Twilight Sparkle frowned through the stained glass as Zecora and her daughter settled into her old carriage. The sun would be setting in a few hours and a detachment of Luna’s personal guard busied themselves preparing for departure. The two zebras would be the first peaceful delegation to be sent to Vhanna since the war began five years ago. There would be a planned stop in Las Pegasus where Luna’s guard would be replaced by a preselected contingent of experienced Wonderbolts who were better suited for the long flight over the western sea. Once they arrived in Vhanna, it was anyone’s guess. Zecora and her daughter stood a fair chance of assassination, if Rarity’s propaganda was to be believed.

Zecora clearly didn’t, or she wouldn’t have insisted on bringing her daughter along. Twilight chewed the inside of her cheek as she watched them prepare for departure. She was treating this as if it were a family vacation, trusting the tenuous promise of a warm welcome from the Vhannan ambassador over her own people. She sighed.

At least Zecora’s migraine remedy was still reliable.

Whatever the outcome, it would make little difference as far as she was concerned. Like the thousands of ponies trapped in the trenches near Vhanna’s coast, Equestria had dug itself too deep into this fight to simply let it drop. She missed the days when she was young and naive. When every problem could be solved by befriending the transgressor. When the Elements abandoned them, she understood that this wasn’t a problem that could be solved through peace. The Vhannans didn’t want to be their friends. They wanted them dead. The only way to solve this was through victory.

Twilight turned from the window and walked across the ornate reception hall that had only just recently held a hoard of hungry members of the press.

No. If they wanted to end this war, they had to find a way to show the zebras that any creature bold enough to raise a gun to Equestria would quickly wish they had pressed the barrel under their own chin instead.

She passed the elegant maplewood tables that littered the room and plucked an uneaten teacake off one of them. No matter what the ministries had on the front burners these days, she always made certain that Rainbow Dash left money in the budget to spoil the press. Sentiment for the war had been bending in the wrong direction over the past year, and part of that came from unplanned outbursts like the one Zecora had made earlier today. She didn’t doubt the ability of Rarity’s ministry to encourage certain publications to rethink their editorials, least of all the Baltimare Bugle who no doubt snuck their reporter into today’s press pool on fake credentials yet again, but Twilight was nothing if not detail oriented.

When Celestia and Luna had offered her a role in Equestria’s topmost echelons of leadership… she declined. Not because she didn’t want it. Not because she hadn’t earned it. But because she could see the chains that the title “princess” came with and she knew she could be more useful to Equestria without them rattling around her hooves. As the first alicorn civilian, she had a certain level of freedom that the princesses did not. Thousands of years of Equestrian culture didn’t just go away in a day. Ponies looked up to her regardless of whether a crown sat atop her head. And more importantly, they listened.

Spoiling the press with good food, better drink and excellent accommodations while reminding them of the importance of their readers’ patriotism was an easy game to play. Some resisted, but Rarity’s people always found elegant ways to make them see the error in that decision. Usually at the expense of their press pass and, less often, their newspaper’s credibility.

Twilight pushed open the grand double doors ahead of her and stepped out into Canterlot Castle’s south garden. Even though she wasn’t technically royalty, Celestia and Luna insisted she be accompanied by a security detail at all times. She agreed on the stipulation that she be allowed to select the members of her detail personally.

Big Macintosh matched her stride as soon as she stepped into the garden, taking position on her right just a step ahead of her. “Where to?” he asked.

Twilight inhaled the sweet smell of the curated flowers growing around the statuary around them and sighed, trying to exhale all of the stress she’d been balling up inside her since the day began. Three other royal guards appeared on the remaining three points around her, though she hadn’t bothered to remember their names. The entire point of selecting her own security was to get Big Mac on the detail. If any pony could badger a pack of royal guards into giving her some privacy, it was him.

“Back to the real work,” she said.

Big Mac only nodded once, but the longer Twilight knew him the more she understood his subtleties. The more she trusted him. Honesty might be his sister’s defining trait, but Big Mac knew how to keep a secret.

On their way through the hedges, Twilight made a point to divert down the path that would take them past one statue in particular. It was impossible to miss. Two disparate horns, a permanent look of shocked surprise and a source of constant irritation to the princesses and quiet embarrassment to Twilight and her five friends. Discord, Lord of Chaos, was a reminder that not all of their enemies could be destroyed. Some could only be imprisoned. As they passed his plot in the garden, she absently wondered whether he was conscious of his surroundings in his stone prison, and what he might say if he knew of the chaos her life had become in his absence.

Their walk across Canterlot took place in relative silence. Big Mac had never been much for conversation and the rest of her entourage kept their eyes trained on the ponies that crowded the markets and dined at tables along the wide sidewalks. The princesses advised against walking the capitol ever since the bombing at Sugarcube Corner had begun inspiring copycats. She knew it was a security risk, but to who’s security? She was an alicorn. If somebody wanted to level a gun at her, then let them. She could fill a list of all the intimate places she could teleport an unwanted bullet.

Big Mac cleared his throat and she glanced at him, noticing the distinct shine to his apple red coat. She frowned at the froth that was forming under the edges of the lavender armor Rarity had designed for them. “How are you holding up, Big Mac?”

He cleared his throat again and shrugged without breaking pace. “Just side-effects from some medicine. Ah’ll be fine.”

Twilight nodded and made a point to look elsewhere, as if the matter was negligible. She hoped it was, but her eyes kept finding their way back to the sweat pouring off the bulky stallion. Like so many other times before, that morning she had asked him to help her test a new spell she created. It mimicked the effects of a drug Pinkie called buffout that her ministry was pushing into development, but without the accompanying risk of heart attack. The concept was simple, but the execution was clearly flawed. Given the usual duration of her spells, Big Mac would be back to normal before his head hit the pillow. She hoped.

Thanks to Big Mac’s artificially deep well of energy, they reached the The Pillar with time to spare.

The design had come from an unlikely source. When the princesses created the six ministries, it became apparent that the hoofprint needed to accomodate so many branches of research was too large to just drop onto Canterlot Mountain. Not without demolishing several dozen city blocks of historic housing which, to everyone’s relief, was roundly regarded as unthinkable. Architects were consulted, designs were drafted and Canterlot’s elite repeatedly shot down every one of them. Nothing could be allowed to alter the skyline of Canterlot Mountain. Not even the war.

Rainbow Dash, being who she was, lamented the impenetrable roadblock to the one pony that was happy to listen to her no matter the topic: Scootaloo. Over the years, the young mare had begun dabbling in the rapidly growing market of home and business security. Her first suggestion had been so painfully obvious that Rainbow Dash flew her straight to the princesses to tell them in person.

“Why not build into the mountain?”

Twilight trotted up a series of wide marble steps that took her to six distinct columns built from the solid stone of Canterlot Mountain. The architecture was strange to her eyes but it carried a sense of authority that even she couldn’t argue. Each massive column was engraved with the vertical letters of each of their Elements: Magic, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, Laughter and Kindness. There had been some debate on the order in which they appeared, but this was war and Fluttershy knew her department would be playing second fiddle to the others for the sake of the nation.

Beyond their columns stood a comparatively tiny pair of doors that were still at least twice as tall as Twilight. Big Mac and the other security pony stepped forward and pushed them open, rejoining her once she stepped into the Pillar’s main lobby.

The design stood in stark contrast to the colors of the world outside. A white ceiling adjoined white walls to a black marble floor. Narrow square pillars, evenly spaced in two neat rows, led them through a set of metal detectors. On the other side, the close walls gave way to a vast monochrome rotunda. Intricate carvings nestled into their own shallow arches along the wall depicted proud points of Equestria’s history in stone relief dating back to the first banishment of the wendigos all the way to the present day. Brass nameplates inset into the white tiles of the dome above them marked the names of ponies who had distinguished themselves to Equestria over the centuries. At the cap of the dome, Celestia and Luna’s royal seal hung in full color, a stark contrast to the black and white space below. Twilight knew some of the names on the dome personally, and hers was up there as well, but the majority of the names accounted for the slew of benefactors required to fund the build.

The Pillar sank deep into the heart of the snow capped mountain, providing enough room for their six departments with room to expand. Twilight and her security detail stood at the apex of the subterranean facility, and the only slice of it that was ever open to the public. Big Mac led them across the rotunda floor, over a circular medallion depicting their six elements, and toward a bank of elevators on the opposite wall.

The three odd ducks of her security detail stayed outside the elevator as Twilight and Big Mac stepped in. One of them glanced at him and he stared back, his relaxed eyes taking on a sterner edge. The guard blinked and looked down as the doors rolled shut.

“Do I need to have him replaced?” Twilight asked as they began descending.

“Nope,” he answered.

She looked down at Big Mac for a while before nodding. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He swallowed, then shook his head. Sweat pattered onto the elevator floor from under his armor. “Ah could do with some water.”

“We’ll get you some from the lab,” she said. “I want to have some blood work done too, just to be safe.”

He winced. “Ah hate needles, Twilight.”

“I know you do,” She tried her best to sound compassionate, but as far as she was concerned it wasn’t up for debate. If he was having a reaction to one of her spells she needed to know what it was, and why.

Big Mac didn’t argue the point any further. That was another thing she liked about him. He never whined.

A momentary heaviness settled into their hooves and the elevator emitted a pleasant chime. The doors split open to a single busy hallway that stretched ahead of them. The Ministry of Arcane Studies was Twilight’s domain, something that didn’t need to be spoken for Big Mac to understand. She stepped off the elevator first and took the lead.

Unicorns of every palette roamed the hall, their hooves muffled by dense lavender carpet patterned with magenta starbursts. The homage to her cutie mark came off a little strong, but she wasn’t about to have research stalled to have it ripped out now. A few new unicorns offered hellos and welcome backs while the longest tenured members of her staff settled for polite smiles and subtle nods. They levitated everything from lab notes to vial trays as each of them made their way through the organized chaos. One unicorn even carried a wooden staff tipped with a long crystal, clearly a relic of some sort, bound tight in several inches of bubble wrap.

Twilight was confident with this much brain power at her disposal, it was only a matter of time before one of the teams discovered something that would tip the scales in Equestria’s favor.

She slowed as they passed one of the wide viewing windows that gave fellow researchers an unimpeded view of the work of their colleagues’ work in action. Several ponies had gathered around the glass to watch a trio of unicorns test the latest draft of their spell. A small caliber pistol dangled from a beaker stand by its trigger guard. One of the researchers stepped forward - a team lead named Starlight Glimmer, if she recalled correctly - and bent her horn in concentration. A narrow filament of magic struck the pistol with a flicker of teal light, and Starlight straightened to observe the results.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the weapon took on a deep red glow that radiated from where the pinprick of magic had touched it. Within seconds, the weapon was little more than a puddle of smoking slag on the stone lab table. Several hooves thudded approvingly against the carpet and Starlight smiled in return. Her eyes caught Twilight’s and widened almost imperceptibly. Twilight, for her part, offered a mild nod of congratulations and moved on before the odd unicorn found a reason to pursue her again.

Starlight had come from a backwards village of her own creation, plucked from the middle of nowhere by Celestia herself after she inadvertently attracted the alicorn’s attention with a failed attempt at time travel. To her credit, the spell had worked. To her humiliation, the spell managed to lock her in stasis for several weeks before the members of her village resorted to seeking help outside their strange cult. Celestia, doing what she did best, spent a minimal amount of time helping reintegrate the wayward unicorn before delegating the problem of Starlight Glimmer to Twilight’s ministry not long after its inception. Starlight had rabidly chased after Twilight’s approval ever since.

“Could be a useful spell,” Big Mac commented.

Twilight offered a noncommittal tilt of her head. “Maybe. She keeps forgetting that not every pony on the battlefield has her proficiency for magic. There’s a reason she led the demonstration and not her peers.”

At the far end of the hall sat a wide pair of oak double doors. Matching signs on either side reminded staff that no books or scrolls were permitted outside the confines of the ministry library. The reasons for the extra measure of security should have been obvious, but fill several floors with magical scholars and the need for signage became a must. The last thing Twilight wanted on her desk was a report detailing how a priceless text was destroyed in a lab experiment.

Walking into the library was like taking a breath of fresh air. Twilight pushed through the doors and let the hint of a smile form on her muzzle.

It had taken over a month of constant debate with Scootaloo to get things set up the way she wanted it. The ministry’s Research wing accounted for nearly half of its allotted volume, and not an inch was wasted. Two floors worth of bookcases lined the sweeping arc of the Pillar’s outermost wall. Scootaloo had argued for metal shelves to save money, but Twilight staunchly refused to spend her days surrounded by cold metal. In the end, she won out and so did the carpenters of Equestria.

Beautifully stained slabs of oak stretched around her in every direction, stacked high with books and scrolls ranging from newly printed to hoof-written centuries ago. The oldest tomes were kept in hermetically sealed cabinets to protect them from humidity, carelessness and the rare insect. Twilight held the railing of the library’s ornate stairwell with the edge of her wing and descended to the lower floor where rows of polished wooden tables stood surrounded by comfortable chairs, many of which were occupied by unicorns hard at work copying what they needed onto blank sheets of paper.

She led Big Mac around the bannister toward the corner where the stairwell joined the rear wall. A simple wooden door built into the base of the stairs waited for them there. It was enchanted with a spell of Twilight’s own creation and would only open for her, the princesses, and perhaps a sizeable chunk of dynamite.

Twilight pressed her horn against the door and it shimmered with her magic before swinging open. Big Mac followed close behind as she descended the stairs beneath the stairs and arrived in a much cozier version of the library above.

Twilight’s personal library was, generously put, a mess.

The similarity to her old home in Ponyville was auspicious. Recessed bookshelves encompassed the majority of the available wall space, stacked high with leather bound tomes while other nooks served as temporary storage for artifacts whose utility she had yet to determine. Scrolls piled like firewood threatened to spill off of shelves while others already had. A wide alcove across from the stairs boasted a small laboratory space complete with a new centrifuge sent down from the Ministry of Technology. Twilight navigated through mounds of open books, past a central round table littered with empty coffee mugs until she reached the alcove.

She slid a short stool upholstered in burgundy leather to her side. Big Mac climbed onto it without needing to be told, and he lifted a damp foreleg to the edge of the lab table. She waited until his eyes began to naturally wander the unique geography of her library before sinking a sterile needle into his leg. He closed his eyes and sighed as his blood trickled against the glass.

