I was starting to understand why generations of scavengers hadn’t picked this place clean in nearly two hundred winters. The foundry was huge.

I hadn’t had the chance earlier to just get a sense of how big the compound was, since I was a little too busy running for my life from the tolan. But as soon as I followed Mawari and her family out of the one building into the interior of the compound, I was amazed. In the light of the moons, I could see building after building lined up and down the roads, some of them collapsing from age and decay, while others remained defiant and strong. While most of the buildings around me were very large and topped with a few smokestacks that had remained standing despite the passage of time, I could see a pair of warehouses down the road to my right, still in perfectly pristine condition. Somewhere in that general vicinity was the shipment the Synarchy had sent the foundry a long, long time ago. I only hoped it’d help us get out of here alive.

After checking the surrounding area for any more wailers, Mawari began to sneak off to the corner of the building on our left, with Denawa following her. I started to follow them, but Rankan put a hoof on my shoulder, stopping me dead in my tracks. When I looked back (and up) at him, he simply shook his head, then took his hoof off my shoulder and pressed it to his lips.

I grasped the meaning easily enough. “I can be quiet too, you know,” I grumbled, sitting down against the wall and crossing my forelegs. “I’ve had to do my fair share of sneaking around and not getting caught by ponies who want to kill me before. Two days ago, I had to hide from the high bitch supreme, Hunter, back in Hole! And she walked right by me without even noticing me.” I proudly stood up and puffed out my chest. “How’s th—!”

He didn’t let me finish the rest of that before he more or less shoved his hoof in my mouth and glared at me. I pulled his hoof out with my magic and spat a few times on the ground. “Jeez, you could have just said something, you know,” I muttered.

SCaR trilled a few times and Rankan raised his eyebrow at me. I just dumbly stared at the both of them. “What?”

Then Mawari hissed at us from the corner of the building. I snapped my head over to her and saw her waving us over with a hoof. Rankan immediately began lumbering after her, his assault armor clicking and clacking as the old plates rattled around, and I followed him over. When we got close, Denawa galloped across the road to the next building on silent hooves, and Mawari pointed to where he was running. “Denawa’s going to take a look at the rebar plant,” she whispered, and I noticed she kept pointing her ears in different directions at the slightest noise. “If he finds a way in, he’ll come back and tell us. We don’t want to break any windows or force open any big doors, or else we’ll be buried to our necks in wailers. And with all the noise the wailers make, the tolan won’t be far behind.”

“Speaking of which, where the fuck is it?” I asked her, looking around us, but everything was still and silent. “It’s the size of a fucking house, it shouldn’t be that hard to find.”

“You’d be surprised,” Mawari said. “Tolans can be very quiet when they’re hunting. All those legs it has dissipate its body weight so you can’t feel the ground shake when it starts stalking toward you. Plus, they’re good diggers, and there’s a lot of rubble here for them to hide in and wait. Keep looking over your shoulder, don’t go too close to anything vaguely tolan shaped, and if you hear a clicking noise, just run. It’s about the only warning you’ll get.”

“Terrific,” I muttered, and glanced over my shoulder. Thankfully, I didn’t see any tolans sneaking up on us. “Can they slice through twenty feet of solid concrete with their claws and shoot lasers from their eyes, too? And just what are we supposed to be doing, anyway? Shouldn’t we have gone with your brother?”

Rankan gestured with his hooves a few times and shook his head. I just looked between him and Mawari and held out a hoof. “Well? What did he say?”

“He says you ask too many questions,” Mawari said, rolling her eyes. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, me and Rankan are wearing armor, so we make a fair bit of noise when we move. But Denawa isn’t, so he can go get a look at things before we go charging blindly into a wailer nest and get bitten.”

Well, they had a fair point, but I couldn’t help that I was impatient. I just wanted to find the access codes, open up the warehouse, and hopefully blow the tolan to pieces. Every minute I spent out here, searching the foundry with these zebras, was another minute I had to worry about Nova and Gauge. I just hoped that they’d barred the door and were staying quiet; I didn’t want any more wailers to find them, because I doubted they could defend themselves as well as I could. Hopefully that one that we’d encountered earlier was the only one upstairs in that building, apart from the ones trapped in rooms, and me and the scavengers had killed the rest on the floor.

