April 6th, 1076

Spitfire chewed the nib of her pen as she scanned the paperwork in front of her. She found it was easier to write notes with her clipboard nestled in the crook of her crossed leg, a posture that in most circumstances was regarded as inappropriate if not borderline harassing. Tucked behind her desk, there was nothing for her candidate to see, but that hadn’t been the point. If she was going to trust anyone to be a liaison to her growing list of contacts, they needed to be able to handle a little discomfort.

The mare seated across from her appeared unbothered. Her adobe colored eyes wandered the surface of her desk, stopping to idle at the pewter figurine at the far corner depicting a Wonderbolt in mid-flight - a memento from her years at the Academy - before seeming to slide toward its center. There was nothing there for her to see beside bare wood. Spitfire’s eyebrow quirked as she realized her prospective candidate was likely imagining what was hidden beneath it.

The mare made no attempt to hide it when she noticed Spitfire watching her, only smiling politely before turning her attention to the myriad awards and plaques hanging on the wall behind her.

Spitfire felt her lip twitch. For a mare who looked better suited to staff a cotton candy stand, she had brass balls.

Lifting the pen between her feathers, she dropped it to the mare’s resume and tapped it against the “i” of her listed name. She was qualified for the job. If she wasn’t, she would have never made it this far in the interview process. Only two other ponies had. One had been a brown-noser, the other had the personality of a rock. She didn’t need someone to sit outside her office and say “Yes, ma’am.” She already had Rainbow Dash for that.

Then again, it wasn’t much of an office. Being given the reins of an entire Ministry was one thing. Being given that control while preserving the illusion that Rainbow was still at the helm had to be done delicately. Her workspace wasn’t much larger than her first office back at the Academy which suited her just fine. The faux wood wall paneling helped create the illusion that she wasn’t sitting in a cement cube one hundred feet below the surface of Canterlot. She allowed herself to indulge in her “promotion” by swapping out the standard fluorescents with more expensive, full-spectrum lighting. She wasn’t shitting in a golden toilet by any means, but it was a nice perk to what started as a thankless succession.

Over the last six months, she’d worked hard to improve the thankless part. That started with the gradual replacement of the Ministry of Awesome’s department heads. If she wanted to get anything done, she couldn’t rely on Rainbow to act as a middle-mare. She needed to make room for pegasi she could trust.

Thunderlane was a natural first choice. His discovery of Rainbow’s attempt to feed information to the gryphons had shaken his trust in her more deeply than anything Spitfire could hope to do. He practically jumped at the opportunity to help keep his former wingmate on the straight and narrow. From there, the other names came more easily. Thunderlane had a short list of Wonderbolts who had become disenchanted with the notion of finding glory on the front lines. More came from her old rosters, colleagues from the Academy and a few powerful pegasi who weren’t above bending the rules for the good of Equestria.

Within the internal architecture of the Ministry of Awesome grew a deeper, more loyal framework of ponies who Spitfire could actually work with. Sure, it was a little more cloak and dagger than she was accustomed to, but it was working.

All she needed now was a liaison between her and the new department heads. Someone unaffiliated with the Wonderbolts, the Academy or any other aspect of Spitfire’s past. With the risks she was taking, she needed deniability.

The taffy-pink mare sitting across from her looked like she could fit neatly beneath a bus, should the need arise.

She clicked her pen and looked up. “It says here your name is Primrose.”

“That’s correct.”

Her voice had a sugary-sweet register to match her complexion. Like Pinkie Pie if she were a six year old. She jotted an X in the margin of her resume. Strike one.

“Mm. Would it be fair to say that you have a… well, a checkered past?”

Primrose lifted a wing to brush a baby-blue curl of mane behind her ear. “I’ve had opportunities to learn about Equestria’s justice system, yes.”

She chuckled at that as she lifted the bottom pages of Primrose’s resume away to scan the first of the many pages produced by her background check. The infractions ranged from minor to outright comical, most dating back to her years as a filly. Maybe that's where she got that cutesy voice from.

“You committed criminal trespass four times when you were nine years old,” she said. “Care to explain?”

A tiny smile formed on the mare’s lips. “I tried to attend Canterlot’s School of Magic.”

She blinked. “You’re a pegasus.”

“I know. All the unicorns my age wouldn’t stop talking about the place, so I snuck in to see what all the gossip was about. It took a few tries, but once I saw it was just a bunch of unis polishing each other’s horns, I stopped bothering with the place.”

Spitfire smirked, lifting another page. “At age twelve, you were tried for larceny?”

Primrose rolled her eyes. “Alleged larceny. All I did was break into the restricted section of the Canterlot Library. I never actually left with the book.”

“The library?” She squinted at the page. “This was at the Museum of Magical History in Manehattan.”

“Oh, that!” The mare genuinely giggled. “I stole a bell.”

“A bell.”

Primrose twirled her hoof as she explained. “An enchanted bell that used to belong to someone who died two or three thousand years ago. Ended up being a replica, of course.” She let out a genuine giggle. “My foster parents were not happy when they found out.”

She giggled again. Spitfire flipped back to Primrose’s resume and jotted in another X beside the first. Strike two.

“For a pegasus, you used to have quite the fixation with magic,” she said. “Why was that?”

Her sweet smile hardened ever so slightly. “Because when I was little, I used to hear unicorns say that all ponies had magic. Pegasi have their skies, earth ponies have the dirt, all that good stuff. They said that like everything was fair when it clearly wasn’t.”

She waited for Primrose to continue, but she seemed unwilling or uninterested in elaborating further. Spitfire didn’t need to be a psychic to know the thoughts this younger mare had chosen to keep private. Unlike at the Academy, Ministry background checks were disturbingly thorough.

Flipping past her qualifications, her eight-year career as an administrative assistant to the lead editor of the Cloudsdale Gazette, and the litany of juvenile criminal offenses, Spitfire turned to the single sheet of paper that had originally caught her eye. To any other employer, the red-flagged document would immediately disqualify her.

The report briefly detailed an attempt by Primrose to publish a leaflet under a pseudonym. The publisher had flatly denied to print the leaflet, but not before lodging a complaint with the Gazette about its contents. She was fired, quietly, to avoid embarrassing the paper. Spitfire tapped the photocopy with her pen. These days, even joking about publishing something like this could land a pony in a cell.

She cleared her throat. “Did you author a leaflet titled Magic is Power: Unicorns and Equestrian Decline under a pseudonym?”

Primrose took a slow breath, her smile becoming brittle. “I did.”

“Why?”

She sat a little straighter in her chair, her eyes drifting to the silver clamp of the clipboard. “Ponies are entitled to their beliefs, are they not?”

Spitfire shrugged. “Ponies tend to believe things like the princesses moving the sun and moon, or that chocolate chips make a better cookie than butterscotch. You believe magic is a threat to Equestria.”

“Unicorns," she corrected. "Not magic.”

She waited before gesturing for Primrose to continue.

The mare licked her lips and grinned, realizing too late that she’d walked into a trap. Abandoning her rigid posture, she leaned into the cushioned backboard of her chair. “Unicorns are the threat. Magic is just the tool they use. They have an evolutionary advantage over every other creature on this planet. It’s a categorical fact, and yet the second one pegasus says it outloud it’s subversive or heresy.”

She lifted her wings, forming air quotes with her feathers and scoffed. “Compared to unicorns, we’re like bugs. Right now they’re happy to let us skitter around, plant their crops and tidy up their skies. But what happens when they conjure up a spell to do the work for them? How long do you think it would take pegasi to protest? And how easy would it be for the unicorns to make us bend our knees to them anyway? Not very.”

The silence lingered for several long seconds.

“A lot of ponies would say that’s a pretty grim outlook to have.”

“It’s a realistic one,” she countered. “This war will only wind up making things worse. Equestria has depots filled with more weapons than it knows what to do with. When this war ends, what do you think we’re going to do with them? Melt them down and forget we ever had them? Please. Give a pegasus a gun and she might actually stand a chance against a unicorn, and they’re not going to allow that.”

Primrose shook her head and let out an exasperated sigh. “Once this is over, things will only get worse for us. I guarantee it.”

Spitfire rested her chin against her feathers, watching the mare come down from her speech. It was strange to hear someone say the words she’d been thinking for so long. Strange not to be immediately feigning revulsion to protect her own hide. Risky, even.

She set the clipboard on her desk with a click. The mare across from her said nothing. There was nothing else for her to say.

Spitfire couldn’t think of a better fit.

“So Miss Primrose,” she said. “How would you feel about a tour?”

Meridian was in over her head.

The four strangers her daughter found digging through the train downhill hadn’t looked any different than the last group of travelers that wandered their way up these rails. That had been, what, three years ago? Turning them around had been an easy matter of firing a warning shot at their hooves and promising better aim if they didn’t go back the way they came. There was something about the way a half-pound railway spike landed that gave even veteran scavengers pause.

Staring out at the tracks with Beans hiding beneath her tail, she watched the bubble of impossible light drizzle away as Ginger snapped awake in Aurora’s wings. The other pegasus stumbled away the moment it came down, tucking what was left of her black tail between her legs while the ghoul hurried after her.

Meridian looked back to Ginger and caught the unicorn looking at her with a mixture of guilt and lingering confusion. She watched her turn to Aurora and whisper something that earned a worried look from the Stable dweller.

“That was old magic,” she said, feeling her heart pumping in her throat as she interrupted them. The pensive look on Ginger’s face only made her more certain she was right. “What you just did. That was a spell.”

Ginger hesitated briefly before eventually nodding.

Beans let out an awed gasp. Lifting her tail away from her daughter, Meridian turned to her. “Go inside and watch the fire.”

“But-”

“Now, Jellybean. Please.”

For a moment she looked like she might argue, but upon seeing her mother’s expression she relented and hurried back behind the netting. The knot in her belly loosened a little as she listened to Beans’ hooves clatter deeper into the safety of their cave.

Once she was certain she wasn’t trying to sneak back to the net, Meridian took a breath and considered her options. She could tell them to leave, to keep heading to whatever they expected to find in Fillydelphia and make themselves someone else’s problem. Five minutes ago she might have considered it, but something inside her made her think better of it. These ponies hadn’t come looking to start trouble, and judging by the way Ginger kept avoiding her gaze she was clearly embarrassed for having lost control.

And after all, this was the Stable dweller. A helper, according to Flipswitch's broadcast.

Were she ten years younger and Beans still just a wish on the horizon, she might have shot the four of them and been done with it. She stiffened herself against that thought. She left her fellow raiders to get away from that life, not use it as a crutch whenever things got tricky. More than that, she had Beans to consider now. She obviously liked these ponies, especially the ghoul they called Roach, and Meridian didn’t want to explain to her daughter why she decided to kill four unarmed ponies.

Well, three unarmed ponies.

She frowned at Ginger and wished Briar would get back soon. He had the soft skills for these sorts of things. Meridian had always been more comfortable letting her size do the talking for her.

“Do you,” she said, tipping her nose toward Ginger’s horn, “have control over it, or does that thing go off whenever it likes?”

Ginger stood with Aurora’s help, clenching her eyes around a fresh headache. “My horn is not a timebomb. I just…”

Meridian watched her turn to Aurora as if she were asking for permission. Or maybe just reassurance.

“I believe I had a nightmare,” she finished.

Ginger must have seen something in Meridian’s expression she didn’t like, and she quickly hedged her answer. “Or a hallucination. I’ve heard exhaustion can play havoc on the mind.”

“But you don’t think it was a hallucination.”

She shook her head no.

Meridian shifted her weight to her other hoof and weighed her options. They didn’t look or act like any con artists she knew, and if what she’d heard about them over the radio was any indication, they only seemed to cause trouble for ponies who deserved it. And the unicorn had magic. Real magic.

Maybe it was pity or maybe it was that lingering nostalgia everyone seemed to feel for better times most of them had only seen or heard about on old holotapes. Whichever it was, she found that the heartless self-preservation option wasn’t coming as easily as it had when she was young. If Briar found out he’d rubbed off on her this badly, he’d never let her hear the end of it.

“Let me see if I don’t have something around here stronger than tea. You two stay put.” She half-turned to the netting, stopped, and leveled an eye at Ginger. “And if you can help it, keep the glowstick turned off.”

Roach glanced several dozen yards back up the tracks where Aurora was tending to Ginger, and he hoped for their sake that Meridian wouldn’t take what had just happened as a threat. The mare had been hospitable, but she also had a foal. He hoped the two of them had the good sense to treat their situation with delicacy.

Ahead of him, Julip paced up and down the rails as she struggled to deal with a flood of adrenaline that had nowhere to go. She shuddered over and over and her teeth chattered loud enough for him to hear it when she spoke. Any lingering doubts he might have had about her not being a soldier were gone. As she flicked the air with the singed black tatters of her tail, he guessed that this might be the closest she’d ever come to facing her own mortality.

“Julip, you have to calm down so I can look you over.”

“Fuck you.” Her eyelids fluttered with embarrassed frustration and she pivoted to stomp away from him again. “Fuck her, fuck this mission, fuck all of it.”

Roach pressed his lips together and blew a sigh through his nose. He followed her until she turned back around to find him standing in her way. When she tried to walk around him, he backed up and blocked her path. He held a hoof toward her, bidding her to stop.

“I just want to make sure you weren’t burned.”

She slapped his leg away, turned as if to storm further down the tracks, then turned back toward him and jabbed a feather back up the way they’d come. “Burned by her. By a fucking narcoleptic unicorn with fucking superpowers.”

Roach said nothing.

“What would’ve happened if that thing had come down on top of my head? Magic is supposed to be dead and somehow the rich mare who ran away from home is using it in her sleep! How does that even happen?”