When she was finished, she swiped a square of clotting gauze over the wound and dropped the sample into her centrifuge, closing the lid while it spun up. As the timer began to tick down, she lifted a blue mug from the central table with her magic and ran it under a stream of water from the sink at the end of the lab table. Clear liquid lit with purple light crawled over the cup until every speck of dried coffee had been lifted away. She filled the mug with clean water and held it out to Big Mac. He picked it out of the air with his hooves and drank deeply.

“How are you feeling?” she asked as she watched him drain the cup.

When he was done, he held it out to her for more. “Tired. Hot. A little woozy.”

She refilled the cup and gave it back. This time he drank slowly enough to breath in between gulps. She glanced at the centrifuge. “Tell me if you start feeling worse.”

He nodded and nursed the cup.

She allowed her mind to wander as the centrifuge timed out and she began the dull work of analyzing Big Mac’s plasma under a microscope. She absently refilled his mug a third time, barely looking up from the lens. Too many red blood cells for the sample size. Beyond that, nothing abnormal.

“You’re dehydrated,” she said. “Beyond that, no other symptoms?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

Twilight shrugged. “Better than buffout, then. I’ll see if I can’t revise the spell to be less aggressive. We can give it another try this weekend if you want?”

“Less aggressive would be nice,” he chuckled. His eyes wandered back to the center table. He nodded at it over the rim of his mug. “New book?”

Twilight followed his gaze to the little red book lying open, its pages face down to keep it from clapping shut. She nodded. “Epimorphic Regeneration in Tropical Reptiles,” she recited. “There are several species of gecko that can regrow missing limbs, even sections of their spines. I’ve been trying to understand how it works.”

Big Mac emptied the mug and set it down on the table. She picked it up and began refilling it under the tap when she realized he had gotten down from the stool and went to the table to look at the book.

She brought the mug to him and watched as he dog-eared the page she had left open before turning to the index. “I never would have picked you to be one for obscure biology,” she said.

A hint of a smile touched his cheek. “Just seemed interesting, s’all. Most this stuff is beyond me.”

“You’re selling that story to the wrong pony, Big Mac.” Twilight opened the book in front of him to the page he’d marked, straightening the crease. “I wouldn’t let you in here to begin with if I didn’t know you were sharper than you let on.”

He smiled a bit wider and leaned forward, pressing the book into the table with his hoof so it wouldn’t close. Twilight watched him scan the tiny notes she wrote in the margins. She saw the subtle changes in his expression as he found bits of text he didn’t understand, then referred to her notes to find clarification. He wasn’t a dullard. If anything, he was guilty of being humble to a fault. Ponies made a habit of underestimating him until it was too late to backtrack. That took a level of patient cunning that she couldn’t help but to respect.

“Knowing you,” he said, his eyes still on the page, “you’re fixing to make a spell that’ll do something like what these lizards do.”

She smiled and pushed the mug of water to him. “That’s the plan, at least. It’s all theoretical, but with the right magic, it’s possible that we could apply this in the triage tents on the battlefield. Just think of all the ponies who wouldn’t have to come home crippled. We could heal the ponies who already are and bolster the front lines with experienced fighters. It could change the course of the war.”

He sipped from the mug and nodded, his eyes on a professionally snapped photo of a dark green lizard perched on a twig. “All from one of these critters.”

“There’s no guarantee… but potentially, yes.”

“Hm,” he hummed, setting the mug down. “Seems like cheating nature, don’t it?”

Twilight frowned, unsure how to respond. There was no accusation in Big Mac’s drawl. No insinuation that she was doing anything wrong. Just a simple question. The Apple family had a tendency to lay their qualms out with little pretense involved. She had been on the receiving end of it for the better part of twenty years, courtesy of his sister.

When it came to the natural order of things, earth ponies often considered nature’s plan to be something on the edge of sacred. The Apples were no exception. Convincing earth ponies to get behind certain aspects of the war effort continued to plague Rarity’s propagandists. They could smell bullshit a mile away. The key was to avoid lying altogether. Twilight’s years with Applejack had taught her how to fold earth pony logic back onto itself until something unthinkable to an earth pony sounded palatable enough to try.

She lit her horn and slipped a red ribbon into the open book to mark her place, and gently eased it shut. “Big Mac, have you ever wondered how the zebras use magic?”

“Wasn’t aware they could,” he said.

“Some of them can. We’re seeing more and more of them casting primitive spells, and they’re getting better at it. It shouldn’t be possible given what we know. Earth ponies are attuned to nature and the pegasi enjoy a passive magical adaptation that permits them to walk the clouds, but unicorns are unfiltered conduits for raw magic. The Vhannans… the zebras never evolved to use magic. Up until the last century they’ve been solely agrarian by nature. Now they’re drowning in wealth, modernized and pouring their coffers into any research that can give them an advantage. Sometime in the last year they found a way to harness magic without the aid of a horn.”

Big Mac frowned at the book’s ruddy cover and looked up at Twilight. “So you want us to do what they’re doing and buck the natural order of things?”

“No,” she said. “Vhanna is under immense pressure to survive right now. The natural order of any species facing extinction is to adapt or die out. The zebras are adapting the same way ponies did millennia ago. Modern scholars are calling it forced evolution, and there’s a chance that they could outpace us. They’re doing exactly what nature intended them to do, except on a much smaller timescale. The only way ponies can hope to maintain the evolutionary advantage is to find our own way to adapt.”

Big Mac frowned indecisively. “By changing who we are?”

“By becoming something better,” she said.

His frown deepened. Coming off too strong, she thought. She sat down next to him, bringing her as close to eye level with him as she could manage. He glanced at her but said nothing.

“I’ve put my blood under the microscope more times that I’m proud of, Big Mac.” The admission hooked the edge of his curiosity and his frown softened out of consideration. She twisted her feathers together and watched the vanes split and pull back together. “The more I do, the more I’m convinced that we’re not some special breed of goddesses with an inborn right to lead Equestria.”

Big Mac sat perfectly still, his brow lifting with unease. “I’m not sure I know what this has to do with geckos.”

She blinked confusion. It took her a moment to realize she’d gone off on a tangent bordering so close to heresy that Big Mac, of all ponies, had begun looking for an escape route. “Sorry,” she said. “What I’m not doing a great job at saying is that alicorns already have a rudimentary regenerative process at work. If I could create a spell that helps our fighting ponies take that next evolutionary step, it could save thousands of lives.”

He stared at the book and nodded.

“It could win the war,” she pressed.

“Ain’t no ‘could’ about it. Zebras can’t fight an enemy that won’t go down.” He sighed and nudged it back open to the page whose margins were dark with hoof-written notes. “I’m just worried you’re about to ask me to help you with it.”

Twilight felt herself sober a little. Maybe she was pushing him too hard after all. “Why would that worry you?”

He turned from the book and looked her in the eye. “Because we both know I’ll do it.”

Aurora awoke slowly.

She lay on her side, her feathers stretched ahead of her as if they had stalled during a downstroke. One lay pinned to the mattress while the other wrapped loosely around the pony doing the pinning, their legs still tangled around one another. Aurora bent her nose into the nape of the mare’s neck and inhaled slowly. She exhaled, her breath warming her muzzle with Ginger’s scent.

The unicorn yawned and perched her chin between Aurora’s ears. The pillow they shared was barely thicker than the dilapidated towels from the bathroom, but it radiated their warmth as if it were newly made. Aurora listened to the sounds of their breathing for what felt like hours. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so relaxed. She turned her head a little and kissed Ginger’s neck simply for the pleasure of doing it, and settled back down to doze.

Ginger stirred. Aurora listened to her breathing grow deeper and more present, the only noise in the compartment besides the whisper of the ancient air return system.

“You awake?” Ginger murmured.

Aurora made a face and stretched her hind legs until they trembled, only vaguely noticing that something was weighing down her left hind hoof. Tired muscles sang relief as she let them relax again. Her hips ached from exertion that had nothing to do with their flight above the clouds.

She shook her head against Ginger’s shoulder and mumbled. “No.”

“Good.” Ginger wrapped a hoof under Aurora’s wing and draped it over her body like a blanket.

Aurora smiled and helped adjust her feathers. She wondered how long they could stay here before someone came looking for them. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit she was tempted to run out the clock. But the more she thought about it, the more she knew they couldn’t. Every minute she wasted was a minute Stable 10 didn’t have.

“We should get up,” she sighed.

“Mm.”

Aurora folded her wing, earning a meek groan of protest in doing so. She mimicked the noise and Ginger scrunched her nose at her in stubborn refusal. “Come on. I need to check on whether Fiona has my Pip-Buck.”

“She did,” Ginger said. She pushed herself up slightly when Aurora tugged on her pinned wing, letting the warm feathers slide free from under her. “Or maybe I dreamed she did. Check your hind leg.”

Aurora frowned and sat herself up until her back pressed against the wall. The ungainly weight attached to her rear left hoof became more apparent.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, fumbling her feathers around the heavy casing in the pitch black. It was undeniably her Pip-Buck. “Why did she have to put it on upside-down?”

She felt Ginger pull herself up to a seated position next to her. “She was trying not to wake us,” Ginger said. “I think she was a little embarrassed when I woke up.”

“Bits to bread says that Fiona is incapable of embarrassment,” Aurora grumbled as her feathers slipped out of what she thought was the latch. Fumbling in the dark, she couldn’t be sure of what she was grabbing at. She needed light to see. “Millie?”

“Yes, Aurora?”

“Turn on the...” Her wings stopped and she frowned in the general direction of the darkened ceiling.

“Who was that?” Ginger hissed.

Aurora hesitated before saying, “Millie, turn on the lights.”

The fluorescent tubes clinked to life, forcing the two mares to squint in the harsh light. Aurora’s mind reeled. Asking for the assistance of her Stable’s AI had been a reflex built on a daily routine that spanned three decades. Millie was a fixture of her home in the same way the generator was. She was always just… there.

What she hadn’t expected was for Millie to be here, obediently awaiting commands from a population that very likely didn’t know she existed.

“Aurora,” Ginger said, her eyes scanning the empty room. “Who was that?”

“That’s Millie,” Aurora answered, despite not being quite able to believe the words herself. “She’s a Stable AI. I didn’t think she would be here.”

“Well, wherever she is…” Ginger paused to focus her magic around the Pip-Buck clamped onto Aurora’s leg. The latch sprung open after some manipulation and Aurora pulled her leg free, using her wing to scoop the device out of the air. Ginger gazed mistrustfully around the room. “Wherever she is, she seems to remember your name.”

Aurora frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. Securing the Pip-Buck to her foreleg, she looked up at the ceiling. There, in the center, was a perforated disc the size of a prewar bit. An identical one sat in her compartment back home. “Millie,” she asked, “How do you know my name?”

A pause. “All residents are registered in Stable-Tec’s personnel files after birth.”

“I wasn’t born here,” she stated. After a few seconds without a response, she added, “How do you have access to Stable 10’s records?”

This time there was no pause. “I’m sorry. You have insufficient permissions for this inquiry.”

Aurora’s frown deepened. She looked down at her Pip-Buck and pressed a chunky switch above the screen, turning it on. When it finished booting, she flipped through the menus, trying to think of another way to get her answer. She clicked over to the map and its topographical lines that wound from one edge to the other like hundreds of snakes in strange parallels. Far to the west, a single waypoint labeled HOME glowed reassuringly at her. She sighed relief.

Maybe it was possible that Stable 6 had detected her Pip-Buck somehow and added it to the registry. It didn’t seem too far-fetched.

“Millie, how many Pip-Bucks are registered to this Stable?”

“Six hundred and forty-two,” the AI responded.

Aurora shuddered. She tried not to imagine how over six hundred ponies would react when they learned they were eating the only harvest their Stable would ever bear, and that the only food available was somewhere in the freshly blasted wasteland.

“Is mine one of them?”

A pause. “No.”

“Huh.”

She noticed Ginger’s eyes on her Pip-Buck, particularly on the miles and miles depicted by its fuzzy green lines. She held her foreleg across her chest so that Ginger could see it more closely and tried not to tense up when her magic began gently manipulating the controls. Fond as she was of Ginger, she didn’t want her to erase that waypoint by accident.

“Millie,” Aurora asked, “how many Pip-Bucks are active in this Stable?”

“Two.”

She wrinkled her nose in confusion.

Ginger hummed disapproval. “It seems Paladin Ironshod bent the truth.”

“Seems so,” she agreed.

Aurora watched as Ginger began clicking the button that zoomed out her map. She remembered doing the same thing over and over again when she was a filly. Part of what made receiving her Pip-Buck special was being able to explore the old map of Equestria and seeing where everything had been. She had no doubt that maps were still used in the wasteland - she had caught a glimpse of several framed on the wall of Autumn’s office when Quincy had retreated inside - but judging by Ginger’s interest in her Pip-Buck, originals had to be hard to come by.

But curiosity still nagged at her. Something wasn’t adding up.

“Millie, which residents do those two Pip-Bucks belong to?”

“Aurora Pinfeathers of Stable 10.”

Aurora waited, but Millie didn’t finish.

“And who else?” she pressed.

A pause. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand your inquiry.”

“Celestia’s sunspot,” she muttered. “Who are the two Pip-Bucks in the Stable registered to?”

“Aurora Pinfeathers of Stable 10.”

She could feel her ears flattening with frustration. “I know that. Who else?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand your inquiry.”

Aurora took a deep breath and exhaled, resisting the increasingly powerful urge to find something hard and throw it at the speaker. Whatever the Enclave did to Stables when they stripped them clean, it hadn’t done Millie any favors.

She decided on a different tact. “Millie, how do you have access to Stable 10’s personnel files?”

“I’m sorry. You have insufficient permissions for…”

“Millie,” she interrupted. “Do you have access to files outside this Stable?”

“I’m sorry. You have insufficient…”

She cut her off again, irritation edging into her voice. “Millie, where am I from?”

“Shelter 10.”

“Well at least we agree on something,” she growled.

Then she paused, her face screwed up with fresh confusion.

“Millie,” she repeated, “where am I from?”

“Shelter 10.”

Shelter 10. Not Stable 10. She didn’t know anyone who referred to their home as a Shelter. It was always a Stable. Even Ginger had caught the distinction, her eyes pinched with renewed interest. An anomaly in Millie’s vocabulary wasn’t something that happened spontaneously. She wasn’t programmed to improvise. And yet that word surfaced without hesitation. Shelter. A place to hide, not a place to live.

