I looked over my class, a feigned smile across my lips looking out over them, barely out of foalhood none of them having a mark on their flank, years ago the wastes had gotten just a bit better, but that’s a story we all know, and they were still as dangerous as ever, “Alright class,” I finally started, Celestia knew it did my heart no good to discuss this with them, but things had to be learned and sooner was always better than later.

“Now, this may be a bit difficult, but you must learn, Equestria… it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, they’re more common than when I was your age but it’s still a rarity, today I will teach you all just a minor amount of the dangers you may face one day, twenty six of them one for each letter,” I continue taking a bit of chalk in a shaky telekinetic aura.

“We start of course, A…”

By G-man64

It was raining today. I suppose that wasn’t the best sign of things to come. Either way, this was already going to be an… excessively dark day.

I laid on my back, staring up at the steel ceiling of our boxcar home. I traced my gaze along the rusted out holes and missing rivets that leaked with a steady drip from the torrent outside. A steady plink, plink, plink sounded from the small puddle forming on the floor next to our bed. We’d wanted to get it fixed for some time, but even just those few pieces of scrap metal we would need to patch it seemed like a luxury far beyond our reach. Maybe if I shut my eyes for just a few more moments, I’d wake up and realize that this was all some massively screwed up dream.

A small motion from to my right banished any hope that would be the case. I turned onto my side, watching the mound next to me shuffle beneath the blanket. A few moth-eaten holes in the cloth revealed a beautiful, ash-colored coat. I smiled as I wrapped a foreleg around the mound and pulled the mare close against my chest.

“Mrrmph,” Tender Soot mumbled sleepily, but nestled closer to me. My smile widened as I nuzzled into her black and white mane, breathing deep the subtle scent of smoke and oil. Perhaps not generally thought of as the most pleasant of perfumes, but one that was just so undeniably hers. I cherished every moment of it.

These small moments of peace were what made this all worth it, and allowed us to get out of bed every morning, to trudge out into that unforgiving hellscape, to tune out the pleas and wails of your fellow ponies, to ignore every nagging sense of right or wrong as you try to make it through and start it all over again tomorrow.

For as long as I’d cared to remember, it had always been the two of us against the Wasteland, but that was all about to change. Hesitantly I lowered my hoof, trailing it through the meadow of her chest fluff until I bumped into the base of a hill. With a shaky breath, my hoof scaled the mound before coming to rest on its peak. A small movement rippled beneath her coat and my heart stopped. Steeling myself, I gently massaged across Tender’s swollen stomach until the movement beneath relaxed and subsided.

My family deserved to get a little more sleep.

With a smothered yawn, I turned back over on the mattress and pulled myself from the intoxicating warmth. I stood up onto the steel floor, stretching each of my legs in turn and prepared to start the day.

As quietly as I could, I walked over to a small stove and turned on the gas. My horn burst into light as a quick spell sent our dented, old coffee pot under the spout of water leaking from the roof. After it was filled I placed it atop the stove and another spell sent a small spark into the gas line, igniting the burner. Setting the water to boil, I turned toward an old storage cabinet mounted on the wall and pulled out a small, metal tin.

Inside were a couple of mesh tea infusers and a clump of dried leaves. I sighed dejectedly as I loaded each infuser with a small pinch and placed them in a couple of cracked mugs. For a brief moment, I glanced back at my flank and gazed longingly at the image of a fresh, steaming cup of coffee next an intricate, porcelain carafe framed with the light tan backdrop of my coat. Brewing the perfect hot beverage had always been my talent, but there was something particularly special about making the perfect cup of coffee.

I so desperately missed the smell, the taste. Grinding the beans, boiling the water to just the right temperature, and ensuring the golden ratio of water to coffee that brought that perfect balance of bold roast and light acidity. My mouth was already watering at the mental image.

Tender loved my coffee almost as much I did, but had sworn off it when we’d found out she was pregnant. She repeatedly said she’d have no issue with me drinking it, but that seemed so unfair to the mare who was so readily willing to carry our foal. So in solidarity with her, I’d followed suit. Tea was… almost as good. Besides, it was a lot cheaper and we needed every cap we could save.

An instinctive part of my brain twinged just as the water began to boil. I waited a few more moments, knowing innately the exact moment to remove it from the heat. The coffee pot shot into the air as the moment passed, and I swiftly filled each of our mugs. Instantly the water turned a pale brown as the tea began to steep. A mix of floral and earthy notes wafted up from the mugs and I inhaled daintily, savoring the scent. It might not have been coffee, but every hot beverage was tantalizing in its own unique way.

“Am I interrupting something?” a sultry, yet slightly mocking voice said from behind me.

