Fallout Equestria: Sola Gratia
Chapter 7: Gravedigger
“So be it. You’ve dug your own grave. Grave! Grave!”

“Now, like I promised, it’s time for some Good News!” I tuned out of the Galaxy News Radio frequency and cut the DJ off before he could fulfill his promise. Caliber had drawn my attention away, to the grisly scene just ahead.

We stepped slowly and lightly, making our way down the final stretch of road to the gas station. What scenery was visible, now that the mist had cleared, no longer held the interest of my fresh perspective. The gray light of the sun was dim, but covered most of the hanging figures in shadow. Only hooves were visible at this distance, the rest of the corpses above were dark and non-descript. They could pass as mannequin or rag dolls, I told myself, trying to deny the harsh truth. I had experienced enough of the new Equestria to know better however: those were dead bodies.

“Keep your eyes on your E.F.S; and let me know if you see anything.” Whispered the red-headed mare crouched beside me. I had gathered that the small device on her leg served no higher purpose than to tell the time, meaning she had no radar of her own.

“There’s no blood,” I realized as we drew closer. “They died from the hangings.” Disturbingly enough, that seemed unusual to me. I was expecting a mutilation of corpses hung up for display, not a gallows.

“Still, keep alert. Though I think we can assume that this wasn’t the raiders’ doing. It almost looks like…”

“Suicide.” I filled in the blank she had left open. We were now at the edge of the gas station, the bodies hung just above us, five in total: Two mares and three bucks. They didn’t look like a family; they were all around the same age. They wore no armor, and carried no bags, they had either stripped down or been robbed. Their Cutie Marks were exposed, of them; none were graphic or especially distinctive. They were pleasant; I could even imagine seeing them in the Stable: Candles, a Book, the Sun, a Key and a Crescent Moon.

“Decay hasn’t set in.” Caliber appraised the corpses with a different perspective than I did. Though I had some medical experience, I had never performed an autopsy. “They haven’t been here long, all the more reason to stay cautious.” Her voice was low and unnaturally calm.

“The whole area is clear from what I can tell. I think they did this to themselves.” I lit up my horn in golden magic to get a better look at how they were fastened to the roof. Each was attached by the neck to a rope tied to one of the angular metal beams that held up the cover. They hung side by side, at equal distance from the ground. “The question is why.” I stopped my illumination, seeing their faces, limp and suffocated, was unpleasant.

“And how,” Caliber added. “Look at how they’re suspended, it’s almost like they’re arranged.”

“They may have used that,” I pointed to an adjustable step ladder behind the open garage door at the far end of the station. It didn’t look culpable; it rested seemingly undisturbed as an inadvertent witness.

“That means they went one by one. Then somebody put the ladder back.” She didn’t seem convinced.
“Let’s check out the shop.” The building just outside of the roof’s cover was vividly branded ‘Quick-Stop’; fluorescent lights still flickered inside, revealing how empty it was.
“Why do you think they did it here?” I asked as we walked over to the store.

“When’s the last time you had a roof over your head?” her question answered mine. As we entered the jammed open doors of the store it was made apparent why they hadn’t used this area. The ceiling tiles were cracked, gaping holes revealed the swirling clouds, as half the roof had collapsed in on the building. There wasn’t much to see, the building was a barren ruin, the bare shelves reminded me of the Supermarket in Acheron, but I didn’t relish the fresh nostalgia.

The side of the store that wasn’t crushed under rubble was where the cashier was located, a booth that opened up to the station outside, so that travelers could pay for gas. Posters remained on the walls, torn and faded; they advertised products from drinks to detergents, the most recognizable being Sparkle-Cola. There was a soda machine outside, decorated in the same style. Another pang for Acheron.

The sky was lighter than I had ever seen it, and instead of a medley of black and gray clouds it was constituted of grays and whites. The holes in the roof allowed us to see without magical intervention and we proceeded to look for any clues as to what had happened.

We found nothing in the store, no packs, clothing or weapons. It was starting to look less like suicide and more like an intricate robbery.

“Do you think they had help?” I asked. It looked like somepony had cleaned up the scene, replacing the ladder and inheriting whatever the five ponies had left behind.

“I wouldn’t call it help.” she stared at the collapsed ceiling, slanted at an angle to the floor. “Let’s try and get a better look at the bodies from up there,” she motioned to the top of the rubble. “Maybe they were dead before they got strung up.”

“I doubt it.” I muttered, it looked like we were both going to stick to our own theories for now. Though I followed her up the slanted concrete anyway, mostly so she wouldn’t worry about me, as she seemed sure that there was a murderer somewhere lingering.

We got our clue at the precipice of the ruin; a plank ran from the store’s roof to the station’s. On the pale blue metal sat the ponies’ belongings, arranged in a circle. We hopped over the gap and clopped our way across the thick metal. Caliber winced at the resulting cacophony. The sound of clanging metal was familiar to me; I almost enjoyed pounding my hooves against the structure’s scratched surface.

From the roof I could see the world, at least that’s what it seemed like. Mountains shot up from the earth to the North and East, the largest marking the end of the range. To the west the highway picked up off the ground and continued smoothly above the sloping land beneath it, a fair distance away it served to the left and curved around the mountain range behind me. To the North West was open, cluttered land, rocks, hills and dead trees kept the landscape interesting and unknown as it stretched into the bleak north. The railway was in that mess somewhere, we would have to cross it to get to the MASEBS tower.

Caliber was staring at me expectantly, now that the mist had cleared I was getting my first look at open land, land that existed beyond distances I could never have imagined possible, needless to say it had distracted me. We were at the circle of disowned belongings and yet I still stared at the world around me. Realizing that I was keeping my companion waiting, I pulled my attention back to the arrangement solemnly constructed before us.

It was almost like a shrine, or an offering, the bags and clothes were arranged in a broken circle around five pieces of technology. This was the brightest spot it the gas station, the light shone through the clouds, gray and pale, down onto the roof. The square metal things were obviously meant to be the focus of the display; their sleek faces almost glinted in the light.

“What are they?” I asked tentatively, hoping not to give too much importance to what could easily just be scrap metal.

“Audio Logs, I think you were right about it being suicide. This looks like a final gesture.” She poked through the packs, checking for signs of pillage or theft.

“Do you think they… do you think they swung off?” thinking back to how the corpses just below us were hung it would make sense that they jumped, necks noosed, from up here.

“Looks like it, that unicorn must have tied up the ropes with magic. They fastened them around their necks and just stepped off the edge over there.” She hypothesized.

“They must have known that the fall wouldn’t have been enough to kill them.” Besides, snapped necks seemed more peaceful than shattered bones and bent bodies laying in the oil stains and dirt below.
“Can we play the logs? Maybe they’re confessions or some explanation to why they resorted to this.”

“I can’t say I’m not a little curious.” She slid the metal squares out of the circle to me. “I haven’t ever seen a group suicide in the middle of nowhere like this.”

