Chapter 6: The Hunters

Nearly six days had passed as Eagle crossed the nearly empty expanse of The Wasteland. Another week on the road did little for him, along with nothing but his musings and melancholies to keep him company, yet the more distance he put between himself andDodge City the better he felt. Marginally perhaps, but a marked improvement was experienced. The Days felt shorter despite the longer daylight hours, the walk less grueling, and despite his nearing The Hoof he felt ‘safer’ in an odd fashion.

Although in the end he only shook his head, and continued his repetitious habits. Worrying after what was to happen when he actually did pierce The Hoof’s border consumed most of it, and the first and most evident threat were the raiders that frequented the place as every creature seemed to know they were there.

He had taken glances at his PipBuck’s map, repeatedly every night he camped, as he tried to determine the why of it; the reason for The Hoof’s bizarre reputation. He knew that the border towns had problems with the raiders, so there was evidence, but beyond border conflicts very few creatures ever actually went in there and returned; at least, without thousand yard stares or half-maddened by the experience he remembered. It seemed that all that was known was that it simply spawned them like insects. An old pony proverb came to mind, that of mice being born of rotten straw.

Simple ignorance perhaps, but as he scanned the region’s landscapes either there was a town or city there that no creature knew of within that had enough ponies to produce the goods to raid, or there were enough pre-War supplies in the massive valley in the first place to provide for all those rumored raiders. The city of Hoofington came to mind, but all he had heard said that place was a graveyard unto itself, and had a habit of killing those who entered.

There were no major cities nearby, unless you counted Baltimare which was every bit of three hundred miles away north-east, and to the south was just the Badlands which was nothing but a hundred and fifty-ish miles of what the name suggested; according to hearsay again. The nearest towns, be they large or small, like Dodge City couldn’t possibly grow enough for them all either. Or worse, he grimaced, not nearly enough towns nearby to cannibalize on, and if they ate each other then the problem would have been solved by now. He hadn’t heard of a caring family in those kinds of gangs, so little prospects of population growth.

He wondered, and knew in a sense, that the tales were most likely exaggerated anyways. They made it out like there were thousands of them in that valley of The Hoof, which he grimly hoped wasn’t the case; despite logic telling him it was just a supply based impossibility.

He shook his head in the end and kept thinking on the preparations on other things as he approached the border in earnest. The chief worry of them was being actually getting in there unnoticed, past any potential raider blockades not once, but twice. Going over the mountain range wasn’t an option as even a griffon didn’t dare fly over their crests. No telling what unseen dangers were there, be they Enclave lightning rods that they used for ‘border defense’ or mutated monstrosities that prowled the peaks. Even just a spontaneous uncontrolled storm would be sure to make any foolish flyer into a pile of steaming, lightning fried meat.

That really left only two options; go through the northern mouth of the valley or go through some underpasses in the mountains. He felt both roads would be a fool’s gamble. Either way he could guarantee it would be guarded, and after a few moments of speculation he decided on going through the tunnels. He didn’t want to risk the wide open spaces of the valley’s mouth, at night or not for fear of unseen snipers watching the pass. It might have been more cramped on space in those tunnels, but if they held raiders he felt he could slip past them unnoticed.

That meant with certainty he would be whipping out every trick in the book to avoid detection to preserve his resources, and his life on the suspicion that the passages into The Hoof would hold more than what he feared.

Doing as he had done many times before, he shelved the dilemma in the back of his mind. He figured worrying about it with every step would only agitate him beyond measure. He would have to deal with it as he had always done before, wing it.

At this point in his life he felt like an expert at it, and the thought made him reminisce again as he recalled times by the score he made it up as he went. The times when he improvised and watched a spur-of-the-moment plan collapse or happen as expected. Old wounds began to twinge at some, and short lived memories of pride or surprise came and went at others.

Regardless, one step after another keeping an even stride he trotted on as he always did. Eyes on the distant horizon he kept watch of the lifeless surroundings, following the long road to the next stop. He had a dim hope that the whole excursion would be uncomplicated, relatively short, devoid of all expected trouble. A vain hope he knew, that any creature knew who strode similar roads, but that hope was the ounce of drive that kept him going forward with this deranged and foolish plan.

The same as any creature held really; the hope that it would get easier one day, that The Wasteland would eventually take a day off and let them rest easy for once. As Eagle mused he looked down at the ground and saw another pile of forlorn bones, the bleached and cracked hornless pony skull grinned widely amongst its ribs and limbs in the lipless smile of the dead.

The Wasteland took a grim twisted pleasure however, in grinding that hope to dust with a raspy chuckling grin.

*** *** ***

A few more hours into the day as the world passed into evening, the already bleak grey sky turned shadowed and ominous. The surrounding terrain of lightly rolling hills crowned in patches of dead trees and small husks of buildings that was once silhouetted by the dull light disappeared into the growing darkness, and as the gloom deepened so did Eagle’s attention to it. His griffon eyes still had difficulty making out more than rough shapes in the distance though.

Focusing on his hearing and sudden movements as he dipped into primal instincts he slowed his pace, almost prowling the final length between him and the junction beyond. Earlier on a hill’s crest he saw his entrance to The Hoof, and it was as he had feared within that open mouth that burrowed into the mountain.

It was empty, no camps or flags declared the territory of some gang. This was a problem, as those with experience dealing with raiders or slavers know that if an area is a good ambush point they will either place a large claim to an area to accost travelers on the road, or lie in wait out of sight. The former wasn’t the case simply for his earlier thoughts on the utter lack of travelers, and the latter meant if raiders were close by they would be inside the tunnels themselves in tight knit camps.

If that was the case, then stealth was all but a doomed approach; he would need to find access points or service tunnels inside to skirt around them. Worse of all was the fact that unexplored or undisturbed tunnels and passages could be host to any number of horrors; horrors that used them as nests perhaps.

The thought sent slight shivers down his spine and tail; the choices were each and every one bad and had their own challenges. A raider camp could mean a massive firefight, the tunnels could mean possible mutated monsters that could swarm him and eat him alive, and flying above the mountain was its own bag of unknowns that, despite not being an option before, became more and more preferable by the minute.

Getting frustrated by the indecision he scoffed at the darkness and stopped, sat down and closed his eyes as he objectively took each into consideration. He weighed the odds of each and the threats he’d rather face, and he concluded he would much rather take his chances with the tunnels, he didn’t know what was in them realistically, and facing that unknown might prove to be nothing more than an errant rat or radroach in desiccated, empty tunnels.

He could only pit guesses against certainty. Mentally shrugging, he stood up and shook his head, stretched out and prowled once more into the dark, closer to the entrance beyond. Now it was time for him to put his ‘plan’ into action. First things first of course; he had to find a tunnel that would take him where he wanted.

That, he gave a worried scoff as he mused, was the real trick.

*** *** ***

Outside of the dimly outlined highway tunnel he looked within and kept himself close to the arching half circle that made up the passage’s entrance. Inside he could see small, but bright lines of light like a campfire’s aura that leaked from cracks in a wall as the sole sources of lights. They allowed him to see more detail than he suspected the residents wanted, as in front of a large and piecemealed wall of rusted metal and splintered wood were two guards posted sitting on low chairs.

