I was staring up at... big.

Big being a noun here, because the sky, the ceiling of the outside itself, was… immense. Before the last few moments, I couldn’t have imagined anything bigger than Stable 33’s Apple Orchard, now… my perception of just how fucking big everything outside was had made me kinda start to think about how small I was in comparison, which was kind of a sad train of thought until I noticed that high above me, the cloud cover with faint little bits of sunlight streaming through, something previously I had only read about, was moving. I now understood the meaning of the phrase; ‘Rolling cloud cover’ that seemed to be a pretty accurate description of what I was seeing. Well, that and big.

Kahu let me sit there staring up at the sky with my mouth slightly agape until she chuckled, and pushed my head downward with her magic to look horizontally.

What I saw was something almost equally as big as the parts overhead. My vision swam from staring vertical for so long and suddenly changing though and I stumbled and plopped dully into a substance on the ground that I recognized from photographs and from various books as sand. As my vision righted itself, I looked over what I supposed a beach looked like in real life, at what I could only guess was the ocean. I brought up my PipBuck briefly to flip on my Eyes Forward Sparkle; I was facing east, which meant I was facing mainland Equestria, and from what I remembered about teaching geography, (which was a fair bit) the Equestrian Islands, where we were, were only a short distance from the mainland of Equestiral however, I still could not see even the faintest outline of it, which perplexed me. If it was there at all, it was obscured by some kind of haze over the water.

“Is it just me, or can you see that smoky looking haze over the water, too?” I asked Kahu, who was waiting patiently to my side while I lay in the sand.

“That is called fog, Tumble.” She responded with a tone that seemed a tad exasperated.

I stood up out of the sand and brushed myself off, looking at Kahu who looked up at me a moment, grinned, shook her head, and struck off down the beach in a north-northwest direction. I followed her.

~

We walked for a really, really long time.

We walked off the beach pretty fast, moving through a thin brush and onto what looked like a very, very worn road. Kahu told me it was leftover from before the war and the elements had put it into the state it was today. I knew from books and pictures that at one point bridges had connected several of the islands; I wondered if any of them were still intact enough to use, though considering the varying state of this road; from something akin to pristine all the way to mangled, I doubted it.

We’d been walking a while, and the sunlight poking through the gray cloud cover hadn’t diminished, so I assumed it was probably mid-afternoon. I looked ahead down the road; it was curving, leading us back toward the beach. Lovely; I could stare at the ocean some more. The immenseness had become less mind-numbing and more fascinating. I’d been staring at the sky as I walked, but Kahu told me that not only could the sunlight damage your eyes beyond repair, the isle wastes were also not apparently very safe; so I decided I could stare at the sky later.

The trees, which where green and alive... ish, and a dark unpleasant color, thinned out gradually as we walked on, and the road stopped gradually as well, seeming to slide under the sand of the beach. The beach itself was narrower here, squeezed between the tree line and the tide. We’d almost made it to the point where the road started to appear again, when Kahu’s ears snapped up and she stopped moving altogether, one hoof raised mid-step.

I froze as well, straining to hear. Everything seemed quiet for a moment, and then I heard it; a droning kind of noise.

“Oh shit…” Kahu muttered under her breath, she turned tail toward the waves, staring daggers out into the haze.

“What?” I asked, turning to follow her gaze, or try to.

“Turn your safety off.” She said, not bothering to address the question in any way. I couldn’t say that was all that surprising.

“Why?” I asked as I magically flipped the aforementioned switch and unsnapped the snap on my holster.

“Your about to find out” she said, “Look.” she finished and pointed a hoof out into the haze.

I followed her fairly vague direction and at first I didn’t see anything, but then I saw it. As the droning sound got louder, I could see a murky dark shape out in the water. It surprised me that any boats were still running almost two hundred years after the bombs fell, though it didn’t in a few moments.

There must’ve been a deep drop-off immediately offshore, or the boat had a particularly flat bottom akin to landing craft, (which it might’ve) because it emerged from the fog down the beach from us, tearing up the coast and coming to a rather abrupt stop maybe two ponies’ lengths from the shore.

