Fallout Equestria: Storms of the Divide

War... War never changes...

In ancient Equestrian history; the Windigos sought to ensnare all ponies in an icy demise by feeding off their hatred and disharmony; figures like Nightmare Moon and Discord wished to press their tyrannical power upon the masses for their own diabolical reasons; King Sombra tried to reshape The Crystal Empire into a War-hungry superpower; and many others all but lost to history.

But War never changes, and equinity learned well from their aggressors.

In the final century of Equine dominance, what was a peaceful and harmonious people had delved into disarray, and they fought over the remaining resources that could be acquired. Oddly enough however, the spoils of War were also its weapons.

Coal and magical gemstones.

For these critical economic resources Equestria would invade Zebrica for coal its ponies required; Zebrica would face off against the quickly growing superpower of Equestria for the gems it needed for zebra survival; Equestria would even dissolve its own government -replacing a thousand years of standing traditions- and the world would break into the chaotic din of world-wide panic as sides were formed across the land between all creatures.

In the final decades of Equus, the storms of World War had come to an unprecedented boil, and in two brief hours most of Equus was reduced to cinders. From the magical radioactive ashes of megaspell destruction, a new civilization would struggle to arise.

In the early days, whatever survivors that had endured armageddon desired nothing but survival, yet in time some minds wandered to questions better suited for the old world. It mattered not, in their many questions, who shot first and for what reasons. The world was destroyed, gone and dead never to return; the spark of destruction struck by equine hooves. It is now, after one hundred years of hellish reward for their mistakes, that it seems remotely possible that ponies can claw their way back.

Only... ponies have learned all to well the malice and inequinity of their ancestors' enemies, made that power their own, and the crawl back to civilization is soaked in blood; especially that of other creatures.

*** *** ***

Fire.

Fire and blood filled the air, the stench of blazing carrion assaulted the senses of the body and mind, while aches and pains of a dozen wounds stung in the smoke choked air. The bodies of a hundred different creatures, ponies and griffons alike, each and every one caked in their own lifeblood and each other’s were harshly highlighted by pillars of orange beacons that billowed out into the black as pitch night sky.

A low drizzle burned the scrapes, cuts, and bullet holes in his broken body, and ever so slowly washed away the dried tears and blood from his feathers. Each and every breath labored, they sent pangs of agony through his entirety, as he looked about at the still and mangled forms of griffons, his eyes lingered as if in sorrowful remembrance, and upon the shredded ponies draped in steel armor with a dead, thudding, burned out hatred. The walls from buildings the flame’s light pulled into view were riddled in hundreds of holes, splatters of blood inched their way down the bricks to corpses below and shone with brilliance to the inferno’s dance.

His forelegs tightened around a body, a form in which his entire being trembled to touch, and he fought with every fiber of his being to stay fixed on the destruction around him, but no matter how much he fought he knew he would eventually. His breath, shallow and weak, hind legs collapsed below him from unbridled pain and his talons slick with blood and sweat, around the only thing that ever truly mattered to him. His eyes betrayed him and stole a glance, and as if in disbelief locked with her perfect, impossibly green eyes. Even death couldn’t steal the beauty in their otherworldly hues, and despite the empty skyward gaze he felt as if she would reach up and kiss him.

Lightning flashed in a cruel sharp note, and the light drowned out all colors and sounds in a single sickly green burst of energy. In that moment, the dearest love of his life was ashes in his arms, and all the bodies around him the same. Dust and cinders in the gust of wind became mud in a sudden flood of rain that drowned everything; the memories of life, the sounds and smells of burning flesh and wood, but not the pain.

He clawed at the ground where her ashes fell in desperate guttural sobs, as if trying to will her back to life if he could only gather the ashes back together again. It only mixed her remains with wet, viscous earth that rippled at his touch, and his tears mixed with her in the puddle that grew and grew until the reflection within seized his mind, eyes locked into the bloody and broken image.