“What do I press?” I fiddled with the first one.

“They’re called Holo-disks, you can play them through your Pip-buck’s radio, I think.” She instructed. I checked the menus of my wrist-held device, data, one was labeled. Under it a new name popped up for every disk I put into my saddlebag. They were simply labeled “Final Words #1-5’. I played the first one.

“…”

Through the speakers a slightly tinny scratching and fumbling could be heard, as well as faint murmurs.

“I am Cyrus, and I leave this recording behind to explain why we are going to do this. Why we have to.”
It was a buck’s voice, soft but confident, though I could hear wet sobbing in the background.

“We were subjected to… proof. We saw something that refuted everything we’ve every believed in. A monstrosity against our minds. During our pilgrimage we came across beings that could not exist. Unless the truth we have lived our lives in accordance to has been a lie. We are believers in this truth, no longer.”

My hair stood on end; while we listened we kept our gazes to the horizon, watching for the abominations the resolved buck spoke of. In the far north a satellite tower was almost visible through what mist remained, barely distinguishable as anything but a silhouette amidst the rocks.

“I will spare you the details… I can only say that the faith that kept us living is gone, so we must depart too. I led this pilgrimage, now I will continue to do so; we came to validate our Goddesses, but only succeeded in discovering the irrelevance of our journey, the irrelevance of ourselves. I will lead these ponies into the darkness, where once we believed light awaited, I will lead them to safety, to peace.
I wanted to speak up, to stop him, almost forgetting that what was done was done. We had arrived too late to save the religious band from following each other into death.

“You will follow me?”

“Yes” three voices spoke together.

“Yes.” Wept the last, the voice of the crying mare.

“Don’t do this.” Begged another soft voice, a meek, strangely accented protestor.

“You can stay behind if you want to, but the cold, darkness here is no better than the emptiness of death.” He assured the soft-spoken girl. “Are the ropes secured?”
Whoever had tied them must have given some sign of confirmation as Cyrus continued.
“Leave your testimonies behind if you wish to, my friends, I have nothing more to say.”

The sound of a rope drawing taught, a snap, and another cry followed the last words of Cyrus.
The log stopped, the soft tinny static that announced it cut out, leaving us in each other’s silence.
Without saying a word I played the next one, Caliber didn’t protest.

“Harvest, please…” another buck, less calm than the former, more emotional.

“Please don’t cry. We’ll go one after the other. You and me. Just promise that you will find peace before you jump. You can’t leave the world like this.”

“Al-alright.” Sputtered the mare. “Let’s go at once, as one, we can hold each other.”

“The sun and moon together. Can we do it Lockbox? Will it hold?”

“The beam is rusted, structure is weak.” The third of the three bucks paused; his voice had been deep but gentle. “It’s worth the risk. These are our final moments. As hard as that is to believe.”

“We all saw them… what other explanation could there be? We are lost already.”

“No matter what you believe, we can survive together!” protested the other mare. “This is pointless!”

“You’re too young to understand, you’ll realize one day… You’ll follow us.” Said Harvest’s buck.

“I’m ready…” the crying had stopped; I could hear Harvest and the buck kiss. “Do you want to say anything for the recording?”

“I love you.” The buck kicked off the roof, the mare following in his embrace. I could almost hear her whisper the words back to him as they fell.

Two ropes drawing tight, two snaps, no cry. The log stopped.
This time I didn’t move on to the next one.

Again we didn’t speak; we both absorbed what we had just heard, interpreting it and justifying it as much as we could. We stared at the horizon, visible sky in the distance. The tower sat atop another range of mountains, separated from the large black one I had seen when I came out of the Stable by a gap of relatively flat land that continued out of Equestria, out from under the clouds. The Tower Mountains ran far away from the ones around us, they were perpendicular to them but did not connect. They curved, forming a longitudinal border along the West, containing all the land within. Typed on a terminal, the landscape as I knew it would look like an open bracket, a space, then three hyphens stacked on top of each other, the middle one shorter than the other two. We sat at the base of the lowest line. Caliber wondering what possible benefits a belief that could drive one to suicide could have, and me berating myself for comparing the vast landscape of Equestria to symbols on a keyboard.

I played the third log.

“So Ah’m next then?” asked a mare who had been quite up to this point. We knew now that there was a survivor, six voices, and five corpses. Her accent was also strange like the surviving mare’s, but in a very different way, like an extreme version of Caliber’s.

“Unless you want to go with me?” suggested Lockbox.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“It’s too late for them, but if you have any doubt in your mind… please don’t.” Came the voice of the presumably alive mare. She sounded rejuvenated at the speaker’s reluctance.
“I tried to convince them for hours, their minds were made up, but if you can still see reason…”

“How can you still believe, Ash?” asked Lockbox. “You saw them, Hell you killed one.”

“We ahll killed it…

“What if you’re wrong? What if the Goddesses do exist? Suicide is a mortal sin!”

“They were alicorns Ash!” shouted the buck. “Like the Godde- Princesses! There is no one watching over us! If those epitomes of sin can even exist you have to know that this isn’t the world we thought it was!”
His fear fueled his anger. “We were lied to! We were fools! We are alone!”

Another snap interrupted their argument. The mare had jumped.

“Goddesses…”

The log stopped. There were two logs left, but only one corpse that we hadn’t listened to the death of.

“Should we look for her?” I asked Caliber, snapping her out of her daze.

“Let’s finish the logs first. She doesn’t sound like a threat.” She paused. “More likely she’s vulnerable right now. It sounds like she just watched five of her friends commit suicide,” I nodded.

I knew how this was going to end, the conflict between Ash and Lockbox, I knew he would not be convinced; the dangling body below us was evidence of that. We were going to listen to Ash fail to save her friend. I played the log.

“I’m going to pray for you.”

“Ash, they aren’t up there. No one will hear you.”

“I won’t believe that. Those alicorns were abominations, fabrications, they didn’t mean anything.”

“Cyrus didn’t think so. He was the most devout of all of us, he preached this religion to us only to see it proved false before his very own eyes.”

“He was scared. They all were.” She pleaded, her soft, boreal voice breaking to a borderline of tears. “Think about what you’re doing. You can’t come back from this.”

“That’s the point.” I heard him kick off the metal roof.

“No!” the pounding of hoof steps followed, a body sliding across steel then the familiar pull and snap, followed by a soft thump, stifled by distance.

The log played on, no sound apart from the soft wind and faint static. Eventually I could hear the mare again, she grunted softly, the sound of rubble shifting and wood creaking marked her approach. She must have jumped after Lockbox, reflexively trying to grab onto him before he could fall the length of the short rope. Her tears and pants got louder and louder as she slowly walked towards the holo-disk. It almost sounded as if she was right next to us, then there was a click and the log ended.

“Caliber?”

“Hmm?” She stared intently at my Pip-buck, eyes blank in internal thought.

