Fallout Equestria: Sola Gratia
Chapter 1•1: Ghosts of the Garden City
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.”

This place is not alive.
It isn’t the sanctuary, the proof, of life that I was expecting… that I needed.
It’s dead, another nail in Equestria’s coffin, or another sign of her corpse scratching against the wood.

The traces of green that I had detected from afar were just that, traces, barely visible.
The pines were numerous but barren, standing like gray skeletons with only vestiges of green foliage.
No… they stood like ghouls, partly rotted, partly lost, but still surviving somehow, clinging on to half-life.
Their bark was peeling, but only to reveal more gray beneath, gray skin, making up a gray world.

The mountainous rock formations stood tall on either side of us, as the ranges curved in such a way that, looking back, I couldn’t see the places I had come from, the open plain of MASEBS and the Earth Mover. Zion was nothing if not consuming, entrenching, it made you feel as if there was no way in, or out.
Clambering over rocks and crags we had come, descending into this snowy valley, into the ominous shadow of black and blue mountains that reached for the roof of the world.

Cliff faces, rocks and plateaus ranged in earthy tones of pale to bluer grays. Their flat, solid forms contrasted with the shifting sky and dying vegetation. I couldn’t even see my horizon, my anchor; there was nothing above us but blackening clouds and unalterable mountains, their sharp, snowy peaks well defined against the dark sky.

It was colder here, in this trapped land of sunless stone and dusted snow. The white precipitation fell with noticeable determination, thicker and slower than it had outside of the valley this morning. The earth had been - and would always be - heavily powdered by it, almost carpeted, which made our walk vary from a sudden soft cold to the usual dusty solidity. Apart from the rarer times in which branches or entire felled trees snapped up at us, splintering under our hoof-falls.

“Are you watching your E.F.S?” Caliber asked quietly. Apart from her blue vest and ragged scarf, she looked pitifully exposed, though still refused the charity of my coat. Ash traipsed along beside her, but the bandages, ironically, made her look more comfortable than the red-headed mare. “It isn’t safe here.”

I hadn’t been watching my Pip-buck’s radar at all, actually, as my perception and interpretation had remained fixed on the land around us. It was different that the wasteland that I was used to, though the differences were disturbingly slight. Still, I couldn’t help but to focus all my attention on it, trying to distinguish the two. I glanced down at the device on her request. All clear, it said. I relayed its message to Caliber, and then stopped walking as I continued to regard the ivory display.

The map in ‘Data’ was what interested me. Just east of the Equestrian Border Security building, now ruin, was Mt. Zion, it had been marked ‘discovered’ as we were walking along its dark base. Another, unvisited location was being heralded by the map, along the northern wall of the valley.

“What’s Celestia’s Landing?” I asked, not expecting an answer. But as I spoke, looking up from the screen, I saw Ash perk up at the reference, almost jumping in surprise and excitement.

“That is the temple I was talking about visiting!” she had mentioned an ancient religious site on our entrance into the valley, and now seemed delighted that I somehow knew its name. My Pip-buck must have automatically filled it in at her reference.

If the machine’s radar capabilities had perplexed her, then she’d see its ability to automatically map and label expanses of wasteland on their passing mention as something that was nearly infeasible.
“How nearby is it? Can we go?!” I had never seen her in such a state of unguarded anticipation.

“Jeez Ash, what’s the deal?” Caliber asked arching an eyebrow at the wide-eyed, quivering - though usually reserved - lavender maned mare. Her own eyes were shining with but a fraction of the shimmering excitement that glistened in Ash’s.

“Celestia’s landing…” she paused for dramatic effect. “Is possibly the most important monument in all of the North, it dates back to, not only before the war, but before Nightmare Moon’s banishment. The chance to see it is coveted on high, but so far we’ve never even heard an accurate description.”

“Why the interest?” Caliber inquired, surprisingly curious about the Faith’s motivations.

“Well it isn’t only significant to the religious, it’s the place where Celestia touched down after beginning the first day, after pulling the sun across what was once known and now remembered as Equestria. It’s historical as well as canonical, depending on whether you see the first day as the dawning of the world or just the point when Celestia inherited the responsibility of the sun.” she explained, happy to indulge.

“But earlier you said that it was a temple.” I pointed out.

“Well it’s a monument, really, but worshippers went on pilgrimages there before the war. Of course no one seems to bother with it nowadays, apart from in the passing thoughts of those driven by belief. Considering that not one of our kind has ever returned from a journey here, you should see why.”

“I can’t imagine that going to Canterlot would have been considered much safer.” The corpses of her friends were a testament to that, I thought, then immediately regretted thinking.

“The place where Celestia rose has always been more important than the site of her landing. And it is said that she took flight from Canterlot, though the meaning of her ‘ascendance’ has now changed from the literal to the spiritual.” She timidly hopped over a black log submerged in the snow. “Anyway, I would very much like to see the monument while we are here.”

“Sure,” I had to admit, I was actually interested. Celestia had apparently brought up the sun in a magnificent flight of light and power that began at the nation’s capital; it was actually verified in a history class our Stable’s teacher had given us. To see where that flight had ended seemed like a worthy detour. “Apart from that we don’t really have much of a plan, so I think we could even head there straight away.”

“Is it high up?” Caliber pried. “What we really need is a vantage point, someplace to scope out the area. I have no idea how the zebras will react if they see us first, and I’d prefer not to find out.” Ash nodded.

“How can we be afraid of them even as we go to ask them for their allegiance?” The relationship that allies shared shouldn’t be based on fear, surely that couldn’t be how it worked.

“If we ask, they’ll say no. We’ll probably have to do something to put them in our debt first.” She followed me as I shifted our course towards the Northern temple of Celestia’s landing. “We’re making a contract this time, not friends. They won’t help us unless we help them, and they have no reason to think anybody would come here to deal, rather than to fight. So we need to meet them on our terms.”

“I don’t think we need to be afraid of a bunch of tribals.” Ash murmured.

Caliber laughed, not out of relief or agreement, but in amusement at how wrong Ash’s information was. “Is that what you folks in the Plains think? That they’re a ragged band of savages with nothing but sticks and stones to fight with?”

“Pretty much,” she confirmed defensively. “The Zion Tribals, it’s what all the stories call them.”

“The Zebras aren’t the tribals!” Caliber waved her hoof conclusively. Ash seemed confused, but got no explanation. I didn’t know what difference it made, as up until know I had heard nothing of Zion.
Anyway, every place I found myself in just seemed more dangerous than the last, the pattern was easy enough to follow. “Even if Grace sees any bars on her E.F.S, we won’t know what to expect except a fight. There’s more to this valley than you think, and it’ll all be hostile until we convince it otherwise.”

The old pines seemed a little more intimidating as they surrounded us. The cold was making me shiver profusely, though my frayed nerves made me tremble at the same time, so I couldn’t tell the difference between the two reflexes. We were well armed, better than we had found ourselves before anyway.

Caliber had her favorite gun attached snugly to her side by way of the repaired battle-saddle, ready to fire by prompt from the bit near her muzzle. Ash stuck with her similarly attached combat shotgun, as she wouldn’t accept the 45 from me. And so I was left armed with it and my familiar laser pistol.

My fear rose for the unknown, the mystery shrouding this bleak, yet looming valley. It didn’t help that, whenever we didn’t speak, it was absolutely silent, making it feel as if we were the only living things left, continuously making ourselves known to imagined ghosts with every snapping branch or brief exchange.

