"The future must be secured. I won’t let you stand in the way of that."

Hollow.

I hadn’t even arrived at the Hollow Shades yet and I could already tell that it had been named vary appropriately. The desolate landscape that stretched out around the borders of the Hollow Shades were empty beyond comparison. There were no structures, no land masses, no life. Just seemingly endless miles of blackened stone and ash, mixed with the occasional withered remains of long dead leafless trees. Even my pipbuck failed to pick up even the smallest life form among the outskirts of the accursed location.

Everything seemed to still and quiet. The only movement being that of ash filled gusts of wind creating strange swirling shapes in the brownish grey atmosphere. Even that wind was completely silent as we trudged along.

Crank lead the way, his heavy hoofsteps muffled by the crunching of ash below his hooves. Pyre walked closely behind him alongside my Hellhound, their intense gaze locked onto the back of Crank’s head, ready to attack if he were to turn on us. Not that I thought that would do any good. Crank had proven beyond a doubt that he was perfectly capable of taking all of us out if he wanted to.

Goddesses I really hoped he didn’t want to.

That left Brisk, Xayah and myself to take up the rear. I didn’t mind that. It had been a long couple of days since the two of us had any real time just the three of us. Not that I didn’t like Pyre Blaze, but there was only so much of her a pony could take at a time.

The last few minutes of walking had been in complete silence, and it was really starting to get on my nerves. I wanted somepony to speak so I could get away from this eerie silence that had settled over us.

“They really meant it when they decided to call this place hollow,” Brisk grunted as he scanned the radioactive wasteland around us. No question about it, Brisk had been just as eager to break the silence as I had been.

Xayah nodded. “As Crank said, this area used to test Balefire bombs back before the war. To be truthful, we are taking far less radiation than I had expected.”

We were still taking rads. About one rad a second to be exact. But I had been forced to deal with far worse levels of radiation before, and considering how those places had not been hit point blank with a balefire bomb, I considered the amount of radiation I was taking to be a blessing. It could have been so much worse.

"I thought Balefire bombs were a Zebra invention?" Brisk asked. "Why were ponies testing them out?"

Xayah nodded, keeping her gaze out at the dunes of ash. "Ponies created mega spells, zebra's created Balefire bombs, but that does not mean ponies were without Balefire bombs and zebras were without mega spells."

The idea of a war where both sides had access to such powerful weapons of destruction was a terrifying one. I didn't like thinking about it.

“So what kind of stuff is out here?” I asked, following Brisk’s gaze out into the empty and vast expanse around us. “The kind of stuff that wants to kill you, I mean.”

Xayah simply shrugged. “Hard to say, I have never been out this way before.”

“Where have you been?” Brisk asked, turning back from the wasteland to look at her. “This was your first time in Manehattan as well, right?’

Xayah nodded. “I was raised in Glyphmark near Canterlot. My family and I spent most of our time there. We lived in New Appleoosa for a while as well, but the ponies there were- well, they were less than thrilled to need to share their home with a bunch of zebras.”

I tried to imagine what it must be like to not be wanted around because you were a zebra. It took me a second, but I quickly realized I understood how it felt to not be wanted because of something you were born into and had no control over.

I nodded Grimly. “Being hated because of who you are sucks. I had to deal with that a lot in my Stable,” I said with a frown, remembering all the beating I had had back in the Stable. The idea of some ponies beating me was a lot less terrifying now than it was back then. I had seen and done so much worse since those days.

Xayah shook her head in near disbelief. “It is hard to imagine anypony not liking you for who you are Amber. The idea is simply foolish to me.”

I blushed at that. Brisk slapped his hoof against his face with a groan. “Goddesses, you two need to stop flirting and just fucking buck already!” I shot him a grumpy look which he took as his que to leave. “Yeah, I’m going to just go chill with Pyre for a moment.”

I looked over at Xayah nervously as Brisk rushed ahead of us, not quite sure where to pick up the conversation after that comment. From the massive blush on Xayah’s face from Brisk’s outburst, I could tell she wasn’t quite sure either. And holy shit could Xayah blush. Her face had gone more red than a fucking tomato.

Xayah rubbed her forehooves together awkwardly. “So, how are you feeling? About the memory orb and all that?”

I winced. Damn, I was really hoping no pony would bring that up. “I uh- I’ve been better, but I’m coping,” I replied evenly, trying to suppress the images of all the broken foals bodies around my hooves from returning to my mind. I didn’t do a very good job.

“But will you be alright?” Xayah pushed, looking over at me with a worried expression.

“I didn’t know if I would for a minute,” I admitted. “But- but I think I’m going to be okay now. I just need to keep going and I’ll be fine,” I didn’t know how much of that was true. Hopefully most of it. I didn’t bother mentioning I had come terrifyingly close to killing myself back on the train. I didn’t want Xayah to be worried.

Xayah gave me a perturbed look, but seemed to believe me. “Well if you ever need to get something off you chest, I’m here for you,” she said quietly, giving me a gentle smile.

I returned her smile, though mine was arguably more forced than hers. “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I never got to thank you for saving my life back with the raiders,” Xayah continued, facing forward and continuing to walk onwards. “Seeing’s how you were unaware of the attack at all.”

I waved my hoof nonchalantly. “Don’t mention it, it was nothing,” I insisted. “We’re all here for eachother in this,” I didn’t like being thanked for murdering a bunch of children, despite the good it might have caused.

“Perhaps it is nothing to you,” Xayah soothed flatly, slowing her pace a little. “But you were not ripped open and disemboweled.”

She had me there.

Ahead of us, both Crank and my Hellhound froze. The massive black Hellhound lifted its head up high and took a long sniff of the air, smelling out what I could only assume was some sort of incoming danger. Crank instantly dropped into a battle stance and awaited whatever it was the two of them were sensing.

I glanced down at my EFS. Nothing except the six green bars that made up our group. I looked up, hoping to spot whatever it was that I was unable to see. I found nothing.

Then I saw it. Something began moving towards us at an alarming speed from across the barren wasteland. It’s seemingly massive form hidden just below the surface, causing clouds of ash and rock to erupt from the ground wherever it moved.

I put my hoof in front of Xayah protectively as whatever it was grew closer. Brisk and Pyre reacted with surprise as well, readying themselves for whatever was approaching. Even as it drew near us, I was unable to pick up the massive concealed monster on my EFS.

I readied Boneless as the massive undisclosed beast began to circle us with a speed that I was having trouble keeping up with. My stomach clenched and I began to feel sick.

A foul smell seemed to ooze from all around us as the gigantic monster closed in.

Then, for a brief second, it broke the surface. I could see pink, fleshy skin coated in pony sized pus bubbles and hundreds of massive, slimy tentacles reaching towards me. In a flash, one of the tentacles wrapped around my hoof and began pulling me towards a gnashing maw filled with razor sharp teeth.

Then Crank blasted at it with his Tesla Cannons. Blood erupted from the side of the monster and splashed us all with visera. The creature screeched and ear piercing shriek that caused a small trail of blood to drizzle from my ears. The thrashing monstrosity coiled away from the attack, releasing its grip on me and quickly retreating into the ground and out of sight.

I lay on the ground panting for a second, staring in horrified awe at the hole that the creature had ripped in the ground, not sure how to take what had just happened. How the fuck had my pipbuck not been able to pick that thing up! It had been huge!

“What the fuck was that thing!” I heard Pyre blurt, peering down the massive hole that had been aggressively ripped out of the ground.

“There are things below the Hollow Shades that make the creatures of Manehattan look like play toys,” Crank grunted, continuing on towards the Hollow Shade as if nothing unexpected had happened. “Try not to get into a fight with them. Your bullets will do little more than pester them.”

I gulped as Xayah and Brisk rushed over to help pull me back to my hooves. Leave it to us to need to go to the one place in the wasteland that had creatures that big that you couldn’t kill. Just my fucking luck.

As we began to walk forwards again I could have sworn I saw a small, filly version of myself smiling at me from behind one of the dead trees. I squinted to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, only for the image to disappear.

“Did any of you see that?” I asked, pointing out to where I thought the filly me had been.

Both Xayah and Brisk cast a glance out to where I was pointing. “See what?” Xayah asked, worry creeping back into her voice. “Do you see something out there?” she quickly reverted to a battle stance.

I shook my head, not sure what I saw myself or if it had even been real at all. “Never mind. I’m sure it was nothing.”

I turned and began following closely behind everyone else. Very slowly the jagged rocks of the Hollow Shade began to loom towards us.

I pulled out my pipbuck and flipped through the audio files I had downloaded from Silver Ace’s terminal in the Four Star Apartment building. I had been so busy the last two days I hadn’t been able to give any but the first recording a listen. Figuring that I had some time to kill before we arrived at the Hollow Shades, I clicked on the second audio file and listened as the hum of static flared to life.

“Twilight’s insistence to reach out to other races has been… less than successful,” the aged, yet smooth voice of Silver Ace said over the recording. “The Buffalo were less than pleased by her attempts to persuade them to the side of Equestria and the Yaks are… well the Yaks are the Yaks,” Silver Ace gave a small chuckle at that, but there was some weight to it. “It should be interesting to see how her next attempt goes, though with the amount of hatred between them even before this damn war I can’t see it going any better.

“In other news, Stable-Tec has continued with the assigned mission. Scootaloo seems very interested in the project. She seems to be far more accepting of the idea of Utopia than I was expecting, even started creating an Atmospheric Administering Sustenance System for prolonged existence within the program.”

I could feel my heart start pounding at that. Atmospheric Administering Sustenance System? He was talking about the A.A.S.S! Stable-Tec had made the A.A.S.S for Silver Ace for some Utopia program he was working on? That brought up far more questions than it gave answers. How had it gone from this Utopia program to Stable 25? Was there more than one A.A.S.S’ out there? What the fuck was the Utopia program? I had no idea.

“The other two heads of Stable-Tec, that being Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, are far less enthusiastic about the idea,” The voice of Silver Ace continued, his tone dropping to one that was far less friendly, though still highly charismatic. “I do hope they don’t pose and issue farther on down the road. This project demands utmost dedication and secrecy. I guess we will see how that all unfolds at a later date.”

“Silver Ace, can I get your assistance please?” I heard a softer voice say from what sounded like a different room to the one Silver Ace was recording in.

“Of course Fluttershy, give me a moment,” Then the audio recording cut out.

I tried to process what I had heard. This Utopia Silver Ace was talking about must have some sort of connection to what was going on, right? There was no way that all this fuss over the A.A.S.S. was for nothing. I tried to think of what the connection might have been, but my mind was coming up blank.

The wasteland had many mysteries. I doubted I would know all of them for a long, long time.

It took almost an hour longer to get the the Hollow Shades than Crank had predicted. Perhaps he had underestimated the distance from the train to our destination, or perhaps he simply wasn't used to needing to travel at the same speed as a group of slower ponies.

Whatever the reason, by the time we had finally made it to the large jagged rock formations marking our destination, my hooves were tired and felt like they were about to fall off. My stomach gave a loud growling noise in protest as it demanded food from me.

I still wasn’t used to this whole needing to eat thing.

The Hollow Shade was a massive circular ruin wedged between two large rock spires. A small collection of ramshackled houses filled the inner circle of the ruins, most houses patched together with slabs of dark black stones. Cracked stone paths weaved through the dilapidated structures and small clusters of dead trees to a large well in the center of the Shade. I wasn’t able to see the bottom of the well from where I was standing, but I was fairly far away so it is unlikely that I would have been able to see the bottom, even if it was only a few feet deep. A large stone wall had been erected around the ruins, making entry near impossible without going through the front gates.

Far in the distance I could see a massive black spire of metal reaching up into the sky and disappearing above the thick grey cloudlayer. An evil green fog seemed to waft around the base of the massive structure.

“What is that place?” I asked, staring in terror at the looming structure on the horizon. It felt wrong somehow, like I was staring down the barrel of a gun.

“I told you that the Ministry of Arcane Science worked around here,” Crank grunted, seemingly more interested in the stone wall around the Hollow Shade. “That is the MAS headquarters.”

I gulped. “Why does it look so… evil?”

“Being hit by a balefire bomb will do that to ya,” Pyre grinned, looking up at the tower. “Don’t matter if you’re a living pony or a tower I guess.”

Brisk made a nervous chuckling noise behind us. “Uh, so- does Red Eye usually come out around these parts?” He asked, turning his attention from the ominous black tower to the stone wall blocking us from the Hollow Shades.

“I don’t think so,” Xayah asked, looking back at him. “Why do you ask?”

Brisk pointed at the large stone wall in the distance. I squinted to make out what he was pointing at. Sure enough two blood red banners depicting a rather evil looking eye had been raised above the entrance.

Before we could discuss that any further, I heard the click of a shotgun being cocked. Crank heard it too. He whirled around to face the sudden intruders, his tesla cannons already prepared to fire at any given moment.

Four ponies dressed in rags had started to approach us. The leader of the group, a tall earth pony mare with a dusty brown coat and black duster held a shotgun level with my head and glared at me with hateful eyes.

“Whose side are ya on,” the mare growled, taking a step towards us.

Crank snarled, his two tesla cannons charging up at his sides. “I would back down if I were you,” the cyber pony growled, making most of the ponies flinch. The mare in the front ignored him.

“I’m goin' t’ ask ya one more time, whose side are ya on?” The mare demanded, her steady gaze burning into us.

Crank began walking forwards, each step causing the ground to shake a little. His tesla cannons began to glow a brilliant blue. I waved my hooves in front of him to stop his attack.

“Hold on there Crank, we don’t need to attack them yet,” I said, hoping to defuse some of the growing tension.

“What do you mean, which side are we on?” Brisk asked, stepping up next to me.

The mare gave a hollow laugh. “Ha! Like y’all don’t know,” After seeing us exchange a bunch of confused glances she lowered her shotgun a little. “Y’all actually don’t know, do y’all?”

We all shook our heads in unison.

“We just came from Manehattan,” Xayah elaborated, keeping her hood pulled over her head in a failed attempt to conceal herself. “We have no idea what is happening out here.”

The mare’s skepticism seemed to buckle at Xayah’s words. She slowly turned to the four ponies that had been standing behind her with their weapons drawn. “Y’all can lower your weapons, I don’t think these folk here mean us any trouble.”

Now that I didn’t have a shotgun pointed at my face, I was able to take in the visage of the other four ponies. On the right was a blue buck with a short green mane and tail, he had a hunting rifle slung across his back and a water bottle cutie mark. Next to him stood an auburn unicorn mare with a long dark red mane. Her coat was covered in a myriad of scars. The final pony was a large black buck that to my suprise managed to stand a solid foot above Crank. His dark blue mane had been shaved on one side and he had a minigun attached to his battle saddle.

The brown mare in the duster turned back and looked us all over. “Well if you ain’t here ‘cause of what’s goin’ on, then what’s a strange lookin’ group like y’all doing all the way out here in the Hollow Shades?” She asked taking a step forward and offering me her hoof. “It ain’t every day a group a ponies wander into these here parts with a Hellhound and cyber pony for company.”

