November 1st, 1075

How do ponies LIVE like this?

Last night it got so cold that mom had to pull the extra-heavy blankets out. The weather mare on TV said it dipped below zero, but the wind makes it feel like negative one hundred. It’s only the first day of November! There’s still an entire winter ahead of us and Violet says that it’ll get even colder before the weather pegasi bring in the heavier clouds.

On the plus side, I’m really liking my hang-out time with Violet. She’s like, really smart, and really fun. Her dads are pretty cool too, even though they couldn’t tell a joke to save their lives. But they’re nice, though, and not as stuffy as I thought they would be when Violet showed me the books they buy her. She wants to be an entim… entimogiest? Entomologist. A bug researcher. She knows a TON about spiders. Like, a lot. I thought it was creepy at first but she keeps telling me things about them that make them… I don’t know, not so freaky.

So like, when we lived in Ponyville, Dad had a toolshed that always had these big fat brown wolf spiders that would wait right above the door. I always thought they were about to drop into my mane. I hated them SO much. But Violet says they’re harmless and that they help keep the mosquitos down. They’re not even venomous. Or poisonous. I can’t remember which. Either way, thanks to her I’m not as weirded out by wolf spiders anymore… which would have come in handy if Canterlot had any. I’m not going to go looking for them like she does, but if I do see one again, I’ll try not to squish it.

November 14th, 1075

Mom’s been acting weird for the last few weeks and she isn’t telling me why. She walks around like everything is perfectly normal, but whenever anything about Vhanna comes up on TV or the radio, she gets super tense. I think it has to do with that thing we talked about that I’m not allowed to talk about during our trip. Secret agent mare stuff. I know how stupid it sounds now, but I didn’t know being a diplomat would be so stressful for her.

At least she says I might be able to have my talisman back before Hearth’s Warming Eve. The ministries are doing tests on them to make sure they’re safe, which is dumb because of course a healing talisman is safe. It heals! But those are the rules, or at least the ones they made up after Twilight took them away. Mom says I should be patient, but… ugh, I don’t know. If Rainbow Dash thought it was okay, then it should be okay!

November 20th, 1075

Violet and I stayed up super late last night to watch Jet Stream Aerospace test their new Friesian heavy boosters. I can tell space stuff doesn’t interest her as much as me, but it’s still pretty cool to have someone to geek out with. The press conference they had earlier this month kept going on about how they’re just testing the limits of the technology and that they were only interested in reaching higher orbits, but everyone knows they’re downplaying it in prep for something big. The launch even got some coverage on Good Morning Canterlot which… I mean, they never cover JSA unless something goes wrong.

Whatever they’re getting read for, it’s going to be huge.

Hoofsteps.

“How’re you feeling?”

Rainbow tipped her nose back until her head hung over the narrow end of her bench. Her ragged left wing hung limp toward the concrete floor, the tips of her feathers whispering across the worn cover of her Friendship Journal. Between her book and the gemless necklace clasped around her neck, they were the anchors that kept her from drifting too far from herself.

With the wisps of her mane dangling toward the ground, Sledge appeared to stand upside down beyond the bars of her cell. As little as she enjoyed her new accomodations, she wasn’t about to argue the logic of keeping her where she was. Getting out of that tunnel, being inside the Stable she had waited lifetimes to enter…

...she was pretty sure she was improving, that was the important thing. Her moments of clarity were definitely lasting longer. Not as long as the stretches where she wasn’t herself. Not nearly, but long enough that she could remember concrete details from the last times she surfaced. Her mother’s obituary was one of those memories she refused to let get away from her. She could remember the bland flavor of the rye cakes Sledge brought up from the commissary earlier in the morning. Even better, she could recall enough to know what day it was with some confidence. Compared to the shifting fog of half-memories from the tunnel, the past two days inside the Stable felt almost normal.

Sledge watched her, his expression tilting with worry as she stared at him in silence.

He asked you how you’re feeling, she chastised herself.

“I don’t want to jinx it,” she said, “but I’m about to set a record.”

Sledge turned the key to her cell with a heavy clunk. With one wing he pulled the door open. With the other, he carried a tray back to what she tentatively recalled to be deputy Chaser’s desk.

He gestured for her to join him and took a look at the clock on the wall. “What’s the time to beat?”

Rainbow stretched her legs into the air, angled them to the side and let gravity roll her the rest of the way off the bench. Her hooves clicked firmly against the floor, and she only stumbled a little before catching herself. It still felt strange being constantly off-balance, but the more she threw her brain these curveballs, the more she knew her body would adjust.

She absently shrugged the stump of her missing wing, still waiting for the harsh reality that she would never fly to kick in. Something told her that it wouldn’t. After seeing her entire world blacken and die, the loss of a wing felt incredibly small.

“Twenty-two minutes, I’m pretty sure,” she said as she stepped out of her cell. Even with her olfactory senses diminished, her nose could still detect the bright scent of the fresh citrus Sledge had brought for her. “I’ll pass that in another five, but I’m hoping to hit a half hour before it happens again.”

Sledge held a tender wedge of orange out to her as she approached, which she gladly popped into her mouth with a flick of her feathers. What remained of her taste buds came to life with a splash of tartness she’d nearly forgotten. She bent her neck back and made a noise unbecoming of a ministry mare.
Fuck it, she thought. It wasn’t as if Rarity was around to send out one of her passive-aggressive interdepartmental memos anyway.

She paused, alternating from chewing her meal to chewing the inside of her lip. That wasn’t fair. She followed the bitter thought with an apology, hoping to herself that maybe it would reach the ears of the ponies who deserved to hear it.

Dipping her feathers among the selection of fresh fruit laid out on the desk, she picked up another nib of orange as well as a smallish half of an apple. Time and limited space were doing what Scootaloo’s projections had hoped they wouldn’t, steadily bearing down on the size of the Stable’s crops as their mother plants adapted to the stresses of their artificial homes. Taking a bite, she knew this Stable was nearing the end of its lifespan.

Judging by the rolling brown-outs Sledge already told her about, her new home had bigger problems than aging crops.

“Any luck breaking Spitfire’s encryptions?”

Sledge held up a wing and waggled it side to side. As he described it, the vast majority of Stable 10’s records dating from the first decade of operation were either locked, hidden or wiped from its servers entirely. The ponies in I.T. were attacking the problem as best they could, but they were running headlong into unfamiliar code. Strange lockouts. Methods that predated the war and Stable-Tec design. After two hundred years of being told to maintain the Stable’s systems, now they were being forced to innovate.

“They’ve made more progress than expected but not as much as we’d hoped,” he said, stealing a piece of what looked like dried fig from the tray. “Opal is dead certain that Spitfire had the first head of I.T. write custom permissions into the system to supersede her successors. She has her team looking for a gap in the code that might let them create a superuser of their own, but it’s a case of a snake eating its tail. We need Spitfire’s clearance to make the new user, but we need the new user to get her clearance. Until we square that mess away, Opal’s team will have to hack what they can and pray for the rest.”

Rainbow’s expression turned sour. “Taking sole control of a Stable and locking ponies out definitely sounds like her modus operandi.”

Sledge cocked an eyebrow.

“It sounds like something she would do,” she clarified. “Spitfire had contingencies for contingencies, or so she kept reminding me. She never shied away from taking a hit if she stood to gain something from it in the long run.”

He nodded as he chewed. “Our revered overmare was trying to hide something, that I’ll bet my bits on.”

With the end of the world warming the hull of their subterranean lifeboat, the list of things worth hiding had to be a short one. “Maybe she wanted to preserve a better version of her legacy?”

He shrugged. “You knew her better than anyone.”

“Not as well as I thought.”

Sledge nodded, nibbling the figs that she actively avoided.

They ate, allowing the silence to soak in. After a beat, Rainbow looked up and the clock and pointed her pale blue feathers at it like she was aiming a pistol. “Boom. New record.”

She lifted a hoof and held it up to Sledge.

He looked at it, confused. “I’m not sure what you want me to do here.”

“It’s a hoof-bump,” she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. When he continued to frown at her, she looked at him with open dismay. “Please say ponies still hoof-bump.”

“Maybe they still do on the outside?” he hedged.

She dropped her hoof, grunted, and refilled the cup of her wing with the remainder of their fruit. “And here I thought Stables were all about preservation of society,” she grumped.

Sledge caught the note of levity in her tone and chuckled. Like it or not, things changed. It was only natural.

Yet, on some levels, the thought of living amongst ponies so separated from the life Rainbow knew excited her. She had spent a lifetime flying from place to place, crossing more borders than she could count and feeling that rush of newness when she landed in a place she’d never been. She couldn’t help but wonder what the ponies here were like. Heck, what ponies in the other Stables were like!

It felt like the old days, back when the world was impossibly large and the creatures spread across it still strange and unknown.

“So,” Sledge said, pulling her from her thoughts. “I have a question for you.”

She cheeked the fruit still in her mouth and slurred. “Schoot.”

Sledge rolled his wings with a thoughtful unease that reminded her of Big Mac, though the comparison might have also sprang from the fact that Sledge bore the same brick red coat and sheer mass. She stifled a tiny laugh at the thought that he was one eeyup away from making a passable impression.

“Opal thinks you might be able to help her prioritize the files her team needs to focus on cracking,” he said, gesturing to the terminal on Chaser’s desk. “You could use any of these, but I can’t shake the feeling that keeping an Element of Harmony in our drunk tank might be something that shows up on my permanent record after I kick the bucket. Provided we could do so safely, would you like to be assigned a compartment?”

Rainbow swallowed. “You mean, like, an actual room?”

He nodded.

She thought about that. Right off the bat, she had concerns. “What about the other residents? When I… disconnect, I’m not exactly the safest pony to be around.”

Vague as the memory was, she could still recall fragments of the events that transpired shortly after the Stable door rolled open. The frantic boil of animal panic that had driven her to bludgeon deputy Chaser and maul Stratus with her bare teeth had felt like being dragged behind a freight train; at the mercy of her own momentum despite how badly she wanted to stop. Two days later, she still feared what she might do when she was that other, broken version of herself. What happened if someone knocked on her door while she was in a state like that? What would she do if they opened it?

“I’ve spoken to a few friends in Mechanical who think they can wire up a card reader by tomorrow morning. You won’t be able to operate the door but you would have a bed, a shower and a terminal to work from.” His wings bobbed with a shrug. “It’s entirely up to you. After everything you’ve done for us, it’s the least I can offer.”

She lifted the last wedge of citrus to her lips and chewed thoughtfully.

Sledge wasn’t naive to the risk of moving her, and she wasn’t blind to the fact that she looked like one of the shriveled monsters from the comically bad horror movies she used to rent with the girls. Moving her could be a disaster, but there was something reassuring about Sledge’s confidence. He’d given this some thought.

She allowed herself a meek smile.

“As long as we’re careful,” she said. “Then… yeah. That would be awesome.”

Julip set her rifle down and stared.

Less than a minute. That’s how long it took for Aurora and her companions to turn an encampment full of slavers into a walled-in graveyard. Whatever the three of them had done up until now must have put them in the good graces of the goddesses themselves because, somehow, they were still breathing.

And yet that wasn’t why she lay in the shadows of a bomb-scorched school, wondering why she’d agreed to come here at all.

The stallion that fell from the catwalk had stubbornly clung to life. It was an oversight the Enclave trained its conscripts to be wary of long before they ever saw combat. Barring the traumatic destruction of the heart or spine, landing a shot center mass took a little time to take the full intended effect. Fresh out of a Stable, Aurora Pinfeathers wouldn’t have known what to look for. She hadn’t checked to see if he was still breathing and hadn’t noticed him reaching for his rifle.

And then poof. A flash of the Dressage mare’s magic engulfed the stallion and he promptly popped into existence several hundred yards above the dirt. The effect was instantaneous and fatal, and Julip found herself having a front row seat to watch him plummet to his death.