It was a loose thread. She decided to pull at it. “Millie, do you have access to files outside this Shelter?”

A pause. “Yes.”

Her heart did a somersault. “Do you have access to other Shelters?”

“Yes.”

“Which?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand…”

Aurora bit back an ugly string of curses. “How many Shelters are still active?”

“Thirty-four Shelters are currently designated operational. Eighty-eight are currently retired.”

Her pulse was pounding in her throat. Thirty-four Stables out of one hundred twenty-two. She felt dizzy.

Ginger nudged her. “‘Retired’ is rather broad.”

Aurora chewed her lip and nodded. “Millie, explain what you meant by ‘retired.’”

“The parameters of ‘retired’ include: disabled, destroyed or no longer under the jurisdiction of Stable-Tec staff.”

Aurora gestured at the speaker in a universal expression of there you have it. Ginger nodded.

“Millie,” she asked, then hesitated. Some things were better left alone, but this… it was a rabbit hole worth falling into. “Millie, were any Shelters retired as a result of a generator failure?”

This time Millie was silent for several seconds, no doubt connecting to whichever database she drew her information from. Aurora drew her knees to her chest and hugged them while she waited.

“Yes,” Millie confirmed.

“Fuck,” she whispered. “Millie, how many of those failures were a result of faulty ignition talismans?”

“Zero,” Millie responded. “Shelters 19, 32, 77, 102 and 132 were retired when their ignition talismans reached their scheduled depletion dates.”

Scheduled depletion dates. The words tied a knot in Aurora’s stomach.

“Millie, what is the depletion date for Shelter 10?”

“That information is restricted.”

No polite apology this time. Just a brick wall that told her what she needed to know. The fact that there was something to restrict meant that there was a date. Stable 10 was being shut down on a schedule.

Ginger slipped her hoof across Aurora’s wings and rubbed her shoulder, making the same connection she had.

She stared at the rumpled pile of sheets laying on the floor next to the bed, the thin film of dust that had collected on them barely disturbed by the compartment’s newest occupants. This Stable had died according to a different plan, but there had been a plan regardless. Centuries after the bombs scraped civilization off the map, the calendars left behind still held firm to the events scribbled on them by corpses. She wondered if any Stables were intended to last for as long as their inhabitants expected, or whether they were just death traps ticking down on different clocks.

Her eyes sank to her Pip-Buck and the wide map of Equestria glowing up at her. She found the waypoint she had set and her heart sank. Even if they found a replacement talisman. Even if they got it back to Stable 10 and it worked, what then? Would her home be safe or would they have exchanged one timebomb for another? What was the point?

“You’re making that face again,” Ginger said.

She scrunched her nose. “I’m not making a face.”

Ginger hummed her disagreement. “You were so,” she chided, catching the stubborn smirk that tried to kink the corner of Aurora’s lip.

“Maybe,” she conceded. Ginger waited patiently for her to finish her thought.

“It just feels like we’re playing with half a deck.”

“It’s been that way since the beginning,” Ginger said. She scooped Aurora’s hoof into her own and examined its rough edges. “There are no guarantees in this world. Ponies have spent their lives chasing ghost and go to their graves with more questions than answers. Sometimes it’s best to be happy with what you have.”

Aurora watched as Ginger turned her hoof over, examining the sole as if she were telling her fortune while resting her head in the nook of Aurora’s shoulder. Old scars from her first shifts in Mechanical stood out like map lines, the marks of an apprentice unused to working with her hooves and wings in tandem. There were so many stories there, several of them dull. Most purely embarrassing. She looked at Ginger’s unmarred hooves and wondered what kind of stories she had to tell.

She tried to take Ginger’s advice and blew out a sigh.

She was alive and relatively healthy, breathing air unfiltered by her Stable and still kicking despite being told that leaving home before the all clear meant certain death. She could fire a rifle and had even learned to fly. Not particularly well in either respect, but she was getting better by the day. She had seen a sky full of stars and shared it with the mare sitting next to her. A mare who had been eager to share more in return.

All things considered, Aurora decided she was pretty happy with what she had right now.

But still...

Ginger set Aurora’s hoof down and offered her a knowing smile. “I look at it this way. If we do find a new talisman and it turns out to be tampered with like the one in your Stable, it won’t become a problem for many, many decades. That’ll be plenty of time to gather a few additional replacements.”

“You’re... actually making a lot of sense,” she admitted.

Ginger patted her on the leg like a teacher whose student finally understood her sage wisdom. This was well-tread ground for her, after all. “I expect you to say that often and enthusiastically.”

Aurora snorted, and Ginger bent up to kiss her. Aurora leaned back to meet her halfway, half-laughing into her mouth at the awkward angle but not willing to break away to find a better one. The affection reassured a self-conscious corner of her heart she hadn’t heard from in a long time. She didn’t want this to be a one-time fling. A temporary vent for their individual traumas. The longer she thought on it, the more she wanted this thing between her and Ginger to last.

Aurora finally broke the kiss only when her neck started to ache in earnest. Neither of them were winning trophies for performance, and it felt good not to be worried about it. The important thing was that they were here together.

Lacking a headboard, Ginger leaned against the cool metal of the compartment wall and sighed. Her eyes traced their way back up to Millie’s speaker. Aurora’s followed suit. They stared at the innocuous disc for several quiet minutes, the silence giving both of them room to think.

“We live in a strange world,” Ginger observed. “Mysteries upon mysteries.”

Aurora nodded, still able to feel Ginger’s warmth on her lips. “Before I met you and Roach, the biggest mystery I had to worry about was why the same apple could cost five bits one month and ten bits the next.”

Ginger laughed. “Once we find your talisman, I wouldn’t mind seeing your Stable for myself. The way you describe it sounds like a small paradise.”

“Huh,” was all Aurora could think to say. She looked around at the compartment, with its identical walls, the same desk and terminal down to the model number. The partitioned bathroom encased in the same white tiles, the same metal toilet and even the same white towels. Despite the growing evidence that something was deeply wrong with Stable-Tec, the Stables provided a level of comfort and safety that couldn’t be found anywhere else in Equestria. The Stables provided a routine, and a promise of a better future when the doors finally opened. Every pony lucky enough to be born inside one shared the same noble goal of surviving where their ancestors had not. The Stables safeguarded the last vestiges of a better, brighter world.

Yet after seeing a brief glimpse of the world that had risen from the ash of balefire, Aurora wasn’t so sure that the Stables were the paradise Ginger envisioned. She had been taught that the world outside was dead. Burned to the dirt and swept away by the tornadic winds thrown out by hundreds upon hundreds of towering green mushroom clouds. The Stables were the seeds of a new future, and the mission had always been to wait. Wait until the poison had settled out of the air, until the soil could be tilled without infecting their precious crops with blight. Wait until the machines of war had rusted away, and the knowledge of how to build them was long forgotten.

Wait until the world they destroyed was ready to give them a second chance.

But the world wasn’t dead, and it certainly wasn’t waiting for them to come fix it. It had been rebuilding itself without them for centuries.

“Dear, you’re brooding again.”

Aurora blinked. “Sorry.”

Ginger waved her off. “Don’t be. Between the two of us, I fear we have quite a lot to brood about.”

“One day at a time,” she said.

“Truer words.” Ginger tipped her nose toward the speaker. “You know, she’s clearly connected to the other Stables in some capacity. Do you suppose she would allow you to contact yours?”

Aurora’s throat went dry. The thought hadn’t occurred to her in the slightest.

The connection was there, however Millie’s software was undoubtedly a rat’s nest of permissions and protocols that Aurora was ill equipped to understand. She knew hardware. Things she could touch with her hooves and occasionally beat into metal confetti with a heavy hammer and a strong wing. Software was something for the ponies up in IT. A mysterious language that only they could decipher, and one that Aurora suspected they used to sandbag ponies like her while their coffee finished brewing.

Exploiting Millie’s unpredictable use of Shelter had been dumb luck. It shouldn’t have worked at all, but it had. Aurora wouldn’t have given it a second thought if Millie had stonewalled her instead.

Asking to contact home was different. It terrified her. What if it worked?

What if it didn’t?

She looked to Ginger and couldn’t help but appreciate the neutral smile she offered in return. There was no pressure to act one way or the other. Whatever decision she made, Ginger would support it.

“Millie,” she said. Somewhere out there, a light on a distant server flickered recognition. “I’d like to access my messages.”

A pause. “You have eight unopened messages. Three are flagged high importance.”

She swallowed and felt her heart tick a little faster. “Upload them to my Pip-Buck.”

“There are eight identical messages stored on your Pip-Buck. Would you like me to replace them?”

“No!” she yelped. When had she been receiving anything? She drew her Pip-Buck close to her face and punched through the menus, stabbing at the cycle button with a feather. “No,” she repeated more clearly, just in case Millie hadn’t understood. “Don’t replace anything.”

The screen flickered from the map of Equestria, through several tabs of empty inventory, and a detailed log of recent flagged health incidents, many of which bore the words RADIATION, LETHAL and CATASTROPHIC.

She flipped past all of them until her message queue glowed on the screen. Normally, her inbox was empty save for one or two errant work orders. Sure enough, the first three new messages were from various departments of Stable 10 complaining about a piece of equipment that had broken or, more likely, been broken by the sender. She had to resist to open them out of sheer reflex.

Her eyes drifted to the five messages at the top of the queue. The oldest was from Tally Mane, of all ponies, with a subject line simply reading “Fuck yourself.”

Aurora snorted, the fear of sending a message eclipsed by the written tantrum Tally had sent. Of course he would be so engrossed with his demotion to Fabrication that he wouldn’t know the mare he was spitting barbs at was halfway across the wasteland by the time he sent the message. Considering he had caused a Stable-wide blackout by using well over his department’s power allowance, ignoring her repeated warnings to dial it back, his reassignment to Sanitation was well-deserved.

The next message was a general announcement simply titled “Overmare Delphi.” Aurora opened the message and began to read.

In light of recent events, it is with great pain and deep sadness that I must inform you all that our overmare has passed away. Overmare Delphi was a beloved and respected…

Aurora closed the obituary. Not today. Not when she could still smell the blood and matter sliding off the crown molding in Delphi’s office. She became aware of Ginger’s hoof idly rubbing the crook between her wings in gentle circles, and it surprised her how much the silent gesture acted like a balm. The pain of Delphi’s death was still there and she suspected it would never completely go away, but the weight of it felt a few pounds lighter.

She scrolled up to the first of three priority messages at the top of the queue and read the subject line. A knot formed in her throat when she looked at who had sent it, and she set her hoof down in her lap. She stared past the mattress at an indistinct square of neglected linoleum until the edges blurred, knowing each message would hurt and hating the fact that they were waiting for her there at all.

When she left the Stable, she broke so many laws. Violated so many taboos by going outside and putting everyone she knew at risk in the process.

Two messages from Sledge waited for her like an indictment, but her eyes were drawn to the most recent one. A lump grew in her throat so quickly at the sight of his name that she scrolled away from it as an act of self-preservation.

She selected Sledge’s first letter and opened it.

Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Overstallion Sledge
Subject: READ IMMEDIATELY
04/07/1297

Pinfeathers, if you’re reading this, you need to come back right now. Please. You have every right to be pissed at me for putting you in a cell but I know you understand why I had to do it. This situation with the generator can be fixed. The entire population is turning the Stable upside-down looking for a solution and we’re going to find it. You know as well as I do that Stable-Tec never makes anything without a backup plan. I need you here to help us put it into place when we find it.

Please Aurora. Your father trusted me with you after your mother died. Don’t make me have to tell him that he lost his only daughter, too.

Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Overstallion Sledge
Subject: I’m sorry
04/08/1297

Aurora, I’m sorry. You know it’s like pulling teeth to get me to admit when I’ve fucked up, but I’m starting to realize that I really fucked up. I treated you like a torn grease rag since you came on shift yesterday and by the goddesses I don’t know why I didn’t apologize for it in my last message. I lose track of how many times I’ve told other ponies to own their shit and there I stood knee-deep in mind pretending it was yours. I don’t know what else to say so I’ll say it again. I’m sorry.

On a lighter note, the eggheads in I.T. are telling me that your Pip-Buck is still pinging the servers and that the signal is getting weaker, which is apparently a good thing. I’m told that means you’re alive out there, Pinfeathers, and that you’re receiving these messages. I’ll be honest, I don’t understand half of what these computer ponies are saying, but hearing you’re still kicking was something I needed to hear today.

I.T. also wants me to tell you to keep your Pip-Buck turned on. They’re working on a software update for your Pip-Buck that you should start seeing this afternoon. It’s going to be a lot so try to stay put once it starts. They’re not sure what’ll happen if you lose signal before it’s finished. The dumbed down version is that your map will be getting updated so you can see all of the prewar points of interest so you have a better idea of where you’re going. There’s going to be a lot of junk info too, but we don’t think there’s time to filter any of it out before you’re out of range so you’re getting everything. I hope it helps.

One last thing before I sign off. The third shift down in Mechanical were able to get some info on the ignition talisman, and the biggest problem is going to be taking the motherfucker out of the generator without burning off our wings. It’s unicorn tech from top to bottom and there’s no off switch for it. I’m hazarding a guess that you worked that all out already, but in case you didn’t, keep an eye out there for any unicorn that might have enough brains to pull this old bastard out. Let them name their price if that’s what it takes. Carbide is leading a team that’s going to design a temporary containment system for it. We’re hoping to have it ready by the time you get back.

We’ll see you then, Pinfeathers.

Be safe,
Sledge

Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Aurora Pinfeathers
From: Dusky Pinfeathers
Subject: To my remarkable daughter
04/08/1297

Hi honey,

Sledge stopped by my compartment today to give me the good news that you’re alive out there. I’m also told that you might be out of range soon and that I.T. is going to be sending files to your Pip-Buck to help, so I need to send this out quickly.

I’m so proud of you, Aurora. I knew the second you came into this world that it would be too small for you, and I feel nothing short of admiration when I think of my daughter surviving outside these walls. There is no doubt in my mind that this Stable was put here so that one day you could go out there and see the real world. If your mother were alive, she would be beaming. I know I am.