Though the mountains were far enough away that I couldn’t quite see their bases, the way they obstructed my peripheral vision, reaching like jagged cracks in the sky, made me feel trapped. Like there was nowhere to run, and enough places to hide so that we could afford ourselves a superficial sense of security, preserved by the dead silence. It was a feeling that proved to be ultimately untrustworthy.

I wanted a bird to cry out, or for a distant rock fall to send an echoing rumble through the mountains, I wanted something apart from us to break the damning silence. Even distant gunfire would have aided in pulling me out of the white, quiet void of uncertain safety. A warning of coming danger, a promise of impending combat, anything would have made me feel at ease compared to this audible nothingness.

“Who are the tribals?” I asked, submitting to the need for our unreassuringly usual noise.

“Well, I don’t know much about them,” apologized Caliber. “Excepting for the fact that they are most definitely not associated with the Zebras here. According to Damascus: they’re incredibly stupid, but there’re enough of them to pose a legitimate threat, especially considering that their idiotic bigotry makes them hostile to anything they aren’t familiar with, anything foreign.”

“How can we be so sure that they aren’t with the Zebras? Maybe things have changed…”

“Well both groups are racially identified, for one; add onto that the fact that they’re both explicitly racist, the tribals to the point of violence, and you aren’t going to see much opportunity for an alliance.”

“And we’re sure that the tribals are all ponies? Ash didn’t seem to know about that distinction.” I pointed out; I didn’t want to believe that racist schisms still existed, especially not after seeing that blatantly derogatory propaganda poster back in the border security station.

Caliber sighed “Promise me you won’t freak out.”

“You know me…” I waved her off, unsuccessfully, as she seemed to want an actual promise.
“Alright, I’ll brace myself.”

After peering at me skeptically for a moment she prompted me to stop walking. “We know that the tribals are all ponies… because they came from a Stable.” My eyes went wide, as my mind cried out at another failure against the Stables’ purpose. Instead of a beacon of renewed civilization and peace, Equestria had only been given another band of racist savages by the technological preserver.

I quickly reigned in my crippling disappointment at the tangible evidence to the folly of Shady Sand’s ambition. I knew there were other Stables; I knew that all those that opened had failed, would fail.
I knew that I didn’t need to go through this again. Keep it down.

“Alright.” I solidified myself against the ground. “Is it here?”

“Somewhere, yes.” Caliber nodded grimly. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing, I’d just like to… I’d just like to see it.” I compromised; I really wanted to fix it, to redeem it for its parting from inherited responsibility, but despite my ideals I knew that I would most likely be disappointed when attempting to do so. Still, investigating was not only appealing: it was critical to my understanding.

“You’re fine?” she seemed relieved, but I didn’t blame her.

“Don’t worry, I’m just curious.” I reassured checking my map to see if the Stable had magically appeared. It hadn’t, though the temple was apparently located just a little further North at the base of the tallest coalition of mountains, or possibly within them. “But for now, we have a monument to find.”
Ash seemed pleased at our similarly driven agendas.

“Stable for Grace, Temple for me… I hope that you can find something to go out of the way for, Caliber.” She said sweetly as we picked up our pace again. “It’d be nice if we all got something from Zion.”

“We will,” Caliber dismissed. “And don’t beat yourselves up over the detours, I have a feeling we would have ended up at both places anyway.” For navigating and fighting most likely, compass and crosshairs, I noted, suddenly feeling incredibly fortunate to have Caliber with me, an antidote against Zion’s solitude.
The looming, jagged rock face was impossibly large as we had very nearly reached its base.

I hadn’t seen the horizon in an unsettlingly long time, and worried that I had become hopelessly dependent on the thought of seeing the sun towards the end of each day. I doubted that we would escape Zion by nightfall; in fact, I had no idea at all as to what lay ahead of us. Whether we would succeed with the Zebras or tangle with the tribals was all variable. Our plan was free-formed at best, loose and arbitrary, driven by ambition more than strategy.

Fading white marble cut through the black rock, aesthetically working with the cascade of mountains alongside it to make the structure appear as if it were emerging from the earth after a burial. The faded pale made a doorway in the mountain, framing a dark passageway that would undoubtedly lead us to the high temple marked just ahead of this spot on my Pip-buck. Gold embellished the angular structures like jewelry, forming bands on rectangular pillars and crowns bordering the top of walls visible from within the rock. The entrance looked as if it were a part of the land, ancient and immersed.

I lit up my horn in anticipation of the darkness within, and we stepped up to the threshold. An aura of torchlight gold surrounded us, spreading the color of my eyes to reflect in my companion’s while never causing them to squint or shy away from its brightness. I was proud of this spell, as it was one of the three I could perform with any confidence, though I had yet to get a willing subject for my mediocre medical abilities. It would still be nice to get some practice, not that I was hoping anypony would get hurt.

“You’re both alright with going through with this?” Ash asked cautiously. “I have no idea where this leads, or how long it will take to get there.”

“The longer it takes, the higher a vantage point we’re working towards.” Caliber reminded her.

“Yeah, it’s not like Celestia could have landed inside the mountain.” I agreed, thinking that I saw Ash bristle at the use of the Princess’ name, though she didn’t say anything in protest.
“We’ll probably find an overlook on the other side of these halls.”

She smiled and trotted her way into the expansive stone hallway. It stretched wide and tall, walls adorned with statues and runes, ceilings left untouched by my soft magical light, making it look like a black sky was stretching onwards above us. I couldn’t discern the graying formations on the walls very well; some seemed to be scenes of the past recreated by chisel and hammer, while others were simply aesthetic or structural in purpose.

The faces on the ponies who once were dancing and celebrating now stood quivering in statuesque immobility, looking almost penitent in the dim light, every expression lit up unnaturally and shaded over as if above a fire rather than under a sun. They were medieval in setting, ragged clothing on earth ponies contrasted with noble, though thoroughly outdated, gowns and jewels on the unicorns.

The Pegasus set higher on the wall, swooping as they extruded from the stone they were based within, were barely visible at this dark distance and dim illumination. The ones that I could make out were dressed as if they had been called to arms, marshaled into steel plating and rank-based adornments.

They hadn’t known what their society would be reduced to, unicorns and earth ponies stripped of their nobility and fortitude while the once loyal Pegasus warriors turned to fleeting cowards at apocalypse.

Ash stopped every once and again to fully examine a mural or effigy, calling me over to defer the darkness that shrouded the passageway’s depths. The large rectangle of gray light from the entrance had long since disappeared, and so everything outside of my golden aura was pitch black.

A silently weeping mother cradled her colt tenderly; expression set in a cry of despair. The child was wrapped tightly in blankets, though it was still visibly frail and unhealthy. The maternal figure was wearing cascading, layered rags and appeared almost equally decrepit.

Nearby, a buck reared and whinnied, standing upright briefly, yet eternally, over the statue’s stone base. His visage was stretched into a strong, violent, expression of angry vigor. Face and neck remained exposed but the rest of his body was enclosed within a segmented suit of armor, ancient or new, there was no accurate indicator of what time he came from, though it was certainly a time of conflict.