“That’s a question you can ask Ginger later. Now just slow down and breathe.”

“I am breathing!”

“You know what I mean.”

He watched her face contort with anger as she scooped a pile of stones into her wing and turned, flinging them as hard as she could down the empty tracks. She chased them with a colorful burst of language that would make a seasoned courtesan blush, then proceeded to sit down on the old beam and stare after where the stones had settled.

“Fuck.”

“Feel better?”

“No. Maybe. Don’t push it.”

He thought he saw the edge of a smirk play on the corner of her muzzle, but he could have imagined it. She continued to stare sullenly ahead as he circled across the rails and sat down to face her. He ignored the sour look she gave him when he held out his hoof a second time and waited until she relented and gave him her foreleg.

Roach was no doctor, but he’d seen enough in his lifetime to know what a burn looked like. Julip’s coloration made it easy to spot the curled tips of singed hairs along the inside of her foreleg, but the extent of her injuries were mercifully superficial. The line of her belly had taken the brunt of what the superheated rail inflicted, searing her hair short enough that a few long patches of angry pink skin showed through the stubble that remained. At worst, he guessed it would feel like an inconveniently placed sunburn. Had she lingered over the steel any longer, it would have been an entirely different story.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

He gave her hoof back. “For what, cutting your tail in half? Anytime.”

She snorted and looked back at what remained of it. “You have a weird sense of humor.”

“I’ve been accused of worse.” He stood, and after a moment she did the same. “You’ll be okay, by the way.”

She pressed her feathers against the raw skin of her belly and winced, frowning with uncertainty. He waited with her for a while as she calmed down enough to look herself over, then he got back up and started walking back up the tracks. With some reluctance, Julip got up and followed suit beside him.

“I’m assuming she’ll want an apology,” she said, nodding up the hill at Ginger.

“Nah. You had a pretty bad scare. You’re entitled to blow off some steam after something like that.” He glanced down at her and noted the pinched expression as she nodded agreement. “You know, it’s funny.”

“Nearly getting roasted alive? Yeah, a real knee-slapper.”

“A what? No,” he said, and tipped his cracked horn back toward her ruined tail. “Before the bombs fell, it felt like every teenaged mare in Canterlot got the same idea to start wearing their tails in bobs. Violet used to beg Saffron and I to let her pin her tail up like that. Every couple of weeks she would have a new reason for why we should, and every time we told her no. She’d kill me if she found out I just gave you the same cut.”

She shook her head. “How long have you been waiting to dust off that old chestnut?”

He chuckled, letting her have that. Up the hill he could see Meridian had gone back inside her cave and that Aurora and Ginger were still where they left them. A good sign he assumed. Better than being escorted away at gunpoint, at least.

“How old was she?”

The question caught him off guard and he looked at Julip to see if she was serious. She shrugged at him, waiting for an answer.

“Sixteen,” he said. “She would have been seventeen that following December.”

“Pfft.” Julip arched an eyebrow at him. “You wouldn’t let her get a bob at sixteen? Jeez, I hope you didn’t forget to take your heart pills today, grandpa.”

Taken aback, he chuckled. “Of course we didn’t! Those tailstyles left nothing to the imagination.”

“Hate to break it to you, but that’s kind of the point.”

He closed his eyes and banished the mental image before it could form. “Okay, let’s change the subject.”

“Just one more question.”

He groaned with discomfort, but the look on her face made it clear she was going to ask him regardless of how much he complained. With a sigh, he waited for her to get on with it.

“Did she know about you?” Julip asked. “About the changeling part?”

He blinked, then nodded. “Of course she did. I was her dad.”

“And she was okay with that?”

Staring down at the passing rails, he nibbled the chitin on the edge of his lip. “Well, not right away. She was afraid to come near me for a few days after I showed her, but she came around eventually. That girl was tough. And it didn’t hurt that I could change into her storybook characters during bedtime.”

He glanced at Julip and thought he saw a note of jealousy in the way she slowly shook her head. “That’s insane,” she said.

“Phrase of the day for you?”

She smirked. “That, and fuck.”

Her nugget of self-awareness stole a genuine laugh out of him, and as he looked at Julip he was heartened to see her grinning at the stones.

“How’s the coffee?”

“Disgusting as it is potent,” Ginger said, rolling the speckled blue cup between her hooves. A little less water and it could have qualified as mud, but she wasn’t complaining. The caffeine went straight to work the moment it hit her bloodstream, chasing away the stifling weight of exhaustion while filling her belly with a cozy warmth. She offered Meridian a reassuring smile. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

The statuesque mare nodded her approval before turning to the filly sitting beside Ginger. “Are you helping or just watching?”

Beans looked up at her mother, then down to the thick lock of severed black tailhairs held in her feathers. “I’m helping!”

They sat against the stone wall next to the entrance of her cleverly camouflaged home. Ginger took a sip of her too-strong coffee and used her magic to snake another pencil-thin clump of hair out of the filly’s wing. Julip stood in front of them, trying her best not to appear self-conscious as she faced forward while the two of them worked to restore her shorn tail. The flash of magic Roach had used to cut her free hadn’t generated enough radiation to be harmful, and it showed in the hasty diagonal slash of what he’d left behind.

Little by little, she wove each makeshift extension back into Julip’s tail with tight braids that followed the line of the original cut. It wouldn’t be the height of fashion by any stretch of the definition, but at least she wouldn’t look like someone had hung a grenade from her backside and pulled the pin.

For her part, Julip seemed almost calm after coming back. She wasn’t exactly handing out compliments or offering to carry anyone’s bags, but whatever Roach had been saying to her since deciding to take her under his figurative wing was having a dulling effect on the sharpest of Julip’s thorns.

She watched Meridian walk over to where Aurora and Roach sat on the rail, glance briefly at the clouds above and then bend down to take Aurora’s empty canteen. On her way back she took Julip’s as well, a stainless steel container wrapped in a leather sleeve, and disappeared behind the netting to refill them both.

“I don’t get it.” Julip looked back at her with a dubious frown. “I’ve had stimpacks before and I never had dreams afterward.”

Ginger sipped her coffee and kept her eyes on her work. “It’s like I said, the ones Autumn forced me to take weren’t ordinary stimpacks. I’ve taken meds before, but this was the first time I felt my bones grow back together. It was awful. Her stims were made before the war with proper spells, not herbs or recycled chems.”

“Okay,” Julip said. “That might explain your magic, but a dozen old world stimpacks shouldn’t be all it takes to break through two centuries’ worth of dreamless sleep. Luna died when Canterlot Castle got hit, and she’s the one who created the dream realm in the first place.”

“Allegedly,” Roach interjected.

She ignored him. “Without her, the dream realm doesn’t exist. Period.”

Ginger slipped another lock of hair into Julip’s shredded tail and offered a noncommittal shrug in return. “All I can tell you is what I saw. When I fall asleep, I wake up at my old house back in New Canterlot and never at any moment that I would consider a happy memory. Maybe they’re hallucinations. Honestly, it would go a long way to explain why everything keeps catching fire. But whatever they are, they feel real enough to me.”

She stopped short of telling them about the mare who had stepped into her father’s office, the one with the starswept mane and clarion voice. Growing up so close to the ruins of Old Canterlot where the princesses were revered by so many including Minister Primrose as ascended goddesses, Ginger had ample opportunities to memorize the regal features of Equestria’s younger monarch.

Yet something made her hesitate to fully admit what she’d experienced, as if doing so would take her down the same path of delusion that drove so many ponies to build the Chapel of the Two Sisters and elevate them to deific status.

Eventually, Beans got bored and quietly snuck away to talk to Roach. Ginger smiled as she wove black hairs together, listening to the two of them growl silly piratisms at each other. Poor Aurora sat beside them with a lopsided grin, unsure what to make of this colorful version of their changeling companion.

It was hard not to notice Meridian monitoring the exchange from the entrance of their cavern home. Doubtless this group of travelers was as strange to her as stumbling across her family in the mountains was for them. She watched her daughter and Roach butcher one cliche after another with a tight smile, just enough to let them know she didn’t object while remaining restrained enough to remind them that they were guests who had very nearly exhausted her hospitality already.

As Ginger finished with the last of Julip’s tail, a muffled burst of static coughed from Meridian’s barding.

“Safe?”

The tinny male voice drew the ears of everyone gathered on the rails and pulled Meridian’s muzzle into a pinched frown as she pressed her chin into her barding’s collar. Embedded in the leather sat a barely perceptible lump of a pressure switch.

“Safe,” she replied.

The voice that buzzed back was nearly washed out by the embedded radio’s background static as if he were at the very edge of its operable range. “I’m wrapping things up with Snowblind, but we just spotted wings in the clouds above town. They’re flying west, taking the C route. Should be above you in a couple minutes. You know the drill.”

Ginger watched as Meridian’s frown deepened. “Beans, inside. Now please.” She pulled open the worn netting for her daughter and looked out to her unplanned guests. After a moment’s hesitation she added, “That goes for all of you, too.”

The air of relaxation evaporated as the four of them got to their hooves and followed after Beans.

Meridian dipped her chin against her radio as they filed past. “We’re getting inside now. Please say you were wrapped when you saw them.”

“Yes dear,” her husband chided.

Ginger waited for Aurora, Roach and Julip to step into the cave before following. She watched Meridian as they did, searching for any sign that this could be some sort of trap. But the earth pony’s attention was bent firmly toward the grey expanse of clouds that loomed above, her visitors temporarily forgotten as her eyes searched the overcast. It was no deception, Ginger decided, and stepped into a home hewn from the naked stone.

Despite the rugged location, Meridian’s burrow was a surprisingly cozy affair. Wood boards from a variety of sources lined the ground in a haphazard attempt to create a proper floor. Here and there a plank or two clung to their original coats of paint while others were so weathered that they were nearly as grey as the stone surrounding them. A black pot belly stove sat against the far wall with a dented kettle still bubbling away on its cast iron flat top. Roach was already craning his neck up to follow the dubious patchwork of salvaged air ducts bound together with silver heat tape that carried the stove’s exhaust to the open air outside.

A cluster of wall cabinets sat on the floor to the right of the stove, the furthest door hanging open just enough for Ginger to spy a yellowed plastic jar of instant coffee mix on the top shelf. On the opposite side, pushed into what amounted to the corner of the rounded space, the corner of a large mattress poked out from beneath a mound of heavy blankets. A short, white-painted bookcase waited beside the family bed stuffed full of narrow-spined foal’s books that Beans was probably already beginning to outgrow. A wooden trunk lay open beside the bookcase containing a small mountain of loose costumes.

Toward the back of the cave, a pair of half-parted house curtains hung on an old nickel rod mounted into the narrow point where two walls converged. A second room peeked out from behind the curtains where Ginger could just make out what looked like a tinkerer’s workshop.

Were it not for the chisel-scarred stone walls and the thick square timbers that shored up the roof, it was easy to forget that this roughly peanut-shaped home had been burrowed into the side of a mountain. The difficulties of getting supplies up here without being seen had to be staggering, but everyone in the wasteland knew that the problems that came with being born with wings were much much worse.

Back at the entrance, Meridian went to work securing the net while Beans whispered memorized instructions to herself as she closed the vents to the stove in sequence. Barely a minute after she was finished, the thin curl of grey smoke venting outside dwindled to an invisible haze.

“And there they are,” Meridian muttered, her nose almost touching the grey weave as she peered through the gaps.

Ginger stepped back toward the netting and squinted at the spot Meridian had locked her eyes on. They were tricky to see at first, but as she worked out where to focus on the eastern horizon she spotted five black figures tracing the bottom of the cloud layer in a tight V-formation. They slid across the sky like ghosts, producing no sound and never coming close enough for her to make out specific details about any one pegasi.

Almost as an afterthought, Meridian dipped her chin to her barding. “I see them, honey. Looks like another reconnaissance flight to me. They don't look interested in anything here. Any idea what they're looking for?"

Her radio crackled. “Snowblind says he can send a courier up the eastern pass and see if anyone on the road knows anything. Fifty caps if it’s nothing, seventy-five if it’s something we should be concerned about. Sound fair?”

Meridian crinkled her lip as the Enclave formation shrank into the western sky. “Tell him if he’ll do a flat twenty-five I’ll show him where we found that refrigerator with the ice-maker.”

A pause. “He says it’s a deal. Pretty sure you just made his month.”

“He’s been trying to get it out of me for longer than that. Hopefully he remembers when it comes time to scratch out backs.” With nothing but a dark smudge to stare at in the distance, Meridian tore her eyes away from the sky and turned to the ponies gathered inside. She glanced at Ginger - or more accurately her horn - and seemed to debate something in her head before speaking again. “When will you be on your way back?”

The stallion’s voice took on a note of concern. “I could leave now if you need me to. The usual caravan didn't show up this week so the vendors aren’t carrying anything new. Is everything alright? Were you seen?”

“Briar, take a breath.” She thumped up onto the mismatched floorboards and gestured a hoof to a red and brown tattered rug at the center of the room, silently mouthing for the four of them to sit down. “Bean and I are fine and no they didn’t see us. But your daughter did make some… friends today. You know that show we listened to a couple nights ago?”

Another pause. “Hightower Radio with Flipswitch, sure.”

Meridian let out a disbelieving sigh. “Well her headline story just sat down in our living room.”

July 16th, 1076

The drive to the test site was possibly the most boring thing Rainbow Dash had ever endured, and that included all the lectures she’d been forced to attend back at the Academy. The trip from Canterlot to the barren badlands of southeast Equestria was not a short drive. Over a solid day of sitting in the back of a motorized carriage with nothing to do but stare out the window and watch the scenery drift by.
Oh boy.