“What did they mean by alicorn?”

She didn’t answer.

“Caliber?” I prodded her gently.

“You aren’t… religious are you?” She was afraid that I would react similarly to the impossible abominations mentioned on the holo-disks.

“No.”

“Good, that makes them easier to understand… still disturbing to imagine though.” She warned.

“I don’t mind.”

“Well… they aren’t associated with the real Princesses from what I know… this Ash was right to think that they’re a fabrication.” She explained awkwardly. “They must have come from the South; we don’t know much about them here, they’re mysteries everywhere actually.”

“So nopony knows who’s birthing them? Or how?”

“Nope, the DJ talked about them once, but all he’s heard are rumors, that there hard to kill and you should avoid them at all costs.” she amended “They’re very…new, I… can’t really tell you much.”

“Why were they so disturbed by them?”

“They must have been from out East. No Galaxy News, few travelers, and certainly no Alicorns.” Caliber had grown up west of here, I remembered, in the farmlands within the bracket.

“What makes it different here? Why aren’t there any to the East?”

“It could be the cloud. It pretty much fills up Littlehorn valley, though it could also be the cold for all anybody knows. The way the DJ talks about them… it scares me. We’re lucky for whatever makes them stay down in Manehattan or at least anywhere south of Canterlot.”

“Sorry, I don’t really know what you mean.” I leveled with her. “Clouds in Canterlot?”

“Fair enough, if you’re that curious we could try and find some kind of overlook on the mountains there.” She gestured to the South. “Littlehorn is the last valley below this one; if you look at it you can see the cloud for yourself, maybe even Canterlot, or the leaking caves below it.” So it was a bracket then four hyphens stacked on each other, I corrected my simplistic mental rendition of the area.

“Maybe later, for now we should find this Ash pony, see if she’s alright.” I was very curious about the creatures that had driven five ponies to suicide, but more concerned for the mare who had been obligated to watch them do it.

“Alright, she might be able to explain it better than I can anyway.” Her attempts to sate my curiosity were appreciated, but ineffective. Caliber was very awkward about the issue; it was like she was dancing around it trying to avoid actually saying anything. I supposed she was scared of what my reaction might be, when one possibility dangled just below us.

“There’s still one more log.” I pointed out. I had laid the other four back into the circle, not wanting to disturb the memorial Ash had set up for her friends, or the offering of repentance to her Goddesses. The last was still with me, marked Final Words #5 in my Pip-buck. “I want to leave this as it was.” Caliber nodded for me to play the holo-disk before I put it back.

“I am Ash Ascella of Caeli’Velum, the last survivor of the Canterlot pilgrimage. I leave this recording in an attempt to save my friends, though to you it probably looks like I’ve already failed.” Her soft voice was strained, she had been crying.

“We came from the East, the Great Plains beyond these valleys, a place we knew as our home. I was raised in this group, in this religion, and I will stand by my Faith until I die. This is why I didn’t follow Cyrus when he led us into the dark; this is why I am now alone on my pilgrimage. We were heading to Canterlot, to see the final resting place of our Goddesses, we didn’t know what lay ahead of us, and we didn’t know what waited in the West.” Caliber sat close, we huddled in the cold breeze.

“All we knew was that Littlehorn was nearly impassable and that Zion is not as safe as its clean air and green silhouettes suggest.” Caliber gestured south at the Mention of Littlehorn and North for Zion. I now had names for the three valleys formed by the varying mountain ranges.
“We went along the Middle Passage, avoiding the rails, highway and towns along the way. Canterlot sits on the Southern mountains of Littlehorn, at the western most point of the range, meaning we would head South at the end of this valley. We did not make it that far. I saw Canterlot though, a silhouette on a far off horizon. I won’t continue there, not alone, not after this.” She spoke in a kind of Bohemian stumble coo.

“We found a ruin, from before the war, long before it. Ruins of stone and sand rather than metal and wood lay nestled in the mountains just behind this damned station. This is where I will go. To purge the world of the monsters that broke my companion’s faith in our Goddesses. But first I must bury my friends.” She paused for a moment, gathering herself, preparing to pray.
“I am of Caeli’Velum but I pray to thee Goddesses as a member of this pilgrimage. I pray for forgiveness, not for myself, but for the dead below me. My pilgrimage took their lives in a loss of faith, the abominations we saw in that ruin, the one we killed, tore from them their sanity, their will. They were reduced to fear and cowardice at the loss of your love, but I knew them for who they were before the trauma. They were faithful, moral ponies, and I beg you to take their actions in life towards your judgment rather than the reason for their death. Celestia let them walk in your kingdom, Luna light my empty sky with the stars of their souls and forgive them of their failures. Let them be judged at your will.” While she prayed her voice was stronger, I could imagine her, head down, eyes closed like so many had done in the Stable sermons. Bristling, gray wind replacing candle-lit warmth.
“I go to bury them, knowing there may be no one to bury me.”
With a final click the log ended. I placed it gently back into the center of the circle.

Caliber looked more confused than empathetic. I gestured for her to follow me off the roof so we could search for the last pilgrim. Ever since the logs started playing she had been acting strange, and I had to break her out of her blank-eyed trance to get her to acknowledge me. She must have truly believed that these deaths had been a result of murder, which was what was normal to her; this religious self destruction had thrown her off. She must not have experienced how committed some became to their faith, or how much losing it could hurt them.

“How does religion exist in the South?” I wondered aloud. “With the alicorns I mean?”

“The Alicorns are barely even a myth, but it still doesn’t, it was always reserved to the North, even before the war according to Damascus. The earth ponies here were far enough away from the princesses to live by myths and speculation about them alone. Only during the war did New Calvary become such a developed, magically imbued place. Before that there were no rails or highways to it, the mountains and valleys kept it secluded.” She explained. No wonder the religious confused her so much, to me they were common-place but in the grand scheme of Equestria, they were a vast minority.

“It sounds like there are a lot of cities south of Canterlot. Hoofington, Manehattan, Fillydelphia, why did Calvary get bombed if the real threat was down there?” I recited what names I knew.

“Everywhere got bombed. And by the time that happened the city was a heaving cornucopia of industry and war production.” She thought for a moment. “In fact Damascus once told me that a few years into the war religion became obsolete in Equestria.”

“It must have been hard to see the Princesses as Gods when they were knocking at your door asking for war bonds and enlistments.” I didn’t know what to think of the princesses, I knew they weren’t gods though, as that belief had never resonated with me.

“Nowadays there are only a few religious settlements and it’s still more than there were during the war. Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.” She shrugged.

“Let’s be careful what we call desperate when we find this mare.” I warned. I had always been tolerant of the Faith, and I doubted Caliber had the same sympathies. “Her faith is the only thing that kept her alive.”