Their barding from what he could see was what he had come to expect of raider types; a stitched and taped together mixture of metal and leather with no real defensive qualities against a smart or well equipped opponent. Beside them he saw a post with a dully gleaming brass bell of sorts. The alarm he noted.

Along the sides of the tunnel were an assortment of traditional wasteland rubble and garbage, like bottles or papers, but no traps or other defenses he could see. Breathing deeply, he flexed his talons and paws one by one to loosen them a bit, tucked his wings close to his body, and began to slowly prowl into the pony-made cavern with a low pantherish stride that gave no audible sounds besides the subtle rasping of his steps.

Eagle could barely hear it himself, but he knew that these raider guards, while they were awake, more than likely couldn’t hear anything short of a cough from the sheer boredom of being stuck outside the camp for the night shift; assuming they even rotated the guards. With careful steps he inched his way like a ghost, closer and closer to the wall within he avoided the tin cans and bottles that littered the path and kept an attentive eye on the guards. He eventually got within reach of touching the scrap wall, and from within he heard the shuffles and soft hoofsteps of several walking ponies behind it. Only a few, by the pace and sounds, and as he listened intently he thought he could hear some snoring as well.

It must have been later than he thought, or perhaps they had turned in early after a day of grueling inactivity. ‘Either way’ he thought, it was easier to sneak by sleeping raiders by far, so it was a stroke of luck.

He turned his head about slowly and saw the two guards clearly now. Both were earth pony stallions and their armor even more blatantly decrepit up close. Their weapons were rusty hunting rifles of sorts, bearing an appearance of having seen better days attached to their battle saddles. Their faces unarmored and their scarred hides wore expressions mixed with boredom and lethargy, more importantly the space between them and the gate was more than enough for Eagle to fit behind them and dispatch them quickly.

Resuming his deliberate pantherish stride he got behind one in the darkness, looked to the other measuring the distance as he took out his knife. With a quick stab and rip he buried the blade into the side of the guard’s neck in front of him and pulled it across, opening his throat he guided his fidgeting body to the ground all but noiselessly. He leapt from him to the next in a lightning quick pounce and buried the blade into the thoroughly surprised stallion’s neck as he turned about wide eyed from his partner’s sudden stifled shout of pain, and in the short fall repeated his slice and finished him off.

He checked the area and saw no other immediate threats and dragged the bodies all but noiselessly over to the side of the tunnel into a corner created by the large wall they were guarding; their blood smeared the road and pooled in the pile where they lay. He wiped his bloodied knife on the leather patches of their barding and sheathed the blade, then scanned the rusty scrap wall for any possible openings besides the main door, which was a smaller inset door to the broad wall. When he found none he knew he would have to risk it.

Grumbling to himself he checked for cracks large enough to see through. He eventually found one and peered inside to find a small assortment of stained and patched tents and other improvised means of sleeping privacy like pyramids of sheet metal or broken down husks of chariots. There were small campfires, little pots and kettles suspended on spits around them that illuminated the underpass beside several of the tents. Alongside some of the chariots he saw collections of footlockers and crates piled up on each other, presumably their spots to keep their goods Eagle thought.

Panning over as far as the crack allowed he saw a pair of raggedy and seemingly drained earth pony mares chatting as they meandered away from the gate with a staggering pace towards the back of the camp. Their armor was light but equally useless as the two he had just dealt with and their weapons in much the same condition. For a moment Eagle wondered if there were any gangs around that actually had equipment worth more that a pocketful of caps, but wished such luck continued in his favor.

Beside them as they trotted on was a small road sign with a bend in its post that rose above them. On the face of the bare rectangular metal plate was an insignia he didn’t recognize painted in bright yellow and black that looked like a winged insect of sorts. He wondered if it was the gang’s banner.

He looked back to the mares as they walked further away and quickly ensured that no other pony was looking towards the gate, and quickly shuffled to the small inset door and tried his talon at opening it. It budged a little, but the slight squeal of the hinges discouraged more force from being applied.

Shaking his head he gave a mental ‘fuck it’ and with great care inched the gate open as quietly as he could until it was wide enough for him to fit through. In a subtle cacophony of rusty pops and groans he managed to get it open quietly enough, and with a deft motion slid through and closed the gate behind him, and immediately with a cat-like silent grace dove behind a ruined chariot off to the side in front of the gate.

Keeping his body low and ears open, he felt a faint sense of relief when no noises declared his discovery or curiosity at the noise of the gate. Risking a peak around the chariot’s corroded fender his hearing didn’t betray him as the tents remained still and the two mares continued the direction they went; their conversation faint and unintelligible from the distance. His eyes panned around the cavern, analyzing with the better view and saw little more than he had seen before.

There were signs of living around tables and stools with chipped cups and bottles on them, some short stacks of curled and crumpled paper and playing cards lay on top of one in the corner opposite of his position. Beyond that were chest high sand bag piles and other defenses that he supposed the camp had put up in case an enemy group got past their gate.

What got his attention, however, was the lack of traditional raider style decorations. For some reason, he remembered, raiders of a particularly maniacal breed tended to wallow in ecstatic pleasure with severed limbs and dismembered body parts for décor like radhogs in mud. The worst he had seen of that variety had unspeakable design choices like intestines for garland strands and hooves nailed to the walls marking kills, alongside the bowls carved from the skulls of their victims.

Worse were the posed corpses used for target practice with knives, or itching that scratch when the rest of the gang refused to sleep with them. In reality though, the last one may have been just because they could, like twisted foals given divine power and expected not to play or satisfy any dark and dire cravings.

This camp though lacked those disturbing insanities, and the break from the custom momentarily confused him; it might have even been capable of being called ‘clean’.

Shelving the thought he returned his gaze to the now silent as a grave campsite, aside from crackling fires and subtle breezes wafting through the cavern and the errant snore. The two mares were gone, probably in their own tents he guessed, and after ensuring the coast was clear he rose up silently and prowled around from his cover between the pieced together tents and sandbag walls deeper into the lair of a sleeping beast. As he went, the numerous tents remained still as their inhabitants slept almost serenely; the few that had ponies awake within were all luckily preoccupied with their own mixture of businesses.

Soundlessly he advanced deeper into the camp until he heard a noise that cut through the silence like a blaring echo of shrieking metal. With a sudden instinctual squat he looked at his surroundings picked out a small roadside walkway lowered into the concrete with enough space to fit him and he dove into it with little racket crouch walking his way deeper into the space. His steps were deliberate as his eyes scanned for potential traps, trying to ensure he wouldn’t trip an alarm or other kinds of paranoid defenses the gangs could place here, if any. He found nothing but assorted garbage; the most dangerous being bottles that he stepped carefully around.

Getting far enough into the cover of shadows he stopped and knelt down on a foreleg, with his ears listening intently and eyes looking out of the view-holes in the roadside to try and see the commotion.

The piercing noise echoed on for what felt like an eternity in the cavern as the sounds of awakening and equally confused ponies muttering questions filled the resonating air. Eagle could make out most of them, and all were a general clump of ‘what was that’ or ‘what’s going on’, adding in curses of a wide variety.