She’d just witnessed teleportation in an era when magic was dying a slow, lingering death. The only question worth asking was how?

These three didn’t need her protection. The wasteland needed protection from them.

An unpleasant thought ran through her head. She was willing to bet that Aurora wouldn’t react violently to seeing her again. That mare had a compassionate stripe in her that most ponies had the good sense to let wither on the vine. Ginger on the other hoof was two very different sides of the same bit. She was unpredictable. For any other unicorn, that wasn’t usually an issue, but Ginger had just proven that she wasn’t any other unicorn.

There had been nothing on her file that suggested she could perform spells, and yet Julip had just seen it happen with her own eyes. Magic. Real magic.

Maybe it was a fluke. Judging by how the three of them froze down there when it happened, it very well was. But it was still dangerous. Too dangerous for her to just waltz in and say hello. She needed to be careful.

She needed to wait.

It didn’t take long for the ghouls of Kiln to come investigate the early morning gunfire. At first there were only a half dozen ready to risk approaching the slaver camp, all armed and primed to defend themselves should it come to that.

By the time Aurora noticed the ghostly eyes peering through the gate at the carnage inside, she had already snapped the shackle of her sixth padlock with a length of pipe she’d salvaged from one of the slaver’s rifles. She would have used the bolt cutters she’d taken from the Stable, but as she recently discovered, many of her tools had failed to make it out of Blinder’s Bluff when they collected their gear. Luckily, the locks Ward used for his cages were low grade cast iron and easy to bend, saving her the task of having to sort through the jangling mess of keys on slavemaster Ward’s ring.

The lock split apart with a satisfying crack. Aurora cleared the latch and swung open the door. As the two mares and the foal they were protecting took their first free steps, Ginger beckoned them toward her at the far end of the cages where a growing stack of iron collars lay in the dirt at her hooves, their explosive charges rendered inert by a gentle application of her magic.

As the freed unicorns walked away, Aurora stared at the ghouls standing on the threshold of the gate. The weapons slung over their shoulders looked strange even from a distance. Wires and conduit and strange green canisters glowed down their length, like something pulled out of an old comic book rather than a gun catalog. The ghouls didn’t seem hostile so much as curious, which made sense given what she had already pieced together about the shaky relationship between Kiln and its Ranger-protected neighbors.

Aurora kept her eye on the gathering as she drove the pipe through the shackle of the next lock. It was clear to both parties that they were no threat to one another and, slowly, the ghouls began to filter into the encampment to take stock of what happened.

Among them, Aurora recognized the stallion from the electronic scrap shop. Ratchet? No, Rusty. The strip of flesh missing from his face, exposing the bleached bone where lips would have otherwise covered his teeth made for a face that was difficult to forget. Despite the damage to his face, she could see the recognition in his one remaining eye as he approached the block of cages.

He glanced at Ginger with something like approval before finally approaching Aurora.

“Making friends, I see,” Rusty rasped.

The cage squealed open. She held out a wing to support an emaciated stallion as he ducked through the low ceiling. “Things got a little noisier than we hoped,” she said.

He nodded, watching as four ponies staggered out into the crisp night air.

“Is this going to cause any trouble for Kiln?” she asked, heading to the next lock.

Rusty looked over to Ginger as she lifted a collar off the neck of a waiting foal. He swallowed and nodded, his eyes turning to the catwalk where several bodies cooled. “Too late to be worrying about that. If it does, we’ll handle it. This was long overdue as it is.”

Aurora pinched her lips together, pushing down the natural urge to ease his guilt. Let them feel it so that next time around they wouldn’t stand to let this happen again.

“The guy who ran this camp said something about a caravan coming in the next day or so,” she said, sliding the pipe through the next shackle. “Am I expecting too much if I say I want to see these cages empty when we come back through?”

Rusty set his hooves on the long end of the pipe, helping her break the lock. “I can’t speak for all the ghouls of Kiln,” he said as she cleared the latch, “but I know a few who might be willing to convince this caravan to find somewhere else to be. At least in the short term. Slavers are like cockroaches. Give them enough time and they’ll build a new camp nearby.”

Aurora nodded. At least it was something. She glanced at the other ghouls inspecting the camp and frowned at the sight of one of them standing on their hind legs to peek at the contents of one of the wagons.

She pressed her feathers into her lip and belted a cutting whistle. “Hey hey hey! Hooves off!”

The ghoul quickly got down and hurried along.

Rusty chuckled. “Spoils of victory?”

Aurora shook her head and jerked her chin to the small gathering of ex-captives at the center of the camp. Some were in tears to the point of being inconsolable. Others just sat with thousand-yard stares.“

“Not until they get what they need to make the trip back to the Bluff,” she said, making room for him this time as they snapped the next lock. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem,” he responded, though he was clearly distracted by the state of the encampment. “Anything I can do to help?”

Aurora pursed her lips and looked to Ginger. “Ginger, Rusty’s looking for something to do.”

She paused to spare a glance their way, smiling a bit when she recognized Rusty. “Would you mind helping Roach take the…” she stopped short of saying corpses, her eyes flitting to the foals seeking comfort amongst the other freed ponies. She gestured to a nearby body. “Before they attract insects.”

Rusty nodded and began taking stock of the slavers still on the wall. “I can do that. What do you need from me after?”

Ginger’s shrug made it clear how much there was still to do.

“Find a few more ponies like yourself, for starters,” she said. “We could use some help sorting through the supplies in the camp. Prioritize food, water and medicine and move onto weapons and armor from there. I want to give these ponies a fighting chance to reach the Bluff without being accosted.”

Rusty nodded and Aurora watched him go, heading straight to the tent line where Roach was busily dragging a limp slaver across the dirt by his tattered armor. There was nothing they could do to keep so many young eyes from seeing the death surrounding them, but chances were it wasn’t their first time seeing tragedy. Something about the way these foals searched the faces around them made it clear to Aurora that the mares they were caged with weren’t their mothers. She started to wonder why that was but stifled the thought before it could grow roots. She didn’t want to know.

An hour later, a proper crowd had formed outside the encampment. Word spread fast through Kiln of what had happened. Whether it was pity, guilt, shame or a blend of all three, the citizen ghouls had come to do the thing they should have done a long time ago. They offered help.

With the bodies dragged sufficiently far outside the walls, Roach and Rusty turned to conscripting a few willing ghouls to help them empty anything of value from the tents and wagons. It didn’t take long to discover that the cart beside Ward’s tent was the primary dump site for the items belonging to their most recent living acquisitions. Saddlebags, satchels, bedrolls and weapons lay in a mixed heap inside, waiting to be sorted.

Meanwhile Ginger had found a quiet corner of the camp where she had taken to entertaining six worried foals with her magic. Two mares bearing deep grooves from where iron had bitten into the necks looked on with weary smiles as Ginger formed her magic into ribbons and rudimentary shapes, dazzling the youngest four while the two eldest watched with neutral obedience. They knew all too well what could happen to them if they trusted the wrong pony.

For her part Aurora remained at the cages, now empty save for the one pony who nearly got them all killed.

None of them knew what to do with Quincy, though they each had their own ideas. He faced away from her, choosing to stare through the bars at the back of his cage rather than acknowledge her.

Aurora sat outside the open door, her wing propped over the rebar to keep it from swinging shut.

“Are you going to talk to me, or are you going to sulk?” she pressed.

The corner of his jaw twitched with irritation, pulling at the matted ring of dirt where his collar once rested. After some protestations from the stallions who had shared his cage, Ginger had made it painfully clear that she wasn’t leaving Kiln knowing that she had abandoned a pony in irons. Quincy’s most dangerous weapon was his mouth, and he would use it with or without a bomb strapped to his neck.

Yet he had gone silent as soon as they began opening cages. Considering how close he had come to denying the seventy other ponies around him their chance at escape, it was no wonder he clammed up. Aurora may have been the sole focus of his outburst, but he had put the rest of them in very real danger. They weren’t likely to forget that.

Quincy, through his own recklessness, was an outcast.

Aurora waited for him to answer, but he stayed silent. She couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the stallion. He was an asshole, there was no arguing that, but hard as she looked she couldn’t see horns growing out of his head. No scales peeking through his white coat or claws erupting from his hooves. He wasn’t evil. He was stupid. He reminded her of the sullen young colts that Overmare Delphi sometimes sent down to Mechanical to have some sense knocked into them.

No doubt there were a few ponies here who would beat that out of him if he couldn’t let go of the chip on his shoulder. Not that she could blame him for having one. Food, water and security in exchange for sitting behind a desk couldn’t be an easy gig to find out in the wasteland. Benefits of working for the wealthy and morally corrupt, she supposed.

“How about this,” she said, leaning into his cage. “Where are you from?”

A derisive hiss passed through his teeth. After a moment, he muttered his answer. “You were just there.”

Fair, she thought. “I’m talking about before that. Where did you live when you were a kid?”

She watched the back of his head shake. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” she said, and she meant it.

Quincy turned slightly, just enough for her to see the offended twist of his lip.

“But,” she continued, “I think if the rest of those ponies see that we’re talking, they might not break your legs once you’re out on the road.”

A flicker of uncertainty passed over his face as his eyes turned toward the haggard ponies gathered around Roach and Rusty. “I’m not going anywhere with a bunch of half-dead slaves.”

“That’s great, because they’re not slaves anymore,” she said, trying hard to keep the edge out of her voice. “Even better, once we get them supplied and armed, they’ll probably be one the safest groups of free ponies on the road to Blinder’s Bluff. That’s where you were headed before you got picked up, I assume.”

The best part about educated guesses were that, more often than not, they turned out to be right. Quincy gave her a look that told her she’d hit the nail on the head. He flattened his ears and looked away again. “Oh happy day.”

Aurora’s grip on the cage door tightened just a little. “Don’t be a dick. I’m trying to help you.”

He snorted derisively. This time Aurora waited, letting the silence settle between them like a scratchy blanket. It took a physical effort to stay as pissy as he was when the person he resented was sitting there with a better reason not to be. Gradually, the set of his jaw relaxed some and the hardness in his eyes softened.

He stared at the ponies with whom he’d spent the last two days caged with, some of which probably passed through the gates of Autumn’s headquarters while he relaxed inside his impeccably maintained lobby. He sucked on the corner of his lip before finally turning his head toward her by the barest of degrees.

“Everfree Grove,” he said. “That’s where I’m from.”

Progress, she thought. “It’s a pretty name. Is that what they call the Everfree Forest now?”

Quincy inhaled a deep breath and exhaled. “It’s the name of our settlement. The only thing that changed about the Everfree Forest is how big it’s gotten.”

He spoke with a tone that made it seem like he expected her to understand what that meant. She only knew the Everfree by name because it was the rumored site of Nightmare Moon’s banishment and reappearance. Beyond that, it was a green blob on a map. Something to remember back when she had to worry about scoring passing marks in her geography classes.

“Can I ask why you left?”

Quincy looked at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since his outburst. “I didn’t want to waste my life chopping thorn vines. I wanted to see the world, so when I turned sixteen I started working with the merchants that kept our village supplied.”

“F&F Mercantile?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Wagon drivers make good caps.”

She tried to picture him sitting at the front of a blue and white wagon, rifle slung over his lap, looking younger than he did now. It didn’t square with the snow white stallion who stood an inch shorter than she did, but then again, stranger things could happen. “It must take some time to go from wagon work to Autumn’s personal secretary.”

“Not if you’re willing to do what it takes to get there,” he said. “You’ve met Cider before. He’s a simple stallion to please.”

She cringed inwardly as she caught his meaning.

Quincy noted her reaction and shrugged again. “You wanted to know.”

That was up for debate. He watched her, his lips and chin stained dark with the blood that had only recently stopped dribbling from his nose. Clocking him for his earlier remark about her encounter with Cider had felt amazing at the time, but not anymore. Like it or not, the two of them had something in common, and it was clear Quincy had experienced more of it than she did.