“We’re looking for a somepony named Kamari,” I said, taking her hoof and giving it a quick, awkward shake. “Have you ever heard of him?”

The mare tapped her chin for a second. “Kamari? Can’t say I have. And I was pretty sure I knew everypony round here,” She turned and pointed to the group of ponies behind her. “Allow me to introduce everypony. The blue buck there’s name is Salt Water, the mare there is Golden Chestnut and the big one is Boulder,” The lead mare said before turning back to us. “And of course I’m Toffee Lighting. Y’all can just call me Toffee for short.”

I nodded and quickly started naming off all my companions. “This is Brisk Spark, Xayah, Pyre Blaze, Crank, and my Hellhound. And I’m Amber Aura,” I finished. I hadn’t realised how large may group of companions had gotten over the last couple of days. We had certainly gone from some random wastelanders to a genuine group to be feared.

Toffee froze as I said my name, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Amber Aura? So Y’all are the ones that Red Eye was lookin’ fer in that bounty he put out a couple a days ago?”

I saw the muscles in Crank’s legs tense up at her remark. I gave her a nervous smile, getting ready to pull out Boneless if they decided to attack us. “Uh- yeah. Thats- thats us.”

There was a quiet moment of tension between us. Finally, Toffee gave us a wide smile. “Well if y’all ain’t friends of Red Eye, then y’all are friends of mine.”

I gave a quick sigh of relief. I really didn’t want to fight these ponies. Not that I didn’t think I could take them with Crank and a Hellhound on my side. From the relief that washed over the faces of Toffee’s companions, I could tell they had really not wanted to fight us either.

“So what is going on out here?” Xayah asked, glancing over at the Hollow Shade. “Last I heard, Red Eye rarely comes out this far.”

Golden Chestnut gave a loud snort, breaking her silence. “Oh his Slavers come out here plenty, usually only in small groups. Normally we just chase them off,” She said with a scowl, giving the wall around the Hollow Shades a putrid glare.

“Then what the fuck happened,” Pyre slurred, picking up a black rock from the ground and ballencing it on the tip of her metal clad muzzle.

“We usually chase ‘em off because we usually have the strength to chase ‘em off, long as they don’t show up in large groups,” Toffee said, finally putting her shotgun away. “But two days ago, Stable 44 sealed itself off to the outside world. We haven’t been able to make contact with them since. Course that’s when Red Eye decided to send in a fuckin’ squadrin of slavers and talon mercs.”

Brisk held up a hoof. “Sorry, what does this have to do with Stable 44 closing itself off?” He asked, clearly as confused as I was.

Salt Water stepped forward next to Toffee. “The Hollow Shades are a dangerous place. Our survival here is dependant on multiple things functioning as one whole. Lose one thing and everything goes to shit,” He explained, slowly pacing back and forth in front of us. “A while back we made a deal with Stable 44. We supplied Stable 44 with scraps that they didn’t have access to in their Stable, as well as protection if they need to venture out for whatever reason. In exchange they supplied us with education, weapons and barding as well as fresh water.”

That last one drew me up short. “You don’t have any water here in the Hollow Shades?”

Toffee shook her head. “The Hollow Shades was a wasteland even before the war. The apocalypse only help to cement that fact. You’d be hard pressed t’ find anythin’ out here that ain’t ash, rock or radioactive waste,” She elaborated. “When Stable 44 blocked themselves off from us we lost access to our only water supply. Next day we’re short on ammo, and the day after that Red Eye comes waltzin’ in like he owns the damn place.”

“Then what happened?” Brisk pushed, more interested in the topic than I would have expected from him. Brisk seemed to slowly be gaining a longer attention span the more time we spent outside of the Stable. Slowly.

“Slavers attack. We fight back. Slavers win. Many sent to Filly. Those who can fight kicked out,” Boulder grunted in a deep, choppy tone. Clearly he wasn’t much for talking. “Many ponies still inside. Trapped.”

Well that just didn’t sound good. “So what are all of you ponies doing out here?” I asked, looking back and forth between them all. “And you said ponies got kicked out? Where are they?”

Toffee gave me a frown. “We were on our way to Stable 44. We were hoping that we could get in and if the ponies in the Stable are willing, get their help in taking out the Slavers,” her brows knitted into a tight scowl. “And there ain’t any more of us left. Most everypony was either shipped off as slaves to Fillydelphia or still prisoners in the Hollow Shades. There were twenty of us that managed to get out of the town but… well it’s just the four of us out here now.”

“So you have a slaver problem,” Crank rumbled, looking over the group. “I could take them all out for you, if that would speed this up?”

Toffee shook her head. “I don’t know who you are Crank, but I doubt you’d be able to take out that many slavers on your lonesome.”

Crank’s eyes seemed to glow a darker shade of red. “I assure you, I can deal with them perfectly fine.”

Toffee shook her head again, clearly not sure how to take Crank’s confidence. “If you say so, but it won’t do us any good to just wipe them out anyway. Without water and help from Stable 44, we’re just sitting ducks out here. Even if by some miracle you manage to kill ‘em all, nothin’ would stop ‘em from sendin’ more, and I don’t think we would be able to survive another attack,” Toffee grumbled, looking off to where I assumed Stable 44 was. “Not to mention if we don’t get water out to the ponies here soon we might as well start burying ourselves now.”

“Do Red Eyes slavers not have water either?” Pyre asked. “They must be livin’ on something? Right?”

Salt Water nodded. “They brought water with them from Filly. More than enough for them to last a month or so, but they don’t seem to have any intention of sharing it with the rest of us.”

“Fucking Slaver bastereds,” Chesnut grunted, kicking at the ground with her hoof.

I gave a small sigh. “Alright, How about we make a deal,” I said, putting on a small grin. “We’ll help you get in contact with Stable 44 and deal with your Slaver problem, and you can help us locate this Kamari we’re looking for?”

Toffee and her crew exchanged a few glances before turning back to us. “I say you’s got yourself a deal partner,” Toffee said with a small nod. “The Hollow Shade is a dangerous place, we could use all the help we can get right now.”

“I don’t think this is a very effective use of our time Amber,” Crank grumbled, turning his glowing red death stare onto me. “It is likely that Azar arrived here before us and is well on his way to Kamari. We cannot afford to be sidetracked.”

I puffed out my chest a little and stared him down. “Well then you had better come with us to make sure we get things done quickly,” I told him in as stern a voice as I could.

Crank glared down at me for a few moments. For a horrifying second I feared this would be the moment he turned on me and blasted me into ash. Finally he returned to a more relaxed posture. “Fine,” He grunted, before turning away from me and staring off into the wasteland.

I let myself sigh. I had him working with me still. I just had to make sure not to piss him off more.

“So, where is this Stable 44?” Pyre Blaze asked, bouncing up next to Boulder as we began walking. The large pony grunted and continued trudging forward.

“You aren’t going to get much conversation out of him,” Salt Water said, falling in step with Pyre Blaze. “He isn’t much for talking.”

No really? Hadn’t noticed.

“Okay, well my question still stands,” Pyre Blaze soothed, rolling her eyes slightly and turning her head to face Salt Water.

“It’s not far from here,” Salt Water replied, combing his mane back quickly with his hoof. “It was supposed to be easily accessible by the Ponies in the Hollow Shade before the war, so as you’d expect, it was kept close to the Hollow Shade.”

I supposed that made sense. And I wasn’t one to complain, I could always do with a little less walking. my hooves still hurt from the long walk here.

“Far as we’ve been able to tell, the Slavers don’t know about the Stable yet,” Toffee said. She had naturally gravitated to walking at the front of the group. Crank kept casting her angry glares, clearly not enjoying somepony taking the lead with him. “Hopefully we won’t run into any of them on our way.”

“I hope we fucking do!” Chestnut spat, her voice filled with an anger that even my rage after the death of my Stable couldn’t match. “I’m going to fucking give those bastereds what they deserve!” She gritted her teeth together and stomped off ahead of the group.

“Is she doing alright?” I asked, quickening my pace so that I was walking alongside Toffee.

Toffee gave a small sigh. “Unlikely. Chestnut has more reason t’ hate the Slavers than the rest of us,” Toffee said, looking off at Golden Chestnut as she stomped ahead of us. “See her and her husband were escapees from Fillydelphia. From what I heard it was pretty awful in there. When the Slavers attacked the Hollow Shades, her husband didn’t make it out of the battle.”

“Goddesses, no wonder she hates them so much,” I said, sorrow creeping into my own voice. “That must have been pretty hard on her.”

“Still is hard on ‘er. Hard on all of us honestly. He was a good man,” Toffee’s eyes dropped down to her hooves for a bit. “Don’t help that the Slavers took her kid too. Last I saw him he was bein’ shipped off to Filly. Chestnut ain’t takin’ that well either.”

I could imagine.

“Why is she still here then?” Crank asked coldly in his deep, rumbling voice. He looked at Chestnut in the distance, a strange gleam on his glass eyes. “If her child is in Filly, why isn’t she going off to save him?”

“She probably wants too,” Toffee admitted. “But Chestnut’s been loyal t’ this here settlement for a long while now. We brought her and her husband in after they had been stuck in the wastes for nearly a month after their escape. I reckon she thinks she owes us a favor.”

“And what about the rest of your friends?” I asked, gesturing to the two stallions behind me. “What’s there story?”

Toffee gave a dry chuckle. “Well there ain’t much t’ tell bout those two. Salt Water there was born here in the Hollow Shades, he ain’t much for fightin’ but he’s the best damn mechanic in the whole damn wasteland I tell ya.”

I huffed at that. “Oh really? I guess we’ll just have to see about that.”

Toffee gave me a funny look. “What? Ya think you’re a better mechanic than Salt Water?”

I gave the most smug smirk I possibly could. There were many things I was uncertain of, but the one thing that I knew better than the back of my hoof was machines. “Oh, I know I am.”

Toffee seemed to be amused by my statement. “Well I guess we’ll just see about that,” She turned back and pointed at Boulder. “Anyhow, Boulder there spent most of his life livin’ out in New Appleoosa. I think he said somethin’ ‘bout workin’ on a rock farm out that way for a bit, But I ain’t to sure about that one. He’s not much of a talker.”

“A rock farm?” I asked, my pace faltering for a second. I quickened my step to keep from falling behind.

“Yeah, there’s one all the way out by Las Pegasus,” Pyre injected, clearly having been eavesdropping on our conversation. “We used to raid that place sometimes, but raiders don’t have much use for gems. Not many of them are smart enough to actually do anything with them.”

“And what about yourself?” I questioned, the idea of farming rocks still lingering in my head. “What’s your story?”

Toffee raised her eyebrow at that. “Well, I was the sheriff of this settlement till Red Eye’s slavers showed up. That’s been my life mostly. Makin’ sure all my ponies here are safe and all.”

“Must be hard protecting ponies in such a dangerous place,” I commented, thinking about how hard just trying to save ponies in Manehattan was. Not that Manehattan wasn’t dangerous, but the Hollow Shades just seemed lethal on another level altogether.

Toffee grinned at that. “You can bet your ass it’s hard, but we make by,” She glanced mournfully at her few remaining companions. “Or we usually do, anyway,” Before I could attempt to comfort her, she wiped away her sour expression and gave me a smile. “Well that’s enough about us, how ‘bout ya tell me yer story? And the story of yer more peculiar company.”

I cracked a smile. “Well funny story that-” I started, trying to figure out where to start.

I had only just began figuring out how I was going to explain my story when we came to a halt in front of a massive cave leading into the side of one of the Hollow Shades many jagged rock formations.

“We’re here,” Salt Water said, stepping up to the cave and slowly entering the gloom. “Told you it wasn’t all that far.”

The cave looked like the den of a dragon, or as Pyre quickly put it, an oversized Mole Rat. The cave was wide enough that we could all walk side by side and still not touch the sides of the tunnel. Sharp, fang like stalagmites hung in large clusters above our head. I kept glancing up at them, scared on might fall and skewer me.

And the whole cave smelt of rot. A foul scent wafted from within the depths of the cave, circumventing through the black rocks and into the air. A greenish brown sludge oozed down the walls and a couple droplets of some form of blood like substance dripped from the Stalagmites.

“I do not like this,” Xayah whimpered, peering around the dark cavern as we passed through it.

I didn’t like it either. It felt wrong, almost as if the rocks around us were sick. I shivered. I didn’t like how the cave felt alive…

“Everything below the surface of the Hollow Shades is like this. Thankfully you aren’t going to find to many critters in here,” Chestnut grumbled bitterly, having now rejoined the group. As she saw the uncomfortable looks on our faces she gave us a fake smile. “It’s better in the Stable. Assuming we can get inside.”

As we neared the end of the tunnel, I began to make out the huge Stable door. A massive steel gear that had managed to withhold hundreds of years worth of Balefire and Wasteland. A small control panel had been built into the wall beside it, looking almost comically tiny in comparison to the gigantic metal door.

Toffee walked up and placed her hoof on the panel, pushing down on a small red button to the left of the controls. “Stable 44, this is Toffee Lighting. Can you hear me?” nothing. Toffee cleared her throat and tried again. “This is Sheriff Toffee Lighting. Do you hear me?”

Chestnut scowled. “Those assholes can hear you fine Toffee and you know it. They just want to hog all the fuckin’ water to themselves.”

“But why? They have never showed signs of being short on water before,” Salt Water said, shaking his head a little. “I just don’t get what could have happened.”

I turned to look at Crank. “I don’t suppose you could just blast your way in?” I asked, gesturing to his two massive tesla cannons.

Crank shook his head. “These doors were made to survive Balefire bombs. My cannons will do little more than blacken them,” Crank grunted in his usual deep and stoic tone.

Salt Water approached and looked over the control panel for the door. He grunted as he ran his hoof across the metal surface. “You could probably open the door with the proper override code, but without it we’d need to completely rewire the doors from within the control panel, and most of the circuitry is inside of the cavern wall,” he said as he traced his hoof along the sticky rock walls of the cave. “Unless one of you ponies know the override code?”

All my friends looked at me as if expecting me to know it. “I can’t hack a terminal without a terminal in front of me to hack,” I said, raising my hoof. “I’m good with machines, I’m not psychic,” then a thought crossed my mind. I turned to look at Salt Water. “Wait, if we managed to get inside of the rock wall, do you think we could manually override the door?”

Salt Water nodded. “Probably. I mean it would be pretty similar to hacking a terminal, just with fewer numbers and letters and more wires and sprockets.”

“You’d need to actually get inside a solid rock wall though,” Pyre reminded me, tapping the wall with her metal clad hoof.

I pointed to my Hellhound smugly, a wide grin on my face. “These things burrow through rock, don’t they?”

The process was slow. Hellhounds, while perfectly capable of digging through rock, were in no way the most precise method of excavation. I had to instruct the Hellhound to dig slowly, only scrapping a thin layer off of the wall at a time. After a few minutes of digging into the stone, we began to see bits of metal tubing embedded into the rock face. How Stable-Tec ever managed to successfully embed circuitry into the rock was beyond me.