They mirrored his own thoughts, and they were all, him included, abruptly interrupted when a cacophony of shouts began in a commanding mare’s voice that echoed deeper into the tunnel. “We’ve got incomin’ fillies! A band of Jocks comin’ from the south!”

The commotion after the statement made Eagle Painfully aware of how complicated an already difficult situation just became. The sounds of cocking rifles and rapid uneven hoof stomps of ponies trying to meet the threat and psych themselves up for the coming fight filled the cavern, and after a short time of shouting war cries like ‘Time to rumble!’ or ‘Get some!’ between the gang’s ponies the general noises of battle prep began.

Orders being shouted to shore up cover, wooden crates and sandbags being moved and shuffled about in a near panic filled the air, and Eagle cursed as this was exactly the opposite of what he wanted. To get sucked into a gang war in The Hoof, the irony was he wasn’t even in The Hoof yet; he was in the highway tunnels on the border. ‘What fucking timing’ he cursed mentally, shaking his head at the thought he returned to listening.

After eight or nine minutes of scrambling defenses and shouted orders is when the gunfire began. Piercing shots that resonated with cruel sharp notes in the cavern sounded off in scattered bursts, and they were met with the return fire of distant gunfire that was all but muted by their target’s war cries and attacks. Eagle heard the telling noises of whistling bullets that impacted concrete and metal alike with a shattering crack, and alongside it he heard pony’s cries of pain when he figured they were hit by a stray bullet.

After a minute or so of the general chaos of battle, Eagle looked down the small corridor he was in and saw it continued on ahead for a stretch before being clogged by rubble and trash. He picked himself up to a low squat and lurked down the tunnel, keeping his noise to a minimum despite the firefight above him.

He knew now that sneaking through the figurative front door was no longer an option, the firefight could last for hours or mere minutes depending on a great deal of variables he didn’t have the time to consider. That didn’t much matter though, as a distraction of this magnitude was a blessing in disguise for slipping past unseen, so long as he kept his head on a swivel and keep to the shadows. The trick was now to find an access tunnel he could use to get out of the center of a gang war, without getting involved that is.

Risking a peak outside of the passage into the main body of the tunnel he found the majority of the gang ponies were in a cramped mob far down in the direction of the firefight, with a handful of them hanging back taking potshots at range with larger rifles on their saddles. He looked in the other direction with a lingering gaze to ensure there weren’t any behind him. He didn’t expect to find any ponies with a firefight on the other end of the tunnel and wasn’t disappointed.

Gazing back to the mob of gangers he breathed deeply, girding himself as he stepped over the ledge and prowling toward them as he kept low. There were roughly thirty paces between him and the closest sniper, and as the earth pony stallion fired shots to the front he reached him and drew his knife, clasping his muzzle shut with his free talon and slit his throat in a single flash of movement. He dragged his spasm wracked body to the ground as he twitched out his last defiant attempts at self defense.

Eagle checked the lines ahead to survey the field. A few of them were looking off in his direction, but all of them too consumed by the fire fight to pay attention to their rear with more than a passing glance. The other group, the ‘Jocks’ according to the ganger mare’s decree, were far down the tunnel, maybe a hundred yards, and while the slight curve to the right in the passage partially blocked their firing line he saw one of them. A burly looking stallion standing tall with wide pinprick eyes and manically proud as he charged into the gunfire wearing nothing but some sort of hard plastic sport’s armor that was mottled and scratched all to hell with a large, wicked looking wooden club with saw blades fastened to it by barbed wire and nails in his teeth.

Bullets that impacted him barely slowed him down as he charged forth, his foaming mouth the tell tale sign of heavy chem usage, and after a large volley of shots that pierced his ‘armor’, with one blowing apart his skull in ground up bloody chunks of gray matter he finally fell to the ground in a sudden collapse. Even then his body seemed to twitch of its own accord. Another one, similarly garbed, only a unicorn wielding two machetes with his magic, exhibited the same signs of overdose as his mouth dripped bubbling froth. He mouthed out crazed sayings Eagle couldn’t hear over the gun fire.

He charged into a firing line, climbed over the sandbags swinging his blades wildly as the bullets buried themselves deep into his body, the only one that remotely hobbled him was a wild shot to a foreleg that impacted the bone inside, exploding on impact and ripping flesh and shards of bone in a spectacular meaty pop leaving a cavity that stretched from his knee to the shoulder that rendered that limb all but useless. In his chem craze however the wound merely made him limp as he landed. His face maintained the wildly barbaric expression as he swung with a primal frenzy, killing a few of his targets but grievously wounding most, as they retreated in desperate flight.

After felling several ponies he finally took a shot that his drugged body couldn’t ignore, and the life left his face as he fell; his hooves scrambled as if his mind still fought when his body was yanked out from under him altogether. Several of the gangers that knelt behind the sandbags peered over their cover and made moves to rally back to the lost ground, but they were immediately stopped in panic as they opened fire again on the Jocks who replaced their fallen comrades. Each and every one wore similar barding and wielded some melee implement that all looked equally vicious and improvised, and all were flying high on some concoction of chems that made the bullets entering their bodies seem unimportant.

As he watched the spectacle, he saw a diverging path off to the left some thirty yards down that had a wooden frame that seemed to be built to cover the entrance with firing lines, or limit the amount of ponies that could pass through at a time. Around the sides and top of the structure were large warning signs, painted with yellow symbols that indicated different things. One sign displayed ‘WARNING’, another read ‘DEATH’, the actually useful ones declared ‘RADS’ and ‘MUTANTS’.

His snap judgment said that some group here must have built that to protect themselves from whatever lay within after finding out the hard way; either the current gangers or any previous inhabitants. It didn’t matter who built it though as the creatures who put it up must have avoided it like the plague and guarded it to keep whatever was in there inside, and that meant little to no presence of any gangers or raiders within. If he could get to it he could follow the passage and make a break for a surface access stairwell; if he could find one, that is.

Sighing sharply, he stretched inside his armor, knowing he would have to get momentarily involved in the fighting to reach it. There was little chance he could garrote his way silently through the mob and not get noticed. He would just have to cut his path open and make a break for it, and hope none of the ponies got off a lucky shot. Their panicked aim was still lethal to chem crazed raiders after all; he doubted he’d be able to shrug off a wound like that as easily.

After preparing for the run he trotted out of hiding to an empty space of cover, gave his own battle saddle a kick with a hind leg, disabling the safety with a click, and patted his chest armor hoping it could catch their bullets if it came to the worst; all while he clutched his knife anxiously. Waiting for an ideal moment he watched the battle for a short while, and when an opening presented itself as the gangers spread in a section advancing he spread his wings and gave a powerful beat of them that launched him forward and into the fray a third of the distance easily.

With expert motions he killed or maimed all the ganger ponies as he closed the distance with lightning slices and accurate stabs and wove between obstacles, using them as cover against the ponies of the firing line on the opposite side of the tunnel. As he raced towards the side tunnel he kept low and pounced on the pair of an unaware gangers ahead of him, slicing out a hind leg and turning a half pirouette with a slash across his throat that sent ribbons of blood that reflected the flares of muzzle blasts and campfires through the air as he screamed from the pain of the first injury, drowning him shortly as he gurgled.