She opted to shift the subject to something less painful.

“So now that you’re gainfully unemployed, what do you want to do?”

He took a moment to mull over her question, his eyes drifting over his shoulder to the small mound of gear that Roach and Rusty were sorting. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Before I escaped the compound, I stole some things from Miss Song’s office that looked valuable thinking I could get enough caps for them to start my own company. But after nearly getting eaten by a deathclaw I’m starting to think that might not be a good idea. I want to go back home for a while and just… chop vines.”

Aurora followed his gaze and watched Roach hold a set of beaten saddlebags out to the waiting hooves of a tired looking stallion. “What did you take?”

“The whole solar plant was coming down around me, so I didn’t take an inventory,” he confessed, not without a little embarrassment. “A couple revolvers, some holotapes from her desk, a pile of jewelry that Cider wouldn’t stop adding to… if it wasn’t bolted to the walls and looked important, I tried grabbing it. Even broke a bunch of her maps out of their frames thinking maybe someone might want them. Enough to get me back home, I hope, and it’s not like she’s going to miss them, anyway.”

She thought about Autumn, forced to chase after the single bullet they had afforded her before they left. “No, I don’t think she will,” she agreed.

As she watched Roach checking the next satchel, calling out its contents until the hoof of one of the gathered ponies shot up in answer, a thought occurred to her.

“Any idea what she might have on those holotapes?”

Quincy shook his head. “Couldn’t say. I didn’t know she had them until I broke the drawer open.”

A locked drawer. They could be nothing, she thought. Anything from defunct plans to expand her business, blackmail on some unknown competitor, or even just a record of her dead company’s finances. Their usefulness could amount to nothing.

And yet that tickle in the back of her brain told her, why not. Throw the dice.

“Mind if I take them?” she asked.

He looked at her and frowned. “Why?”

“Why not?” she asked with a mild shrug. “Color me curious, I kinda want to peek at my almost-killer’s diary.”

She had to hand it to him, he wasn’t even trying to make her think he was buying it. He eyed her, sucking at his teeth as he considered. “What’re you willing to pay for them?”

The cage door squeaked back and forth beneath her wing. “How about I leave this unlocked and we call it even.”

He blinked. “That’s fair.”

“I thought so too,” she said, and got up. “Come on. Let’s get your stuff.”

She felt relief when she watched him tromp out of the cage and follow. He kept his head low as they walked to where Roach and Rusty were meting out supplies, carefully avoiding the eyes of the gathered ponies still waiting for their belongings. Aurora brought him to the back of the thinning crowd where they waited, hoping her presence was enough to signal that his outburst, at the very least, was behind her.

They watched while Roach dragged the next saddlebag out of the neat pile Rusty had stacked in front of the slavemaster’s tent. With the tip of his hoof, he rummaged through the contents until he found something of note. A silver plated pocket watch with an engraving on the back. He wasn’t through reading out the initials before a hoof shot up and the pony claiming the bag recited the second half of the inscription. Satisfied, Roach put the watch back in its bag and offered it to the waiting stallion.

The same process played out again and again until eventually Aurora and Quincy were the only ones remaining. His bag, uncovered and unclaimed, sat in the dirt behind Roach. Seeing Quincy was still waiting, he hooked the bag by the strap and plopped it down where he could see its contents.

“I thought this might be yours,” Roach said, lifting an eyebrow and shifting the contents around. “How much water did you pack?”

Quincy cleared his throat. “None. I was hoping to trade for a canteen on the road.”

Roach grunted, apparently satisfied with his answer. He closed the flaps and hefted the bags forward, allowing Quincy to take them.

“Stick around,” he said, tipping his horn toward the ponies quietly milling together in pairs and groups near where the bulk of the wagons were parked. “See if you can’t make things right with the folks you’ll be travelling with. We’ll see that you have enough food and water to make it back to the Bluff.”

Aurora dipped her wing under the straps of his bag and pulled them toward her, feathers flitting through the contents while he watched. He hadn’t lied when he said he went straight to Autumn’s office to snatch up what he could. There was no organization to it. Everything - her weapons, jewelry, several half-crumpled trade maps, pistols and an assortment of junk - was thrown into a rough heap.

Quincy eyed her as she shuffled through his bags, but his attention was torn by something Roach had said. “What do you expect me to do, make friends with them?”

Roach shrugged, watching Aurora with mild curiosity. “You don’t have to do anything. It’s just a suggestion.”

“A good one, too,” Aurora agreed. “Blinder’s Bluff is a full day’s walk from here, and that’s if you don’t stop for a break. I hate to admit it, but the roads are getting more dangerous without F&F to keep the peace. Those ponies will be your best protection if something goes sideways.”

She found what she was looking for at the very bottom of the bag. Three scuffed holotapes laying loose beneath one of Autumn’s maps. She pushed the roughly treated paper aside with the back of her wing and scooped up the tapes. Then, on a whim, she grabbed a map as well.

Quincy’s lips bent in a tight frown upon seeing her taking more than just the tapes, but he didn’t argue. Aurora closed the flaps and slid the bags back to him, depositing what she’d taken into the saddlebags slung over her back. When she was done, she pointed a feather across the encampment to where Ginger sat.

“First pony you need to apologize to is right there,” she said a bit more sternly than she intended, but probably just the amount that was warranted. “Get going, and be nice.”

His eyes followed her wing to the fiery-maned unicorn and grimaced, yet to Aurora’s surprise he put on his bags and started walking across the field to where she was keeping the cluster of foals entertained. She kept an eye on him until Ginger noticed him approaching, his ears low with the embarrassment of a young stallion being forced to own up to his mistake.

“For a second there I thought you were going to send him to time-out,” Roach said, though his dessicated voice couldn’t quite mask his chuckle. He shook his head, taking a moment to watch Quincy stumble through the first words of his penance.

Aurora couldn’t help but smile a bit as she watched Ginger regard him with stiff silence, giving him nothing to indicate whether his words were landing. Even as he floundered, drawing curious looks from the foals who seemed to find more entertainment from him than the wispy aura hovering above them, he had to know he was getting off the hook easy.

And that was alright, Aurora decided. She didn’t know exactly how old Quincy was, but he was young enough to still be walking through the minefield of shortsighted decisions that even the wasteland didn’t seem capable of shaking out of headstrong stallions.

If stupid were a crime, well, nobody would reach adulthood without spending some time in a cell. Autumn and Cider took advantage of that. Coming to terms with that fact would be enough of a trial without her adding to it.

“So, are you going to fill me in on who that is?” Roach asked.

She tore herself away from Quincy’s confessional and shrugged. “I met him down at Autumn’s solar array. He used to work for them. Sat behind a desk and looked pretty, for the most part.”

Roach hummed understanding. “I don’t think I have the qualifications for that line of work.”

Aurora snorted, then caught herself. “Sorry.”

He smirked at her. “I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with looking like a broken dinner plate,” he said, and tipped his nose toward her saddlebags. “Anything special on the holotapes you took?”

“No idea,” she admitted. “He raided Autumn’s office before he bolted. Ginger and I got zilch. It’s only right for him to share.”

Roach looked at her skeptically.

“And he almost got us killed,” she amended.

“Ever the diplomat,” he said, shaking his head.

She felt her cheeks warm. Maybe she was being a little petty, but fair was fair. With some luck, the tapes would have something on them that a fledgling trading company might be willing to pay for. Worst case, they were worthless. The only other items of immediate value Quincy had taken had been a pair of revolvers nearly identical to the one Autumn had tried to kill the two of them with. She could live without having to see those irons again.

Following Roach’s gaze, she looked over her shoulder back to where Ginger sat. Her expression still carried a distant sternness to it, and her attention was focused on juggling a trio of amber spheres to the delight of the younger foals, but she was talking now. Quincy sat a couple yards off to her side, trying hard not to stare at the display as he replied to something she said.

“Well, she doesn’t look like she’s thinking about poofing him,” Roach chuckled.

Aurora nodded. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around how that happened,” she said. “That slaver had us dead to rights. Then, pop, he’s a hundred feet above us and falling?”

Roach grunted. “Might be why they call it teleportation.”

She gave him a sour look.

He held up a black hoof in mock surrender. “You said Autumn had been giving her injections before you intervened.”

“Stimpacks. Old ones made with prewar magic. Autumn and her brother found them sealed in the basement of some hospital somewhere.” She looked to where Ginger and Quincy sat. “Whatever the bombs did to weaken unicorns, those stimpacks fixed it.”

“That’s one theory,” Roach said, but before she could ask him to clarify he turned to the ghoul rummaging through the wagon behind him. “Rusty, they could use some help unloading the other wagons.”

He pointed a hoof toward the ghouls forming piles of supplies outside the remaining slaver wagons, their organization quickly deteriorating as the mounds grew. “It’s starting to turn into a mess.”

Rusty poked his head out of the wagon and frowned after the well-meaning helpers. He dropped down with more grace than a pony as decayed as him ought to have and began trotting after them.

“And set aside some Rad-Away,” he called, to which Rusty responded with a mock salute that made Roach smirk.

“You two work well together,” Aurora said.

Roach grunted agreement.

“So what’s the other theory?” she asked. When he looked at her with confusion, she added, “On what happened to the unicorns, I mean.”

“Ah,” he said, then shrugged. “I don’t think anything is wrong with unicorns at all. I think the bombs did something to damage magic.”

Aurora stayed silent, inviting him to continue.

He cleared his throat. “The ghouls here, for example. More than half of them are unicorns but none of them are trying to use their magic.” He gestured to the gathered residents of Kiln as they transferred bags, weapons, food and drink to one another from mouth to mouth. Every horn among them was dark. “Talk to any unicorn ghoul anywhere else and they’ll show you they can still use theirs. It’s weak magic, but it’s there. These ones can’t even brighten their horns.”

“Maybe they can, but they don’t want to irradiate Kiln any more than it already is,” Aurora posited.

Roach shook his head. “I have yet to meet another ghoul who has this problem, and I’ve met hundreds.”

She looked up at his fissured horn. “What makes you so special?”

He laughed at that. “Subtle,” he said. “The best guess I’ve come up with is that it’s because I’m a changeling. We were bred to draw in raw emotion, or at least that was how we understood it back then. These days I’m sure that Chrysalis knew something we didn’t, and we were harvesting an amplified form of your magic for her to consume. Changelings are natural siphons for that sort of thing. We pull it out of the air as easy as breathing. When the tunnel back at the Stable collapsed and the radiation started bleeding in, I thought I could calm the survivors by taking some of their fear away. Looking back, I’m certain I was drawing in a good bit of the radiation with it.”

Aurora frowned.

“I’m past beating myself up over it,” he said, seeing her expression. “Can’t undo it if I wanted to. My magic’s tainted, sure, but it supports my theory that the balefire that the bombs unleashed had a direct impact on magic and not its casters.”

She watched him, trying to piece together the puzzle he was presenting to her, and found herself remembering something from the day they left the cabin. “When you used magic to protect us from those raiders, I saw you start to change into another pony.”

Roach smiled a little. “You saw Sunny Meadows, then,” he said. “I haven’t been in that body since the bombs dropped.”

“You were for a little bit,” she said. “At least…”

“Parts of me, yeah,” Roach finished. “I know. It’s an after-image. I don’t cast it intentionally.”

Aurora pressed her lips together, remembering the growing, shifting and shrinking patches of chaff colored coat and a tumbling moss-green mane that shimmered across his blackened carapace like a second skin. At the time, she hadn’t been able to really process what she was seeing. It was the first time Roach had used his magic around her and, in that moment when she thought she had been shot through the chest by a sniper’s round, her fearful mind had packed the strange sight away for later.

It was later, now, she realized.

“Well,” she said, “if it counts for anything, you were handsome back in the day.”