Aurora, when I heard you left I thought I lost you. I’m still afraid that I might. I want you to be careful. More than that, I want you to know that seeing you yesterday was the highlight of my life. Neither of us dealt with your mother’s death in a way she would have approved, but I shoulder the majority of that blame as your father. I should have done better. I should have visited you first, and more often than never. I only pray that you can find it in your heart to forgive me for being an idiot. If you’re reading this, I want you to know that I forgive you.

You are a pioneer. Win or lose, whether you find what you’re looking for or not, I want you to know that I will never stop loving you. You’ve always been destined for great things, Aurora. I’m looking forward to hearing about them when you come home.

Love,
Dad

Aurora’s jaw shuddered as she read her father’s message. The letters were barely legible through the thick film of tears clinging in her vision. Her father had never been one to wax poetic. This was a new side of him. He thought he was saying goodbye.

More importantly, he forgave her.

“You’re lucky to have him,” Ginger spoke. Her eyes had taken on a shine of their own.

Aurora nodded, her voice husky. “Yeah.” She blew out a long breath and scrubbed the water from her eyes with the back of her hoof. “Millie?”

“Yes, Aurora?”

She cleared her throat and blinked until she could see clearly again. She hesitated for a moment before asking, “Where can I find an ignition talisman?”

It was a shot in the dark. She wasn’t surprised by Millie’s response.

“That information is restricted.”

She wiped the rest of her face and blew out a long breath. “Of course it is.”

Ginger was unusually still against her shoulder, enough for Aurora to glance at her to see if she’d fallen back asleep. The unicorn wasn’t asleep. Instead, she stared at some invisible spot in the middle of the room, her face creased, deep in thought. Aurora stopped short of asking her if everything was alright. Whatever idea she was chasing, she barely had it by the tail. She gave her time.

When she finally spoke, she did so slowly as if she didn’t quite trust her own words. “Aurora… this Stable we’re in now. It works. It has power.”

Aurora gave her a concerned frown and looked up at the lights. “We can’t take the Bluff’s talisman.”

“I know that,” Ginger said, shaking her head to clear it. “What I mean is, this Stable shouldn’t have power.”

She tried her best not to look as confused as she felt. Ginger saw the lack of understanding on her face and sighed.

“Scooch,” she said. Aurora tucked in her knees to let Ginger slide past her to the floor where she could pace. The unicorn’s hooves clicked from the door to the desk and back as she organized her thoughts. Aurora took the opportunity to stretch her legs too, and skirted around Ginger toward the bathroom. She ran the faucet in the sink and waited for the water to run clear while Ginger clarified. “This Stable was… retired, as Millie called it, after its crops failed. Whether the original population evacuated or someone else got inside much later, it’s clear that the Enclave found Stable 6 not long after it failed. They did then what they still do today and stripped as much technology out that they could.”

Aurora nodded and dipped her mouth under the slightly yellowed stream and took a sip. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. Probably safer than anything in the wasteland. “Okay,” she said, wiping water from her muzzle. “But the Enclave is a fan club for pegasi. They would have had to leave the talisman behind.”

Ginger shook her head and stopped pacing. “Membership in the Enclave is exclusive to pegasi, but they’ll work with anyone if the potential gain is worth the inconvenience. I was raised in New Canterlot. It’s one of the few cities in Equestria that the Enclave controls, and they were always walking the markets looking for ponies to travel into Ranger territory for some prewar relic.”

“Maybe this Stable is different,” Aurora suggested. She eyed herself in the mirror and grimaced at her mane. Bedhead didn’t begin to describe it. Even Ginger’s skillfully kempt fiery locks were kinked and matted. Aurora began running her feathers under the faucet to wet the clumps of cream hair back into some semblance of dignity. “Maybe they didn’t know what to take back then and left the talisman behind by mistake.”

“No,” Ginger disagreed. “Even if they did, they would have come back to take it by now. Leaving it behind in a place like this… look at what the Rangers have done with the Bluff just by having one working Stable as an outpost. The Enclave wouldn’t clear out a Stable and leave the lights on for the enemy.”

Aurora worked her feathers through a tangle until it finally fell free. “So you’re saying they took the original talisman.”

“Yes. They stripped as much tech as they could and brought a few unicorns along to take the ignition talisman out before they left.” Ginger stepped next to the mirror to examine her own shorter mane and cringed. She lit her horn and began working on fixing it.

Aurora frowned up at the lights and finished Ginger’s thought. “And when the Steel Rangers discovered an ignition talisman of their own, they came here and plugged it in.”

Ginger made a face at her reflection and, carefully, used her magic to tease her short locks back into an elegant bob. “That’s my theory, anyway. Considering how many decades the Rangers have dedicated to stockpiling relics from the old world, it would make logical sense that they should come across a talisman or two in that time. Oh, no. Let me help you.”

Aurora had been using her feathers to comb her mane flat, which was always how she wore it. She felt a flush of embarrassment as Ginger took it upon herself to fix it for her. She had never needed to do anything with it before. There wasn’t much point when you’d be pulling flakes of metal out of it the next day. She dropped her wings and relinquished her mane.

As Ginger worked, tugging gently as she ran her magic through the damp strands, Aurora came to the conclusion that Ginger’s theory wasn’t just plausible, it was very likely dead on.

“And yet they left Millie operational,” she wondered aloud.

“Assuming they knew about her,” Ginger countered. “Even if they did, they may not have understood the extent of her connections. Or perhaps they couldn’t remove her because of it. If she’s on a network, it’s not outside the realm of possibility for her to be operating remotely.”

Aurora nodded at that. “Maybe. This place is definitely in bad shape. That’s why Ironshod wanted me to get him schematics to build a fabricator. With enough raw material, they could rebuild a lot of what was taken out,” she reflected. “He probably thinks he could make more talismans with one.”

“Could they?” Ginger asked.

Aurora smirked and shook her head. “I wouldn’t be out here if that were the case. Fabricators are great for replacing simple components of the Stable as they age, but they have hard limits when it comes to complex designs. I spent two weeks of my apprenticeship learning how to cut threads for new screws on a lathe because the ones that come out of Fabrication are garbage. We let the general population use them for their own projects but if one ever made it to Mechanical, Sledge would blow a fuse. You spend thirty years finding those little gremlins stripped out in your equipment and you would too.”

Ginger chuckled as she held several layers of Aurora’s mane aloft. “Perhaps you should tell Ironshod that story before he gets his hopes up.”

Aurora snorted. “Nah, wouldn’t want to ruin his day.”

“Mm.” Ginger’s magic wove her mane into loose curls that fell against her neck one after the other. “We should consider the possibility that the Steel Rangers may have more talismans in storage somewhere.”

That was something to consider, but Aurora made a face when she remembered something else. “I might have told Ironshod that I was looking for one.”

“So?”

“So if we steal a talisman, he’s going to know it was us.” She waited as Ginger slid amber light through a thick clump of her mane, watching as the plain sheet of cream took on a silky wave as it fell against her neck. The last time she remembered doing her mane like this was the morning of the first day of her apprenticeship. It felt good to see it again.

“I can think of more pleasant ways to die than being caught stealing from the Steel Rangers,” Ginger chuckled. She eyed Aurora with a raised brow, but the smile on her lip undercut the chastisement. “New rule. No burgling fanatical military organizations.”

Aurora grumped and Ginger dropped a fan of her mane over her eyes in response.

“They burgled me first,” she muttered.

“I’ll burgle you myself if you keep it up.”

She lifted the mop of curls out of her eyes with a feather and looked from Ginger’s reflection to the mare standing next to her. “That sounds like an incentive.”

Ginger rolled her eyes and pecked her on the nose. “You’re incorrigible.”

Aurora grinned as Ginger turned her chin to face the mirror again. She settled in as layer after layer slid through Ginger’s rejuvenated magic.

As the dim hum of the Stable replaced conversation, she found her thoughts drifting back to the events of the last several days. It comforted her to know that the strange updates on her Pip-Buck hadn’t come from some mysterious source, but from her home. Not only did they want to help, but they wanted her to come back.

She watched Ginger for several long seconds and her smile dimmed a little. Her original plan when she decided to step into the wasteland was to leave, find a talisman, and come home. It was a simple plan because simple plans had the best odds of success. Then the tunnel ghouls mobbed her and she met Roach. The plan got a little less simple. Then she met Cider, which muddied the water even further. And finally she met Ginger.

The mare was humming a pleasant melody she didn’t recognize. It was soothing to the ears and Aurora found herself wondering what words had been written for it, if any. Listening to Ginger’s music made her feel safe. Moreso, it made her feel at home. Her simple plan was suddenly a lot more complicated.

Three hard thumps rang the compartment’s steel clad door, shaking Aurora out of her reverie. Barely a breath later the door slid open and a Ranger she didn’t recognize frowned over the threshold.

He spotted them staring at him from the bathroom sink and glanced toward someone else in the hallway. “I got ‘em,” he called.

The last strands of Aurora’s mane fell against her neck unfinished as Ginger whirled on the Ranger and stamped her hoof against the tile. “Excuse me, but we did not…”

Two uniformed stallions filed around the Ranger standing in the doorway, taking positions on either side of the door. Aged but well-cared for black rifles hung off their shoulders from heavy leather straps. The worn muzzles pointed lazily at the floor, but the fact that they were visible at all made it clear that they weren’t here to debate. Ginger pressed her lips firmly together without bothering to finish her thought.

The stallion who opened the door stepped forward, flanked by his armed counterparts. His eyes locked onto Aurora with a still intensity that lifted her hackles. “Elder Coldbrook has asked to speak with you,” he said. “We’ve been sent to escort you to him.”

The name was only vaguely familiar. Roach had said something about a Coldbrook in the garden, but she couldn’t place it. She stepped around Ginger until they were shoulder to shoulder. “I don’t know who that is.”

“That doesn’t matter,” the Ranger said. “You need to come with us.”

Aurora’s frown deepened. “Not until you tell me why.”

She watched the Ranger’s eyes dip impassively as he watched her widen her stance. This felt too much like the way Ironshod had pulled her out of Redheart’s clinic, only she knew better now than to let it happen. Her fight instinct was revving up hard.

“I wasn’t briefed on the Elder’s motivations.” The Ranger stood a little straighter, trying to look a smidge larger than he was. “I was ordered to find and take you to him, by force if necessary.”

Aurora sighed. More of this. The Steel Rangers seemed more and more like an organization that saw every problem as a nail, and relished in playing the role of hammer. She shrugged her wings. “Alright, fine, but Ginger’s coming with me.”

“Non-negotiable,” Ginger agreed.

The Ranger looked at each of them with equal disinterest. “I don’t care. Just stop talking and follow us.” He did a quarter turn and gestured past his two counterparts through the open door. “Now, please.”

Stables had a way of giving things a false sense of permanence. Day to day, things rarely changed on a visual note. Same walls, same lines painted on the ground, same ponies walking the same corridors. In some ways it was comforting. A pegasus knew what to expect when she stepped out of her compartment. In other ways, it was maddening. Ponies sometimes sought out a little chaos in their day or, in most cases, the evening after their shifts. It was the reason why Stable security found stills operating in bathrooms every month, and why while they might dismantle the homebrew operation, there was often little alcohol officially recovered on paper.

Stables were, by their nature, as boring as the ponies who lived in them. It took some real ingenuity to keep one’s self occupied. Or in Aurora’s case, a willingness to bury herself in her work and never come up for air unless it was to blow off steam with a few drinks and sometimes a few punches. She was careful never to take either one too far, however. It didn’t take much of a push to go from casual drinking to problem drinking in a Stable, and at the end of the day Aurora preferred the monotony of her day to day over the living under the watchful eye of a sobriety program.

As the Rangers led them through the surface tunnel and into the waning light of an overcast evening sky, years of living according to a fixed routine primed Aurora to notice that something was different on the Bluff. The steady mumble of conversation from trader wagons set up on either side of the wide cobblestone boulevard had taken on a note of consternation. Here and there, ponies argued more heatedly with vendors over prices. A unicorn scratched numbers on a slate with a bit of chalk in front of one cart, then trotted across the road to another with wild determination in her eyes. Several Rangers loitered on the sidewalks, their weapons in full view much like the ones escorting Aurora and Ginger.

Ginger nudged Aurora and pointed her horn toward a familiar white and blue pinstriped wagon. The whimsical letters of F&F Mercantile had been painted over with heavy strokes of white paint. A plain wooden board hung over the front of the wagon. Block-style letters, still wet, read HICKORY TRADING COMPANY. The wagon’s owner waved dismissively at a group of wagons still bearing F&F’s insignia on their canvas while he worked at separating a few caps from the stallion listening to his energetic pitch. The vendors at the F&F wagons stared daggers at him as ponies drifted toward the sound of his voice.

Word had finally reached Blinder’s Bluff.

It hadn’t taken long for the traders to react. Some were clearly being cautious about the news. More than half of the carts owned by Autumn Song’s company still bore F&F branding and their vendors were out in full regalia, quelling any doubt about where their loyalties lie. But some had seen the opportunity in front of them and took it. Carts laden with salvage and other useful items were suddenly without an owner, save for the ponies pulling them. Back at Stable 10, ponies called that seed money. Even as the market row drifted behind them, Aurora spotted a pair of earth ponies pulling the pinstriped canvas off their cart. Another defection in the name of entrepreneurism.

With the chaos behind them, their escorts led them downhill along the same street they had taken from the wall. The shacks near the bottom resembled something akin to actual buildings, something Aurora hadn’t been in the state of mind to notice on the way up. She remembered a colt greeting them from a window somewhere on this street and she idly searched for it despite knowing she wouldn’t recognize it from the ramshackle frames that rose to a second story on each side of the narrow street.

Something savory wafted under her nose and her stomach creaked at the injustice of being so close to home cooking after being neglected for… she blinked. How long had it been since she ate anything? Ginger cleared her throat to distract from the peeling growl of her own gut. It occurred to her that neither of them had had any real food since the day they left Junction City. The smell of salted meat turned her body against her. It took a force of will not to break away from their escort to pursue that intoxicating scent.

The road bent toward the wall. For a terrible moment Aurora thought that the meeting had been a ruse and the real reason for their escort was to evict them from the city entirely. As they approached a small crowd gathered around a brightly lit plank building and saw the Rangers posted outside, she breathed a sigh a relief.