“Careful now,” I ordered as one of the Hellhounds claws came dangerously close to cutting one of the metal tubes in half. I didn’t want to know what would happen if we accidentally broke the circuitry. Would the Stable fail to open again? Open forever? Neither situation sounded pleasant.

“That should be good,” Salt Water said, holding up a hoof and inspecting the hole the Hellhound had dug. “I think I can rewire it from here.”

I ordered my Hellhound to stand down and joined Salt Water as he began fiddling with the metal tubes and loose wires that now protruded from the rocks. “Sooo, you can rewire the door from those?” I asked, looking the circuits over. It seemed impossible, even for me. And I was a master of Stable-Tec technology.

Salt Water nodded. “Yeah, should be that much different from rewiring a robot actually. Pretty much the exact same thing,” A small shower of sparks popped from the wall as he touched two wires together. “Though, maybe this might be just a little more complicated.”

“I’ve never actually rewired a robot. not many robots back in my Stable to do that on,” I admitted, staring over his shoulder as he worked in fascination. “I once managed to hack into the brain of a cyber pony, but that’s about it,” Crank cast me a nasty glare at that comment.

“Well just sit back and watch them,” Salt Water chuckled, his hooves still working furiously to override the door. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”

I groaned, not quite knowing how to feel about being upstaged by somepony at my special talent. My irritation quickly subsided as I was near mesmerized by Salt Waters work. I started picturing what each wire did and where they connected to each part of the door. That much I could at least figure out with some ease.

“What I tell ya,” Toffee chuckled. “Best damn mechanic in the wasteland.”

Despite my wonder, I still had to huff at the comment. “I’ll prove to you yet that I’m the better mechanic,” I grumbled, hitting a rock with my hoof.

Pyre chuckled at that. “Classic Amber, always trying to prove something.”

I gave her a small scowl.

There was a small buzzing sound and Salt Water took a quick step away from the wall. “That’s about as much as I can do,” he cooed, looking up at the large gear shaped door then back at the wall in frustration. “These doors were not designed to be opened from the outside, while I can override it, I would need a large power source strong enough to jump start it, which as far as I can tell, we don’t have access to.”

Crank groaned. “Ugh, how big of a power source?”

Salt Water gave him a sceptical look. “Large enough to power and move a massive metal pendulum. While I doubt Stable-Tec ever put Hellhounds into consideration while designing the Stable’s they clearly had no intention of ponies finding a loophole in the door.”

Crank took a step forward, grumbling something to himself under his breath the rest of us couldn’t hear. Probably a bunch of less than flattering insults. “Point me in the right direction. I’ll get it up and running,” he muttered, a large spark of light blue energy flashing up his jagged horn and sparking at the top.

Unsure what exactly Crank was proposing, Salt Water guided him to a large gap in the circuitry where all the metal tubes seemed to lead to. Crank put his horn to the spot, a massive spark erupting from the tip and sending streaks of crackling energy rippling through all of the wires.

The blast of his horn sent Crank staggering back where he landed on his metal rump, his horn smoking and charred a dark black.

He grunted, rubbing his forehead with a hoof. “Fuck I hate doing that.”

I heard a loud clunking sound as the Stables metal pendulum swung down on the far side of the Stable door and clicked into place before it began pulling the solid metal inwards. Sparks sprayed from the edges of the door as it slowly pulled itself open with a screech before rolling to the side to reveal the Stable within.

Standing in the doorway were five ponies in Stable Security barding. Each one of them was equipped with a shock baton almost identical to mine as well as an assault rifle. For a Stable, they were very well armed.

“Hold it right there!” A mare in a Stable jumpsuit called from the top of the grated stairs leading up into the Stable. “I don’t know how the fuck you managed to get that door open Toffee, but you had better turn your ass around and march on back to your town. You aren’t wanted here!”

Toffee held her ground. “I don’t rightly know what’s going on Purity, but I ain’t leavin’ till I have a proper answer.”

I could see the Stable security cast Crank and my Hellhound a worried look. From the looks in their eyes, I could tell they might just fire on us simply out of fear. I took a step forwards in a hopes to defuse the situation. “Purity, are you the Overmare of this Stable?” I asked, looking up at the mare. “We have just come to talk to you, we don’t have any interest in fighting.”

I could hear Pyre Blaze’s groan of annoyance at the lack of fighting part.

Looking at her closer, she had a solid white coat with a long blue main that looked as if it had been flat ironed. She had dark bags under her eyes. I had seen my fair share of tired ponies while in the wasteland, but these eyes reminded me a great deal of my fathers. This was a pony who had a great deal of stress on them to make sure their ponies were safe.

Toffee had similar eyes, though she seemed to do a better job of looking presentable.

Purity nodded. “Yes, I am. And who might you six be?” Her eyes swept over me and my company. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before. You aren’t from the Hollow Shades, that’s for sure.”

Toffee shook her head and took a step forward, ignoring the Stable guards that raised their guns at her at her approach. “That’s not important right now. I want to know why y’all shut us all out!” There was a steady inline in the level of her voice. “Y’all know we ain’t got no water out here. Ya knew we would die and run short on ammo!”

Purity scowled. “You have no idea what’s going on in here. We couldn’t afford to continue with that one sided deal with your selfish town out there.”

Salt Water growled. “One Sided? We’ve been supplying you with scraps you can’t get in you Stable for years! How is-”

“And Scraps are all they are!” Purity yelled, cutting him off. “Crates of junk for fresh water, weapons, ammo and an education system is hardly a fair deal!”

“Because of what you did, Red Eye and his fucking slavers have taken over the Hollow Shades!” Chestnut spat, stepping past me to stare Purity down.

Toffee shook her head again. “Then y’all should’ve told us that it wern’t workin’ for y’all. I’m sure we could have come to an arrangement,” she gestured to the Stable Security. “Do ya mind tellin’ yer security here t’ stand down. I think we need t’ talk with a few less guns. Ya know we don’t mean y’all no harm.”

She didn’t withdraw her guards, but she at the very least told them to lower their weapons and allow us into the Stable so that we could discuss everything in a more civil manner.

Stable 44 looked almost exactly like Stable 25. There were a couple of discrepancies in the layout of all the rooms, but for the most part it looked identical. Same dull grey walls, same floor and claustrophobic feeling that came with the roof being so close to my head. I must have been the only pony in the wasteland that got a sense of euphoria from claustrophobic situations.

But it also felt sad, thought I couldn’t tell if that was the Stable itself or my overly emotional memories of Stable 25. I could imagine clouds of pink wafting through the blood soaked halls as the last of the Stable dwellers struggled for breath. Suddenly I was feeling a whole lot less euphoric.

Brisk seemed to be taking the whole ordeal just as well as I was. His eyes kept darting around the metal tunnel as if looking for an escape exit.

I leaned over to him so that only he could hear me. “Hey, you doing alright?”

Brisk nodded slowly. “Yeah, this place just looks really similar. I don’t like it.”

As we walked through the painfully familiar halls, my eyes landed on a room that did not exist back in Stable 25. Curious, I glanced up to the sign above the door that indicated the function of the room. The slightly glowing sign read ‘Library’.

My whole body froze as I looked up at the sign. I quickly pointed to the door. “You have a library in here?”

Purity looked back and glanced up at the sign above the door. “Of course. The ponies in this Stable are all descendants of members of the Ministry of Arcane Science back before the war. A rather large collection of books were collected in here.”

I bit my bottom lip and continued staring at the door. “You don’t think that I could- I don’t know… go take a look inside do you?”

Everypony turned and gave me a quizzical look. Purity raised her eyebrows. “I don’t see why not, though I would appreciate if we could all-”

Before she could finish her sentence I was darting through the door to the library. Inside was like looking at a massive pile of gold. There were hundreds of books. Rows upon rows of bookshelves lined the library walls and created small aisles down the middle. I had never seen such beauty in my life.

“-Stay focused on the matter at hoof…” I heard Purity finish with a sigh. “Is your friend always like this?”

“I really like books!” I called back as I raced through the different aisles of books. They had everything. The complete Daring Do series, power pony comics, the unabridged history of equestria. My eyes landed on a large leather tome that lay neglected in the corner of the room. The words ‘Big Book of Science’ was sprawled in gold letters across the front.

I quickly snatched up the book and pointed to it. “Can I have this one!” I called out in excitement.

The librarian, whom I hadn’t seen until now gave me a quizzical look. “You can borrow it, so long as you give it back. We don’t sell our books to outsiders.”

My face fell. Damn it! I knew there would be a catch. There was no way that I’d be staying around Stable 44 long enough to read the book.

I placed the book back down on the shelf and begrudgingly sulked out of the room to rejoin everypony else. “Darn wasteland, always ruining things,” I grumbled as I fell back in step beside Brisk and Xayah as we continued walking.

The library had given me a moment to disassociate myself with the Stable, but with each step down the hallway, memories of my time in Stable 25 came flooding back to me. I had a sudden urge to turn around and run for the door as fast as I could.

Stable Dwellers were beginning to poke their heads out into the hallway and stare in bafflement as the security ponies marched the ten of us down the hall. Clearly we were an odd sight, and with Crank and a Hellhound in toe, I wasn’t surprised.

Purity and her security entourage brought us to the Overmare’s office overlooking the main atrium of the Stable. I had to use every ounce of self control I had to not instinctively search for my bedroom.

With a tired sigh, Purity pulled herself into her chair and looked at all of us from across her horseshoe shaped desk. “So, would you mind telling me why and how you managed to open the Stable door?” She demanded, folding her hooves in front of her crossly.

“After you abandoned us, Red Eye showed up and took over the whole of the Hollow Shades,” Chestnut growled, stalking towards Purity with a hate filled gleam in her eyes. The security raised their assault rifles as she approached, forcing her to back down. “If you hadn’t cut us off from our main source of weapons and goddesses damned water we would have been able to fend them off!”

Toffee put a hoof on Chestnuts shoulder in an attempt to calm her down, but she simply shrugged it off.

Purity looked over us all again. “I’m sorry about Red Eye, I truly am, but the truth of the matter is that we are having issues with the water ourselves. Our water purifier has been having some trouble. There seemed to have been some form of magical malfunction. We only have enough water reserved for ourselves and even then we don’t know how long it will last us. We couldn’t risk you greedy ponies coming and claiming the water for yourselves,” She told us flatly.

Pyre coughed in a poor attempt to hide a laugh, drawing all of our attention to her. When she realized we were all looking at her she gave us a fake chuckle. “Sorry, ignore me.”

“Is there something you would like to share with the rest of us?” Purity asked, raising her eyebrow slightly.

“Well it’s just that that excuse is brahmin shit and you know it,” Pyre said bluntly, staring Purity down. “And I don’t need to know what it’s like to lead a Stable to know that.”

“And what would you have suggested I do?” Purity asked, giving Pyre a death stare. “Share the water? We both know that the wasteland does not take kindly to sharing.”

“Well you could have asked for help for one thing,” Brisk piped up, taking a small step next to Pyre. It was almost surprising to see him actually agree with her for once. “I’m sure other ponies would have helped you fix the purifier.”

“Or you could have given a warning that you were going to drop connection,” Xayah added, also taking a step forward to join my friends.

Purity cast Toffee a strange look. “Do you mind explaining who these strange ponies are and what they’re doing here again?”

Toffee simply shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t even know myself. But they’re here to help, and I’d be lying if I said I weren’t grateful fer it.”

“I understand that this is hard for you, but if you came her looking for my help, then you had best just leave,” Purity said in a stern tone. “I’m sorry about your town, but I need to think about the Stable first.”

I joined my friends in front of the desk. “The way I see it is that we have three problems here. You don’t have enough water to share or even for yourselves, the trade between the Hollow Shades and Stable 44 isn’t working out and Red Eye has completely taken over,” I summarized, putting everything together. “No pony here benefits from any of these problems.

“So, here’s what I’m thinking,” I continued, turning so that I was facing both Toffee and Purity at the same time. “We band together so that we can get the water back to working order and come up with a better trade agreement,” I turned to face Purity directly. “You said you need to think about the Stable first, well then you’re going to want to think about fixing the purifier and getting a useful form of trade going right?”

Purity seemed flustered at that. “Well yes, I-I suppose that's correct-”

I turned to look at both of them again. “Then we'll deal with those problems first. Once that’s all sorted out we can start working together proper on equal terms and go and deal with Red Eye and his forces as one unit.”

Toffee and Purity cast each other a nervous glance. “Well that sounds like a plan t’ me,” Toffee finally said, reaching a hoof out to Purity. “What do ya say? Together?”

Purity just stared at her hoof for a second before finally reaching out and shaking it. “You got yourself a deal.”

Brisk raised a hoof timidly. “So uh- How do we fix this purifier thingy? And why haven't you already fixed it? I’m sure you have the resources in the Stable.”

“Because the Water talisman or purifier isn’t the issue,” Purity said, looking over at Brisk. “We’ve tested it out and it seems to be in perfect condition.”

“What? Than what’s the issue?” Salt Water blurted, scratching the back of his head. “I thought you said it was a magical malfunction of some form.”

Purity nodded at that. “Yes, but not of the purifier. The malfunction is coming from the water itself. Our piping is getting little more than a dark oozing sludge.”

I glanced at Crank to see if there was any connection between this sludge and the strange black liquid that flowed through his veins. He remained as stoic as ever.

Toffee, Salt Water and Chestnut all slapped their hooves against their heads in unison. “Fuck! You don’t mean-” Chestnut groaned. I detected a small sliver of fear in her voice.

“Mean what?” Xayah asked, glancing from one pony to the next. “What does that mean?”

Toffee turned to face her, her face somber. “It means that whatever is causing the water to go bad is in the cave systems underneath the Hollow Shades.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad,” I said innocently. “I mean, this Stable is already underground, right?”

Purity shook her head. “The deeper you go under the Hollow Shades the more dangerous it gets, and the Hollow Shades is already a dangerous place. There are things down there that we can’t even begin to imagine.”

Toffee grunted. “If that ain’t the understatement of the year. Outside of massive face eating monsters that ya can't shoot or outrun, the cave system is filled with pockets of radiation. Stand in the wrong spot for too long and you’ll be melted right into the cave floor,” She glanced at Chestnut wearily. “And yes, other things that we can’t imagine.”

I gulped. Great. That sounded just great.

On the bright side, Purity had agreed to send us into the caves below the Hollow Shades well equipped. We quickly found ourselves each with an additional twenty shots in our respective guns as well as a generous stash of five healing potions. She was also kind enough to send four Stable Security ponies that had volunteered to help us.

I also had a Hellhound and ridiculously powerful cyber alicorn on my side, so that calmed me down a little.

On the down side, I was currently standing at the mouth of a massive dark, spooky cave that seemed to ooze with the feeling of dread and probably was hiding some unspeakable evil in the shadows.