The machine idling in the water was quite the piece of work. I recognized what was left of the original shape as an Equestrian Coast Guard patrol boat; I recognized it from several patriotic posters, though it had clearly been severely modified. The hull was patched up with various pieces of metal, welded together with what must’ve been some level of expertise, considering the boat wasn’t at the bottom of the ocean. The rear of it had a rim of metal plating standing vertical around the edge of the deck, and I could see burlap through a few holes in the plated guardrail. Only toward the back however, which probably meant they served a dual purpose of keeping the vessel balanced and protection. Mounted in the rear of the craft was a severely large gun, (that had definitely not been in the photos) with a bandolier of excessively large shells leading out of a port on the side down below my field of vision into what I assumed was a crate filled with more ammunition. The glass of the cab had probably been broken or fallen out years ago, and the sides were replaced with more heavy steel; though not enough to impair peripheral vision, I noted. The vessel was manned by five ponies; three mares and two stallions. Two in the cab, two on the front stern, and one, a particularly burly stallion, in the gunner position of the mounted gun. To top it off, everything on the ship was riddled with bullet holes and dents the size of bullet holes, though the ponies aboard looked fit and ready, and ironically friendly, considering they were on a makeshift warship that looked like it’d been through hell and back. On the bow was the vessel's name; Kila wikiwiki'Kala ke'oke'o. Painted on with what looked like black spray paint in sloppy letters.

“Nana Switch, kela’ekahi kela mau ponies mai Hema Lae!” One of the stallions called, looking at one of the mares and pointing at Kahu.

“Aloha, makamaka” Kahu responded, “wai’olu mahana makani.” She finished; this tribal language was making my head hurt; excessive use of the m pronunciation and repetition in words meant I was going to have a hell of a time learning it, which I intended to do because not understanding these conversations was irritating me to no end.

“Eo makamaka. Aha ho mai’oukou I waho keia la?” The mare that the stallion had been addressing earlier said, pronouncing it as if it were a question; or at least, I thought she was, but what the hell did I know about a language older than dirt?

“Ia.” Kahu responded, nodding her head toward me, flipping her mane back out of her eyes on the return. I frowned at her, wondering why I was being mentioned in their conversation, but it continued anyway.

“Hiki ku?!” The mare gasped, her eyes widening and her reaction being mirrored by her crew-mates, “Kela hope loa lo’ohia?” She finished, turning her wide eyes on me; I suddenly felt very nauseous, as all her other crew-mates did the same.

Kahu nodded, and the mare immediately turned toward one of her crewmares, barking an order in that same tribal language. The pony darted across the deck and kicked open a gate at the rear of the boat; I hadn’t even noticed the hinges until now. She also threw a long length of wood partially overboard, propping herself up on the heavily reinforced guardrail and gesturing for us to come aboard via the makeshift ramp.

I didn’t really like the idea of getting into or onto a vehicle that looked like it had been completely re-purposed for waging nautical warfare, but I supposed I didn’t really have much choice in the matter, and my hooves kind of hurt from carrying my fat-flank around for several hours, anyway.

~

Kahu pretty much vanished to sitting in the cab with the captain and navigator, one of being the pony one of the crew members had addressed as Switch. The large stallion gunner looked very content with carving a very detailed design onto the mounted gun; spiraling vines and intricate leaves and flowers. It was very pretty, and I saw his cutie mark resembled a recolored version of whatever tool he was using to doodle. The weapon was clearly a half finished work, and the bottom portion was covered in the intricate designs, while the upper parts, including most of the actual weapon itself, were void of any artwork. I only interrupted him to ask what Kahu might be doing, he just said 'seasick.' It was a good enough answer for me. The other two crew members where up on the bow talking quietly and looking excited about something, occasionally they'd throw a glance back my direction, stop talking, and then look back at each other and keep on talking like a pair of giddy fillies; which, they kind of where, fillies at least.

I forgot all about the logs I'd downloaded into my PipBuck that I could've read to occupy my mind, and sat quietly instead, watching the waves and thinking; not really a smart move on my part.

Eventually, my drifting thoughts came to the mare from... was it really earlier today? Had I really murdered somepony that same day? It felt like longer, it also kind of surprised me that I hadn't been pondering this event while Kahu and I had been walking, but I suppose the sky and thoughts of it had occupied most of that time.

Somepony even set a can of sweet potatoes and a Sparkle-Cola next to me at some point, and I didn't touch them; my thoughts had become much too busy attempting to console my conscience that somehow, some way, the fact that I'd literally turned somepony's head into a bloody smear on the floor was okay.