Its black beak was chipped and torn in spots, claw marks having carved scars in it, and the navy blue colored feathers on its head and body almost dyed crimson were slowly cleansed by the storm as bloodied droplets poured from the features. Its eyes were bloodshot, swollen from rage and grief, and what was white in them were coated in blood that clung to the eyelids, all framing a set of deeply blue irises with a fresh disfiguring wound running down across the right eye from forehead to jaw.

The expression was empty, as if dead like the cinders that were once his friends and family around him. He didn’t know this griffon, which terrified him all the more beyond the brink of madness. He did the only thing he could do.

He screamed.

The shrill sound a mixture of rage, terror, anguish, and defeat clashed violently for supremacy from the tempest surrounding him. Images of that griffon rushed back, of it tearing ponies and foals apart with its talons in desperate slaughter; like an animal, it rent, tore, broke, and shattered dozens in a haze barely remembered. What terrified him more than anything?

It was him.

*** *** ***

Chapter 1: Forgotten Memories

A sharp and shallow breath broke the silence in the room; he was sitting up in bed, knife drawn and while his claw held it with a steady grip his body shook ever so subtly. The crisply cool, yet damp air hung like a blanket across the faintly lit room with scattered debris. The window was cracked open, and a slight breeze was caught in the molded and torn curtain, waving to and fro stirring some of the dust floating through the air illuminated by the pale, sickly light of a thrice filtered Sun.

The Griffon breathed deeply, his chest rising and falling even metered as his shakes slowed with every breath. He closed his eyes, grinding the knife’s grip in his talon’s palm, and slumped back into his bed. It was old, moldy, half destroyed by time and the slow decay of the elements, but regardless it served its purpose. Opening his eyes again after burying his nightmares he took a detailed account of his surroundings, and found that it was all where it was left. His pack was next to his bed, left open for quick access if needed.

His firearms were there as well. A well worn and surface rusted revolver built for griffons alongside a wide brimmed black hat sat next to him on the bedside table, and next to his pack in a similar condition laid his battle saddle. Within it was his trusty rifle, small perhaps, but powerful in its own right. The number of ponies, griffons, and zebra alike who fell to it alone proved its worth.

Beyond his possessions was a small, guttering campfire out in the middle of the room’s floor. The embers within clinging to life as the final sparks of flame died leaving crisp ashes within a circle of small rocks. Several half burnt to cinders books were inside the ring, black and grey with soot, along with tatters of fabric whose colors long since lost their hues. He breathed deeply once more, staring into the embers and sheathing his knife he sat up on his haunches as he stretched out the aches of resting after the long day on the road before. He flexed his grey claws, spread out his large navy blue wings along with his forelegs and with a low deep yawn popping several bones with sharp, hollow cracks of grinding cartilage in practically all his moving limbs.

Grimacing at first, he let out a mute sigh of relief followed by a scratching of his sweat matted feathers on his head that gleamed subtly in the gloom. For a while he simply sat there, staring into the fire pit before him, contemplating everything and nothing. He finally stood up from the bedside to all fours and made a lethargic pace, donning his pistol belt and grabbing a small rectangular worn canvas carry bag.

He unbuckled the straps and pulled out the old, slightly rusty reinforced case of a dark olive drab color with a worn but somewhat clean screen dominating a majority of the machine’s body. Three large dull red buttons lining the left side of the device with adjacent words indicating their function, and a domed analog stick and larger orange button above it flanked the screen’s right side. Above the top left corner was a plaque displaying a cartoonish pony smiling, a hoof extended outwards with the vibrant stylized letters of the device’s name.

PipBuck 2000a

With a practiced grace he flipped a switch on the top and the little arcanotech machine burst to life with the same insignia and text as the corner plaque had on the screen. The cartoonish pony in dull green light against an almost ebon-green screen appeared with her hooves placed above her haunches, lifting one in a rough animation and pointing it forward with a smile and wink of her eye. The name of the device below her disappeared along with her as lines of code began rolling and after several seconds the display flashed with a status screen.