The crowd could be described many ways. Disruptive. Threatening. A public nuisance. Aurora went the more diplomatic route. The ponies standing outside were pissed.

Evenly spaced letters painted in flaking whitewash stretched from one corner of the building to the other, bearing the words SOMEPLACE ELSE. Two halves of a sandwich board hung by nails near the door, advertising all manner of food and beverage in neatly printed chalk. Several of the options were crossed out, the words “No Stock” jotted in place of the price. The bottom of each board urged patrons to speak with Lime Royale should they be interested in selling him ingredients.

As the Rangers pushed through the wide-set doors, several members of the crowd hollered at their backs in outrage. Aurora barely noticed. The smell of seared meat flooded her nostrils as the doors clapped shut, closing out the furious patrons behind them.

Someplace Else was a cross between the eclectic chain restaurants of yester-century and an old-timey Appleoosan saloon. Two dozen heavy wooden spools once used to wrap industrial wiring sat on their sides as tables, surrounded by all manner of chairs and stools ranging from simple wood to chrome plate. The owner had attempted to replicate booths along the far walls with couches, benches and in one case a pair of church pews facing one another under half of a dinner table. Various nicknacks hung from walls, wooden pillars and even the ceiling. It was charming, in its own way, and had been clearly assembled with some semblance of care. Aurora immediately decided she liked it.

The armed duo in their escort took their usual position next do the door while the third Ranger led them to the back. A wide bar dominated the rear half of the establishment and the earth pony tending it, a remarkably tall brown stallion wearing a simple green smock, stood in front of a wall of white-labeled bottles. Each one had something different scrawled in black on the label and Aurora could make out a few drawings that faced them. The bartender watched Aurora as she passed, looking at her wings and then the Pip-Buck on her foreleg. For the life of her, Aurora couldn’t decide whether the stallion cared much about either. Even so, his muddy brown eyes followed her as the Ranger led them to the only occupied booth in the bar.

A grey unicorn with a short cut silver mane sat in the last booth, a makeshift affair cobbled together by two iron park benches and a pair of square chess tables nailed together at the bottom to make something that approached a single dining table. A chipped ceramic plate sat in front of him, layered generously with steaming greens and something that looked suspiciously like steak. A knife and fork pointed into the shank of meat and, aided by a gentle white glow, neatly sawed a small triangle off the edge.

Elder Coldbrook nipped the morsel off his hovering fork and glanced up at the two mares as they approached his table. He smiled an apology and held up a hoof as he chewed, swallowed and washed it down with a glass of purified water. “Take a seat,” he said.

Lacking any real choice in the matter, Aurora slid onto the bench and Ginger followed suit. The Ranger escorting them, his role complete, thumped his hoof against his chest and left.

Coldbrook watched him go as the mares seated themselves, then turned his attention back to his plate. He sank his fork into a neat stack of greens that Aurora didn’t quite recognize. They looked like carrots, but thinner and paler. Despite the strange visual presentation, they looked and smelled fantastic. The stallion popped them into his mouth and chewed, earning a sympathetic groan from Aurora’s stomach.

“You’re hungry,” Coldbrook commented. His eyes didn’t leave his meal as he pricked another maybe-carrot with the tines of his fork.

“Such is life in the wasteland,” Ginger politely agreed.

“Such it is.” Coldbrook glanced up at the two of them, his weathered eyes creasing atop a widening smile. He straightened in the salvaged bench and let his fork settle on his plate. He reminded Aurora of the photos her father had of her grandfather, though Coldbrook couldn’t be much older than fifty. Still, there was a charm in his eyes that some stallions seemed to inherit with age. It was disarming, and she supposed that was the point.

“Mister Royale, these ladies look half starved,” Coldbrook called to the bar. “If you could bring us two more plates, please.”

The bartender grunted and disappeared into the kitchen behind the bar.

Coldbrook pointed a knife toward the bar. “Best cook in the city when there’s protein on the menu. Brandy’s shit, though.”

It was meant to be a joke, but neither of them laughed. Aurora set her hooves on the table and gently cleared her throat. “I’m sure it’s awful,” she said. “Can we get to the part where you tell us why we’re here?”

Coldbrook smiled and resumed cutting away at his steak, content to ignore her while he ate. Plates clattered in the kitchen. An abrupt sizzle of meat on heat tempted the mares’ eyes toward the bar. Coldbrook grunted his satisfaction as he chewed. “It’s hard to find good Ursa this far east. Either of you have the opportunity?”

Ginger pursed her lips and leaned back against the bench, choosing to let her eyes wander the nicknacks hung throughout the bar rather than entertain the stallion’s one-sided conversation. Aurora couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed that this was what they’d been dragged out to listen to. It was evident that whatever Coldbrook’s reason for meeting them here was, he would get to it at his own pace.

“I can’t say I have,” Aurora said

Coldbrook’s eyes glittered at the response. “At the risk of being presumptuous, I think you’ll find it better than the average fare you had back home.” His eyes dipped knowingly to her Pip-Buck. “I heard you had some trouble with one of my paladins recently. I believe you’re owed an apology for his conduct, but I thought I’d spare you the discomfort of speaking to him and offer you one myself.”

That was enough to catch her by surprise, but she held onto her suspicion with open caution. “Thank you,” she said.

The stallion nodded, as if that was all he wanted to hear in return. Aurora watched him tuck back into his meal with all the confidence of a pony who thought he had just resolved all of her grievances against Ironshod. She found herself watching him more closely, looking for a crack in the facade. It was hard to tell whether he was genuine or leading up to something else.

She found herself doing an impression of Ginger, allowing her eyes to wander while Elder Coldbrook ate in happy silence. It occurred to her that the bar was adorned with prewar trinkets that very likely held some value, if they still worked. A blocky yellow alarm clock sat on a shelf above Coldbrook’s head next to a glass jar filled with old corks. An assortment of gears hung from the wall next to her, their teeth completely unsuited for one another but arranged with a surprising amount of care to look pretty on the wall. It was an offense to engineering that she was glad to forgive.

The half-wall partitions between each booth were held upright by thick wooden posts stretching from the floor to the ceiling. Several of them had coat hooks hammered into the wood, and Aurora found herself looking at the innocuous brown uniform hanging from the one near Coldbrook. Between the cloth folds glittered an assortment of gold pins and sewn ribbons. A large patch stitched onto the shoulder prominently displayed a black broadsword bisecting two outstretched wings of the same color. The feathers bent upwards, nearly touching the tip of the sword on their way around a trio of six-pointed stars. Two hundred years later, it was hard to find a pony who didn’t recognize Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark at first glance.

It didn’t take Aurora very long to conclude Coldbrook’s uniform had been arranged deliberately. He wanted her to know who he represented. Or, at least, who he thought he represented.

A renewed shout rose from the patrons gathered outside as a gust of wind made the bar doors shudder. Aurora and Ginger turned just in time to see the armed contingent of their escort take a cautious step away from the doors in either direction, their weapons lifting by the barest degree.

“Oh, can it, Feldspar. He’s with me.” The familiar voice was joined by the thumping of hooves on the boardwalk outside.

Coldbrook’s magic coalesced around the Rangers’ rifles, pushing their barrels down. The two Rangers looked down then over to their booth before finally standing down.

The old doors swung open on creaking hinges and Fiona sauntered through them, followed closely by a sheepish looking Roach. Her golden eyes locked onto them like she’d spotted a mouse in the underbrush, and her impressive catlike frame slinked through the crowded tables toward them. Roach nodded politely at the Rangers guarding the door and followed close behind.

Aurora glanced at Coldbrook, whose amicable smile didn’t show any sign of wavering. Fiona, on the other hand, looked ragged. The rims of her eyes were bloodshot and she looked like she was on the verge of falling asleep, which made perfect sense given she only seemed to broadcast at night. Aurora and Ginger had slept through the day out of temporary necessity. Fiona had been nocturnal for years. It probably didn’t help that she’d stayed up late to help Aurora retrieve her Pip-Buck. Judging by how she barely picked her wings off the floor as she walked, she was running on fumes.

Fiona’s eyes dipped to Aurora’s foreleg and she offered a tired smile of recognition. With nowhere else to sit, her butt hit the floor in the walkway outside the booth. Roach opted to lean on the post next to Ginger, his featureless eyes somehow managing to ask them both whether they were okay. The two mares offered mild nods in return.

Coldbrook dabbed his mouth with a grey square of cloth that amounted to a napkin and finished chewing. The utensils clicked against his plate and remained there.

“Good. We’re all here.” He nodded his greeting to Roach and Fiona, though his eyes lingered briefly on the gryphon. “I recall sending a contingent of Rangers to escort you here, Ms. Goldbeak.”

Fiona flushed, something Aurora didn’t think was possible. “You did. And it’s just Fiona.”

Coldbrook nodded, a tightness forming in the corners of his eyes. “I take it they’re making the trek down the Bluff alone.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead turning his attention to Roach. “And you?”

“Fiona picked me up,” Roach said. It took them a moment to realize he meant it literally. Ginger barely stifled a snort.

Coldbrook looked at the four of them and shrugged. “At least their reports will be interesting to read for once,” he said. Straightening in his seat, his eyes drifted back to Aurora. “Well. Now that we’re all here, I think we can begin.”

The four of them exchanged bewildered expressions as Coldbrook pushed his plate to the side and dropped his napkin over the uneaten portion. His eyes were the color of sun bleached brick. They swept across the table, stopping briefly on each of them before coming back to focus on the three ponies occupying the other side of the table. “I realize the three of you may not who I am. Let me be very clear in saying that it’s important that you do. My name is Pickett Coldbrook. I have been entrusted with the station of Elder of the Second Equestrian Army. I am responsible for ninety-five thousand Steel Rangers spread over eighteen divisions, including the fifth division stationed here in Blinder’s Bluff. My sworn duty is to protect Equestria from all threats within and without, and I have been carrying out that duty for the last eighteen years. Each…”

The kitchen doors banged open and the bartender sidled backwards through them with one plate resting on an upward facing hoof and a second pinched delicately between his teeth. Coldbrook smiled as the stallion walked around the bar and to their table, setting both plates down with a single fluid motion.

Aurora’s eyes grew round as Ginger pushed one of the plates in front of her. An inch-thick slab of seared meat from something Coldbrook called an Ursa still hissed beneath an aromatic pillar of its own steam. It was surrounded by a bed of the same strange not-carrots the stallion had pecked at, seasoned with something that appeared to be salt and soaking in a thin pool of the meat’s grease. Her stomach felt as if it were on the verge of digesting itself out of sheer desperation. She reached over Ginger and snatched up her utensils between two feathers and proceeded to dig in. Ginger wasn’t far behind.

The bartender looked at the two newcomers and frowned a question at Coldbrook.

He looked between Fiona and Roach. “Would either of you like something to eat?”

Roach shook his head. Fiona offered a half-hearted shrug and looked at the bartender. “Any coffee?”

“Instant,” Lime said.

Fiona made a face. “Bring the carafe and put it on his tab.”

Lime looked to the grey stallion, who nodded. He disappeared back to the kitchen without a word.

Coldbrook’s smile was pinched. “I seem to have lost my train of thought.”

“You were telling us that we needed to know who you were,” Ginger deadpanned.

The stallion’s eyes swiveled slowly to Ginger and hung there for several seconds like ruddy weights. “How right you are, Ms. Dressage, though I feel it’s safe to assume you’d all like to know less about me and more about why you’re here.”

He let the silence stretch before continuing. “Simply put, you are all here because of your individual involvement in certain events that have taken place over the last several days. Some of them amount to petty crime,” his eyes moved to Fiona, then slid across the checkered table to Aurora. “Others are proving to be catastrophic, and will likely have effects lasting for several years.”

Aurora bristled. “If you’re asking me to apologize for…”

“I am not asking any of you to apologize for anything,” he interrupted, hooves raised in placation. “I only ask that you listen.”

“Then talk,” Fiona grumbled as she accepted a dented stainless steel carafe from the monosyllabic bartender. She poured something barely darker than tea into a metal cup and sniffed it before taking a tentative sip. She grimaced and took another.

Coldbrook watched her and smiled. “Let’s go around the room, then. Fiona, you recently paid a visit to one of my paladins. While I was relieved to hear that you weren’t there for your usual business purposes, I was disappointed to learn you extorted that paladin for the purposes of acquiring a valuable piece of technology currently wrapped around this mare’s fetlock.”

Aurora quickly removed her foreleg from the table, her eyes on Coldbrook’s horn for any sign that he was preparing to take it away. To her relief, he didn’t try. His attention was entirely on Fiona who stared back at him unrepentantly as she nursed her coffee. “I understand that Paladin Ironshod came to possess Ms. Pinfeather’s Pip-Buck through unconventional means,” he continued, “but I cannot tolerate civilians entering a restricted area to impose themselves upon one of my officers, no matter what the reason happens to be.”

Fiona rolled the cup into her palms, looking more inconvenienced than aggrieved. “Are we on trial, then?”

“We’ll get to that,” Coldbrook dismissed, having already shifted his attention to Roach. “I’m told you have some talent with gardening and have taken it upon yourself to provide us with notes on what we’ll need to resurrect the crops in our Stable. I want you to know your generosity isn’t unappreciated.”

“Thank you,” Roach said.

Coldbrook nodded. “With that said, the open hostility your people showed Equestria prior to and during the war was never officially resolved, and I don’t feel it would be in the best interest of the ponies under our protection to allow a changeling to reside in Blinder’s Bluff given your nature as a parasite. After this meeting is finished, your possessions will be returned and you will be escorted out of the city.”

Ginger all but leapt out of the bench in objection. “Roach is not a parasite,” she snapped. “He has done nothing but…”

Roach put a hoof on hers and shook his head. “It’s alright. We weren’t planning on staying long.”

Ginger allowed herself to sit back, but her face made it clear she wasn’t okay with Coldbrook’s decision. She stared daggers at the greying stallion. “He’s worth ten of you.”

Coldbrook surprised them by nodding. “I harbor no ill will toward your friend,” he said assuringly. “Were he just a ghoul like Nurse Redheart, I doubt I would have received so many concerns from the population. It’s not my decision to make, in the end. It’s the Bluff’s. As a small consolation, I’ve authorized three days’ worth of rations to be included in your saddlebags which you can reclaim at the gatehouse when you leave.”