We had gone to the lower levels of the Stable where a large maintenance hatch had been waiting for us. The hatched bordered on the edge of the dark caverns under the Hollow Shade. One side of the door was the creepily nostalgic Stable, the other was a horrifying rock tunnel.

“You ponies sure about this?” Toffee asked, looking over at me and my friends. “This ain’t yer problem. I’d hate for y’all to get hurt ‘cause of us.”

I waved her concern off. “Don’t worry about us. We’ve been through worse, I’m sure.”

Chestnut coughed. “Anypony that’s spent time in the wasteland thinks they’ve seen worse. Then they end up coming down here. Trust me, you haven’t seen nothing yet.”

“Really helping my confidence,” Brisk grunted, trying to peer into the darkness with his one good eye. “I don’t like what it smells like down here.”

He wasn’t wong. The entrance of the cave smelled like a mix between rotting corpses, bile and bad eggs.

“Once we get going, the smell is going to be the least of your worries,” Chestnut cracked, pulling out her hunting shotgun.

I would have loved to have a few more minutes to prepare myself before charging head first into what sounded like something similar to that of pony hell, but one of the Security ponies with a dark grey coat stepped forwards and began moving into the darkness. “Come, we have spent enough time here already,” He grunted, urging us to all move forwards.

Slowly, the fourteen of us descended into the darkness of the cave. With every step we took, the thick gloom around us seemed to darken exponentially. I quickly turned on my pipbuck flashlight, hoping to get a better view of what was around us.

“Shut that off,” Chestnut hissed from beside me as soon as the light flared to life. “Do you want to attract the things down here?”

Not bothering to question her, I shut the flashlight off and plunged us back into darkness. The blackness that surrounded us seemed to close in like a heavy blanket trying to smother us alive. The blindness was nauseating.

I heard the pipbuck of the Security pony walking in the front start to click as he began entering a radioactive area of the caves. There was a small yelp and the sound of him shuffling backwards.

“Radiation,” The security pony grunted from the darkness, restating what I had already figured out. “Give me a second, I’ll try to find a way around.” We all waited in silence for a minute as the leading security pony shuffled around the edges of the tunnel. Finally we saw a small flash of green light as he quickly flipped his pipbuck on and off to notify us on his location. “There is a relatively radiation free passage this way.”

We began walking down the new tunnel. My pipbuck began clicking as we began descending a steep slope into the cavern. We only seemed to be taking one or two rads a second though, nothing we needed to worry about too much at the moment.

A terrifying tingly feeling slowly began etching its way down my spine. I didn’t know why, but I could have sworn it was the feeling of something watching me. I shivered as I tried to shake the feeling, but it refused to go away.

I felt somepony brush up against my side, their soft coat an unexpected comfort in the dark bowels of the cave.

“Amber, you still there,” I heard Xayah’s soft voice whisper from the gloom beside me.

I nodded, then quickly realised that she couldn’t see me in the darkness. “Yes, I’m right here. Are you holding up okay?” I asked, moving against the warmth of her body a little more.

“I do not like it down here,” Xayah murmured. “I think something is watching us.”

Damn it. So it wasn’t just me that felt that. Something was in fact staring us us from behind the curtain of shadows that filled the cavern. For a second I considered turning on my pipbuck flashlight to see what it was, but I decided for the sake of our sanity, it might just be better to ignore the feeling and move on.

Up ahead a faint green light seemed to illuminate the tunnel beyond. I could see the shapes of tiny glowing green fungi growing out of the cracks in the walls. The radiation on my pipbuck spiked for a second, going from one rad a second to ten. The second we passed the fungi the geiger counter dropped back down.

“Those Flammulina Velutipes should give us some light,” Salt Water said, quickly stepping past the fungus himself. “Course they might give us a few more rads than we would like, but at least we’ll be able to see a little.”

“Flammulina vlewhatawa?” Brisk sputtered, shooting Salt Water a baffled look. “What the hell is that?”

“The glowing fungi on the walls,” Salt Water stated flatly, pointing to another cluster of fungi on the walls a few feet ahead of us.

Brisk gave a small pout. “Dumb smart ponies and there dumb long words.”

I glanced around to see if I could spot whatever was causing the ominous feeling of being watched, but aside from the dark shapes of my friends beside me, I couldn't see anything. Even my EFS wasn’t picking up any other lifeforms around me. Why couldn’t my EFS detect anything?

Now with the irradiated green light of the Flammulina Velutipes, I could begin to make out other things about the caves. Strange green ores ran through the dark rock walls, looking almost like sick veins in flesh. To my displeasure, I could see the melted remains of ponies fussed to the walls, their limbs reaching out as if they had died while attempting to give somepony a hug. Their long dead screaming faces had begun to ooze some form of sludge, giving them the appearance of melting wax.

I shivered and stepped away from the melted bodies. They made me very uncomfortable.

I looked at the four Security ponies that were walking ahead of us, their forms silhouetted by the glowing fungi. “Have you ponies ever come down into these caves?” I asked, jumping slightly as my hoof brushed up against a skeletal hoof that had been protruding from a crack in the ground.

The dark grey buck that had entered the cave first shook his head. “A few times, but this is the first time in a very long while. I don’t think we’ve sent any pony down here in over a hundred years.”

I was beginning to understand why.

Toffee and Chestnut exchanged a small glance. “The two of us came into similar tunnels out by our town,” Toffee said. “It wasn’t very pleasant, nearly didn’t make it out alive.”

“Some of us didn’t,” Chestnut grunted.

“Yes, and some of us didn’t.”

The guard glanced back at Brisk and I. “I noticed you two are wearing Stable barding yourself. What Stable are you from?”

“Stable 25,” I said quickly, not wanting to think much about my Stable. The memory of it hurt too much. Brisk and I exchanged a knowing, hurt filled look.

The grey security pony simply grunted. “Where is that? Manehattan?”

I nodded, then realised he probably couldn’t see me to well in the darkness. “Yeah, not far from Friendship City. Well- It used to be anyway.”

“Used to be?”

Brisk gave a small snort, telling him to back off a little. “It’s gone, the pony we’re looking for destroyed it.”

“Kamari?” Toffee asked from somewhere beside me. We had slowly entered another dark patch in the cave, making it impossible for me to tell exactly where she was.

“Kamari,” I confirmed.

The security pony gave a small grunt from the darkness. “Don’t suppose you being a Stable Dweller yourself has anything to do with how you opened up the Stable doors?”

“Opening the doors was more Salt Water’s doing,” I admitted, gesturing to the blue and green buck beside me. “That and assistance from my Hellhound.”

“Going to be a pain in the ass to fix that damage y’all did to the door,” another security pony grumbled. “Now any wastelander that knows a thing or two about overriding robots can get it open. Granted those are far and few between.”

I glanced over at Crank, who was silently trudging through the cave next to us, not bothering to join in on any of the conversation. I thought crossed my mind. “So Crank, how did you managed to get into Stable 25?” I asked, hoping to pry some more information out of him before his inevitable betrayal.

“Latched onto the Stable 25 emergency broadcaster after you activated it,” Crank grunted, his glowing red eyes remaining forwards and cutting a small beam of red through the darkness. "Once we had a location, we teleported in from Fillydelpia.”

I froze. Teleportation? How the hell had he managed to get his hooves on an ability like that? I had heard of unicorns that could teleport, myself included, but all the way from Fillydelphia and into a Stable seemed impossible?

“How- how does that work?” I stammered, trying to figure out the logistics of teleporting that far into a Stable that had from what I could remember, had a spell that keeps unicorns from teleporting in and out. “Like- with your own magic? And what about Tripwire, Steel Blade and Inferno? They don’t have horns, how did they get in?”

Crank shook his head. “I’m an earth pony. This cybernetic horn can’t do any magic like telekinesis or teleportation. It is more of a gun than anything else,” Figures as much, just a massive weapon of destruction.

“So what? You have some sort of teleportation machine that can bypass even Stable doors so long as you have the proper coordinates?” I asked, slowly piecing everything together.

I could see Crank’s glowing red eyes bob up and down in the gloom, signifying the nodding of his head.

I gulped. I didn’t like the idea of enemies that could teleport anywhere and from any distance. “And Red Eye has this kind of tech in Filly?” I was almost afraid of the answer.

Crank pondered that for a second. “Not yet,” He rumbled slowly. “But he probably will soon.”

“But the pony who sent you to retreive the A.A.S.S has that?” Brisk said from beside me, shifting Crank’s attention to him.

“To an extent. He only had the ability to get us in and out,” Crank grunted. “But given time, I’m sure he will have more access to it.”

I raised my eyebrow at him. “So there’s a he now? When are you going to tell us who sent you?” I said smugly.

Crank simply grunted and stopped ahead of us, refusing to answer my question yet again. Damn it, what was his resistance to telling me to had hired him? Was it part of a contract or something? And if so, why did Crank care? He had already double crossed whoever it was.”

My pipbuck began clicking faster as we began entering another cloud of radiation. The security ponies noticed it on their pipbucks as well, pausing for a second as they contemplated what to do.

“We’re going to have to run through,” One of the security ponies that hadn’t spoken yet grumbled. “I don’t think there is any other way around.”

“Crank and I could just go scout ahead,” Pyre suggested, dancing up to the front of the group in her power armour and trying to look down the dark cave in front of her. I doubt she was able to see anything. “I mean, neither of us are affected by radiation and all that. We could search for another router for you all.”

The gray security pony who I was starting to suspect was in charge shook his head. I only barely managed to make out the movement a few inches in front of my face. “No, I would not recommend splitting up the group down here. We are much safer when we are together.”

“So what? We run through it and hope that the patch of radiation isn’t a long one?” Chestnut scoffed, taking a small step away from the radioactive area. “What if the rest of the cave down there is irradiated or some shit?”

“We will run,” Boulder grunted bravely, taking a small step forwards. I jumped a little at his voice. Despite his immense size, he was so quiet I had completely forgotten he was standing right behind me.

Well I guess that settles that.

Toffee nodded grimly. “Alright, we will run. On three?”

I tensed my legs and I prepared to dart through the darkness. Even from a few feet away from the irradiated section of tunnel I was taking in a lot of rads. I would need to be fast.

“One.”

I could feel Brisk and Xayah begin to crouch low to the ground in anticipation, both of their sides brushing against mine as they prepared themselves. Even Crank seemed to be preparing to charge forwards.

“Two.”

Goddesses, I hoped this tunnel didn’t last long.

“Three!”

We surged forwards as one. My geiger counter went crazy, the clicking going so fast that it began to blur into a droning hum. Twenty rads a second. Thirty rads a second. Forty rads a second. My hooves pounded against the ground as I raced forwards, waves of pain rushing through them as the impact of the rocky ground pulsed up them. I felt something slither under my hooves, but I didn’t dare stop to see what it was.

Five seconds paced. Then ten seconds. Then a minute. We had taken almost two hundred rads. I could feel my insides begin to churn and boil. No doubt we had all been infected with some form of radiation poisoning.

Then, the clicking on our pipbucks halted and and we all collapsed to the ground out of breath. I rubbed my hind hooves as I tried to steady them from shaking after running so fast. I could hear all of my companions gasping for breath around me.

“Is- is everypony alright?” I heard the grey security pony call out in a shaken voice. There was a bunch of grumbles from around the cave as everypony tried to put words to their survival. “Roll-call,” the security pony grumbled. I could hear him pull himself to his hooves. “Cherry, Granite, August?” he called out, allowing me to hear the other security ponies names for the first time. Each one making some form of grunting noise at their name. “Toffee, Salt Water, Chestnut, Boulder,” Again, three grunts of acknowledgment. “Brisk, Xayah, Amber, Crank, Pyre?”

I raised my hoof and called out. “Here,” as if I were back one of the classes back at school in Stable 25. I could hear all of my friends do the same. I reached out and patted the dark coat of my Hellhound to make sure it was there. To my relief it was.

“Alright, that could have gone worse,” The grey security pony I still didn’t have a name for grumbled, walking around and passing out a radaway to each of us. I gratefully gulped it down, ignoring the vile taste of the orange fluid. Thankfully I wasn’t able to see it in the darkness of the caves, that helped me get it down a little better.

I watched in satisfaction as my geiger counter dropped back to around fifty rads. At one point in my life, I would have been panicking if I was even above five rads, but after having spent a couple days in the wasteland, being below one hundred rads seemed like a blessing.

I felt something slimy slither past me, making me jump back a little. Both Crank and my Hellhound froze, their eyes darting around the room.

“There’s something in here with us,” Crank grumbled. I could feel everypony tense up as he said that. He was silent for a few seconds, scanning the darkness with his red glare. As the dim light of his eyes passed over the walls I caught a small glimpse of something fleshing riggling away from the light and up the rock face. “Multiple things actually.”

“Are they hostile?” Xayah asked. I could feel her turning her head to try and spot them. Like me, her eyes found little more than darkness.

I glanced down at me EFS. Still nothing. Were the things down here dead already? Was that why I couldn’t pick them up? I doubted I’d ever know for sure, but the thought terrified me.

Crank was quiet for a few seconds. “Yes, they are just waiting for an opening to attack,” he answered, his tone stoic as ever. Great, so these things were intelligent. Just what I needed. “Do not stop facing towards the walls.”

“Huddle in the middle,” Toffee ordered, pulling herself up and slowly backing inwards, making sure to keep her eyes fixed on what she assumed was the walls of the cave around her.

I pulled myself up began backing up. I felt my rump push up against both Brisk and Xayah’s as we met in the middle of the cavern. Somewhere to my right I could sense the large forms of both Crank and Boulder back to back.

“We won’t be able to fight these things without light,” Salt Water said, a sliver of fear slipping into her voice.

“Pipbuck lights?” One of the security ponies that I now knew as Cherry suggested, tapping their pipbuck with a hoof.

“I thought that attracted the stuff down here?” I squealed, remembering what Chestnut had told me when we first entered the cave. “Isn’t that like… bad?”

“Well we’ve already attracted them,” Chestnut growled, stomping her hoof slightly. “Sure they’ll attack us if we turn it on, but they’ll attack us if we run anyway and we have a better chance of survival if we can see.”

I gulped. That made sense to me. Despite my earlier actions on the train, I really didn’t want to die. Especially not in this dank hole in the ground.

“Alright, everypony ready?” Toffee asked, readying her gun. “Now!”

I clicked on the pipbuck flashlight and let its green light illuminate the cavern. I saw Brisk and the four security ponies do the same. Even Pyre’s helmet shot a beam of yellow light from a flashlight installed my her right ear.

Our light flooded out the gloom of the cave, giving us a glimpse of the cylindrical rock space we had gathered in. For a terrifying second I thought that the cave was made out of a mass of wiggling flesh and tentacles. Then I saw the hundreds of beady white eyes peering back at us. The cave wasn't made of rotting flesh, but covered in… in… things!

A creature lurched off the wall and lunged at me, revealing a circular mouth filled with spinning teeth. Blood oozed from its jaw and spilled down its front as it lashed at me with its gnashing fangs.