“This doesn’t seem right.” I whispered, my voice magnifying at the break of our enkindled silence. These figures were depressing; they didn’t fit in a place that was supposedly intended to celebrate, to honor. The marble ponies were warring or mourning, enraged or depressed, there was no happiness here. Legionnaires and Widows, oppressive Royalty and abused Peasants, this was all wrong.
“This looks like a memorial… not for a beginning but for a loss, a war.”

I didn’t get a response from either of the mares; both were engrossed in the still forms appearing suddenly out of the consuming emptiness, summoned on our passing. The ground was a dusty marble tile but didn’t imply a ruin to me, an ancient memory but a reconstructed one. “Keep your guns ready.”
I ordered. We didn’t know enough about this place to assume that we were safe.

Particles of shifted dust passed through the light, expressing themselves adamantly as the decayed, refused erosion that they were. These were the only other source of movement, the only other source of anything. The Statues had tapered off, and now we walked alone.

Caliber made eyes towards my Pip-buck. I nodded in response. My E.F.S was the only thing keeping me sane, and so she didn’t have to remind me to keep attentive to it. Ash was peering around just as eagerly as she had before, despite the fact that there was nothing more than emptiness within and beyond the fringes of my arcane light. Fortunately, something was driving all of us; otherwise we would have been panicking, wondering how we would find our way out, wondering how we would find anything in the expanse of black. It could have been curiosity, or comforting denial.

I thought I could make out pillars to my right as the floor began to slope upwards, surprising sudden and steep. If the ceiling existed, it was no doubt being lifted along with us by the now distinguishable pillars; otherwise they stretched up endlessly into the expansive hollow mountain.

I caught myself panting a little bit after a considerable amount of time struggling against the slow, angled escalation. Ash’s breathing had changed too, becoming an excited series of held back whispers as she contained her fear or anticipation. We both attempted, but failed, in vain to hide the alteration, her out of religious revere and me out of Stable shame.

The dim gray light of day shone slightly from ahead, appearing high out of the walls by way of six ornately stained, circular windows. As we reached the peak of the slope, another similar - but exponentially larger - window became visible at the end of the room we had entered. Each aperture was laced with a tone of color, the largest illuminated in white gold by forlorn gray rays passing through both cloud and rock to reach it. The design clearly mimicked the sun in its grandiose, celestial stature, as well as through its decorative facets of triangular rays over curved flames emanating from a central, circular plane.

I dimmed my illumination as we stepped onto the level floor of the bleakly sunlit room. The distant walls were interrupted by pillars in between the impermeable windows, all orbiting over the central apex. A throne of a chair rested at the end of the cross, as that was what the room was shaped as. It was tall and persisted in an aged gold, though it was partially silhouetted by the huge sun window making up most of the wall behind it. The aisle to it was lined with pews that spread to the walls on either side, their quality enlightened by the slightly colored windows above.

Purple, White and Orange highlighted one wall, shining a consistent gray despite their dyed glass.
Yellow, Blue and Pink lined up on the other, again creating the illusion that light of the respective color would be created through it, yet yielding only the usual pale unto the room. The ceiling was ordained by another gargantuan circular window, it was a deep black, made up of obsidian, unlit glass. Not serving as a portal of illumination at all, but as a reference, I realized, a sly inclusion.

As expected, Celestia’s window shone the brightest, but the Yellow window on the right wall was a notable second. The others had a defined fade when compared to the brightest two, Luna’s window placing last to the point of being impossibly dark, almost seeming to absorb the dusty light from the room.

“I wasn’t expecting a church…” Ash seemed awestruck; her eyes locked on the giant window as we walked down the aisle. Even Caliber wasn’t even slightly indifferent; seeming thoroughly and genuinely taken in by the beautiful portal ahead of us. This room was stylized similarly to how the lower atrium had been prepared for the Confessor’s sermons. Rich red carpets and cushioning lined with gold spread over the pews and narrowly extended down the aisle. “Goddesses, this is incredible.” She said, scuffing and twirling against the dusty red carpet as her attention diverted from window to window. The steely and earthy hues set off perfectly with the red tapestries and gold embellishments. The huge room, the hall, seemed ancient, yet preserved, though the stained windows remained impossibly immaculate.

“I don’t get it…” We reached the throne and pedestal at the brink of the aisle. “Religion was never dominant enough to warrant this kind of construction, was it?” The hall was indisputably the greatest feat of architecture I had ever seen; even the pictures or descriptions of Canterlot in Stable media hadn’t seemed this intricate and regal.

“Celestia’s Landing, the event not the place, was effectively the beginning of our world, of our existence. It was not simply the first day of Equestria; it was the first day in time, the very beginning.” Ash recited, giving the throne a wide berth while I investigated it. It was simplistic, yet beautiful.

“So where did Celestia come from?” Caliber retorted benignly. “Or Luna, or everything else that wouldn’t have just appeared at the raising of the sun.”

“Astral eternity, a Kingdom in the Stars. The place we go to at the ending of a well-led life, the place from which the Goddesses now rule: the true beginning and the destined end.” I was surprised that Caliber didn’t roll her eyes at the vague answer; and instead seemed to accept the response.

“Considering that’s the only ex-planation I’ve heard as to where the Princesses came from, I can’t really put up any sort of argument. Anyway, the only difference it makes is where we’re heading after we die, and I’m not holding on to anything for that. I like the idea of an ending, a retirement... in its way.”

“When you reached the age of retirement in the Stable, you could either be punished, effectively banished from your home by rite of ‘damnation’. Or assigned a stasis pod that would preserve you until the world recovered: ‘ascension’.” I didn’t mention the neutral outcome, because it was boring.

“You don’t look old enough to have been retired.” Caliber observed. “And you surely aren’t someone I would consider deserving of banishment...”

“I was set up for murder,” I admitted, as the thought of my oncoming visit to another Stable was making me feel a lot more forthcoming with the truth. “They found me guilty and sentenced me to Damnation. The whole system was involved in the lie, committed to it. More than a dozen ponies sat by as I got punished for a crime that I didn’t commit.” Though I summarized it all with little emotional input, it still upset me.

“Corruption,” Ash announced, her voice echoing dramatically and uncharacteristically through the stone hall. “Is one of the reasons we can’t trust our own governance, why we needed the Goddesses as our Princesses in the first place. We were lost before them, and we are now lost again.” She was getting caught up in the atmosphere of the church, her blindly faithful side coming out in its full religious fervor.

Caliber gave her a wary, amusingly perturbed look. “Well… I’m sorry about the terrible things that happened to you Grace.” She rested her hoof across me, comforting me again, genuinely despite the subtle sarcasm aimed at our wayward prophet. I appreciated her support, though felt exponentially less upset at reliving my own past through memory than I had reliving the end of a world through data logs.

“Oh… right, me too.” Ash said as she snapped out of it. “I’m sorry, I mean…to hear that.” Her reconnection into the small scale was awkward and sudden; she went from an enthusiastic preacher to her usual shy self in less than a second. The mare floated her hoof in the air, as if she had been lifting it to copy Caliber but then changed her mind. She thought for a second, then lowered it again.

“It’s fine, I actually feel alright about it.” I assured. “Given the knowledge that I have now, I would have left the Stable by my own will a long time ago.” Now wasn’t the time to reminisce, we had a job to d-… We had a thing to look at. “This can’t be the place where Celestia landed; we’re still inside the mountain.”