“I understand, I’ll reign in the criticism if we find her.” The ‘if’ bothered me.
We clambered into the collapsed ‘Quick-Stop’ and made our way back to the gas pumps. I felt worse seeing the corpses now that I had heard there final moments on holo-disk. Cyrus, the leader of the pilgrimage had to be the muddy green buck with the book cutie mark. Harvest, the moon, and her buck, the sun, still held each other limply, entwined together. The rural mare who I still couldn’t name had the candles on her flank and Lockbox, the last buck, must have been the one with the key.

“Do you think we could have stopped them?” I asked, they had to have died fairly recently, a few hours ago at the most.

“Sounded like only a bullet would’ve been enough to stop them.” She replied grimly. “The way their friend was begging, I doubt we could have done anything.”

“If Ash is still planning to go after the alicorns, we could help her.” I realized, feeling better knowing that there was still something that I could do.

“Let’s hope we’re not too late for that.” Caliber stated in agreement, emerging from the cover of the station roof and making her way towards the nearby mountains. The land on the other side of the highway looked much too rocky to have drawn anypony looking for a burial site. We scanned the landscape ahead of us, Caliber examined the dust while I fruitlessly hopped and strained to try and look everywhere as quickly as possible. Caliber’s interest in the ground peaked and she began to follow a trail that I couldn’t see. Her eyes down she had more intuition on where to go than I did with my radar and heightened perception. I would ask her to teach me how to track, hoof steps were a new concept for me, as was dust.
“This way.” She instructed, heading back the way we had come along the highway.

Eventually, I heard the unfamiliar sound of metal repeatedly scratching and scooping at earth. We hurried towards the source of the noise, reaching the very base of the mountains. A shovel swung above a hole in the ground, repeatedly digging it into the earth to shift the hard packed gray material. Caliber slowed, surprising somepony in the wasteland was not a wise idea.

“Excuse me,” I called out. A green beige mare poked her head out of the fresh grave; she dropped the shovel from her mouth and onto the edge of the hole as she climbed out. Her body had swatches of a slightly darker Ecru color that could either be from the dirt or from long sustained wounds. Her hair was varying shades of pale violet, to old lavender. Her palette made her look faded compared to the solid black of her vest and the relatively clean cotton white of her rolled up sleeves and shirt. She wore more white material wrapped around her middle, presumably to shelter her from the winter cold. Her mane was shoulder-length, thick and wavy; her tail sustained the same texture but was cut shorter. She shook the cascade out of her face and revealed her black eyes, they were almost uni-colored, like a ghoul’s, but rather than cloudy mist they were solid, shining coals.
She didn’t say anything.

“Are you Ash?” inquired Caliber.

“Ash Ascella of Caeli’Velum?” I added to indicate that we cared enough to remember it in full; the name was in the same language that the faith had used, and while I only knew a few words and phrases of it, my experience had made it easier for me to remember the title.

“We listened to your Pilgrimage’s logs.” Explained Caliber. I noticed the small rigged shotgun at the earth pony’s side, and hoped that she wouldn’t feel the need to use it.
“We want to help you.” She almost seemed scared, but stood firm.

“You listened to them all?” her gentle voice was pained. “You heard them die?”

“Yes, and we would like to help you avenge them.” Caliber eased.

“Can you… can you help me get the bodies down?” Her eyes were on my horn.

“I can try to slow their fall,” I knew I could do little in the way of telekinetic cushioning but I could levitate something up to cut the ropes at least. She was half-way done with the fifth and final grave.

“Thank you for your kindness.” She turned to place the shovel more delicately against a rock. Her cutie-mark was a black diamond tear drop, a pale lavender star falls at the bottom of it, it is engulfed in deep purple flame that licks up to the top of the diamond. It almost seemed to move. “This was the closest ground I could find that would yield to the shovel. We will have to drag them here.”

“We could put them on the ladder, then carry it between us.” Caliber suggested.

“Like a rack of meat… Though it is better than dragging them.” She admitted grimly. “I’m sorry; it is hard to look at the transport of their corpses objectively.” She walked over to us. “It’s still settling in.”

“You’ll feel better after giving them a proper burial. The best way to deal with this kind of thing is to get some closure.” Caliber advised as she led us on our way back to the station. Somewhere in the meeting the introductions had gotten lost; we had known her name already and hadn’t offered our own. I felt the instinctual need to tell her who I was, but it felt like it was too late now.

“Why are you helping me?” Ash asked softly as we walked.

“You shouldn’t have to deal with this alone.” I answered.

“And you won’t be able to deal with an alicorn alone, either.” That answer made her shudder.

“They called themselves Goddesses. That’s what set us off the most. The used the name we had given to our creators and entitled themselves to It.” Anger seeped into her tone. “My closure will come when the ruins are clear of those abominations.”

We walked in silence the rest of the way, what little heat the midday sun had provided through the clouds was fading into the cold afternoon. I realized Ash’s emotional disarray came from anger, not remorse. Ponies of the Faith had a uniquely positive outlook on death, they missed those who had passed away, but felt that they had ascended to a better place. As those in the Stable missed those in the Stasis pods but knew they would one day emerge to a better world.

“Do you believe that the Goddesses forgave them?” I asked the wet-eyed mare as we looked up at the bodies.

“We are taught to forgive as they do. Those ponies lived their lives following what they were taught, if that means anything at all then they are ascended.” She smiled as she said that. Though I hardly knew her, I liked to see her smile.

“Well, while you get their bodies de-scended, I’ll bring the ladder over.” Caliber was undoubtedly the strongest of us; though Ash was slightly smaller than me, I suspected my soft Stable body was still the weakest of our three. That’s what magic was there to compensate for.

I levitated my knife out from within the scripture-embroidered vest under my coat and held it up against Cyrus’s noose. I wouldn’t be able to slow his fall, I didn’t have the ability, and I wasn’t about to try while simultaneously floating a knife above our heads. I did, however, light up my horn, illuminating the dead faces once again. I dimmed it to soft candlelight and began cutting the rope. Ash stepped back as his body fell and, with a thud, hit the ground.

“Sorry, I was over-confident when I said I could slow them.”

“That’s alright; I would have had to climb up in between them to cut them down if you weren’t helping me.” I had to admit that sounded very unpleasant. “They’re just corpses.” Her shining eyes said different.

“Caliber wasn’t making false promises about the alicorns, though.” I said to comfort her. “It sounded like she had some…” another thud as Lockbox fell, “experience with them.”

“No experience unfortunately, I’ve only heard rumors.” She set the ladder down against one of the gas pumps, sliding her neck out from in between the rungs. It wasn’t fully extended but still reached high above the machine it leaned against. “From what I’ve heard, I’m not looking forward to this fight.”

“We killed one.” Ash told us again, before it had been over holo-disk. “We were scared and didn’t know what they were. Yet we managed to kill one and get away down the mountain path.”

“What could they do?” Caliber inquired, thankfully distracting the candle-mare’s friend from seeing her crash to the ground. “The DJ didn’t mention much. They’re a new threat down South too, but from the way he talked about the stories, they sounded like a force to be reckoned with.”

