I don’t know how long I was out cold for, but I didn’t even dream or hallucinate. All that surrounded me was black nothingness, and I blissfully drifted through unconsciousness for an eternity. But it wouldn’t last forever.

I came crashing back down to the world of the living with a gasp, panting and shaking. My face and coat was matted with dried blood, and my limbs twitched and shook. I could feel cuts and scrapes covering basically every inch of my body, and the sharp corners of scrap metal were digging into my flesh from all angles. And it wasn’t until I tried to stand that I remembered the piece of rebar impaling me, and the pain from that suddenly came crashing back down on me.

The cry of pain I made echoed a surprising number of times in the total darkness. Wherever the scrap chute went to, it was a big, empty room. Gritting my teeth, I tried to keep myself as still as possible so the rebar wouldn’t hurt me anymore, and I let my horn glow to get a look around.

The orange light on my head weakly sparkled and fizzled once or twice before I finally had enough light to see with. The room I was in must’ve been about fifteen feet high, with several chutes protruding from the walls about ten feet off of the ground. I was lying on top of a big pile of scrap metal in the middle of the room, almost all of it, including the rebar spear I was impaled on, covered in rust and grime. I saw what looked like a door a little ways away, so at least I wasn’t trapped in here. Or so I hoped.

And then I heard a low wail echo in the chamber that made my blood run cold. I whipped my head back and forth, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from; it echoed so much that I couldn’t pinpoint the source. I knew that if I was pinned to the scrap pile for much longer, I was about to become dinner, and I had no intention on letting that happen. But first, I had to pry myself off of this spike, and I was not looking forward to that at all.

I heard the metal behind me shift a little bit, and I looked over my shoulder and saw an almost skeletal wailer slowly shambling up toward me. I reached for my pistols, but when I pulled them out, I saw that their slides were both back, ready to receive fresh magazines. My saddlebag holding all my ammo was on my left side, but the rebar spear running through my side was between me and it, and it’d somehow impaled the bag as well, so I couldn’t open it. I doubted that I had the strength to summon a fireball, so my only hope was to get off of the damn thing before the wailer managed to climb up to me.

I considered just ripping the rebar through my flesh and escaping that way, but it was a good inch or two into my side, and I’d probably be crippled for life if I did that with all the muscle it would tear, not to mention that it’d be almost impossible to close the wound and I’d die of blood loss. So that meant the only way I was getting out was going up and over, and to do that, I’d have to stand. Squeezing my eyes shut, I turned my head to the side and bit onto my sling as tight as I could, then tried to stand. The pain was excruciating, and I screamed into my sling as I felt the metal ribs on the rebar sliding into and out of my flesh. But I didn’t stop, because if I stopped, I was going to die.

And then, just like that, I did it. I gasped as I felt the end of the rebar slide out of my lower side, and my weak legs collapsed back onto the scrap pile. I immediately felt my side begin to drench itself in blood, and the rebar spear was covered in a gory red, but I was free. Free and about to get eaten.

The wailer bit down on my tail and dragged me backwards a bit. I twisted away and kicked at its face, despite how much my side hurt, and I smashed its muzzle to pieces. It gurgled and snarled at me, but I screamed in exertion and dug my telekinesis into its gaping muzzle and pulled until I tore its rotten head in two. It moaned once and then collapsed on the scrap pile, thick and coagulated blood plopping out of its destroyed head.

I took a second to rest, and when I put a hoof to my side, it came away covered in blood. Grunting, I sat up and threw my saddlebags onto the metal in front of me, looking for something to patch the wound with. I had bandages and gauze, but that wasn’t really going to stop a puncture wound from bleeding. I needed Stabil-Ice and staples to hold the wound shut, but I didn’t have either of those in my bag. And at the rate it was bleeding, along with all the dried blood I’d lost on the rest of my body, I probably only had ten, maybe fifteen minutes before I died from blood loss. And I was way too weak to make enough fire to cauterize the wound, especially one that deep.

While I was at it, I reloaded both of my pistols, then threw them back in their holsters; I was worried that if I tried to carry them in my magic, I’d just weaken myself faster, and I might not even notice if I dropped one. With all of that taken care of, I forced myself to stand, and I slowly stumbled down the scrap metal pile, my right foreleg still bound in a sling, and my left side crippled and painful to even move. But I managed to avoid falling on my face, despite how dead my hooves were, and I made it to the bottom without too much trouble.

I staggered over to the door I saw earlier and tested it with my magic, but a little tug from my horn was all it took to break the rusted hinges off it. I had to step back a bit so the falling door didn’t crush me, though I cringed when it slammed on the ground and the noise echoed throughout the room and down the hallway on the other side. I guess if there were any more wailers around here, then they knew I was here now.

There were four doors in the hallway and a staircase going up at the end of it, next to some big cargo doors that must’ve been how they got the scrap out of here and sent it to where it needed to go. Maybe one of the smaller doors had some medical supplies inside, but there weren’t any labels on the doors. I considered opening each one and rummaging through them, but the dripping of my blood on the floor reminded me I didn’t have all that much time to waste. Plus, I tried two of the doors closest to me, and they were both locked. I couldn’t afford to waste energy breaking old locks when I was bleeding to death. I was already starting to shiver a little bit.