“Must be up those elevators.” Caliber stated aloofly, gesturing towards either horizontal end of the cross that the church’s alleys formed. At the end of each perpendicular, shorter aisle were wide, metal sliding doors. They were blatantly incorporated into the stone walls and looked to be blemishes, wounds of technology against the ancient, devotional atmosphere.

“What the heck?” I asked rhetorically as I jaunted up the left-hand arm. “…That’s… convenient.”

“Just because they were religious doesn’t mean they wanted to climb a mountain every time they went to see the monument.” Ash smiled. “Although these must have been installed near war-time, during the technological revamp, so I doubt they were used by many pilgrims or devotees.”

“Probably just tourists.” Caliber agreed. “Or patriots. Celestia’s landing probably got commercialized to build up ‘team-spirit’ in the Northerners, get them behind the country.”

“That’s kind of exploitative,” I muttered, the elevators had ruined the sanctimonious and sacred room for me. The sliding doors were reminiscent of the Stable and seemed off in the otherwise pious place. “But it’s better than walking all the way up.” I admitted as I hit the call button. I couldn’t deny that, despite the connotations, I preferred technology to tradition. And there was nothing wrong with patriotism.

The button had lit up green, indicating that this place had power, and that the elevator might actually still function. I wondered if we hadn’t actually needed to blindly make our way through the darkness of the previous room, if we couldn’t have just found a light switch instead.

For some reason, the whirr of the approaching machine comforted me, and I felt more at ease than I had throughout our entire collected journey into and across Zion.

That peace was torn away as the metallic doors slid open at the arrival of our carrier. The elevator was expansive, rounded with a diameter of at least five adult bucks, and it was lit up in the flickering fluorescence that I had come to know as familiar. Scattered amidst the tattered rags were bones, another budding familiarity, which persisted in disturbing me. The bodies were painfully small: ponies, fillies and colts, almost a dozen of them, coated the floor in whole, recognizable skeletons.

Caliber just sighed softly, Ash crossed herself and muttered, but I remained silent, staring down, wide-eyed, at the long-dead, long-decomposed children. What bothered me most was how little I was bothered. The scene was surprising, depressing even, but it didn’t faze me enough, not as much as it should have.

At my lead, we filed into the graveyard, stepping tentatively over the stripped corpses, once students from the telling remains of backpacks and uniforms. A solitary adult accompanied them, had had to calm them as they starved, or froze to death in the still elevator. The power must have cut out at some point during the last day, stranding this school trip in a vertical hallway of the historical site they were visiting.

It wasn’t like they would have survived if they had been anywhere else, I told myself, but I couldn’t shake the remorse. This was a horrible way to die, early and completely undeserved, unwarranted. But the physical disturbia in front of me hadn’t stopped me from entering the elevator, I could justify myself with all the remorse I wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact that I had become acclimated to death.

I organized to be taken to the top floor, ‘Memorial’ as it was labeled here, and so we began to ascend. Though it groaned, the dark machine trundled consistently up the shaft, stalling only briefly and never giving any signs of real danger, despite the skeletons. There was only one stop between the church and the roof, but I didn’t care to investigate it, I wanted to get this ride over with.
“You want to bury them?” Caliber offered kindly.

“Equestria is a grave; and we can’t dig fresh ones for every skeleton we find.” I said bluntly, I didn’t like it, but I had to accept it. “You’d know better than me how many there are out there.” She nodded at that. I had already seen several, and hadn’t really had the urge to bury any of them. There was something intrinsically wrong with disturbing what little peace they had left, what respite they had maintained for almost two hundred years. “Respecting their sanctity is all we can do.” It wasn’t.

“They’re already in a memorial.” Ash reminded, trying to console me, as my stoic façade was thinner than even I knew. “It’s not the worst place to rest.”

I nodded, stowing my sympathy away as best I could. The elevator reached the apex of its increasingly rapid ascent and began to slow. We were going to find ourselves considerably high up, hopefully giving Caliber the overlook that she wanted… And we apparently needed.

The doors slid open to reveal a smooth marble surface of graying white. We stepped out, into fresh air and the distant cover of a cut-off ceiling of clouds. We were near the border again; on it even, considering the mountains had served as the original divider. A light snow fell inconsequentially, small as the particles of dust within the tombs below, but less distinct in the soft illumination of occluded day.

The marble cut into a rocky landscape, smooth and angular compared to the near black, layered features of the land it was built into. Mountains stretched high ahead of us and all around us, so high that despite the visibly fading cloud cover; I couldn’t see anything but Equestrian soil, rock and marble. The distinctive form of Zion’s Nominal Mountain rose before us, still looming despite our own altitude.

The monument made a clearing in the range, large and solid, barely cracking or eroding. It was a circular plane, founded in the natural stone but constructed of the artificial. It worked with the crags and faults, columns occasional breaking into them, all arranged far around a central point. The monument was an expansive construction, but was specifically focused on the middle of its slightly implied, bowled form. Tall, flat pillars rose out around the focus like angled knives through the mountains, stretching up into the sky and creating a sporadic border around Celestia’s landing. The white sometimes gave way to gold, not only the color but the actual metal as it embellished the large-scale, geometric testament.

We walked towards the wide ring of almost two-dimensional pillars, through a flat pass that spilled from the elevators to the monument proper through a ridge of black rock. Cuts had been made into the marble for decorative trees to be planted, but now they all stood, old, dead pines stripped of color and purpose. Several pedestals stood along the border around the smooth expanse of marble, ordained with statues of heroes or memories. The monument’s entry passage was huge, a veritable plaza, and it took us awhile to reach the memorial’s central focus.

The floor here was another metaphor for the sun, I realized, energy emanated out of the center through color and patterns, faint shadings of white and gold. The massive blunt knives, more rectangular than triangular, were tilted out of the ground at angles to cut rays out into mountains or sky. To my right, at the edge of the circle, was the crowning pillar, a huge angular, monolithic obelisk growing narrower from its lower middle, which stretched out in turn from the structure’s base. It was set back into a black mountain like a cradle. It had a short staircase that lead to a large hallmark figure set on its widest point; it looked both like a dark golden cross and a minimalistic alicorn taking flight. Celestia raising the sun, I realized, that was what the cross on my father’s coat paid tribute to, what Damascus’ cutie-mark symbolized.

We stood in the middle of the monument, facing away from the obelisk, overlooking a gray void.
We were standing where Celestia had landed, a point left barren to commemorate its original purpose. Ahead of us was her flight-path, open sky that stretched on eternally. I could see over the opposite mountain range, into the Middle Passage, though every feature was reduced to indiscernible minimalism. Nestled within the highest mountains in Equestria, this was a lookout onto the world, barren as it all was.

Caliber and Ash simultaneously turned and walked in opposite directions, as if they were beginning an old fashioned pistol duel. One headed to the strategic precipice and the other to the sanctimonious obelisk, their intentions drawing them apart. I followed to behold Zion.

The wind whipped my mane and coat as I stood on the monument’s sharp and sudden ending. There wasn’t even a fence, the marble just stopped short along the circle’s perimeter, opening out into nothing but sky high above the hard slopes below. Caliber stood leaning over the cliff, terrifyingly close to the long fall onto sharp rock. I kept myself the reasonable distance away… perhaps a little further than that.

“You’re awfully close to the edge there, Cal.” She knew, but I had to voice my concerns. I hadn’t had much experience with heights, but it definitely didn’t seem wise to tempt gravity.