Beside the screen three small glowing talismans roughly the shape of light bulbs, protected by a small and fine wire mesh grating, glowed with a subtle amber color. He felt an equally subtle, yet familiar sensation wash over him as the machine’s magical systems booted on, scanning him and keying its systems to him so the PipBuck’s medical and inventory spells could do their work.

When the feeling died down to a level he couldn’t sense anymore he saw a griffon icon in the middle of the screen; solid lines on each his limbs and one hundred percent indicators on each. Flexing his aching shoulder he felt as if it was trying to fool him into believing that. The status screen told him nothing he didn’t already know, so he pressed the button below ‘Status’ marked ‘Inventory’. More of the same. His clothes, knife, the three-fifty-seven magnum rounds for his pistol, the pistol itself, his silver locket-

Silver locket. His eyes lingered on those words, the entry always made it seem so... empty. Plain, unimportant even. His free talon reached up almost instinctively to hold its precious form as it hung around his neck by a length of fibrous cord. It was about the size of a large bottlecap with an oval shape, and had a simple, smooth surface of tarnished grey silver that gleamed slightly in the morning light. With a click of a small button on its side a faded picture was revealed inside it as it split open.

Her green eyes still mesmerized him after all those years...

After a moment’s reminiscing he closed the locket and stuffed it back into his shirt, closed his eyes for a time, and held up the PipBuck again and clicked the ‘Data’ button below ‘Inventory’. The data screen had several sub-directories, consisting of ‘Archives’, ‘Automaps’, ‘Radio’, and ‘Notes’; the Radio tab was grayed out indicating it wasn’t working, which was a shame.

He clicked the domed analog stick downwards and pushed the button above it on the automap tab, and the text entries changed to a large, pixilated image of Equestria filling the screen. The ebon green space was littered with dozens -if not a few hundred- of little green square markers that ranged across all the cardinal directions. A majority of them were in the south though, as the expanse he was in seemed empty for a great deal of those little square marks.

It centered on his location, and the machine had it named as ‘Whiney Fallons’’. Supposedly an old clothing store chain before the apocalypse, now nothing more than a dive among many for travelers to huddle in on their way to a quaint little up and coming town of ‘Good Neighbor’ to the east.

Good Neighbor, as he remembered, is about as average as your typical small town gets as far as history or amenities. Some group of ponies find some semi-intact destroyed buildings among totally destroyed ones, then put up boards and tape until they felt better about themselves, as well as planting crops -or tried to, rather- for their own survival. As time went on, they established enough of a populace to want trade with surrounding towns amongst the stubborn ponies who refused to pick one spot and settle as one large clump.

The trade itself was dry, mostly, but bullets and food for trade meant the town was worth the visit on long hauls. Of all the decent things the town had though, as short a list as it was, one bad thing was going for it that glaringly drowned out all the little problems that built up. The Gangs.

Or Gang, to be precise. One singular gang, the largest, dressed in salvaged suits and hats, fancying themselves to be gangers of an old creed long since eradicated named ‘Gunponies’. They played the ‘guards’ of town, keeping the peace and protecting trading considered illicit by other towns -so long as they get their cut of the profits- and so they formed an odd ‘underground’ of commerce.

The Griffon worked the PipBuck’s controls to pan the map over from Whiney Fallons over to the east, and a short half day’s travel sat Good Neighbor serenely on the screen. Like an invitation to the unwary of a good, neighborly place where every creature, be they pony or griffon or even zebras were welcome. He scoffed lightly, and examined in detail possible paths between the dive and the town. Settling on one he felt most secure in taking, he pressed and held the selector button for three seconds and the screen went blank as the PipBuck went into standby mode.