Jumping to the next in a practiced motion he finished the spin and hammered the mare in the jaw with a clenched talon as she turned aghast, then instantly Eagle drove the knife deep into her neck and, with a sharp twist and rip, he kept the motion and launched from her body drawing shining threads of blood with the blade as its target was stricken with shock. She fell to the ground clutching the wound with her hooves.

The cacophony of gunfire ahead began to escalate sharply in intensity towards the front line as Eagle butchered his way through the back ranks, and the moment when he spared a glace at the line to see what deserved that extra gunfire his body felt the ever familiar pang of pain from a sudden pressure in his armor. The lack of sharp burning pain immediately told him his armor had caught the bullet, and with a trained crouching turn he faced the direction where the bullet came from to find a ganger mare wildly firing a large pistol in a prismatic blue telekinetic field with panicked eyes.

Without an immediate clear shot he dodged to the left with a wing beat and dove behind the cover of a large rusted chariot bus nestled next to the tunnel’s wall, and upon finding it occupied he rectified it with a quick and precise slash and stab to the surprised stallion. His body barely hit the ground with a dull clatter lost amid the gunfire before Eagle backed against the chariot’s large side panel. Eagle looked down at a part of his armor where a good sized crater was pressed into its plate, below and behind his right shoulder beneath his coat; the light coat of rust on the armor stripped out of the divot surrounded by blackened streaks that the bullet’s splatter created.

Sparing a moment to catch his breath and thank his luck profusely he breathed deeply and turned about to quickly scan the battlefield ahead and plot his next course, and when he did he realized what all the extra gunfire was about.

It was large, beyond large actually. More like a gargantuan metallic chariot turned monstrous tank that turned around the bend in the tunnel beyond that had all manner of nasty bits attached to its jagged surfaces. Barbed wire lined the top of the roof and large serrated sheet metal spikes rose from its broad exterior armor panels welded to the structure, and on said spikes were a few pony corpses impaled on them forcefully like trophies.

On the front of the machine was a large and slit lined armor plate with a thick mesh of metal a foot from the panel itself. That, Eagle supposed, acted as the view port for the driver. Fixed to the roof was a mounted machine gun that owned the extra gunfire all to itself as its deep and bellowing roars drowned out the screams of its victims, and its pony gunner was armored in an all encompassing suit of bullet cratered and scratched steel armor. The pony panned the gun back and forth across the firing lines in front of him, and he looked as if he was cackling madly at the mayhem with sick pleasure.

Eagle temporarily went wide eyed and quickly rectified an earlier statement in his head. ‘This isn't a gang war, this is slaughter’.

“This just got really complicated...” was all he managed to say, voicing disbelief to himself when a blinding, burning pain pierced his left foreleg’s thigh after an ear stunning blast echoed behind him, and with a loud growl of pain he instinctually beat his wings and launched backwards, pirouetting he buried his knife into the same mare’s body that shot him from before. The stab broke her focus and the pistol clattered to the ground, and with a moment of advantage Eagle filleted her alive with slashes across all her major veins and arteries as he vented the battle frenzy born of his injury. His blood haze left her body bloody and broken, torn to ribbons on the ground.

After ensuring the mare was dead he staggered back to the chariot’s cover and limped as he did so. He slumped on it, shook his head from the pain of the gunshot and his own foolishness for forgetting ganger mare for merely a moment. He flinched from the consuming gunfire around him as he breathed between primal adrenaline powered grunts. He wiped his knife clean of blood as well as switched it over to his left talon, and he looked at the bloody hole in his armor between the Kevlar panels with raging eyes as he cut open the barding to reveal the nasty bullet hole beneath.

Cursing under his breath savagely he positioned the knife tip on the hole and, with a measure of hesitance, he quickly opened the hole a few inches more. The sharp fiery pain launched him into a fury edged agonized groan and he dropped the knife, used the talon to dig into the wound, growling in pain as his beak twisted into grimaces, and finally fishing out a relatively small blood coated mushroomed bullet from the now profusely bleeding gash.

Letting the bullet drop to the ground he quickly rummaged in his pack and pulled from it one of the brilliantly glowing purple healing potions and downed it like a shot of alcohol with desperate eagerness. A few seconds later the burning pain dissipated to bearable levels as the injury closed bit by bit, with the flesh magically knitting itself back together whole again. He did his damnedest to stabilize his breathing, but without much success he looked down at the healed wound and the bullet on the ground with a snarling beak, picked up his knife and peered back to the dead mare whose blood pooled below her.

“Fuck you...!” he spat at her corpse with a murderous coarse voice, and he slowly picked himself up and shook his head of the lingering pain. He tested his hind leg for strength and found it was nothing but sore now; the marvels of pony alchemies again astonishing him.

He looked back out to the battlefield and the mechanical monstrosity as its rapid fire machine gun and piercing reports tore apart cover and the ponies that hid behind them, leaving massive holes lined with ripped and ground flesh in them. It had managed to advance around the bend in the road beyond with an entourage of far more heavily armored Jocks that wielded large rifles in their battle saddles. They carved a path for the improvised tank behind the forward advance.

In front of it the ponies still alive were pinned down behind blasted rubble, and were scared beyond terror and their expressions matched. The few that tried to fight it were either wasted by the machine gun itself or its guards on the ground, both cackling profusely as pony after pony fell on their gunfire ripping them to pieces.

Eagle needed to move, to dive into the tunnel before that thing got too close, and with a slight limp he quickly moved around the cover of the chariot bus and kept low towards the side tunnel. He didn’t dare fly too high otherwise that turret might spot him and consider him dangerous enough to focus its fire, and being armored up or not that thing looked like a fifty cal. Anti-Machine rifle rounds being fired at an alarming rate of fire would shred him, as it would shred even the power armor it was built to penetrate.

The cacophony of gunfire and death began to escalate once again as desperation threw the gangers the Jocks targeted into a survival frenzy, some ran for their lives and others made their final stand against the metallic beast trying to shoot at weak spots. Most of them were simply mown down with limbs blown off or gaping holes ripped into their bodies with only a few stragglers managing to fall back. Several of them saw Eagle as he charged forward as he saw, one of which caught his eye; a pale green mare with an expression of urgency he would expect from this mess. The panicked fear of the vehicle kept them from paying him no more mind than a momentary confusion however.

One of them Eagle had crossed paths with, and with a deft leaping wing beat he hopped over the ducking terrified mare and kicked off her back with his paws driving the pony to the ground with a pained grunt. In her terror she didn’t bother chasing Eagle and merely scrambled to her hooves and continued fleeing from the Jocks.

Closing in to the tunnel’s entrance Eagle decided to risk it. He charged down the rest of the distance with wing beats between his strides giving him an incredible speed, and with that display he felt the thundering cracks of automatic weapon’s fire surround him as he neared the corner into the passage. He dove through the slim doorway with a mighty wing beat, and the air seemed to dance around him in that moment as he skid to a halt inside. Quickly he scanned for paths deeper into his refuge, and immediately found one in the middle of a large wooden framework down the path that was lit up with spotlights that wreathed the darkness in harsh hazy white contrasts; dust lazily flowed through the air as miniscule glowing white beacons.