I jumped, and instantly felt a searing pain splash across my muzzle. I yelped and quickly wiped away the scalding liquid. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d brought one of the mugs directly beneath my nose as I’d been smelling it.

After setting the mug down, I turned around and my vision was dominated by my wife. Her soft, ashen coat glimmered, even in the dim light of our boxcar. The tangles of her black and white mane cascaded down around her face, framing that gorgeous visage like a piece of fine art. Her forest green eyes contained nothing but adoration and warmth. Every bit of it was directed at me. There was concern in her eyes, but also a hoof in front of her mouth, doubtless hiding an amused smirk.

“Are… *snrk* are you okay, love?” Tender asked, stepping forward and investigating my rapidly reddening nose.

“If you were looking for a well done stallion, you might want to cook me a little more,” I said jokingly.

Tender leaned in close, sniffing softly, “Mmm, I think you smell delicious just as you are.” She batted her eyes seductively.

“Then how about you have a taste,” I responded in a breathy whisper as I leaned toward her in turn.

She giggled quietly just before our lips met. Forget every single thing I’ve mentioned about coffee, there wasn’t a roast on Equus that compared to this feeling.

All too quickly, Tender pulled back from the kiss, but offered the most loving stare in return. “Good morning, Espresso,” she whispered delicately.

“Good morning, Tender Soot,” I responded, then smacked my lips thoughtfully. “Hm, you’ll have to give Ladle my compliments. That really is an excellent stew.”

She giggled again. Goddess above, if her laugh was the last thing I ever heard in this life, then no amount of damnation would ever tear the smile from my face.

“What do you mean?” she asked quizzically. “You had some of it too didn't y-” she cut herself off and the smile disappeared. Instead, a look of frustration grew across her gorgeous face. My stomach sank as I realized that I’d just outed myself.

Tender took a shaky breath before continuing, “You didn’t eat again, did you?”

“O-of course I did,” I stuttered unconvincingly. “Ladle had some scrap barley left over from the stew and I had that. It was more than enough to fill me up so I figured you could have both of our serv-”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Tender snapped. “With how little food there is right now, Ladle isn’t even throwing away old corn husks much less perfectly edible barley! I won’t stand for you lying to me!”

I winced at the outburst, tearing my gaze from her and staring guiltily at the floor.

Tender took another deep breath before wrapping a foreleg around my neck and pulling me into a hug. “You can’t keep doing this, love,” she said calmly. “I know things are tight, but that’s no excuse for you to starve yourself.”

I nuzzled into the crook of her neck, “You remember what the doctor said, you need every scrap of food you can get right now. You’re eating for two, I can afford to miss a couple meals if it means I can feed you and our… um… our-”

“Our foal,” Tender finished. Her smile returned as she took hold of my hoof and pulled it back toward her stomach, holding it there.

“Yeah, our… foal,” I repeated, disbelief laden in my tone. The life Tender carried chose that moment to make themselves known, kicking softly beneath her coat. I almost pulled away, but the gentle strength in my wife’s grip kept me there, embracing the entirety of my family. “Wow,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Tender said, “get used to saying it, knucklehead, we’re gonna be parents before you know it.”

“It still just feels so… surreal, you know,” I said, gazing longingly at her stomach.

“I know,” she said warmly, then pulled back and socked me on the shoulder.

“Ouch,” I said, reeling back more in surprise than in pain. “What was that for?”

Tender’s smile didn’t disappear, but there was a hardness in her gaze. Ironically, kind of like a mother that’d just caught her foal sneaking candy, “You can’t keep skipping meals. You think you’re doing it for my sake, but you’re going to be a father soon. What do you expect us to do if you keel over from starvation? How do you expect to survive the job today if you’re so hungry that you can’t think straight?” She turned away from me, and I could hear the hurt start to creep into her tone, “Now that I think about it, you’re in no shape to go gallivanting across the Wasteland. I’m going to go tell Trail Boss right now that you’re staying home, they can find somepony else to take your place and-”

I sighed, of course I should have known that this conversation was going to come up again. She’d use any excuse to keep me home today, but I couldn’t let that happen. I walked up behind Tender and hugged her, pulling her head against my chest. A subtle dampness started to spread across my coat as her silent tears dried in my fur.

“Sweetheart, we’ve talked about this,” I began, pulling her closer. “Even if you could work in your condition, that last raid tore up the track for miles, nopony knows how long it will be until the rail lines are repaired. There’s not much need for an engineer with no trains to run.” I lifted her chin, locking our gazes as I smiled, “And even less for some two-bit barista like me. We need food in the pantry, a roof that doesn’t leak, a crib, toys, diapers, Goddess-knows what else the little tyke will need, and enough caps to last us until we can start working again. I need to do this.”