He wiped the screen of some particulates and examined its case in detail. All the old scuff marks were the same, no new damage as he could tell, and satisfied with its condition he flipped the machine over to see its back. A small plaque showing the Pipbuck’s technical information displayed many things, some scratched beyond recognition and others just plain incomprehensible to any creature who wasn’t a PipBuck technician. In a broad, once empty space, was a name scratched into the case with a dull steely color in sharp contrast to the olive base.

The name was ‘Aizen’.

The Griffon ran his talon over the name, not with a loving touch but one of regret. The name was his own -once before. Now his name was only a moniker to his nature -a calling card to the broken and battered griffon that remained from a sand storm of death that strips the flesh and mind from all who endure it, leaving them with nothing but aching pains.

Shaking the distractions from his head, he slid the PipBuck into its satchel and attached the bag to his harness. He checked his rifle’s action, detached the drum magazine and cycled the feed with test bites of the bit in the side of his mouth to check the firing mechanism. It all functioned as it should, so he reattached the rifle’s magazine with the three-oh-eight cartridges below the firearm itself. He attached his battle saddle and pack to his harness alongside the rest of his gear, adjusting and securing it as needed, as he locked it all into place over his gun metal grey riot armor -the steely face cross hatched with years of nicks and scratches, breaking apart several dull patches of rust- and his faintly stained brown duster long coat.

Once his armor and gear was in place he stretched out in his well worn and long traveled ensemble, picked up his wide brimmed black hat on the nightstand with a caring grace and donned it. He looked about and found the small pot of creek water he had collected the day before and drowned the small campfire till it was nothing more than muddy ashes. Going to the door, he disarmed his tripwire and the mine attached to it, buried in scrap and junk beside it, and settled it in his pack.

With a deep breath he looked at the door, listened intently and found no noise beyond the casual whistling of wasteland winds. He grasped the lever door knob, pulled his revolver from its holster, and slowly opened the door.

The desolate expanse that followed was one that any creature unacquainted with it would be held aghast. Endless brown and beige landscapes rolled with spires of concrete tombs and charred shapes of long dead trees, headstones to a dead world with few left to truly remember them rising into the sky in defiance of time’s ravaging. The sky matched the detritus with leagues and leagues of grey, sickly plumes of cloud that all but blocked out the sky and the sun’s radiance, painting everything in a sickly sheen as it threatened rain almost on a daily basis with the seasons.

From beyond, a steady and slow paced chilling wind lazily stirred what dust and sand wasn’t glued to the ground as damp mud off towards the distance. The Griffon’s eyes with a calm pace examined what terrain was around for possible threats, finding none he holstered his pistol and walked to the middle of the building’s rear parking lot. Sparing a glance back to the building he saw its dilapidated form, anemic and stained by a century of abandonment and a few hours of balefire bombardment before that. It seemed to him as if the building remained standing for simple fear of falling, holding on for no better reason than to spite the inevitable end.

Even if that existence is nothing more than one of a tombstone to what once was.

He scratched his scarred black beak, sniffling, and turning back to the east he walked into what little sunrise there was to walk to. Kicking up dust in his rear paws and front talons he trotted on, towards his next stop to an equally dilapidated place, in an endlessly diseased world.

*** *** ***

The road east was thankfully uneventful. The errant mutant varmints, like bloatsprites or suicidal radroachs, that needed nothing but knife work to deal with made up all the excitement for the morning. By early afternoon the Griffon found himself before a large ensemble of buildings, each one as decrepit as the last with an old billboard before them on the road declaring the town’s name twice over, with the pre-war name destroyed by the words ‘Good Neighbor’ emblazoned upon the face of the dirty surface, accompanied by several other smaller font obscenities typical of raiders or gangers.

This was the Good Neighbor line. The border to which most honest townsfolk never dared to tread beyond without a caravan of guards with them, mainly since within the borders the Gunponies demanded under pain of ‘a thoroughly embarrassing thrashing’ that the other smaller gangs leave each other alone within the lines. Outside of that was uncontested territory, therefore free for any conflict to happen.