Wasting no time he beat his wings with a sprint and made a break for the darkness beyond the struts, momentarily noticing there were a number of indistinct forms wrapped inside the barbed wire inside and scattered about the ground; he paid no time to examine them closer for fear that the Jocks might close in soon as he ran down the passage. The moment he cleared the structure into the spotlight’s glow wooden splinters filled the air about him and the thundering reports of the tank’s turret sounded, making it hard for Eagle to hear his own thoughts.

Ducking down and weaving deeper into the tunnel he left the light behind him. The asphalt around him began to explode into flaring chunks of rock and metal fragments, and ricochets resounded as bullets pinged around him that seemed to electrify in the air around him.

Dodging to and fro in the growing darkness he hopped into the air with powerful wing beats, he led the gun fire about the cavern. All of the lethal rounds missed him by what his senses deemed a hair’s width, and after more than a few desperate he seconds finally found the cover of another small access corridor like the one he hid in before, down into the side of the road shielded by dense shadows and concrete pillars.

Making a break for it he deftly dove inside it, tucking his body together he crept up the passage fast and after finding himself in complete darkness came to a stop and caught his breath. After a few deep draughts of air he finally managed to quiet himself, and then waited, his ears open and eyes peeled for pursuit.

Shortly, he heard the loud and unmistakable clatter of hooves on asphalt among the gunfire, followed by loud and addled shouts that tore their way through the noise. Their words were rough and half unintelligible in their giddy beyond measure speech, but among the jumbled words came ‘Feather-fuck’ and ‘Gettim!’ with the murderous playfulness typical of chem fiends.

"They’re pursuing of course..." he grumbled to himself mutely as the gibbering off beat hoof falls trailed off deeper into the tunnel’s darkness beyond. Eagle cursed under his breath sourly. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and waited for a few more minutes as he listened to the ever more thinning gunfire as it resonated, and without the return of his hunters he picked himself up slowly as he rose from his hiding spot.

He peered back from where he came. The spotlights made it hard to see past their harsh gaze, but within the barbed wire mesh and the wooden struts he saw bizarre black silhouettes outlined with mottled chromatic hides of deranged, mutated creatures that resembled ponies from the chest up. Their lower bodies however were all kinds of sick and twisted as they had bulbous and tumor spotted bodies with eight stunted limbs outstretched like spider legs. On top of some of their bodies were what looked like mismatched, malformed wings that weren’t even symmetrical, or on their backs like one would think, and crested on others their slack jawed heads bore only what could be described as a resemblance of a unicorn’s horn.

The mad forms weren’t perhaps as unnerving as the fact that some of their forms had both wings and horns, each mutated sinisterly in different horrendous proportions. Among the sheer number of them that were caught in the defenses and laid low on the ground around the entrance there were at least a dozen or more, perhaps twenty of the things, all dead with dismembered limbs or gaping bullet holes where the glaring light allowed him to see them. Eagle grimaced as he came to face his fear of a threat probably worse than going back and going talon to hoof with a well equipped raider gang mad on chems.

A nest of taint fiends.

If there were any of these things left alive in these tunnels, there had to be a nest somewhere for them to throw this many of their own onto the guns of raiders, and a nest means mutants by the score in their own home territory with radiation and taint to make and sustain this many. Now aware of his odds before a few raiders went sprinting past into the depths left a chill in his spine, as they were terribly small in his judgment to begin with.

If they disturbed them inside their nesting grounds then there was absolutely no telling how many of them would be awake or prowling for other intruders. Weighing his options again in severe dilemma he wondered if he’d be better off in a firefight with an armored vehicle bearing a fifty cal than going blind into a possible nest, and after ruminating for several minutes as the gunfire finally began to die into separated single shots he came to his conclusion.

No choice but forward.

He saw what these Jocks could do to an entire gang that once numbered thirty or better in heated combat, and they were chem crazed wielding overbearing firepower. He could probably go against them but that would be guerrilla warfare over a large area, not close-quarters trench combat. He had to risk it; dealing with a nest was little better than definite death, and with a heavy reluctance he prowled out of the access tunnel, dosed himself on a chalky RadSafe pill as he went down into the deep darkness beyond with his ears open and eyes scanning the area meticulously. He scoffed, and hated this job more and more by the hour.

*** *** ***

For what felt like an eternity as he prowled the near darkness of the tunnel, illuminated solely by a few sparse glowing mushroom patches along jutting pipes that ran the length of the tall curved walls, Eagle nearly drove himself mad listening to nothing but the rasping of his boots and gloves and the light rustling of his barding amidst the penetrating shadows. The gunfire had trailed off long ago it seemed, and now silence dominated the passage like a vengeful wraith.

His breathed low and even, despite the musty and thick air that defied him, his eyes struggled to dissect his surroundings and his ears fought to hear anything before the unseen could pounce on him in the dark. There was nothing but rubble, refuse, and the subtle groaning howl of air as he added to its symphony, giving some presence of life to the ebon graveyard.

He couldn’t measure time at all in his prowl, too hesitant to stop and see what his PipBuck had to say on the place, not that it really mattered; every iota of his focus was spent to ensure his cover of silence remained, and hoping that these mutant beasts weren’t more capable than he was in the dark. It was a fool’s hope, he knew; these creatures lived down here and their mutations must have made them capable of surviving a pit like this.

He went over time and time again his plan, to slip past undetected and get to the surface, and hopefully find a path to the coordinates. It was all he could do to keep his limbs moving forward in a creeping pace as every absence of noise set him on edge.

It felt like time crawled before he reached a large chariot pile up that blocked the road beyond. The smaller, single passenger sized ones laid out upon each other in blasted heaps, some upside down or standing on one end with their trunks or hoods towards the ceiling as giant busses formed the bedrock of their destroyed forms. He peered up into one of the busses he found one was a rent open with a panel on its second deck that he could enter. After stopping to measure the sounds around him, finding no out of place or animalistic echo he gave a wing beat and pounced gracefully into the entrance.

His initial steps were met with a piercing groaning of rusted steel, but they faded, shortly echoing as he grimaced at the announcement. He held fast and waited for any response to his presence but found none.

‘Lucky so far’, he mused, and with a turn he looked at the blown out panel he entered and found the hole was not the product of the bombs or degradation, but it had recent evidence of being cut open, like machete strikes. ‘The raiders must have come through this way’ he guessed to himself. Their determination was astounding to him, even if they were tripping on every variety of combat drug available.

Shaking the idea he reminded himself he had to keep moving, and with a careful step of a talon, testing the rotten carpet floor below him for creaks and groans finding little more than a subtle squeak of the steel beneath, he advanced.

As he made his way through the body of the bus past rows of long derelict and rotten seats, whose one time passengers still lay upon them as blackened bones, he circled the central stairwell peering down into the eerie depths beneath the deck. He looked to the other end of the bus and found no hole to match the previous one, so he made careful steps downwards through the flight and avoided the missing or rusted beyond use steps; he grimaced slightly as they groaned or bent under his weight.

He managed to get to the bottom without causing a ruckus, and he found the bottom deck matched the top down to the scattered bones, save for the pegasi driver’s seat harness which still retained much of the slack form inside it in the front of the bus. The shredded folding panel door next to it was hewn open, much like the panel above.