Tender didn’t argue, just broke our gazes and turned away.

“Hey,” I said soothingly, taking hold of her chin and bringing her eyes back to meet mine. A small, white glow appeared beneath her eyes as I wiped away the tears. I planted a soft kiss on her forehead, “Everything is going to be fine, I promise.”

“Y-you can’t promise that,” she said shakily. “You know what they’re like. I just wish that we didn’t have to have anything to do with… them.” Tender spat the last word like it was made of venom.

“We’ve been trading with them for years,” I countered. “Their operation wouldn’t be nearly as big if we hadn’t been involved, so it’s not like we’re blameless. But they’re giving us a chance to keep the town moving until we’re all back on our hooves again. I don’t like what they do any more than you, but unless we want to abandon New Appleoosa, we don’t have another choice. You heard Trail Boss, everypony in the community has to do their part if we want to survive. Not much need for a barista, but I’ve got a working horn and can handle a gun. That’s all they need.”

“I know, I know,” Tender said despondently. “It’s the smart thing to do, but we’re talking about selling ponies! How could we have ever agreed to this? Don’t we have any compassion for them?”

“All we’re doing is taking them to Fillydelphia, dropping them off, and coming right back. That’s all,” I tried to reassure her. “And yes, I feel for them,” I gently rubbed my hoof along her cheek, “but I’m more worried about my family starving. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

She fell quiet again, but nodded her head in reserved acquiescence.

“Ok,” I said, giving her one last hug before stepping back and offering her one of the steaming mugs. “Now come on, drink up before it gets cold. You know how much I hate that.”

Tender wiped her eyes and took the mug, settling down beside me as I started sipping at my own. “You know I’m going to nail your tail to the floor before I let you out that door without breakfast, right?”

“Yes, love,” I said, leaning my head to the side and resting my cheek against hers. “Whatever you say.”

The rain hadn’t let up much by the time we were done with breakfast, a modest portion of stale biscuits, but with the added indulgent of some apple preserves. The last scrapings of a jar we weren’t likely to see more of for some time, but Tender had insisted I have the taste of home on my tongue before we left. A little extra motivation to make it back safe and sound.

I suited up in the old canvas barding I’d worn when Tender and I had been on the road, before we found New Appleoosa and been accepted into the community. My trusty .357 revolver dangled in a holster on my hip. I’d thought so naively that I’d never need to take up the burden of a firearm every again. Up until recently, the few guards that would volunteer, and our resident pegasus defender, had been more than enough to keep the town safe.

I’d been able to concentrate on setting up a little cafe, just like I’d always wanted. Tender was overjoyed to find a working rail line, even if it was primarily for delivering supplies to an outpost of slavers. At long last it seemed like we could put the horrors of the wasteland behind us, and we could finally focus on the talents that made us who we are.

As if any happiness were more than just a fleeting whimsy on the radioactive winds.

We descended the staircase leading down from our boxcar, a large, rusting orange shipping container stacked atop another blue one below. Tender batted away my hoof when I tried to offer some support, although the look on her face let me know she was… mostly joking. Despite being in the final months of her pregnancy, Tender refused to show any sign of helplessness. Even when she was waddling precariously down the ramshackle steps.

After arriving at the ground floor, I couldn’t help but look at the boxcar sitting beneath our home. It didn’t look terribly special, aside from some simple lettering painted on the side.

Rail Line Roasters.

I smiled wistfully at my cafe, trying desperately to mask the sorrow that steeped in my heart. I could almost hear the sounds of the percolators and smell the smoky, sweet scent of the fresh ground coffee beans. My thoughts swirled into memories of serving the citizens of Appleoosa, knowing the only thing that pulled them from the comfort of their beds was the promise of a hot, gourmet cup of coffee. It was my greatest source of pride, knowing that my talent kickstarted the day for our entire community.

Tender’s hoof on my shoulder broke me free from the bittersweet reverie. I turned toward her, only now noticing the subtle burning at the corners of my eyes.

She smiled so sweetly up at me, “We’ll have it open again soon. This is just a bump in the road.”

“Yeah,” I agreed quietly, though not as confidently as I would have liked. I wiped a foreleg across my eyes as we turned away from our home and started heading toward the center of town.

A few dozen ponies had already begun to gather, with only a soft murmuring breaking the silence. It almost seemed like everypony was trying their hardest not to disturb the quiet of the morning. Maybe they felt if we didn’t mention what we were all about to be party to, then maybe it would be like it never really happened.

There were a few notable absences from the gathering. Crane and most of the rail line workers weren’t there, more than likely having set out before first light to work on the torn up tracks. The ghoul mare that ran the general store, Ditzy Doo, was absent as well. As far as anypony was aware, no one had told her about what we were planning today. However, she was definitely a lot more clever than most gave her credit for and had likely figured it out for herself. Nopony had seen hide nor hair of her ever since.