Here the Griffon knew he was relatively safe, at least from getting sucked into the middle of a turf war. All there was to deal with were the sentries, highwaymen, and other blockages that frequent the unprotected of the town, or the conveniently unrecognized by fools. Breathing deeply he flipped off the safety of his rifle with his wing, stretched within the confines of his armor with several bones popping, and trotted slowly down the road -eyes peeled.

*** *** ***

For the past fifteen minutes he spotted at least three groups of gangs; small, lightly armed and even more lightly fed, and all of them a rough mix of Earth and Unicorn ponies. They all tucked tail and hid behind their small half destroyed buildings as if hiding from some giant monster that prowled the streets, and their wide eyed and agape expressions when he caught them matched their desperate flight. He simply trekked onwards practically ignoring them. At least he did until he found one larger group at the other side of an overpass that did the exact opposite in his passing.

They blocked the path.

The ragged ponies shuffled slowly forward, wielding blunt instruments like horse hockey sticks or clubs in mixtures of mouth grips -precious few telekinetically held- and some with nasty looking odds and ends attached to the tips that did more for appearances then any true effect. A few even had knifes -a machete here and there.

The big unicorn, probably the leader, had himself a rusty and ramshackle pistol levitated next to him; nine millimeter semi-automatic most likely by the size. From a first impression it seemed like all the caps this gang made went into hiring ponies to get more hooves together just to swamp the opposition, with their barding ragged and literally duct taped together from miscellaneous scrap like metal plates and chariot tires. Their stances and expressions betrayed the worst mistake they made though.

They were cocky.

“Ahm gonna need all your shit there, you feathered fuck!”

The griffon didn’t bother speaking, moving, or even acknowledge the brash leader’s roughly accented remarks. Only his eyes scanned the surrounding ponies as they began to spread out around him within pouncing distance in both spaces between them and the overpass’ base. Smirking, he slowly and casually looked over his shoulder back down the road and saw it was empty, save for one set of binocular glints in the pale sunlight.

He turned his head back to the gang members with a level gaze, and lost his smirk as the leader approached him brandishing his pistol at him. “Are yah listenin’ to me?”

He jabbed his hoof into the griffon’s chest plate with a dull thud, and his eyes had a stare that could boil water now; his pupils barely visible beneath the hat’s brim. The leader didn’t sway in the slightest.

“I am now...” He whispered in a dangerous low tone, deep and gravelly like sandpaper. The leader’s dirty features gave a slight and malicious grin.

“Good!” He did his best to match the Griffon’s own tones, but his lighter accented voice made it impossible. The griffon nodded his head slowly and donned his own mirthless half smile.

“Are you listening to me?” The leader’s eyes seemed a bit surprised, but glad to have his target speaking at least.

“Yeah.” The griffon tensed his shoulders beneath his coat and barding, looking quickly off to the side at the rest of his menagerie and back to him.

“Good... put that hoof on me again and you won’t get it back.” The griffon's smile disappeared, replaced by a cold and level empty expression. The leader gave a half laugh at his bravery, glancing backwards to his gang for a moment and shouted as imperiously as his speech allowed.

“Can you believe this fuckin’ guy!?” His mouth spread into a smug ear to ear grin as he lifted his hoof to jab his chest again, trying to mouth out certain demands, only his hoof was severed in a flash of silvery steel and fell to the ground with a dull thud.

The sight of a blood leaking stump seemed to petrify him into place, and as he pulled back the damaged limb he stared at the clean cut. Meat and bone cut so evenly one could almost swear thinly wrought razor wire did the work, and he stammered at it with a loss of words. He hunched down to cradle the limb with his intact one, and the levitated pistol clattered to the ground as some internal component pinged within it.

“H... how did yah... do that...?” His eyes bulged as shock set in; the blood leaking out upon his arm and the ground. He slammed onto his haunches backpedaling, and looked around him with panic growing. He looked up to the griffon that held a razor of polished steel, like a bowie knife broad and lethal, and the patch of red clinging to its edge. His panic induced anger burst forth.