I figured that there had to be a first aid kit in a bathroom, and hopefully there’d be some Stabil-Ice in it, assuming that it hadn’t already been found by scavengers before me. And I doubted that there were any bathrooms down here, so my best bet was to go upstairs. Maybe I’d find what I needed up there.

My blood dripped, dripped, dripped on the stairs with each step I took. I had to use the railing to hold myself upright, my legs were so weak. When the staircase doubled back on itself, I could see the splotchy red trail going all the way back to the open scrap room. Gritting my teeth, I shivered and pushed further up the stairs, leaving a red smear on the left wall as I staggered against it.

The doors at the top of the stairs were already open, which I thought was a little odd. One of them looked badly damaged, like something big had forced it open, and there were bullet holes all over the pair. There were also a few skeletons lying around, two of which were wearing old combat armor that’d been shot to shit. I don’t know what’d happened here, but I had a feeling it was related to the plants just suddenly stopping mid-production and spewing all those rebar cobbles everywhere. Of course, I had more worrying matters to deal with than finding out who killed these soldiers and why.

The doors opened up into a big central hub, and it took me a few seconds to realize that this was like the living quarters or something for the ponies who worked at the foundry. It made sense; Auris wasn’t developed enough to have towns and cities nearby, so they would have had to house the workers on site. That was good for me, at least. If they had to house their own community here, then they should have had something like a hospital to treat any injured workers. I just had to find it.

The first floor of this building was a big communal area. There were lots of old chairs and tables on my left near some huge windows looking out on the Auris countryside, although the fences and wires and all that other industrial shit kind of ruined what little of the view I could see in the moonlight. At the far end of the floor was a big desk that a receptionist or somepony probably sat at, and beyond that were a set of big double doors that probably led back out into the foundry. At least I knew the way out, and maybe once I was done here, I could go looking for Mawari and SCaR. I only hoped that they were taking good care of the drone. And that SCaR was playing nice with them, too. I honestly didn’t know what he would try to do when I got separated from the rest of them.

I didn’t see any staircases leading up; they were probably behind doors somewhere in the corners of the building. But if I was going to build a big communal building and put an infirmary or something in it, I’d want it on the ground floor so that injured ponies could be quickly taken in and out. And there were plenty of doors to choose from on the ground floor alone; I saw eight, so I staggered and limped over closer so I could read the labels. At least these ones had labels.

The fifth door I looked at had ‘INFIRMARY’ printed on it in big, blocky letters under the dust and rust coating the metal placard. I sighed in relief and took a moment to lean against the wall and recoup my strength for breaking open the door. The dripping of my blood on the floor just sounded weird to my ears in the dead stillness of the foundry, and I shook my head back and forth a few times to try and push a little blood into my brain. I was really shivering and starting to become disoriented; I didn’t have much time to fuck around.

I took a few deep breaths to get oxygen into my body, and then I grabbed onto the door and began to pull and pry. But the door must’ve been reinforced, because I couldn’t get it to flex or bend at all, and when I shook it back and forth, the hinges didn’t rattle. I cursed and tried again, knowing that this door was the last thing between me and salvation, and if I could just open it, maybe I wouldn’t die here. But the fucking thing refused to budge in the slightest.

“Open, you stupid fuck!” I weakly grunted at it. My throat felt dry as sandpaper and I could hardly move my tongue. In desperation, I started pounding on the door with my good forehoof, and I slammed my shoulder into it once or twice. I winced from the pain, and as the dizziness took hold, I closed my eyes and slid down the door. So close! So fucking close!

Then my sling got caught on the handle, and it turned to open the door.

I kind of stared at it for a moment as the door swung open, unimpeded. I felt like such a fucking idiot for not checking the stupid handle first. But seeing the inside of the infirmary open to me put a little bit of energy back in my hooves, and I managed to stand up. My head swam and my vision blurred and blacked for a few seconds, but a few deep breaths let me see and walk again, and I limped into the infirmary, immediately heading for a big red box bolted to the back wall.

I opened it with my magic before I was even halfway across the floor and feebly cheered in joy when I saw it stuffed with medical supplies. I nearly tripped and fell in my excitement, but I used a gurney lying askew in the middle of the room to support me as I hauled everything over. Spreading everything out on the gurney, I immediately picked out two packs of Stabil-Ice, a roll of gauze, and what looked like a miniature staple gun. The bottle of disinfectant was some kind of black sludge, so I threw it aside. Stabil-Ice kind of disinfected things, so I hoped that’d be good enough; besides, I’d already spent so long impaled on that rebar spear that I doubted whatever might be on two-hundred-year-old staples was any worse.