He cleared his throat before the encroaching quiet had a chance to become more uncomfortable than it already was. Roach, for his part, seemed unoffended and was asking Fiona for a sip of her coffee.

“That brings us to the two of you,” Coldbrook said.

Suddenly under the spotlight, Aurora realized she’d been holding her knife and fork in mid-carve for the last few minutes, the meal suddenly unimportant as she waited to hear whether Ginger would want her help backing up Roach. It occurred to her that she was gripping the handle of the knife more tightly in her wingtip than she needed to, and she relaxed it slightly as Coldbrook addressed them.

“I genuinely don’t know where to begin,” he said with a shake of his head. His practiced smile vanished with the gesture. “The damage you two have caused to the stability of this region is nothing short of catastrophic. My job here, my only responsibility at the end of the day, is to maintain order. To ensure that every mile of Steel Ranger territory east of Canterlot Mountain is secure. Part of what made this territory safe to travel for the past ten or so years was the trade network that Flim & Flam Mercantile established.” He placed his hooves on the table and leaned forward. “Do either of you see where I’m going with this?”

Aurora finished cutting away the square of meat and dipped it in its own grease. So this was where Coldbrook’s casual banter ended and the demands began. She wasn’t blind to what was happening outside. Cider’s death and his sister’s, well, castration would accomplish the same thing that happened at any other time a business found itself without an owner. Competition would see the obvious opportunity and take some steep risks to fill the vacuum. Nobody abandoned a gold mine without someone else staking the claim in their absence.

She nipped the oddly flavorful meat off her fork and chewed, stubbornly determined to enjoy the first substantial meal she’d eaten in days.

“It was self-defense,” she said around the morsel. “Both times.”

“Both times,” Coldbrook repeated flatly. He lifted a hoof and scratched his lip, unimpressed. “I’m under no illusion Cider or Autumn were saints. The rumors surrounding them were disturbing enough, say nothing about the actual facts of what they did to accomplish what they did. But there are no saints in Equestria anymore.” He looked pointedly at Aurora. “I don’t know a single Ranger who would fault you for doing what you did to Cider Song. He was overdue, in my opinion.

“What you did at the solar array, however,” he continued, the irritation visible in the lines on his forehead. “That was recklessness writ large. You saw one ant and decided to throw a grenade on the entire hill. I can’t even guess how many years it will take us to clean up your mess.”

Aurora felt her ears flattening as she speared a stack of not-carrots with her fork a little harder than she needed to. “If you’re expecting me to apologize, you can save your breath.” She looked at Ginger. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Ginger winked at her, then glared at Coldbrook for a moment before returning to her own meal.

Coldbrook watched the exchange and smiled, his eyes dropping to the worn squares of the modified chess tables. He considered them for a breath before giving the wood two gentle taps and looking up at Aurora, his expression tranquil as if he’d come to a decision he hadn’t been certain about until now.

“There have been deaths,” he said simply.

Aurora looked up from her plate.

He held her gaze. “Word always travels fast among traders. It didn’t take very long for some of them to figure out their employers were out of business, and whatever goods they had in their wagons were theirs to do with as they saw fit. Our Rangers started hearing reports of traders attacking other traders as early as late morning today. Some of them decided they hadn’t gotten their fair share and came looking for their competitors for the excess. We’re seeing wagons coming into the city filled with double, sometimes triple the normal limit that F&F enforced. It’s a free-for-all on the safe roads right now. It won’t be long until ponies start risking the back paths and attract the raiders’ attention.”

Aurora tried to absorb that, and stopped. She had spent the last several days stacking every mistake on her shoulders and heaping guilt on top for good measure. Ginger nearly died because she’d been too wrapped in worry to do anything but be led like a sick pet. She stabbed the last bit of steak with her fork and ate it. This Coldbrook might have his sworn duty, holy oaths and whatever other divine farts on the wind his Rangers promised themselves to, but she had her own promises to fulfill. Whatever ponies chose to do to each other out here was their burden to bear. Not hers.

She took a long pull of water from her glass and set it down with an abrupt clack. “Did you bring us all here just to tell us how badly we fucked up your day, or is there a point you plan on getting to?”

Coldbrook looked between Aurora and Ginger with an edge of severity in his voice. “My point is that were it not for your minor celebrity here on the Bluff, the two of you would have been tied to posts outside the wall and shot for the damage you’ve done.” He leveled a hoof at Fiona, whose eyes were a little more awake as she nursed her second cup of tepid coffee. “The only reason either of you are still breathing is because of that gryphon’s broadcasts, and the simple fact that I don’t know whether the Bluff would denounce or celebrate your execution right now. The two of you are enjoying a rare moment of generosity from the Steel Rangers. Do not make the mistake of assuming my patience is infinite.”

He watched the expressions of his gathered audience harden as the implied threat sank in. Aurora set her fork and knife down and leaned back, giving Coldbrook her undivided attention. She stared sourly at his reddish eyes, waiting. Ginger continued to clean off her plate, her eyebrow lifted at the stallion in quiet defiance.

“Good.” Coldbrook put his hooves back onto the table and turned his head to Fiona. “Ms. Goldbeak, I said earlier that I couldn’t allow your actions against Paladin Ironshod go unpunished. Starting today, you will be barred from utilizing any electricity generated by our Stable for the purpose of broadcasting.”

“What?!” Fiona shot to her feet, sending the cup and carafe spinning into the bottom of a nearby spool-table. “That’s bullshit! You can’t just cut me off, I’m paid up for the next three months! For fuck’s sake, I have listeners depending on me to tell them where it’s safe out there!”

Aurora hissed a curse under her breath as Fiona grew more and more agitated. Roach lifted a hoof as coffee pooled toward him and Ginger’s horn took on a faint glow as she redirected the beverage as it puttered from the overturned carafe.

Coldbrook stared at her as if she were just another document to stamp and file away. If he had any sympathy for her, his quiet expression didn’t make room for it. “Fiona, sit down. I’m not finished.”

The muscles in Fiona’s jaw clenched and twitched under the effort it took to restrain herself. She grudgingly sat.

“You are also barred from selling your services to any Rangers stationed in the Bluff. Any infraction…”

“That’s over half my income, Coldbrook,” Fiona growled.

“Any infraction,” he repeated, “to this policy will result in your expulsion from Blinder’s Bluff and forfeiture of any property or possessions you have here. Do you understand?”

Fiona stared at the wood floor, her eyes wide with indignant shock. Filaments of wood curled up behind her talons as she absorbed her new reality.

“Elder Coldbrook,” Aurora said, her hooves upturned in placation, “I asked Fiona…”

He lifted his chin to her, his expression frosty. “I am not blind, Ms. Pinfeathers.” His eyes dipped to her Pip-Buck. “Now please, be quiet.”

Aurora closed her mouth and looked to Fiona, trying to think of some way to curb what was happening. She came up empty. There was no leverage for her to use here. No clever turn of phrase that could derail Coldbrook’s authority. The three of them had been reduced to spectators forced to watch as the dominoes they had unwittingly set up were knocked over by another’s hoof.

Fiona could see the futility in fighting it. The axe had been over her neck the moment she began making a name for herself. She lifted her eyes to Coldbrook, her voice smoldering. “The Bluff won’t stand for this.”

Coldbrook turned on the bench to face her directly, clearly unmoved. “The Bluff will find something else to entertain them. I strongly suggest you do the same.”

Fiona took a slow breath and exhaled, her talons digging shards of wood into her fists. For a moment it seemed she was gathering herself up to attack, but the moment passed. The gryphon seemed to deflate. It was over. With nothing left to discuss, her eyes turned to Aurora, then down to the Pip-Buck on her foreleg. “I hope that thing was worth it,” she murmured.

Aurora watched in stunned silence as Fiona rose from the floor and padded through the spilled coffee. A single repeating pawprint dampened the floor behind her as she slinked between the tables and shoved her way out the doors.

They clapped shut hard enough to bounce on their hinges.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Ginger said darkly. “You didn’t have to take away her livelihood.”

“Her livelihood was a liability, and frankly none of your concern.” Coldbrook gathered their plates in his magic and sent the stack hovering to the bar where Lime Royale was waiting to take them. With the table clear he leaned forward and regarded Aurora. “Let me ask you something, Ms. Pinfeathers. How much do your companions know about where you came from?”

Aurora leaned toward Coldbrook, mimicking his posture down to his penetrating stare. She was close enough that she could detect the stale odor of cigarettes on his breath. “They know plenty. How much do you know?”

Coldbrook’s icy smile widened until he shook with a quiet chuckle. He sank back into his bench and turned his hooves up as if he thought he could still pass himself off as humble. “Paladin Ironshod filled me in about what you’re looking for and why you left your Stable to find it. He said you called it an ignition talisman.”

Aurora didn’t move. “Okay. What about it?”

He shrugged. “I may be in a position to offer you one, provided you cooperate.”

Roach shook his head with disgust. “Why didn’t you lead with that?” he rasped.

Coldbrook didn’t react to Roach, his attention fixed firmly on Aurora. “Well?”

“How do I know this isn’t some kind of scam?” she asked.

Coldbrook’s smile took on an edge of indignation. “I’m the Elder of the second largest contingent of Steel Rangers on this continent. I don’t run scams.”

Aurora didn’t buy it. “You’re not telling me something.”

“Of course I’m not,” Coldbrook chuckled. “That’s how negotiations work. You only get as much as you give, Aurora.”

She felt Ginger’s hoof on her leg and looked to see the unicorn examining Coldbrook with open suspicion. Ginger’s eyes flitted to Aurora for a split second before returning to the stallion. “And what do you want in return for an ignition talisman?”

“Answers,” he said plainly. “Truthful ones.”

Ginger was unconvinced. “That’s all?”

Coldbrook tilted his head. “For the time being. First, I’d like you to answer some questions regarding some concerns shared by my scouts down at the JetStream solar array. Primarily why an open cage was found inside a utility room at the bottom of the facility, and why there were three very recently wiped servers inside of it.”

“Is that a question?” Aurora asked.

“Is that your answer?” Coldbrook replied.

She sighed. “Autumn had a pony locked inside. I let her out.”

Coldbrook nodded. “That would explain why one of your feathers was found in the doorway. Lockpicking can be a valuable trade, by the way. Now can you tell me who the feathers found inside the cage belonged to?”

She licked her lips and shrugged. “A pegasus.”

“A pegasus,” he repeated, nodding. “But not from your Stable, I assume.”

The opportunity to lie was right in front of her, boxed and wrapped and waiting to be opened. It would be easy. It was also a trap. “No,” she said. “I don’t know where she was from.”

“Then tell me this,” Coldbrook said, propping his elbows on the table and steepling his hooves against his chin. “Was she Enclave?”

Aurora could feel her heart ratchet to a higher gear. She needed to choose her words carefully. “That’s what she told me, yes.”

“Hm,” he hummed. “I genuinely expected you to deny that.”

“You said you wanted the truth.”

He nodded, his face lightening with something approaching appreciation. “I did. What can you tell me about the servers? Why did Autumn Song imprison a member of the Enclave and give her access to the solar array’s network?”

Aurora sat back and realized Ginger and Roach were watching her with a mix of trepidation and interest. “She was forcing her to look for coordinates to something everyone kept calling Solace.”

Coldbrook shook his head, confused. “I don’t follow. Did she say what Solace was?”

“Are you alright, Roach?”

Aurora glanced at Ginger, who had spoken, then followed her worried frown to Roach who was staring silently at the floor. His opaque eyes were distant, haunted even. It took him a moment to notice that Ginger was speaking to him, and a bit longer to answer. “Sorry,” he said, blinking rapidly. He looked at Ginger, then Aurora. “Dizzy spell. They happen sometimes.”

Coldbrook’s full attention shifted toward Roach and stayed there. His eyes bore into him like mining drills. “What do you know, changeling?”

Roach shook his head a little too quickly. “I’m not sure what you…”

“No, no.” Coldbrook’s smile took on an unpleasant edge. “Don’t lie to me. You lived before the bombs fell, and you’ve been sitting like a stone gargoyle since you arrived.” He pointed absently at Aurora. “But the moment she mentions Solace, you lose your composure. So let me ask you one more time. What do you know?”

Roach seemed to shrink under the elder Ranger’s withering gaze. He swallowed, opened his mouth and promptly closed it. He looked to Ginger and Aurora for help, but they were just as bewildered as he was. He shut his eyes, took a slow breath and said, “It’s not pronounced Solace. It’s SOLUS.” He spelled it out. “Just… agh, I don’t remember everything.”

Aurora leaned forward. “What do you remember?”

He stared at the table, tracing the light and dark squares with his eyes. The checkered surface blurred as he looked beyond it, as if searching for something in the middle distance.

“It’s a satellite,” he said.

“A satellite,” Coldbrook repeated dryly.

Roach nodded. “JetStream Aerospace had been putting them in orbit for several years before the war ended. SOLUS was supposed to be their first attempt at docking two spacecraft mid-flight.”

“Did they?” Aurora asked.

Roach shook his head. “I don’t know. World ended before we found out.” He paused, then added, “I assume if ponies are still looking for it, then it might still be up there.”

Aurora could see the wheels spinning in Coldbrook’s head. Anything worth kidnapping an Enclave agent for would most definitely be worth his time.

“Do you recall what this satellite was for?” he asked.

Roach looked at Coldbrook and nodded. “An observation platform, or something akin to that. I don’t remember the specifics.”

Coldbrook frowned, deep in thought. “I fail to see what value an observation platform would have for the Enclave if the only thing it can see are the clouds their factories pump out every day.”

“Maybe having something like SOLUS would allow them to stop producing them,” Aurora theorized. “It can’t be cheap maintaining that much equipment for this long.”

Coldbrook shook his head. “That doesn’t add up. What was Autumn Song planning to do with it if she couldn’t use it?”

“Trade it, probably,” Roach said. “Either to you or the Enclave.”

The stallion didn’t seem convinced, but the kernels of truth were all there. Just not enough of them to paint a full picture. He looked at the decorative gears hanging above Aurora’s side of the booth and let out a frustrated sigh as he mulled over the new information.

Aurora turned and looked over her shoulder toward the front of the bar. The light from the windows was fading quickly. Part of her brain told her to start thinking about finding a place to sleep, but thanks to the last few days her internal clock was missing a few gears of its own. She could tell she would be wide awake for the next several hours no matter what she did, and odds were good Ginger was in the same boat.