It wasn't. This would never be okay; I remembered her name now, it had been Ratchet. Her cutie mark had been the tool she was named after. She'd worked in sanitation technically, but her position might as well have been maintenance of sanitation. She worked on all the pipes and stuff, and made sure all the drains lead down to maintenance instead of rusting out and draining into a wall. I'd had her twin colts in my class a few years before, they'd went on to the older kid's class, and her husband had worked in the orchard. Her family was dead, and she'd been an emotional train-wreck, fucking with another emotional train-wreck that was quite a bit bigger than she was. I tried to tell myself it was okay, and that I'd been defending myself... but I hadn't been. I could've easily just pushed her away gently; she was much to small to have posed any kind of threat, and I just said 'Nope fuck that!' and smashed her head into a pink paste all over the promontory.

I laid down, leaning against the sandbags, (That's what the burlap sacks I'd barely made out were) and put my head on my hooves, trying not to cry and bother the lithography pony and distract him from his work; I wasn't sure how he did it as an earth pony, but he managed to be extremely dextrous with that little tool of his. It was pretty impressive, and watching him work distracted my scatterbrain from my moral ailments for a few moments before I got bored and went back to staring at the floor.

What the hell was I going to do? I was a killer; in cold blood. In cold blood I'd taken the life of another pony; I mean, it'd be different if it had actually been self defense in some shape or form, and I probably would feel less mortified if I didn't have the sensation of somepony's skull crunching underhoof permanently embedded into my mind for the rest of eternity, but fuck's sake; I'd murdered somepony! That was.... Bad! Right? That was still bad out here in this back-ass-wards place where ponies got melted by radiation and boats had guns bigger than me mounted on them; right? I sighed; no it was probably perfectly acceptable, now that I thought about it.

I poked the can of sweet potatoes with a hoof and was briefly entertained watching it wobble back into place.

As my fixation on can wobbles waned, somepony called my name and I looked up to find one of the sailor ponies (Were they still sailors if the boat had no sail?) beckoning me toward the cabin; I stood up groggily and was rewarded for the slight bit of effort by the boat shifting on the surf, and my hooves sliding over the deck; throwing me down face-first with a nice little slide to land right in front of the pony who'd called for me. I looked up to find her face-hoofing, and blushing under my darker coat I stood back up. She shook her head a little and moved aside, making room for me in the fairly small cabin; the pony who'd been addressed as Switch was sitting next to the helm, sitting quietly next to her was Kahu, and the white pony who'd lead me in to Switch's right. I sat down in front of them, because that's where I fit, and looked expectantly at them; waiting for whatever they had to say.

There was a pregnant silence as Switch very clearly looked me over, and then she sighed, and spoke,

“A master of pages from the land beyond 33's door,

Through pain and strain, they'll conquer all before,

Unknown four, will land upon their own door;

The first longs to be free,

The second remains in owing,

The third rides the sea, ever so easily,

The fourth will take wing,

And incur, bring, about,

Something, not seen,

Nor that has been,

Since O'er in time,

Before the grime,

However, prior,

To their lighting,

Of the fire,

Of ire clash,

To ignite the spark,

A'night; a'dark,

In stark manner,

Ere banner fly,

The things I speak,

Remain what you seek;

A blade, a bell, a pair of whistles.

A book, a break, a board,

And well-nigh,

Exigent,

Utmost untime spent;

A cure; to your,

Most motley uhn' clean,

Serene, misery.”

My jaw had decided it was no longer attached to the rest of my face and had found a lovely resting place on the floor about halfway through her spiel; it remained there when she finished, and she giggled at what must've been a horridly embarrassing expression on my face. That'd been absolutely stunning literary genius. It took me several moments to actually process the fact that that was more than likely the very prophecy I was meant to represent, spoken aloud. Though it did irk me quite a bit that I was still dealing with all this prophecy mumbo-jumbo.

Kahu looked at Switch with a smug look on her face, “That was pathetic.” She said, her voice sounding very quiet and strained.

“What was? The fact that I have it memorized?” Switch asked, looking at Kahu a bit abashed.

“That'd be what I meant; yeah,” Kahu said, nodding, “Though at least you remembered it all.” she finished, and I was briefly reminded of teaching about constructive criticism for whatever reason.