“No, they almost seemed afraid.” She looked at me. “Before you feel bad, the insides of the ruins were strewn with body parts and blood.” She had read the almost sympathetic look towards the alicorns that was appearing on my face. “You’ll feel just as I do when you see them.”

I didn’t respond, instead beginning to saw on Harvest’s noose.

“How hard was it to kill?” Caliber was trying desperately to get an idea of what we would be up against. She seemed very interested in alicorns and I imagined that curiosity was also fueling her questioning.

“It took some time… again we were panicked, some were crying rather than fighting and they all cowered at the sight of it. I don’t blame them.” I paused my assault on Harvest’s suspending rope.

“Why didn’t they affect you as much?” I deferred from Caliber’s line of questioning.

“I don’t hold the Goddesses accountable for the horrors of the wasteland. These are the challenges we face in faith, I hold mine to be self-evident, irrespective of what I see. I took this pilgrimage out of respect, not out of a desire for proof.”

“So the others wanted to see Canterlot to validate that the Princesses bones aren’t there?” I guessed.

“Yes, they couldn’t justify that the Goddesses would subject us to this, which is the belief that leads to most crises of faith” she explained. Caliber stayed quiet, in guarded respect to the zealot.

“Why do you think that this happened?” I gestured around at the dead land.

“Even Gods make mistakes…” Harvest’s rope snapped on its own and the mare was let loose. She stalled for a moment, still locked with her buck in a dead embrace, and then she slid down his limp body and slumped softly onto the ground. I felt irrational guilt for separating the couple.

“Ash, do you think you can help me put them on this?” Caliber asked as she set the ladder on the ground.
The young mare nodded and joined Caliber in pushing her dead friends in over the rungs.
I sawed gently at the last buck’s rope; he looked lonely without Harvest in his arms. He fell with a much greater impact than his lover had as his body landed on the hard tarmac.
We took a moment to secure the five onto the ladder, leaving a gap in the middle for one of us to provide support from. I volunteered to lead the meat wagon and let Caliber and Ash lift the ladder up over my neck, as it set on my shoulders the weight almost buckled my knees and I struggled to maintain my composure. Caliber took the last rungs and Ash ducked under the now suspended ladder into the middle.

“We all set?” I couldn’t turn my head and called for an all clear before I began walking.
I heard two calls of confirmation and so started us on our way. We walked in silence, the dead held between us stifling any desire we had to talk, and motivating us to keep a fast pace. Carrying all of them at the same time hadn’t been the most strategic course of action, but we pushed through the physical exertion over the hills and rocks.

Eventually we reached the graves. Caliber instructed me to position us so that the ladder hovered perpendicular to the graves. For a moment I worried that she was planning on tipping the rack, sending the bodies falling roughly into the earth. Instead we lowered it to the ground and each steeped into the grave closest to us, leaving the loaded ladder lying across them all. As we climbed out of the ground I noticed that the sky was becoming darker, an occurrence that was no longer an implication of nightfall but rather the clouds become more moist and full. The grays and blacks above were off-set by the clear white on the distant Northern horizon, later we would see the sun in that strip of clear sky.

All three of us entered each grave at a time, slowly sliding the respective body off the ladder and into the dirt; we set Harvest next to her buck in the same grave on the left. The fifth grave would remain empty.

“Why dig this fifth grave?” Caliber asked as we lowered Cyrus.

“I was stalling, certainly was not looking forward to going back to the station.” She explained. “Harvest and Daybreak would have wanted to be buried together. They died together, so it’s only appropriate.”

Cyrus, Lockbox, Daybreak and Harvest. The second mare alone remained unnamed to me.

“Who was she?” I peered down at the still, pretty corpse. Her pale coat and stiff body made her look like a statue in the earth.

“Dixie, she was the second youngest in our pilgrimage. Second to me, so we were close. Harvest and Daybreak only needed each other and Cyrus was our leader. Lockbox was always playing the role of second in command, he liked to prove himself.” She joined me to stare down at her friend. “I wish I could have convinced her… she was the only one who would have listened.”

“You tried.” Caliber said matter-of-factly. “That’s more than most would do.”

“Thanks…” she searched for a name she didn’t know.

“Caliber,” they shook hooves over the grave’s corner.

“I’m Grace,” I took my opportunity before it slipped away again. “Grace Marie.”

“That is an optimistic name.” Ash observed as we regarded each other in introduction. “Almost sounds like something from before the war.”

“It kind of is.” Compared to the real world, the whole Stable seemed like somewhere from before the war. “It’s nice to meet you Ms. Ascella.” Caliber snorted and rolled her eyes. I had forgotten that proper manners were supposedly obsolete.

“I feel as if I am stalling again.” Ash said as she looked back to the body in the ground. “I think it’s time I bury them. Time to say goodbye.” I bristled at her words. Unpleasant nostalgia shooting through me once again. Visuals of the bloody halos around the bleeding heads of the Overmare and the Raider flashed before my mind’s eye. I had never had memories as accurate or detailed as these, my consciousness held onto the bad and the horrific while the good became occluded in their looming shadows.
“I will bury them. There is only one shovel, please do not offer to help.” She set to work.

Caliber and I stood back, not watching as this near stranger had her last moments with complete ones. White flecks fell from the shifting dark clouds, the great masses of black and gray did not seem to shrink or lighten as they released the wispy precipitation. Was this snow? It looked light and feathery, the white disappeared into the gray earth, they weren’t thick enough to set and so quickly melted away.

“Snow?” I asked dumbly, holding out my empty hooves to try and catch the round slivers. They dotted the sky sporadically, barely obstructing my view of the clouds.
Caliber just nodded, her own head was turned up to the sky and her brown eyes reflected the gray. To my shock she stuck her tongue out, and little pieces of the solid moisture quickly disappeared on the hot surface. She giggled as she shook the slight damp off her face and blinked the moisture away.

She gave me a prompting look, nudging her head up to the open air. She smiled, waiting for me to follow suit. I lifted my tongue to the sky. Each piece of snow tickled for a brief moment before dissimilating into cold water that trickled down my throat, it was pure and refreshing. We laughed quietly together as we lapped up the snow from the air. Taking the most inappropriate time to find enjoyment.

The brief scratch between metal and rock reminded us of what we were a part of. Ash was heaving and trembled as she brought the shovel down over and over again, turning dust and earth over onto her pilgrimage. I could have helped with my magic, but I could tell that the act meant more to Ash than manual labor. This was a ritual she wanted to perform alone, a burial, a funeral. We didn’t know the ponies lying in those graves; this was for them, between them and her, a final goodbye.

“I’m going to ask her to come with us.” I decided. “After we hunt down the alicorns.”

“Grace…” the levity of our snow catching had been broken in the brief moment we had watched the mare toiling just ahead of us. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“She’s alone; her purpose has been taken from her. She needs something to set her mind on, somepony to be with her.”