As he made his way forward he avoided the bones and strewn rubble, and his ears caught a subtle, yet very alarming sound that resembled gnawing with a meaty and moist undertone. His limbs instinctually locked in place as his eyes and ears practically panicked to place the direction of the sound, and they found it somewhere in a general direction ahead, maybe to the right as well.

He cursed in his thoughts, inched his way forward up to the bus door and peered about the expanse beyond. It was shrouded in a blackness thinly veiled with the faint green luminescence of those mushroom patches, but the glow was enough for his griffon eyes to see in plain detail the horror of the taint fiends within.

There weren’t many, only three that he could see, but it was three too many for his liking as their slack jawed mouths with long, slime coated tentacles and their warped bodies’ limbs fed on two familiar and fidgeting pony corpses. They tore the meat from bone in sloppy bites as the greasy feelers penetrated the blood matted coats and ripped whole chunks away with thin threads of slime forming between them and their fare.

They were Jocks by their garb, and the plastic sport’s armor seemed to impair the mutants’ attempts to eat them, but only barely evidenced by the sheer amount of missing flesh from the bloody bones that protruded from beneath the plates. On one, Eagle could see his dead but expression locked face that still bore the chem crazed features; foam clinging to his lips as his body convulsed with primal shudders with each bite into his flesh. His face bore a wicked smile, but his eyes betrayed the deep horror sealed within as the last light of life within him knew he wasn’t just dying; he was being eaten alive. Leisurely.

Eagle’s own face twisted into wide eyed disbelief of just the type of terrors The Hoof held, fighting the urge to cough in surprise he looked around to see if there would be any way to sneak past them. He saw a small passage on the ground between chariots that he could fit inside, but every instinctual urge in him demanded a different route, fearing that these mutants used such passages like tunnels in their nesting grounds.

Shaking his head of the thought and trying to form a plan, he wondered if he could get on top of the bus and if there would be more chariots to cross, avoiding the ground level wherever he could. Mentally shrugging, ‘only one way to find out’ he thought, and he slowly began to back into the bus before turning around with a silent prowl.

Only his pace was met with a jump of his heart followed by a thundering pulse that demanded all his self control not to fire his rifle by reflex. His eyes locked with opalescent glazed orbs, bereft of expression set in the mottled, faintly green tumor dotted face of an eight limbed mutant. They were empty, almost staring beyond and into him simultaneously beneath its off center horn. The grotesque body itself seemed to writhe beneath its cancerous, greasy, bleakly glossy flesh as if it struggled within its own form.

Eagle stood there, tense and prepared to pounce around it and make a break for it, except the thing just sat there with its tentacle feelers probing the air around it with its own body rigid, unmoving with a low and hollow guttering breath that reeked of sickeningly sweet rotten flesh. Eagle had to suppress every urge inside him to butcher the thing where it sat, but at the same time he was immensely confused as to why this thing just... sat there.

He moved his head slightly and peered at it almost sideways and it didn’t move a muscle in response. He raised a talon slowly and methodically and waved it back and forth, eliciting the same lack of motion from the creature. Only its greasy feelers moved at all between its rotten breaths that swelled the wretched monster.

Arching a brow with surprise, he looked down to the floor of the bus and found a small pebble and, with a silent motion, picked it up, looked back to the mutant before him. He arched his talon up and with a small toss it clattered behind it, and caught the beast’s attention. Its mouth tentacles began to sporadically shake and writhe like a thing possessed, and it spun itself around sluggishly with its uncoordinated limbs, and a hellish noise followed like a mixture of agonized moans and guttural primal anger.

It skittered and crawled to the pebbles landing spot at the far end of the bus, and taking advantage of the clear path Eagle made a hasty silent stride back up the stairs to the upper deck with nary a creak or groan from the steps.

‘So they’re blind but can hear noises,’ He thought. ‘might be able to smell too the way its... things were moving.’ The idea of these things having no sight was comforting, but the ease was replaced by fear at the thought that they could sniff him out. The wind was non existent in this tunnel save for a subtle breeze, but the only things his experience could protect himself against was sight and sound; smell lent a new layer of difficulty to this. He had no idea what would trip them off in that department. He assumed anything out of the ordinary or alien to the other mutants, but regardless he had no defense against it as far as he was concerned.

Sparing no more time to think in this pit, he looked about the upper deck as the sounds of fleshly crawling beneath him resonated in the chamber and found a small but open emergency hatch in the roof of the bus. Giving a little cat like leap he managed to grab the lip of the square hole and lift himself through the opening with little noise, but the small groans of rusted metal were replied to with the mutants same harrowing noise. On the roof now he took a moment to survey the area and found a precarious path of roofs and piled up chariots close to the tunnel’s ceiling that he could walk down with little trouble; as long as the metal could hold his weight.

He stepped forward, carefully shifting his mass with a cat like grace he prowled across the roof of the bus eliciting little noise from the metal as the mutants below him fed on the Jocks with stomach churning sounds of slurping and tearing.

After a ways of subtle creaks and moans of rusted steel he reached a small gap in the path before him. The next roof top he had to leap a short distance to reach it. He scowled sourly and girded himself for the worst, and leapt the distance with his wings outstretched to help glide down silently to no avail. He landed on the loud and sonorous creaking metal below him all manner of nasty and guttural animalistic shouts of the mutants resounded throughout the chamber, and with a sharp but stifled howl of pain Eagle felt the sting of some kind of warm acidic slime rocket into his right lower hind leg burning the coat and flesh beneath his barding.

He moved with urgency to the middle of the buss’ roof, and in decent cover he hunched down and held out his agonized and injured limb. His face twisted with pain, and despite the darkness he saw a subtle shimmering on it above the top of his paw’s boot. In a sudden panic he fished around in his pack for a canteen of water and poured some of its contents over the wound, trying to wash it off, but it only worked on his clothes. The burning sensation in the wound flared to an unbelievable height, bringing an adrenaline fueled gnashing of his beak, and he cursed as the pain felt unbearable.

He immediately brought a luminescent healing potion to his wound, pouring some of its contents over the sizzling flesh that helped immensely more. As the sensation dulled to a low throb in his muscles as the potion did its work knitting the flesh back to health and neutralizing any remainders of the acid.

“Note to self...” Eagle whispered in gravelly rasps between deep breaths as the pain dissipated. “Water doesn’t work on their acid... fucking hell they can spit acid...!”

As he turned around he saw several globs of the muck, highlighted by the subtle green glow from the mushrooms below, fly up through the air and arch down into sizzling piles with wet viscous thumps on the steel roofs of chariots. Shaking the lingering pain he tested his leg and once again in his life thanked the miraculous power of healing potions, finding it nearly as if it never had been hit in the first place.

Sketching out a rough path in his mind over the busses and chariot heaps he began again his swift cat like pace down them as the shrill mutants shrieked below. Now began the game of cat and mouse as Eagle crossed the rooftops and did his best to keep the noise of his passing to a minimum. It didn’t always work of course as every other landing either shifted or creaked no matter how delicately he stepped on it, and with each sounding of his presence it was followed by a monstrous shriek and a small barrage of acidic volleys he narrowly dodged as he watched them fly and fall in the dim green glow.