It wasn’t all bad, though. The glass partition that separated the back half of the vehicle from the front offered her and Applejack something close to privacy during the long drive. Cool conditioned air blew in through a pair of vents near their doors, a recent addition the motorized carriage industry had adopted in their continued focus on passenger comfort. The slight chill made Rainbow’s worn flight jacket feel luxuriously warm much in the same way her feathers must have felt around Applejack’s shoulders. With tires mutedly droning against a river of bright new concrete, they spent much of the time chatting.

“You know,” Rainbow had said as Canterlot faded behind them. “I could fly us there in half the time.”

Applejack had just settled into her smooth leather seat and smirked. “And you know just how I feel about flying.”

She’d rolled her eyes at that, still never quite understanding why some ponies feared something that was as natural as breathing. She knew not to push the issue too hard with Applejack, but she also knew she could get away with a little nudge. “You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than you do being dropped by a pegasus. Especially me.”

Applejack snorted at the self-aggrandizing postscript and took off her wide-brimmed hat, reached across her seat and plopped it unceremoniously over Rainbow’s mane. She gave it a firm wiggle with the flat of her hoof just to make sure it stayed put.

“Ain’t a matter of statistics, Dash. I know you’d never drop me, but there’ll always be that lizard part of my brain that goes nuts when I see the ground pull away.”

She shrugged, adjusting her mane beneath her new hat. “Maybe Celestia has another alicorn potion lying around.”

A wry laugh bubbled out from the earth pony, a soft noise richly flavored with her family’s accent. “Naw, there’s only one Apple I know who fantasizes about having wings and a horn and he’s…”

The words were out of her mouth before she knew it and the mention of Big Mac brought with it a dark cloud that had dulled their conversation for the better part of the next hour. It had been several months since any of them realized he was missing. The first sign something was wrong had come when Twilight asked Applejack if she’d seen him. According to her, he’d become distant after he found out she’d sold the research they’d been working on to Maiden Pharma. It didn’t take long before the royal guard and several of his concerned friends were standing inside his empty apartment at the center of Canterlot, searching for anything that might explain his absence.

What they found had broken Applejack’s heart. His closet had been left open with several articles of winter clothing left in a small heap on the floor. A stack of empty picture frames lay neatly on his dresser, the photos removed and presumably taken with him. Recent entries on his terminal brought up a list of prospective routes north. Everything pointed to the same thing: that Big Mac had chosen to flee north to the Crystal Empire.

It didn’t make sense at first, but then Twilight admitted that Big Mac had confided with her more than once that he was becoming frustrated with the titanic companies that had grown out of Equestria’s industrial boom. Their family’s repeated dealings with Flim and Flam came to mind and it occurred to her that there was a seed of truth to Twilight’s admission. It didn’t take long for that seed to sprout and for the reality of what her only brother must have suffered through in silence to take root.

Whether he made it to the Crystal Empire safely or not, no one seemed to know. Cadence and Shining Armor assured her and Applebloom that neither of them had seen or heard from him nor were they aware he’d made plans to cross the border. In the dead of winter with seemingly no help from anyone, Big Mac had ventured off into the snow with the singular goal of leaving Equestria.

It was as if he’d just ceased to exist.

Applejack had been understandably eager to change the subject. As the highway rose and fell between the forest-shrouded bluffs east of Canterlot, she tapped a hoof against Rainbow’s hip and gestured to the yellow mare seated beside the driver on the other side of the partition.

“Isn’t this trip a little above her pay grade?”

Rainbow frowned at the back of Spitfire’s head and offered a mild shrug in response. “She’s the reason my ministry operates as smoothly as it does. I try to keep her in the loop wherever I can.”

It wasn’t so much a lie as it was an omission of context. At least that was what Rainbow told herself to tamp down the guilt of losing control of her ministry. Spitfire was the only thing standing between her and a sedition trial. When her former instructor caught wind that something important was slated for today, she made it known that she wanted a seat at the table.

Still, lying to Applejack was as painless as swallowing glass.

“That, and I owe her a favor,” she added.

Applejack nodded as if she understood. “Must be one heck of a favor.”

Yet thankfully she didn’t press for details. Applejack, presumably still the Element of Honesty, had given Rainbow her unconditional trust. Somehow that made her feel even worse.

Around what felt close to dinnertime their driver pulled into what he determined to be a “safe” place to eat. That determination wound up being one of the many Red Delicious restaurants that had begun cropping up around Equestria like weeds. Rainbow laughed as Applejack tried to subtly cover her face as a drive-through attendant wearing her cutie mark on his uniform levitated four grease-stained brown paper bags to the driver, but she found her well-intended ribbing turned against her as their dinner was passed back to them along with two sweating cups of fizzing, electric blue liquid.

Cartoonish yellow letters resembling lightning spanned the width of the licensed image of her silhouette. RainBOLT brand soda wasn’t the only endorsement she would come to regret, but the unnaturally blue beverage had become something of a cultural image for single stallions under twenty and not in a flattering way.

Rather than go through the embarrassment of having the driver take them back around and get something nontoxic, she and Applejack shared her sweet tea. With a full stomach and a long night ahead of them, Rainbow settled in and joined Applejack in watching the bluffs pass like waves on a darkening sea.

When she woke, the scenery was much different. The hills were gone, replaced by a flat expanse of sun-cracked soil that she only vaguely recognized from her very first trip down to Appleloosa. She was shaded in part by Applejack's silhouette as the early morning sun began its upward trek just behind her. For a brief moment she forgot that Spitfire or their driver were sitting barely a yard away, and she watched the love of her life doze against the dusty window.

It was another hour until they reached the perimeter of the site. Spitfire tapped the partition with the corner of her aviators and gestured with them through the windshield as the vehicle began to slow.

“Finally,” Rainbow murmured, sitting a little straighter as they rolled toward a gatehouse no larger than a tollbooth. It was guarded by two armed pegasi, neither of which looked happy to be there.

Applejack yawned against the back of her hoof as they came to a stop, and the two waited for the guards to approach their windows. A split second passed as one of the pegasi glanced at Spitfire and stiffened before continuing on to Rainbow. The other stallion approached Applejack’s and the two of them produced a pair of white, plastic pistols from their belts.

Rainbow managed not to roll her eyes as the mare on her side of the car took her temperature, confirmed with a polite nod that she wasn’t a changeling doppelganger, and proceeded back to Spitfire to do the same. With the test site positioned at the very limit of Equestrian territory, they were closer to Chrysalis’s hive than they were the nearest city. One couldn’t be too careful.

Their identities confirmed, the guards waved them through. A few miles later and the checkpoint was little more than a hazy smudge in the morning heat behind them.

“Going to be a barn-burner today,” Applejack noted.

Rainbow groaned, earning a hearty chuckle from the mare.

“Twilight thinks this is the one,” she added, leaning toward her to peer through the windshield. The scaffolding that held the prototype weapon, something Twilight’s ministry was calling the Balefire Bomb, was still many miles away. Even from the bunker it would barely be visible.

Rainbow glanced at her, sensing the return of the foreboding that Applejack couldn’t help but express whenever they were called down for these tests. Three in the last month already and only one detonated with barely enough force to damage its platform. All duds. And yet if the video brought back from the explosion in the Pleasant Hills were to be believed, this balefire stuff had the potential to level cities.

“Hoping for another fizzle?”

Applejack pursed her lips. “You weren’t there for the accident. Of course I am.”

That was fair. As far as anyone seemed concerned, this was a weapon that could potentially end the war by merely existing. Even now she could make out the pillboxes dotting the outermost perimeter of the projected blast radius, their experimental high-speed cameras and sensors positioned for the best angles to capture the full majesty of the bomb. If everything went as Twilight hoped, Vhanna would be receiving a delegation from Equestria carrying footage that would leave them no choice but to offer unconditional surrender.

Applejack, however, had already seen what the bomb could do. On paper the failed M.A.S.T. test had been laid at Trixie’s hooves. Had the ponies in Stable 2 simply been killed, she might have gotten away with supervised reassignment. Maybe a few years in prison to appease anyone who might otherwise object to a light sentence.

But not all the ponies in Stable 2 died. Not entirely. Probes sent into the labyrinth of buckled and warped corridors found… things. The remains of ponies who escaped the worst of the explosion in some far corner of the facility only to be trapped, soaking in whatever airborne residue the detonation had unleashed, and changed. Combined. They weren’t dead, but they weren’t quite alive either. The few ponies who’d seen the footage called them Melts. Once it was determined they weren’t mobile enough to escape the ruins of Stable 2 and would eventually succumb to their condition, they were classified as fatalities and left to their fate. Meanwhile researchers from the Ministry of Magic flocked to the crater to study the nameless invisible substance radiating from the site.

“Something about this just feels…” Applejack shrugged, visibly uncomfortable finishing the sentence aloud. Rainbow waited as she licked her lips and tried again. “It’s like we’re trying to get rid of ants with dynamite.”

“Vhanna’s full of some pretty dangerous ants.”

Applejack winced. “I know. Believe me, I get it.”

Several seconds passed as Applejack gestured feebly toward the barren landscape ahead. A squat rectangle of concrete had formed at the end of the dusty road, familiar to both of them at this point.

“Or maybe I don’t.” Applejack let her hoof drop to her lap and she deflated a little. Rainbow stayed quiet, knowing not to interrupt. “It just feels unnecessary. The zebra lines are already showing signs of breaking now that Twilight’s stimpacks have made their way into the trenches, and last quarter my people developed a M.A.S.T. talisman portable enough to integrate into our P-45 power armor which means we can finally move to the manufacturing stage. We’re already in a position to start pushing into the Vhannan heartland.”

She sighed. “I know how much Twilight loves to go above and beyond, but… this doesn’t feel like something the good guys would do.”

Before Rainbow could respond, the glass partition in front of them slid down. Spitfire half-turned in her seat until one honey-colored eye gazed at Rainbow from behind her aviators. At the same time their driver began to slow the car, tires crunching over parched soil as they rolled the last few yards to the bunker.

Among the wingful of ponies milling outside the protective concrete cylinder was a familiar stallion wearing his signature white collar and black tie. His sunrise mane would have been unmistakable even if Rainbow hadn’t already met him in person after he sent her his proposal for SOLUS.

Spitfire’s brow ticked up a faint degree. “Did I remember to tell you Jet Stream would be attending?”

“No,” Rainbow said, feeling her jaw stiffening as Jet smiled recognition toward her window and lifted a feather in polite greeting. She lifted one of her own in response even as she scrambled to understand why he was here at all. “Twilight was pretty clear she didn’t want civilian eyes on this test.”

“Twilight was the one who invited him.” Spitfire gave her a puzzled smile as if she were surprised Rainbow hadn’t been made aware.

It was everything Rainbow could do to keep herself from reaching into the front of the car and throttling her. Each day that went by, her ministry fell further and further out of her control. At this point she had accepted it would happen, but Spitfire was getting dangerously close to flaunting that reality in front of the last pony she wanted to find out.

“Goes to show you can buy your way into anything with enough bits.” Applejack sank into her seat a little, regarding Jet through the glass with an unimpressed frown.

Spitfire shrugged. “Ninety-nine percent of the satellites orbiting the planet have his name on them for a reason. Equestria needs a reliable delivery system for this weapon and he’s offering one in exchange for a research partnership with the Ministry of Technology. He scratches our back, we don’t stab his.”

Applejack gaped at her, then Rainbow. “Why am I only just hearing about this now? I don’t care what he’s offering, I ain’t working with him! There’s a whole drawer in Rarity’s office filled with evidence he and his daughter…”

A muffled pop cut her off as Spitfire unlocked her door and cracked it open. Dry desert air and the murmurs of ponies gathered nearby silenced any accusation Applejack might have thought to give voice. Like it or not, Jet Stream was a critical pillar of Equestrian industry whose influence stretched further than a potential gift of much-desired rocketry. His laissez faire lifestyle made keeping details of his complicated family life relegated to the back pages of notoriously untrustworthy tabloids a constant undertaking for the Ministry of Image, but thus far Rarity had managed to keep him out of trouble despite his best efforts to get into some.

Spitfire smiled, knowing Applejack wouldn’t undo all that work on such a critical occasion.

“I think you’ve been reading too many magazines in the checkout lane.” She pushed her door the rest of the way open and swung a hoof out onto the sunbaked terrain. “Come on. Ponies are waiting on us.”

Rainbow watched Applejack stare daggers after Spitfire as she dropped out of the carriage and made her way toward the group outside the bunker.

“I know she’s your friend and all,” Applejack muttered, “but if she talks to me like that again I’ll kick her square in the teats.”

Rainbow winced at the mental image. “Please don’t,” she said. “I still have to work with her.”

Applejack made a noise in her throat that sounded like a grudging acceptance of terms. She blew out a slow breath to bring her boil down to a mere simmer and popped open her door.

They piled out into the uncomfortably warm morning air and made their way toward the bunker while the driver turned the carriage back the way they’d come. Several eyes turned briefly toward them, but only Jet’s and Rarity’s lingered as they joined the small gathering aboveground. More voices echoed up the cement stairs that descended into the bunker proper.

“Applejack, dear!” Rarity trotted toward them with the professionally honed smile of a mare who knew their arrival would be good enough reason to end the conversation that had been boring her up until now. “You finally managed to get her into a carriage! I thought I’d never see the day!”

Rainbow felt her neck flush as Rarity made a small show of kissing each of Applejack’s and her own cheeks. She could smell the burnt odor of cigarette smoke on Rarity’s breath as she went through the motions.