“You don’t just randomly fall over, do you?” she smiled, her head stuck out over the marble, front hooves solid on the border between life and death. “When you’re dealing with heights, nerves are what’ll get you killed.” Her short red mane ruffled in the breeze, like a dull fire. I had an involuntary lurching feeling in my gut, as looking at her was enough to make me shudder, somehow managing to make me worry for my own safety as well as hers. I shook off the feeling as best I could and peered safely into the valley.

Even Zion had become simplistic, reduced to basic symbolism and implication by the distance between. The black pines appeared even more skeletal, dotting the snow-dusted landscape in groves or lonely singularity. Mountains over mountains made up most of my field of vision. The first stretch of flat land was directly below but my overt caution made it hard to see in full. I could, however, look to the East where the valley opened out into the now named Great Plain, mountains giving way to an expansive, golden nothing, all features or factions invisible to my distant surveillance.

I couldn’t see anything to the West as the curve of the range kept Mt. Zion between MASEBS, the Earth-Mover and I. Looking back I saw Ash curled up beneath the towering obelisk, at the base of the Celestial Cross, praying or weeping, I couldn’t decide which was more likely. Seeing this place probably reminded her of her Pilgrimage, the suicides constituting her friends’ failure of faith. I felt uncomfortable watching her so I turned back to the southern horizon.

“It’s beautiful.” I offered, trying to make myself appreciate the admittedly majestic land before us with more enthusiasm than my fear was permitting. The mountains rose like walls, sheltering each valley from the next, savages from slavers, clean air from Cloud. Canterlot was somewhere on the furthest mountains to the west, Calvary: east, but between us was too much intimidating, eerily alluring dead land.

“That’s not what we’re looking for.” She mumbled, eyes locked downwards, searching for a sign. She looked up after my comment and her brown eyes reflected the same wonder, if a little numbed, that I was starting to feel for the panorama of wasteland. “But it is…” I smiled at her admission.

Stretching further than the earth, were the clouds, the Enclave’s barricade. They began, tearing black and gray above us, then faded lighter and lighter into the white haze of the horizon. If it weren’t for the snow, I would have already forgotten their original purpose, I would have thought of them as a ceiling alone, nothing remotely natural or even feasible, just an omnipresent roof over the world.

“Grace…” Ash’s amiable voice came scared and shaking from behind us. I turned to investigate, only to be faced by the sharp end of a spear. My eyes crossed down to its point before travelling along the pike to regard its master.

Raider! No… not quite. The buck was ragged, but his eyes weren’t burning with the venomous wildfire I had seen in the familiar, modern savages. Animal bones clumsily adorned his familiar rag outfit, blood and suffering created in exchange for produce, rational gain, not done out of psychopathic mock necessity. For a moment I thought the sand colored buck was a zebra, as he was striped. However it was not by coat pigmentation, but by wounds. This was a pony mutilated to look like another race; the scabs were precisely cut into him, covering the entirety of his body in the red injury of aged blood.

His black mane was periodically twisted or clamped by intricacies and earthy filth, wild patches disrupting what order had been retained. His cutie-mark was obscured by the leather and fur wrapping his body.
Something about his eyes, dark blue and vibrantly alive, stayed my telekinesis.

“We have a problem…” she choked out over the crude stone knife pressed against her throat.

* * *

Stable 34, a chokehold of population control as well as cultural acceptance, a genetic bottleneck gifted with a noble cause. A small population, given an expansive, yet isolated, environment. Authoritative intentions for a controlled, small population combined with joyous ignorance due to avoidance of the apocalypse, resulted in an inevitable population explosion. Disregard for the social restrictions of the dying Equestria just outside of the Stable doors, excitement at the chance at a new life, the gift of survival, and a prompt to procreate in order to keep the population constant, led to massive inbreeding.

In the installations earlier years, the ponies of Stable 34 were repeatedly taught to disregard the stereotypes held against Equestria’s last enemy, they were educated and informed on Zebra culture, beliefs and history. They had been the answer to the possibility that the Zebras would win the war, they were meant to be ambassadors for the surviving Equestrians, using their empathy and understanding with the invaders to bring a peaceful resolution to the predicted hostile take-over. But somewhere down the line it was all distorted in the inbred depression of intelligence and ability.

The Stable first opened decades ago, as the door was coded genetically, to open at a Zebra’s influence. The citizens first interacted with the Zebra’s that had taken inhabitance in Zion valley, but found them to be aggressive racists. So hostilities broke out, beginning another war between the two races, though this time it was on a relatively molecular scale.

Their civilization has degraded to the point of reckless savagery, these ponies have no idea how to survive off the land as their opponents do, and must resort to voracious hunting, the consumption of raw meat, or raiding. The population has been dwindling, inbred infertility and the harsh wasteland taking their toll, but this group has already survived for decades out of their Stable, living off what food and shelter it provided. Creating an unintentional dependence on the rapidly shrinking food supply has left them desperate, and violent. Restraint and forethought aren’t the qualities they live by. Their light will burn out.

The Stable is nestled in the mountains below, he claims, and he had to come to meet us: the intruders, as soon as he knew of our coming. A collection of in-bred savages don’t know how to deal with ponies diplomatically, but he is different, he was lucky enough to retain his intelligence, he says.

We had travelled through misty passes, avoiding crags and gaps in the rock as we were led away from Celestia’s landing. The ponies, who had found us, had used these passes to make their way to us, avoiding the terrifying darkness of the church and tombs. They were idiotic, simplistic, but hadn’t killed us. Using what sense they had left, they recognized us as more than prey, as their own kin by some distant genetic bond. Their war was based on race, their enemy was the one striped in black, not bare, the bare ones were initiates, ponies who had yet to prove themselves as warriors. They saw us as lost innocents, treated us as they would armed children, forcing us to follow them back to their temporary station.

Now we stood in their primitive camp, nothing more than a few rags and bags. No cooking fire, no supplies apart from the familiarly Stable-brand rations of water and food, though even these didn’t seem like nearly enough to feed the six of them. Like the buck had said; they were running out of food.

Five bucks had surrounded us at Celestia’s Landing, taking Ash hostage first to ensure we complied. I had prompted Caliber to oblige them, we didn’t take the opportunities we had to escape or kill our captors, and we followed them willingly at their request and mine. I had seen the stupid, ignorant, innocence in that first buck’s eyes, how easily our guns and skill would have felled them, and I had gotten curious. We would never get into the Stable if we had attacked the first inhabitants that we met.

This new buck, frail, untrained and soft, had been waiting for us at the makeshift camp. He looked like a Stable pony, though his dark gray mane was filthy and unkempt, while his body was contracting due to inactivity. He wasn’t hardened, he had lived in relative comfort for most of his life, he hadn’t been a hunter, and he still wasn’t a killer. These were the privileges intelligence had given him, strength determined their leader, but intelligence kept the weak valuable enough to leave be. He had no authority, no responsibility, but he was smart enough to have survived amidst a band of inbred animals.

He had told us about all this, his situation, his people, the Zebras, the Stable. He obliged to all our questions, never mentioning any requirement for us to give him anything in return, seeming genuinely pleased to be able to talk to somepony for once. Though despite his helpfulness, near friendliness and compliance, he was scum.

“Why haven’t you tried to help?” I berated the sleazy olive buck. “If your people are only attacking the Zebras out of savage jealousy then surely you can solve this diplomatically.”