Stripes moved across the street, and Denawa came creeping out of the undergrowth toward us. He hissed once to catch our attention, then waved his hoof for us to come over before disappearing back into the grasses and shrubs. Mawari stood up straight again, looked down the streets for any trouble, and then nodded to me and Rankan. “He’s found a way in. Let’s move.”

Mawari galloped across the street on surprisingly light hooves despite her armor and gear, though Rankan was hardly better than her; the heavy bulletproof plates of his assault armor rattled with every step, and he crossed the street more like a force of nature than a zebra. As for me, I followed close behind him, hobbling in my sling, my two pistols held by my side in fiery orange magic.

When we crossed the street and pushed through the brush, I saw Denawa standing next to a smashed in window. Flicking his ear toward it, he put one hoof on the sill. “It’s a mess in here. Lots of rubble and toppled machinery. Probably wailers hiding in the corners too. But they had a lot of drones to handle hot rebar here, so it’s worth a look.”

Mawari nodded and turned to the rest of us. “Keep quiet and calm. Don’t fire unless a wailer starts charging you; a single gunshot will wake them all up, and they’re usually fairly docile unless they hear noise.” She nodded toward SCaR. “Can you get him up in the air? That spotlight was useful last time, and wailers don’t respond to light, so we should be safe.”

“Just tell him where you want him to go and he’ll listen,” I said, smirking at SCaR. The drone hummed at me and then drifted over to Mawari’s head, slowly circling around her once as he scanned her or something. Fuck if I knew what that drone was doing half the time, but at least he was smart enough to understand what we wanted him to do. “What about me? I don’t have a whole lot of ammo for these pistols, but I have pyromancies, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.”

“How’s your stamina?” Denawa asked me. “I’ve seen unicorns blow their mana in three or four spells and then they’re out.”

“I’ve had plenty of practice,” I insisted. “I can conjure ten, fifteen fireballs a day.”

“And how many have you used today?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know, maybe five? I’m not feeling tired if that’s what you’re asking. I spent all day sleeping. I’m, uh… well, I’m sure you’ve seen it.” In case they hadn’t, somehow, I turned my flank a bit so they could see the heart burned over my left mark.

“I was wondering about that,” Mawari said. “You’re lucky. Not many slaves get away from the RPR.”

“I’m not actually a slave myself, but I may have kinda done a lot of shooting in Hole and helped a bunch of slaves escape,” I said, grinning. “They’ve got their hooves full right now. Still, the sooner that we can kill this tolan and get the fuck out of here, the happier I’ll be. Don’t want to be staying in one place too long in case they catch up to me again.”

“Hopefully we can help with that.” Mawari checked her rifle and nodded to the window. “Denawa, scout the threshold. We’ll follow you and move right toward the stairs so we can get on the catwalks. If the wailers sniff us out, we’ll have a better chance fighting them up there.”

Denawa nodded and unslung his shotgun, balancing it between his hooves. “Right. Follow in fifteen.” And then, like a shadow, he slipped through the broken window and melded into the shadows inside.

Mawari must’ve been counting down in her head, because she didn’t say anything or move at all for about fifteen seconds. Then, all of a sudden, she crawled through the window, the loose plates of her armor rattling a bit as she entered. I glanced at Rankan, and he just stared back at me, so I swallowed hard and swung my legs over after her, being careful not to get my sling caught on anything.

The rebar plant was dead silent, save for the clop my hooves made when they landed on the concrete inside. Some glass also crunched underneath them, and I quickly scooted away from the window so Rankan could enter. I could hardly see anything inside except for the faint glow of old metal piled high in front of me, so I tugged on one of SCaR’s thrusters with my magic to get his attention, then pointed up toward the ceiling. Trilling quietly, SCaR puttered up higher, then activated its spotlight.