But those thoughts could wait. I primed the two pouches of Stabil-Ice, then tore one open and shoved the end right in the upper of the two holes running through my side. As I squeezed it, I sighed in relief as a cold, icy numbness swept over the whole area. By the time I finished the whole pouch, I wasn’t losing blood anywhere near as fast as I was before. So I grabbed the second and used about half of it to fill up the wound, then set it aside and made sure that the staple gun was loaded. Pinching my flesh together with my magic, I grit my teeth and stapled my wound shut. It hurt a fair bit, but the area was already numb from the Stabil-Ice, and besides, after having a rebar spear run me through, tiny staples were hardly anything in comparison. Once that was done, I stapled the top hole shut as well, and then I slathered both wounds with the remaining Stabil-Ice in the second pouch. I only hoped that the excessive number of staples I used would be enough to keep my wounds held shut when I inevitably had to start running again. But, just to be safe, I dumped the rest of the contents of the first aid box into my saddlebags and sealed them up good. I had a feeling they’d be very useful later.

While I was here, I figured I should take stock of my injuries and collect whatever else the infirmary had to offer. I didn’t know just how long I was going to be away from the next settlement, or if that settlement was even going to be friendly to me, so I’d need to be able to tend to myself and Gauge and Nova once we left this deathtrap. I shoved the gurney away and sat in the middle of the floor, looking over my impressively large collection of cuts and scrapes, most of which were on my legs and stomach from flopping onto the scrap metal pile. None of them looked too deep at least, which was astounding, but I did bandage up some of the deeper ones and used a third pouch of Stabil-Ice on the few still bleeding. But I stopped when I looked at my right foreleg, and the collection of odd scrapes arranged in a semicircle just above the fetlock. I stared at them for a few seconds, then swallowed hard and wrapped a bandage around them as well.

“It’s nothing,” I whispered to myself. “I’ll be fine. Just fine.”

Though maybe I should have a conversation with Ace when she showed up. I didn’t know how Gauge would react if I told him I’d been bit. But maybe I’d be fine. The cuts hadn’t looked too deep at least. Maybe the spores weren’t in my blood. Maybe it wasn’t even a wailer’s bite.

Maybe.

I tried to calm myself down with a few deep breaths before I stood up again. There wasn’t anything I could do about it now, except try to not get bit anymore. I figured that if those were bite marks, then I must’ve gotten them when that wailer tackled me when I was trying to save Mawari. I couldn’t remember any other times I got that close. Unless that one wailer in the scrap room gnawed on me a bit while I was passed out and impaled, but if that was the case, then I would’ve been covered with a lot more and a lot deeper bite marks.

I realized that I was feeling horribly light headed from all the blood I lost. My hooves were numb and tingly, and I felt like I was going to be sick. But as much as I just wanted to lie down and take a nap, I knew I had to keep moving. Mawari and her family might be looking for me, so I had to try to link back up with them as soon as I could.

I started scavenging the infirmary until I came across some artificial blood packs inside a locker. I frowned and pulled them out to get a closer look at them. Each pack held about a liter of dark red blood, and each was labeled with ‘U-Art’ and a bunch of numbers and code I couldn’t make sense of. About the only other useful thing I could see on it was the word ‘pony’ printed at the bottom of the label, so at least I knew this wasn’t griffon or zebra blood. That was good, because I could really use some to make up for all I lost today. I just hoped that since it was artificial blood it’d be okay to use. About the last thing I needed was to get fucked up because I was using the wrong blood type. But the U on it had to mean ‘universal’, right? I remembered seeing blood packs with the same markings on them back in Ace’s place in Hole, and seeing how I wasn’t dead yet, they should be fine.

The blood packs already had a tube and needle on them, so I found an IV bag stand to hang the first one up and sat down on a bed next to it. I held out my left foreleg and looked over it until I was able to find a vein bulging out of my thinning coat. At least not eating much since leaving the dam was making this easier than it otherwise should have been. But once I found a vein, I wrapped a tourniquet around the crook of my foreleg below it, then jabbed the needle under the skin and into the vein. The blood began to flow out of the bag and into my body, and I idly kicked my hind legs as they dangled off the edge of the bed while I waited.

It only took me like two minutes before I got bored. I was still kind of on edge, because I half expected a wailer to jump me while I was getting blood, but nothing moved and nothing made a sound. The beds in the back of the infirmary were all covered in dust and grime, the blankets rotting away over the years. Now that I had a chance to look around, actually, I noticed a few skeletons scattered throughout the room. There was one in a bed next to me, and another that looked like a griffon’s skeleton in a small bed at the far end of the infirmary. And at the other end, there were five or six skeletons lying in a pile, their bones bleached with age and limbs sticking off in random directions. They definitely didn’t die there, otherwise they wouldn’t be positioned like that, so somebody had thrown their corpses in the corner after they died. But who, and why?

That wasn’t really something that I could find an answer to while I was just sitting here, so I put my mind on other things instead. I took out both of my pistols and counted the rounds I had left, and I came up with a very disappointing thirty-two. I only had one reload for each of my eight-shot pistols, so I’d have to be careful with my fire. Though if I got only headshots, I could kill thirty-two wailers, so that was something. And I still had my spells, and I was already feeling a bit more awake and aware by the time I finished the first blood pack.