“Listen Sugar,” when Caliber had called me that it had been warm, endearing, and sweet as the substance itself, but when this buck crooned it to me it felt as if a moist fish was sliding across my face. “These idiots are never going to stop, and I know for damn sure that they won’t listen to me, so I might as well let the men go out, fight and die, while I stay in the comfort of the Stable enjoying the benefits.” He shrugged off his selfish abandon like it was nothing.

“You’ll run out of food if you don’t get the zebras help.” Caliber pointed out.

“I have my own reserves…” he smiled his sour grin, ugly mud colored eyes glinting. “Enough to feed me for a hundred years, easy. And the zebras already tried to teach them how to live off the land, decades ago; they were too stupid to understand them then, and their even stupider now.” He spat, insulting his family, his neighbors. “They still carve themselves up, trying to emulate the stripes. They want to replace the Zebras, wipe them out and steal their land. Not that it’ll feed them.”

“I thought you said the Zebras were aggressive racists?” Ash cut in, reserve replaced by repulsion.

“I exaggerated, whatever, they can’t help each other so it’s all the same.”

“So you let your people fight them, casualties on both sides, even though they initially tried to help you? Even though there’s nothing but misconceptions and the resultant self-defense fueling this conflict?” I was starting to really detest this bastard. It was ponies like him that caused the Stables to fail, and selfishness like this that had escalated the war in the first place!

“The more alpha-males die, the more mares there are for me. Not that they’re monogamous.” He laughed. “I don’t even know if they understand where the children they so desperately need come from.” So the population was dwindling. “Well, they know where they come from of course, but they probably don’t have a clue how they got there! Maybe they think it’s magic!” he enjoyed their ignorance immensely.

“You’re disgusting.” Ash softly expressed what we were all thinking, in a gentler tone than I would have said it, and with less physical harm to the buck than Caliber would have liked to see.

“They don’t care!” he cackled. “Mine is probably cleaner than warriors’ anyway! In fact… I can show you if you’re interested…” he arched a greasy eyebrow, something told me that even if the Stable hadn’t run out of clean water, this buck would shower as little as possible.

Caliber snarled and set herself into an aggressive, canine stance. The buck balked, unaccustomed to defensive mares. He let out a pathetic whimper at the first sign of danger, a coward and a gluttonous pig. I was getting tired of this entitled sleaze bucket.

“Look, you’ve been very helpful…” my words were civil but I couldn’t help but maintain a cold, reserved tone as I tried to control my voice. “But we need to talk to somepony with some diplomatic control.” If we got these savages to lay off the Zebras then we could probably expect them to return the favor, then all we would have to do is aim that at the Slavers and their Railway.

“The Chief is no smarter than any of these meat-heads; the only diplomacy he sees is violence, which is how he got his job, after all.” Sleazebag seemed to enjoy disappointing us time and time again.

“What if one of us were to defeat the chief in combat?” Caliber asked, picking up on the tangible system of their monarchy.

“The rest of them would kill you.” He grinned. “No Mares allowed, no Zebras either, and the only pony out of that Stable who can string a sentence together is standing right in front of you, in the glorious peak of his physical form.”

“Any other loopholes, something that’ll appeal to their… traditions.” I inquired.

“It’s all about fighting to them, that’s how they communicate, it’s how they find their mates, educate their foals and eat their meals. They exist in some retarded system of hierarchy, based on physical prowess, the only way to get rid of them… is to wipe them out.” The bucks around us didn’t seem to be listening.

“You’re awfully quick to condemn them to death.” Caliber growled. “You expect to be spared?”

“I expect you to lose.” He chuckled. “Militant Zebras, despite all their rifles and stealth ‘expertise’ haven’t made a dent in our numbers. The savages are morons, but there are a lot of them. They traded genetic separation for fast reproduction, Zebras are smarter, but we’re a horde and they’re a family, a small one.”

“Take me to your Chief; we’re ending this without any more bloodshed.” I announced. Nopony had the right to make such a decided choice between two groups like this; I wouldn’t damn the savages to save the Zebras. At least, not until I knew the odds, and whether or not the Stable ponies were really as savage as they seemed. Being animalistic didn’t warrant execution… depending on the animal.

“Mares in the Stable are only used for three things. Because you have three-“

I slapped him across his smug, disgusting face before Caliber got her chance to pounce. I had swung my right hoof out, sparing him from the metal casing of my Pip-buck. But it still connected with a solid, satisfying click. The rest of the ponies in the camp reared up around us, enclosing us in a crude circle, primal weapons drawn. They hadn’t taken ours; it was as if they hadn’t even recognized them as the threats that they were. I hovered both of the pistols, laser and 45, at my sides for show while Ash and Caliber stood flank to flank aiming their respective battle-saddles.

“Call them off or you go down with them!” I commanded the whimpering buck, drawing from my contempt to sound intimidating. He had fallen to the ground at my previous outburst, out of fear more than pain.

“Alright! Alright alright!” he stammered as he got up and made gestures at the other, bigger bucks. I expected him to use their language, however primitive it was, but his imprecise hoof motions indicated that they didn’t even have something as basic as that. They were simple enough to respond to motion over words; they would probably look at the tip of your hoof rather than the place you were pointing to.

“They don’t talk?” Ash asked rhetorically. “Goddesses how far gone are they?”

“Further than raiders…” Caliber answered. “Grace, I think we only have one option here.” She meant to handle the situation in Zion as a whole, rather than the one localized in the encampment that was already boiling down as the bucks lowered their weapons.

“They have families… we need a better plan than that.” The thought of massacring an entire Stable of mentally challenged ponies shook me to my similarly reared bones, especially because it was fast becoming a viable solution, a consideration…

“They have sex slaves who occasionally pop out a foal, if their rapist decided to go the traditional route.” She corrected graphically. “Even then, they don’t see a filly or colt, they see a warrior or a whore.”

“The mares may also be this deteriorated, they probably don’t even object. They wouldn’t even call what’s happening to them rape, just a natural order.” Ash threw in. The bucks around us had all but subsided, some still blinked in confusion at the rapid exchange and conflict of orders against instinct. “We could wipe them all out, and have done nothing worse than exterminating a den of dangerous Yao Guai.”

“It wouldn’t be extermination! It’d be a massacre! Genocide!” I cried out, pistols still drawn on the idle bucks. I was trying to convince myself as much as I was them; I desperately attempted to suppress the temptation seeping into my mind. The fact that it was there at all made me guilty enough.

“Alright, they’ve stopped!” Greasy called out. “I stopped them.” He breathed a sigh of relief as I stowed my weapons, because this wasn’t happening. At least not yet.

“Thank you,” I nodded to him in feigned appreciation. Caliber and Ash relaxed.

“Don’t try anything like that again you bitch!” I should’ve hit him again, but that would make the pinnacle decision for me, which I wasn’t ready for. If the only intelligent pony in that Stable was…him, then what evidence did I have that there could be any redeemable quality to these savages. Genocide! I yelled at my own train of thought. It’d be easy, practical and… even moral? Merciful? Like putting down a mad dog. For what? A few extra guns to fight the Slavers?
No…
For the Zebras who had inadvertently unleashed this threat upon their home, who offered to share the knowledge they had, only to be met with frustration and immense violence at the very first failure to communicate. They deserved peace after all they’d survived, but judgment can’t be passed without evidence, without both sides of the story.