The drone slowly swept the spotlight across the plant so we could see what was around us. Half of the ceiling had collapsed, letting some moonlight in, and there was a lot of heavy machinery that was crushed underneath it. Near us, a huge cobble of rebar had roared out of a jam and formed seven or eight loops in the air before it finally stopped, leaving only a twisted and rusted set of hoops and turns jutting out of the machine two centuries later. And there were a few skeletons lying near that machine with cracked and bleached bones, just to complete the picture.

Mawari saw the skeletons and shook her head. “Poor bastards,” she whispered. Then, moving slowly so her armor wouldn’t rattle, she began to move to the right, her eyes set on the flickering shadows SCaR’s spotlight cast on the catwalks.

As I followed her, I got a little distracted trying to reconstruct what had happened here. I sure as shit don’t know the first thing about forensics, but I could put together a rough idea of what’d happened solely from the rebar cobble and the skeletons near the machinery. The plant had been running when everything went to shit, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a cobble still sticking out of the machines. Maybe the plant had been attacked while the workers were still using it? And if that was true, I had to wonder if those skeletons next to the machinery belonged to the workers. It was one thing to grow up surrounded by centuries-old technology, but it was quite another to find the remains of somepony who’d actually used it.

I was starting to get the feeling that all of the buildings in the foundry were laid out the same. They had all of their machinery on the floor, a whole bunch of catwalks around the perimeter, and a room that overlooked the whole thing at the top, which was usually connected to some more offices for administration and shit like that. And, true enough, once we made it on the catwalk, we began to go up and toward the foremare’s office so that we could see the whole thing from above.

And then the rusted stairs shrieked and collapsed under us when we were about halfway up.

I felt my stomach start moving into my throat as the catwalk fell out from under me, and I lunged forward and managed to hook my one and only good foreleg around the bars on the stair railing a little further up. I grunted and smashed my teeth together as my hind legs kicked at nothing and I tried to hold myself up with only one leg, but thankfully Mawari was in front of me, because she quickly turned around and hooked her hooves under my shoulders, dragging me onto the stairs with her. They groaned a little bit more under our weight, and she quickly skipped up a few more steps to try and distribute the weight better.

I took a second to catch my breath before I looked behind me. A good fifteen or so steps had completely fallen out of the staircase, right in the middle of it, and Rankan and Denawa were picking themselves up at the end of it. I guess they’d jumped back before the falling stairs took them down too, but now they were on the other side, and there wasn’t really a good way for them to get up to us. But that was about to become the least of our problems.

A chorus of howling moans and wails began to echo through the plant, and SCaR squawked in alarm and quickly shifted its spotlight toward the far corner of the room. I felt my throat tighten up as a whole swarm of wailers began shambling, tripping, and falling over the equipment and rubble toward the staircase, wailing in agony as they did so. Seeing that many victims in such bad decay, many of them carrying twisted and rotting limbs and exposed brown bone, made me feel like I was going to puke.

“Shit! Denawa! Rankan!” Mawari screeched, quickly turning her bullpup rifle on the wailers below and firing several puttering sprays into the crowd using only her hooves to hold and brace the gun. One fell to the ground, its brain blown to pieces, but the others just staggered onwards despite the bullets ripping into their backs. I wished I had my rifle, because that was a lot more accurate than whatever gun she was using, but I only had a pair of pistols, and I doubted I could score any headshots from this far away.

Denawa and Rankan quickly took up defensive positions on the staircase, with Denawa crouching in front of and to the left of Rankan and his dual battle rifles. They waited until the first wailers funneled onto the staircase before Rankan opened fire, his rifles alternating bursts to rip the first few wailers to pieces. Denawa just tensed his grip on his shotgun and looked back at us. “Unicorn! Can’t you make a fucking bridge or something?!”

I quickly holstered my pistols and tried to look around, but it was really hard to focus on anything with all the flashing lights and loud thundering of gunfire all around me. I first tried to grab onto the collapsed portion of the stairs and lift that back up, but it was way too heavy for me. I managed to heave it maybe a foot off of the ground, but I had to let go before my head blew up. It felt like somepony was driving an axe through my skull. I had to think of something else.