Boneless flew into the air and blasted it apart with a single shot, its explosive rounds pulping its head and sending bits of rotting flesh spewing everywhere. It’s form immediately melted into a strange pulpy fluid and dropped to the floor.

Then they were all lunging at us, strange wriggling forms of flesh flashing from the wall and surging around us. My vision was filled with a blur of puss bubble covered flesh, tentacles and jagged gnashing teeth.

I could hear my companions firing shot after shot into the surging mass. Every shot was accompanied by a burst of flesh and blood, followed by the targeted creature flopping to the ground as some strange ooze.

Squirming tentacles began trying to wrap around me and drag me towards a plethora of gaping jaws. I could feel some sort of radioactive ooze seeping from the tentacles and into my coat, causing my body to itch and burn. Long tongues lashed out of the mouths, wrapping around my hooves and trying to pull me in faster.

Xayah lashed forwards, her knife slicing through the tentacles and freeing me from their grasp. I swiveled boneless to face the mass of jaws and fired.

Blam! Blam!

The tongues coiled away from the assault as the creatures were liquified by the explosive buckshot. I pulled out more shells and began loading them back into my gun, unfortunately giving the strange creatures an opening. One lunged at me, clamping its slimy mouth around my forehoof. I tried to shake it off, yelping in pain as the razor sharp jaws shredded my hide. I raised my hoof and brought it down on the creature, crushing its skull and making it liquify.

Then fluid that had once been the creature began to writhe around my hooves. Twisted hooves reached from the flood to grasp at me as the creature began to completely regenerate itself from nothing.

They hadn’t been lying, bullets did nothing against what lurked below the surface of the Hollow Shades.

I massive shock pulsed up my body as Crank’s tesla cannons fired another blast of blue energy into the hoard of monsters. All my hairs stood on end as he fired blast after blast into the onslaught. Fire roared around us as Pyre Blaze’s flamers set the squirming creatures ablaze.

My Hellhound lashed at the monstrosities viciously, tearing them apart with his massive claws and turning them to dust with precise blasts of his energy weapons. Any creature that got close was instantly shredded by the whirlwind of thrashing claws.

And yet they still continued to rise, nothing was slowing them down or seeming to prevent them from regenerating. As soon as one would fall, five more would take their place.

I saw one of the security ponies, August I think, overcome by the waves of creatures. The mass of flesh and tentacles surged over him, gnashing mouths of razor fangs shredding him to the bone in seconds.

“We need to get out of here!” I heard Salt Water yell, managing to shoot one of the creatures through the face with his hunting rifle. “We can’t kill these things!”

More were rising from the dead. Their liquified bodies had pool around our hooves and were beginning to pull themselves up between us. I saw bloody mouths reaching from the ground to eat me as I tried to fight on.

From down the tunnel we had come came more slithering creatures. Their fleshy, snake like bodies wriggling around the walls and crawling up the roof of the cavern. I saw screaming pony faces stretched out across their bodies, as if they were made out of melted and fused pony corpses.

We had to run. This place was a death trap.

Crank sent a massive blast energy towards the exit of the cave, a gaping hole that descended deeper into vile cavern. The creatures covering our escape route were blasted apart into dust and rotting fluid.

“Run! Now!” Crank ordered, charging down the tunnel, his tesla cannons and horn sending massive bursts of bright blue light flashing down the hall, incinerating anything that remained down there. “Pyre, take back!”

I didn’t have time to argue or figure out that specific order for Pyre as I felt the whole group begin charging after him, Pyre Blaze taking the back of the line and sending a wave of fire at the entrance of the tunnel to prevent the creatures from pursuing as fast as they normally would have.

One of the fleshy monsters managed to evade the wall of fire, darting down the tunnel and latching onto Salt Waters hind leg with its jaws. Salt Water screamed in pain as he toppled to the ground, beating at the creature with his hoof. The gaping jaws dug deeper into his flesh drawing blood and ripping most of the hide from the bone.

I blasted the creature with a shot from Boneless, spraying blood and bits of rotten flesh across Salt Waters face. I pulled him up and helped him run along as we did our best to keep pace with the galloping group.

Another blast of fire from Pyre’s flamers set the tunnel ablaze with firelight. I could feel the heat of the flame flaring around me as the creatures rushed down the tunnel towards us.

The strange snake like creatures bolted through the fire, ignoring the searing heat and flames that raced across their bodies. The Grey Security pony shot up at them with his assault rifle, but the bullets did little to slow down the incoming creatures.

The snake creatures lashed at him, coiling their bodies tightly around his neck. I could see the grey ponies eyes start to bulge as their grip around him began to constrict. Before the pressure could pop off his head however, Boulder’s massive sledgehammer collided with one of the snakes head, making the body fall to the ground. The creature began writhing as it tried to chase us even without its head.

Ahead of us I saw a small glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Crank had already left the tunnel, his large form bursting into the cavern beyond. I picked up my pace, doing my best to help Salt Water along as he limped towards the exit.

“Come on! Hurry up!” I heard Pyre growl, another wave of fire submerging the tunnel behind us. I heard the creatures shrieking as they were once again set aflame.

The rest of us shot out of the tunnel and into the gloomy cavern beyond. The second I pulled Salt Water from the tunnel, a blast of light blue energy lanced over our heads from Crank’s cannons and collided with the rocks above the tunnel. The top of the cave collapsed inwards, burying the tunnel under a few feet of black rock and crushing the flesh creatures inside.

I gasped, slowly helping Salt Water to the ground. “What the fuck were those things?” I sputtered, glancing back nervously at the collapsed tunnel.

“No fucking idea,” Chestnut whimpered, not sounding quite so intimidating for the first time since I had met her. “I’ve never seen anything like that down here.”

“Where the hell are we?” I heard Brisk utter breathlessly from beside me. I turned to look at the room we now stood in. instantly my jaw fell open in awe.

We had entered some form of giant underground cistern. Massive stone pillars ran in organized rows through the large space, the tops of them curved into beautifully sculpted archways. The floor was a large body of water about four feet deep with a stunning green and blue tile floor below it. Strange blue light emanates from between the cracks in the tiles, giving the room a spooky glow just bright enough for us to see a few feet in any direction. The room was large and dark enough that I couldn’t see the walls, so whether they were still made of rock or if they were as beautiful as the rest of the room remained a mystery to me.

“We’re in one of the old cisterns below the Hollow Shade,” Salt Water chilled, pulling out a healing potion and downing the contents. The nasty wound on his leg began to heal a little bit, but the strange acidic sludge the creatures had been oozing seemed to be preventing the wound from healing completely. “There’s a massive network of these below the whole area. The Ministry of Arcane Science used to spend a lot of time down here I think, I don’t know where these ruins came from or what they had hoped to find down here though. It’s one of the Hollow Shades many mysteries.”

“More importantly, it’s where Stable 44 gets their water,” The grey security pony in charge informed us, pointing to a water generator sticking out of the water not too far away. The rusted piece of pre war technology clashing with the stunning architecture. “So whatever is causing the issue with the water should be down here too.”

Great, so we just needed to search this area until we found the source. That wasn’t so bad. I remembered the horrifying fight we had just gone through and quickly changed my mind. I suddenly didn’t want to know what was causing all the problems.

I glanced over at Xayah who had taken to looking up at the roof, her eyes fascinatedly looking over something. I slowly limped over to her, pulling a healing potion and quickly drinking the fluid inside to heal the wounds I had received from the fight.

“What are you looking at?” I asked, pulling up next to her and following her gaze to the ceiling.

She pointed a hoof up at a large white serpent like object embedded in the rock roof of the cistern. “Bones,” Was all she said. It took me a few seconds, but I began to make sense of the strange shape.

It was some form of giant skeleton belonging to some kind of serpent like creature. It was hard to tell exactly what the creature had once been as all I seemed to be able to see was a small portion of its massive tail. Even still, each vertebrae of the tail seemed to be bigger than my entire body.

I shivered, glad that whatever those bones belonged to was long dead. I really, really didn’t want to fight something of that magnitude.

“Hey, I think I found somethin’ over here,” Toffee called out, looking off into the water farther out into the dark cistern.

We all wandered over to where she stood and looked at what she was pointing at, the crystal clear water around our hooves slowly transformed into a dark green ooze around the generator and continued off into the darkness of the cistern. The ooze mingled with the water, slowly seeping into it and turning it into a sickening green as well.

“Well we seem to have found the source of the problem,” Salt Water commented, limping on his injured hoof and following the trail of dark sludge into the gloom of the cistern with his eyes. “Guess we better follow it to see where this stuff leads.”

Everypony nodded in agreement and began trudging through the foul fluids and into the darkness beyond. I gulped as I slowly began to walk after them. Something about the area seemed wrong to me, as if the cistern itself had eyes and was watching me from the darkness. I felt like I was standing in the throat of a beast that intended to swallow me whole.

In the distance I could see the far wall of the cistern. the walls were covered in strange ancient drawings depicting strange star beasts. a particularly large image was of a massive pony made out of what I assumed were shadows. A massive archway in the middle of the wall lead to a dark tunnel beyond. Through the darkness, I could have sworn I saw two pony shaped figures standing silhouetted in the archway.

“Bad,” A choppy voice grunted from behind me, shifting my attention from the wall. I nodded, assuming it was Boulder, granting us with one of his few moments of speech.

Then I spotted Boulder walking a few feet ahead of me beside Toffee and the grey security pony. I whirled around to face whomever was behind me. Only my Hellhound stood there, their eyes locked on me with a strange fear filled glare.

“Did- did you just talk?” I asked shakelly. I had had no idea that Hellhound could speak. They seemed intelligent in combat and Watcher had seemed to suggest that they were just as sentient as ponies, but they idea that they could actually converse with us had never crossed my mind. I felt a chill go through me as I realised how truly morally wrong it was to be controlling this hellhound the way I had been. It might as well have just been a pony. I had to do everything I could to stop myself from releasing it right then and there.

“Bad,” The Hellhound grunted again, looking up into the darkness my friends were approaching.

Something was wrong. Why had it waited until now to speak? Was the mind control device keeping it from talking as it normally would, and if so, why was it speaking now? “What’s bad?” I asked, glancing in the way of my friends. I had a sudden terrible feeling that we were walking towards something truly horrifying and terrible.

“It comes,” The Hellhound grunted, taking a step back. A small whimper escaping its mouth. Okay, something was definitely wrong. “Bad. Very bad.”

Before I could ask the Hellhound more or question the morality of my actions, I spotted something hunched over in the darkness. At first I assumed it was nothing but a large rock in the center of the dark cistern, but the longer I stared at it the more it began to unfold. A massive body emerged from the depths on huge gnarled legs. A hulking mass of fleshy tendrils broke the surface of the foul water, writhing as they slowly expanded and contracted from the creatures body. The bodies of hundreds of ponies squirmed from underneath the creatures rotting flesh as they tried to rip themselves free from the massive body. The dark sludge that had begun to contaminate the water radiated off of the creature, the water around it as dark as the shadows in the cave.

Whatever it was, it was the cause of the bad water.

A foul stench began to fill the cistern, reeking of rot and decay. I placed a hoof over my mouth to keep from vomiting.

The creatures head slowly emerged from the water, its limp jaw crooked and gaping as thousands of tentacles pushed their way from the creatures mouth. slowly, its eyes began to open.

I stumbled and fell into the water as the creature turned to gaze at me, dark green sludge surging over me and obscuring my view of the creatures eyes.

I sputtered as the dark fluid poured into my throat. It burned like acid. I broke the surface again and spit it out, bits of sudge mixed with bile and viscera spilling from my lips.

I looked up at my friends. They had all turned to stare in horror at the hulking monstrosity that had emerged. No wait, not starring in horror. They were frozen in place, their jaws slack and their bodies shaking ever so slightly as they stared at the beast. Even Crank stood immobilized, his powerful form twitching as he stared down the creature.

They weren’t there, not mentally. I could tell by their blank expressions. Something about looking into the creatures eyes had frozen them.

I could hear the creature slowly lumbering forwards on its lopsided legs, a blood curdling wail echoing from its strange tentacle filled mouth. My body began to shake at the sound of the wailing. It was Brisk’s cries.

I kept my head low, not daring to look up at the creature as it slowly advanced towards it prey. I dashed over to Brisk and Xayah, waving my hoof in front of their face in a desperate hope to break them free from whatever trace the massive creature had put them in. They just stared back at me, horrified expression on their faces as their eyes darted to a fro.

Making sure not to look into the creatures eyes, I raised Boneless and fired at the creature, the explosive shells bursting against the monsters rotting flesh. A gaping wound was ripped open in the creature, allowing a pony like form to flop out of the body in a wave of blood and yellow fluid before the monsters rotting flesh pulled itself back together like nothing had happened. The massive creature didn’t even seem to notice the attack and continued slowly closing in on us.

Yeah, I hadn’t really expected that to work. Guns were next to useless down here anyway.

I turned back to my friends. There had to be some way to get them out of this trance. An idea came to mind, but I knew it would take time. I rushed away from Brisk and Xayah and stopped in front of Golden Chestnut, the only other unicorn in the group that could do magic. Taking a deep breath I ignited my horn and placed it against her forehead.

My vision flared with a blinding white, a sharp pain shooting through my head. I forced myself to go on, ignoring the pain. Then everything swirled away into blackness.

I was standing atop a large platform overlooking a crowd of slaves as they were herded like cattle towards a large machine. Slavers in dark black combat armour stood over them, occasionally cracking their bladed whips down upon slaves that were moving to slowly. The sky was cast in a deep red haze and a thick smog had settled over the area around us. Above me I could see the shapes of hot air balloons made to look like the old ministry mare Pinkie Pie’s smiling face.

The air was filled with the shuffling of hooves as the slaves were pushed along and the loud buzzing of machinery. Every few seconds a scream would echo from the crowd and pound in my ears. I might have been standing in hell itself.

This could only be one place… the dreaded Fillydelphia.

I saw Chestnut down below me, dressed in rags and her hooves clamped in chains as she shuffled forwards. I could see multiple whiplashes across her back. A strong looking brown stallion slave stood beside her, doing his best to comfort her as they both cried and pushed forwards.

I was about to run up and help her when a dark red stallion with a jet black mane stepped up beside me. I glanced at him, taking in his commanding presence. I saw a dark red mechanical eye on his face, very similar to Crank's eye.

I gasped and took a nervous step back, certain that I was staring at the infamous Red Eye I had heard so much about. He was a cyber pony too! The whole world seemed to be shifting around him, but not in the literal sense. The very air around him felt commanding and headstrong. Some part of me that I hated even admitted that being so close to him was… was comforting. Peaceful.

A particularly large, black female griffon swooped down and landed next to Red Eye. She raised a thick bullwhip and slashed it through the air, causing a massive cracking sound that made all the slaves wince.

“Silence slaves!” The griffon roared from beside me. I had to put a hoof over my ears to prevent them from exploding from the power of her voice. All the slaves below went silent and froze, even the slavers had a moment of pause as the armoured griffon loomed over them.