“The seating downstairs is the same as the last time, so we won’t need the dress rehearsal.” She took a step back and let out a conspiratorial roll of her blue eyes. “With any luck this will be the last time I have to drag everyone out here. I made Twilight promise me a successful test today.”

Applejack chuckled as she led them down the stairs. “Heck, who knew that’s what we were missing this whole time?”

Rarity’s smile touched the corners of her eyes and it was infectious. In a world that often felt alien to what she’d known growing up, Rainbow took comfort in knowing Rarity could still tee up a joke at her own expense. Leaving Spitfire to rub elbows with Jet, they descended the last steps into the observation bunker.

Solid concrete formed a single, sweeping wall of grey that began at the heavy steel bulkhead the three of them passed through and ended at a narrow viewing slit cut through the forward quarter of the cylindrical room. The thick layer of wire-reinforced glass that filled the cut gave them a thin but unobstructed view into the test range beyond. If Rainbow squinted hard enough she knew she’d be able to make out the tiny dark filament of scaffolding standing out in the desert with its deadly cargo perched at its apex.

A caged light fixture clung to the center of the ceiling, staining the walls with a yellowish tinge. Rarity led them past a uniformed mare speaking quietly into a radio, but not so quietly that Rainbow couldn’t hear her and Applejack’s names being announced. Fluttershy and Twilight had already found their seats at the front of two rows of chairs positioned at the rear half of the bunker. Pinkie, unsurprisingly, had found another reason to remain absent.

Twilight acknowledged their arrival with a nod toward their assigned seating beside her. “Same as last time. The test will start after everyone’s under shelter.”

Good to see you too, Rainbow thought.

Rarity peeled away to bring in the group outside while Rainbow and Applejack took their seats. On the other side of Twilight, Fluttershy leaned forward and smiled a silent greeting. Rainbow smiled back, trying for once to push away the guilt that had dogged them since Gilda’s death. Fluttershy’s plan to advance Vhannan solar research had backfired so spectacularly that her hard-fought self-confidence had been shredded as a result.

“I thought we agreed you would leave that in Canterlot.”

Rainbow looked at Twilight and realized she was addressing her. Her friend’s eyes were tilted down toward the Element glinting behind the open zipper of her jacket.

“Guess I forgot.”

She watched Twilight’s expression darken at her dismissal. “You for-”

“Rainbow Dash!”

From the bunker door, an orange and magenta mare decked in a slim-fitting black suit coat made a beeline to where they sat. The shining brass gear of Stable-Tec’s new logo caught the bunker’s light on her lapel.

Rainbow grinned up at Scootaloo and held up her hoof. The businessmare and lifelong fan didn’t hesitate to thump it with her own before hurrying to the row of seats behind them.

As Rarity ushered in the rest of the observers, mostly project techs and members of their various ministries, Rainbow turned to whisper over her shoulder. “Think it’ll pop this time?”

Scootaloo waited as ponies filed in front of her to take their seats, then leaned forward. “I’m hoping so. We have some new wall sections set up around the test range that should in theory hold up better than Stable 1 did during the accident.”

Frowning, Applejack leaned back a little. “I thought that’s the Stable we were in.”

“It was. The shockwave cracked most of the welds on the northern wall, though. We had to run pumps for two weeks just to keep the groundwater from flooding the lower levels while the ruptures were sealed. If there’s a silver lining to what happened back in January, it’s that we know the prototype Stables were fundamentally flawed from the beginning. Better late than never.”

Curiosity overrode concern for the politely distracted eyebrows from the ponies sitting nearby. “Flawed how?”

Scootaloo hesitated, mindful of the ears around her. “As in we were thinking too short-term. I designed the Stables to be a temporary shelter should the zebras ever reach Equestria. After witnessing the Pleasant Hills accident, seeing that we intend on weaponizing what happened there… it’s undeniable Stable-Tec needs to prepare for something on a much longer timeline.”

Rainbow turned in her chair, causing the feet to scrape the cement. “So less of a bomb shelter and more of a siege holdout? I’m not sure many ponies would be excited to spend their summer underground.”

Scootaloo winced, but said nothing. Her eyes were saying plenty.

She knew that look. “Worse?”

Scootaloo nodded, glancing down the row at Twilight. The alicorn had been pulled into a quiet conversation with Rarity. A clipboard and a pen hovered in the air between them. Scootaloo subtly gestured toward Twilight with one of her too-small wings.

“Her ministry’s not saying anything official, but my people are confident that the Pleasant Hills explosion released some kind of toxin. We’ve taken soil samples from the immediate area and there’s nothing. No mites, no insects, not a living microbe. Completely barren. We had to stop sending ponies to the crater site because they come back spitting up blood, even the unicorns. Their shields just pop when they get too close and their magic just… stops.”

Scootaloo chewed her lip for a moment, shaking her head. “All the data we’ve collected is bad. If the zebras get their hooves on a weapon like this… if they find a way to use it on us? The half-life we're measuring on this toxin is one to two generations at least. We’re looking at agricultural collapse. Mass starvation. Equestria could…”

She stopped herself, realizing in time she was inches from saying something that could land her in a cell. She took a breath and composed herself.

“If the worst were to happen, we might be looking at centuries under heavy shelter, not seasons.”

A few nearby ministry attendees briefly glanced at Scootaloo, causing a lull in the surrounding conversation that lasted long enough to draw a look of interest from Rarity and Twilight. As the busibodies eventually turned back to their original threads of gossip and the murmur of voices rose back to something approaching normalcy, Rainbow tried to think of an inoffensive way to tell Scootaloo she had somehow left the realm of things that were real and dived head first into bad science fiction.

“Well,” she said, knowing how hollow the words sounded as they tumbled from her mouth. “Your heart’s in the right place.”

Watching Scootaloo’s reaction was like seeing a flower close its petals for the night. She blinked once, nodded stiffly, and smoothed the wrinkles from her suit jacket as she sat back in her chair.

Regret settled in Rainbow’s gut as if she’d swallowed ice, but before she could think of something to say to smooth things over Rarity’s voice pierced the air.

“Ladies and gentlecolts, your attention if you please.”

Dozens of eyes turned to the alabaster mare who now stood at the front of the bunker. Beside her stood a tiny, mottled stallion wearing one of the crisp suits that denoted him as a member of the Ministry of Image. A tiny blue diamond glittered on his lapel, further branding him as her personal staff. Beside him hovered a bulky camera fixed to a silver tripod, its lens pointed at the seated crowd.

Rarity allowed them a moment to notice the stallion before resuming. “You have all read and signed your MoI Etiquette Agreements prior to being given clearance to attend this test. That being said, I will remind you all that every aspect of this event is historical in nature and will be recorded. If at any point during the test you feel the need to use language that is profane, unpatriotic,” her eyes slid toward Jet Stream, who smiled back at her. “Or seditious, I strongly advise you to think twice.”

She let her words sink in before looking to Twilight, who simply nodded. On an unseen cue, the camerapony backed against the far wall and began setting up his tripod. Rainbow was well aware his wasn’t the only recording device in the room, nor the most sophisticated, but having a lens aimed at them would provide a more tangible reminder they were being observed than the little pinhole devices rimming the cylindrical bunker.

As with the three failed tests before, Rarity watched the enlisted ponies at the entrance seal the bulkhead door. The radio operator near them tapped her hoof twice into the cement.

“The test will proceed in two minutes. At ten seconds, remember to turn fully away from the observation window or shield your eyes completely in the crook of your foreleg. You will be told when you can safely look. Those of you with magic may feel nausea and will be temporarily unable to cast after the test. These symptoms are normal and will wear off within a few days. Any pegasi present are advised not to attempt cloudwalking during the same period of time. Earth ponies should be fine.”

A smatter of chuckles rippled through the room. Applejack’s chest rose and fell with an annoyed sigh.

The radio operator spoke up. “One minute.”

From the back, Jet Stream asked, “Anyone remember to bring popcorn?”

Another ripple of quiet laughter from the more senior members of the ministries, including Spitfire beside him. Rarity shot him a look that could make sand sweat. He maintained his perfect smile even as he lifted his hooves to reassure her he was done.

At thirty seconds, sirens began to wail outside. The mare beside the now sealed door turned up her radio until the hiss of amplified static joined the klaxons. A stallion’s voice came over the airwaves.

“Twenty seconds. Confirm all personnel are secured.”

A mare’s voice replied on the same channel. “Confirmed.”

“All personnel secure,” the stallion repeated. “Fifteen seconds.”

Several chairs behind Rainbow squeaked as ponies began turning away from the viewing slit. Before she covered her own eyes, she looked down the row at her friends. At the far end Fluttershy had practically gone fetal in her seat, trembling through the final seconds. Twilight and Rarity were among those who chose to turn away completely, eyes pressed shut and faces calm.

“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.”

Applejack stared back at Rainbow, her face a mix of apprehension and sadness. This was the culmination of an accident that had claimed the lives of some of the most promising researchers within her ministry and ruined the career of an ambitious unicorn she’d seen real goodness in. Now they were here, once again seeing if they could reproduce those destructive forces.

“Five.”

Forces that Scootaloo believed had the power to destroy Equestria.

“Four.”

Applejack shielded her eyes. Rainbow did the same.

“Three.”

Fluttershy whimpered.

“Two.”

Ponies held their breath.

“One.”

A moment passed. Nothing.

Another.

And another.

Then, light.

Gasps rippled through the bunker and for a split second Rainbow thought she’d accidentally opened her eyes. She could see her foreleg covering her face. Confused, she squeezed her eyes shut more tightly. The view didn’t change and she understood what she was seeing. Her bones. Veins. Arteries. Everything that made her Rainbow Dash exposed before her in front of a glowing sphere of impossibly bright light far beyond.

A startled shout went up behind her. Scootaloo, she realized, unprepared for what she was seeing. Unable to process the reality of peering through herself as well as the ponies seated in front of her.

After the light came a heat unlike anything she had ever felt. It was as if she were being poured through a glowing hot sieve. An almost unbearable warmth passed over and through her skin, swarming down into every inch of her body before dissipating just as quickly.

“Everyone, it’s safe to look.” Hard as she tried to mask it, Rarity’s voice carried an unmissable tremor. “Please remain seated until the shockwave pa-”

The leading edge of the blast struck the bunker with enough force to scare Rarity’s last word into a startled shriek. Rainbow shouted something that would have to be edited out as the rush of air punched her eardrums hard enough to hurt. She winced toward the viewing slit but all she could make out was a greenish haze of dust.

Confusion began to take hold among the gathered visitors.

“Was that supposed to happen?”

“I can’t see anything!”

“Does anyone else taste that?”

The complaints grew more agitated as dust continued to collect against the sliver of glass. Rainbow felt a pang of panic run through her as her thoughts conjured up images of being buried alive, and she stood up, wings held open on pure reflex. Applejack was beside her just as quickly, muzzle warming the cup of her ear.

“It’s okay, sugar. I'm right here. Take a deep breath.”

She took several.

“Everyone, please!” Twilight’s clarion voice cut through the growing panic like a knife. “You are all safe! We will be opening the bunker for outside viewing in a moment! Please form a line at the door and for the love of Celestia remember that you are being recorded!”

If Twilight was losing her composure it meant that the footage was already unusable for the general media. Nobody wanted to see members of the government screaming in panic in the face of their own weapon. Or maybe they would. Probably they would.

A puff of dust filtered through the door as it was pulled open. Rainbow followed Applejack up the stairs, smacking her mouth at the sudden unpleasant taste of metal.

One by one, their eyes were drawn up to an emerald sky. Thunder shuddered in their chests. Wind drawn back into the vacuum clawed at their hooves, urging them toward the terrible green maelstrom that burned away the clouds.

It mushroomed into the world like the clawing arm of an ancient deity. Scootaloo was right.

They had harnessed Death.

Rainbow opened her mouth enough to whisper something Gilda used to say, back when she was still alive. “Oh my...”

“...god that still feels weird.”

Rainbow sat up on her mattress - Aurora’s mattress - and pressed her eyes into her matted and greying feathers. It surprised her how strongly Blue sometimes clung to her as she came back to herself, like a passenger floundering at the side of a lifeboat who didn’t understand how close they had come to capsizing it. There was a moment when feral instinct began to give way to rational thought, where simple emotions melded with deeper context and everything felt like she was living in a lucid dream.

Or at least that’s how she would have described it if she really wanted to. Right now all she knew was that she was back, and she needed to pee.

A familiar voice hummed a soft chuckle from her compartment door. “That didn’t last long.”

She dropped her wing to her side and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Sledge lay on the floor beneath the door’s card reader, his tree trunk legs tucked under his chest as he looked up at her from an open book in front of him. Rainbow recognized her old Friendship Journal and felt an urge to snatch it away from him, close its pages and protect it.

Sledge smiled at her, using one of his feathers to gently turn the brittle page. She decided it was probably safer with him anyway.

Stretching her legs until they shivered, she crossed the compartment to the closet-sized bathroom. The toilet waited just around the tiled entryway huddled in the corner next to a spartan sink and mirror. Not even a door to close for privacy, she mused. If Scootaloo were alive, she’d lay into her for the oversight.

The memory of the young Crusader felt too fresh to be two centuries old. She sighed, flicked the remains of her tail aside and sat down. Biology took over from there.

“I can tell,” she said, referring to Sledge’s previous observation. “Did she even sleep while I was away?”

Her abrupt trek to the toilet hardly phased him. “Only for an hour or so. Blue spent most of the time staring at Opal.”

A third voice chimed in. “She was mostly interested in the terminal screen. You bite hard, by the way.”