It wasn’t for several minutes of a harrowing gauntlet until Eagle had hit the end of the improvised walkways above the hellish creatures, and beyond him the ground was open save for a precious few scattered chariots laid out that could provide some cover. With that he cursed, trying to stomach the thought of crawling around with those things in the refuse as they numbered much more than he ever wanted to see. It felt like there were dozens of them down there lumbering in the shadows from the movements he could pick out.

The only girding thought he had was the fact that he could probably slip by with more success on stable asphalt instead of a line of wrecked rusty chariots, but the last thing he wanted to risk was close combat with them with the way he saw them rip flesh open on those Jocks, not to mention their obvious acidic capabilities. With a scowl he hopped off the scraped pile of vehicles, and he glided down softly onto the road; knife drawn he began his prowl inching forward into the bleak.

As Eagle strode forth with a pantherish silence, his pace was uneven and constantly halting as the grotesque mutants continued to block his path with their meandering shamble about the tunnel’s road. His view of them was faint at best with faintly green shimmering outlines, but the unnerving noises of moist guttural movements of leathery tattered flesh sliding against the asphalt forced him to reposition more times than he could count.

His sole deliverance was their lack of attention as time after time a small and subtle noise that would have at least caught the ears of patrolling sentries did nothing to phase these creatures. It helped even more when Eagle had tossed rocks or chunks of scrap metal out into the bleak beyond and with a primal wrath they descended to where the bait had fallen. Eagle mused to himself silently that it was almost like child’s play, albeit with some severe strings attached.

After a time of repetitious baiting and prowling, Eagle’s eyes began to pick out a subtle chromatic glowing ahead that seemed to radiate from a crater ahead. It wreathed the area in its multicolored malevolence, and with a silent cursing he knew his fears were confirmed. He was nearing the heart of the beasts’ lair, their true nest bathed in the invisible aura of magical radiation and taint. He crested the crater, a few chariots angled over the edge, and looked down into the massive hole, one that devoured the ground and sections of the tunnel’s walls and ceiling, and he saw them with his own eyes.

Barrels upon barrels of that poisonous and hellish liquid in its ironic rainbow shining splendor, piled up within a stagnant pool on the ground around them, the colors melded and swathed about in chaotic abstract forms, with at least two dozen of those visceral mutants wallowing in it like deranged pigs. The sight of them as they writhed, bending and flexing their malformed flesh cast in harsh contrasts of blended rainbow sheens twisted his guts, and an expression of disgust and instinctual fear grew on his face. His beak and eyes contorted as foul smells of burnt flesh accompanied the sight, and filled his nostrils.

This was nothing, however, compared to their groaning. Moist sounds mingled with the empty moans that exhibited pain from their absent minds as the taint’s aura touched and played at their insides. It healed and harmed them in concert and yet, with animalistic instinct, they clung to the barrels and goop like babes to their mother’s breasts. The sheer alien and monstrous spectacle locked Eagle’s eyes on the scene, and after collecting his thoughts his calculating mind returned, and discovered an even more terrifying prospect.

He would have to fly the gap across to get past them. A majority of the crater’s floor was covered in that taint, and what wasn’t was festering with those mutant creatures, or filled by sharp piles of concrete and metal scrap that served no use as a platform to cross.

Flying itself wasn’t the issue, rather the amount of noise flying actually made. These beasts were easy enough to distract with a tossed rock and slipping past but he had no measure up to now of how they would react to true wing beats in such an enclosed space, ones that would echo off the walls. He raced in his mind to come up with some plan to get past them, one after another dug a hole deeper into his fear that left him grasping for anything that would work; until one came that might. He dropped down and tore through his packs for a few moments before he withdrew a mine and a small round grenade.

With a wicked grin he pressed the small button on top of the disc, making the small light bulb beside it glow with a dull amber color.

“This should work well enough...” he spoke softly in a wicked gravelly tone, and he stood up on all fours and stretched his wings out while sighting ahead. There was an impromptu platform beyond that he could land on well enough, but further than that was lost in the darkness that provided no plan.

He shrugged off the indecision and girded himself to fly ahead, declaring a soft ‘fuck it’ as he hoisted the mine in his talon. He reviewed what he would do and stretched his limbs out; when to throw the mine, how long to wait after the explosion, dropping the grenade in on top of them as he flew over to keep them occupied, the running frenzy sure to follow if there were more beyond this crater, and a number of other things that followed as well.

Finally ready he handled the explosives in either talon, and with a subtle grace he threw the mine into the crater and mutants ahead like a discus, and he ducked for cover beneath a chariot beside him with a solid roof.

Soon after a short sequence of piercing beeps a deafening roar of fire filled the chamber that left a ringing in his ears, despite his clasping of them, and it was followed by a small shower of variously sized viscous droplets of glowing taint that scattered, followed by smoking debris and bloody chunks of tattered flesh that splattered on the road. A harrowingly pained screech of what felt like hundreds of mutants shouting in unison followed, and Eagle’s mind had to bolster against it.

The moment the falling remains stopped peppering the area Eagle leapt out of his cover, making an effort not to step in the scattered globs of taint, and made a running charge with a wing beat and soared over the crater at immense speed. He spared a glance at the destruction below him.

The scene was brutal, but oddly it comforted him as he pulled the pin from the grenade and dropped it into the mess of shredded mutants as more than half of them were missing body parts and writhed about in blind confusion. Some merely laid on the ground and looked more like dead meat clinging to bones while their ichor-like black blood mixed with the taint pool beneath them as it slowly oozed back into the gap the explosion made.

He pulled his eyes back ahead of him as he landed deftly on the other side of the crater, and he took a quick accounting of the terrain beyond as he counted down in his head the timer on the grenade. Four seconds left is what he had to clear the blast zone, and the road ahead gave no clear path he could pick out in as his mind pressed for haste. He beat his wings again, the whooshing noise filled the air joining with the ringing in his ears as he cleared the pile of vehicular carnage in front of him and flew above their scattered remains.

Three seconds.

As he hasted down the tunnel he felt the wind cut through his feathers and saw faintly several acidic blobs fly past him from below, and they forced him to dodge and weave through the air as he danced around the mutant’s attacks.

Two seconds.

He spied out ahead a small red light illuminating what looked like a rusted doorway with a pile of chariots around it. He dove for it with a mighty beat of his wings and flew at incredible speeds he closed the gap.

One second.

He reached the door and hastily grabbed the lever knob and tried it several times as he rammed his body into the door. He found it locked and quickly cursed as his revolver practically leapt into his talon. He aimed the barrel close to the space between the keyhole and the door frame and squeezed the trigger twice. The gunshots resounded with immense retorts in the enclosed space, but were quickly drowned in the scream of the massive explosion that signaled the grenade’s detonation, all followed by a repeated harrowing shriek of the mutants filling the chamber a second time.