Although, Ditzy had left a basket full of healing potions and RadAway. Even tied a bow around it and left a note that said, ‘Stay saf, friends.’ She still cared, but obviously couldn’t stand to be around the town today. I had to admit, that made me feel significantly worse than if she’d just ripped into us for what we were about to do.

The final absentee was the town’s resident pegasus.

A hush fell over the crowd as a stallion stood up on a crate in their midst. He was an older earth pony, though not quite what I’d describe as elderly. His coat was jet black and he had deep green mane, cut short and starting to gray. He was wearing a rusting set of metal armor and a tattered cowpony hat. The strap of an old lever-action rifle was slung around his neck.

Trail Boss cleared his throat, “Alright now, everypony. This ain’t the kind of day where I’m gonna be makin’ a fanciful and insprin’ speech. We all know why we’re here and what we’re gonna do. But it’s good to bear in mind that we ain’t doin’ this for wealth or some ill repute fame. It’s about our survival, that’s all. We need to provide for our families, for our friends. To make sure New Appleoosa sees another tomorrow. What we do today ain’t gonna be pretty, but it’s the only option we all got left. So let’s head out and-”

“Bullshit,” a voice shouted from behind us.

In unison, the entire crowd turned their heads. Seated upon a stack a three box cars was a silhouette hidden in the downpour. The figure took one long leap as a pair of wings sprung out from its sides. They landed lightly on the ground right beside the crowd.

Their head was tilted downward, allowing the falling rain to drip down the brim of their black cowpony hat. The pony’s stance recalled a mousetrap, deadly and ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. The brown, pegasus stallion lifted his head and glared directly at Trail Boss.

“Calamity,” Trail Boss said in an unsurprised monotone, almost as if he’d been expecting this. “I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about accompanying us to-”

“You know I haven’t,” Calamity growled angrily. “I’m here to try and talk some sense into y’all one last time.”

“Well you can save it,” Trail Boss responded boredly. “We’ve discussed this ad nauseam, and everypony here is still in agreement. We’re doin’ this, whether you’re by our side or not.”

“Then y’all are no better than slavers yourselves,” Calamity spat with disgust.

“We’ve been tradin’ with ‘em for years. They’re still in business because of us,” Trail Boss countered. “Today we’re just… helpin’ ‘em out a lil’ more directly.”

“T’ain’t the same and you know it,” Calamity snapped, breaking his glare and looking pleadingly at the rest of us.

“Y’all know me, and I thought I knew y’all. It don’t matter how bad things get, this is wrong and we all know it,” he pleaded. “Please, don’t do this. We’ll find another way.”

Nopony met his gaze. A few guiltily scraped a hoof against the ground, but not one member of the crowd said a word to Calamity. The righteous indignation that had illuminated the stallion in an almost visible light was snuffed out by the darkness in our indifference. Not a single one of us could measure up to his principles and we all knew why.

Principles got ponies killed. Selfishness kept us alive.

“Come on y’all,” Trail Boss said, his tone turning morose. “We got a schedule to keep.”

With that, about a dozen members of the crowd started moving toward a gap in the ring of boxcars around town.

I turned toward Tender, noting she too was pointedly looking away from Calamity. I nudged her shoulder, prompting her to look at me.

“I love you,” I said quietly before leaning in to give her a kiss.

She returned it briefly before stepping back. “A-are you sure about this?”

“No,” I answered honestly. “But what other choice do we have?”

Tender nodded her head solemnly before throwing her forelegs around my neck and squeezing with all of her might. So much so that I had to suppress a gasp as she constricted my windpipe.

“Just come back to me, ok?” she whispered shakily.

“I’ll come back,” I answered, returning the hug. “I promise.”

After at least a full minute, I reluctantly broke the hug and started to follow the rest of the group. I passed by Calamity, who still stood exactly where he’d landed. Though now he stared dejectedly at the ground.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

“You got yourself a foal on the way,” the pegasus said gruffly. “So I understand why you’re doin’ this more than most of ‘em. But do you ever stop to think if you’ll be able to look that li’l one in the eye after this? What if they figure out what you did?”

I paused a moment, considering that before answering, “I guess I’d rather my kid looked at me with disgust then not be able to look at me at all.”

Calamity nodded before springing into the air and flying off. I watched him go, my heart feeling heavier as he went. Almost like I was watching my own morality disappear into that gray, roiling sky.