The griffon took a step back, allowing Red Eye to take the lead. The cybernetic pony strode forwards calmly, taking in all of the ponies that cowered before him. Everypony was silent. No pony dared to interrupt whatever he was about to say, even in the slightest. “Ponies. The world of Equestria from the days of old has gone, replaced with a sick and twisted landscape that we must struggle to survive day by day. But because of your contribution, we will rebuild Equestria and make a world where our children and the generations to come can live a true life. A happy life,” His words struck me as oddly charismatic. Despite the growing hatred I had developed for him over the past few days, I couldn't help but feel an eerie sense of calm by just listening to him.

Red Eye took another step forwards, looming over the crowd of slaves. He reached his hooves out, as if offering to help pull them up to the platform with him. “Let us join hooves. Let us work towards a better tomorrow. Equestria could be a Utopia once again, we just need to make it so,” The word Utopia made a chill go down my spine. Something about that word was starting to feel wrong. Like a sick and festering lie that was slowly curroding away at my understanding of the world at large. Red Eye continued, his smooth, oily words filled with an intelligence I had never seen in another pony. “Today you begin your contribution to the great cause. Today you build a world that your children will be able to live and thrive in. Today we take back this wasteland and make it what it should have been all along through a great unity. Today we take one more step closer to making this world home.”

With that, he turned and slowly walked from the platform and out of sight. I followed him with my eyes as he left, unable to tear my eyes away from the impressively smooth speaker. The second he had left my view I snapped back to my senses as if I had been caught in a trance. For a second I wondered if his words had put a spell on me. I mean he couldn’t simply be that charismatic and convincing, right? There was no way words could be that powerful!

All the slavers stomped their hooves in applause at his words. To my disgust, I saw a few slaves stomping along as well, clearly swayed by his speech.

Remembering what I was here to do, I began walking down from the platform towards where Chestnut and the brown Stallion were being pushed along by the slavers. I had to figure out a way to get Chestnut out of this weird dream state thing before that monster back in the real world reached us and started eating us alive.

None of the Slavers stopped to look at me as I made my way past them. I doubted they could even see me in this bizarre nightmare world I was in.

As I neared her, Chestnut tripped on her own broken hooves. She collapsed to the ground, one of the slaves that had been walking behind her stepping on her chest to get over her as the slavers urged them to move forwards. The brown stallion leaned down to help her, but a slaver with a dull blue coat and cyan mane pushed him away, ordering him to stay in line.

Aggressively, the slaver bit onto Chestnuts ear and yanked her from the line where he threw her down into a pile of scraps. The jagged chunks of metal and broken shards of glass cut at her sides, tearing up Chestnut’s exposed coat as she began to whimper.

I had never seen Chestnut look so defeated and broken. She had always seemed so strong. Not that I had known her for very long, but still.

The slaver raised his whip above his head, readying to lash it against her back for daring to slow down in the line.

I saw his rage filled eyes flash with a pale yellow and a mass of tentacles burst from his mouth. It only appeared for a second, but it was just long enough for me to see.

I knew what I had to do. I had to remove this strange creatures imprint from my companions minds. Seemed simply enough.

“There you are,” I muttered, raising boneless and firing point blank against the slavers head. The slaver burst open, dark ooze spilling from the stump that his head had once been. it swayed slightly, before falling to the ground with a thump.

Chestnut looked up at me, tears in her eyes. Then there was a flash of white light and a spike of pain that shot through my skull. Once again, I was torn away from reality.

My eyes flashed open. I could see Chestnut’s eyes open as well a second later, a look of fear and hurt still played across her face.

She slowly began to tilt her head up to see the lumbering monster again, still consumed by a state of confusion, fear and shock. “What in the world hap-”

I grabbed her head and pulled it back down away from the massive creature, looking her in the eyes and refusing to let her look back up at the monster. “Don’t look into its eyes,” I instructed, keeping her gaze fixed on me. “Looking at it sends you into some sort of waking nightmare. You’ll need to go into your friends heads get them out of the trace as well. Got it?” I instructed, trying my best to both explain everything that was going on as well as understand it myself.

Chestnut nodded, her eyes still displaying signs of terror at what she had just seen. What she had just had to live through for a second time. “How- how do I do that?”

“Do you know how to use memory orbs?” I asked quickly, quickly checking my ammo. I still had thirty five shells. Clearly shooting of a gun in the weird dreamscape I had been inside of didn’t take up ammo. I shouldn’t have been surprised. She nodded quickly. “It’s the same sort of thing. It seems to be embodying ponies that you fear from your darkest moments or some shit. Find the creature inside and kill it. You save your friends, I’ll save mine.”

I could hear the monster getting closer. It was practically looming over top of us now.

Then I was darting back over to Brisk and Xayah as the continued to stare motionlessly at the oncoming horror. I hoped Chestnut would be able to figure out how to get ponies out of this trance state, there was no way I could free all of their minds myself in time.

Even now I saw the creature bend down in the corner of my eye. It’s slithering tentacles wrapped around the frozen grey security pony and began dragging him into his mouth with a disgusting sucking noise.

Something was quickly moving towards me in the water. I couldn’t make out it’s shape as it stayed low below the surface.

Shit, I had to do this fast. There were more things coming.

I turned and placed my horn against Brisk’s head. A sharp pain shot through me and everything swirled away into a blinding white.

I was standing in Stable 25. Not the bloodsoaked metal halls from my last visit, but as they had once been a long time ago. Dull and grey.

I was in the security holding area. A few Security ponies stood around me at all sides, grinning at us with wicked grins.

Shit. I could already tell where this was going.

A filly Brisk lay snivelling in the centre of the room, his green coat sticky with semen and covered in dark bruises. He was dry heaving on the floor, his hooves already in a pool of vomit and bile. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old.

A Security mare stood over him, a look of pleasure still very much visible on her face. She had a dark grey coat and a dusty beige mane, her cutie mark was that of a baton.

Fuck her, I knew her too. She had escorted me to class a few times when the bullying and beatings had gotten extremely bad. She had even helped me with my homework once, a long time ago. She had seemed so nice. So very very nice. Damn her.

The security mare put a hoof on Brisk’s back and pushed him hard into the floor, his face landing in the pool of vomit. She grinned at him, wiping some of the bodily fluids off of her own barding.

I didn’t need to see her face contort into a mass of tentacles to know it was her I had to kill. I raised my baton in my magic and slammed it down across her head, cracking her skull. But the mare didn’t die. She whirled on me, her limbs thrashing. Tentacles began slithering out of every orifice in her body as the deranged creature tried to attack back. it would not let me kill it so easily this time around.

Foul tendrils of flesh began wrapping around my body. They dripped of a vile black slime that burned away at my flesh.

As the tentacle tightened, I began to smell the stench of death. Pink clouds began pumping into the room from the vents above me, slowly making my coat melt away. The once sneering security ponies that circled the room began to cough and clutch at their throats as the iniquitous cloud pushed its way into their lungs.

I bashed the creature over and over with my baton, each hit breaking bones and causing the creature to ooze with more puss filled fountains of blood. I would not let it get to me. I would not let it get Brisk.

And yet still it held tight to me, its slimy tentacles wrapping tighter and tighter around my body, making me gasp for air.

I saw bodies of raider foals at my hooves, blood spilling from their shattered skulls. Their broken forms began to thrash as some twisted magic brought them back from the dead, only for them to start screaming in agony as they felt the damage I had done to their body.

The Creature began to shift, something inside of it expanding and bursting from the flesh of the grey security mare. It took the form of Inferno, his flamers ablaze with light as they sent waves of fire washing over me, burning away at my already melting skin. Then it became the grinning grey and purple zebra Azar, tentacles bursting from every part of his body even as he placed his hoof over the detonator held tight in his grip.

I could feel myself slipping away, dying. It was going to tear me apart from my very body.

I didn’t let them. I began slamming my baton harder against the creatures skull again and again until its head burst open and the slithering mass of rotting flesh inside of it spilled across the floor.

I raced up and wrapped my hooves around the shivering form of the filly Brisk. He pushed me back, coiling away from my touch as his face was marred by burning tears.

The pink cloud began closing around us tighter, my breath became ragged as I started to choke and drown in my own blood.

I took a step back from him and bent down to eye level. “It’s going to be okay Brisk. I’m here for you. You are not alone.”

Then the world flashed white and I felt myself being ripped away from the nightmare of Stable 25 once again. For once, I wasn’t sad to see the Stable go.

Brisk and I opened our eyes at roughly the same time. To my relief, none of the wounds the two of us had received had followed us out of the nightmare. He looked at me, tears brimming the rim of his eyes. He shook his head, trying to shake the image of what had just happened. “Amber, I- I didn’t want you to see that. I- That isn’t me anymore…”

I gave him a tight hug. “I know. You are who you are Brisk. That memory doesn’t define you,” I pushed back from him quickly, realising how little time I had to save everypony. Already I could see the monster turning from where the grey security pony had once been and moving towards Salt Water, it’s large tentacles reaching out to consume him. I never was able to find out that security ponies name. I turned to look at Brisk. “Don’t look the monster in the eye. Get someplace safe!” I shouted as I quickly moved to face Xayah.

Brisk glanced down at his hooves and began backing up, clearly not wanting to go back into the monsters strange nightmare trance.

As I neared Xayah something leapt from the water and knocked me to the side. Damn it, I had forgotten about the weird thing I had seen moving in the water.

As I steadied myself, I took the creature in. It was a ghoul, or at least something very similar to one. It’s rotting and patchy coat was covered in oozing puss bubbles, a few of them popping even as I watched. It’s face had been distorted, twisted into an endless scream and its jaw crooked and impossibly wide. I could see things wriggling below its flesh, as if the creatures veins had turned into maggots and were trying to eat their way out of him.

The ghastly ghoul lunged at me again, swiping at me with gnarled limbs. I leapt to the side, bringing my baton down hard on it’s back.

The creatures spine snapped, it’s back half twisting up at a near ninety degree angle. And yet it refused to die.

The geiger counter on my pipbuck spiked and clicked furiously just by being close to the creature.

It lunged again, refusing to even be a little slowed by its crooked and flailing back half. It’s hooves lashed me across the face. I could feel its mear touch burn away skin.

I reeled back and bashed it across the head with Boneless, causing it to stumble to the side. As it began to realign itself to attack me, I pushed Boneless up against its head and Fired.

Blam!

The creatures head exploded, it’s whole body dissolving into a black ooze as it died.

But it didn’t die. It slowly began to rise again from the water, the black sludge slowly hardening into thrashing limbs. It didn’t seem to be pulling itself together quite right either, it’s head wasn’t straight and it seemed to have a few additional limbs as it began to rise.

Shit. Just like everything else down here, shooting it did little more than use up our ammo!

I turned back to Xayah and put my horn to her head. I had to do this before it finished reforming and attacked me while I was in Xayah’s memories.

I quickly glanced at Brisk, who was doing his best to keep his eyes away from the massive monster. “Keep that thing at bay!” I shouted, pointing to the slowly reforming ghoul creature. I saw Brisk nod as I ignited my horn and let the world swirl away.

We were surrounded. Raiders were closing in from all sides, their wicked grins filled with malice and undeserved hatred for the group of zebra’s I was standing with.

There were three zebras total. The one closest to me was Xayah, that much was obvious. Unlike the other memories I had gone into, Xayah looked no younger than she did in the present day, though she was admittedly in better condition. I hadn’t realised just how damaged looking she had become during her travels with me.

Beside her was a much older looking black and white zebra I could only assume was Xayah’s mother. Xayah was clearly a spitting image of her mother, from the same stripes and colour pattern, to the same emerald green eyes and upward mane.

Squeezed between the two of them, was a young zebra I assumed was Xayah’s daughter Zira- or at least what I thought had been a zebra. She was a lighter colour than Xayah was, being a light grey and black and her mane was a solid white unlike any other zebra I had seen. The zebra glyph on her rump was not a zebra glyph at all, but rather the image of a wooden flute.

Xayah had told me back when we had first met that Zira had been fascinated by zebra glyphs. Now I knew why. Zira was possibly the only zebra with a cutie mark instead. Was she half pony? How did that work?

The first wave of raiders swarmed inwards, a deadly wall of knives and barbwire covered baseball bats surging towards the three zebras. They managed to dodge the first attack with the same surprising agility I had come to expect from zebras, but they were greatly outnumbered and didn’t even seem to be in possession of any weapon. Xayah had told me her family had not been fighters.

A pegasus raider dropped down on them from above, her chainsaw severing off the leg of Xayah’s mother. I noticed that the pegasus’ cutie mark had been burned away and replaced with what seemed to be a replica of the old ministry mare Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark. Odd, what the hell does that mean?

ZIra screamed, racing for where her mother had fallen bloody to the ground. Xayah raced up to her, her hoof deflecting oncoming attacks as she frantically fought for her life against the onslaught.

I narrowed my eyes at the pegasus raider. I had no doubt she was who I was meant to kill to get Xayah out of this nightmare. A flash of pale yellow in the pegasus’ eyes only confirmed my theory.

Xayah was crouched over her broken mothers body as she tried to fend of raiders coming from every side. Even against so many, she seemed to be faring fairly well.

Then a raider broke past her defences and stabbed a rusty knife deep into her calf and it was all over.

Raiders bore down on her mother, ripping her apart limb for limb. Blood and viscera were sent flying everywhere.

Zira screamed, thrashing her hooves against the raiders sides and trying to free her still flailing mother from their attacks. A raider lashed out with a machete, the wide blade slamming down hard on the fillies head.

With a thwack, the blade lodged itself in the fillies skull and stuck. There was a moment of stillness from both Zira and the raider, as if the sudden and anticlimactic attack had frozen them both in place. Then the raider pushed against Zira’s body with a hoof and dislodged his blade.

And just like that, I watched Zira die, at least it had been somewhat quick.

To Xayah’s credit, she managed to hold herself back from bursting into uncontrollable sobs as both her mother and daughter were slaughtered before her eyes. Not that I was surprised. I don’t think Xayah had even learned how to cry until after the death of Stable 25.

The pegasus landed atop Xayah’s mother’s body, her chainsaw swinging down and decapitating the thrashing zebra’s head. She stared up at Xayah, her vile gaze passing straight through me. “Chain that one up,” The pegasus raider cackled. “I want to have fun with that one.”

I gritted my teeth. I had killed this bitch once before. I’d be damned if I couldn’t do it again.

I rushed forwards, firing Boneless against the pegasus’ head. The shot missed as the pegasus rocketed towards the sky with a powerful flap of her wings, but this time I knew that I couldn’t run out of ammo here. Here I could be a little more reckless.

I fired up twice at the pegasus as she dove down towards me. The first shot missed again, but the second shot made its mark, shredding the pegasus’ wings and dropping her to the ground. Instantly tentacles began shooting from its mouth, trying to wrap around me. I wouldn’t let it. I quickly reloaded and fired again, this time into its mouth. The tendris were blasted apart into visera.