Mawari suddenly cried out in alarm, and I immediately spun around to see her grappling with a wailer that must’ve come down the stairs toward us. She’d jammed the barrel of her rifle into its snapping jaws so it couldn’t bite her, but it was thrashing and flailing so violently that she was having trouble keeping her balance. Suddenly, it twisted its head to the side with frightening strength, enough to wrench Mawari’s hooves off of the ground and slam her into the railing of the stairs. Her hooves slipped off of her rifle, and suddenly she was going over, right toward a mass of wailers stupidly standing below us.

“Hang on!” I shouted, rushing to the edge and quickly flaring my horn to life. I managed to grab her tail with my telekinesis and stop her fall just a foot or so from the snapping jaws of the wailers. Gritting my teeth, I pulled her back up toward the stairs, sweat beginning to bead on my horn as I strained to lift her. She probably wouldn’t have been too bad by herself, but all the armor and gear she was wearing really weighed her down.

But while I’d been doing this, the wailer on the staircase wasn’t content to just sit and watch. Almost as soon as it’d thrown Mawari, her rifle fell out of its mouth and it started snapping again. Then it set its sights on me, and before I knew it, it was all but on top of me. With me holding Mawari and the fucking zombie about to tear into me, I had to make a choice. Did I haul her up and let the wailer possibly bite me, or drop her so that I could blast it with a fireball or fling it off the staircase?

I grunted and basically tossed Mawari back up to the staircase; I just hoped that she’d be able to grab onto it and that my aim wasn’t too shit. Then I tried to draw my pistols before the wailer set on me, but it slammed into my shoulder and sent me onto my back. I felt my head and shoulders over open air, and I managed to kick a hind leg between two stairs to try and anchor myself to them. It was painful as fuck, but trying to keep the wailer from biting me had my attention for the moment.

It was almost as if it knew that it had its prey cornered, because it just laid on top of me so its weight could hold me down while it tried to find something to bite onto. I got yet another close-up look at its disgusting, rotting teeth, and this close to my face I could see some sort of yellow and red bile in its mouth. I fought as best as I could with one good foreleg, and I tried to hold its face away from me with my magic, but it was really struggling and trying to break free. It even managed to bite onto the sling holding my foreleg in place, and I struck it on the cheek with my good hoof to get it away from my helpless limb.

After what felt like an eternity of wrestling and fighting with this thing, Mawari suddenly cracked its head to the side, breaking its neck and immobilizing its limbs, though its jaws continued to bite furiously where its head lay. I quickly picked it up in my telekinetic field and dumped it off the stairs, where its rotting skull broke open on the collapsed staircase below. Mawari held out a hoof and helped me stand, and then she pointed to her family. “Can you pick them up? Like you did me?”

I nodded and moved up the stairs a little bit. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, too,” I said. “Denawa! I’m bringing you over first!” I shouted across the gap and over their gunfire. The two of them were making good use of the chokepoint, but the second they were out of bullets and shells the wailers would be on them in an instant. I’m not sure if Denawa heard me or not, because he kept his ears flat against his skull and blew the mushy brains out of one of the wailers, but I wasn’t going to wait for a response. Closing my eyes and putting all of my focus into my magic, I wrapped a field around Denawa and lifted him off his hooves.

He jerked in my grasp, startled, but then he stopped moving, so I guess he realized that I wasn’t a wailer suddenly pouncing on him from behind. Only when I brought the field close to me did I open my eyes, and I safely deposited him on the bottom of our part of the stairs. “Get up the staircase, I don’t want all of us standing on this thing,” I told him. He nodded and slid past me, and he and Mawari moved toward the foremare’s office above us.

Rankan stood his ground by himself now that he didn’t have Denawa’s shotgun supporting him, and I cursed at myself as I realized I should have brought him over first; his rifles were accurate enough to shoot across the gap, but Denawa’s shotgun couldn’t cover that distance. I took a second to catch my breath and recover my strength, and then I readied myself for the larger of the two. “Rankan! You’re next!”

Just like before, I closed my eyes and focused on bringing him across. Once I had him firmly in my field, I lifted him up and started pulling him toward me. He must’ve stopped firing once he was clear of the wailers, because he wasn’t shaking in my grip, and besides, they couldn’t get to us.