“He just cut my hoof off!!” He flailed his hoofed foreleg at the griffon with rage filled eyes. “Kiss him!!”

The gang behind him shared expressions of confusion, and one voiced it in a simpleton’s, even more accented tone of his leader’s. “Whud he say?”

The griffon slowly backed down the overpass’ corridor, speaking loudly at the group as he did, blade raised and slowly dipping back into the deeper shadows beneath the structure. His voice resonated softly inside it in a dangerously cold voice.

“He’s in shock. Think he meant ‘Kill him’.”

The gang simultaneously began walking towards him inside the shadows brandishing their melee weapons, a few grinning maliciously and others the façade of surety cracking. The griffon’s murderous smile was lost on them in the darkness, and the closest to him swung his barbed wire wrapped club at him in his mouth. ‘Time to dance’ he thought, and with a deft side step he slashed at the exposed neck in a practiced motion that bathed his attacker in their own blood in seconds; his griffon eyes saw it with acuity despite the lighting.

‘First mistake’ he thought, ‘fighting a griffon in low-light’.

All Tartarus broke loose as the rest of the gang tried to pile on the strikes on an opponent they could only see in silhouette, each and every strike landed in empty air as their target beat his wings, deftly prancing side to side around their blows like water, and parrying with uncanny accuracy those he couldn’t outright avoid. Over extended, each pony pulled their extremities bleeding and sliced in some form or fashion, and several fell straight to the ground in a last grunt or gasp of pain that reverberated off the walls as they leaked their life blood onto the rubble strewn asphalt, with their weapons clattering uselessly alongside them.

One managed to land a strike with his dull machete, and as its edge shattered on the Griffon’s armor he grabbed the attacker’s mane and yanked it downwards to the side causing the earth pony to tumble to the ground violently with a guttering grunt as the Griffon’s blade slid across his neck, making him drop his machete with a clatter. Inertia carried the Griffon forward with a beat of his wings as he lunged faster than the two unicorns arrayed beyond could telekinetically swing their own weapons.

He fell on one, burying his knife into her neck with a shrill shriek consuming his hearing, and he used his free talon to grab her mane and swung around her as the other unicorn swung his magic wreathed weapon at him. It found its mark in his friend’s chest, tearing her barding and flesh to shreds with panicked rapid slashes with her dying shortly from shock alone. The Griffon shoved her body towards the weapon and it clattered off to the ground lost from its magical grip, and using the motion he pirouetted towards the other unicorn whose horn was dim and with a rear paw, claws extended from his open-toed boots, tore four long gouges of flesh from his chest despite his ‘armor’. He shrieked and fell to the ground quickly clasping his wounds in his hooves.

The Griffon felt a sudden jarring and blurring vision as the back of his head exploded in fiery pain; a pain that resembled a club’s strike he had the unfortunate displeasure of recognizing. He pirouetted once again with a blind slice that found some purchase on the raised forelegs of the last pony to stand against him. Blood splattered the blade and the target’s arm in ribbons flying through the air, and the dimly lit features of the pony betrayed a mixture of pain and rage. The pony raised his club in a flash and brought it down towards the Griffon, and he dodged to the side and parried the strike with his blade, jabbing his rigid talons toward the neck of the pony.

The dazed sensation didn’t impede his defensive motions, but it muddled his attack and it went wide. The wound wasn’t immediately lethal, but the pain would keep the attacker blind with anger and wild in his strikes. Wild indeed, his flurry of quick, yet inaccurate attacks were easily avoided by the pantherish and lithe dodges of the Griffon. Seeing an opening he struck out with his blade, puncturing a deep hole just above the pony’s collarbone and ripped it out just as quickly. With a violent half turn he slashed with a free talon ripping three lines through his pain blinded face throwing it backwards and causing him to loose grip of his bludgeon, and as he brought his head back after the strike the last half of the Griffon’s spin brought a powerful kick to the pony’s rent jaw.