Then the raiders began attacking me. Their faces had twisted, now resembling something similar to the ghoul creature I had fought back in the cistern.

Damn it, this thing was learning. It wasn’t just going to sit back and let me kill it, it was going to start throwing everything in had at me. And in a dreamstate that it controlled, ‘everything it had’ could be virtually anything.

I leapt to and fro, doing my best to dodge the unexpected assault of raging ghouls. A hoof swept out my hooves out from under me, sending me topping to the ground. The mass of ghoul raiders, lunged, clawing at me and tearing away flesh.

I screamed and pulled away from them, reverting my attention to the brutalized mutating pegasus. These ghoul raiders didn’t matter, only her.

I telekinetically swung Boneless to face her. I could see the creatures eyes widen as it realised it was only seconds away from being blasted apart once again.

It began shrieking, a large hole in the fabric of existence began tearing its way out of the air between us. Through the hole I could see what appeared to be the wastelands equivalent of a dessert.

The vile pegasus lurched forwards, throwing itself through the portal and towards whatever was on the other side to escape me. Seconds after it began to close, and with it the whole world began to crumble. Manehattan skyscrapers fell, its already broken spires crumbling and raining down on us from above. The ground was ripped apart and broke beneath my hooves. I could feel my very being beginning to cease to exist.

The terrifying idea of dying in here and having my mind forever tapped deep in Xayah’s twisted subconscious, unable to return to my body flashed through my mind. The idea was horrifying.

Not knowing what to do, I shook the ghoul raiders from me and leapt into the closing portal after the monster. It felt like I was being squeezed through a hole the size of a straw. My whole body convulsed, my battered form clenching tight around my guts. For a horrifying moment I thought my ribs might snap and burst through my chest.

Then I was standing in a ramshackled house. Out the window I could see a radioactive desert. An old sign had been hastily spray painted to read ‘New Appleoosa’.

A slightly younger looking Xayah stood shivering in the corner of the room. A trail of blood drizzling down her hind legs. A large buck with a lasso for a cutie mark towered over her, his face a strange mix of sickening pleasure and rage.

“Y’all should never ‘ve come t’ this town,” the stallion snarled, pinning the shaking Xayah down with a powerful hoof. “We don’t take kindly to zebras ‘round here. Now you get down and beg!”

Xayah crouched down even lower, her eyes filled with a fear I had never seen in her. The stallion’s strong hoof pounded her across the face, making her fall flat on her stomach. The Stallion laughed and said something, but I wasn’t able to make it out.

Not because he said it quietly though, in fact it was quite the opposite. The stallion had practically yelled at her. But I was so angry, blinded by a burning rage that bordered on death of my Stable levels of anger that I had lost the ability to do anything other than seethe in rage.

How dare he! How dare he touch her like that! For… for what? Being a zebra?

With Brisk, I had at least been somewhat prepared. As sick and fucked up as it had been, I had at least been mentally preparing myself to face the atrocities of what the Stable had done to him. When I had gone into his mind to save him, I had known deep down that I was going to witness his rape.

But not with Xayah… I had no idea…

Crank had told me. I should have listened. Damn it!

I saw the Stallion lay a hoof on her head. Xayah whimpered at the contact, her left forehoof starting to shake violently. I knew it would never stop.

“You Fucker!” I screamed, lashing out at him with my baton. The heavy shock baton hit, sending the stallion crashing down on top of Xayah’s shaking form. I pushed him off of her, allowing her room to pull herself away and huddle in the corner. My baton beat down again, snapping both of his front legs. “You fuck! You- You fucking rapist!”

I could see the stallion slowly morphing into the hideous tentacled monster again, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to bring pain to that stallion. Give Xayah some form of justice for what had been done.

My baton slammed down again, and again, and again, and again. Electric shocks rippled through the creatures body with each hit. I felt bones break, limbs crunch. Blood was gushing onto the floor. I raised my hoof and slammed it down across his face, only to feel his face give way to the punch, my hoof lodging itself halfway through his skull.

The squirming stopped.

I looked up at Xayah. She was afraid. So goddess damned afraid. And she was shaking, she wouldn’t stop shaking.

Both our eyes burst open. We stared at each other for a long moment, both of our eyes welling up with Tears.

“Xayah, I… I had no idea,” I muttered softly, wrapping her tightly in a hug.

Xayah sniffled, hugging me back. “I did not want you to know. You would- you would worry about me. And- and... I… I did not want myself to know.”

I didn’t have time to ask what that meant as the ghoul like creature slammed into me again, knocking me off balance. So much for Brisk keeping it away from me.

Then I spotted Brisk doing his best to deal with two other ghoul things. Shit! There were more of them?! Where the hell were they coming from?

I heard Chestnut and a now freed Toffee screaming as they blasted at the massive monster with their guns. I turned to face them, finding the monsters gaze away from me and locked on the pony it quickly sucked into its mouth. I saw the last few seconds of Salt Waters life before he disappeared into the mass of tentacles in the creature's mouth. Salt Water gave a loud pained scream, clearly having broken from his trance mere seconds before he was devoured.

A fucked up part of my brain sighed that I would never be able to prove I was a better mechanic than him, before the more emotional side of me began to sob uncontrollably, realising I had just watched a friend get eaten alive.

I watched as Toffee fired a shot from her shotgun, the buckshot ripping a massive hole in the hulking monsters side. Like what had happened with I had shot it, a pony sized glob of something fleshy flopped out of the monsters bleeding wound.

Terror shot through me as I realised what was happening. I reached a hoof out, signalling for the two of them to stop attacking it. “Stop! Shooting it just makes more ghouls!” I screamed, hoping they could hear me over the chaos. “Just focus on getting everypony out of the transes!” They seemed to hear me. Chestnut began running over to Boulder, and Toffee began focusing her attacks at the few ghouls that had wiggled their way out of the creatures flesh.

Xayah and I turned to face the ghoul thing that had jumped at me, both our bodies tensing up as we saw it preparing to lunge at us again. It’s attack never came.

Before it had the chance to move, Pyre’s massive power armoured form collided with the ghoul, her armoured hooves stomping down on its head and crushing it flat.

“Get going!” Pyre shouted, stomping her hooves on the creatures head again as it began to rise back up. “We need to find a way to kill that thing!” Yeah, no shit. But I was happy to see her all the same.

Apparently Chestnut had freed Pyre Blaze as well. I wasn’t complaining, there wasn’t any pony better to have in a fight than her. Well, I guess there was one...

I quickly looked over at Crank standing frozen a few feet away from me. Him and Boulder seemed to be the only two that hadn’t been set free. I could see the two remaining Security ponies fending off ghoul things while doing their best to not look directly at the massive abomination.

The monster had begun to move again now that it had finished eating Salt Water. It’s long tentacles began reaching out, twisting their way towards Crank. For a second I considered just letting the monster eat him. It would be one less enemy I would have to worry about and it would save me a lot of trouble in the future.

I sighed, shaking my head a little. No, if I didn't save him I wouldn't be Amber Aura. I needed to save him.

Fucking morallity. Worst. virtue. ever.

I began racing through the dark cistern. A ghoul jumped out at me, it’s hooves slashing at my throat in a savage attempt to rip it out. I ducked low, my chin just barely skimming the surface of the black water.

My Hellhound lashed out, cutting the ghoul in half before it could attack again.

Apparently Chestnut had freed my Hellhound too. Clearly she was faster than I was at the whole dreamscape thing. That or the memories she had to deal with were easier. I almost laughed at that. I doubted Pyre’s past was easy.

I skidded to a halt before Crank. I could feel the massive monster behind me looming over me, slowly drawing closer and closer. I could see it’s tentacles slither towards us like snakes. One began wrapping around my hoof, another around Crank’s thick neck.

It was now or never. I took a deep breath and put my horn to Crank’s forehead.

“Alright, lets see what the mighty cyber alicorn fears,” I said, almost whimpering in fear as I realised how dangerous what I was about to do was. I ignited my horn and sent my world into a blinding white.

This time wasn’t like before. Before I had found myself in a horrible memory while terrible things happened to ponies at the hooves of monsters just as foul as the one making these nightmares occur. But this wasn’t a memory. It was a void.

A void that had been filled with corpses. Everywhere I looked I saw bodies. Many blasted apart and oozing blood. I recognised the many wounds that coated all the bodies. These were all of Crank’s victims. Goddesses there were so many.

I could feel the presence of the creature searching through Crank’s mind, searching for the perfect nightmare. It was either having trouble finding one, or there were too many to choose from.

The bodies around me seemed to be glowing slightly. I drew closer to them, spotting a strange pulsing sphere of light inside of them. They were very similar to the silver orbs I had seen when inside Inferno’s head. Whether these were a cyber pony thing or just what memories looked like I couldn’t be sure. I guess they did kinda resemble memory orbs in a way.

Slowly, I reached out and touched the body of a buck who had been ripped open. Instantly the world flashed into a brilliant white and I found myself standing in the wasteland.

The corpse of the buck was no longer a corpse, but rather a pony standing beside me. A few other ponies stood behind him as well, pulling a large wagons full of scraps down the cracked roads of Manehattan.

I could see four figures approaching from the distance, the light of the cloud covered sun gleaming off of their metal plating. The ground seemed to rumble as they approached, each one of their hoof steps causing a miniature earthquake.

The group of ponies slowed to a stop as they spotted the four cyber ponies nearing them. Many of the ponies quickly reached for their guns, not sure what to make of the oncoming death machines.

All four cyber ponies stopped a few paces from the group. I could see all four of them, their mere presence sending chills down my spine.

Inferno, Steel blade, Tripwire and Crank. Four of the most deadly fighters the wasteland had ever seen. Just seeing them all at once gave me a creeping sense of dread. I had managed to kill three of them so far, but not without a great deal of effort and a lot of luck and unfair advantages. The idea of facing down all four at once chilled me to the bone.

“Well hello there,” the buck said, taking a nervous step forward. He did his best to hide the fear in his voice, but he was unable to conceal it completely. “Can we help you four with something?”

I could see Crank’s red glass eyes narrow. “We are looking for a pony named Diesel. Have you seen him?” His voice was a low commanding rumble that made all of the ponies, myself included, take a fearful step back.

A wave of discomfort washed over the ponies. Just from their reactions I could tell that they not only knew where this Diesel pony was, but he was in this very group right now. Inferno clearly felt the discomfort as well. He stepped forwards, sneering at all of the ponies with a cruel and wicked sneer. I could see the ends of his flamers start to heat up.

“Point me towards him,” Inferno inquired simply, his tone almost sweat. My skin crawled just hearing the vile cyber ponies voice again.

There was another moment of uncomfort. Finally I heard somepony from the back of the group call out. “We don’t need to tell you anything.”

His comment only seemed to make Inferno grin wider.

“You would dare defy us and the will of our god!” Steel blade bellowed, stomping his hoof on the ground. The other three cyber ponies seemed to roll their eyes at his outburst. Now given a moment to take him in, I realised how much smaller Steel Blade was compared to the rest of the cyber ponies. Crank hadn’t been lying when he said Steel Blade was the weaker of the four.

“Your deaths can easily be arranged,” Crank snarled bluntly, taking a step forward, his tesla cannons and horns glowing a brilliant blue. “Bring him forwards and the rest of you can walk away.”

There was a moment of silence, followed only by a fairly small and frail looking stallion pushing his way to the front of the group. He shook in fear before the four death machines. “I… uh… I’m Diesel.”

Instantly, a ray of blue light blasted from Crank’s horn and lashed through Diesel’s chest. The stallion screamed and clutched at the gaping hole that was just ripped through his front. Blood spilled across the dark concrete road as he flopped over and died.

It all happened so fast.

Everypony stood in shocked silence, staring at the blood spilling across the road. Finally the buck who I had first seen roared with rage. “How dare you! You… You monster!” he rushed forwards, pointing a shotgun at Crank and firing off a round in pure anger.

Crank didn’t even bother to dodge as the buckshot bounced of his metal coat harmlessly. Crank’s bladed tail lashed out, sending a massive spike through the bucks forehead. The buck spasmed for a second before going limp on the end of Crank’s tail. With a quick flick, Crank send the body flying away to the side.

“Make sure that stallion wasn’t just covering for the real Diesel,” Crank snorted, fanning out his bladed wings. “Do whatever you feel is best.”

Crank rocketed off into the sky, leaving the remaining ponies alone with the three cyber ponies. Inferno grinned, trotting up and looking down at a filly who was cowering in fear.

“Oh, I have a few ideas,” He smirked, his vile black tongue licking his lips as he looked down at the filly. Then the three cyber ponies surged forwards, their weapons blazing with light.

Then I was back in the void, staring out at the massive collection of corpses. There was a story behind all of them. They had all met a tragic end at Crank’s hooves. I spotted the bloodied corpse of Diesel beside me. So many deaths.

I moved through the bodies, doing my best not to touch them. Occasionally, one would brush against my side making their last few moments flash through my mind. I saw ponies being torn apart, blasted to bits and turned to ash. It was horrifying.

I could sense something moving through the darkness around me, obscured by the shadows and mounds of corpses. The creature I was here to kill perhaps? Or something else?

Why the hell was this so different from all the other nightmares?

As I walked forwards, I found an area of the void that wasn’t filled with corpses. A sad wailing like sound seemed to fill the air as I began walking through it. Up ahead I could see a lone corpse floating in the blackness.

It was a mare. She seemed to be about my age, if not a little older. She had an auburn coat with a beautiful orange mane that flowed slightly in the strange breeze that passed through the void. Unlike the rest of the bodies, she seemed at peace.

She was truly beautiful. A ray of light amongst the darkness of Crank’s subconscious.

Curious, I reached a hoof forward to touch the glowing light that seemed to be emanating from her.

“Don’t you dare touch her!” Crank snarled form behind me, making me jump and spin around to face him. I hadn’t heard him approaching. Crank’s eyes were filled with anger as he glared at me, his glowing red eyes cutting through the gloom. “Step away. Now!”

I did, quickly moving away from the mare. I looked at him as best I could in the darkness. Something about him seemed off. “I don’t understand,” I muttered, looking away from him and back at the floating corpses. “Why is everything like this? It wasn’t like this in the other’s heads.”

Crank snorted, slowly advancing on me. I could feel myself backing up on instinct to get away from the lethal cyber alicorn. “Don’t you understand?” Crank grunted. “This is my greatest fear. The ponies that have died because of me.”

I could understand that far too well. Again I saw Crank not as a machine of death, but as an older version of myself, twisted and ruined by the wasteland. That image was quickly destroyed as Crank growled, his eyes flicking back to the glowing body of the mare.

“But where are the ponies that wronged you?” I asked, glancing around as if the creature was going to emerge from the darkness. I had no idea how to get Crank out of here if I couldn’t find the creature to attack.

Then, as if on cue, I saw Crank’s glowing eyes flash a sickening yellow. It was him… The creature was inside of Crank! He was the pony he feared the most.

Damn it, this wasn’t going to be easy, was it?