He snorted, chuckling to himself to mask the embarrassment creeping up his muzzle. “Thanks, but I don’t recommend the balefire spa package.”

She gave his chest an admonishing thump with the back of her wing. “So you think balefire corrupts magic.”

“Maybe,” he said, clearly unsure even now. “I think damage is a better word for it. Or disrupts. Without knowing where it comes from, all we can do is throw guesses at it until something sticks.

“We noticed it when we started trying to dig ourselves out. Unicorns were having trouble concentrating on their spells. Some of that was the radiation sickness, but then rocks would slide out of their magic like it wasn’t there. Soon we couldn’t even sweep away the debris. Once we realized something was wrong with our magic, that’s when ponies started to give up hope. They died before we ran out of food. It took me years to finish digging out on my own. After I broke through and met the ponies trying to rebuild Junction City, I found the same problems we had in the tunnel were affecting the unicorns on the outside.”

He spun his hoof around, trying to coax the words along. “A mare I spoke to said it felt like she was trying to suck water through a straw, but the cup was empty. She knew what it felt like to tap into Equestrian magic before the bombs and she could tell something was wrong. Like it was gone, or fading, or the bombs had shoved it all somewhere else where they couldn’t reach.”

Aurora watched the ghouls unloading the wagons, their efforts now turned to sorting the piles into more organized groupings of supplies. They bent down, picking up bundles in their teeth with practiced movements. They had been without magic for most of their lives.

Meanwhile, Ginger narrowed her eyes at a sphere of magic, slowly flattening it on six sides until it resembled a cube. She did so while still holding a conversation with Quincy. It was like night and day residing in the same encampment.

“So you’re saying the stimpacks Autumn gave Ginger didn’t fix her,” she said, beginning to understand. “They charged her up. Like a battery?”

Roach paused, then nodded. “That’s a good way to describe it, yes. The magic she’s using is probably finite. Your guess is as good as mine as to how long it’ll last.”

She felt her heart sink. “Does she know?”

“I’m not sure how to tell her,” he said. “It’s only been a few days and she’s already so attached to it. For all I know, we could be wrong.”

She sighed. “And yet.”

“And yet,” he agreed.

“I should probably give her a break,” she said, unable to quell the prickle of worry she felt now as she watched Ginger’s magic dance among the giggling foals. “Let her preserve what she has left.”

Roach looked at her, eyebrow raised. “You’re going to foalsit while we do the heavy lifting?”

The hairs on her neck stood upright at the thought of that. She didn’t mix well with kids. They were confusing, unpredictable and inexplicably able to make everything they came near sticky.

“I’d rather get my wings caught in…” she cut herself off, remembering that Roach had once been a parent. The quiet expression he wore made it evident he was glad she’d caught herself. “Foals aren’t a skillset I have. There were a couple mares who were looking after a colt when we arrived. I’m going to track them down and see if they can’t take over while we figure out what we’ll want to take with us.”

Roach nodded toward the wagons being unloaded. “Send Ginger over to Rusty and I once you do, and I’ll talk to her about her magic.”

“Sounds good,” she said.

She started toward Ginger, her mind already wondering how much magic she had left in her, when Roach called to her.

“Hey, Aurora?”

She stopped, looking back to see that he hadn’t moved.

“We did really good today,” he said. “You should be proud of yourself.”

Aurora stood there, and for a brief moment it wasn’t Roach giving her a nod of approval, it was her father, his jumpsuit smudged with the damp, rich soil of the gardens. Her breath caught in her throat and she had to bite hard on the inside of her cheek to keep her composure.

Around them stood seventy-one ponies who an hour earlier had no future to look forward to. No aspirations beyond surviving the current day. No hope that the next would be any better. Things could have gone better. They could have gone much worse, too. They had done something today that Aurora had never expected to do when she stepped outside her Stable, and it felt right.

She smiled in spite of herself and nodded back.

As she crossed the field toward Ginger and Quincy, she could hear enough of their conversation to tell that some of the tension between them had eased. Quincy still looked prepared to hide under the nearest rock should a vacancy open up, but he did an admirable job staying put as Ginger gave him the foal-friendly version of what Autumn had done to her during her time in the holding tank. The young stallion looked paler than his white coat could provide on its own.

Ginger noticed her approach and her expression warmed enough that two of the younger foals turned to see what she was looking at. Aurora gave them a polite nod, hoping that was acceptable, and opened her mouth to speak.

A sharp whistle peeled into the air behind her, cutting her off.

“Ginger!” Roach’s ragged voice called from the other side of the field. Aurora frowned back at him. “We need your help over here with the sort! Bring the kid with you! Aurora’s going to watch the foals!”

She blinked. “Wait, I’m not…”

“Oh, I’ll be right there!” Ginger chirped. Before Aurora could object, Ginger was on her hooves and the streamers of magic evaporated. She smiled thanks to Aurora, letting her see a hint of the weariness in her eyes before addressing her little audience. “Okay kids, I have to go help the grown-ups pack up your bags for your big trip, but my good friend Aurora is going to keep you company while I’m gone!”

Oh no. “Ginger, I…”

“Now I bet if you all ask her very nicely, she’ll tell you what it’s like to fly above the clouds! Doesn’t that sound like a fun story?”

Six wide sets of eyes turned toward her with unbridled excitement.

A yellow, pink-maned filly barely past her fourth birthday stared up at Aurora like she had just leapt out of a fairy tale. A breathless wow formed on her tiny muzzle upon sighting her wings.

Ginger stepped close enough to whisper. “Thanks, Aurora. I was beginning to think I would run out of shapes.”

She pecked her on the cheek and motioned for Quincy to follow, leaving Aurora standing dumbfounded before a pack of awestruck foals. She looked back to the far end of the field where Roach and Rusty looked on, the former grinning like an idiot.

Treachery. That’s what this was.

Well, the joke would be on them. She could figure this out. They were just foals, after all. Spin up one or two stories from home and they’d be happy little lambs. How hard could that be?

A voice peeped up, making her jump. “Are those wings?”

A colt, not much bigger than the yellow filly who kept staring at her and had yet to blink, pointed a small hoof at her. Aurora blinked and lifted her right wing.

“Yep, this is a wing,” she said.

“How come you don’t gots a horn?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, “Uh, I wasn’t born with one.”

“Why?”

She blinked again. “Because I’m a pegasus, not a unicorn.”

“What’s a pegasus?”

“It means I have wings,” she said.

“Why?”

“Wh… because all pegasi have wings.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Oh, she thought.

Oh no.

“You’re sure nobody’s going to freak out?”

“Provided you don’t rip off your jumpsuit and start yelling, ‘Hey everybody, I’m Rainbow Dash,’ I think we’ll be just fine.”

They stood at the door of the deputy station, Sledge to her right and Stratus trailing close behind. The entirety of Stable 10 waited on the other side. It was early in the morning, nearing the point where ponies would be waking up for the shift change. Rainbow wasn’t worried so much about being recognized as she was just outright scaring them. She wasn’t oblivious to how sickly she looked. The jumpsuit hung over her frame like a loose tarp, zipped up to her chin to hide the iconic necklace hidden beneath its collar. She was the postermare for a diet gone terribly wrong.

“I’ll try to avoid that,” she said, giving her wing a nervous shuffle. The stump behind her right shoulder waggled to mimic the gesture. “Time’s wasting.”

Sledge slipped his badge through the reader and the door emitted an approving chirp, hissing up and away.

Rainbow’s breath stuck in her throat as she stepped out into the Atrium. Below her, colorful little storefronts ringed a spacious pavilion. Most were closed, save for a few that were illuminated from within as their staff prepared for customers soon to begin arriving. On the far side a teal mare pushed a narrow delivery cart in front of her stacked high with blue plastic totes. She paused to set one down outside the darkened doors of what looked to be an arcade, its reproduction game cabinets just visible through its wide windows. Checking the delivery off her list, she moved on to the next without skipping a beat.

Nearby, a pair of elderly pegasi sat next to each other on a bench at the center of the Atrium, flanked by a pair of potted ferns. They chatted as they watched the delivery mare make her rounds, their hooves resting atop the empty canvas shopping bags draped in their laps. Their attention drifted from the delivery mare to a nearby bakery. A stallion could be seen stocking a display case inside, dutifully filling the shelves with uniform cubes of bread ahead of the upcoming hour.

The elderly mare glanced up and noticed Rainbow staring over the railing. She squinted up at her with palsied eyes, a kind smile forming as she lifted her mottled brown wing in greeting. Rainbow hesitated before returning the gesture.

It was all still here.

Sledge guided her away from the railing and led her down the short flight of stairs to the Atrium floor. Covered mostly by her Stable-Tec branded jumpsuit, she didn’t attract as much attention as she had feared. A few eyes turned their way but they were drawn to Sledge, their new overstallion. She was a footnote. Someone that a pony might wonder about in earnest after she was well out of sight. She felt relieved.

He led her into a wide corridor where a stallion busied himself scraping a dust mop along the far corner. He nodded a reverent hello to Sledge as he passed, and was gone. A few doors down, they had to stop when a mare and her colt stumbled backward out of their compartment, the little one riding on his mother’s shoulders with his Pip-Buck held tight between his teeth. The colt’s mother hardly noticed that she’d nearly toppled into them, checking once to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything before hurrying ahead down the corridor. The little colt squealed as they rushed to get him to school.

Rainbow allowed herself to relax as they walked the halls of the place that was meant to be a haven for her whole family. An elevator took them deeper into the Stable, a ride that was reminiscent of the lifts that stratified her friends within the Pillar. When they stepped out, her eyes were immediately drawn to the brightly colored murals adorning the walls. Even in the dim half-light of reduced power, they leapt out at her.

Her pace slowed.

There on the wall stood Scootaloo, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, grown into three of the brightest mares Equestria ever had the privilege to know. They were flawed, deeply in some cases, but they had seen what was coming long before anyone else was willing to admit it could be a possibility. Rainbow Dash had been a part of that as well, providing the seed money to get Stable-Tec off the ground, but Scootaloo had done the hard work of cultivating what sprang from it, ensuring their joint venture remained hearty enough to survive until it was needed.

Moving forward, she found herself looking at a pastoral scene of Sweet Apple Acres in summer, something Applebloom no doubt wanted to see included in the decor. Rainbow could still remember what it felt like to walk those dirt roads, teasing Applejack about her work-a-holic family even though she privately admired them for the pride they took in their farm. She wondered if it was still there, overgrown or tended by a new family. She knew in her heart that it wasn’t. She kept walking.

The murals down here provided one gut check after another. Scenic vistas of Canterlot, Los Pegasus, the Smokey Mountains and even the striated mesas of the southern badlands adorned the walls like snapshots taken from her own life. She had been to all of these places once upon a time. She had smelled the air, flown through their skies and listened to their sounds as one trial after another pulled her and the girls to every corner of Equestria. Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis and Tirek. Four terrible creatures who suddenly chose to rear their heads within a short few years of one another, threats that hadn’t been seen in some cases for hundreds or thousands of years suddenly appearing at once.

Maybe that should have been a warning. The canary in the coalmine that something was wrong with the world, and that something worse was on its way. If it had been a test, they had failed spectacularly.

When she peered toward the next image her blood ran hot.

Spitfire stood above her, posed heroically in her original Wonderbolt uniform with a single hoof pointed toward a distant mountain. Tiny winged figures flew in neat formations from a familiar city in the clouds toward a gap at the base of the hill, guided by the silver-tongued deceiver who would become their first overmare.

Nowhere in the painting were the hundreds of earth ponies or unicorns who had fled to Stable 10 behind them. The road leading toward the tunnel, the one Rainbow remembered seeing choked with carriages, trucks and rickshaws packed with terrified survivors, didn’t make the cut. They had been erased.

One of the lights above them buzzed harshly, sputtered and went dark. Sledge nudged her with the edge of his wing, trying to move her along.