“Everybody has trauma in the wasteland. But when it’s this fresh…” she winced. “It’s the only thing you can think about. It eats you up inside. And until she recovers she’s not in a state to help us. And that’s honestly what we should be more concerned about.” I could tell from her pained expression that even she didn’t like what she was saying.

“What are you really worried about?” I pried.

She looked forlornly at the graves. “I don’t want anybody else to be in danger. And I don’t think she’ll be able to handle herself. Emotion should stay segregated from your work.”

“If she had nowhere else to go…”

“Then I admit that she would be better off with us than alone.” Caliber yielded. “I may be underestimating her. Her friends seemed to have.”

“Sounds like she handled herself well when faced with the alicorn. I’m willing to bet that its body is filled with more buckshot than anything else.” I made reference to Ash’s shotgun. “She might even be of more use in combat than Me.”

“Hey, you’re already two for zero, not bad for your first day.”

“Oh yeah? What’s your kill count?” Ash had finished covering the graves; she went along them one by one bowing her head in prayer. I knew from experience this was not a moment you should interrupt.

“I’ll put it this way: If I had tried to keep track with notches on my gun then I’d have nothing left but a splinter to fight with.” She unstrapped her marksman Carbine.”Speaking of which, I’d like it very much if you used her against the alicorns… seeing as I can’t.”

“Sure,” I let her strap the weapon to my side. “Any tips?”

“Unless alicorns are drastically different anatomically: aim for the head. Even the biggest opponents can only take a couple bullets to the brain before it shuts them down.” Not the biggest revelation in the world. “Oh, and less obviously, if they can actually fly, then swap to incendiary rounds when you’re trying to bring them down.” I really hoped Ash was right to think that the alicorns deserved this.

“Let’s see if she’s ready to go.” The longer I thought about the alicorns, the dimmer my drive to hunt them down burned. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop Ash once we found them, and if she was wrong about what she saw in the ruins then I would be enabling murder.

We walked slowly over to the four full graves. The fifth remained an empty hole, half as deep compared to how the others had been. I could tell Ash had been crying, her eyes were lined with red and her body looked wracked from heaving. I felt like holding the smaller mare, but her body language dissuaded me.

“It’s hard to think they might not have made it.” She revealed why she was so sad despite her beliefs.

“They’ll make it.” I reassured her. “You wouldn’t follow the Goddesses if you thought they wouldn’t do what was right.” Ash began walking to the West, we followed her guarded pace along the mountains.

“They would not want horrific imitations of themselves walking Equestria. Calling themselves by Celstia and Luna’s rightful title. Kidnapping and mutilating… in the name of their sick sense of purpose.”

“You lead us to them and we’ll help you send them straight to…” Caliber tried to adhere to her religion as she comforted her. “The moon?” Ash laughed a soft, sweet laugh; though it was still wet from her mourning. But the serious expression slowly returned across her face.

“If you decide to run when you see them.” She seemed to be talking directly to me. “I will not blame you.”

“I’m not…” she glanced at the symbol on my coat. “I’m not a member of the Faith.”

“Oh…” she seemed surprised. “Then why would you help me?”

“Same reason she did.” I nodded to Caliber, who seemed pleased at the reference.

“Just because!”

“That’s… interesting.” She stared at both of us with a newfound confusion. “We don’t usually receive kindnesses from anypony who isn’t kin to us. Cyrus would have found this… eye opening.” Ash said, sparing a look to the old pilgrim’s grave behind us.

“We’re the kind of godless heathens you don’t need to be afraid of.” Caliber assured, she seemed familiar with the Faith’s negative perception of non-believers.

As we walked Ash seemed to be deep in thought. Whether she was still mourning, readying herself for the alicorns, or simply pondering the motivations of the two ponies following her was unclear.
The mountains seemed impossibly tall when I looked up at them. They were more imposing even, than the giant black behemoth of Zion valley, which I had only seen at a distance. The snow still fell, gently and slowly, so softly that sometimes I forgot it was even happening. The ground consumed the white precipitation before it could even leave a mark. I wondered if the heavy snow that coated the landscape in pictures of old world Hearth’s warming Eve celebrations still occurred. And why the clouds never seemed to fade, despite the fact that they were dispensing their moisture, the fabric of their existence. Coupled with the way the curtain of grays and blacks simply cut off at the Equestrian border to the north made them seem suspiciously artificial. A lie, solid like the sky painted onto a casino ceiling to deny the passage of time.

We began to make our way into the mountains, along a winding path reminiscent of the one leading down from the Stable. It twisted through the rocks making what lay at the end of it a mystery. The path was narrow and rough, so we walked in a line, Ash first, then Caliber, then myself.

I was excited. Adrenaline already ebbed through me, the thought of fighting something that required no moral forethought to kill appealed to me. Assuming they were the abominations, Ash promised they were.
What else could have prompted five ponies to suicide? What else would blindly smear the ruins they occupied with the remains of the ponies they killed? What else could be known as the newborn terrors of the South? I wished that I had heard the DJ’s report on them, he had guided my hand before, to kill raiders, and I desired his guidance again. All I had to justify this extermination was the fearful awe of a bound mercenary and the vengeful rage of a brooding zealot.

Soon we were surrounded by rock; we were walking down a short craggy pass through the mountains. They rose up around us, closing us in, and these towers of earth and rock made me feel more claustrophobic than the Stable ever had. I could no longer see the band of sky that had been my anchor against the clouds that made up the constantly shifting roof of the world.

The path picked up again, the rocks around us dropped away to gentler slopes of land and mountain. We had reached the other side of the escarpment. The train that I was following stopped; the pony leading us had frozen in her tracks. Caliber and I stepped up to join her.

“What the celestial fuck…” Caliber whispered.

“Regnum Caeli…” Ash crossed herself as she gave her own version of the other mare’s crass sentiment.

A giant pony lay dead on the path ahead of us. Three times my height at least, legs long and neck curved. It was tinged purple, but dark as the night. It lay in a pool of blood that for once seemed lighter than the body it was bleeding out of, it only served to set off the darkness of its owner’s coat. I saw the wings first; thick but limp, laying spread and flayed exaggerating the creature’s huge span. Then I noticed the horn, long and gnarled, tip pointed like a lance. Alicorn! My mind screamed, Celestia! Luna! Alicorn! I looked to its flank for a crescent moon, and saw blank darkness instead.

This thing had no cutie-mark.

Ash looked back to me, and we met eyes. I nodded, whatever this was, it wasn’t a pony, it wasn’t natural, it was a fabrication. A raping of the Princesses’ image. I levitated Caliber’s gun out of the strap, readying myself for this fallen horror’s brothers and sisters. We all felt the tension, we all felt the fear. None of us spoke. This monster was terrifying as a corpse, what had it been like alive?

