do,” Scotch said, completely lost. “And you work it out as best you can. You just know, you know?”

“I don’t just know how… you know…” She tapped her hooves together. “I mean I know know. I watched Rice River television too. Damned Carnilians. I just… I know, but I don’t know. You know? You don’t know.” She and groaned, hiding her face in her hooves. “I so need to see the future right now.”

“Why?” Scotch asked with a smile, “What’s wrong with living in the now?”

“Because right now you kissed me and got a face full of my existential identity crisis, that’s why,” she said with an exasperated little huff.

Exawhat? “Well, the only time you and me are living at the same time. Otherwise you’d see it coming and you’d have the whole conversation for us.” She gestured at the imaginary cloud of issues. “Then I’d never really get to hear all of this.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Pythia groaned, rubbing her face hard. “I miss seeing things before they happen. It makes conversations so much… simpler.” She sighed and shook her head before Scotch could comment on that, saying in a plaintive voice, “We’re not supposed to be thinking about this till we’re grown up and… and stuff! Right?”

Scotch was sure that whatever an ‘existential identity crisis’ was, fillies their ages weren’t supposed to have them. Scotch only shrugged. “I like you, Pythia. You’re frustrating and annoying, but I think you’re a good filly. And I’d like to do stuff I like. Stuff that feels good that you can only do with another pony. But only if you want to. And if you don’t… well, you don’t. And if you do… well… I do too.”

Pythia looked at the dust. “I don’t,” she murmured. “Even if… even if the idea is… is… interesting… I don’t. Especially not here, covered in dust.” She rubbed her leg as she looked away, “Maybe not ever.”

Scotch nodded. “Well, whenever… wherever. Just let me know. Don’t be afraid to talk with me, even if the futures might be bad.” Scotch rose to her hooves, feeling a little rejected, but far more like a grade A idiot for kissing Pythia when she was effectively ‘blind’.

“Scotch?” Pythia called after her, and she turned. “Thanks for being nice to me. It’s… nice,” the zebra said with a small smile.

“Sure,” Scotch said, and then stepped out of the car and back to her friends.

She balked at the four of them smirking at her. “Pay up,” Charity said, holding out a hoof to Skylord.

“I totally thought they were gonna be smooching,” Skylord grumbled, reaching into his saddlebacks for an imperio coin.

“What happened? Do you need music? Romantic lighting?” Majina asked as she sprawled on her belly.

Precious pointed behind Scotch. “You need to get back there and show that filly what for! Just take her and say ‘you’re getting sweet lovings!’ and do it!”

“I… you… What the heck is wrong with all of you?” Scotch demanded, her cheeks flaming. “We just had a talk! Just a talk!” Nevermind that she’d set the whole thing off with an idiotic ‘surprise smooch’.

“Right. Just a talk. You and her. Alone,” Charity snorted.

“Take her stargazing. She’ll probably do it then,” Skylord suggested.

“You are such a pig,” Charity quipped back. “She’ll do it when she wants to do it, and she’s not going to want it anytime soon, especially with all of you perverts hanging around!”

“But you bet too!” Majina pointed out with a pout.

“If you four are rested enough to speculate on us doing it, then we should get going,” Pythia said as she followed Scotch in.

“Aww, you sure? I bet Scotch has some romantic music on her PipBuck! We’ll let you borrow the canvas,” Majina offered.

“You heard her. Let’s get going,” Scotch ordered. As the four shuffled out, Scotch and Pythia shared a look, and broke out in giggles.

Four days later, she wished she’d taken the chance for some playtime, because as they travelled on, the Empty beat all the joy out of them. Sand, not dust, seemed to cut into their hides and feathers. The gusts became so strong they had to let the sail out or risk tipping over. It was as if the Empty was sensing that they were trying to escape, and threw everything it could at them. Twice the wheels broke through the salt crust, and they struggled to wrestle them free and move the tractor onto firmer salt. The water from the Whiskey Express became more and more bitter. Then, to everyone’s disgust, came the requirement of drinking their own pee to make the water last.

There was no end in sight. The Empty was going to have them. One break. One tear. One flip. One impact. That’s all it would take. Scotch’s hooves burned from the salt drying out the tender flesh connecting them to her forelimbs. Her eyes were barely open a crack under the goggles as she twisted the wheel, struggling to keep a straight heading. She couldn’t even see the lumps of the causeway. She just had to keep going south.

Keep going.

Keep going!

We are not going to die!

Then a gust caught the sail and it started to tip further and further over. She released the wheel too late. With a scream, the Whiskey Express rolled onto its side. The canvas sail ripped to pieces as her friends were thrown free. All of them lay still where they fell. Her E.F.S. said they were still alive, but were seemingly weakened as Scotch herself was, as they lay there, incapable of even mustering the strength to stand.

This is it. This is where we die.

They hadn’t escaped the Empty. Maybe they never could. They’d be buried in the salt, and slowly sink down through the layers to join the dead.

Forever.

…

Scotch glanced over at Pythia and her friends and rose. The rope from the mast snapped in the wind. She tied it around each of her motionless friends, and started to pull. She was an earth pony, damn it. She could do this!

Step. Step. Step. The rope bit into her shoulders, her footing slipping under her cracked and bleeding hooves. Keep walking! Her lungs burned and darkness swam at the corners of her vision as she choked down successive lungfuls of stinging dust with every breath, setting her chest afire. It didn’t matter. Pull.

She managed two dozen steps before she collapsed.

It was enough.

She emerged from a near solid wall of dust to collapse on some sand dunes. Before her rose tall brown hills, forming a V-shaped canyon. From that canyon trickled a stream of water towards a collection of metal trailers converted into shelters. The Bone Legion flag fluttered in the fading breeze overhead, but right this moment she paid it no mind.

In front of her was a caravan of a half dozen tractors, the zebras filling their bottles with water from the canyon as they stared at her in shock. A mare approached her, as if staring at a ghost. “Uh, do you need help?”

Scotch’s split lips cracked and bled as she smiled up at her mare. “That’d be nice,” she whispered, and let unconsciousness claim her.

They’d crossed the Great Western Empty.

Author's Notes:

I am so very very very sorry for not putting this up earlier. This was done two weeks ago, put on patreon, but then I forgot to upload it here! I am sorry. Gomengomengomengomen...

Thanks to everyone that's stuck with the story up to this point, even if it isn't as good as I'd hoped. Thank you to Kkat for creating Fallout Equestria, and thanks to everyone that reads our stories. Really, please read other stories and give them a chance. A feedback. A comment. There's so many and they just drift away. You might find one you love.

Thanks to everyone that's supported me through these tough times. It's your help that keeps me going. Whether its through patreon or a donation, I appreciate every bit. And for everyone that supports me through comments and feedback, thank you! I may not comment to everything, but know that I read each and every one and use to when writing the next chapter.

Again, so sorry for this slip up. Gomen'nasai. ::Bows::