But then a loud roar, crumbling concrete, and twisting metal almost broke my concentration. I heard Mawari scream in terror, and when I opened my eyes, the tolan had all but smashed through one of the decaying walls near the stairs and was forcing its way through. Rankan started shooting at it, but he only got a few bursts off before his rifles automatically ejected their empty magazines. Gritting my teeth, I simply flung Rankan over my shoulder in the general direction of the foremare’s office, just to get him out of reach of the tolan, and the sudden exertion made me stagger on my hooves. The dark haze of burnout crept in on my vision, and it took me a second to get my sight back again.

That was a second I didn’t have.

When I could see again, I saw the tolan lunging for me, massive mouth open and hundreds of crooked, glistening teeth ready to tear me to shreds. I kicked off of the stairs as much as I could, and I somehow managed to get out of the way of its bite. Its jaws snapped shut on the bottom of the staircase where I’d been standing just a moment ago, and the entire structure shrieked and groaned. But before I could climb any more steps, the tolan thrashed its head back and forth, tearing the entire staircase off of the foremare’s office and sending me flying across the plant.

I heard Mawari shout my name, and SCaR blared and squawked in alarm, but I ended up hitting my head on the ground, and that disoriented me for a few seconds. It hurt like a bitch to stand, but I forced myself to, because I could hear the tolan climbing over the rubble and around the broken machinery of the plant to get to me. Not only that, but I was in the middle of at least four wailers, who’d just noticed that a fresh meal had landed between them. Thankfully I’d holstered my pistols earlier, otherwise I would’ve lost them when the tolan threw me, and I immediately drew them and quickly dumped their clips to make sure that I dropped those wailers before they could get to me.

And then the tolan roared again, and I didn’t even bother looking over my shoulder; I just started running. There was too much rubble to climb over and I could never escape the tolan and its six legs that way, and not only were the windows next to me shut, but they were also barred. The wall was still pretty intact, and I couldn’t find any holes to slip out of. The only thing I had to look forward to was a dead end corner right in front of me, but I took it nonetheless.

I could feel the tolan’s hot and rancid breath on my neck, and I figured that it was just waiting for me to corner myself before it came in for its meal. I heard gunfire from the scavengers and heard a few bullets spark off of its armor, but they weren’t distracting it, and really, that was the best they could do. But as I got closer to the corner, I saw a big metal hatch in the wall that was about as big as me. I didn’t know what it was for, but as soon as I got close enough I pulled on it with my magic. It was a little rusty and didn’t want to open, but I forced it open anyways, and I saw a chute leading down into darkness. I wasn’t going to question my good fortune, though; I holstered my pistols again and galloped right toward it, and I didn’t waste any time jumping inside.

I heard the tolan’s jaws snap shut behind me and the entire building shook as its skull rammed into the wall, but I was safely out of its reach. As I slid down the rusty chute head first, I lit up my horn a little bit to see what was at the end. The moment I did that, I felt the chute drop away beneath me, and suddenly I was falling. The orange light on my horn glinted off of twisted and jagged metal below me, and as soon as I realized what it was, I hardly had time to cross my forelegs against my body and try to make myself as small as possible before I landed right in the scrap pile of rust.

An intense, fiery sensation shot through my left side, right around my midsection, and sparks of pain went shooting up and down my horn as I struck my head against something. A rolling wave of agony slowly engulfed my limbs one by one as my brain tallied up my injuries, and only when it finished with all of those did I suddenly feel the lance of lightning in my side. I managed to open my eyes and keep my horn weakly lit, and when I looked at my left, I saw a long piece of rebar running through my side, impaling me from below and with a good foot sticking out of the top.

Blood ran down my face and got into my gaping mouth as I just stared at the piece of metal running through my body. I felt myself begin to convulse around the foreign object spearing me, and I could hardly breathe from the shock alone. Little by little, the light on my horn dimmed and dimmed, and it wasn’t even thirty seconds before I was shrouded in complete darkness.

And then the shock and the pain took me away from the world, and I blacked out.