Rainbow went rigid, the presence of the Stable’s head of I.T. startling a jet out of her. She could have cared less what noises Sledge overheard but another mare was an entirely different story, especially one who she barely knew. She must have breezed right by her without noticing she was in the room, though in her defense Opal wasn’t the largest pony by any measure. A lot of that had to do with her age. When Sledge introduced her that morning, Rainbow assumed she was meeting his grandmother.

She winced at her reflection in the tiles across from her, resigned to finishing what she started. “Sorry Opal, I didn’t know you were here.” Then something occurred to her. “Wait, why are you still here?”

A mirthful laugh trickled in from the main room. “It ain’t the smell, I can tell you that!”

Rainbow put her head in her hooves and swatted the flush handle with her good wing. Could ghouls die of embarrassment? If so, she was ready.

“Oh pfft.” She didn’t have to be able to see Opal to know she was waving her off. “It’s just nature. Reason I’m still here, oh, five hours later than I should be is because you made something of a mess of your user profile before I could even meet ya. D’you know how long it takes to reset permissions for a ministry mare?”

Rainbow understood exactly half of what she had just said. “Five hours?”

“More’n that, dearie. I still haven’t checked to see whether anyone out there noticed. You certainly do live up to your reputation as the troublemaker.”

There was a note of levity to her voice that reassured Rainbow she wasn’t in any real trouble. She finished, cleaned herself up and ran her feathers under the tap. When she stepped back into the main room, the old mare sat exactly where she expected, hunched forward in front of the screen with her feathers pecking at the keys like little jackhammers.

As she sat back down on the bed, she noticed Sledge smirking at her from the corner of his eye. She shot him a why didn’t you tell me she was still here expression, to which he simply smiled more broadly and turned the page.

“Sorry if I caused any problems,” she said, resisting the urge to beat Sledge over the head with her book. She turned toward Opal and glanced at the strange language of brackets, letters and gibberish she was writing in. “Is there anything I can help with?”

Opal paused her typing long enough to look back and assess Rainbow. Her colorations, from her dusty blue coat to the almost shimmering spectrum of hues in her mane and tail, was uncannily close to what her own had once been. A white star above Opal’s brow and matching socks that ran up to her knees were the only notable markings that set her apart from the mare she’d been asked to help. A part of Rainbow wanted to ask if Opal was in any way related to Windy Whistles, but then she remembered her mother died a widow.

“You asked me that before, don’t you remember?” When Rainbow shook her head no, Opal didn’t seem fazed at all. Her eyes nearly shut when she smiled. “Ah, well, we tend to get forgetful with old age. S’pose it makes sense since you asked right before you turned into that other version of you. Ornery cuss, that Blue.”

Opal turned back to the terminal, her feathers dropping to the keys once more. As she resumed her work, Rainbow noticed the knot of bandages taped to her shoulder.

“Did I do that?”

The old mare chuckled again. “Only because I reached for that necklace of yours. Ain’t every day you get to see an Element of Harmony even if it’s just the jewelry that used to hold it. It’s my fault for ignoring Sledge. He explained your condition and told me it might take Blue some time to get used to me. Luckily I learned after the first chomp.”

The screen blipped dark for a moment and lit up with a prompt that Rainbow didn’t bother trying to decipher.

“Anyhow,” Opal said, stretching the first vowel as she flicked through a tree of menus. “Cleaning up code is my job. Your job starts once I’m done, but in the meantime I was hoping you could explain how you tricked Millie into building you an account with full security clearance.”

Millie’s little speaker, a much less threatening interface than the black half-globes that once studded the ceilings of the Pillar, loomed overhead. Two centuries later and she still hated the idea of a machine listening in on her.

“By accident,” she admitted, flopping backward on the mattress. “The Millie we had installed back in Canterlot had an override built in so the girls and I didn’t have to stop for every keypad and card reader in the Pillar. I guess it works here, too.”

“Huh,” Opal murmured, her feathers never slowing as they danced over the keys. “That’s mildly terrifying.”

Rainbow and Sledge exchanged glances.

“Terrifying as in…?” Sledge prompted.

“Oh, well.” Opal stopped typing and pivoted in the chair, her lips pursed. “We already know some of the Stables are still connected on some kind of a network, or else we would have lost contact with Aurora a week ago. If Rainbow Dash was able to log in with her old credentials, it could either mean Canterlot survived the bombs or that the Stables are connected to the same network that the Pillar used. Or it could mean Overmare Spitfire added those credentials after she arrived. We really have no way of knowing until we break through her encryptions. And even then, we might not have the full picture.”

Rainbow frowned at the ceiling, trying to understand what exactly Opal was getting at. The aging technician noticed her confusion and sighed.

“Think of it this way,” she said. “We’re in a ship on a very dangerous ocean. Up until recently, our ship has done its job the way we need it to. Now we’ve learned that all the other ships out there might be connected to one another, and we don’t know whether that means we can turn on another boat’s deck lights as a prank or shut off its engine in the middle of a hurricane. Right now we’re pushing buttons hoping none of them cause us to sink.”

Rainbow blinked. “Oh. Yeah, that’s actually kind of terrifying.”

From the far side of the compartment, Sledge spoke with an uncharacteristic delicacy. “When you say someone on the outside could shut off our engine, do you mean like what’s happening with the generator?”

Opal screwed up her face and made a see-saw gesture with her feathers. “Maybe, but maybe not. After you told me what was really happening with the blackouts, I had my department scan the servers for any external communications. There’s nothing there. Not so much as a ping in two hundred and ten years.”

“Two hundred and twenty,” Rainbow corrected.

Opal shook her head and turned back to the terminal, her feathers diving back to their work. “Nope, two hundred and ten is as far back as we’ve been able to look. Whatever Spitfire was up to during that first decade is locked off in that encrypted partition of hers. If anyone did connect to the Stable from the outside, it would have happened in those first ten years. The only other entries to the log come from Aurora’s Pip-Buck after she left.”

Sledge hummed understanding, the Friendship Journal forgotten. “At least that rules out sabotage.”

“Unless Spitfire did something and that’s what she’s trying to hide.”

Opal and Sledge looked at Rainbow, their faces bent with concern.

Sledge was the first to speak. “Alright. For the sake of argument, what would she gain from sinking her own ship?”

Rainbow mulled it over but came up empty. Spitfire was a bitch at best and a monster at worst, but she held one thing above all else: preserving the lives of pegasi. The footage Sledge showed her from that first harrowing day in the tunnel made it clear Spitfire had gone through pains to ensure as many pegasi reached the Stable before any other pony. She would never put in the work only to scrap it all at the first sign of trouble.

“I guess she wouldn’t,” Rainbow admitted.

“Which is why it’s important we get you to work,” Opal said. After a few more keystrokes, she clicked a button that set Aurora’s terminal into a tizzy.

Rainbow watched as the screen went dark, then flickered back to life with the familiar caricature of the Stable-Tec mascot standing in the middle. As the terminal booted up, Opal stood up from the chair and beckoned her over. The little green pony vanished as she took a seat at the terminal, the wood warm against her skin.

“I’m not really sure what it is you want me to do,” she said. “I don’t know the first thing about hacking.”

Opal yipped with a laugh that made Rainbow flinch. “Oh, no no no! I have my ponies up in I.T. for that. What you’re going to help us do is determine which files to focus on. You knew Spitfire better than anyone here, so we’re hoping you might see something that could lead us in the right direction. A message chain, a journal entry, anything that might tell us why she blockaded so much of the primary archive and whether there are more landmines waiting to go off once we start rootin’ around down there.”

Rainbow stared at her reflection in the terminal, suddenly certain she was in way over her head.

“You used to be a big fan of the Daring-Do series,” Opal added. “Think of this like one of those books.”

She tried not to wince. “Can’t I just have Millie override the encryption?”

“Ah, well, no. Encryptions don’t work like that. You either have the original key or you don’t, and we don’t. Neither does Millie. Spitfire was annoyingly thorough about that.” Opal sidled up to Rainbow’s chair and leveled a slender feather toward the topmost line in the glowing list of options on the screen. “Partition 40. Go ahead and open it.”

Rainbow highlighted the line and clicked a key. The screen went dark for a moment before returning a substantially longer list of what at first glance appeared to be gibberish. File names, sizes, formats, an entire spreadsheet of information she didn’t understand. It trailed off the bottom of the screen where a tiny icon informed her she was on page one of nearly three thousand.

Her frown deepened.

“This is everything we found on Spitfire’s partition so far, every bit of it locked down tighter than Blueblood's chastity belt. I know it’s a lot, but you shouldn’t have to worry about the technical junk. All you’re looking at are the file names. Spitfire renamed a lot of them for whatever reason, so focus on the ones which were modified most recently. I think she did it to make whatever we’re looking for harder to identify but she never got around to changing the timestamps.” Opal reached for the keyboard, scooting Rainbow’s feathers out of the way as she clicked back to the main screen. “You can access the Stable’s residential network from here if you get bored. Movies, music, other… entertainment. I know these screens don’t have the best resolution but if you-”

“I got it,” she interjected. “Thanks, I think I can figure it out.”

Opal cleared her throat and tapped the screen again. “Resident mail system is accessible through here. If you find anything you think we should look at, send it up and we’ll get to work on it. Okay?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Great, we’re all set! Sledge, if you need me for anything else, you know where to find me. Otherwise I’ll let you know if we make any more progress.” Opal turned to leave, but stopped to wrap a few feathers around Rainbow’s shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. “Ms. Dash, it really is an honor to meet you. You were my hero when I was growing up. Still are. If there’s anything I can do…”

“You’ll be the first to know. Thanks, Opal.”

The mare made a noise in her throat Rainbow was normally used to hearing from giddy fillies in their teens. She hurried to the door and swiped her badge before disappearing into the busy corridor. Sledge stood in the doorway until it shut, politely blocking the view of a few curious pegasi.

Rainbow spun around in the chair and set her chin against the backrest. “She’s interesting.”

“She’s got stickers of you on her terminal.” He smiled at her as her eyes widened, but the moment was short lived. Rainbow recognized the sag in his shoulders from her years in the ministry. He was tired.

“Want to talk about it?”

He shook his head and sighed. “Can’t. Gotta meet with the Mechanical heads and schedule the next week of blackouts, and then I need to check whether Aurora sent us anything new and start planning for what happens if she doesn’t come back.” He winced at the floor like he’d tasted something bitter. “I’ll have Deputy Chaser bring you dinner in a few hours, okay?”

She nodded and watched him as he fished his keycard from his pocket and turned to line it up with the strip on the wall.

“Hey,” she said.

He stopped.

“Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”

He nodded, slowly. “Dash, if I tell you something, will you promise to keep it between the two of us?”

Rainbow frowned as she sat up on the mattress. “I promise.”

Sledge tapped the edge of his card against the wall, shaking his head. “The generator’s tanking. The ignition talisman is braking so hard now that it’s feeding oscillations into the main rotor. The generator’s going to tear itself apart well before it runs out of juice. We’ve got maybe two weeks. Probably less.”

His forehead connected with the side of the door with a gentle thump.

“I don’t know how to tell Aurora. The Stable doesn’t need more help. It needs a miracle.”

Aurora wiped a film of sweat into the back of her wing and breathed a curse. Ginger glanced to her from the curtain that divided the room, a small smile playing on her lips as she watched her companion work.

In exchange for safe passage and some much needed coffee, the work Meridian put in front of her turned out to be simpler than she expected. Past the curtain that divided the two halves of their peanut-shaped cavern was a surprisingly robust little workshop.

A semi-organized selection of rust-caked tools leaned out from a collection of wooden milk crates lined up along the wall near the curtain. Some still had thick rubber sleeves wrapped around their handles, an accessory Aurora didn’t understand until Meridian suggested she try turning a bare wrench with just her teeth. The thought of chipping a tooth while tightening a bolt made her shudder.

Beyond the tools sat a stout metal work table topped with a small plastic cabinet covered from top to bottom in tiny yellowed trays. Each tray contained a selection of screws, washers, pins and bolts with a respectable variety of dimensions and threadings. A small pile of do-it-yourself repair manuals occupied the other corner of the table, the pages heavily dogeared and marked with labeled nibs of paper. When asked, Meridian admitted that her husband had been trying to teach himself how to fix the problem that had been dogging them for several days now.

That problem sat nestled between six blue plastic water barrels and what Aurora could only generously describe as a terrifying attempt at creating a backup power station. A myriad of cables in varying states of degradation wound their way from at least a dozen carriage batteries sitting atop a second workbench, spliced together to mate the power input of an electric water pump nearly as large as Meridian.

The cast iron pump, unsurprisingly, was broken.

Aurora had dubiously eyed the batteries before turning her attention to the pump itself. It was a similar model to the ones that were regularly cycled down to Mechanical for maintenance, though the bright blue coat of paint she was used to seeing was replaced with a rough patina of orange rust. Were she back in the Stable she would have sent the whole thing over to Recycling to be ground into powder for the fabricators. That wasn’t exactly an option for Meridian, and a deal was a deal.

She went to work while Meridian stood watch, keeping a close eye on her and the rest of her unscheduled company in the other room while Beans kept them entertained. Despite the state of neglect their tools were in they did the job they were designed for, albeit slowly and only after several hard whacks from an old claw hammer. As she twisted what felt like the hundredth heavily rusted bolt from its threading and dropped the socket wrench over the next, she contemplated dragging the entire pump out of the cave and shoving it over the cliff just to see if it might jar a few bolts loose on the way down.

“Celestia’s…” she panted, dredging her brain for something profane enough to match her exhaustion. She leaned on the wrench’s handle and scrubbed the sweat off her brow with the back of her wing, coming up nothing. With a stomp from her hoof, the stubborn bolt cracked through the last of the rust and allowed itself to be ground out of the pump’s housing.