I looked at the second one and thought about it for a few seconds. I honestly didn’t know if one was enough or if two would be too much or what. But I mean, I couldn’t have too much blood, right? I’m sure in that case, the bag would just stop emptying once I had enough. Detaching the first bag from the needle still embedded in my foreleg, I set up the second one and got it all hooked up. Then all I had to do was sit back and relax for a few minutes before that one emptied as well.

When it was finally done, I pulled out the needle and put a little bandage on my foreleg. It honestly looked a little silly to see a tiny normal bandage next to a bunch of big bandages and gauze wraps, but it was definitely enough. Sliding off of the bed, I pranced around on my hooves for a little bit and even worked my wounded shoulder just a tad to get some of the stiffness out of it. I already felt like a new mare, though I still hurt like shit all over, especially on my left, because the Stabil-Ice was already starting to wear off. But so long as I stayed in one piece, then I wasn’t out of the fight yet. Not by a long shot.

Collecting my things again, I left the infirmary behind after scavenging a few more metal boxes of medical supplies and stuffing them all in my saddlebags. As much as I would’ve liked to go searching through the living quarters some more, I needed to find Mawari and SCaR, wherever they were. I could try going back to the rebar plant, but if the tolan was still around there, I didn’t stand a very good chance of escaping it again on flat ground. My best bet was to try and find the building the rebar plant connected through if it was anything like the first building I’d run into where Nova lost her wing. Maybe the zebras were still around there.

As I walked past the big reception desk in the front of the building, my curiosity got the better of me, and I went around behind it. There was a skeleton lying on the floor with its skull cracked and caving in around a hole in the center; must’ve been a gunshot to the top of the head, which was interesting, but I couldn’t really make sense of it. Pushing away some of the mulchy papers and shit on the desk, I found another one of those glass panels. Blowing away the dust, I held it up to my face and read.

09/01/1589 10:17:32 — Message from Blue Dew

Don’t say anything, okay? This comes down from the top. The workers don’t need to know. We’ll have an explanation soon. Let them use the NetStat if they want, but if they complain that they can’t get any letters through, tell them that the system is down. It might even be true, for all we know.

But you want to know what I think? I think this is it. Something really bad happened back home, Tare. Nopony’s been able to contact Equestria for over a week now. Mr. Billet won’t talk to any of us about what’s going on. I think he might know what’s happening. Ever since that message came through, he’s been all but locked in his office. I ran into him down near the smelting plant yesterday and he smelled like booze and smoke. I don’t think he’s slept in days. I even poked around his office a bit while he was out, but I couldn’t find the message. I think he’s keeping it with him; I noticed he has a piece of etch glass inside his suit. Good luck trying to get it away from him.

Oh, and another thing. Have you noticed the soldiers acting weird? They’ve been all over the place since the new year, sticking their noses in things they otherwise wouldn’t care about. A bunch of them tried to get some of the manifests from me the other day, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer. I had to give those to them because we’re at war and the military has the last say, you know? I don’t know what they’re going to do with them, but I don’t feel safe here anymore.

Can we talk at lunch? Bring anything you don’t want to leave behind.

Blue

I bit my lip as I put the glass thing (etch glass?) back down. I guess the secretaries here hadn’t known what was happening, but they could tell something bad was going on. Maybe I could find that etch glass that Mr. Billet had on him that Blue Dew mentioned. There might be answers in that.

I was about to leave the desk when I noticed something tucked in the corner. Curious, I pulled it out with my magic and set it on top of the desk. It was pretty horribly rusted, but I could tell at a glance that this was a drone of some kind. It didn’t look like SCaR—it was sleeker and smaller, so it must’ve been some kind of civilian model instead of the rugged military frame SCaR had. I spun it around until I found what looked like the storage ports, and I pried them open with my magic. Inside were a few chipboards that weren’t too badly damaged, so I pulled them all out and stuck them safely in my bags. I’d let SCaR figure out which one was the memory board when I found him again; I hardly knew how computers worked in the first place.

My ears perked at some muffled gunshots coming from somewhere outside, so I immediately secured my bags and bolted out the door. I looked up as soon as I got outside and saw the zebras and SCaR crossing one of the walkways between buildings with a horde of wailers right behind them. I couldn’t help them from here, because my inaccurate pistols would be just about as likely to hit them as the wailers, and I definitely didn’t want to shout in case there were any more near me, so I just took off in the direction of the building they were going to. Hopefully I’d be able to meet up with them inside.

I made it about halfway across the street before a big loading bay door at the rebar plant flew off of its tracks and the tolan started crawling out of the gap. Before it could see me, I immediately flung myself face down in a drainage ditch alongside the road and covered my head with my hooves. I didn’t know if tolans used their eyes or their noses more to hunt, but I just prayed that my orange and yellow mane wasn’t standing out like a beacon.