The slavers of Old Appleoosa met us a few miles outside of town. There were six of them, all sporting sets of wicked-looking armor and armed to the teeth. Yet they all bore such uninterested expressions. Like they were idly waiting for a train instead of handing off enslaved members of their own kind. It was so… eerie. I’d almost feel better if they were a bunch of cackling, moustache-twirling villains. If they showed even the barest hint of knowing that what they did with their lives was wrong. Instead, they may as well have been farmers coming to town to sell off their harvests.

In a way, I guess they were.

“Trail Boss?” a mare at the front of the group asked. She was wearing a set of metal armor with spikes jutting out of the pauldrons and had an oddly modern-looking machinegun dangling lazily at her side.

“That’s right,” Trail Boss responded. “And I suppose that makes you-”

“Chain Choker,” she interrupted, “but you can call me Choke.”

“Charmed,” Trail Boss said reticently.

“Just a reminder about what happens to those that cross me,” Choke said matter-of-factly. “Now that pleasantries are out of the way, let’s get down to business.”

Without waiting for a response, she motioned over her shoulder and four of her companions disappeared behind a nearby rock. After a few seconds, they re-emerged pulling two wagons behind them. Atop the wagons were caged enclosures filled to the brim with ponies.

I’d been trying to prepare myself for this moment, but there wasn’t a single thing horrid enough to draw from my imagination that could brace me for this sight. There was hardly room enough for them to all stand with how tightly packed they were. Their coats were all plastered in filth and a myriad of lashes, showcasing why not a single one dared try and make eye contact with us or their captors. There was also something… strange about the bunch. Beyond the fact that they were slaves, there was another factor that united them all. Something I couldn’t quite put my hoof on.

There was an occasional cough or murmur of pain, but aside from that the slaves made almost no noise. The moment of shock the wagons imbued into our group was the most deafening silence I’d ever experienced.

“Welp,” Chain Choker continued, as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “Here they are. Them folks up in Fillydelphia are expectin’ this shipment in five days, and I heartily recommend not makin’ ‘em wait. That leader of theirs is a might ornery. There’s twenty-six of ‘em in there, and they’ll be expectin’ at least twenty-five. Gotta account for… incidents y’all might face on the road. Still, means y’all only got one spare so try to not be too careless. They’ll each need a scoop of grain and a ladle of water in the mornin’ and at night. That should be enough to keep ‘em alive. They’ll try and moan at ya for more, but just smack a couple of ‘em around a bit and they’ll shut right up.”

Nopony responded to the instructions, just had their gazes locked onto the wagons or stared despondently at the ground.

Chain Choker cleared her throat, “Any questions?”

“N-no,” Trail Boss stuttered, moving toward the group. “I-I think we can handle it.”

“Brilliant,” Chain Choker said sarcastically. “Now as soon as y’all get paid, get your sorry asses right back here. We’ll let you keep your delivery fee, more than enough to keep your lil town goin’ a couple more months, and then we’ll all happily part ways.”

Just as Trail Boss reached the group, Chain Choker struck out with sweeping kick, tumbling the older stallion to the dirt. Before he or any of us could react, Choker whipped her machinegun around and had the barrel shoved directly into Trail Boss’s mouth. Throughout the entire attack, her demeanor didn’t change at all. Just held that same bored, flat expression.

“And if any of y’all get any funny ideas about screwin’ us after giving you this incredibly charitable opportunity, then just remember…” she removed the barrel from Trail Boss’s mouth and fired right next to his head. A plume of dust launched into the air, and the crack of the gunshot echoed in a haunting wail. Choke held our gazes until the final ebbs of the echo faded into the distance. “Your precious lil town and all your loved ones ain’t nothin’ but a day’s ride away. Hear me?”

We said nothing, but nodded our heads in understanding.

“Nice to see we’re all on the same page,” Choker said, offering a hoof to help Trail Boss back up. “Now y’all better hurry up, you’re burnin’ daylight.”

“What’s on your mind,” Trail Boss asked me, breaking the numbing silence.

The group had been quiet for a while. In fact, not many words had been shared at all in the last three days. Ever since we’d parted ways with the slavers, everypony had seemed fairly willing to just let the silence rule over us. It wasn’t like we could just ignore what was happening and talk about something superficial, but talking about it would open a wound that none of us seemed quite ready to start treating yet. Better to just let it fester for now. The first day had been… rough to say the least.

“Does it matter?” I asked, keeping my gaze locked ahead. Trail Boss and I were at the front of the wagon train, another four of us were pulling the wagons, and the rest were fanned out behind us.

“Yes it does,” Trail Boss responded. “Y’all asked me to lead this caravan, and part of that is lookin’ after the well-bein’ of those in my charge.”

“All of us?” I asked, pointedly glancing back at the huddled masses in the cages.

“Yes,” Trail Boss said simply. “Cargo included.”

“Is that all they are to us now, cargo?” I continued, needling my point through the questions.