A sharp rap of the table snapped her attention away from the windows and back to Coldbrook. His pleasantly patronizing smile was returning in earnest, making it clear to the three of them he had decided on something.

“Now that I have your attention, here’s what I suggest,” he said, earning a glower from Aurora. “The three of you will continue your journey to Stable-Tec HQ as if nothing is amiss. Word will travel fast among the upper echelon of the Enclave that a dustwing rescued one of their agents, and they’ll have to assume you helped prevent prewar tech from being used to aid their enemy. Like it or not, they’re going to realize that they’re indebted to you Aurora. I don’t see a scenario where they don’t send someone out to recruit you.”

Aurora jerked her head back. “What do you mean recruit me? I thought they hunted and killed dustwings.”

Coldbrook held his hoof aloft and twisted it back and forth. “Sometimes, yes. But not always. Either way, it’s worth the risk.”

Ginger straightened in her seat, sensing the same thing coming that Aurora was. “What risk?”

“Should the Enclave contact you,” Coldbrook explained, “I want you to allow them to recruit you. Learn as much as you can about their operations, find out what the pegasus you freed knew about SOLUS, and report that information back to me. Once it’s verified, I will provide you with an ignition talisman and whatever assistance you require to return home safely.”

Aurora stared at Coldbrook for several long seconds. It was too convenient to trust, but the offer was right there on the table. She ran her hoof through her mane, trying to ground herself in a familiar gesture, but was distracted by a few loose white curls that spilled over her ear against her cheek. She pushed the stray locks back and tried to shove down the wave of adrenaline rising in her chest.

Her first instinct was to say yes even though she had just witnessed him destroying Fiona’s life mere minutes ago. She had no love for the stallion, but if he had an ignition talisman then he was the pony to please. The word was on the tip of her tongue when she glanced over to Ginger and Roach and saw the concern in their eyes. Ginger shook her head almost imperceptibly. Roach pressed his lips firmly together, the gaps in his black chitin glowing as they spread apart.

Their faces screamed no and as much as she hated to admit it, they were both right. Coldbrook’s words echoed in her head. That doesn’t add up.

She took a deep breath and blew it out through her nose, turned to face the silver-maned stallion and tried not to focus on the regret she felt for every syllable she spoke.

“I can’t do it.”

Elder Coldbrook’s expression darkened. He cocked his head at an angle, his brow creased and his smile tightening. “I’m sorry?”

“I can’t do it,” she repeated, more firmly this time. “The amount of risk you’re talking about, not to mention the time it would take… I can’t do that. I don’t know how long my Stable has before the generator fails. It could be months away or it could happen tomorrow.” She offered a weak smile hoping he might be sympathetic. “Maybe we could work something else out?”

He shook his head slowly. “Ms. Pinfeathers, there is no something else. This is it. This is the deal. There are no other talismans to be bargained for. We’ve found all of them. Either you agree to do this thing for me, or you can wander the wasteland until Stable 10 dies.”

“I… how did…” Aurora could feel her mouth drying up. She blinked and looked to Roach, whose eyes were as wide as hers.

He knew. Coldbrook knew.

“How did what?” he probed, his smile breaking into a narrow grin. “How did I guess your Stable number? Was that it?”

His eyes slid down to her foreleg and her heart sank. When he spoke, it was with the same tone her father once used when she skinned her chin after ignoring his warnings not to run through the corridors.

“Aurora, you’ve been gone without your Pip-Buck for nearly two days. Did you think Ironshod would put it on one of his shelves and forget about it?” Coldbrook’s chest shook with silent laughter. “The right information is worth more than all the caps in the wasteland, my dear. That’s a lesson your friends should have told you long before you ever stepped hoof in Blinder’s Bluff.”

Pieces of the puzzle she didn’t know she had clicked together one after the other. Cider had been willing to kill her to get at her Pip-Buck. Ironshod had stolen it off her leg in clear view of his subordinates only to inexplicably give it to Fiona and make no attempt to recover it while Aurora slept. Millie had told exactly what had happened and Aurora had dismissed it as a glitch. There were two Pip-Bucks in Stable 6. The owner was Aurora Pinfeathers.

Coldbrook had a copy.

Aurora felt her hackles rising. “Delete it,” she growled.

Coldbrook’s smile widened. “Don’t be ridiculous. That information is far too...”

She wedged her wing between the wall and the table’s edge and wrenched it sideways. Wooden feet squealed as the table shot past Ginger and Roach and slammed into the side of Lime’s bar hard enough to crack the leg off one of the stools trapped in its path. She dropped from her seat onto the filthy floor between them, willfully ignorant of the Rangers barking orders for her to get on the ground as they rushed to help their leader, and planted her hooves on the edge of Coldbrook’s bench.

Furious ridges formed down the bridge of her nose, which hovered barely an inch away from Elder Coldbrook’s. She repeated herself, slowly.

“Delete. It.”

This close, there was nothing he could do to fully mask his reaction. While he still managed to maintain the same confident smile, his rust-red eyes were wider than before. She’d caught him off guard and for a moment he was afraid, but that moment was short-lived and his brow began its descent. Something hard stubbed against the side of her temple followed by another deafening order to get on the ground. Ginger was screaming for her to listen to them but her hooves stayed where they were. This was her nightmare come alive and she was wholly bent on smothering it in its crib or die trying.

Coldbrook looked past her and shook his head, motioning with his hoof for the Rangers to calm down. “Go outside now, both of you,” he calmly ordered. When they hesitated, his voice rose several decibels. “Give us the fucking room!”

Aurora flinched as spittle from Coldbrook’s obscenity landed above her lip. He took the opportunity to push past her and lifted his uniform off the post while she wiped at her mouth.

“Brainless idiots,” he muttered as guided his legs through the shirt with the aid of his magic. He glanced at the ruined table and Lime, whose opinion on recent developments was clearly written across his face. Liquor pooled out from around the bar, mingling with glass shards lying on the wood floor. Then he looked back to Aurora.

She stood in the space the table had once occupied, her wings half-extended from the adrenaline sloshing through her bloodstream. Ginger and Roach stood out of their way, horns lowered in preparation to aid her if required.

“I won’t ask again,” she warned. “Delete that data. It doesn’t belong to you.”

Coldbrook pressed his tongue under his lip and chuckled at the wreckage around them. “I’m starting to understand how one mare can tear down an entire trade network overnight.” He closed his uniform and leveled his eyes at her while his magic fastened each button. “I’m going to make you a final proposition that I think you’ll want to hear before you turn it down. Can I tell you what it is?”

Aurora clenched her jaw and nodded, once.

Coldbrook bowed his head with a deferential smile. “All I want is for you to find a way into the Enclave and bring back the coordinates to SOLUS. You will receive an ignition talisman in exchange for that information. That’s the offer.” His eyes drifted to Ginger and Roach, whose horns were still pointed toward him.

“But,” he continued, looking back to Aurora, “if you decline my offer, I promise you that my Rangers will travel to Foal Mountain and peel open Stable 10 like a tin can. We will replace its ignition talisman and we will remove the ponies living inside. It will be fortified and you will never step hoof inside that place again. Unless you agree to help us.”

Aurora bit down on her lip hard enough for it to hurt. She was out of options. “You motherfucker.”

Coldbrook finished the last button. “Is that a no?”

She looked away, afraid if she saw his infuriating grin one more time she would well and truly try to kill him. “It means I accept,” she said quietly. “I’ll get you SOLUS.”

He gave the wood floor a gentle stamp that made her twitch. “Good to hear! I’m looking forward to your first status report. I’ll be expecting to receive one each day until you have SOLUS.”

She shot him a withering glare. “How am I supposed to do that?”

Coldbrook tipped his horn toward her Pip-Buck and turned toward the front of the bar. “Send it to yourself, Ms. Pinfeathers. We’ll see it.”

With a departing nod to Roach and Ginger, Elder Coldbrook strolled toward the exit. “Oh, and don’t forget to pick up your bags and weapons at the gatehouse. You’ll be needing them.”

Aurora swallowed hard as the doors splayed open to reveal at least a half dozen Rangers, several in varying shades of power armor, waiting outside. The crowd of belligerent patrons were either silent or had been encouraged to find somewhere else to drown their sorrows. Coldbrook spared a glance over his shoulder as the doors closed behind him, a fox’s grin spread across his muzzle.

The doors clicked shut.

Aurora’s hooves scraped against the gritty floor as she sat in the Ranger’s seat. She tried to process what she’d just agreed to but her brain kept choking on it. Her voice shook with fear. “Luna’s grace, what did I just do?”

Ginger stepped through the space once occupied by a table and placed a hoof on her knee. “You took the only option he gave you,” she said.

Roach climbed up onto the bench next to her and nodded. “He played all the moves before we got here, Aurora,” he rumbled, and thumped her on the foreleg. “You did good. You tripped him up. Otherwise we wouldn’t know he has a copy of your Pip-Buck. This is the best case scenario he didn’t want us to have.”

He was right. They both were. She nodded and deflated with a little groan. “We’re so fucked.”

“The wasteland has a tendency to do that,” Roach agreed, his eyes tracking to the doors. “And Coldbrook is too clever not to have already sent Rangers to the Stable. We need to warn them.”

Aurora looked down at her Pip-Buck, and the list of old messages still on its screen. An icon along the bottom margin indicated a strong connection to what remained of Stable 6’s network.

“I can do better than that.”

Droplets of condensation formed a ring on Overmare Delphi’s desk. A red aura picked the unlabeled bottle up by the neck and Sledge brought it to his lips, taking a long pull before setting back into its puddle with a heavy thunk.

Overstallion Sledge.

Nearly a week into his new role and the title still felt strange in his mouth. Here, at the literal top of Stable 10, he felt like an imposter. Every minute seemed to bring with it a new problem for him to solve and a new pegasus to convince that he knew what he was doing.

He didn’t have a clue what he was doing, or if he was doing it well. His message queue updated constantly with everything from belated congratulations to urgent-flagged requests from department heads complaining about the power holiday. He looked up at the half-lit fluorescent tubes and grunted with discomfort as they blurred around the edges. He wasn’t supposed to be drinking, but then again Delphi wasn’t supposed to be scrubbed off the wood paneling behind her chair. His chair. Fuck. He took another sip of homebrewed beer, a souvenir from his home down in Mechanical, and tried to think.

Delphi didn’t leave him instructions, and I.T. was still struggling to find a work-around for all the files she encrypted before she ate a bullet. He winced a little at how easy it was to simplify it like that. Something had been bothering the overmare well before Pinfeathers picked up the phone in the control room. Delphi had known something was wrong. Something that extended beyond their generator.

This is what they do. Her words echoed in his head like a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing. They build a pretty box, wrap it with a pretty bow and tell hundreds of pretty ponies they’ll be safe inside. And then they crush it to see what colors leak out.

Sledge held the bottle close to his lips, his eyes stagnating on the terminal in front of him.

It’s another one of their Celestia-damned experiments.

He hadn’t understood what she meant back then. Hadn’t really given much thought to it with the looming problem of their failing generator right in front of him. Something about living in a Stable just ended up getting to ponies sometimes, and they cracked a little. It was something everyone dealt with at least once. Almost everyone came out the other side of it a little stronger and able to help their fellow residents cope with theirs.

But Delphi hadn’t.

He stared at the steady march of green text as new messages rolled in from all across the Stable. I.T. assured him that they would help him set up filters once they finished decrypting Delphi’s files. She had been trying to hide something, and he needed to know what it was. In the meantime, he would sit here.

Maybe he would wait until the buzz wore off, then go take a walk. Being cooped up in this office was driving him crazy. He didn’t feel like himself this far away from Mechanical. More than anything, he wanted to check on the generator. See how it was doing even if the news coming from Mechanical’s new department head was getting worse by the day. Their initial estimate of the talisman’s lifespan had put generator failure out as far as a year.

Flux was reporting different numbers now. The talisman wasn’t braking at a fixed rate. Its deceleration was curving. Sharply.

Sledge considered the bottle and the bitter liquid that rippled in its bottom third. As a young colt, he believed the overmares and overstallions of each Stable could wake up in the morning and make up any rules they wanted. Cake for breakfast, candy for dinner, free plays in the arcade for life. When his sister had been alive, one of them would regularly be the other’s slave for a day. Him the overstallion and her the overmare. The mystery of the office he sat in permeated the entire culture of Stable 10 in so many unpredictable ways. From the Atrium floor it sounded like paradise.

Sitting here with a single medallion window to look out of, it felt like a prison.

He sighed and lifted the bottle, intent on finishing it off so he could start another, when something in the message feed caught his eye. He had to squint through the mild inebriation and wait for his eyes to focus.

When they did, the bottle dropped to the floor and shattered.

Welcome to ROBRONCO Industries™ TermLink
Resident Mail System :: Stable 10
To: Overstallion Sledge
From: Aurora Pinfeathers
Subject: I’m Alive
04/12/1297

Sledge, it’s Aurora. I’m sorry, I’m in a rush. Things are happening out here that I don’t have time to explain so I’m going to try to cover the important stuff and hopefully it makes sense but not all of it will. Okay. I got yours and Dad’s messages. Tell him I love him back and that I’m okay. Sorry about leaving the way I did, but you know how I get. I love you too by the way. Platonically, by the way. Don’t get any ideas. Fuck I’m rambling.

I need you to get I.T. to do something that’s going to sound crazy but you have to trust me. They need to revoke all of the permissions linked to my resident account. All of them, Sledge. If they can delete my registry altogether that would be better. DO NOT OPEN THE STABLE FOR ME. There’s a group of ponies out here called the Steel Rangers who made a copy of my Pip-Buck and I’d bet my ass they’re going to try to use it to get you to open the door. DON’T let them in, no matter what they tell you. You’re safe as long as you don’t open the door.

Which reminds me.

You probably already know this now that you’re overstallion, but there’s a tunnel outside the door from when the Stable was built. The entrance is blocked off by a landslide kicked off when the bombs fell. Sledge, this is going to sound insane, but there’s a pegasus trapped in the tunnel that needs to be brought into the Stable before the Steel Rangers get there. She’s in a utility room at the end of the tunnel. She answers to Blue and she’ll probably fight whoever you send out to her, but please don’t hurt her. She’ll have some jewelry and an antique book in the room with her. Make sure to bring those in. They seem to keep her calm. I’d tell you more but I don’t know if the Rangers will be able to read this once I send it. She’s important, Sledge.