I raised Boneless and leveled it at Crank’s head. “Just trying to save you,” I muttered, before firing off a round at his head.

Crank dodged, evading the shot and rushing at me with impossible spreed. His tail lashed forwards, coming dangerously close to slicing me in two. The only thing that saved me being my baton blocking the path of his attack as I quickly swung it up to meet his bladed tail.

The shock of the impact sent me stumbling back into the darkness, my baton now completely ripped in two. Before I had time to steady myself, Crank was on top of me, slamming down on my chest with his hooves. I felt bones break under the heavy assault.

I blasted another shot from Boneless into his face, the explosive buckshot ripping apart some of his his remaining flesh. Faster than the regeneration of the other three cyber ponies, his flesh melded itself back together. He didn’t even react to the attack as he continued slamming down on me.

My body was torn open, blood spilling from the gaping wound in my chest. I could feel my mind slipping away, melting into the darkness of the void. My body would become one of the many that surrounded me soon.

Crank’s face moved down inches from my own, his jagged metal jaw now filled with writhing tendrils of rotting flesh. His tesla cannons began to charge, readying themselves to blast me into oblivion.

Blam!

A booming shot rang out in the darkness. The bullet tore through Crank’s skull, sending black sludge like blood spewing from his head. He staggered, stumbling off of me as his skull began to pull itself back together.

I rushed to my hooves, feeling a wave of pain wash over me as the movement caused more blood to rush from my body. I looked over to where the shot had come from.

Brisk was standing in the darkness, his horn glowing with a pale light. I could see his face strained with pain as he tried to keep his magic concentrated enough to remain inside of Crank’s head.

I stared at him with a mix of shock, wonder and pride. “You… you’re using magic,” I beamed breathlessly, looking at him and his glowing horn.

He gave me a pained grin. “Well it’s kinda like memory orbs right, and I can do those things.”

We didn’t have time to talk more as Crank turned back to face us. His blood soaked face twisting with anger. He lunged at us, his wings slashing at the air in an attempt to rip us apart.

The two of us dove to the sides, scattering and began our attack on him from all sides.

The air filled with gunfire as Brisk and I shot at him with everything we had. But despite our best efforts, Crank would not go down. He was faster, stronger and far more experienced than both of us combined. Not to mention he was being possessed by some massive tentacle monster. His tesla cannons flared, sending explosive blasts of sparkling blue energy in all directions. With each blast the black void was filled with blinding light.

We ran and dodged, doing our best to stay on the offensive while evading his powerful blasts. Crank could afford to be hit by our attacks, he would just regenerate all the damage in a matter of seconds. But I knew that if either Brisk or I got hit by even one of his attacks, we would die.

My whole body screamed in protest as blood continued to gush from my wounds. Every time I tried to evade his deadly attacks I felt myself slowing down. The pain was unbearable, threatening to throw me into unconsciousness at any given moment.

This was getting us nowhere. We couldn’t hurt him, and we could only evade him for so long. How long would it be until he managed to land a shot? A couple seconds?

I glanced up at the body of the beautiful glowing mare. Crank had seemed protective over her. Perhaps if I could just...

I rushed towards the mares body, dodging another blast from Crank’s tesla cannons. I didn’t avoid getting hit by it’s massive shock wave though. I was sent flying forwards and crashing into the body of the mare.

Crank roared in rage, blasting at me yet again. The glowing blue light of the tesla cannons collided with me. I felt my forehooves get blown apart and my coat burned until I was little more than a flailing pile of flesh. I went blind in one eye, no doubt it had been melted under the searing heat of the cannons. I screamed as I felt every bone in my body shatter and my insides begin to boil. Blood was everywhere, spilling out of my body and into the darkness around me like a waterfall. It was pain like I had never experienced before. But I wasn’t dead yet. I still had a chance.

I could hear Brisk screaming, blasting at Crank with his 10mm pistol. The attacks did nothing. Crank ignored him as he Charged towards me.

I pushed myself forwards on my back legs, the only part of me that seemed somewhat intact. My already ruined vision began to fade even more as my remaining eye began to liquify. Pain shot through my body, causing me to scream out as I pushed myself closer and closer to the body of the mare.

Just a little closer.

I realised I had no idea if this would even work. Goddesses I hoped it would.

I reached out, my hoof touching the mares body. At the same time, Crank roared. His tesla cannons fired again, the blue energy blasting me apart and blowing off the lower half of my body. The light of the tesla cannons mingled with the light of the mares body, the dazzling silver merging with the glowing blue.

For a split second I wasn’t in the void at all. I was someplace else, flashing through a collection of memories that I couldn't understand. Crank’s memories. I saw his whole life flash by me in a second, filling all of my senses with his own. Pain, loss, grief, failure, even brief moments of joy and love flared through my mind. It was so fast, I didn’t have time to register any of it.

Then I was back in the void. I could see Brisk rushing towards me as my vision began to darken more. Tears streaked down his face as he called out. I couldn’t hear him, my hearing was gone as well. All I could hear was this endless buzzing and the rapid beating of my own heart.

With my last bit of strength, I turned my ruined, nearly liquified head to look at Crank. Blood spilled from the top of my head, obscuring my dissipating vision.

Through the blood and the rapidly growing darkness I saw Crank staring at me, a look of sheer terror on his mechanical face. He had seen what I had too, his whole miserable life splayed out before him. Every mistake, every failure, every death.

Crank growled, but it wasn’t at me. “Get out of my head!” He screamed, bashing at his skull with a hoof. “Get the fuck out of my head!”

He lashed at himself with his hooves breaking open his own skull. A writhing mass of tentacles burst from his head, spilling across the floor and wrapping around his hooves. He growled again as his face pulled itself back together, his tesla cannons blazing brighter than ever as fought back against the creatures possession.

Brisk was standing over me, doing everything he could keep me conscious and stop the bleeding. But he couldn’t stop the bleeding. How can you stop it when I was bleeding everywhere.

I saw Crank’s cannons fire, blasting apart the fleshy creature and blowing his own body apart. As I slowly faded into death embrace, I saw Crank scream in rage, his horn burning with blinding light. Then the monster was turned to little more than ash as I drifted into nothingness.

I was alive. My eyes popped open, bringing me back into the dark cistern. Crank must have killed the creature inside mere moments before I had died. I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I had been far too close to death there for my comfort.

Then I realised I was no longer on the floor of the cistern. I was half way between the ground and the massive mouth of the creature. It’s tentacles had wrapped tightly around me and was slowly dragging Brisk, Crank and I into its razor sharp jaws. Hundreds of gnashing mouths reached out for us as it pulled me in closer.

I thrashed against it screaming, trying to get myself away from its jaws. Brisk was squirming beside me too, trying to free himself from the lumbering creatures grasp. Damn it, I didn’t want to die like this!

Then Crank emerged from the nightmare. He glanced around, only taking a second to take in what was going on. Then he bellowed with rage, the walls of the dark cistern shaking from the noise. His tesla cannons flashed, turning the creatures tentacles into ash. Blood surged from the ruined stumps of where the tentacles had once been as Crank send blast after powerful blast into the creature.

Brisk and I fell to the ground as the tendrils of flesh holding us aloft were ripped to shreds. Brisk crawled over to me, clearly glad that the injuries I had received inside of Crank’s mind hadn’t followed me out. Not in the physical sense anyway, but I could still remember the agonising pain. I doubted that memory would leave me for a long while.

Another blast of Crank’s tesla cannons drew my attention back up to him as he battled against the massive monster. The huge creatures head exploded, raining dark visera down around us. I saw swarms of ghoul creatures tearing them self through the monsters flesh, spilling out onto the floor of the cistern around us.

Killing this thing was going to unleash and army of ghouls on us!

“Wait stop!” I yelled, hoping Crank could hear me. Either he couldn’t or he simply didn’t care. Crank continued to fire. Blast after blast, bloody holes were ripped into the monster. Finally, with a massive burst of light from Crank’s horn, the beast exploded. Black sludge and bits of bone showered down around us as the massive monster finally died.

Crank landed with a big splash on the floor of the cistern. His heavy metal hooves cracking the flood and causing the whole cavern to shake. A ghoul lunged at him, its rotting teeth doing little but scratch his thick armour plates.

Crank glanced around at the massive swarm of ghoul that were rising from the water. “Everypony get down!” Crank ordered as his horn began to glow brighter. When Crank demanded something, you obeyed. We all dropped below the surface of the water. I noticed that now that the monster was dead, the water had already begun to clear.

A flash of blue light flared above our heads. The water distorted the sound, making it sound like a far of gunshot.

Out of breath, I pushed myself back above the surface. All the ghouls still stood standing, but their entire top half had been sliced clean off. After a second, they all fell limp to the floor. I doubted that would stop them from coming back to life again, but it gave us a few minutes at least.

I glanced over at Crank as the rest of my party began to break the surface of the water as well. He was shaking a little, clearly still hurting from whatever it was he had seen when all those memories flashed through his mind.

“Fuckin’ shit!” I heard Toffee exclaimed as she looked around the cistern. “Now I’ve seen some fucked up shit in my day, living my whole life in the Hollow Shades and all, but that was fucked,” She glanced nervously at Crank. “An’ maybe you weren’t lyin’ ‘bout taken on all them slavers yerself.”

We heard a slow clapping sound from across the cistern. We all looked up towards the crooked archway I had seen right before we were attacked. I hadn’t been mistaken, there were two pony shapes in there.

Slowly the figures emerged, coming closer towards us. One of the forms clearly more brave than the other.

The first pony I saw in the gloom wasn’t a pony at all. It was a zebra. A zebra with dark purple stripes. I felt my stomach clench as the strange zebra grinned at us with mocking praise. Azar…

My eyes drifted to the second pony. The pony was shorter than Azar, with a lavender coat and a long white mane that was very reminiscent of the old ministry mare Rarity. My eyes locked on the pony.

Shade!

What the hell were they doing down here? Unless these tunnels lead to Kamari...

I snarled and moved towards Shade, Boneless tight in my telekinetic grasp. I fell a rage building inside of me. The same rage I felt when I had watched my Stable die.

Shade backed away from me, cowering behind Azar as I approached. Azar grinned back at her, before pushing her forwards with a hoof, as if instructing her to go join me. Shade’s eyes widened as she was pushed forward.

“Go to them,” Azar grinned, giving her a slightly harder push, making her stumble forwards and land by my hooves.

“But… They’ll kill me!” Shade squeaked, scooting away from me on her hind legs. “You said you would get me away from the Stable!”

“And I have,” Azar smirked, looking down at Shade with mocking pitty. “Now get. I tire of you.”

Crank stepped forwards, his glowing eyes locking with Azar’s even stare. “Give me the A.A.S.S Azar!” He boomed, his powerful voice filling the whole cavern.

Azar didn’t even flinch, in fact he just grinned wider, showing off uncomfortably white teeth. “I do not think so. I think I would very much like to give it to Kamari myself,” Azar soothed in his deep and methodical voice. I could feel Xayah cowering behind me as she heard the mighty zebra speak. “Though you are of course welcome to try and take it.”

With a roar, Crank lunged at Azar, his cannons blasting at the strange zebra. to my surprise, Azar swiftly leapt to the side, dodging the attack before kicking back and striking Crank in the neck with his back hooves.

Crank was knocked sideways upon the impact, seemingly shocked that Azar had managed to hit him. His tail lashed out, slashing Azar across the face. Blood spilled from the open gash before the zebra’s purple stripes glowed a deeper purple. The wound stitched itself back together.

Of course Azar could regenerate. Because of fucking course.

The two powerhouses clashed, incredible speed and agility verses unparalleled strength and firepower. For the first time, I saw Crank face off against somepony that seemed to be equally as deadly.

The cavern flashed with blue light as Crank tried to blast Azar apart. Crank was fast, yet somehow Azar managed to outmaneuver him every time. Azar was strong, yet Crank managed to shake off every attack that Azar hit him with.

Fear gripped at me as I watched the two powerful combatants battle it out. They were both so deadly, far beyond anything I had the ability to kill.

I saw something slowly moving away from me out of the corner of my eye. I turned just in time to see Shade start running away. Boneless swung up, knocking her legs out from under her as she tried to flee. I pushed my hoof down on her to keep her from running and snarled at her.

“You aren’t going anywhere!” I screamed, rage still building up inside of me. How dare she! She had been my friend!

Shade curled up in the shallow water and whimpered. “I’m sorry Amber. I’m so sorry.”

Brisk was next to me, his eyes burning with anger as he glared down at Shade.

I heard a loud shout from Azar as one of Crank’s lethal blasts made contact. The blast had ripped one of Azar’s legs clean off. As I watched, his stripes began to glow and the limb quickly pulled itself back together.

Crank wasn’t looking at Azar anymore though. I followed his gaze to where a small black device had fallen. The A.A.S.S.

Realising the device had fallen from his Saddlebags, Azar Began rushing towards it. Crank got to it first, snatching up the device and taking to the air on his bladed wings. Azar leapt for him, leaping higher into the air than anypony should have been able to. His hooves collided with Crank’s left wing, denting the metal and making Crank drop down towards the ground.

Azar’s hoof flashed out, striking Crank across the face and sending him staggering backwards. Crank quickly recovered and blasted a beam of blue energy towards Azar from his horn. Azar jumped back to avoid being turned too ash and into the darkness of the tunnel beyond, disappearing from view.

Crank snarled and pounced forwards, landing in the large archway. He glanced back at us, his glowing eyes landing on me for a moment. “You saved me from that monster Amber,” His voice was low, and for the first time since I met him, he seemed to not want to blow me to pieces on the spot. “So I’m going to let you live. Don’t come after me or Kamari, this is beyond you.”

I stared at him in shock. Was he sparing me? Would this have been the moment he would turn on us, had I not just saved his life? Not how I had expected the moment to go down. “You know I will be coming for Kamari,” I said, holding my ground before the mighty cyber alicorn. "Nothing will stop me from trying."

Crank shook his head, seeming to understand, but also disappointed. “Go home Amber. I will not be so generous next time we cross paths.”

His massive tesla cannons swiveled at his sides to face the roof of the cistern. There was a loud bang and and flash of blue light. The rock ceiling collapsed down above us, blocking the entrance to the tunnel to keep us from following as Crank charged into the darkness after Azar.

I stood there in the darkness, staring at the blocked off exit of the tunnel. “Home…” I muttered, my heart sinking. I could feel a tear roll down my cheek. I could feel Shade squirming underneath me and Brisk breathing heavily to my right. We were all that remained of Stable 25. “What home…”

Footnote: level up.
New perk: Robotics Expert -- +25% damage to robots, can shut down robots by sneaking up on them

Author's Notes:

This was originally supposed to be the shortest chapter in the whole story, however as you might have noticed, things didn't turn out that way. In fact, I've ended up splitting it into two parts. I got really into the story of the Hollow Shades I guess and I wanted to explore it in greater depth.

Fallout Equestria belongs to Kkat

I hope you all enjoyed and have a lovely day!