“For all intents and purposes, yes,” the older stallion answered. “We all agreed that-”

“Agreeing to the necessity of an act doesn’t make it any less immoral,” I snapped angrily, though immediately regretted it. Nopony had lied to me or put a gun to my head to force me along with this. I was just as free to stay home and have no part in transporting slaves. Lashing out at Trail Boss for the disgust I felt toward myself was the height of hypocrisy, and it wouldn’t help anything, wouldn’t change anything.

“That’s true,” Trail Boss said, keeping his voice calm and level in the face of my anger. “I ain’t gonna pretend like what we’re doin’ is some great moral achievement. We ain’t makin’ the world a better place, just makin’ the lives of everypony in our community that much better. Lettin’ them survive another month.” Trail Boss paused for a moment, looking off into the distance at mounds of sand, fields of cacti, and the towering mesas of the desert. “We all like to pretend that, just ‘cause we have our li’l township, that we’re somehow better than those we like to deem ‘evil.’ But if you think about it, we’re really not all that different. We’ll fight, even kill, anypony that threatens our way of life. How is that any different than a raider that does the same to anypony that invades their territory?”

I turned toward Trail Boss, disbelief coloring my tone, “Raiders… enjoy what they do. They’ll mow down a horde of innocent ponies with a smile on their face. They paint their homes in the blood of their victims, and put their skulls on the mantle. They’re… demented. When we kill, at least we have the presence of mind to do it for the right reasons and not… glorify it. It’s necessary.”

“So that’s what makes us different?” Trail Boss asked. “We feel bad about the ponies we kill so we can justify it to ourselves.” He chuckled darkly, shaking his head, “Dead is dead, my friend. Doubt the motivations of the shooter makes much of a difference to the one takin’ the bullet.”

“We fight to protect and provide for our families, our friends,” I countered angrily.

“So do the raiders, so do the slavers,” Trail Boss said. “They do what they do, whether it’s kill, rob, kidnap, or enslave, to make sure their friends and neighbors have what they need to survive. The whys and hows, they’re all just set dressing. End of the day? A raider will kill you for the clothes on your back. We’ll kill to keep the clothes on our back. They kill, we kill. It’s all survival.”

He glanced back at the wagon, “And I don’t know about you, but this sense of morality we all so desperately hold onto seems to be a major disadvantage for us. Those who would do us harm always have the upper-hoof, because we’re too scared to lower ourselves into the same abyss they thrive in.” Trail Boss stopped a moment, looking directly at me until I met his gaze. There was a life of conviction hidden in those old eyes, but also a lifetime of loss and the cold, unfeeling shell he’d grown in order to live with it. There was an unyielding drive to protect what he had and those he cared for, consequences be damned.

“I will provide for my people, Espresso. I’ve killed for them, what’s so different about slaving for them?”

“Why even lie to ourselves then? Why not just start raiding and slaving ourselves? Turn New Appleoosa into another rat-infested raider den?” I asked. Despite my objections, I had to admit he had a point. It made every inch of my skin crawl, but there was logic in what he said.

Trail Boss shrugged, “Everypony seems pretty happy to me, to keep livin’ the way we have been. Tryin' to keep up the lie that some of the old world’s rules still apply. I’m happy to let 'em keep that illusion alive. To let 'em keep their hooves clean while I do the dirty work.” He continued walking, breaking our gazes. “How about you? You gonna provide for your wife and child? Or are you gonna let your morals starve them to death?”

“I…” I faltered, trying to find the words.

Trail Boss sighed, “It’s ok, you don’t need to say it.” He looked back toward me, smiling now with understanding eyes, “It’s the li’l lies we tell ourselves that makes this world tolerable.”

I smiled back, but the pit in my stomach only grew deeper. I felt sick, but… oddly more resolute. I didn’t agree with everything the older stallion had said, but at least now I was reminded again of just why I was out here.

Suddenly Trail Boss stopped again, raising a hoof in a gesture to signal the caravan to stop. Everypony followed the order, looking around nervously.

A unicorn mare pulling the wagons gulped, “Wh-what’ya hear Trai-”

She was cut off as her head jerked violently. A spray of red splattered across the trapped slaves behind her as a gunshot cracked in the distance. She swayed for a moment, the look of fear on her face morphing into confusion, before her eyes rolled up and her body crumpled to the ground.

Trail Boss was the first to come back to his senses. “RAIDERS!” he screamed. “TAKE COVER NOW!”

The silence that had plagued our journey so quickly shattered in the wake of this tide of violence. Somewhere in the sand dunes, a machine gun opened fire, raking across our line. Luckily, Trail Boss’s order had come just quickly enough for our remaining numbers to hit the dirt and escape the barrage.