She dropped the bolt into a small pile at her hooves and looked over her shoulder to where Meridian stood. “Finally. Give me a hoof with this?”

The earth pony didn’t argue, and after seeing where the frontmost section of cast iron separated from the rest, she found a ridge to prop her teeth against and helped lift the casing away.

With the pump’s internals exposed, it only took a quick glance for Aurora to confirm her suspicion. The impeller, a glorified scintered steel fan built to pressurize the water it drew into the pump, had decided to fail in spectacular fashion. After two centuries of disuse, one of the impeller’s blades had simply given up and sheared away while the pump was running. The shard of met had lodged itself between the rotating disc and the housing with enough force to bend several of the other blades before killing the entire pump.

Aurora sucked a breath through her teeth and shifted back a few inches so Meridian could see the damage.

The mare frowned before giving Aurora a hopeful look. “Can it be fixed?”

“Not without the right welding equipment and a blueprint for the angle of that broken vane.” She shook her head, knowing this wasn’t the outcome Meridian had expected from their bargain. “You’d be better off replacing the entire part with a new one.”

“And that’s it? It’ll work with a new…”

“Impeller.” She gave the broken disc a jiggle, eyeing the bright slashes of damage to the housing. “I can’t guarantee there won’t be a problem further down the line, but yeah. I think that’s all you need. The tricky bit’s going to be finding one that fits the pump you have. These aren't exactly interchangeable.”

Meridian leaned until her shoulder settled against the rim of the nearest water tank, its murky contents sloshing gently inside. She stared at her party disassembled pump, seeming to consider her options until the water went still again.

She dipped her chin against her collar. “Safe?”

A few seconds passed before the radio coughed static. “Safe.”

Meridian’s chest swelled even as she tried to maintain an air of strength around her guests. “Aurora took the pump apart for you. She says the impeller is broken.”

A pause. “How did she get it open in the first place? That thing’s rusted solid.”

Aurora smirked at the mismatched floorboards and said nothing.

“You probably loosened it up for her, honey. She also says you should have bought that acetylene torch when you had the chance, you dummy.”

Several seconds passed as they waited for a response. In the other room, Beans shouted something about sea monsters as her tiny hooves clattered back and forth across the floor.

“At least we don’t have to replace the whole pump,” Briar conceded, craftily turning the conversation away from himself without acknowledging he’d made any of the mistakes his wife hinted at. “I can make a run down to the Boiler tomorrow morning and see if I can’t salvage one of the others.”

The Boiler? Other pumps? She was so used to living beneath the water table that she hadn’t stopped to consider where they were pulling their water from until now. Out here, the only likely source they could tap into was the groundwater under the valley floor a good quarter mile downhill. Something didn’t make sense.

Her eyes drifted to the bank of batteries on the table next to her and the fat black cable snaking down through a gap in the floorboards beneath them. Something was keeping them charged up, but she hadn’t seen so much as a windpump to explain where that power was coming from.

The curtain rings gently clacked as Ginger cleared her throat to get their attention. She looked ready to collapse, but the tired smile on her face reassured her that the caffeine and Meridian’s high-strung foal in the other room were keeping her far from sleep.

“Come look at this,” she whispered.

Torn between the mechanical puzzle in front of her and whatever was going on beyond the curtain to make Ginger grin like a thief, Aurora put down the wrench and crossed the workshop to where she stood. Meridian said a quick goodbye to Briar and followed close behind.

Ginger held the curtain open and tipped her nose toward the scene that was playing out in the other room. Left alone to the mercy of Beans, Roach and Julip had been forced with differing levels of willingness to take on the roles the little filly imagined for them. Her trunk of costumes lay half-dumped onto the floor and thoroughly rifled through. It took Beans no time at all to relocate her pirate costume, complete with her bladeless paper slicer and eyepatch. She stood atop a wooden chair near the cave’s camouflaged mouth, the handle of her “sword” held out like a conductor’s wand as she directed a mock battle between her ship’s mate and a tentacled beast.

The scarves Beans had worn when they first ran into her now hung around Roach’s neck, one of which had been loosely tied over his right eye as a stand-in for a second eyepatch. Apparently in Beans’ imagination every pirate wore an eyepatch. Strangely enough, it suited him. The “sword” Roach carried - a broken length of broom handle shoved through one of the holes in his foreleg - was so absurd that Aurora’s jaw hung open with an unabashed grin.

Beans hopped up and down on her chair, cheering him on. “Fine work, first mate! Ye nearly have her finished off! Lop off another tentacle and the ship be saved!”

In front of him wobbled Julip, one of her hind legs tucked up against her buttock while the others trailed three heavy woolen socks. The fourth lay on the floor beneath her, evidently the severed tentacle, while she did her best to wave the others menacingly at Roach without falling on her face. A pair even dangled from the ends of her wings, turning her into a vaguely octopoid monster.

“Oh no! She’s rearing up for another attack!” Beans directed.

Taking her cue, Julip lifted a foreleg and took an exaggerated swipe at Roach complete with a trilling noise that she must have thought fit her new role. Beans whooped as Roach swung his impaled foreleg and swiped the sock off Julip’s hoof with the broomstick. Sensing their mock-fight might go on until every one of her fuzzy grey limbs were removed, Julip reeled back in feigned agony and shook off the remaining socks with a theatrically pained reaction to each one’s loss. Her hasty defeat was satisfaction enough for Beans who gave her wings a victorious pump, momentarily lifting her from the chair while Julip collapsed to the boards.

As she let out a guttural death rattle, the Enclave pony finally noticed the three mares smirking at her from the curtain. She flushed, got to her hooves and quickly began picking up the socks strewn around her. “Are you finally done in there?”

Aurora pushed through the curtain with a nod, casually pretending not to have seen what she’d seen. There was nothing she could do for Meridian’s pump without dragging it all the way back home. She eyed the floorboards as she slowly crossed the room, looking for a clue to where the cable hidden beneath them led.

“The pump won’t run without a new impeller, and they don’t have the tools to fix it here.” She frowned at the spot where the floorboards ended and the rocks just inside the netting began. Nothing there. They must have buried the cable to keep it out of sight. Smart. “Briar knows a place where he can find a replacement, so there’s that.”

A glance at her Pip-Buck showed her that their brief detour hadn’t been as brief as she’d hoped. Well over half the day was behind them now, leaving them with four or five hours of good daylight before they needed to choose their next camp.

She absently tapped the ridge of her hoof against the floorboards while Roach helped Beans finish putting away her costumes. A smile crept along her lip as she realized none of them were listening to her. Even Meridian had stopped to watch the post-production cleanup. Julip, keenly aware of the eyes on her, avoided all of them as she tossed her woolen tentacles into the costume trunk. Roach had to give the broomstick wedged through his foreleg a firm twist with his teeth before it came loose, much to Beans’ entertainment.

When the lid of the trunk thumped shut beneath her little wings, Beans gave her mother an expectant grin. Meridian pressed the flat of her hoof against her daughter’s head and did the earth pony equivalent of tousling her mane. The silence that settled in the room made Aurora hesitate to break it. Maybe the wasteland was making her cynical, but something about the simple normalcy of this family made it seem cruel that they had been forced to live in hiding.

Noticing her hesitance, Meridian spoke for her. “Well, let me top off your canteens before we start heading back down. There’s a section of track you’ll want to avoid a ways down just to be safe…”

Beans balked at her mother before turning to Roach. “You’re leaving?”

Unsurprisingly, he seemed prepared for this. He folded his front legs, chitin scratching against the floor as he got down to her level. “We have to. Aurora’s home is in trouble and her family is counting on us to fix it. It wouldn’t be fair to them if we stayed here having fun forever.”

For the first time, Beans scrunched her nose up at Roach and avoided his eyes. “I didn’t say forever. Just until dad got home. Tonight’s gonna be soup night.”

Confused, Roach looked up to Meridian for help.

“Briar’s been teaching her how to cook for herself. We do soups when one of us goes down the mountain to trade.” She sat down beside Beans and nudged her shoulder with the back of her hoof. “Maybe they can visit on their way back from where they’re going. How’s that sound?”

Beans grumped at the floor, unmoved. “Maybe just means no.”

For a filly her age, she knew how to work a crowd. Aurora spotted the glance Beans flicked in her direction before doing the same to Ginger and Julip. A little smirk crossed Aurora’s muzzle as she remembered being that age and doing the same thing, convinced with her own performance just as much as Beans was with hers.

She stole a look back at the grey netting and the imperceptibly dimmer sky behind the thick weave. “How long until Briar gets back?”

The question was directed at Meridian, but Beans answered first. “Mister Scale’s camp is three hours on hoof and twenty minutes by wing. Dad doesn’t fly if he sees Enclave so he’ll walk home.”

Aurora’s eyebrows rose together, impressed at how precisely the little pirate queen had recited the figures from memory. She looked to Meridian who shrugged, but not without a little pride in her eyes.

“Briar should be back in a half hour,” she confirmed.

Thirty minutes was a small price to pay, especially considering the prospect of a hot meal to go with it. Considering the only food the four of them possessed was currently gathering dust at their last campsite thanks to the centaurs, delaying their departure in exchange for a full belly wasn’t the worst trade she could make.

“Alright,” she said, eyeing the workshop behind the curtain. “As long as your mom’s okay with it, we can stick around for a couple more hours.”

Beans gasped and looked up to her mother, hooves dancing excitedly against the floor.

Meridian was quiet for several seconds before slowly nodding, a gesture that drew a barely contained squeal from her daughter. She stood and plodded past the still-glowing stove to one of the cabinets leaned up against the rough stone wall. Lipping open a drawer, she retrieved a stack of browned paper that was neatly sewn together along the top margin by a length of silver wire. A nib of an old pencil lay sandwiched between the papers.

Turning back, she brought the pad of paper to Aurora and dropped it in her open wing.

“Write us a list of tools and equipment you think we need to keep what we have here working and we’ll call that payment for dinner.”

Aurora tugged the pencil free and touched the tip to the top of the first page.

“Sounds like a deal.”

August 2nd, 1076

“You’re actually serious.”

“I wouldn’t be standing here if I weren’t.”

Celestia loomed before them as she often did, comfortably seated in the cushion of her sungold throne atop an ivory dais. Luna’s chair was empty, but not conspicuously so. If she cut her sleep short to attend every important meeting that cropped up during the day, she would never sleep at all.

Besides that, Twilight knew this idea of hers would float better if she only had one princess to contend with.

Her ear twitched at the soft thmp-thmp-thmp-thmp coming from the nervous bouncing of Fluttershy’s hind leg. When Twilight proposed the idea to her, Fluttershy had enthusiastically jumped on board, so much so that Twilight worried she might go forward with it with or without Celestia’s approval. There had been a desperate glint behind those baby blue eyes that she couldn’t remember ever seeing before. A hunger, as if by doing this Fluttershy would finally prove something to herself.

Now, standing before the Princess of the Sun, that ambitious energy was swamped with anxiousness. Twilight opened her wing, tapping Fluttershy’s nervous leg with her feathers until she noticed and fell still.

Celestia watched the brief exchange with indifference, her focus sharply aimed at the proposition brought before her. “Twilight, when I gave your ministry a blank check to develop the balefire weapon, it came with the expectation that it would be used as just that. A weapon.”

Twilight nodded. Little over two weeks earlier, the six of them had stood on the cracked dirt of the Equestrian south, heads craned skyward as clouds shriveled against the wrath of their terrible creation. Figures from the test were still trickling in and the sheer magnitude of destructive energy unleashed by the prototype balefire talisman measured in numbers she struggled to put into context. There was no question. One way or the other, this bomb would end the war.

Yet as that emerald fireball climbed above her, she couldn’t help but remember what Spike had said to her between the shelves of his library.

“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you have to.”

When she walked into Fluttershy’s office at the heart of the Ministry of Peace, she wondered if it was already too late. The balefire bomb had been built, detonated and thoroughly documented. The genie was out of the bottle, and there was no such thing as an airtight ship. Word would spread. Whispers would reach Vhanna and the zebras would know technology like this could exist. It wasn’t a matter of if they found out, but when. The question now was how Equestria intended to tell them.

“I’m not suggesting we discard the balefire bomb as a potential weapon.” She held her breath as Celestia lifted a questioning brow. When the interruption Twilight was expecting didn’t come, she soldiered on. “What I’m proposing is that we show Vhanna footage from the test as a peaceful demonstration of what we’re capable of. Fluttershy still has her contact in Adenia…”

“Ambassador Abyssian,” Celestia noted, evidently deciding on the interruption after all. “I’ve heard rumors that he pulls more strings within the Vhannan monarchy than he lets on.”

Twilight blinked, turning to Fluttershy. The yellow pegasus was just as confused as she was. If Celestia had a point or if she was just being cryptic for her own enjoyment, they would probably never know. Twilight tried to ignore it.

“He and Ambassador Zecora have maintained something of a professional friendship since their first meeting last year, however a regular complaint that comes up during her trips is that Abyssian is still awaiting an invitation to visit Equestria.”

Fluttershy piped up beside her. “He thinks we don’t trust him.”

Celestia’s eyes slid toward her. “That is because we don’t. I hope you aren’t about to suggest we bring him to our homeland for the sole purpose of showing him the most heavily classified weapon in our arsenal.”

Twilight took a step forward and gently cut in front of Fluttershy before she could blunder into Celestia’s trap. “We wouldn’t be showing him the balefire talismans or acknowledging the origin of the weapon’s technology. He would be brought in under preapproved restrictions and shown the test footage once Rarity’s censors have had adequate time to redact any sensitive information. Every step of his visit would be tightly controlled.”