“Your compartment’s a few doors down,” he murmured.

But her eyes had shifted to the portraits on the opposite wall, nearly blocked completely by Sledge’s bulk as they passed. She stopped, turned around and weaved past Stratus to better see. Her eyes welled as she stepped toward the six mares posed above the words HARMONY LIVES.

There they were. Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie, Twilight and Applejack stood shoulder to shoulder while Rainbow hung behind them, treading air with her signature bring-it-on grin. The mural had been modeled around a photograph taken during their youths, not long after Twilight received her wings and shocked the world by declining the mantle that came with them.

Her eyes drifted to Applejack, one foreleg characteristically crossed ahead of the other the way she always did when she felt comfortable.

Rainbow wanted to say something profound. It felt like the right time for it. To tell Sledge, or deputy Stratus or any one of the hundreds of ponies whose lives orbited within the safety of her mother’s Stable that the six of them had been normal ponies once. That the world splayed across the hallways wasn't just a story. That it had all existed once.

She could feel her throat tightening and bit the inside of her cheek to stem the tears. With the back of her wing, she scrubbed the damp out of her eyes and walked back to Sledge.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

Dumb question. Judging by the sudden stiffness in his renewed gait, he knew it too. She forgave him and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Just something I have to get used to seeing.”

He nodded, trying to understand.

“Is it possible for me to get that photo in a frame?” she asked. “Without the text?”

“I’ll get it done,” he said.

“Thank you.”

She kept her eyes low for the short remainder or their walk, having had her fill of old memories for now. Sledge put a wing over her shoulder, gently slowing her as they came to the compartment that had been prepared. A simple steel nameplate adorned the wall next to the sliding door.

A. PINFEATHERS.

Rainbow read the name aloud. “That’s the mare you told me about.”

He nodded, swiping his badge through a card reader identical to the one at the deputy station. “I’m sure she’ll be alright with you staying here.”

Aurora’s door chirped and slid away, allowing Rainbow to step into the mare’s spartan living quarters. For someone as bull-headed as Sledge made her out to be, her compartment was surprisingly devoid of any decor. Along the far wall, a blocky old terminal sat dark atop a small wooden desk. To the right, she spotted a spray of tile beyond a narrow partition that separated the bathroom.

On her left waited an unmade bed, the thin blue comforter slopped partway onto the floor where it had lay for a week since it was first kicked away. The rumpled sheets and flattened pillow bore a patchwork of grease stains, the sight of which wrung an irritated groan from Sledge.

“I told them to replace those,” he muttered.

Rainbow knew that tone. Someone’s head was going to roll. “I slept in a musty tunnel and ate mutated cockroaches for two hundred years. A few stains aren’t going to hurt me.”

“Still,” he said, and turned to Stratus. “Can you go grab…”

The deputy was already halfway through the door. “I’m on it,” he said.

Rainbow turned to watch him go and noticed the wing-shaped leather sleeves hanging from a row of hooks near the door. “What are those?”

Sledge glanced at them. “Wing guards. Keeps any pegasi in Mechanical from accidentally feeding feathers to the machines down below. Or catching fire from walking too close to a welding station.”

“You let pegasi weld?” she asked. “How?”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “Very carefully.”

She whistled, unsure she wanted to see what happened to feathers after holding a welding torch for any length of time. But given Spitfire had gone out of her way to filter the first residents like she had, she supposed the pegasi who made it in would have been forced to adapt.

She turned a slow circle in the center of the compartment. Four walls and a roof. That’s what Applejack always said she was willing to settle for if things ever went bad.

It would be enough.

“It’s nice,” she said. “Thanks.”

Sledge dipped his wingtip into his saddlebag and withdrew the battered copy of her Friendship Journal. She accepted it, feeling its rough and warped cover between her feathers. Turning, she set it on Aurora’s desk and blew out a ragged breath.

“Home sweet home,” she said.

“If there’s anything you need, just ask and I’ll make sure you have it,” Sledge said. “Opal expects to have your resident profile finished before lunch, so you should be able to place orders with Fabrication and Supply. I’ll make sure you have enough bits to order whatever you need. Cost is not…”

Rainbow stared up at him, shaking her head.

“Slow down,” she said, her lip twitching upward at the irony. “I don’t want to be pampered, and I don’t want you to pull strings on my behalf. I’m not an Element of Harmony anymore. Or a ministry mare, or a Wonderbolt. I haven’t been any of those things in a long, long time. Right now, I just want to work on being Rainbow Dash for a while.”

The discomfort on Sledge’s face was charming in its own way. She could tell that he wasn’t sure if she was testing him or being forthright. He wanted her to be comfortable. To feel honored among those who survived up to this point. She couldn’t help but smile.

“But you do deserve better than this,” he said, gesturing at the bare walls.

“Sledge,” she said, setting her wing on his shoulder, “if my mom was able to start over from nothing, then so can I. You opened the door for me. Anything you think you owe me is already paid in full. I don’t know if I can have a normal life, but I want to try. Let me earn my keep. Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay. Just do me one favor.”

Her wing slipped off his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“I want you to let one of our doctors take a look at you,” he said. “Sooner than later I’m going to have to tell the Stable you’re here, and your… condition is going to raise some questions I’d like to be prepared to answer.”

Rainbow snorted and began fiddling for the zipper beneath her chin. “Sure. I’m probably overdue for a checkup.”

“You…” he stopped, pressing his lips shut as she unzipped the front of the ungainly jumpsuit.

She shook her forelegs out and used her wing to push the rest of the jumpsuit down to her hind legs. It felt loads better to have the stifling fabric off of her. She scooped the bundle up with a hoof and dropped it on the edge of Aurora’s bed in a heap.

Sledge cleared his throat, carefully averting his eyes. “I’ll bring someone down to take a look at you this afternoon. I have some things I need to check on until then, but it’ll give Opal a chance to stop in and walk you through what she’s been working on.”

Rainbow lifted an eyebrow at him, noticing his inexplicable discomfort. “Everything alright?”

“Yep,” he said a little too quickly. “I’ll let you get settled in. If you need anything, just ask Millie.”

“Millie?” she asked. It took a few seconds for her to dredge her brain for a clue to where she’d heard that name before, and then it dawned on her. She snapped her eyes toward the ceiling where a simple, innocuous speaker rested flush with the metal panels. “You have a Millie system?”

Sledge followed her gaze, glad for the distraction. “Yeah, Stable-Tec installed the 1077 model before everything went teats-up.”

She snorted. “That’s... colorful.”

If he weren’t already red to begin with, he certainly was now. “Ah, sorry. Mechanical has its own language.”

“We had something like that back at the Academy,” she said, chuckling. “I like yours better.”

He allowed himself a little smirk. “Contact me if you need anything, but I’ll stop by a few times a day to make sure you’re doing alright,” he said, moving toward the door before stopping to add, “And maybe throw on your jumpsuit before Opal visits. It’s…”

Rainbow looked to the jumpsuit, then to the floundering overstallion.

“...nevermind,” he said. “Forget I said anything. Stratus will be back soon with new linens for your bed. Millie can contact my Pip-Buck if you need anything else.”

She tried not to smile too broadly. “Sounds good.”

“Alright then,” he said, and retreated the rest of the way to the door. It slid open and he stepped out, letting it drop shut behind him.

Rainbow stared after him and shook her head with a low chuckle. If she didn’t know any better, Sledge was a prude.

Still tittering to herself, she hopped up on her new bed and sprawled herself over the cool sheets. Compared to the filthy sleeping bag she was used to, the thin mattress felt like the peak of luxury. She lay there and sighed.

“Hey, Millie. Long time no twenty-four-seven monitor.”

A dual chime from the ceiling came in response. “Good morning. Please say your name to log in.”

She closed her eyes and shrugged. “Rainbow Dash.”

A pause. “There are no residents on record with that name. Please say your name to log in.”

“Minister Rainbow Dash,” she said.

“There are no residents on record with that name. Please…”

“Minister Rainbow Dash, Element of Loyalty, High Priestess of the Official Daring-Do Fanclub and Lord of the Rainbooms.”

She grinned as Millie shared the bad news a third time. Because of course it wouldn’t work. Spitfire never had any intention of letting her into the Stable in the first place, so why go through the trouble of adding her to the list of residents?

Oh well. Water under the bridge, whether she liked it or not. She shifted her shoulders until the little bone spur that remained of her right wing found a more comfortable angle to rest.

“Millie,” she said, “send a message to overstallion Sledge.”

“For messaging services, please log in.”

“Oh, for...” she murmured. “Aurora Pinfeathers?”

A pause. “Voice verification failed.”

“Overmare Spitfire,” she said.

“Voice verification failed. Resident deceased. A warning has been logged for review. Please be aware that access to services via this device may be temporarily revoked if further infractions are incurred.”

“Yeah, well fuck you too, sister,” she said.

A pause. “I’m sorry, I did not understand your request.”

Applebloom, she thought, I’m going to build a time machine and burn down whatever lab designed this idiot box.

She covered her eyes with her foreleg and tried to relax.

At the corners of her perception, she could feel the fog beginning to trickle in. How long had she made it this time? Close to an hour, she thought. Not bad, but not great either. Still, she felt better knowing that even if she faded out for a little while, she would be alright in the long term. Blue would let go eventually.

In the meantime, she had a minute or two to pester the mare in the ceiling.

She sighed, trying to think of what else to say. Of all the voices from her past, it somehow didn’t surprise her to find that Millie's was the one that survived an apocalypse. At least Stable 10 hadn’t come equipped with the little black half-dome cameras that Robronco insisted installing all around the Pillar. Something about not being sure which way that electronic eye was looking gave her the willies.

The simple reflection was just enough to jar something loose in her head. A bit of her daily routine from before the war, something she gave little thought to. Just another way to shut Millie up so she could get to where she needed to get to.

It was worth a try.

“Millie,” she said, “please verify credentials and override.”

A pause. It stretched until Rainbow was pretty sure she hadn’t recognized the command at all. She opened her mouth to try again when Millie chimed.

“I’m sorry, I am unable to verify your credentials at this time. Please recite one of the three security passphrases selected during registration.”

Rainbow moved her hoof and scowled up at the speaker. Security phrases? That was over two hundred years ago! She gestured blankly with her wing and took a shot anyway. “Twenty percent cooler,” she said.

“Verification failed. Two attempts remain.”

She groaned, remembering how hard she had tried to get that stupid catchphrase to stick. “Can I get a hint?”

“Verification failed. One attempt remains.”

A litany of profanity danced through her head. Why would she ever bother to remember something so pointless as a passphrase when a visual scan would do all the work for her? “Shove it up your ass, Millie,” she muttered.

A pause. “Confirmed. Welcome, Minister.”

She laughed, vaguely remembering Twilight sitting her down on their first day and forcing her to finish setting up her security protocols. Millie’s interface had been so irritatingly cheerful, it threatened to drive Rainbow up the wall. Somehow, Twilight managed to get her to sit still long enough to finish answering Millie’s prompts, but not without a little sass.

The fog was getting thicker now and it was getting harder to concentrate. Despite knowing she was safe, she could feel that familiar twinge of fear creeping up her neck as the moment approached when she would have to stop holding on and let go.

“Hey Millie,” she said, curling herself up in the middle of Aurora’s bed. “Could you play some music?”

“What would you like to hear?”

She thought about that as she pulled one of the pillows under her head. Her thoughts drifted for a moment, pulled briefly out of reach before flowing back, and she remembered the songs Sunny sang back in the tunnel to keep her calm. How long ago had that been?

“Do you have anything by…” she hesitated.

By what?

Where was she?

She curled herself tighter, confused. The words were there, but she had to reach deep to dredge them back up.

“Everfree Brothers,” she said.

Millie chimed. “I have fifty-seven songs composed by the Everfree Brothers. Would you like me to play a selection?”