I pulled out the revolver on my hip, my eyes scanning the surrounding area and trying to get a sight on our attackers. There was some movement around the bend of the mesa to our right, just before another rifle shot cracked through the air. The dirt not a foot away from my head kicked up in a blinding cloud. I heaved off the ground and tumbled away from the path, finding a narrow ditch running parallel to it. Once I was reasonably sure that I wasn't immediately in somepony’s crosshairs, I tried to take stock of our situation.

The others had all either followed suit with me and were taking cover in the ditch, or had ducked beneath the wagons and hid behind the wheels. Trail Boss was with the latter, his rifle now unslung and returning fire toward the machine-gunner off in the desert. Another salvo of fire answered the older stallion, forcing him behind the wagon’s wheels. A stallion hiding alongside him cried out, clutching his leg as a stray bullet caught him.

I turned my attention back toward the sniper, trying to catch another sight of them. With the lot of us now out of their field of view, they’d have to reposition if they wanted to keep us pinned down. A bit of motion caught my eye, and I instinctively fired in the direction. It was a ways off, and my little .357 didn’t quite have the range for any sort of guarantee. Still, it was enough to give the sniper pause and duck back behind the rocky crags.

I nudged the mare beside me, a purple earthpony that I vaguely recalled visiting the cafe on her way to work. I couldn’t quite remember what she did in town, though from the look of utter terror on her face I think it was safe to assume she wasn’t a guard.

“Hey,” I said, nudging her again until she snapped her face toward me. “We gotta take out that sniper or they’ll keep us pinned until-”

“Oh Goddess,” she cried, the beginning of tears forming along her eyes. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this, please… somepony stop this- I can’t- this is so- so- I-”

She kept babbling falling into an incoherent mess. Dammit, I needed some support here. The other two in the ditch were in similar states of distress. It wasn’t like I was some badass soldier or anything either, but Tender and I had grown up wandering the wastes. We’d had to fight off our fair share of raiders before arriving in New Appleoosa. I forgot sometimes that not everypony had been… ‘blessed’ with that kind of upbringing.

I grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “What’s your name,” I tried to ask comfortingly.

“P-P-Posie,” she stuttered.

“Posie, if you do not help me right now, we are going to die. We will never make it home and you’ll never see your family again. Do you understand?” She continued to shake, but the look in her eyes lost a bit of mania and she nodded.

“Good,” I continued. I noted her weapon, a short, small-caliber rifle that would hardly tickle a gecko. But all she needed was something to go bang. I lined the rifle up in the general direction of the sniper, “Now shoot over there. After each shot, wait five seconds, then shoot again. Got it?”

Another nod.

“Ok, get ready,” I said, then turned back toward the others. Trail Boss and the ponies with him were doing an admirable job of keeping the machine-gunner pinned. Still, I waited for him to return fire one last time.

I whipped back toward the mare, “Now! Start firing!”

She answered with her first shot, chipping the rocks right where I’d pointed her. Then I jumped out of the ditch and sprinted toward the sniper. I counted down, five, four, three, two… I dropped just as another of the mare’s shots flew overhead, then I was back on my hooves and sprinting again. I kept up the cycle all the way until I reached the hiding spot, then leapt over the rocky outcropping.

I heard a small yelp of panic as the dark-armored mare hidden there saw me sail overhead. She tried to turn the long rifle to bear against me, but I’d caught her unaware and drew first, fanning the revolver’s hammer and firing off a trio of shots that slammed into her chest. Not great at a distance, but at this range the heavy rounds slammed into the mare and sprayed out the other side, painting the red rock in a far deeper shade.

The raider screamed in pain, causing a head out in the dunes to poke out in surprise. Trail Boss and the others didn’t waste the opportunity and opened up on the exposed raider, damn near cleaving his head off with a hail of gunfire.

Just like that, the desert fell silent once again.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, breathing heavily from the exertion. I fell back on the ground, my eyes glued to the writhing mare on the ground before me. It’d been a while since I’d had to shoot somepony, it wasn’t something that you ever really got used to. Even less so when the pony you shot was still alive afterwards, and then you had to decide what to do with them.

I sighed, standing back up and walking toward the fallen raider. She was dressed in a simple set of… surprisingly clean combat armor and a helmet with a full tactical face mask. Raiders usually liked the intimidation factor that came along with a lot of extraneous spikes and random spray paint and… and-

Oh Goddess.

“Hey,” I called, forcing her attention onto me. “Where’s the rest of you?”

“R-rest?” she asked, confusion underlying the pain in her tone.

“Yes, the rest of you,” I said quickly, trying to keep the panic out of tone. “Where’s the rest of your raiding party. You ponies never go after a target unless you’ve got the numbers to back it up. Now where’s the rest?”