The tolan roared once, and I heard its claws stomp across the ground as it started moving toward the building where Mawari and them had run off to. I carefully, carefully poked my head out of the ditch in case I needed to run, and I watched it growl and sniff as it crossed the yard. When it was halfway across, though, it slowed down, and I saw its throat vibrate several times as it began to make a clicking sound. Its six legs moved much more slowly and smoothly, and it almost glided across the ground as it stalked up to the building.

Well, fuck. That was where I needed to go. And unless the tolan left any time soon, I wasn’t going to get inside without it noticing me.

I tried to look through my bags without making too much noise; I didn’t want to attract that monster’s attention to myself. I didn’t really have anything that would be good at distracting it, but then I looked at the pair of pistols I was carrying. After thinking it over for a minute, I sighed and slid the magazine out of one, leaving only the bullet in the chamber. Then, cocking the hammer back, I flung it as far as I could in the opposite direction of where I needed to go and took cover.

It took almost six seconds before I heard the gun fire off in the distance, and I heard the tolan growl. When I peeked over the edge of the ditch again, I saw the monster stalking in the direction I’d thrown the gun, clicking as it did so. I waited until it was almost at the corner of the rebar plant before I crawled out of the ditch and started trotting as quietly as I could toward the building it’d just left behind. By some stroke of luck, the tolan was too distracted by the gunshot to notice me, and I was able to slip in through the first door I found without having to scream and run for my life.

At least that went better than expected. I’d take whatever I could get.

The door I’d slipped through opened into a small room that had a lot of old computers in them. All their lights were dead and the faceplates were covered in rust and ash, but the whole place reminded me of the listening outpost back in Blackwash. I guess this is what it would have looked like if we hadn’t taken good care of it over the years. I had no idea what all these computers were for, but I figured they had to be involved in running the foundry in some way. Maybe they automated the machines or something like that. Couldn’t really say now.

There was a door at the other end of the room, so I snuck over to it, trying to keep my hooves as quiet as possible on the concrete floor. When I got there, I forced it open and stuck my muzzle through the gap, looking around for any wailers, but the room was too dark to see inside. I let some magic slowly build on my horn until I had enough of a glow to see with, and once I was sure there weren’t any wailers hiding inside, I pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside.

There were a lot of rebar bundles in this plant, and some heavy duty machinery on wheels and tracks. If I’d had the time, and I wasn’t desperately trying to outrun and outsmart tolans and wailers, I would’ve loved to study this place and get a good look at the machines. But at the moment, I simply couldn’t. As I quietly trotted past a few decrepit machines, the rust coating their nuts and bolts like a fuzzy layer of paint, I promised myself that I’d come back here when all this bullshit with the code pieces was over. This was where the future of Auris lay; not in the messages and relics of the past, but in its machines and technology. One day, my descendants would need this stuff to build a new world. I just didn’t know how long that’d be from now.

I idly scratched my foreleg while I paused between two silent behemoths. This was all assuming that I was even alive a week from now and not some corpse mind-controlled by a mushroom.

Suddenly I heard a squawk and a trilling sound above me, and I tilted my head all the way up to see SCaR fly down from the rooms at the top of the plant. The drone excitedly chirped and circled around my head a few times, and I let out a sigh of relief and smiled at him. “Good to see you too, little guy,” I said, tapping my hoof against his top panel like I was petting him or something.

I looked back in the direction that he came from to see Mawari and Denawa looking down at me, both with relieved looks on their faces, though Denawa was kinda trying to hide his. They didn’t say anything, I guess because they didn’t want to wake any wailers if they were hiding around here, but Mawari gestured for me to come upstairs. I nodded back to them, and when they disappeared from the window, I carefully picked my way over to the nearest staircase and climbed up the catwalk. And for once, nothing tried to kill me.

When I finally made it up to them, I saw the three zebras sitting in a circle, busily reloading their weapons. “I don’t know how, but I’m alive,” I said, smiling and leaning against the wall. “I miss anything?”

Mawari chuckled and stood up. I didn’t know what she was doing until she stopped in front of me and hugged me. “Your ancestors must’ve been keeping a close eye on you. We all thought you were tolan food; we didn’t see you escape.” She stepped back and started looking me over. “How did you escape? And—oh my, just what happened to you?”

“What, do I look that fucked up?” I asked her. “I didn’t find any mirrors where I went.” I sat down and poked at my face with a hoof, wincing from all the bruises and cuts and all the dried blood plastered to my coat. “I found a hatch in the rebar plant that went to a scrap pile under the whole foundry. Got kinda run through by a piece of rebar sticking out of it.” I pointed to the stapled wounds on my stomach and back. “Passed out for a bit, woke up and had to fight off a wailer, then went looking around for a while. I guess I ended up at the living quarters or something, but I found some medical supplies to get myself patched up. Oh, and I also found these.”

I dug through my bags and pulled out the chipboards I’d stripped from the drone behind the desk. Mawari and Denawa looked at them in thought, while Rankan just kept his attention focused on spotting any creeping wailers. “Let me take a look,” Denawa said, and I slid the boards over to him. After a moment to look them over, he set two of them aside and held up the third. “This should be its memory. I just hope that your drone can read it.”