“Mm-hm,” she murmured.

A pause, then a crackle of sound. Faint pops and a quiet hiss from a recording taken directly from the vinyl. A long-dead hoof flicked the strings of a forgotten guitar, strumming a strutting melody that made Rainbow gently bob her head in time. The smooth surface of her pillow rustled in her ear as she recited the words he used to sing to her.

“Bye-bye love,” she smiled, letting herself go. “Bye-bye happiness… hello, loneliness...”

Aurora’s hind leg hitched up, ready to kick. “Ow! Would you quit moving it?”

Several ponies looked their way as Rusty and a pile of other ghouls helped strap the strongest of the former slaves to their freshly commandeered wagons. The sun was creeping over the horizon now and the bulk of Kiln was either loitering outside the encampment or milling the streets at the edge of town in hopes of seeing the caravan when it departed.

Half a dozen wagons, carefully scoured of any markings that would identify the slaver guilds who owned them, waited in a line that ended at the same gate Ginger had led Aurora and Roach through hours earlier. Those ponies who could walk were asked to do so in order to make room in the wagons for those who couldn't. There was enough food, water and medicine to get them to Blinder’s Bluff and more than enough weapons to defend themselves with. From there, their fate would be up to them.

"You'll be fine," Roach rumbled.

Aurora narrowed her eyes as she caught a glimpse of Roach rolling his. The medical supplies hoarded by the slavers had been abundant, but what they hadn’t stashed away were time or gurneys. They would have to take their Rad-Away while they walked.

Roach bit the rubber tubing he’d wrapped around her thigh and gave it another firm tug, cinching the knot and earning another displeased grunt from his patient.

Pinned against her hide was a standard IV port that came packaged with most bags of Rad-Away, much like the one currently hanging from a length of twine he’d secured to the strap of her saddlebag. Brownish fluid trickled from the bag, fed through several loops of excess tubing and flowed through the flexible needle into Aurora's vein.

“I think you complained less when that feral took a chunk out of your leg,” he said, stepping back to inspect his work.

“I passed out,” she retorted.

“Well, there is that,” he agreed as he double-checked to make sure the line was flowing. "I'm not wrong, though."

Aurora stared daggers at him.

“It’s a little slapdash, but if you can refrain from dancing for the next hour it should hold up.” He gave her ribs a thump with the back of his hoof and quickly turned his attention to Ginger before Aurora could throttle him. “Any issues with yours?”

Ginger wrinkled her nose at the needle clinging to her lower thigh and the heavily worn saddlebags bearing down on her hips. “Dare I ask where you came up with this?”

Aurora lifted her leg up and forward like a cat wearing a boot it wasn’t particularly fond of and winced at the sensation of the needle resisting the movement.

“Aurora, stop playing with it,” he said.

She glared at him, but he stared right back. She huffed a breath through her nose and dropped her hoof.

“It’s an old wastelander trick I picked up from a traveller I met, back when everyone was still working out how to survive after the dust settled. Clever stallion named Sandbar who said he learned to rig something like this up whenever he needed to pass through the irradiated zones.” Roach squinted at the needle standing out of Ginger’s thigh.

It sat a few inches above the leather sheath that kept the thick blade of her newly requisitioned hunting knife from digging into her skin. After the fight they’d been through, and knowing now that her newfound magic was finite, she had no intentions of relying solely on her horn going forward.

Satisfied with his work, Roach nodded his approval. “Sandbar was good company. Bit of a smartass, but he taught me enough tricks to forgive that.”

Aurora took a few experimental steps, feeling her irritation wane a little when the needle didn’t tweak her skin nearly as much as she expected. Picking her rifle off the top of the empty cages, she looked over to the caravan as it readied to depart.

She watched as two ghouls helped strap Quincy into a harness attached to the second wagon, paired with a mare who looked capable of snapping him in half if he got out of line. The look she gave him when he wasn’t paying attention made it clear that was exactly why she was there. He had a fair bit more work to do before his traveling companions trusted him, but Aurora had a feeling he’d get there eventually. Volunteering for the hard work of pulling a wagon full of ponies and supplies was evidence enough that he was trying. She couldn’t help but smile a little at that.

A leather ball flew out of the wagon, beaning Quincy in the back of the head before bouncing off toward the dismantled tents. The foals responsible squealed with laughter from behind the canvas as a beleaguered mare climbed out to track down their toy.

“Are you sure they’re going to be okay?” she asked, watching as Quincy shot them a smirk in spite of himself.

The strap of her rifle glowed amber and lifted itself over her neck. Ginger drew up beside her to adjust the way it set across her shoulder. “I truly pity anyone who would attack those foals after today,” she said. “Are you worried?”

“How can I not be? They’re just kids. They don’t know what’s out there.” Aurora gave her horn a worried glance. “Ginger, you shouldn’t waste…”

“Dear, this is my magic,” she said in a soft but firm tone that brooked no argument. “I intend to use it how I choose for however long I have it.”

Aurora clenched her jaw with uncertainty.

“This is a gift I’ve been given,” she said, cupping Aurora’s cheek with the flat of her hoof. Aurora softened as Ginger pressed her lips against her cheek in a gentle peck. “Something I intend to share until it’s gone.”

She sighed and nodded, knowing full well it wasn’t her place to decide how Ginger spent what remained of her magic. For all they knew, there was enough left to last her a lifetime. Or she could have spent the last of it helping her put on her rifle. They wouldn’t know until they knew, and despite how easily Ginger seemed to accept that fact, Aurora couldn’t shake the unfairness of it all.

“As for those foals,” she continued, nodding toward the caravan, “they do know what’s out there, and now that includes ponies like us.”

Aurora clasped her hoof in her wing and kissed it. “Yeah. They’re not that bad, either.”

“Are you including the yellow one who had your feathers in her mouth?”

She released Ginger’s hoof and spread her matted and bent primaries apart, trying not to grimace as several clung to one another as if they’d been glued. “I still don’t know how she got behind me.”

As if on cue, Roach appeared beside Ginger with an expectant grin. He tapped his cheek with a cracked hoof. “Hey. Where’s mine?”

Aurora averted her eyes as Ginger latched her foreleg around his neck, giving him a loudly exaggerated kiss on the cheek. “There,” she laughed, “do you feel included now?”

“Almost,” he said, casting his eyes forlornly to the ground. “Aurora’s been giving me the stink-eye.”

“Yeah, A for effort but you’re getting a failing grade on the execution,” she said, stepping away from both of them for emphasis. “I’m not kissing you.”

Roach tracked her with some of the most unsettling puppy-dog eyes she’d ever seen. It was like he was one of those kids, staring unblinkingly into the deepest depths of her very soul, but at least they had irises. “Well, I suppose that’s it,” he said with mock dejection. “I’ll just be your third wheel, then.”

She gave him a wide berth and started toward the gate. “Uh huh. Try not to squeak,” she said, smirking back at them and gesturing with her wing to follow. “Come on. I want to get on the road before we have to say a hundred goodbyes.”

She heard Roach chuckling as they trotted after her. With their saddlebags topped off, the first dose of Rad-Away chasing through their veins and an entire day of walking ahead of them, it was as good a time as any to leave. She was awful with goodbyes. Something told her watching a caravan of ponies who finally had their lives ahead of them again would turn her into a blubbering wreck.

As they neared the head of the wagons, she spotted Rusty talking to a pair of freshly harnessed stallions, the three of them going over the route back to the Bluff for what had to be the tenth time. Since the wagon’s wouldn’t make it over the dried-up riverbed Aurora had to fly Roach and Ginger across, they would be taking a detour to the south where Rusty knew a bridge still stood. It would avoid the main trade route and bend back to the quiet, tree-shielded road that passed by Gallow’s home. With the only threat on that lonely lane taken care of, it would be a relatively safe journey.

Roach broke away and bent toward Rusty, who smiled at his approach. Aurora couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but it was clear he was offering a more personal farewell. After a moment they clasped hooves, thumped one another on the back and returned to their respective tasks.

Aurora eyed him as they left the camp behind, smiling. “Well that didn’t take long.”

He smirked back at her and shrugged. “I could go back and crack open a bottle of Sparkle-Cola with him if you like.”

She mock-laughed in response and swatted him with the flat of her wing. Maybe it was the brightening of the clouds above or the euphoria of knowing they had accomplished something important, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that today would be one of the good days.

For the first time since leaving her Stable, she could feel them getting close. Baltimare, Stable-Tec HQ and her best chance at finding an ignition talisman stood just beyond the range of mountains in the east. All they had to do is keep moving forward.

Beyond the wall, ghouls gathered together in clusters to watch the caravan prepare to leave. Some had brought food and drink, picnicking on the irradiated hardpack with friends and neighbors. It was like the old photos in the history books, back when ponies used to gather in the grass to enjoy their countless seasonal celebrations. Aurora found herself wanting to stay here, despite the radiation from the crater or the creatures lurking behind the upturned regolith beyond Kiln. It felt like she was peering through a keyhole, catching a glimpse of a world she’d only read about.

They backtracked through the dusty cross streets of Kiln, finding their way back to the main road with little trouble. Ginger’s hoofbeats quickly synchronized with her own while Roach’s loping gait provided a not unpleasant disharmony to the crunching path beneath them.

Kiln’s electric lights had gone dark, unneeded in the growing daylight that seeped through the roof of clouds. Fewer ghouls were out on the main drag now that there was something more interesting happening back at the encampment. After everything that happened, Aurora couldn’t help but feel a little strange as the last hoof-built buildings slid behind them and the flat expanse of the wastes yawned open ahead. Kiln had been intended to be a quick pit-stop. Somewhere to resupply, fill their bellies and rest up before the next leg of their trip.

They’d done a little more than that, and she already found herself missing the company of the ghouls they were leaving behind.

As Kiln shrank behind them and the hazy slopes of the Pleasant Hills inched higher on the horizon, they fell back into what was becoming a well-worn routine. Roach took point this time, leading them across the cracked terrain back to the old eastward highway. Aurora walked in lockstep with Ginger, occasionally reading a few entries from the hardbound journal she hovered in front of her nose when idle conversation naturally waned.

Aurora had caught enough snippets of looping cursive to know the journal had belonged to a zebra filly from before the war, detailing the day-to-day struggles of a young mare blissfully unaware of what was coming.

After a stretch, Ginger clapped the covers together and slid the journal back into her saddlebag.

“Anything interesting?” Aurora asked.

Ginger paused before answering. “She made a pony friend at school. It seems to be going well.”

She snorted. “That’s pretty vague.”

“Something of a necessity, dear,” she said, glancing at Roach. Before Aurora could ask what she meant, Ginger slowed until she could press her nose between Aurora’s ribs and feathers. Without needing to be asked, she lifted her wing and settled it across Ginger’s shoulders.

“Cold?” she asked.

Ginger sidled against her. “It’s a little brisk.”

They walked side by side for several miles, parting only briefly to navigate the wider fissures in the highway or slip by the rusting remains of a carriage. Aurora noticed that they were coming across more of those than before, sometimes mingled together where two drivers had somehow come together at speed on this lonely expanse of road.

“I wonder what it was like,” Ginger said after another rusting wreck slipped behind them. “Sitting inside a machine and telling it where to go.”

“It’s not much different than a wagon, only gas carriages were a lot faster,” Roach said.

“You’ve driven one?” Aurora asked.

Roach tipped his head to the side. “I rode in one, once, and it scared me half to death. I stuck to flying after.”

Ginger opened her mouth to comment, but yipped surprise at the sudden chirp that came from her foreleg. Face pinched with fresh embarrassment, she glanced down at the Pip-Buck still clinging to her leg and the cheerfully cartoonish mare winking up at her from the little screen.

She squinted at the narrow green letters the tiny mare stood on top of. “It says ‘connection reestablished.’”