The sound of water babbling down the pools on either side of the dais’s carpeted ramp slowly dominated the vast throne room while Celestia stared down at her in quiet consideration. It was obvious that at least on principle she was against this visit, but Twilight had a suspicion that the prospect of bringing a prominent Vhannan official to Equestria wasn’t as bitter a pill as the princess pretended it to be. Not if the intention was to rub his nose in her success.

“I’ve seen the footage from the test the six of you attended,” Celestia said, her tone taking on a subtle, softer shift. “My advisors tell me the fireball was over ten miles tall. I would have guessed much less judging by what I saw on the screen. Why would Abyssian think any different? No one in Vhanna would blame him to assume you’re lying.”

“We’ll take him to see the crater.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could reconsider them. It was too late now. Celestia’s expression was already darkening at the suggestion but Twilight pushed forward, refining the plan as she spoke. “We could take the chariot and have the Wonderbolts take us through a few fly-overs so he can get a true sense of scale. Zecora could come with and give him numbers on the blast wave, thermal radius and maybe mention a few prospective Vhannan targets during the trip.”

Fluttershy winced but didn’t voice her objection.

Celestia was less moved. “And you’re confident this show-and-tell of yours will be enough of a deterrent for Abyssian to convince Vhanna to surrender?”

“What do we stand to lose from trying?” She approached the bottom of the ramp and set her hoof on its gentle slope. One of Celestia’s slender eyebrows lifted at the gesture. “If it works and Abyssian can persuade the zebras that surrendering voluntarily is preferable to what we would do to them if they don’t, Equestria wins. Vhanna would have to let us take back control of the oilfields and we will have bought the time we need to invest in sustainable energy.”

Even though Twilight couldn’t see it from where she stood, she could tell Celestia’s hackles were rising at that last suggestion. For years she had sought ways to stamp out Jet Stream Industries’ insatiable pursuit of solar power and every time she thought she’d put the issue to bed, a new shell corporation or branch of research tied to that stallion’s name cropped up like an unkillable weed. A thousand years ago she would have burned him to ash and have been done with it, but these days the world was more complicated. There were rules of society that her subjects looked to her to embody, and Jet Stream wouldn’t be the last pony to use them to get his way.

Twilight knew better than to admit she had a deep respect for his tenacious pursuit of knowledge, or to endorse his solar initiative in Celestia’s throne room. Contracting his company to share its understanding of rocketry with the ministries was as close to an umbrella as she could provide him, but it was a strong one. Equestria needed a reliable delivery system if they intended to use this bomb, but the fact that Celestia still allowed her to speak suggested she might be making progress in a different direction.

“The Ministry of Technology has made some refinements to the original M.A.S.T. project to make their ignition talismans less… volatile.” She tried not to think too much about who had caused that first talisman to run wild. “I don’t think it’s too far-off to suggest we could be powering our current infrastructure with talisman-generated electricity within the next half decade.”

Celestia grunted. “That sounds optimistic.”

“This whole endeavor is optimistic,” she countered, careful to keep her tone as agreeable as she could manage. “If Vhanna surrenders now, Equestria could enter a new age of prosperity. If they don’t, well, we can always reserve the right to provide them with a live demonstration.”

“But you don’t want that to happen.”

“I…”

She hesitated, catching the light accusation in the princess’s tone. Any ordinary pony would be risking accusations of treason for suggesting the zebras be given a chance to decide their fate, but Twilight wasn’t an ordinary pony. She left that life behind when she accepted her wings and burned a significant bridge with Celestia when she declined the responsibilities that came with them. What little favor she held with Celestia was being spent on, of all things, a plea for mercy for the zebras she’d spent the last five years helping to kill.

“I’m trying to think of the long term ramifications, is all.” She tried not to smile at how strange it felt to be acknowledging her extended lifespan in front of Fluttershy. “The playing field won’t be the same a thousand years from now and Vhanna’s ancestors might one day find themselves in a position to do to us what we choose to do to them. If we give them a chance to surrender now, they might extend us the same courtesy then.”

Celestia narrowed her eyes at her. For a breath it looked as if she might ignite her horn and dispense immediate punishment, but then her expression softened. With a sigh she turned her gaze to the stained glass murals framed by the white pillars of a palace she’d spent a millennium ruling from alone.

“Don’t ever let the press hear you say something like that,” she murmured.

Twilight pressed her lips together and waited.

“You would have made a good princess. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that before, but it’s true.” She seemed to sag in her throne, not a minor feat considering the way she sat. “This war has made some of your rough edges even rougher, but I can’t say I’m not glad to see a little bit of the old Twilight beneath it all. This balefire weapon is your baby. If you think Vhanna deserves a chance at a peaceful surrender, I won’t stand in your way on one condition.”

Her chest swelled. “Name it.”

“Vhanna will have one month from Abyssian’s return home to issue their surrender. If they fail to do so by the deadline, we will attack targets within sight of Adenia until their citizens hang their king’s corpse from the palace walls. Do you think he’ll understand?”

Twilight licked her suddenly dry lips and nodded, trying to focus on anything but the rush of cold that washed her heart. Reality never hit softly, and this time it felt like a sledgehammer. She turned to Fluttershy. She knew Abyssian more than any of them.

“It’s your call,” she said.

Fluttershy swallowed, her voice barely a whisper.

“Yes. I think he will.”

“You’re joking.”

“It’s true.”

“Seriously?”

“Pinkie promise.”

Aurora accepted a bowl of steaming broth from Meridian and the others watched with amusement as Ginger peppered Briar with question after question. His arrival had been as unassuming as he appeared; a cream coat mottled with flecks of caramel over his shoulders, all wrapped tightly in dull brown road leathers that looked like they’d been picked off some dead and forgotten wanderer. With the exception of the shock of orange that ran through his otherwise mud colored mane... he looked completely forgettable.

Given how much care he’d taken to hide his wings beneath his attire, she guessed that was exactly the look he was going for.

When Briar nudged through the netting, he regarded Ginger, Roach, Julip and Aurora one by one as if he were assessing potential threats. At the time, Beans had been showing the four of them recipes she had marked from one of her purportedly favorite cookbooks. The book’s binder rings had long since rusted away and had been carefully replaced by a trio of plastic zip ties. Its cover, however, had been remarkably well preserved for its age.

A single water stain marred the top of the bubblegum pink cover, reaching just far enough to discolor the back of Pinkie Pie’s mane. The Minister of Morale stood frozen in mid-laughter behind a gigantic bowl of cookie dough and a batter-clogged eggbeater inexplicably held in the curl of her mane. The title of the book, Fun Confections and Foal-Friendly Foods, wrapped around the mixing bowl with the word “fun” spelled out in the batter with chocolate chips.

Briar’s arrival put an end to the cavalcade of desserts Beans hoped to someday make. The book snapped shut like a gunshot and just as quickly Beans was hurtling across the cave to launch herself into her father’s legs. Meridian, who had been rummaging through old bottles of spices in their salvaged cabinets, smiled at the helpless stallion as he endured the assault. Once his daughter had burned through the worst of her excitement, he gave her his saddlebags and sent her back to the cabinets to unpack the meat and vegetables he’d traded for.

He went down the line of introductions and admitted that thanks to their radio he had the advantage of knowing more about them than they did him. Julip was mercifully quiet during the first round of small-talk, doing nothing to expose herself for who she was but staying nearby so as not to seem like the odd mare out. As Meridian helped Beans prepare dinner, the five of them gathered near the netting where a pleasant breeze wrapped around the entrance. The short step from the plank flooring to the rough-cut stone beneath provided a makeshift bench behind the netting. Aurora didn’t hesitate to sit and Ginger plunked herself down beside her. Roach, per usual, lay on the cool stone beside the netting. Julip hovered nearby, occasionally peeking her head outside to monitor the sky. Briar took notice from his place on the far end of the planks, seeming to approve.

As the scent of sizzling meat and something close to onions wafted out into the afternoon air, he asked why they were travelling so far. It was a question Meridian had already posed to them during their walk from the passenger train and undoubtedly passed on to Briar, but Aurora found she didn’t mind the polite cross-examination. They were, after all, intruders into the pocket of safety he and Meridian had literally carved out for themselves.

When Aurora explained that they were headed to Fillydelphia, he asked what for. Painfully aware of Julip’s sudden interest in the conversation, she only admitted that there was a crisis at Stable 10 and that she had left to find a fix somewhere in Stable-Tec HQ. Briar didn’t try to hide that he’d noticed the casual omission of exactly what the crisis was or how she expected to fix it, but he didn’t ply her for more information either.

Thankfully, neither did Julip. It wouldn’t do well for her supposed fellow Stable resident to start asking what they were doing out here.

Seeing that his line of questioning had taken them into territory he must have assumed was sensitive, he turned the topic around and informed them that he and his family had not only been to Fillydelphia but that they’d called it home up until seven years ago when they moved into the mountains.

Meridian never took her eyes off Beans as she asked Briar to tell them what they used to do while they lived there. She spoke with a half-chuckle as if she were asking him to reveal a harmless but embarrassing family secret. Briar took a deep breath and smirked at Aurora.

“Meridian and I used to be raiders.”

Aurora’s attention turned to Roach, whose eyes had widened but who also didn’t seem ready to leap to his hooves for a fight. Julip didn’t seem impressed at all, her gaze still focused on the clouds she could see from where she’d parked herself next to Roach.

But Ginger’s reaction surprised her the most. She looked intrigued, as if she’d just uncovered a rare and unique breed of spell. While Ginger dove into her inquisition, Meridian tapped Aurora on the shoulder to draw her attention to the wooden bowl held carefully between her teeth by the very edge of its rim. Aurora mouthed a thank you as she accepted it, not wanting to miss a word.

“Pinkie promise,” Ginger repeated as she took a bowl from Meridian. “At the risk of sounding crass, you two don’t strike me as the raider type.”

“Thanks hon,” Briar murmured, shrugging his wings out from under his leathers to take the next bowl. “We weren’t your typical raiders.”

Aurora brought the bowl to her lips and took a tentative sip as she listened. The soup had the color of muddy water, making it a challenge to identify the various lumps bobbing on its surface, but the rich, earthy flavor that filled her mouth and filled her nose roused a sound of pleasure from her throat that briefly stifled the conversation. It was like the soup she’d tasted at the Brass Bit back at her Stable but on an order of magnitude more flavorful.

Briar blew over the surface of his dinner before taking a sip of broth, sparing a smile for Meridian as she distributed the rest of the bowls. Soon, Beans had plopped herself down beside her father with a dish of her own. Aurora didn’t notice as she happily tipped her bowl back again, this time fishing for the chunks that flavored the dish. A knob of chopped carrot crunched between her teeth followed by a tender piece of meat that tasted vaguely familiar. She arched a questioning brow at Meridian which, by some miracle, she understood the meaning of.

“Vegetable beef soup,” she said as she sat down on the planks between Aurora and her husband. “It’s supposed to be a stew, but that takes too much firewood to make.”

Aurora bit through a chunk of fresh potato, too in love with the meal to care that it hadn’t had quite enough time to soften in the pot. It was like eating straight out of the gardens back home, something she hadn’t done since her father had caught her when she was little and given her the scolding of her young life. Eating raw from the gardens was tantamount to stealing from the entire Stable. It was part of why she’d drained her savings buying apples before she left rather than going to where she knew they grew. There wasn’t much point in saving Stable 10 if she’d spend the rest of her days scrubbing debris screens in Sanitation.

“Eh’s so guhd,” she groaned around a second mouthful.

Meridian chuckled and tested the broth herself. “It’s just soup, hon, but I’m glad you like it.”

“It’s certainly wonderful,” Ginger agreed, “but back to the issue of the two of you being raiders?”

Briar held up his free wing and made a see-saw motion with his feathers. “Former raiders, and not exactly the type you’re thinking of.”

Ginger’s bowl floated in front of her as she picked neat little liquid spheres out of it. Aurora watched with strange fascination as the little nuggets disappeared into her mouth and became acutely aware that the rest of them lacked anything that could be used as a utensil. She glowered at her soup and wondered if the apocalypse had taken all the spoons with it.

“I wasn’t aware there were different kinds of raider,” Ginger said without a hint of judgment in her voice. As kindly as this family had been, she wasn’t about to test their hospitality by making accusations. “What kind were you?”

Briar smirked into his soup and pulled a loose strand of mane away from Beans’ nose as she ate. “The kind that protects their own and tries to stay out of trouble.”

Aurora watched Beans bury her muzzle into the bowl, loudly slurping up her dinner while her father tried to keep it out of her hair. She wondered if he was directing that toward them.

“So not the leather straps and rebar spikes kind of raider,” Ginger offered.

Meridian snorted. “I mean…”

“Tiny ears.” Briar gave her a look that let her know he’d caught the entendre, then shook his head with a quiet laugh. “No, we never did spikes or body paint. Scale’s Scavs is more of a… how did he put it?”

“‘A well-defended family,’” she quoted with a low, stallionlike voice. Briar chuckled at the inside joke. “The Scavs don’t gallop around attacking anything that moves. That’s never been how Scale operates.”

“Scale?” Roach prompted.

“Head of the table,” Briar said, pausing to tip some soup into his mouth and chew. “Not a fan of being called the leader, or boss, or anything like that. Thinks it’ll give him a fat head. Probably would. Him, my father and a couple other families got together when they saw the only other way for them to be safe was to join up with Rangers or sign a contract with Flim & Flam Mercantile.”