“We’re going to go find the Zebras, see what they think about all this.” I decided, maybe it was a stall to put off the decision or maybe it was a genuine precaution, either way I knew that we wouldn’t be committing to anything here.

“You aren’t going to stop us from leaving are you?” Caliber snarled at Dirty Coward. He was startled again; the selfish leech wasn’t the type to take risks, not when they were this personal.

He shook his head no, burying his face into the dirt and trembling. One moment he was an arrogant pervert and the next he was reduced to a sniveling child, polar opposites but both equally pathetic on him. His only redeemable quality was his cutie-mark, a scruffy stack of books and parchments. Maybe when he was younger he had used the gift he had been given, tried to help his people by learning about their past and the place they lived, but now he had either given up or given in to the temptation of lethargy.

“You tried to help them when you were a colt, didn’t you?” I asked, taking the time to try and find something forgivable about him. “That’s how you now so much about what happened in your Stable.”

“Yes… but it was pointless!” he spat at the primitive bucks standing around us. They didn’t even react, much too preoccupied with yipping and snapping at each other to vent their stalled aggression.
“They wouldn’t listen, they couldn’t! My parents didn’t even name me, dammit! Do you know what that’s like? A life without compassion or care from anypony, lived with just enough intelligence to realize how shitty your existence really is?!”

“So you snapped and decided to take all the advantages you could.” Ash concluded.

“Yes… now I have no higher responsibility than eating, sleeping and fucking. They didn’t even mark me with their damn stripes once I’d reached maturity. At least I got a cutie-mark, so it’s their loss.”

“They don’t…” I looked around at the wild bucks in the mountain encampment. I had assumed the skins that they were wearing had covered up their base identities, but now knew that there was nothing but blank-flanks beneath them. “How is that possible?”

“They’re children, they can’t even understand that they’re supposed to have talents apart from hunting and killing.” Caliber explained for us. “There needs to be some self-awareness involved… otherwise they stay just as indistinguishable as animals.”

“Animals who know how to hold hostages?” Ash added. One savage had held a knife against her throat, a strategy of higher reasoning than surely any animal was capable of.

“It’s instinctual; they learn that violence is the best way to deal with a situation, even if no actual killing is going to happen. It’s how they control each other, how their can even be a Chief at all.” Bookstack Sleazebucket agreed. “Don’t think that the ability to strategize makes them deserving of mercy.”

“You really hate them, huh?” I investigated.

“I hate being a part of them...” He shook off the sentimentality. “But their stupidity makes them pander to my own instincts, keeps me coming back for more.” He pushed his fringe, darkened by sweat and stains, away from his ugly, intelligent eyes. “I always enjoy the chance to collect visitors, out of curiosity, but I never leave with them… if they even leave at all.”

“Do me a favor Bookstack.” I requested, using the least derogatory name that I had assigned to him.

“No.”

“Get anypony who’s got a chance, any mental capacity at all, and take them away from the Stable. If it boils down to an all out conflict, the least I can do is try to save the few that I can.” The bucks’ lack of cutie-marks had almost made my mind up on the issue. They were violent husks of the personalities that they could’ve been. I believe that most ponies deserved to be saved, but these ones simply couldn’t be. “Are there any others with cutie-marks?”

“No.”

“I see…” I was crestfallen at the strategy developing in my mind, disappointed with myself while at the same time I preached the lack of moral castigation that this ‘genocide’ deserved. “Will you bring your chief out, act as ambassador? A liaison would really help us rule out a peaceful resolution, or maybe find one.”

“He won’t talk to anypony who isn’t a Bleeding Stripe, not even me, and he would only treat a mare or Zebra with the respective instincts, the physical reaction for each.” He didn’t seem upset at the impossibility of a non-violent solution. “You can try to talk to him on the battle-field if you’d like, but he isn’t much more vocal than these idiots.”

“How many of y-… them are there?” I asked beginning to take considerations for the seemingly inevitable fight.

“Less than the Zebras think, a lot less, considering the mares don’t count. A few have figured out how to use guns, but without strategy or co-ordination… I actually think you’d win. Intimidation has been the only thing keeping us alive so far.” He admitted. “The Zebras assume that with an expansive underground citadel, consistent food supplies and an armory we pose an incredible threat… but we waste all of it.”

“Do what you can to save them. This may be your last chance.” I warned him, my Pip-buck had labeled the Stable as he described it, and in my mind the course of action we had to take seemed unavoidable. After we confirmed with the Zebras… “We’ll see you around Bookstack.”

The encampment was set up in the clearing of a deep rocky crag, shorter mountainous walls rose up all around it and there were only two ways we could leave by. Either back to Celestia’s Landing, the overlook, or back down into Zion, to search blindly for the Zebras.

“Um…” I didn’t know where to go. “Seen any Zebras recently?” I asked Bookstack with an embarrassed smile, I felt I had ended the conversation quite poignantly, now I had to ruin it to ask for directions.

“You may as well have phrased that: been killed by any Zebras recently.” He answered dryly. “You see the Zebras when they want you to, and for us that means when they want to attack us, so no.”

“Any advice?” Caliber asked, holding a smile of obvious restraint rather than social awkwardness.
It seemed as if she would follow my lead to such an extent that her very personality was affected, and there was no way to truly know what would have become of Bookstack was she free of her contract.

“As much as I’d like to help you collaborate to wipe out my entire family, if we knew how to find them, we would’ve wiped ourselves out trying to kill them by now.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re lucky I’m letting you go at all.” She arched her eyebrow at him. “Yeah, yeah, I know that’s bullshit.”

“Let’s go back to the monument; maybe if we light it up we can draw the zebras attention.” Ash suggested. “Now that we don’t have to worry about the savages, there’s no reason not to.”

Bookstack laughed. “Since when did we stop being a threat? Sure we don’t stand a chance six to three, especially when we forgot to disarm those three,” he shot a disdainful look towards the sand colored buck, who chewed intensely in response. “But if we couldn’t handle ourselves we wouldn’t even be here.”

“Hold on a minute,” Caliber interrupted. “What do you mean ‘light it up’?”

“Didn’t you see the array set up around the obelisk?” Ash seemed surprised that we were confused. “There were dozens of floodlights built into the mountain…?” she waited for us to come to some realization. “Dozens…? You didn’t notice that?”
We shook our heads; we’d been too busy at the cliff looking over Zion.
“Well if we get those on then the Zebras will probably come to us, I bet you can see the obelisk from within the valley itself. In fact I think that was the point.”

“Oh… well good, then we have a plan.” I hesitantly agreed. “Better than nothing?” I looked expectantly at Caliber, kind of hoping she had a better idea. She just shrugged.

The filthy buck seemed to be enjoying our blind adherence to these slivers of a plan. “I’m real worried about the wrath you’re going to be raining down on us soon, so can I please go home and weep for my people now?” he asked sarcastically. “Prepare for the genocide?”

“You’re really just going to let us go?” I could tell he didn’t take us seriously, but he had put a considerable amount of effort into meeting us, surely he couldn’t just stand by and let us walk away.

“You still know how to use those guns?” we nodded. “Then we’re still the best of friends, alright?”

“Alright,” I tilted my head down the pass to Zion. “Get out of here.” Despite the sour taste that talking to Bookstack DirtyDishWater had left in my mouth, I still kind of pitied the sleazy buck. He’d lived his whole life as an outcast, family and kin separated from him by mental degradation and an animalistic social structure. He wasn’t lucky to have been born smarter, at least not based on what he had done with his life. I watched him as he loaded the supplies onto the bucks and herded them down the pass, like burdened cattle or a flock of sheep, like animals.