A sharp snap and cascade of cracks emanated in the space and the blow forced the pony’s body to fall lifeless in a twirl to the ground. The Griffon turned about with eyes darting back and forth checking for more of the gangers, but found none but the dozen or so dead upon the ground. Breathing heavily, his battle haze lifted, and he ensured all the ponies were dead about him by a quick glance. Little rivulets of blood poured out of each still form, intermingling with each other in pools that shimmered dully in what sickly light came in from beyond the shadows.

Over a ways lay his hat with a crumple in the back of the brim. Scowling as he saw it, not remembering when it had fallen off in the first place. He slowly walked towards it, picked it up and straightened out the brim, wiping the dust and grime from it as he did. Donning it he turned to the bodies once again and began surveying them for packs or other ragged methods of keeping personal effects they may have implemented. A few had some caps, others maybe a bobby pin or two. One even had an old brass flip lighter.

He squirreled all that was worth his time away in his packs. The few that were still breathing he opened up their jugulars with surgical slices as they gave final spasms and fell silent once again. Standing amidst them he counted thirteen dead, and outside of the tunnel sat the fourteenth, staring on with terrified eyes as the ground he groveled on was wet with ebon crimson. They switched between the Griffon and the severed hoof that lay in a small pool of red, and he inched slowly and weakly towards it. The Griffon turned toward him and slowly walked out of the tunnel, stopped over the hoof with the ex-leader whimpering after it a few feet away.

“I told you, you wouldn’t get it back.” The Griffon looked down at him with an empty gaze and with his free talon shoved the severed hoof aside him. The pony looked after it longingly, and with a distraught, yet seemingly resigned expression he stared at his blackened stump.

“Yeah...” he gave a few short shallow breaths “you did.” He stared at the Griffon and his now blood stained long coat with a distant gaze. “Why... why didn’t yah just shoot ‘em? Would uh been kinder than that...” The pony coughed several times, yet the griffon’s steady gaze remained unchanged.

“Not worth the bullets.” He said matter of factly. He turned his head back down the tunnel and spied out the same binocular glint in the same place they were before. He smirked slightly as they quickly disappeared from view.

“Who are you...?” The pony asked faintly as his eyes fought to stay open. The Griffon turned back to him, abandoned his half smile and measured the worth of telling him who he was. He didn’t really care he supposed, but maybe watching his gang get torn to shreds changed his mind on whether waylaying him was in fact a good idea. He finally knelt down on one of his foreleg’s knees with the knife held fast in the other, breathed in and spoke in a low and grave tone.

“‘Red Eagle’.”

Something deep inside him felt satisfaction that the expression of realization, mixed with regret, fear, and resignation all rolled into one flashed across the dying pony’s face. Something even deeper felt a pang of sickness; something repressed and calloused by twenty years of this continued cycle of death he grew ever so familiar with. The accented pony quietly sobbed out his last regrets of how he thought Eagle wasn’t who he thought he was, or how his gang should never have agreed to this hold up. It didn’t last long however as Red Eagle lived up to his name once again.

With a quick motion he buried his knife into the pony’s chest between ribs, and with a push and twist the last dying grunts of the pony were sounded. Sliding the blade from the now lifeless body he wiped the blood from it on the corpse’s tattered barding, sheathed the blade and stood among the newly christened graveyard. His eyes lingered on the city ahead, panning back across the dead landscape as its concrete tombs promised more idiots to throw themselves onto the weapons of others.

His breaths were even, long, and deep as he gave into his desire to reminisce of a time before all this. Not even before the wasteland, since that was all he ever knew, but a time when he never had to butcher a dozen plus people to just go to a town, a time when his name wasn’t ‘Red Eagle’, a time when he had his own home and a people he cared for. A time when...

When he had love...

Footnote: Red Eagle maximum level.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2: The Path Estimated time remaining: 12 Hours, 22 Minutes