“I’m sure he can,” I said, and I tugged SCaR down with my magic. The drone squawked at me but was otherwise cooperative. I looked him over a few times and turned back to Denawa. “So do we just like shove it up his ass or…?”

The scavenger rolled his eyes. “Assuming it still has all of its hardware, there should be two wires in a compartment on its bottom that allow it to interface with boards like this one. All we have to do is connect them to the plugs on this board and it can read off what’s kept in the memory banks.”

I flipped SCaR over (much to his annoyance) and found a small rectangular panel on the bottom. I was able to pry it open using my magic, revealing an orange and a black wire neatly coiled inside. I pulled the two out and showed them to Denawa. “These?”

He nodded and passed me the board back. “Good. Connect them to their matching ports on the board, then give it a few seconds to transfer the data. Hopefully it has what we need.”

I did as he told me to, and SCaR squawked once and then made some kind of loud, low tone that just droned on and on. I looked at Mawari and Denawa, but they both just shrugged, and I noticed Rankan wearily checking the doors and hallway that led deeper into the offices. Then the noise stopped, and I looked at SCaR for a few moments before I unplugged the wires and flipped the drone back over.

SCaR didn’t do anything for a few seconds, but suddenly there was a spark and his thrusters ignited, propelling him a few feet off of the ground. He chattered and beeped a whole lot, and his thrusters flickered a few times, but then he started behaving like his usual self, slowly wandering around the room and occasionally beeping or trilling.

“Did it work?” I asked, cocking my head at the drone.

“It’s not my drone. I don’t know how to communicate with it,” Denawa said. “Can’t you just ask it?”

Now I really wished I had Gauge with me. He could understand SCaR’s beeping and babbling, or at least he acted like he did. I actually didn’t know. I’d just assumed…

Well, fuck it. “SCaR, you find any codes on there? Anything that will help us get into the warehouse?” I asked it. At least SCaR could understand Equiish, so I didn’t have to worry about that. The drone stopped puttering around the room and faced me, then began enthusiastically chirping and whirring.

Mawari looked at it, then looked at me. “Well? Are we good to go?” she asked, running a hoof through her sweaty mohawk.

“Uh… I’ll be completely honest with you, I have no idea what he says half the time,” I said, blushing a little bit.

“And the other half?” Denawa asked.

“Kind of? I mean I can tell when he’s happy or pissed…” Denawa rolled his eyes, and I turned back to SCaR. “Just… beep once or something if you found what we need.”

SCaR just kind of hovered in place and stared at me for a few seconds before he chirped. Great, now even the robots were giving me sass and thinking I was stupid.

Denawa didn’t look too impressed, and even Mawari frowned at me. “Right,” she said. “Maybe we should—?”

She abruptly stopped and her ears started twitching. The rest of us froze, and I started pointing my ear and a half around too. I didn’t hear anything at first, but then I recognized an odd clicking noise coming from below us.

Before I could even react, razor sharp claws tore through the thin metal floor of the observation office, shredding it to pieces and causing it to buckle. I scrambled back to the wall and drew my pistol, for all the good it would do, but the tolan kept slicing as we all tried to get away from the floor. Then it suddenly tore a huge chunk of the floor out, and Rankan’s eyes widened as he began to fall. Mawari screamed in terror and alarm, and I tried to grab the big zebra in my magic, but I was too exhausted from everything I’d been through today. My horn flared up but began to spark, and I cried out in pain as it felt like somepony hammered a chisel into my skull. I heard the tolan’s jaws snap shut, and when I could see again, I saw it mashing something that vaguely looked like a zebra to red paste between its teeth.

I pressed my hooves against my stomach and dry heaved. I’d seen ponies heads explode and shit before, but nothing as brutal and horrible as that.

“Rankan!” Mawari screamed, and I was afraid I was going to have to hold her back or something with my magic. Denawa’s face was stricken with horror, and we all slid closer to the walls and further away from the hole in the floor. My heart began to thunder in my chest, and I looked across the room and spotted another catwalk running along the wall of the plant before ending at a door in the corner. If we wanted to live, we had to get there before the tolan finished its meal.

“Come on!” I shouted, stumbling past the two of them and getting onto the catwalk. “We have to go now or we’re next!”

I looked over my shoulder to make sure they were coming when I was about halfway over the catwalk. Denawa dragged Mawari away from the hole in the ground, and after one last tear-stained shudder, she turned her head away and came galloping up behind me. I made it to the door first by virtue of my head start, and I quickly spun the shrieking rusty latch and started shouldering it open.

Or trying to, at least. The metal door was so swollen with rust that I couldn’t get it to open. Once he saw that I was struggling with it, Denawa rammed his shoulder into the door and immediately winced when it failed to open. Gritting his teeth, he pushed me out of the way and gestured to his sister. “Buck it open! Unicorn, just push with your horn!”