Bring her in and lock the door. Disconnect it from the main power if you have to.

I won’t be able to contact you with this name after I.T. locks it out, so I need you to do one more thing. Tell I.T. to watch for a new user trying to connect to the network. It’ll be a name you’ll recognize but the biometrics aren’t going to be mine, but it’ll be me. Limit that account to messaging only. No door access, no nothing. Just messaging. If you get pinged by anything strange, block it. This is the only thing I can think of, and my gut says it’ll work, but I know computers even worse than you do.

And Sledge, tell dad that I’m safe and that I have friends helping me. Tell him I’ve seen the sky, and it’s beautiful once you get above the clouds.

Stay safe,

Pinfeathers

“Do you think he’ll listen?” Ginger asked.

“I hope so. Hold still.”

Aurora held Ginger’s hoof in her lap with one wing while she pecked at the keys to the Pip-Buck clamped around the unicorn’s foreleg with the other. Roach lay behind a tree stump a few steps to the right of them. Aurora’s rifle, Desperate Times, lay in the crook of his shoulder, pointed toward the ribbon of broken highway that lay just a few dozen meters to the north.

The fallen section of tree was wide enough to give Aurora and Ginger enough cover to work in without being seen by the odd traveler heading to and from the Bluff. Even with the sun having sunk well below the horizon by the time they retrieved their weapons and supplies from the gatehouse, Aurora wanted to get as much distance between them and the city before Coldbrook learned about the message she sent.

They had managed to cover a few miles before pausing to work on the second half of Aurora’s loosely assembled plan, opting to keep the highway as near as they were comfortable without risking being seen. Blinder’s Bluff glittered like a beacon to the west of them, the individual lights blurring together into ribbons that wound their way up the slope. The pulsing red beacon of Fiona’s radio tower was dark now, extinguished by Coldbrook’s Rangers. Part of her wanted to find Fiona and apologize in earnest. She hated the feeling of leaving without having a chance to make it right, but it wasn’t hard to tell that the gryphon hadn’t been in a state of mind to forgive anyone when she left Someplace Else. Aurora barely knew Fiona, but the thought of losing a friend still stung.

The Pip-Buck chirped and prompted her to fill in another form. She didn’t know if contacting Sledge meant that Coldbrook’s deal was off the table, but at the very least she didn’t expect to see him holding a talisman in his hoof for her any time soon. She would cross that bridge when they got there. For now, she needed to finish setting up their dummy account.

Aurora ticked the knob through the setup menus, working by the dim green light of the display. True to its design, the Pip-Buck detected Ginger’s unique biometrics and promptly logged Aurora out. To her relief the setup was relatively straightforward. It requested a laundry list of personal information that Aurora didn’t have, so she filled the unnecessary fields in with N/A. It wasn’t important whether it was done correctly. All she cared about was that when the servers received and rejected the resident registry request, the name left on the logs would stand out like a sore hoof.

She glanced at the top margin of the screen, at the name she picked out, and a dull knot of guilt formed in her chest. It felt like sacrilege to use her name, but Aurora knew Sledge wouldn’t mistake it for anyone else but her when he saw it.

She tapped the final keys with her feathers and submitted the new profile. The screen went dark, replaced by a cartoon pony smiling down at a watch around his fetlock. A moment later the rejection appeared.

Aurora swallowed the lump in her throat and sent the request again. She needed to be sure it got flagged somewhere in the Stable’s system.

“May I ask who she is?” Ginger asked.

The failure notice reappeared. Aurora sent it again.

“She’s my mother,” she said quietly.

Ginger looked down at the Pip-Buck attached to her leg and nodded understanding.

Once she was satisfied the attempts couldn’t be missed, Aurora lifted Ginger’s foreleg out of her lap and sat up straight with a soft grunt. The sound of rustling grass drew Roach’s attention and she nodded her head at him, signaling they were done. Roach returned the gesture and tipped her rifle onto its side, flipping the safety on before pushing himself to his hooves.

“How long until they make contact?” he asked.

Aurora’s wings bobbed in a noncommittal shrug. “Tonight, with any luck.”

Roach held her rifle out by its strap, waiting patiently as the two of them got up. She took it from his hoof with her wing and lowered it over her shoulder. The weight of the overmare’s rifle was a comfort she didn’t realize she’d been without until the Rangers at the gate handed it over. She had found herself hoping Latch would be there to see them off, but the Knight had been absent from the wall when they passed through the gate. If it hadn’t been for him, she might not have found the solar array in time to save Ginger.

She owed him a proper goodbye if nothing else, but there was nothing to be done for it. The longer they lingered in the Bluff, the better their odds were of being escorted to another meeting with Elder Coldbrook. As far as she was concerned, locking the Steel Rangers out of Stable 10 was a fair trade. Something told her he would see things very differently. She didn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out.

As Ginger fiddled with the clasp of the bulky Pip-Buck, Aurora and Roach secured their saddlebags over their hips. Roach squinted in the direction of the road where a gas lantern bobbed toward the Bluff.

“Night travel is going to be difficult,” he pointed out. “Moreso, if Coldbrook was telling the truth about traders attacking one another.”

“It’ll be more dangerous to sit here and wait to be seen.” Aurora watched the lantern fade away toward the city and frowned. “If both of you are up for it, I want to cover some of the ground we lost. We still have a ways to go until we reach Fillydelphia.”

Ginger slipped her knife out of the sheath wrapped around her hind leg and checked the blade before putting it away. “It isn’t as if we’re completely helpless. Provided Aurora doesn’t antagonize any more deathclaws, we should be fine. Besides, we slept most of the day away. If we’re going to be awake all night we might as well use the time productively.”

Even in the darkness, Aurora could make out the slender smile on Roach’s cracked muzzle. Unless she was seeing things, the changeling almost looked proud.

“Okay,” he said. “Where to next?”

Aurora instinctively looked to her foreleg for her map and sighed when she came up empty hooved. She wasn’t about to take her Pip-Buck off Ginger and risk missing a message from Sledge. “Well,” she hedged, “I did see some backroads a few miles south of the Bluff when I left. They mostly kept in one direction from what I remember. Might be safer to find one and take it east for a stretch.”

Roach nodded his approval and looked to Ginger, who shrugged. “Alright then, let’s get going. Aurora, you and I will take point. I’m going to teach you what you need to listen for. Ginger can cover the rear.”

Ginger snorted and fell behind them as they struck out into the dry grass, leaving the highway and its myriad of new threats to shrink over their shoulders. Aurora flicked her tail under the unicorn’s chin and mouthed a wide-eyed behave as she moved up to match pace with Roach, thankful that it was too dark to see the flush of color rising up her neck. Ginger offered a teasing grin in return.

Roach shook his head with a wry smile and sighed. It was going to be a long night.

The flight to the Vhannan capital had been, in so many words, a mixed experience.

Zecora rubbed her daughter’s back as she leaned over the side of the chariot, her eyes clenched shut. Not long after departing Canterlot, Teak discovered to the dismay of the pegasi trailing them that she was prone to flightsickness. Everything in her system came up immediately. It wasn’t a pleasant eighteen hours.

Only when the Vhannan coast came into view and the first fishing villages resolved through the mist did her black-tipped ears perk up. Zecora joined her at the side of the chariot as the villages drifted beneath them, too distant to make out any meaningful detail beyond a speckling of red rooftops connected by hair-thin dirt roads.

“Mom, look,” Teak whispered, her hoof pointing to the western horizon.

Zecora took a sharp breath as she saw what her daughter had spotted ahead of them. Thick, brown smoke rose toward the clouds below like an oily curtain that flattened out like an anvil. The red Vhannan soil darkened into a black stain that stretched from north to south and beyond. Reading about the front line of the war was one thing. Seeing it approach below them was something else entirely.

The chariot lurched, their bearers putting more distance between them and the fighting as it slid toward them. Teak gagged at the sudden motion and groaned when nothing came up.

Zecora squeezed her shoulder and said, “Shh. Don’t look. I’ll tell you when we’re beyond it.”

“Okay,” Teak moaned, and shut her eyes once more.

Even though they were too high to see the fighting, Zecora could make out the winding lines of trenches well enough to make her chest clench. The killing fields stretched on for miles like a sea of black mud. The curtain of smoke resolved into hundreds of individual stems that sprouted from bright orange seeds on the ground. Sickly yellow stains pooled over the battle lines, bleeding into the trenches like filaments of some unknown plague.

Blindweed.

The herb grew abundantly in the Vhannan swamps to the south and was even found in some stretches of the Everfree Forest, but coming in contact with it rarely led to more than an itchy rash where the oils managed to penetrate a pony’s coat. A few notable cases of ponies getting it into their eyes, resulting in temporary blindness, earned blindweed its name. In recent months, Vhannan researchers isolated several active compounds in the plant’s oils. Thousands of times more potent than their natural progenitor, blindweed grenades aerosolized the purified compounds. Reports of exposure were horrific. The toxins severely burned every inch of exposed skin they touched, scorching lungs and sealing throats shut in a manner of seconds. The Ministry of Technology was already shipping rubberized masks to the front lines, the first real line of defense to exposure, but the filters were imperfect. Ponies were still dying.

Zecora watched with growing sadness as puffs of dirt erupted along one of the lines far to the north, mercifully distant enough for the sound to be lost before reaching their ears. It felt unfair to watch tracers flicker across trenches, so far away that they may as well have been on a different world entirely for all the aid they could render. Slowly, the western front of the battlefield lumbered into view. The churned soil lightened, resuming its ruddy hue as trenches gave way to camps, and camps gave way to command centers. A village rolled by. Then a small town. Finally, as the last of the dark soil disappeared over the horizon, they began to see Vhannan cities.

Zecora gave Teak a gentle nudge. “It’s okay to look.”

Teak nodded, but her eyes didn’t open. Zecora pinched her lips and quietly sighed, worried that bringing her daughter along had been an awful mistake.

It was another half hour before the Vhannan capital of Adenia lifted out of the west like a piece of cut turquoise. They descended toward the savannan gem, its beautiful city center resolving into a myriad of blue and green glass. It looked nothing like the hard right angles of Manehattan or Fillydelphia. The skyscrapers reaching up to greet them were all curves and splendor, resembling a fleet of strange fishing boats on a red sea.

These were the enemies of Equestria. The savage zebras who frothed at the mouth in their quest to cross the land bridge that connected their continents and split the Lunar Ocean into north and south. Rarity’s ministry painted zebras with a singular brush to terrify Equestrians into supporting the war. No doubt, Vhanna had its own Rarity bent to the same task.

It felt different, seeing Adenia for what it was. No pyres burned in the streets. No strange tribal dances haunted the boulevards. Just zebras. Ponies born with stripes. Coming here, watching the hoof traffic come into clear view below, it reassured her that she was doing the right thing. That peace would be worth whatever trials stood in front of her.

The Vhannan palace stood in the center of a vast green space nestled in the heart of the city. She heard Teak gasp at the sight of its ornate copper dome, stained with intricate swirls sea-green patina that bloomed over the gleaming metal like painted vines. Narrow, marble minarets stood proudly at the four corners of the palace grounds, ringed with dazzlingly blue lapis lazuli tile.

It was an oasis within an oasis.

They descended over the simple iron fence that divided the city street and palace grounds, drawing the attention of the contingent of zebras gathered in front of the white palace steps that would serve as their reception party. A detachment of their escort stood apart from the zebras, having flown ahead to announce their arrival and spare the Equestrian delegation an abrupt and undignified end. Zecora was glad to see there were no panicked looks toward aimed at their chariot. They were expected. More importantly, they were being welcomed.

The chariot thumped onto the grass with the practiced ease of seasoned flyers, leaving the barest indentation of tread in the green as they rolled to a stop. Already, she could see Ambassador Abyssian, an unusually tall stallion, walking across the bright stone promenade and onto the grass to meet them. A pair of zebras bedecked in black sunglasses and black suit jackets flanked the Vhannan ambassador, their heads turned in the general direction of Zecora’s Wonderbolt entourage.

Abyssian stopped within hoof’s length of the chariot as watched with a patient smile while Zecora and Teak stepped out and onto Vhannan soil. His lavender eyes glittered with enthusiasm as he extended a leg and bowed to the two mares, a gesture that Zecora mimicked much to Abyssian’s delight.

“Welcome to Adenia, Ambassador Zecora!” he declared with a rich tenor voice that rose out of his chest. “And welcome to you as well, little one! It is so good to finally meet you.”

“Thank you for receiving us,” Zecora said, letting her eyes wander across perfectly manicured clusters of desert rose and flame lilies. The edges of the horseshoe-shaped promenade were vibrant with flowering herbs she had only seen in books or had to import dried. Even Teak seemed a little less green as she gawked at the exotic flora. “I regret not having the opportunity to visit my mother’s homeland sooner.”

Abyssian allowed himself a moment to admire the glass towers around them. “When I was but a colt, this city was a slum. I am proud to see how far we have come since.” His smile dimmed, touched with genuine sorrow as he regarded Zecora and her daughter. “I trust you have seen the fighting near the coast.”

Zecora nodded. “I have. It is a blight.”

“It is,” Abyssian agreed. He looked to the west for a moment and sighed, his eyes brightening a little as he turned and gestured toward the palace. “Come. We can discuss the sins of our nations over dinner.”

Zecora looked to Teak inquisitively. “Are you feeling up for something to eat?”

Her daughter offered a tired nod. “Maybe.” She looked sheepishly at the ambassador. “Do you have hayburgers here?”

Abyssian bubbled with laughter and Teak flushed with embarrassment. Zecora managed to keep a straight face, but only just. It took Teak a moment to understand that he wasn’t laughing at her. It was a release of tension. A good thing. Zecora nudged her daughter while Abyssian collected himself and gave her a wink.

“Ah, today is going to be a good day. No, my dear Teak, we have many dishes in Vhanna but I fear hayburgers have not yet reached us here. But I assure you we have something much better that you are sure to enjoy,” he said as they stepped off the grass and began making their way toward the palace.

“Tell me,” he said. “Have you ever tried kitfo before?”

Next Chapter: Chapter 16: Edibles Estimated time remaining: 65 Hours, 10 Minutes