We stepped around the body, through the blood, trailing it as we went. We couldn’t step over it; we couldn’t bring ourselves to touch it. Even Caliber, who held no stake with Goddesses or Princesses, stood silent and afraid before the nightmare. Black sky set off by white snow covered, a black corpse set off by deep red blood.

The ruins were apparent now. Around me were stones of brown and faded hues, cracked and displaced by time and the reverberations of war. Short pillars lined the path as we approached the center of the ancient construction. An altar sat atop a spherical stage that poked out of the dead earth, torches sat cold around it. Into the mountain face stood a doorway, gaping and black, calling to us. The ruin looked bare, where I expected vegetation to have grown up around the age-old stone stood blank grays and rotted browns. Stories told of vines and overgrowth but this place from before the old-world stood as barren as the rest of the wasteland. We walked side by side now, but quickly stopped, simultaneously, once again.

A living nightmare. It stared into the sky as it stood on a outcropping of rectangular ruin, jutting out over what was presumably the Littlehorn valley. Its eyes blinked slowly, but were so dark that it was hard to tell. Its wings stretched out at its sides, as if it were readying itself to take flight. It was almost graceful, an aberration of the virtues it mimicked. It was frozen in place like an obsidian statue, dark green.

It felt like I was at the edge of the world, everything cut off just ahead of the alicorn as the land opened out into the expanse of air above the valley. As I surveyed the area I saw two more of the creatures, standing just as still and silent as their sister’s corpse: One near the entrance into the mountain and another amidst some collapsed stone near the cliff.
“They’re all mares.” I whispered, though the others didn’t seem to care.

“We should attack them now, while they’re unaware.” Ash growled.

“We can’t take all of them.” Warned Caliber worriedly.

“They are stupid and lost. They cannot work together as we can. One dies and the others will panic.”

“Then I’ll sneak up to that one looking over the valley.” I planned. “Once I kill it, the others will come for me, you two attack them then and we’ll drop them together.”

“You think you can handle her?” Caliber asked earnestly.

“If this gun is all it’s cracked up to be.” I floated her beloved rifle besides me. “Then I’m the best armed here, your shotgun, knives and pistol will work better for a dirty, combat attack then an initiating one.”

“Good luck.” Ash said bluntly, closing the issue. Caliber nodded at me, and then she knocked her hoof softly against the bottom of her jaw. I got the message.

I circled the altar, hugging the mountain face for as long as I could. The alicorn wasn’t facing me, to my advantage. The cliff limited my options for a covered path, to my disadvantage. I darted to a pile of rubble nearer to the altar, suppressing my steps as best I could against the alternating rocks and earth. As soon as I fired a shot, we would be in the heat; I would have to make it count.

I got as close as I dared to, the last pillar before the expanse of brown stone making up the overlook. Levitating the large rifle at my side I prepared to take a shot. The back of its head, the bullet would tear through its skull and rip apart its brain. I lined up the weapon to its target… and fired.

The kickback nearly knocked me off my precarious balance against the pillar, but the shot hit its mark. The round went straight through the alicorn’s head; I heard the rapidly echoing sound of bone being penetrated twice within the same second, then saw the bullet emerge in a spurt of dark blood from the other side of the alicorn’s skull. But I did not see the creature fall.

To my despair it did not die, as somehow the nightmare had survived a bullet through its mind.

“WHO DARES TO FIRE UPON US?!” the voice screamed loud and booming, the voice of something horribly far from a mare. Not the voice of something with a hole in both sides of its head.

I ran out from behind the pillar, ran towards the alicorn.

“YOU INSULT US!” its horn glowed green and I saw broken rock rise into the air in my peripheral vision. It was lifting hundreds of pounds at once; its telekinesis was astronomically powerful.

Stone crashed into the ground around me; shrapnel from the shattering rock scratched my hide as I ran towards the monster, weapon ready. I ducked and dived to avoid being crushed under the screeching meteorites; I narrowly avoided bone-crushing death by a hair. The alicorn stood still, head crooked down to stare into my eyes and wings stretched in physical exertion. It trembled under its own magical prowess; as its black eyes stared into my gold.

I couldn’t fire while dodging the wild debris, so I leapt right in front of the alicorn, firing three successive rounds into its chest as it thrashed its neck wildly and reared up onto its hind legs.

“INSOLENCE!” Its giant hooves waved wildly in the air. They began to descend with unrelenting force, to crush my very body under their mass. I slipped into SATS for the second time.

The world froze within a tinted hue. The alicorn’s screams stopped, its fury seemed to disappear save for the unchanging expression of surprise, disgust and anger on its face. The clouds were no longer tearing against each other behind the beast as the entire world paused. Everything was quite, the word insolence echoed in my mind as I stared into the mouth that had somehow spoken it as it screamed.

Calculated percentages expressed my chances to hit every part of the body before me. I had to think of a way to save myself from the hooves hovering just above me. Shooting its head was too risky, as there was apparently no guarantee that it would die, and the same went for the chest and legs. My only option was to disarm it, to destroy the weapons bearing down on me. I ordered a shot to each hoof.

Time began again as the rifle in my golden magic let loose two impossibly rapid shots into the alicorn’s hooves. The bullets broke into the thick, black, keratin and the beast cried out in pure agony. All the force behind its impending strike was lost as it succumbed to absolute pain. Every nerve in its lower legs burned intensely as their bases shattered into dozens of shards, yielding to the weapon’s powerful 556 millimeter rounds.

I avoided the slower, broken onslaught easily, stepping even closer to the giant, eternal thing in front of me. I could smell its pain; I could hear its cries just above me as it tried to settle down on its shattered hooves. It was struggling to stand, much less fight, now was the time to finish it.

I pressed the end of Caliber’s rifle deep into the base of the alicorn’s jaw. Right at the end of its neck, in the soft underside of its muzzle, below its brain, allowing me to feel it swallow by the movement of the gun. I fired the killing shot, brain matter and blood exploded from the crest of its head, the cries stopped and its hooves gave up their fight for hold against the floor that had brought them unbearable anguish.
I had learned from the second raider I killed, so I quickly stepped aside from where the corpse collapsed, bleeding from four holes in its head and three in its chest. Hooves in pieces before it.

Spinning around I saw my two allies fighting the dead alicorn’s kin. They danced around each other, the monsters occasionally lifting off into the air to avoid a barrage of buckshot and .45 rounds. The blue alicorn stabbed desperately with its sharp horn, attempting to skewer Ash like a piece of meat, the other, a green one, opted for telekinesis and floated sharp shards around it, jabbing them in all directions.

I quickly swapped the rifle for my laser pistol, running to join the close quarters skirmish. I worried that at this range I would hit Ash or Caliber with the rifle rounds that would no doubt prove much more deadly to a regular pony. As I ran I watched the mares duck and dive, eventually performing an act of improvised violence and teamwork that almost made me stop to admire its unfolding.