I nodded and gave the two zebras space to work, and they began hammering on the door with their rear hooves. I tried to help them with my telekinesis, but I was so burnt out and exhausted that I could only manage a few spurts at a time. When the door refused to open after ten seconds of frantic pounding and shoving, I felt my stomach drop when I heard the tolan begin clicking again.

“Together!” I screamed at them, and they looked at each other and nodded. While they quickly got situated, I prepared whatever last mana reserves I had and concentrated on the door. “On three! One! Two! Three!”

The two zebras bucked the door at the same time that I slammed it with a blast of my telekinesis, and I heard the ancient hinges shriek. But the door still wasn’t open enough, so I swallowed and spread my stance. “Again! One! Two! Three!”

We all struck it again, and this time, there was a decent space between the door and the frame, but it still wasn’t enough to squeeze through. I looked down at the ground to see the armored hide of the tolan stalking out from under the office, its four eyes practically shining with its hunger, and blood dribbling down its lips. I whipped my head back to them and stepped a little closer. “One more time! One! Two! Three!”

This time, when we all hit the door, it flew open, revealing a fire escape that went down to the road outside. We didn’t waste any time charging out of the door and down the stairs, and I heard the catwalk behind me shriek and tear as the tolan ripped it off of the wall with a roar. I didn’t want to look over my shoulder to see how close it was, so I instead focused on not falling on my face as I tried to gallop down the stairs on three hooves. Every second counted, because it was only a matter of time before the tolan got back out of the building and started chasing us across open ground.

“Across the street! The warehouse!” Mawari shouted, and I wasted no time following her toward one of the long buildings at the edge of the compound. As we ran, I saw a few wailers emerge from their hiding spots and begin shambling over toward us, so I drew my pistol and fired a few shots at the closest ones, trying to slow them down. Mawari and Denawa couldn’t aim while running like I could, so they just pressed on toward the warehouse. I noticed a dead zebra or two covered in bitemarks, and a few had their brains blown out from weird angles. I could only assume those were mercy killings after they were bit; better to die from a bullet to the brain rather than be turned into a walking corpse until you rot to pieces.

The warehouse door was already open, so the three of us galloped inside and immediately ran straight to the back. I didn’t know where the two of them were going until they went behind a stack of some old crates to reveal a terminal next to a blast door of some kind. “This is it,” Denawa said, pointing to the computer. “I hope that your drone found what it needed on those drives, otherwise we’re all going to die in here.”

“Then let’s save us some anticipation,” I said, and I pulled SCaR lower with my magic. He started to squawk at me, but I just pointed to the terminal. “Can you get it open? Please tell me you can get it open!”

SCaR warbled and set to work on the terminal, extending a plug or connector of some kind I didn’t know that he had and sticking it into a port on the wall. Mawari and Denawa immediately took positions behind him and readied their weapons, then began firing at the first wailers that came in range. Rotting, mushroom-y limbs and chunks of flesh came flying off of their bodies with every hit, and a few fell down and tripped some of the ones behind them. I fired off my pistol a ton of times, then slid a fresh magazine in it and continued shooting. I really hoped there was something useful behind that door, because I was basically out of spells and almost out of bullets.

Then I felt the ground shake and the tolan came charging around the corner, sending a few wailers flying with its big feet as it did so. It spotted us huddled against the back of the warehouse and let out a loud roar, then began charging right at us, shattering crates or simply knocking them aside. I fired at it in a panic, for all the good that would do, and my bullets either ricocheted off of its armor or shattered against its scales.

Luckily, SCaR chirped and warbled behind me, and I heard ancient pistons decompressing. The door behind us made a chime, and then it slid open. We didn’t waste any time turning tail and diving through it, immediately running as far into the darkness on the other side as we could.

We formed a little half-circle about fifteen feet in and started shooting at the wailers that’d followed us. “SCaR! Shut the door and hit the lights!” I shouted at the glowing light and two flames hovering overhead in the darkness. SCaR whistled and flew back up to the door, completely ignored by the flesh-hungry wailers, and fiddled with a dimly lit panel for a few seconds. There was another hiss of air, and the door slammed shut, actually crushing a wailer in half. The sudden darkness was jarring, especially since I could still hear a wailer or two moaning, but I was able to provide enough light to see by and we were able to mop up the last few threats.

Then ancient lights began to turn on, one by one, and I could see all the dust that we’d kicked up swirling in the air. I could also see just how reinforced the walls and roof of this part of the warehouse were, and even when the tolan slammed against the wall leading back into the main part, nothing bent or buckled. We were safe for the moment.

And then I turned around, and my jaw hit the floor.

There were tons of old crates stacked up high, each one with the same symbol printed on them that I’d seen at the dam: a unicorn horn going through the middle of a winged horseshoe, with a sun, heart, moon, and star arranged clockwise around them. On the right was an entire set of gun cases and ammo crates covered in dust, and on the left were heavy munitions of all shapes and sizes. And further in the back…

“What are those?” I asked, pointing to them. “They look like giant tank shells!”