“The latter of which you,” Meridian said, tipping her nose to Aurora, “already know about.”

Aurora nodded, still unsure what the general opinion in the wasteland was in regards to her and Ginger essentially decapitating the monopoly Autumn and Cider used to enjoy.

“Can’t complain now that all the new start-ups are trying to outprice each other. We normally can’t afford good beef.” Briar lifted his bowl slightly in a mock-toast. “Either way, Scale and the rest weren’t keen on living under anyone’s hoof, so they created the Scavs. Started in a camp in the mountains not far from here before they attracted a few other families and decided to move into an abandoned stretch of the Filly suburbs. The only way to keep the big hitters in the area from rolling over us was to advertise ourselves as raiders. Most ponies aren’t too excited about the idea of messing with a nest of trigger happy hornet seven on the best of days, and the suburbs are a rat’s nest of prewar sewer lines and abandoned settlements. Most ponies leave us alone.”

Ginger quirked her lip. “Most?”

“Eh.” Briar looked like he’d eaten something bitter. “Thing about calling yourselves raiders is that some folks get the idea that you’re going to come and, well, raid them. We never did stuff like that as a matter of principle. It’s not why the Scavs grouped up. Every year or so, though, some group of travelers or the odd vigilante thrillseekers would try something stupid. Attack one of our camps, kill a few ponies... never enough to uproot us.”

“Did you ever try to tell them you didn’t want to fight?”

Briar looked at Aurora and shrugged. “It doesn’t work like that out there. If you call yourself a raider, ponies are going to treat you like a raider. Kind of the one flaw in Scale’s plan, but it’s the price of freedom. Sometimes we can scare attackers away but more often than not they’re too chemmed up to see reason. Doesn’t hurt our image to have a few extra graves outside the wall, but it’s still something we have to carry with us.”

Aurora frowned, her thoughts turning back to Gallow and the knowledge that things between them had panned out the only way they could have. Much like the road they met on, there was only one path to take. The second Gallow spotted them from the trees, one of them was going to have to kill the other.

“I know that feeling.”

Briar pinched his lips together, nodding understanding.

Beside him, Beans spoke. “Sometimes we have to do bad things. But that doesn’t mean we’re bad ponies.”

Aurora looked at Beans and opened her mouth to say something, but realized there wasn’t anything to add. For a filly her age she had a startlingly good grasp on things Aurora was only just beginning to learn for herself.

“And she,” Briar said, jostling the top of his daughter’s head with the cup of his feathers to her giggling protest, “is why we moved up here, away from all that.”

“Wouldn’t it be…” Aurora stopped as quickly as she began, her eyes falling to Beans and the adoring smile she had for her father. Wouldn’t it be better for her to live in a community?

Meridian set her bowl down on the planks, seeming to read her mind.

“It isn’t safe for her to be down there when there are so many eyes up there.” She tipped a hoof toward the stone roof, and by extension the sky above. “They target dustwing foals because they can use them to flush out their parents. Two birds with one stone. When we found out I was pregnant with Beans, the rest of the Scavs promised that they would die to protect her and… I believe them. Briar’s always good about wrapping his wings but foals forget things. If the Enclave ever found out we were harboring dustwings, they wouldn’t hesitate to burn everything we’ve built to the ground just to find them.”

Roach gently cleared his throat, his eyes on his soup. “Tiny ears?”

Aurora looked to Beans who was looking up at her mother with reluctant understanding.

“There are some things she deserves to know.” Meridian regarded Roach with the sadness of one parent recognizing another. “We try not to dwell on it, though. We have each other.”

A deep silence settled among them as they each finished their meal. The mood had changed. Even the broth tasted a little less savory than it once had. As empty bowls settled into laps or clicked against the floorboards, Meridian stood and gathered them up to be set in a leaning stack atop the cabinet sitting beside the stove. From the same cabinet she produced an enamel bucket and carried it into the workshop where she could be heard filling it with clean water for washing.

“Beans, why don’t you help your mother clean up?”

She looked up at her father as if to be sure she was the Beans he was speaking to, then hopped to her hooves and trotted into the workshop after her mother with a subdued, “Dad says I gotta help.”

Briar smiled after Beans. Soon, the low gurgle of water could be heard splashing into the bucket. He looked to Roach and said, “I hear she likes you.”

Roach grunted his agreement.

“She spends a lot of time in her own world these days. Sometimes it’s hard to get her out of her shell, if you’d believe it.” He sighed, then regarded Aurora unexpectedly. “You’re probably her second favorite for how much you enjoyed her cooking. What did Merry end up prying out of you for the meal, if you don’t mind telling?”

She’d nearly forgotten the notepad that now sat on the chair Beans had stood atop of when she directed her mock performance. Leaning behind Ginger, she plucked the pad up by the tips of her longest grey feathers and held it out for him to take.

Briar took the pad and read down the long list of tools and supplies she’d filled the first few pages with. Slowly, he smiled with understanding. “Good to know,” he said, tapping the list against his thigh. “We weren’t sure where to start with the pump.”

Aurora chewed her lip and looked back over her shoulder through the open workshop curtain where she could just make out its disassembled casing. She considered keeping the question brewing in the back of her head to herself. This family had opened their home to them at great risk to their personal safety based on a few fleeting stories they heard about her and Ginger during Fiona’s broadcasts. They were here trying to survive. Their home wasn’t some puzzle for her to solve.

And yet.

It tumbled out of her like a long-held breath. “Can I ask you about that setup of yours? It’s been bothering me since I got here.”

Briar set the notepad down and shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“Where are you drawing power from?”

She didn’t mean for her question to land like a brick, but there it was. Judging by Ginger and Roach’s reactions, knowing how Briar’s family was keeping a single water pump churning had been the furthest things from their minds. They looked at her with equal amounts of confusion and curiosity as if they were just now being made aware of something important.

From her post at the edge of the curtain, Julip watched Briar with no visible reaction. Immediately, Aurora wished she’d thought of a way to get her out of earshot before she asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

Aurora realized Briar’s expression had become a mask of calm. She had tread onto sensitive ground and very possibly had gone a step too far. Embarrassed, the only answer she could give was an honest one.

“Curiosity, mostly?” She gestured through the netting where she could just make out the longer shadows of early evening stretching over the bare mountains beyond. “It’s just that you live all the way up here and there’s nothing I can see for you to pull electricity from. Or clean water, for that matter. You’re not even running a purifier that I can tell.”

“The world’s full of mysteries,” Briar agreed, following her gaze outside. A moment passed, and then another.

As the silence stretched, something she’d heard him say earlier surfaced in her memory. “Is it the boiler?”

He smiled and looked down, unconsciously hovering his chin over the subtle bulge of a switch beneath the collar of his leathers. The twin to the radio Meridian had used to keep in communication with him. “You heard that, did you?”

Aurora nodded once, dislodging a strand of blonde mane that swung into her lip. She tucked it back behind her ear, idly noticing that the gentle waves Ginger had worked into her hair were going limp and were caked in road dust.

“It stood out,” she admitted. “I can think of easier ways to generate power out here besides using a boiler.”

Briar laughed and picked the notepad up again, his eyes scanning the list a second time. “It’s a place, not a thing. I just call it the Boiler because it’s easier than saying The Uninhabitable Furnace At The Bottom Of The Valley every time it comes up.”

The four of them exchanged confused expressions.

“It’s a prewar hole in the ground,” he clarified. “Merry found it back when we were still doing supply runs with the Scavs. Thought it might be a Stable at first but it didn’t have a cog at the entrance, so our best bet is that it’s one of those missile command bunkers the old government was in such a hurry to build during the last year of the war.”

Aurora squinted through the gaps in the netting. “All the way out here?”

“Straight down in the valley.” He stood, as if the decision was already made. “Here, I’ll show you.”

Walking through them, he pulled aside the camouflage and gave the clouds a cursory scan before stepping out. The four of them followed him into the waning afternoon light and onto the rusted tracks. The loose ballast stones still bore the shallow ring-shaped depression where Ginger’s dome had cut through them. Briar kicked a few stones into the groove as he passed over it on his way toward the rough cliffside on the opposite end of the rails.

They joined him there and watched as he lowered a feather toward the valley floor. “Right there. Let me know when you see it.”

The four of them squinted in the direction he indicated, but Aurora wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Living in a Stable where every wall turned at a neat ninety degrees and every floor was perfectly level, she wasn’t exactly equipped to recognize which parts of a geologic feature didn’t belong. The valley did bear a few notable features. Greenish stands of grass and shrubbery clustered at the lowest points where, presumably, there was water available. Stumps of desiccated trees dotted the surrounding soil like stubble, a feature that coincided with what Roach hinted at a denser distribution of balefire bombs near the coastal cities. The sight of so many dead trees reminded her of the historical footage of the first bombs to be tested, and how one test had featured an artificial forest of old pines. Every year on the last day of October, the same memorial documentary was distributed across the Stable. It was a stark reminder of why they lived in hiding, and a reassurance that they were a crucial link on the chain to a generation who would one day rebuild Equestria.

Roach was the first to see the Boiler and guided the rest of them to where it stood. Sure enough, a few hundred feet uphill beyond the vein of struggling greenery was a forgettable looking lump in the dirt. From where they stood it resembled a pimple in the otherwise uniform soil.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“That’s it.” Briar’s eyes flicked to the sky again, something Aurora realized was a learned habit. “It took weeks to strip out enough cable to reach up here. Even longer to find enough hose for the pump.”

Ginger glanced back to the cave. “And that?”

Briar followed her gaze. “The Scavs gave us a hoof with that. Benefit of calling yourself raiders, you inevitably pull in a few ponies with a penchant for explosives.”

“But how did you get the power back on down there?” Aurora frowned at the tiny mound in the distance. “What kind of generator does it use?”

The face Briar made told her the answer to that wasn’t nearly as simple as she thought it was. “That’s the thing. Far as Merry and I can tell, the Boiler’s generator isn’t running at all. The entire place is dark. Nothing works.”

Aurora quirked her lip at him. There was no way they were drawing power from nothing.

“But,” he continued, twirling a feather as he searched for words, “part of the fourth floor is lit up like a Hearth's Warming tree. I spent more time than I care to admit trying to track down where it was coming from, but all the lines on the floors above and below are dead. The energized lines on the fourth floor all eventually disappear into the outer wall, and with how hot it is down there I wasn’t willing to pick away at concrete just to electrocute myself.”

She frowned. “So you just spliced into an unknown power supply and called it a day.”

Briar shrugged. “I’ll leave the great mysteries of Old Equestria to the archivists to figure out. I just care about making sure my daughter can fill a glass of water at night.”

There was no heat in his voice but she could still sense the edge of a warning. He wasn’t out here to impress anyone, nor was he going to tolerate criticism. Aurora puffed out a breath and nodded. “That’s fair.”

He waved her off. “Ah, don’t mind me. Merry says I get defensive too easily.” Smirking at the ground, he nudged Aurora to the side and began scraping his hoof into the loose soil at the edge of the cliff. It crumbled away under the gentle assault until a thick, black cable began to appear. “You try burying a quarter mile of this stuff up the side of a cliff and tell me you wouldn’t get a little sour.”

Aurora pursed her lips to whistle, but stopped.

“That's a 6-gauge main line,” she said.

Briar hummed agreement. “Pretty standard stuff. It’s a lot heavier than it looks.”

“No, it’s not. 10 and 12-gauge are standard,” she said, crouching down to look at it. “I work with this stuff back home. We were forced to waste material fabricating this junk because we had so much equipment running the Stable at all times. If we used standard cable the whole place would have burned down on day one.”

“Oh,” he said.

Using her hooves, she scraped away the dirt to expose more of the cable until she found what she was looking for. A scuffed white serial stamped into the black insulation.

Briar squinted down at the numbers as Aurora traced her hoof across them. Then he looked at her and saw the expression on her face. “I’m guessing those numbers mean something?”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “Yeah, they do.”

She could feel her heart picking up again. That hard and steady drumbeat that marched along with her through the slaver camp, hunted Gallow down on the empty road, tortured her as she retreated from Autumn’s solar array and spurred her forward as she lured an abomination of nature back through its fences. The same heavy thud against her ribs that kept her alive long enough to lie her way into Blinder’s Bluff, challenged her to take the life of a genuine raider - her first time killing another pony - in order to keep Ginger and Roach safe, and which ignited in her the first flicker of a primal drive to fend off and put down Cider’s salacious midnight ambush.

It pounded in her throat as she understood the significance of what she was holding.

The tip of her hoof settled over the last four digits of the serial. S001.

She knew this format. She had seen it in Blinder’s Bluff during her interrogation with Ironshod. It was the same cable she had spent years of her life taking apart wall panels to find, follow, disconnect and replace. She knew this cable because it was her job to know. It was the same cable that spooled out of her generator and back in Stable 10 like great black arteries.

Setting the cable back into its trench, she pressed a feather into her Pip-Buck and opened up her mail. A recent message from Coldbrook burned at the top of her inbox but she barely noticed it, reading instead the header that appeared to her a thousand times before and never once drew her eye. Even out here, as her Pip-Buck connected to the same unexplained network that Millie seemed to be able to jump back and forth across, she hardly paid it any attention.

She turned her eyes toward the tiny blister in the valley. Briar’s first instinct had been correct. Cog or no cog, it was a Stable. The first Stable. An abandoned bastion of safety just like her own and somehow still generating power. An entire Stable. A working ignition talisman, and it was being used to run a single water pump.

Just three ponies who she barely knew.

In exchange for hundreds.

Her throat went dry.

Next Chapter: Chapter 25: Stable 1 Estimated time remaining: 50 Hours, 35 Minutes