“We’re far enough from the crater for it to find Stable-Tec’s signal again,” Roach said.

Aurora cast a glance to the flat expanse of dirt and blast debris beyond the highway. “That means there’s another Stable nearby.”

“It’s probably one of the dozen or so Stables buried under the hills,” he agreed, gesturing toward the range ahead. “Must mean one or more of them are still active.”

“Think one of them might have a spare ignition talisman?” Aurora asked.

Roach looked back at her, eyebrow raised. “Did ours?”

She watched him, unsure how to answer that. It was the first time she’d ever heard him refer to Stable 10 as anything other than hers. Something passed across his eyes like discomfort, and he faced forward.

“There's a new message from Sledge,” Ginger said, the Pip-Buck hovering in front of her where she could better read it. “Do you want the long or abridged version?”

Aurora glanced at the wall of text flickering on the screen and winced. “Give me the highlights.”

Ginger took some time to skim ahead. “He says he’s going to move Blue to your compartment until you get back. She’s going to help someone named Opal unlock a cache of files owned by someone else named Spitfire.” She looked up at Aurora for clarification.

“Opal’s our Head of I.T. and Spitfire was Ten’s original overmare,” she said, wrinkling her nose with confusion. “Sledge shouldn’t need help opening anything, though. He’s the overstallion.”

“He doesn’t go into much detail on the subject,” Ginger said, scanning the lines a second time.

“Given what I told him about Coldbrook, I don’t blame him. What else does he say?”

“He says they’re making good progress building a containment system for the talisman, and to tell the unicorn from the access tunnel… I presume that’s you, Roach... thank you on Blue’s behalf. Her condition has been improving since she was brought inside, and…”

Ginger paused, narrowing her eyes at the screen.

“And?” Aurora coaxed.

She shook her head, her eyes focusing on the reflection as she slowly tilted the glass screen to one side. “Don’t stop walking and don’t look up. There’s a pegasus circling above us.”

Aurora and Roach bristled. Not good.

“How far up?” she asked.

“Hard to tell,” Ginger said, narrowing her eyes at the dark speck that wheeled in the sky’s reflection. “A mile, maybe less.”

“Close enough to drop a bullet with some accuracy,” Roach muttered, the stubs of his ears going flat. “Aurora, you’ve got the wings. How do you want to play this?”

She shook her head, the urge to look up like resisting a physical force. “No idea. I can’t shoot while I’m flying, and I don’t know what they’ll do if they see me taking off.”

“We don’t have cover, either,” Ginger said, scanning the flatlands and coming up woefully short of anything that might provide an overhang. “If they’re hostile, they’re not going to let us make it all the way back to Kiln.”

“The only reason they wouldn’t be hostile is if they’re another dustwing,” Roach said. “Even then, they could be a raider scout. I’ve seen it before.”

Even the good news was bad news. Aurora set her jaw and stopped walking. As she slipped her wing through the hooks of her rifle, she noticed the concerned looks from Ginger and Roach. “Relax, I just want to see who we’re dealing with. For all we know, that’s a buzzard up there.”

“Buzzards died out a century ago,” Roach said.

She shrugged the butt of Desperate Times against her shoulder and sat on the concrete to steady herself, hefting the heavy barrel skyward. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Keeping her feathers away from the trigger allowed her to keep the rifle relatively steady, balancing on her shoulder much in the same way her classmates used to balance broomsticks on the flat of their hooves. It was awkward, and peering through the sights at an endless expanse of clouds was disorienting at first, but eventually a dark shape slipped across the crosshairs. She held her breath and chased it until it reappeared, vaguely green and misshapen by the fluttering edges of what looked like some sort of clothing.

She frowned, wishing this highway had a concrete meridian she could use to brace herself against. At this angle the pegasus was banking away from them, forelegs tucked in as it gyred above them. No, not it. Definitely a she. That, or the most unfortunately equipped stallion this side of Equestria. Aurora felt a bit of heat rising in her cheeks, but there was nothing to be done about it now. The forest green coat and black tail clicked somewhere in the back of her head, and the rest of the puzzle fell rapidly into place.

“Oh, you’re not going to believe this,” Aurora half-groaned.

As she continued to bank, the mare’s face came into view. Her mouth was moving a mile a minute, every other syllable beginning with a very pronounced F. Aurora could count all the wasteland ponies who fit that description on exactly one hoof.

She lowered her rifle and sighed. “It’s Julip."

“Hey, Aurora. Remember me? I was in the neighborhood and fucking fuck that’s stupid.”

Julip glanced down at the distant stretch of highway and the three figures slowly making their way across it. Why the fuck did this have to be so hard? She was a representative of the Enclave, arguably one of those most well-connected mares this far east of New Canterlot, not the welcome wagon for some old timey friendship party.

Just go down there, explain why you’re here and see what they say, she told herself.

Easier said than fucking done.

Were this mission given to her by anyone other than Minister Primrose, Julip would have found some way to weasel out of it by now. What did they expect her to say?

“Hi, my name’s Mint Julip but everyone just calls me Julip. I know you rescued me and all but my boss told me to come back and tag along so I can make sure you don’t get your pureblood aerosolized by a shitass fucking landmine.” She pumped her wings and laughed miserably into the wind. “Oh and please tell your unicorn not to fucking pop me like a grape. Yeah, that’ll fucking work.”

If she weren’t five thousand feet off the ground, she’d kick herself for not pulling off this band-aid earlier. It would have been easier back at that dive bar in Ghoultown, but it was too late now. They were sobered up and probably on high alert after their massacre at the slave depot.

She wasn’t even sure what to think about that. What was the point of freeing perfectly good slaves? Most of them would wind up selling themselves back into indenture once they realized how hard it was living on their own. The Dressage mare had to know that, given her history. Why roll the dice with their own lives just to uncollar ponies who were only going to wind up wearing a new one later?

A thought occurred to her. Maybe she should scout ahead. The Pleasant Hills were a known hunting ground for raiders and other creepies. Maybe if she waited long enough Aurora might stumble too close to one of their camps. It could be a prime opportunity for Julip to swoop in and rescue them, or at the very least keep her target safe while the others served as a distraction. It would definitely cut past the awkward hello-I-was-stalking-you while making it clear that she could be trusted.

It was risky, sure, but then again welcome to the fucking wasteland.

She sharpened her bank, cruising in a tight arc that kept the three of them in clear view. Her wings were going to feel like jelly after today, and that was only if all this gliding didn’t bore her to death first. She squinted as she turned into the west wind, verifying that her targets were still moving.

She frowned. They’d stopped.

And there were only two of them.

“Aw, fuck,” she spat, scanning the road ahead and behind to see who had gone missing. This high up, they were just shapes against the terrain. Maybe one had wandered off to water the molerats. Or maybe they were too close together for her to trust her eyes to pick them apart. Grimacing, she began a shallow descent to verify.

A grey shadow whipped past her, startling a yelp out of her as it broke its ascent and began banking down toward her.

“Aw, fuck,” Julip moaned, recognizing the monochrome mare with growing dismay.

Aurora Pinfeathers wobbled slightly as she worked to match her speed and angle of descent, coming close enough that she risked swatting Julip’s wing out from under her. Julip clenched her jaw for a moment, swallowing the parade of fucks marching circles around her tongue, and met the eyes of a pureblood pegasus who had an arguably better reason to look as irritated as she did.

“Hey there, Julip!” she called into the wind. The tight pleasantness in her voice made it very clear how unhappy she was. “Is there something I can help you with?”

Goddesses, what did I do to deserve this?

She couldn’t bring herself to wear a fake smile, so she didn’t. She couldn’t believe she let Aurora catch her red-feathered. “Actually,” she called back, hesitating to even say the words, “it’s the other way around. I’m here to help you.”

Just let me read you this helpful fucking pamphlet. “The Enclave & U.”

Unsurprisingly, Aurora responded with skepticism. Her eyes dipped to the submachine gun slung tight around her shoulder. “Is that what you’re doing up here?”

Julip muttered a phrase of many colors into the wind. This whole thing was blown. At least now she didn’t have to worry about being subtle.

“I was given orders to locate and protect you,” she said, cringing on every word.

“By who? The Enclave?”

Our pamphlet has all sorts of information to help you accept assistance from your friends in New Canterlot.

She nodded. “Can we talk on the ground?”

Aurora shrugged. “I want that rifle when we land.”

“It’s not a rifle, it’s a compact…” Julip stopped herself before she could dig herself a deeper hole. “Fine, yes. If it makes you feel safer.”

“It does, thank you.”

Aurora dipped into a sharp descent, leading her toward the section of highway where her companions waited. Julip stared after her, perplexed as the mare flared her wings at too shallow an angle, causing her hooves to strike the pavement fast enough to force her into a skidding gallop. It was like watching a foal learning how to land for the first time, except foals usually had a parent around to keep them from snapping their legs in half.

By some stroke of dumb luck, Aurora stumbled to a stop without turning herself into a pancake. Julip kept her mouth shut as she gave her wings a series of hard flaps, bleeding off the last of her momentum until her hind legs touched the road.

Ginger and the ghoul watched her with open mistrust, the ex-slaver’s horn lit while the ghoul kept some sort of shotgun contraption fixed to his leg aimed just a few inches off her left shoulder. She waited for Aurora to backtrack from her botched landing and bowed her neck so that she could lift her weapon off by the strap.

“I’ll need that back when we’re done,” she said.

Aurora slung her weapon across her own shoulder and stepped back toward her friends. “We’ll see,” she said. “Right now, let’s talk about why you’re here and how you intend to help us.”

Disarmed and caught out, she didn’t have much choice. The only way this could get any worse was if one of her compatriots decided now to pilot a sprite-bot within recording range to watch her make an ass of herself.

“Well,” she sighed, plopping her backside onto the road. “Where to fucking start?”

October 31st, 1075

“I should get going, sugarcube. It’s already past midnight.”

Rainbow pressed the bridge of her muzzle against the underside of Applejack’s neck, wedging herself a little deeper into that nook she’d been waiting more than twenty years to finally explore. She offered up a noise of complaint, hardly more than a sigh, and tightened her wing around the apricot coat of Applejack's midsection.

Her house was a mess, but it smelled amazing. Better than it did after flinging the windows open at the first break of winter. True to her roots, Applejack had come prepared, lugging in an old cooler filled with the essential ingredients for fried okra, tomato salad and something she called chicken fried steak, though it contained neither chicken or steak. Despite the migration of gryphon cuisine into Equestria, Applejack hadn’t yet brought herself to the point of eating another creature's meat, though the flavoring that came with the protein substitute had undoubtedly weakened that resolve by another degree.

The cherry on top had been the wide-bottomed bottle of cider she plunked down on the granite countertop. The Apple Family farm may not be owned or managed by Apples anymore, but that didn’t deter the Ponyville Historical Society from doing their best to keep the tradition alive. While it didn’t have the same taste that came with the oaken casks she remembered, the contents of the bottle branded with their iconic purple barn was sinfully good.

That bottle was empty now, and had been for the better part of a few hours. There had been just enough for the both of them to get to that happy middle between pleasantly buzzed and revealing their darkest secrets to the neighbor’s cat. They ate, drank and caught up on everything they had missed since taking on their ministries. It turned out there was a lot to catch up on. Enough so that the conversation had migrated from the dining room, tried its best to reach the bedroom before giving into impatience halfway and landing on the couch.

Rainbow inhaled, tasting the tangy scent of Applejack’s sweat mingled with the fruity aroma of her morning conditioner. It had been a good night.

Screw that. It had been a great night.

“Hey,” Applejack said, patting her on the shoulder. “I really do gotta get up.”

“Mm. Stay,” Rainbow murmured.

The mare beside her chuckled, a low and jovial noise that made all of the best parts of Rainbow’s brain light up like a little firework show. As she began to sit up, Rainbow let out a pleasantly tired groan that had nothing to do with the time of night. Applejack hooked her foreleg around the crook of her wing and gave her a gentle tug, urging her up.