In a mad panic Eagle rammed the door with his shoulder as he put all his body weight into the blow, and the door flew upon and dumped him onto the ground beyond it. A dimly lit room with scattered debris and furnishings, but without examining it he quickly he got up onto all fours and twirled about to see two or more of those mutants closing the distance between them, and with an instinctual bite of his battle saddle’s trigger he sent three roaring shots that cut the darkness away with bright orange and white muzzle blasts into the closest of the monsters; its chest heaved and threatened to spew acid at him.

The bullets buried themselves into its upper chest, with one blowing out a yawning hole into its head and the beast fell limply to the ground and shriveled brain matter and blood splattered around it. As its companions slid closer Eagle rushed forward, slammed the door shut and shoved his body against it. He looked around in frenzy and saw a large rusted filing cabinet close to him and he leapt to it, heaved its weight from the ground with considerable strain in his frame as he found it feeling full to bursting with mass inside. He practically threw it in front of the door as a brace and shoved it hard against the door with his side, and he felt the surges of strikes soon after as the beasts hammered the passage to open; the door rattled under their assault.

The beating sent vibrations throughout his body as the hinges on the door strained and cracked the concrete they were fixed into. Shortly after, however, the assault thankfully ended and with a deep inhalation between adrenaline powered gasps he sighed, dropped to the ground and sat there to relax and recollect his mind. His eyes automatically surveyed the room he was in as his ears worked to drown out the muffled screams of the mutants behind the door. There was a small ruined desk next to the place the filing cabinet was, and opposite of it a large tool cabinet of sorts busted open that betrayed its empty insides. A few posters lined the walls that were no longer legible but displayed the chromatic faces of prewar Ministry ponies, and the low light of a dull lamp in the ceiling that did little for visibility in the dilapidated surroundings.

Finding no immediate threat Eagle let his head down and laid there on the ground in front of the door catching his breath, and rested for a spell before he spoke in adrenaline taxed, low, and gravelly toned words dripping with revulsion as the shrill noise died away to a low roar.

“I fucking hate taint fiends...” he rose to his legs with a lethargic pace and took out one of his canteens from his pack and took a long drink from its metallic hinted water between labored breaths.

“Fucking hate them...”

*** *** ***

Shortly after winding his way through a few more tunnels, a generator room that clung to life just barely, and ascending from that underground hellscape he found himself staring to the outside world once again. Relief washed over him, his taxed body wishing he could simply crash then and there after the conflicts below, but he couldn’t. He wanted to put as much distance between him and the tunnels behind him as possible before putting himself in a dangerous position, so he tread forth and examined his surroundings.

He stood with the blown apart and crisply burnt terrain of some garage, one that was filled with scattered and blasted rusty chariots and a few blackened skeletons. Another graveyard it seemed, and he pressed on to the wide open entrance ahead.

He breathed in the fresh open air that poured from it with immense relief as he stared up into the dim dawn hued cloud smothered sky above. The parking garage was set a decent ways up the mountain side, and the crisscrossing road leading up to it stretched into the valley below into a great expanse beyond; the view half filtered by a lingering fog that hung in the air like a mist.

Despite it though, Eagle’s euphoria of being out of the tunnels was drowned by the ominous sight of some city from afar. The fog itself removed any clarity to its visage, but the early morning low light was dark enough for this... terrible emerald green glow that Eagle had never seen before.

Its skyscrapers towered over the walls that surrounded it, cutting vicious silhouettes in its green glow that mocked the surrounding ruins in their derelict bombed states. The only sound present was that of eerie wind that whistled in the cool morning mountain breeze, and the bracing air acted as a subtle relief for Eagle’s mind as he took in the sight of the looming necropolis.

He stood on the precipice of discovery, it seemed. He recounted the tales, of an emerald graveyard that stood, nearly untouched, in the center of the valley; glowing with an ominous threat or promise of destruction akin to prophecy. Eagle was never a griffon for superstition, but the visage of the skyscrapers piercing the vale of clouds above, tall enough to dwarf any other Equestrian city still standing, set his neck feathers on end and for a time stood enraptured in vile premonitions.

He sighed and closed his eyes, broke the stare and just took in the wind as it cut through his feathers. It eased the tensions of the fight before, and he breathed evenly and metered and stood there for a short time before finally opening his eyes and sighted down the road below as it stretched down into the valley. He stretched out his wings and, with a shortleap, he descended down with a swift glide letting the mountain air carry him the distance. Heglanced this way and that as he searched for a place where he could make camp and rest before heading out again to meet the rendezvous team.

He needed the sleep, and he wasn’t due to meet them in roughly a day and a half or so anyways with the pace he managed to keep getting to the Hoofington border. Finding one such place ahead of him, a small building further down the road, he changed direction and glided to it settling down in front of it deftly and trudged the rest of the distance with his pistol drawn.

He reached the dilapidated building he saw it was your standard fare for ruins in the post war world, half crumbling concrete remains with rubble scattered about and rebar jutting from chunks here and there, and the inside of the place bore the same qualities only with a few desks, tables, chairs, and other furnishings that littered the floor in various states of decay amongst miscellaneous debris.

Most importantly however, utterly abandoned and desolate of life; except for him.

Deeper within Eagle had found was he was looking for, an enclosed room that would serve as a bedroom for the time he would use it, and after tearing the legs off of a table he set the broad piece of partially rotten wood onto the ground as his bed and draped his olive drab army blanket, that was patched and stitched back together in spots, over the board. He made a small campfire in the room’s center from the legs of the table and several other wooden scraps along with burnt beyond legible books he found around the building.

Taking off his harness, coat, and hat with a sluggish aching pace he stretched and relaxed into his impromptu campsite, and after setting a tripwire mine trap outside his door he sunk to his haunches on his 'bed', and stared long into the flame before him.

He took in the warmth of the fire as he laid there holding his now quarter empty moonshine bottle in a talon. He eyed it with reluctant desire as he twirled the liquid around within it, the night having taken its toll on him. Taking a few short pulls from the drink his face screwed up with disgust, and after a short while most of his aches and pains slowly dissipated to a dull and distant discomfort as the alcohol did its work.

His paws and talons felt the tingly and loose sensation as it crept further up his body, and after stoking the fire a bit, corking his drink and doing a routine weapons check and eating a little he sighed deeply, got as comfortable as his sleeping arrangement allowed and curled up as he stared into the flame before him.

Shortly thereafter did he plunge into a deep sleep, warmed by the fire and eased by drink he once again camped in the wasteland’s wilds after such a day that begged a different line of work as he had done so many times before in his life. Alone, in utter silence save for the crackling of flame as a companion, its warmth a poor substitute for the comfort he wanted. It was some comfort nevertheless. In such a depraved world of monsters and terrors any creature, no matter their form, takes comfort where they can find it when they allowed themselves the pleasure.

One might go mad otherwise, or break so thoroughly that they live for nothing but to spite death; fighting tooth and hoof, clinging to life for no better reason to stay alive despite lacking a reason to remain living. In the wasteland there is precious little anodyne for the pain, the suffering. Pure, unadulterated obstinance really as some would say, or rather the last dying gasps of a great creature battling for just a minute more in the face of death, defiant and too prideful to lie down and pass away. Creatures in such pain will cling to hope, and the warm promises of such small comforts.

If only to help them forget their pains, before facing them once again when they wake.

Footnote: Red Eagle maximum level

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