By some miracle, I didn’t die that night.

Shocking, I know, given that I’m here to tell this story, but, well… let’s just say that you don’t know the half of it.

I don’t know how long I was out for, but when I finally came to, the rays of light shooting through the holes in the shack slanted at steep angles. It took me a few minutes to get my bearings, but it didn’t take me that long to feel the dried blood caking my face, or to feel the lingering heat in my left flank. I reached forward with my hooves, managing to crawl out from under the bed with agonizing effort. Grunting, I forced myself to stand up, hissing as I held my branded leg to the side. I immediately flattened my ears against my head as my grunt sounded like a roar, and I recoiled slightly. That was when I first noticed how… quiet Blackwash was.

Ignoring the corpse lying on the floor, lifeless eyes staring forward forever like glass marbles, I limped to the door, shedding the rope bridle I was still wearing in the process—just another horrible reminder of last night. While things were still more or less a haze to me at this point, they were starting to come back, and in frightening clarity. As soon as I stepped outside, everything suddenly hit me in the face, and I could only stand in the road, breathless, as I took in the carnage around me.

Smoke plumed from a few smoldering buildings near the edges of town, rising into the air before the high altitude winds finally swept them away. It filtered the blue sun’s light, making it less white and more blue, bathing the town in an eerie glow. Spent casings in the dirt reflected the light, giving the ground a dull sparkle. And of course, lining the street, the bodies of ponies I knew lay in limp heaps, attracting flies and flesh strippers.

It was a good thing I was starving, or I’m pretty sure I would’ve puked again. Even still, dry heaving wasn’t much of an improvement.

The wind whistled through the empty streets of the ruins of Blackwash. I walked the entire length of the street without seeing a single untouched building. Even the one I’d passed out in after killing my captor was missing pieces of its roof and rear wall. The dull crunch of my hooves on the ashy ground was the only sound of life in the entire town. Somewhere, hinges creaked in the wind, giving me an eerie feeling I wasn’t used to experiencing in the middle of my town, especially in broad daylight.

I wandered around town in a daze, not really sure where I was going. I still had some lingering dizziness from my concussion, but even if it weren’t for that, I was incapable of thought. A dead mare walking, I drifted through the ruins of town, the ruins of my life, without aim or reason. Maybe I was hoping I’d see somepony else that’d managed to escape like I did. Maybe I was waiting for a bandit to pop out of the ruins of a house and gun me down in the street. I can’t really say. What I do know is that it didn’t take me long before I was staring down the front door of my house—or what was left of it.

Only two walls of the house were still standing, the front and left side and much of the roof had collapsed. Tendrils of smoke escaped from between the charred metal and scorched steel that once made up the roof, and the yard was littered with twisted debris and rubble. It wasn’t too hard to find the crater on the right side of the house, the remains of the bomb that’d given me yesterday’s concussion (and today’s headache). I stumbled into the backyard to see that the forge was completely gone, now little more than a raised mound of scrap on the mountain.

And between the remains of my house and the corpse of the forge…

“Get away from her!” I cried, rushing to Mom’s side in a gallop that was more a prolonged series of trips and falls than anything. Waving my hooves, I managed to chase off the flesh strippers that’d been gathered around her body, forcing them to take flight with shrill trilling sounds and the flapping of their four wings. When I was a few yards away from Mom, my frenzied gallop slowed to a trot, and eventually to a crawl. I fell to my knees by Mom’s side, simply trying to hold back the plethora of emotions as I stared at her bloody and mutilated body. It was pretty obvious that the flesh strippers had been at work for an hour by the time I’d come around.

I didn’t have any more tears to shed. The well had run dry hours ago.

Animals. These… Crimson had treated us like animals, but if anything, they were the animals, not us. In the space of one night, they’d flown into Blackwash from who knows where, burned the whole thing to the ground, enslaved everypony who could work and shot all the rest. My life, and the lives of everypony I knew, had been destroyed in a single night. As I sat next to my mother’s corpse, trying to find the tears to even cry, I wondered how hard it would be to join her, to join everypony else who’d died last night. After all, what was one more body on the mountain for the flesh strippers to feast on?