I managed to re-hinge my jaw enough to stammer out, “Th-tha, wha-? Buh- uh-muh?” Strange; I hadn't been talking like a month-old filly the last time I'd checked, well, I had been kind of, but this was worse.

“Yes; that was about you Tumble.” Kahu said, turning her grin into a flat line and facing me. I just blinked at her in response.

“I'm so excited!” Switch said, jumping up and down, “This'll show the boss that all our talk about this prophecy isn't just tribal nonsense!” She was practically ecstatic; kind of odd for a pony with a switchblade knife for a cutie mark and fur that was probably the drabbest gray I could ever imagine seeing. Her crew mate was face-hoofing again; so far that mare seemed perpetually exasperated.

“Speaking of which,” she said, immediately serious, “You two should probably hit the sack, along with everypony else.” She finished, intentionally making the last half of the sentence louder for everypony else on the vessel to hear.

I looked out the windows; I couldn't really tell a difference between the semi-stormy cloud cover and the lack of sunlight filtering through, though they did seem a tad tinged orange.

~

Apparently hitting the sack on the boat was literally that; hitting the sack.

Everypony pretty much just laid down curled up against the sandbags, and the one person on guard made sure everything was in the right order with the anchor and whatnot, and they cycled through the crew members as the night wore on. First up was Cream, (The face-hoof pony). I laid down to sleep, casually blowing Kahu's tail out of my face, and briefly wondering why you needed a guard on duty in the middle of the ocean. I fell asleep in a timely manner; the deck wasn't actually as unforgivingly hard to sleep on as you'd think it was.

~

The still night over the ocean was torn apart by an unforgiving ear-splitting screech.

It jolted me awake and I was on my hooves right behind the crew members and Kahu. I jumped up to find the deck being swamped with sopping wet ponies of some sort. The only light had been a candle-lit lantern in the cabin and that was lying on the deck as Cream wrestled with one of the things, and three more advanced on her, while the rest were fast approaching the rest of us. In the flickering dance of the light I vaguely made out what they where; grotesque creatures vaguely pony shaped, similar to the ghouls I'd seen but not quite the same, all wielding some form of a blade weapon in their mouths or with a sickly colored levitation.

Before I could even unsnap my holster Kahu jumped forward, sliding across the wet deck and into their legs, knocking a pair of them forward, and running forward to help Cream, who was being mauled by four of the damn things.

Switch and the other crew members each met one of the monsters with force of some form or another; the lithography pony slammed a forehoof into a face, disarming the thing and jumping into a flurried melee with hooves against it. Switch herself met blade to blade skillfully deflecting with a small blade I assumed was her namesake and talent at work. I stepped forward and promptly re-lived crushing Ratchet's head as I stomped the life out of one of the things, I knew what the other two crew member's fate's had been as a scream followed by a sickly retching sound reached my ears.

One of the crew members had made a beeline straight for Cream, and had gotten a terrible gash through her throat as she tried to run by one of the abominations; she was already dead. The other had been tangling unarmed with one of the few unicorn-like ghouls and had just been skewered in the middle of the breast; a scream, followed by her retching up blood, were the last sounds she made prior to the sickening snap-pop of a blade being pulled from flesh and bone being heard as her killer turned toward Switch, the Lithography pony, and I.

Rage. Just... Pure, hatred, seethed through my very bones. It wasn't fair. They hadn't deserved to die! Just hours ago they'd been giggling like school-fillies because I'd shown up and given them something. I'd given them the gift of hope that things like this wouldn't fucking happen anymore. I'd come into their lives and for a moment, even if briefly, they'd had a chance to stop and think, 'Hey; tomorrow might actually be better.' because I was supposedly the key to this prophecy they all believed so wholeheartedly in.

All I could think about as my adrenaline-surged world seemed to slow to a crawl was how much I wanted that thing to die. Just. Fucking. Die. Fire; I somehow got fire from die, and went with it. I hardly knew any spells, let alone any about fire, but I'll be damned if a silly thing like logic was going to try and fucking stop me. Fire. Fire, fire, fire. Burning, explosions. Flames. Smoke. I felt the sensation of magic building at the base of my horn and I closed my eyes, letting the concentration and emotion pour into whatever the fuck was happening right there. My thoughts flickered over to the overturned candle lantern for a split second, and then a roar ripped through the air, and the pressure I'd built in my horn was immediately expended.