“Kind of sad.” Caliber said. Caliber? What the Heck? My face no doubt expressed my surprise. “You get used to bucks like him eventually, wasteland’s full of them. It’s easy to pity the ones with some reason behind their selfish, disgusting lives. I can almost forgive him, considering what he’s been through.”

Ash and I met each other’s gaze. “No, I’m with you Grace, he was just nasty.” Ash laughed softly, getting a sweet giggle out of Caliber. I smiled, drawing happiness from seeing their friendship on display again, despite the misrepresentation of my opinion.
We began on our way back to Celestia’s Landing. Our disruption actually having helped us more than harmed us, not as you would usually expect from a kidnapping by savages. Did victims usually just hand their weapons over or something? How else could those ponies have gotten their deadly reputation? Maybe they were actually getting stupider over the years.

The sky was darkening above, but the misty snow coming off the mountains was illuminated in the beautiful gold once again. Somewhere beyond Zion, the sun was beginning its descent, exposing itself for a few short hours to Equestria’s northern reaches. The layered, gray and black rocks beside me were caricatures of the layered gray and black sky above, leaving me with nothing to see but these dreary colors deprived of the golden light. The edge of the cold air was also left unhampered by warming rays, biting raw and solitary. I felt like I was missing out on it all, as if the sun would feel hurt at my absence.

The trees on the mountain faces alternated from tall, sharp pines to shorter, clawing shrubs or branches, daggers and hands, all monochromatic and dry save for a few rare specks of surviving green and the usual dusted white of snow. The frozen precipitation had stopped falling, leaving the air looking a little empty, although the ground remained lightly carpeted as it forever was here.

Caliber stopped every once and a while when we reached a clearing, or another scenic overlook of Zion, the crags rose sporadically and sharp, gray rock imitating cold steel, and we didn’t often get the chance for a view. Of course there were no signs of the veritable ghost faction, a group apparently renowned for their clandestine mystery. I still couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that had persisted throughout our day in this valley, the feeling that we were being watched. Despite the confirmation that we had, in fact, been followed and accosted already, I still felt uneasy; as if that hadn’t been the event that all the suspense and premonition had been building up to. Like ‘the big one’ had yet to happen.

The entire range was silhouetted dark in front of the golden tinted sky which drew bright lines, highlighting the black mountains by making the snow shine. Marble began to extrude from the rocks along our pass, an indication that we were getting close. Ash had explained on our way down that this place had been built long before the gross advancements in technology that had befallen Equestria in its last years. Magic hadn’t even been used to construct this monument, nor had flight; the stone had been dragged through these narrow splits in the mountain, propagated by raw strength and fortitude alone. And it stood the test of time, for over a thousand years it stood, refurbished or upgraded but rarely repaired or restored.

Stepping onto the great flat marble plane of the central monument I trotted towards its sharp rectangular end. The gold light hit the mountains in the relatively near distance, but quickly died out. There were some places, many places, in Equestria where they never felt the actual rays of the sun, I realized. Beyond the Middle Passage the world was eternally gray, growing rapidly darker as the day ended. You probably couldn’t see the sun from Canterlot or Calvary, meaning I would eventually have to say goodbye to its promise, the reliance on its coming, while we worked in that cold, dead city.

Turning back I saw Ash, our personal mechanic, pointing out the floodlights to Caliber. They were nestled neatly and subtly into the stone, focused primarily on the tall obelisk built into the considerably taller mountain face. I hurried to join them, clopping back across the shaded marble. The statues and trees strew the plaza to my right, off of the monument’s circular heart, where the elevators were. I hoped the light switch wasn’t downstairs, another hauntingly crowded elevator ride away, into the dark cathedral.

I arrived at the base of the looming obelisk and noticed that it was slightly slanted when viewed from this angle, its face above the wider middle point turned up to the sky at a marginal fraction. The section lower than the effigy of Celestia was similarly slanted, but towards the ground. You could stand with the gold cross and the bulk of the obelisk above your head if you stepped into the slight alcove below.

“So what do we need to do?” I asked

“Get in there.” Caliber said gesturing to a doorway well hidden just perpendicularly across from the base of the column. “It’s got to be a maintenance room. It looks like it was dug out of the rock, so we can probably assume it has something to do with the technological additions to this place.” Just like the elevators and floodlights, the changes had attempted subtlety but succumbed to unavoidable, borderline defilement. “Ash says it’s locked.” Why couldn’t pre-war ponies have trusted each other enough to keep something unlocked? It seemed as if the last thing everypony in Equestria had done was turn a key.

“Yes, I noticed it earlier and tried to get in.” It sounded like Ash had found more useful information investigating the obelisk than we had looking over the entirety of Zion.

Caliber sauntered over to the blue-gray door that had, for a moment, looked like an especially flat portion of the surrounding mountain rockery. She replicated her method in the Border Security station and winked her bruised left eye, pushing her right as close as she could.
“This is one hell of a lock.” She sighed, “Worse than the cell.”

“What cell?” Ash asked, causing the mare at the door to shoot me a panicked look.

I knew that I had to lie, better she didn’t know what had happened to Fern. “There were a bunch of cells on the top floor of the station earlier; a soldier’s… body was in it so I asked Caliber to pick the lock… I wanted to investigate.” Not exactly a lie. “Unfortunately the lock stuck and triggered the security systems… and you know the rest.”

“Oh, well then maybe we shouldn’t try to bypass this one, in case we break It.” She responded, thankfully uninterested in any of the more revealing details. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Caliber sounded relieved, understandably. “Though I think breaking it is our only option, and by breaking it, I mean blowing it up.”

I hoisted out the leftover grenades from my saddlebags, two should do it, I predicted. “It’s not any more complicated than pulling the pin and running is it?” I asked, actually looking forward to this plan.

“Nope, I wouldn’t even have bothered learning how to pick locks if I’d had a bottomless bag of grenades at hoof.” She rubbed her jaw. “Although there’s stealth and scale to consider… wouldn’t do much good to set off a grenade while trying to crack open a jewelry box on somebody’s bedside table.”

“You might need to get arrested for murder if there’s somepony sleeping in that bed.” I added.

“Arrested?!” Caliber laughed, as she set one of the grenades precisely against the door. “Murder doesn’t even count as a crime anymore. In fact, I think every crime doesn’t count as crime anymore.”

“Depends on who is judge.” Ash murmured, peering up at the obelisk.
“You don’t think this’ll damage the monument, do you?”

“Nah, it’s too far.” She assured, following us as we put more distance between ourselves and the doomed door, pacing backwards along the celestial marble.
I clutched the grenade close in my golden telekinesis, waiting until we were out of range to avoid the inevitable outburst of shrapnel and heat. I felt a strange desire for the satisfaction derived from the explosive landing of a meteoritic grenade, though it probably would have worked just as well to shoot the charges with Caliber’s rifle.

Speaking of explosive rifle rounds, just as I prepared to pull the pin, one embedded itself into the stone between my hooves, detonating on impact and sending me hurtling suddenly and semi-consciously into the center of the sun.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Here and Now: You instantly level up, lazy bastard…

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Here and N- Oh no you don’t! You’re not getting away with that again!
No Perk for you!

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