Then it hit me. As long as I could breathe, my life still meant a whole fucking lot. Not because of me personally. But because as long as I was alive, I was carrying the fate of everypony who’d survived the massacre on my shoulders. Nova. Gauge. Stardust. Brass. So many ponies I knew who were counting on me to save them. And even though I never asked to be a hero… I was the only one who could save them. I was the only one who knew what happened here, and the only one who could make it right.

I was going to get off this damn mountain, find out what Carrion had done with my friends, and put a bullet between his fucking eyes.

But first, I had business to attend to. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. The very first thing on my list was making sure the dead could rest easy. I was only one mare, but if I didn’t do the last rites, nopony would. All I’d be doing would be leaving ponies I knew for the flesh strippers to feast on, until there was nothing left but bones. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Mom, damn it.

I managed to find a shovel in the remains of the forge and haul it back to Mom. Thankfully, using my magic didn’t make me feel like my head was splitting in two, so I was able to get to work. Even still, trying to dig through the ashy soil on the mountaintop was a nightmare, and I hit stone no more than two feet down. But without tools to break up the rock, it was the best I could do.

It took me an hour, but I finally laid Mom to rest. A painted panel of aluminum served as her headstone for her shallow grave, but it was the best I could do. I threw more scrap metal overtop of her grave so the rains wouldn’t wash the dirt away, then simply sat near her head. Somewhere, thunder rumbled in the distance, but I didn’t pay it any mind. My attention was focused on replaying last night’s scenario and wondering if there was any way that I could have saved her.

My throat began to tighten, and pricks of warmth at the corners of my eyes signaled the arrival of tears. I swallowed hard, and as the gentle wind blew through my sweaty, bloodstained mane, I finally parted my mouth. “I… I-I never got to say goodbye,” I murmured. I didn’t know why I was talking, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. “It all… h-happened so f-fast.” Tears ran down the sides of my cheeks, and I rubbed a fetlock against my face to wipe them away. “It’s not fair. N-None of this is. I… I can’t even believe that you’re g-gone.” Swallowing hard, I looked up, to the east, in the direction I’d seen that flying machine come from. “I’m so… so sorry. But… b-but I’m going to make this right. You hear? I-I’m going to make this right!”

I quieted back down as thunder rumbled once more. After a minute of trying (and failing) to hold back tears, I simply hung my head and laid it on the ground next to the headstone. “I love you, Mom,” I whispered. “I love you so much.”

That was it. I didn’t say anything more. Before the depression and helplessness could paralyze me again like it did when she was dying in my forelegs, I rolled over and stood up. I still had a job to do.

I made my way back to the center of town, collecting whatever fuel and scraps of wood I could find along the way. Whenever I saw flesh strippers slicing through a corpse, I’d holler at them and chase them away. I knew I wasn’t solving anything, because they’d simply wait for me to leave before returning to their bloody feast, but it at least made me feel better. Nopony deserved to be a meal for scavengers.

But if I thought the flesh strippers were feasting before, I finally found the banquet.

I screamed in disgust and revulsion and dropped all the wood I’d scavenged at my hooves. I’d finally made my way to the town square, and I figured out that Carrion had meant business. From one side of the square to the other, the corpses of Blackwash’s elders all laid face down in the dirt, surrounded by pools of brown, dried blood. The neat lines told me they’d been executed one by one and left to rot. I could smell the stench carried in on the breeze, and hear the frenzied trilling of the flesh strippers as gangs descended onto the bodies. So much carrion for the feast…

There was no way I could bury that many bodies. That’s why I’d been collecting wood. Bundling it up again, I made my way to the clearing in front of the dishes and dumped the pile there. Then, one by one, I grabbed the bodies of the elderly in my magic and carried them over as well. I could hardly look at them without feeling sick, but I had to do this. I wasn’t going to burn a pile of discarded corpses. I lined them up in neat rows and folded their forelegs across their chests so they could at least go with some dignity, and spread the fuel over them. Hopefully it would be enough. I didn’t see SCaR where the bandits had left it, though. Maybe they took it with them when they left.