“Orbital munitions,” Mawari said, her voice almost reverent in this treasure trove of the past. “The Synarchy used to have ships that fired thirty inch shells for orbital bombardment. They’d level everything in a city block when they hit. And those next to them are for ship to ship combat.” She pointed to a bunch of long and thin metal rods that were about four times as long as I was tall from hoof to horn. “They’d shoot them at ships and they’d use their momentum to overwhelm shields, pierce through compartments, and rupture the ship’s hull. A direct hit to an enemy ship’s bridge would completely disable it, because the crew would be sucked out into space.”

“And why is all this here?” I murmured, still kind of amazed by what I was seeing. “This is a steel foundry for fuck’s sake, not a military base.”

Mawari shrugged. “I can’t say, but the Synarchy was very secretive. They hated everyone who wasn’t a pony, zebras included. And we all hated your kind back,” she said, turning to me, but there wasn’t any hostility in her eyes. “Or, so that’s what the elders say. But your pony nation had enemies everywhere, and I think that they were always afraid that one day they’d be attacked and need to defend themselves, so they hid weapons stockpiles like this one everywhere.”

“Well, they were at war at the time the Silence started, but I don’t know if they were attacked or they started it,” I said. “I’ve found a few logs and journals in my travels, but nothing that really explains what was happening on Equus and why everything went to shit. Even the foundry workers here had no idea what was going on.”

The tolan rammed against the wall again, and I noticed a few flakes of paint come off of the bulwarks. Gesturing to the weapons cache on the far wall, I started trotting that way. “Come on. Let’s see what we can find.”

They followed me over, and together, we started digging. We dragged a few of the weapons cases over and opened them, and I had to stop myself from squealing as we opened case after case of pristine weapons, the finest shit money could buy. And speaking of money, there were probably a million bullets in here, maybe more. Even after splitting it evenly, I’d have more brass than I knew what to do with.

But small arms weren’t going to help us now, so we set those aside and started going through some of the heavy munitions crates. There were some anti-vehicle rifles and rocket launchers, and even some kind of laser gun that hardly looked finished with all the wires sticking out of it at random, but then we dragged out a heavy steel case and set it on the ground. And inside was a long steel frame that looked almost like a rectangular tube with a saddle mount and pop-out firing computer. Wires ran between bulky blocks of metal running along its length, and one end was painted yellow and had ‘warning’ printed in black. The presence of a set of replacement steel rails inside the case told me that this was exactly what we were looking for.

I pulled the railgun out of its case and looked it over, using my magic to lift the heavy thing up. Out of curiosity, I flipped the switch on the side, and I heard a hum as ancient circuitry powered up and the pop-out screen flashed to life.

“This,” I said, “is a sexy piece of equipment.”

I set it down so Mawari and Denawa could look at it, and I pulled out a few heavy discs that were set inside the case as well. The case came with five of them, and when I picked one up, I was surprised at how heavy they were. It was hardly bigger than my hoof but I’m pretty sure it weighed close to twenty-five pounds. No wonder that case had been so hard to move around; the five slugs in here probably weighed more than the railgun itself!

Denawa nodded in approval. “If this thing doesn’t kill the tolan, then I don’t know what will,” he said.

“Do we know how to use it?” Mawari asked. “Looks complicated.”

“I dunno,” I said, hefting it up again. “I put it on my back, point, and shoot? How hard could it be?”

Just then, claws tore through the metal wall between two of the reinforced bulkheads. The tolan roared at us as it tried to force its way through, and in a few minutes, it might’ve been able to. Growling, I stomped around to face it and picked up the railgun in my magic. “Won’t you just fucking take a hint?!” I screamed at it, and I took one of the slugs out and slotted it into a circular port at the base of the gun. The firing computer displayed a few messages, then proudly told me that the slug was loaded and that it was priming the magnets. Mawari and Denawa took a few steps back as the gun began to whirr to life, and by the time the tolan had made enough space to stick its head through the wall, the computer displayed a green exclamation mark and the word ‘PRIMED’ began flashing in big letters at the top.

“This is for Nova, you piece of shit!”

I pulled the trigger, and the computer chimed at me. The magnets hummed and the whole thing buzzed with electricity, and I actually saw the air deform around the barrel rails as it fired the slug faster than a bullet. Amazingly, there wasn’t any recoil because the slug was pushed along with magnets, but I felt the air slam back together as the twenty-five pound hunk of metal tore through it at supersonic speeds.

And the tolan… well, it had armor, and it was huge and vicious, true. But when the slug hit it in the chest, it passed right through its hide like there wasn’t anything there. I heard the lump of metal shatter bone and pop scaly armor before shearing straight through the roof of the warehouse. Blood and gore flew out through the exit wound like it’d been sucked out, making a red tidal wave behind the monster.

Then it went limp and slumped over, the last of the railgun slug’s momentum knocking it away from the wall. A second later, the warehouse shook with a loud thwump as the tolan hit the ground, dead.

And I couldn’t help myself but cheer.