She relented, allowing herself to be pulled off the couch. Her knees wobbled a bit as she found her balance. Applejack was already halfway across the living room, her hips performing a delightful sashay as she stepped into the dining room.

An unusually rational thought surfaced in her mind as she followed. “Don’t touch the dishes. I’ll do them later.”

She found Applejack at her modest little dining room table, a gift from her parents when she moved away to her first home in Cloudsdale. That seemed like ages ago, yet the medallion shaped table still held up. Two plates, the smears of their first meal now cooled and solidified, sat amongst the equally forgotten dishes clustered in the center. Rainbow felt a slight pang of guilt for letting good food get cold, but their priorities had… shifted.

“Hey,” she said, entering the dining room. “I said I’ll do the dishes.”

Applejack nodded, but she wasn’t paying attention. Her eyes were glued to the red and green-pinstriped Pip-Buck she’d lifted off the table, now hanging off her hooftip.

“Everything okay?”

Applejack offered an almost imperceptible shake of her head and secured her Pip-Buck around her foreleg. “Don’t rightly know yet,” she said, dropping her haunches to the floor to free up her other hoof. “Want to guess why I have seventeen unread messages from Trixie?”

Rainbow blinked confusion. “Seventeen?”

“And now there’s one from Twilight,” she groaned, scrolling down the list to the earliest one. She tapped it open and skimmed the first line, her expression hardening. “Son of a… Dash, I gotta get to the Pillar. She says she blew up the fabricators.”

“Need some backup?”

Applejack shut off her Pip-Buck. “Not as bad as she does.”

The elevator ride to the Ministry of Technology’s deeply buried manufacturing wing was nerve-wracking. Applejack grew quiet as she gathered herself for whatever she was about to walk into, taking comfort in knowing Rainbow was beside her in case she needed extra help.

When the doors opened, a murky haze of dust slid into the car. Two ponies armed with slender black long guns stood outside like statues, their eyes flicking to the newly arrived mares and then to the rest of the elevator to ensure it was empty. Applejack strode past them without so much as a greeting. Rainbow followed close behind.

She heard yelling well before they arrived at what was left of FABRICATION L1.

Steel panels from the lab’s exterior wall lay in the corridor like toppled dominoes kicked out by some monstrous force, liberally coated with shards of material that had once been desks, terminals and the ministry’s precious fabricators. More armed ponies stood on either side of the wreckage to prevent anyone from getting too close while a half dozen dazed technicians loitered on the far side of the cordoned-off area, staring across the debris field at the enraged alicorn that Applejack trotted toward.

Twilight stood over Trixie like an enraged goddess, stabbing her hoof at the destruction as she railed.

Rainbow matched Applejack as she picked up her pace, both hurrying to intervene before Twilight did or said something she might regret.

“...any idea how far this sets us back? Months! Months we don’t fucking have, Trixie! In what universe did you think it would be okay to treat this facility as your fucking playground? You might not have a family to go home to, but those ponies…”

Applejack interrupted her. “Twilight, that’s plenty.”

Twilight turned, glaring at Applejack and then to Rainbow.

She leveled a purple feather at Trixie, still riding the height of her anger. “I’m not done with her yet.”

Applejack’s lips pressed into a thin, white line. She deliberately came to a stop directly in front of the alicorn, positioning herself between her and the shamefaced blue mare sitting with her nose pointed to the floor. “You are. Last time I checked, this is my ministry.”

“And I felt the explosion through the floor of mine,” Twilight hissed. “She could’ve killed someone.”

Applejack looked to Trixie. “Is anyone dead?”

The mare shook her head so quickly that the singed tips of her otherwise white mane fell into her lap like snow. “I evacuated the lab before it went off.”

She turned back to Twilight. “There. No fatalities,” she said, brusquely adding, “That means I don’t need your help kicking a dog when it’s down.”

Twilight gave her a disgusted look and gestured past her with her wing. “She set off a bomb that destroyed four fabricators!”

“Then sit your purple ass down over there,” Applejack snapped, pointing a hoof the way they had come, “and let me talk to her.”

For a long, quiet moment Twilight stared at her as if she were preparing to say something. To her relief, she relented and walked sullenly to where Rainbow waited a few steps away.

Applejack sat herself down in front of Trixie, using her hoof to bring her chin up so she could see the extent of her injuries. The unicorn didn’t resist, allowing her to turn her head left, then right. A thin trickle of blood had traced a line out of her left ear and was mottled grey with the dust still lingering in the air. She delicately held her foreleg in her lap, limp as a marionette with a cut string.

Her eyes settled on the oddly twisted limb. “Is it broken?” she asked.

Trixie shook her head, her voice breaking. “Dislocated. I don’t know how to set it back.”

“Can’t say I do, either,” she said, frowning down both ends of the corridor. “How come Medical isn’t down here already?”

Twilight piped up, her tone distant. “I wanted to talk to her first.”

“Are you…” Applejack caught herself, her expression hard as she glared back at her. “Go. Get. Medical.”

She watched as Twilight set her jaw and looked away. Her horn flared and with a flash of displaced air, she was gone. Seconds later, she reappeared right where she had been, along with two unicorns toting a pair of bright red medic bags behind her. They staggered in place for a moment, evidently unprepared for the abrupt teleportation, before steadying themselves and heading toward the damage.

One of them spotted the technicians on the other side of the outwardly bulged stretch of wall and broke off, banging her way over the destroyed panels toward them.

Applejack fought the urge to scowl at Twilight, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. She made room for the medic as he dropped his bag next to Trixie. For several minutes, they waited as he asked her questions she should have been asked much earlier. They learned that the blast had thrown her as she urged the last technicians out, throwing her into the far wall with the rest of the debris.

All the while, Trixie chewed on the inside of her lip, fighting back tears.

“I didn’t think this would happen,” she said, glancing up at Applejack as they waited. “You’re not going to fire me, are you?”

Applejack wasn’t sure enough to give her a straight answer. “You need to tell me what happened, Trixie. What were you trying to do?”

She winced as the stallion probed her shoulder with the tip of his hoof, then gently wrapped her dangling limb in a white aura. With a confident, fluid movement, he sank her shoulder back into its socket. The pain was bright and brief, forcing a gasp out of her before quickly subsiding.

“Trixie,” Applejack pressed.

“Follow the light with your eyes,” the medic said, lifting a pen light to her face while holding her chin still.

She glanced at Applejack before relenting and tracking the light’s movement. “I ran a schematic through the fabricators to… test a theory,” she said.

Applejack could sense the nervousness in her voice. “Okay,” she said. “What kind of theory are we talking about?”

She blinked rapidly when the medic clicked his light off, her eyes flicking briefly to Twilight before coming back to her. “Magical theory.”

Twilight visibly stiffened but Applejack held a hoof out, motioning her to wait. “Just give me the nuts and bolts, hon. What happened?”

“It’s hard to explain without my notes. I was trying to design a…” she glanced at the medic, then looked meaningfully at Applejack. “A stone. Like the two we’ve been studying.”

A talisman. “I’m following you so far. Was it supposed to do…” Applejack gestured to the ruined lab behind her, “...that?”

Trixie swallowed. “No! I promise, it wasn’t supposed to do anything! I didn’t think they were even capable of…” she stopped to compose herself, closing her eyes until her nerves settled. “Last week, I was bored and started looking through the data we had on the stones, and I noticed a pattern in the thermal scans we took when they were first brought down. Wherever there was a hook formation in the internal structure, there was a coinciding heat spike nestled into the upstream side of the flow. A pocket of high pressure where the magic was being disrupted.”

Applejack frowned a little. “You’re starting to lose me.”

Trixie lit her horn, forming a hoofball-sized bubble of aura between them. With her uninjured leg, she swiped her hoof back and forth through the pink haze. “We always assumed magic was a manifestation of force. Not a physical thing. According to the best research we have, it doesn’t have mass or experience pressure. It just is.”

She stared at Applejack’s blank expression and grimaced, searching for a simpler explanation. Gently, and to the consternation of the medic checking her over, she lifted her other hoof and slowly pressed them together through her magic. “It doesn't have hydraulic properties, so it can’t be compressed.”

That, she understood. “Okay, but you think it can be.”

“I know it can!” she nodded. “I-I’ve seen it! I’ve done flow tests and run my numbers past the other techs. I’ve even scanned my own horn while I’m casting! It’s ludicrous that we haven’t thought to do this earlier! I saw the same temperature spikes in the pores of my own marrow and I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s part of the reason why some unicorns can cast stronger spells than others!”

“Alright, alright! Slow down!” she said, and looked to the medic. “Is it possible you can give us a minute?”

The stallion gave Trixie a final glance before nodding and stepping away.

“Okay,” she said. “I get that you’ve been thinking about whatever this is for a while, but let’s talk about what made that lab explode. From what I can gather, you’re saying you figured out a method to pressurize magic to… what, make a bomb?”

Trixie pursed her lips and blinked irritation at the ceiling. “I wasn’t trying to make a bomb. I wanted to see if a talisman, made properly, could act as a vessel to gather and store magic.” She pointed a hoof over Applejack’s shoulder toward Twilight. “And for the record, I will have you know that I succeeded!”

“Careful,” Twilight murmured.

“What practical application is there in storing magic?” Applejack asked.

Trixie leaned toward her, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Why do we store electricity?”

Applejack paused, then blinked. “It's a battery.”

“That was the plan, at least,” she hedged, mindful of the charred remains of the workspace behind her. “But this proves my theory is sound! I may have miscalculated the rate of magical flow into the talisman, but the fact that it exploded without any external influence proves there are internal structures that passively collect and store naturally-occurring magic! It worked.”

“Land’s sake,” she breathed.

Bottled magic, in the most literal sense. It could change everything. Revolutionize not just the war, but Equestrian industry on a fundamental level. The ability to pull power from thin air was the dream of the solar sector, one that had floundered since the moment Princess Celestia sniffed out its existence and leaned in hard to stifle it.

Applejack stared at the gaping wound torn through the side of her corridor. This was a different beast entirely. It could be the equivalent of the day the first unicorn harnessed magic. A magical-mechanical bridge that could redefine the foundation of technological progress. Her mind whirled with possibility.

“Trixie,” she said, “you’re a damned genius.”

The blue mare’s chest swelled with pride.

“Once Medical clears you, I want to see your notes on this project,” she said. “All of it. You're going to walk me through every step until I understand everything you do.”

Trixie nodded eagerly, then slowed as her eyes shifted to the pony looming over Applejack’s shoulder.

“You’re going to need the princesses’ approval before any of this moves forward,” Twilight said, narrowing her eyes at Trixie. “This feels like the Alicorn Amulet all over again.”

“What? Twilight, that was more than twenty years ago!” Trixie snapped.

“And Tirek waited thousands before he returned,” Twilight countered. "Don't pretend you have a spotless track record."

"I've bent over backwards to make up for what I did!"

Twilight took a step forward. "Bend more."

Before she had a chance to get ahead of her, Applejack got to her hooves to position herself between the two mares. “Both of you calm down right now!”

Twilight inched toward Applejack, staring past her. “I’m very calm.”

Her voice dipped low. “Twilight. Walk away before we have words.”

One beat.

Two.

Twilight’s nose wrinkled with disgust and she turned away with a harsh flick of her tail.

“I want to talk to you later,” Applejack called after her.

She watched as Rainbow moved out of Twilight's path, the click of her hooves muffled by the dust settling on the floor.

“I’ll add it to my schedule,” she replied.

Her horn flashed, and for the first time Applejack could remember, she flinched. A flicker of lavender light and she was gone, leaving a wisp of dust whirling in the air where she vanished.

Next Chapter: Chapter 21: Disharmony Estimated time remaining: 55 Hours, 47 Minutes