By the time it was high noon, there was one more fire burning on the mountaintop. I only lingered for a few minutes; the smell made me sick.

Now that the dead had their rest, it was time for me to get ready to leave. I’d need a weapon, some food, water, traveling supplies, and a map. My growling stomach steered me toward food being the first priority, even though I wasn’t sure I could eat after seeing all the death around me. But hiking down the side of a mountain on an empty stomach is about as bad an idea as they come, and I wanted to avoid as many bad ideas as I could. Apart from, you know, wandering into the Wilderness with no clue where I was or what I was doing.

I trotted over to the remains of the listening outpost; I knew there were some emergency rations still stored there from when the military used to own this place, and dried hardtack and sterilized water is better than no food at all. At least, until I could gather some food of my own. Even though the mountain was covered in pink grass, it was mildly toxic to ponies, meaning grazing was an absolute last resort. I’d have to go hunting for stone hares (which are about as hard to eat as their name would imply), or find some wild berries. There were a few spots where the latter grew on the mountain, and the former occasionally wandered up the slopes close enough to hunt.

The outpost itself had been hit hard. Sure enough, it looked like the Crimson had cut through the side of the prefab, bypassing the big door altogether. I guessed by the twisted shrapnel that they were more of a fan of breaching charges than fusion cutters. There were more bodies scattered around the outpost. A lot more. It looked like most of the fighting took place here. I could’ve stopped to bury every one of them, but I was just one mare, and I’d already used most of my fuel burning the elderly. One mare can’t bury an entire town of hundreds of ponies.

I crawled through the hole in the wall of the outpost and found—big surprise—more bodies. But what was actually surprising was the lack of collateral damage inside the outpost itself. There were only a few holes or dents where bullets were fired, and definitely no scorch marks from explosives. The Crimson had been very careful not to damage anything inside of the outpost, and I had a good idea why.

A few seconds later, I was able to confirm my suspicions. The main control room, where I’d stood not even two days earlier and listened to a message from a long-forgotten world, had been completely stripped bare. All of the computers were gone, all of the holodisk records, everything. Whatever working tech there was in the outpost, the Crimson had stolen all of it.

But why though? I knew that the signal we received drew them here—that much really wasn’t too hard to figure out—but why? I had no idea. And come to think of it, Carrion said he was doing a job for an employer. But who would want to kill a small, isolated, peaceful town on a mountaintop over a message sent hundreds of years ago?

But there were more pressing matters. Who cares if I knew why we were attacked if my friends and family were being sold into slavery, maybe even while I was lingering on the mountain? The ‘whys’ of why my life was destroyed in a night could be put off until later. Right now I had to answer the ‘hows’; like how I was going to get off this mountain, and how I was going to find the Crimson.

I already knew the answer to the first ‘how’: with food, water, blankets, and guns. Thankfully, the Crimson hadn’t found the emergency supplies inside the outpost; either that, or they didn’t care, but I wasn’t complaining. I opened what looked like a little storage closet to find a dozen boxes of hardtack and two dozen metal cans of purified water. Not only that, but there were some blankets and other basic survival gear inside, most importantly of all being saddlebags to carry all of this shit. Loading myself up with two boxes of hardtack and a half dozen cans of water, I felt a little more ready to take on the Wilderness. There was only one problem though.

I needed a gun.

The supply safe didn’t have one, which I guess made sense? I wasn’t really sure what Equestrian protocol was for dealing with supplies in emergency situations, but apparently reserve firearms weren’t mandatory. A trot across the way to the armory yielded… nothing. Apparently the Crimson had stripped it dry, taking all of the dozens of firearms and thousands and thousands and thousands of rounds Blackwash had been stocked with for themselves. I guess bandits like them weren’t about to pass up on an opportunity to bolster their own firepower. But that still left me with no way of defending myself, apart from brute force bludgeoning with a lead pipe or something. And from what I’d seen in town, they’d been pretty thorough in scavenging all the weapons and bullets they could find. That was a little odd. Even bandits had a limit for bullets; how many could they possibly need? Maybe they needed to stock up because they’re terrible shots with those automatics of theirs…

…Which gave me an idea.