In the scuffle at the other end of the ship between Cream, Kahu, and the four other monstrosities, something or somepony had kicked the lantern right to the hooves of the one who'd just killed Switch's crew member. I'd somehow managed to make that thing pop like a balloon, sending the energy of the burning carbon of the candle exploding all at once into the freakish thing, sending it sailing in flames off the port side. I didn't really have time to marvel at how in the fuck I'd done that, and I was still pretty up-in-arms with emotion and whatnot.

I swept up a pair of the sharp whatevers that the creature's where assaulting everypony with; they looked like hunks of pipe, flattened and sharpened. Crude and dangerous. I didn't really give a fuck what I was using as weapons right now though. I charged forward toward the three things still fighting with Kahu and Cream and the one climbing back aboard (They'd knocked one off, I guessed).

I slammed a blade down as hard as I could on the single grotesque hoof gripping the guardrail and it gave way a lot easier than I thought it would; my weapon slid right through it and slammed into the guardrail itself, jarring itself out of my levitation and whacking the creature's hoof clean off at the same time.

I still didn't give a fuck; I kept on, I thrusted my last remaining blade-thing into one of their backs, and snatched his out of the air as it fell, managing to slam the one to my left in the face with it; this one was just a piece of pipe. Still didn't care; I kept swinging, bashing one of the ghoulish creature's eyes out of his head, and kept on swinging. The last one got wise fast however, and turned toward me, swinging his blade at my flank, giving me a lovely gash right across my cutie mark on my right side.

At that point, I decided the disgusting thing with his eyes bashed out of his face had had enough and had been turning around to face the other. I wailed as my cutie mark of all things was injured, the sudden surge of pain breaking my hold on my weapon. I bucked as he came down for another swing and his weapon cut again down my right side this time just as my hooves connected and he was thrown against the cabin's outer wall, dropping his own weapon.

I grabbed his weapon off the deck smeared with different colors of bloodstains, and whipped the thing around, through the air, letting go midway so it connected with full force of impact as the ghoul-thing tried to stand again after I'd bucked it into the cabin wall. The crude weapon slid right through the soft flesh of it's neck and lodged itself in the cabin itself, sticking the corpse to the wall in a half upright position.

Everything was really quiet all of the sudden. Save for the little fiery spot where I'd made a lantern pop like a cork from a champagne bottle somehow, (I still didn't really want to question that) and the sound of the water slapping against the side of the ship. It was also really dark now; the light had almost entirely gone out, except that little bit of fire.

I was also suddenly very groggy as my adrenaline wore off and my wounds began to throb excessively in time with my heart beating a thousand times a fucking second. I really, really just wanted to go back to fucking sleep. There was a tapping sound and a gurgle from the port side, and I plodded over purposefully, unsnapping my gun and flicking off the safety; there was just enough light I could see the little monster flopping around in the water, the same one I'd chopped a hoof off of. He hissed at me as I peeked over the side, and I leveled my gun with his face, pulled the trigger, and was rewarded with the water sparking with blue arcs of electrical energy for a moment, not to mention a lovely burst of gore, before the corpse vanished into the waves silently.

Okay; now everything was nice and quiet. Switch and lithography pony had been joined by Cream in mourning their lost crew-mates, and Kahu was quietly looking herself over. Everypony who was still alive seemed a bit beaten and cut up, but living and not in immediate life-threatening danger; though I couldn’t say the same for the ones we’d lost. I stepped over toward the cabin, slipped on something wet, (could've been blood or water; or both) and thumped onto the deck, sliding slowly to rest with my belly against the base of the mounted gun, which had seen no action this battle, I noted.

Kahu padded over to me, and I didn't see any more 'cause I just sighed and closed my eyes.

The last thing I heard was something about Switch, potions, and ow.

What the hell was ow?

~

Footnote;

Level Up!

Melee skill has increased to 45. (From 20)

New Perk – Emotional: You are emotional. You cry at weddings, you cry at funerals, you laugh aloud at every joke, you get angry when appropriate, and your happy when you should be. Your emotions have a direct effect on your magic, and if you concentrate hard enough, you can focus that emotion into a spell you don't even know! You do not learn whatever you cast, and you also have twice the difficulty learning and performing new spells than everypony else.