Communicating in the way that only two ponies in the heat of battle could, Caliber initiated a co-ordinate attack on the alicorn that was desperately swinging shards of rock through the air. She tossed the Auto pistol to Ash, who caught it in her mouth, an exchange that only earth ponies had the aloofness to find sanitary. Leaping towards the green telepath Caliber snatched one of the deadly sharp shards out of the air with her teeth. She landed and used her momentum to slip beneath the towering monstrosity, plunging the makeshift weapon into its chest.

She cut an almost surgical line down the underside of the creature, running along its body with her head tilted up. She emerged from between its back legs leaving room to take her place. Ash dived onto her back under the rearing alicorn and fired off with both her rigged shotgun and the pistol in her mouth. Some of the pistol shots went wide but the combined buckshot and 45 rounds that hit home tore the internal organs of the alicorn apart leaving its entire chest and gut cavity shredded and laden with bullets.

The mockery collapsed to its side, completely destroyed from within. The thick alicorn coat had been torn asunder and every piece of unloaded shrapnel had cut into something vital, leaving it incredibly dead.
As Ash had predicted the last alicorn was panicking at the sight of its fallen comrades.

“STOP! YOUR GODDESS COMMANDS IT!” it screamed as it swooped evasively from all three of our shots. My red laser beams were now a part of the desperate onslaught of buckshot and bullets.

“GODDESS, WHERE ARE YOU?! HELP ME!” it contradicted itself. “WE ARE THE GODDESS!”

The alicorn was panicked, but it gathered itself enough to remember its telekinetic abilities. Lifting itself into the air it pulled up at least a dozen stones of varying sizes along the way. It began to swoop over us, no longer circling our rapidly firing guns but wisely keeping a dancing distance. Passing above us, it forced its payload into the ground. Chunks of earth flew up around us and I found myself ducking and diving once again. The attacks were wild but disorientating, the alicorn flew fast and high when it wasn’t gathering ballast in its magic, making it difficult to hit… impossible.

Then I had a stupid idea.

I holstered my laser pistol, gauging the alicorns flight patterns along a vaguely repeating circuit. It swung low after unloading its assault of stone to collect more artillery. Now it was above us, debris and rock rained down, focusing on Caliber and Ash who were still firing fruitlessly at it. It came back around, flying close to the surface, working its wide-spread telekinetic magic. I leapt through the air, kicking hard off of a pillar, and tackling the alicorn as it flew by. It hadn’t been moving fast, but I almost lost my hold as it curved back up in altitude. I straddled the fallen angel’s back, locking my legs against its wings and neck.

“REMOVE YOURSELF FROM OUR BACK!” it yelled, promptly hailing down another attack on the two mares, who were still grounded in their sanity.

“Stop shooting! Grace is on it!” Caliber exclaimed, though I could barely hear her under the flap of the alicorns wings and its booming commands.

“INSOLENCE!” it screamed the same word its sister had. My father’s coat whipped behind me as the alicorn circled the ruin violently, the wind rushed around us making it impossible for me to hold anything securely with my telekinesis. The alicorn was bleeding profusely from bullet wounds, burn marks on its body and wings marked where I had hit it and perforated swatches indicated where Ash had.

I strained my neck and pulled the knife from my vest, realizing that I would have to do this with my mouth alone. I gripped the handle of the short combat knife tightly in my teeth, biting down hard so as not to lose it to the lurches and bucks of the struggling alicorn. Its neck lay bare before me, if I could only get enough of a grip to get some power behind my strike… Beyond my own control one of the alicorn’s wild swoops wrenched my neck and drove the knife deep into its own.

It dug in to the hilt, warm blood sprayed into my face as the beast’s jugular was pierced.
“Goddess…” it gargled, its powerful voice reduced to a strained murmur through a felled throat.
The alicorn lost control, breaking off from its circuit around the ruin and beginning a final dive straight for Caliber and Ash in a last ditch attempt to avenge its gutted sister.

We were going down; it barely flapped its wings as we quickly fell towards the earth. I let go of the knife, leaving it embedded in the creature’s neck. The wounds it had sustained were too numerous, it had lost more blood than I had in the entirety of my body. I doubted it would be conscious enough to stop our impending crash landing. Caliber and Ash dove out of the way as we came barreling down, the alicorns eyes were closed but mine were wide open in instinctive fear. Flying was tarrying, falling was terrifying.

We hit the earth, the alicorn below me, landing angled and speeding. The initial impact was enough to break my hold on the creature it killed. The sick caricature’s corpse dug into the ground as it slid, crushed and broken. I couldn’t watch it for long as I spun wildly off upon my own volatile path, flying independently with retained velocity. My saddlebag opened, releasing half of my worldly belongings, letting them scatter around me, and sending Damascus’s ornate box towards its own rough landing somewhere below.

I finally touched down; my head snapping back and hitting hard dirt, better than solid stone. Luckily my body bore the brunt of the crash. I was alive, but I couldn’t move. I felt paralyzed, lying on my back and staring up into the void that seemed to be growing darker by the second. Soft snow still fell.

“Grace?! Grace!” Caliber appeared above me, her polished chestnut eyes fleeting worriedly across my aching body. I was losing consciousness, I could feel it happening. The sky became darker as I struggled to keep my own eyes open. I used the frantic auburn blur of her mane as an anchor; but Caliber’s words nearly became unintelligible, as every sound was reduced to a dull echo of itself.

The pain was almost unbearable; as parts of me were bent unnaturally, to the point where they almost didn’t feel like they were attached to my body anymore. I wanted to close my eyes and rest, but hard hooves clutched my face and shook me into focus.

“We’re going to help you Grace!” Caliber assured, depriving me of sweet unconsciousness.

“She might have broken bones; we need to set her legs and keep her still until we can confirm that she’s Stable.” Ash’s voice spoke from beyond my visible world. Stable. Stable. Take me to see Cross. I couldn’t tell if I was saying the words as I ordered myself to speak them. I was losing grip on reality. Concussion, it felt like. Blood? Was I going to die like I had seen others die twice before, face up in a pool of my own blood? The raider and the Overmare. Stable. Take me to see Cross.

“Focus on this!” Caliber precariously held a seemingly eternal orb between her hooves, trying desperately to draw my attention to it. “You don’t want to be able to feel us move you.” She pressed the cold artifact against my horn. “Hold it.”

I felt her let go of the orb and I reflexively grabbed at it with my telekinesis. As I latched onto it, my focus split in parallels, and I drove it at the sphere in a final burst before losing it all completely.
The world went dark.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk added: Wasteland Doctor: (pre-requisite Wasteland Medic) You can fully restore crippled limbs with the right supplies at hoof. Also you gain a +5% critical chance against opponents with familiar anatomy. This is all useless while you’re unconscious though.

Next Chapter: Chapter 8: Where is my Mind? Estimated time remaining: 12 Hours, 34 Minutes