Laden with supplies and a bedroll, I trotted across town, taking care to avoid the still-burning pyre in the town square. I felt my throat momentarily seize up as I returned to my home in its sorry state and saw the freshly dug grave outside. But I’d already shed my tears; I didn’t need to shed more. So, head held high and staring forward, I trotted past both until I was climbing the little hills and gullies up against the side of the caldera. After a few minutes of searching, I finally found what, or should I say who, I was looking for.

It was the pegasus bastard who’d killed Mom. His body laid crumpled in a feathery heap where he’d fallen, and if he wasn’t dead when I’d shot him, the awkward angle of his neck told me he would’ve died immediately upon hitting the ground. Brown, dried blood stained his armor and the ashy ground around him, and I could see three puckered marks along his chest—the entry wounds of my rounds. As I stood there, staring at his body, a revelation hit me.

I’d killed ponies last night.

You’re probably thinking I’m stupid or something for coming to that realization way after the fact, but the truth is, I was more concerned with not dying to think about how I’d just snuffed out the lives of two of my fellow equines. Now, they may have been horrible, horrible ponies, but the point remained that I’d taken two lives and hadn’t even thought about it. One of them had even died in incredible agony as I sliced his innards to ribbons and I didn’t even bat an eye. I mean, I’d passed out almost immediately after, but that was beside the point.

Yet here I was, staring face-to-corpse with the repercussions of what I’d done last night. Was taking a life really that easy? Three shots to the chest, just fire and forget? I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel. Disgust? Remorse? Joy? I mean, I’d cut the bastard down that’d killed Mom, but for some reason, that didn’t make me feel any better…

In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not a very philosophical mare. So I did what any not-philosophical mare would do, and simply ignored the implications of what I’d done. I could think about them later. Right now, I was wasting valuable time, and a look to the west, where the horizon met a shimmering blue ocean a hundred miles away, showed rainclouds bearing down on me. I only had a few hours before I’d be all but drowning in water. On Auris, when it rains, it pours.

I found the screws that held the automatics to the stallion’s shoulder mounts and quickly undid them. Prying the gun off of his shoulder, I took a step back and spun it in place with my magic to get a good look at it. It looked like a Bronco SM45, an ammo-hungry automatic submachine gun with virtually no accuracy. Basically, this thing sucked beyond twenty-five yards, which was pretty much its maximum range. The only way a pony could hit something at range with it was to just squeeze the trigger and hope its nine hundred rounds per minute would be enough.

At least it seemed in decent condition, which was more than I honestly expected given how mangy the stallion looked, and as I searched through his saddlebags like a damn grave robber I found four drum magazines for two hundred rounds in total, some spare parts, and some cleaning supplies. I decided to leave the other SM45 with the bandit; I only had two hundred rounds, and I didn’t want to divide that between two guns. Besides, I hopefully wouldn’t need to use it anyway, and I think it goes without saying that I’d already be horribly fucked if I needed to wield both of them at once.

There was one more useful thing I found on the bastard’s corpse: a crude map of the area. It took me a few seconds to get my bearings on the mouthdrawn map, but I found Blackwash easy enough by looking for the largest mountain in the west. Sure enough, it’d been circled and marked with an exclamation point. There were a few more things of interest throughout the valley, including a bright red X surrounded by exclamation points nestled in the middle of the mountains probably eighty or so miles away from me. On the opposite side of the river that ran through the valley was a black square marked as ‘HOME’. At least that gave me a direction to shoot for.

A few names were also scribbled at the foot of the mountains, Northlight being the closest. Names of towns, perhaps? It was definitely worth checking out when I finally scaled the mountains. I didn’t even know that there were other towns and other ponies that lived that close by. Remember when I said that Blackwash was my entire world?

I stood up and sighed, tucking the map into one of my saddlebags and fashioning a makeshift sling to hold the SM45 around my neck while I walked. I wanted it at the ready so I wouldn’t have to dig it out of my bags if I was attacked or something and had to act fast. Fully stocked on supplies, I trotted away from the bandit’s corpse, but not without spitting on him first. That fucker killed Mom; I hoped the flesh strippers tore him apart.

Before I left the mountain, however, there was one more thing I wanted to say goodbye to. Trotting off of the hills, I slowed in front of the remains of my house. Something still smoldered inside, but at least the shack looked stable. It’d be pretty fucking ironic if my journey ended before it even began because I got squashed by a house.

Picking my way through the rubble, I found myself inside of the single room shack I’d called home for twenty winters. Only the corner Mom and I used for our kitchen and bathroom was destroyed; everything else was singed or had fallen from its shelves, but at least that all was fine. I walked across the dirt floor to our beds, which we’d placed side by side at one end of the house, and plucked a picture off of mine. It must’ve fallen off of the shelf overhead, and the mattress stopped it from getting broken. I turned and trotted a bit back towards the hole in the wall for some light, and promptly sat down on my haunches and simply stared at the picture.

It was the only picture of our family. All of us. Me, Mom, and Dad, in front of our house. I was still a newborn foal, and Mom looked exhausted, but there was a shining light in her eyes; she was happy. Probably the happiest I’ve ever seen her. And she was leaning against Dad’s side, who had a wing draped over her barrel. He was a wheat brown pegasus, but that was the most I could tell about him. Right as the picture was taken, he’d pulled a hat down over his face, obscuring it. I think he knew even then that he was going to leave.

That Mom still had this picture and hadn’t torn it up after he left told me a lot. She loved him. She loved him with all of her heart, and he’d stomped on it and flown away without so much as a word, leaving Mom to care for two-winters-old me by herself. Maybe she kept the picture around because she hoped he’d show up again. I couldn’t really say, and I couldn’t really ask her now. All I could do was take the picture out of its frame, fold it up, and stick it in a pocket. I could at least carry a little piece of both of them with me, wherever I happened to go.

There was a mirror lying on the ground that caught my attention as I left my house. Biting my lip, I picked it up and took a look at myself.

The Ember that looked back was not the mare I knew. Her face was covered in dried blood, and her mane was matted and tangled. Soot, ash, and more blood coated her coat, at least where it was visible beneath the saddlebags and equipment she was carrying. She had one cut hoof draped across a gun hanging from her neck, and her cutie mark on her left flank had been nearly burnt away, instead yielding to a heart seared into the flesh, still raw and red.

I looked like I’d been through hell and back. I suppose that’s not an inaccurate metaphor.

Pocketing the mirror, I limped away from the house and made my way to the east slope of the mountain. There I stood, staring down at a narrow path that twisted and winded down the mountain and the adjacent slopes for hundreds of feet. Me and Nova and Gauge used to make a game out of who could go the farthest down the side of the mountain without getting scared and turning back. I usually won, and I could still see the twisted stump of the tree that I’d touched the very last time we played, eight winters ago and nearly four hundred feet down.

Looking back on it, after seeing how far I’ve come now, and all the things I’ve done since the day I decided to leave Blackwash for the first time, it still amazes me that I’d lived my whole life up until that point within the boundaries of that tree. And there I was, about to venture into the great unknown with reason and purpose, with nothing to look back to and an uncertain future before me.

I didn’t look back at Blackwash as I took my first of many, many steps away from my home. I didn’t want to remember a broken, twisted, and dead town. I wanted to remember the home I grew up in, the place that protected me, the place that I loved, as something alive and well, even if only in my mind. As the damp western wind began to curl my frazzled mane with moisture, I only trudged onwards, eyes focused on the path ahead of me, and making sure that I didn’t lose my hoofing and go rolling down the side of the mountain. Up ahead, the gnarled, hardened trunk of an Auris tree stood, waiting for me to visit it again, daring me to turn back.

I passed it, setting hoof on new ground, and leaving Blackwash behind me… forever.