“R-raiding? O-oh,” she said in realization. “I-I see.” She reached a shaky hoof up and unlatched the helmet, letting it fall. It revealed a pale pink face, her eyes squinting in pain as she looked up at me. “I-is that h-how you justify it? P-pretend that anypony th-that’d come… *cough* come after you just w-wants your slaves?” She grinned, and I saw red dripping from her teeth. “W-well not today, you sl-slaving sc- scumbag. W-we were… were here to… s-save… s-save”

Instead of finishing, she reached up and pulled out a medallion hung around her neck, tossing it weakly at my hooves. It showed a set of iron shackles with a bolt of lightning breaking them apart. My eyes grew wide with horror.

“Th-that’s right,” she mumbled, her speech getting weaker. “Y-you bastards… remember that… ‘cause one day… w-we’ll f-finally wipe you… ou-” She stopped, her hooves dropping to the dirt as she died.

I walked numbly back to the others, my mind racing with what I’d just learned. Trail Boss met me, an enormous grin plastered across his face.

“That was some damn fine tactics, my friend,” he said, laughing as he slapped my back. “For a second there, I thought we were done for.”

Posie, the mare I’d instructed before, approached. She looked up at me, mumbling as she tried to say something. A sob escaped her instead, just before she threw her forelegs around my neck and squeezed. She held me like that for a moment, then withdrew and walked away.

“Y-yeah,” I said weakly. Should I tell them who those ponies were? Was it the right thing to do? Would it make a difference?

“Well, unfortunately we’re blessed with precious little time to celebrate. We’ll need to… to get Ivy over there loaded up on one of the wagons,” he looked toward the mare that’d first been shot. “Her family deserves to bury her themselves. Then we’ve gotta patch up our wounded and get these wagons moving before-”

“Trail Boss!” One of the stallions who’d been hauling the wagons called out. “We’ve got a little bit of a problem here.

“Oh what is it now,” he answered, sauntering toward the wagons. The stallion who’d called out was behind them, his eyes wide with worry as he looked inside the enclosures. As we turned the corner around the cart, my stomach dropped as I saw a steady stream of red pouring out of the back of the cart. We all fell silent as we stared inside. Two slaves, an older mare clutching a younger one as if to shield her, were peppered with machine gun fire. They lie in each other’s embrace on the wagon floor, the crowd around them staring in dumbfounded silence. It was a miracle none of the others had been hit, but the two that had been were most assuredly dead.

Once again, just like the day we’d first taken the slave wagons, I was struck by an odd feeling. Some uniting factor that all slaves shared. Why couldn’t I put my hoof on it?

“Goddess-dammit,” Trail Boss swore, whipping his hat off and slamming it on the ground. “So close, we were so damned close!”

“Th-the slavers said w-we only had one spare,” a mare said. “Wh-what’re they gonna do to us if we don’t deliver. What’re we gonna do now?!”

A general buzz of fear and uncertainty pervaded the surviving Appleoosans. Murmurs of abandoning the job and running or trying to find a replacement were prevalent until…

“Shut it, all of you!” Trail Boss snapped, quieting the nervous ponies. “We keep movin' just like we have been. Nothin’s changed on that front. I will figure out a plan for dealin' with Fillydelphia before we get there, I swear to you.”

That seemed to quiet them, although they seemed less than reassured. We set about cleaning up, picking up the dead Appleoosan and loading her in the cargo below a wagon as best we could. The dead slaves received… less gentle treatment as we dumped them on the side of the road. The other’s patched themselves up with potions and bandages and, within the hour, we were moving again.

Trail Boss and I took the lead once more and I watched the elder stallion closely.

“So, what’re you thinking oh abandoner of morality,” I jibed coldly. “How’re we gonna make this up to the slavers?”

He looked back at me, that same cold conviction from earlier still radiating from his gaze. “Oh we have options, my friend. Some you and this lot might be too blinded by your illusions of civility and morality to consider.”

Trail Boss fell silent at that, locking his eyes on the horizon as we continued forward.

I’ve seen some pretty scary places in my time. Abandoned Stables we thought could make a decent home, only to turn out to be host to some mutated abominations that may or may not have been purposefully created. Ghost towns filled with feral ghouls looking to munch on anything remotely living. Even kindly little townships that turned out to be harboring some… uncouth methods of food production.

All of that paled in comparison to Fillydelphia.

Who would have thought that a theme park could be made into a terrifying, fire spewing fortress of slavery? And yet here it was.

We were obviously expected if the contingent of armed guards at the gate were any indication. There were dozens of them, more than we could ever hope to fight if things turned violent. In the dead center of the line was a single, deep-red earthpony flanked on either side by an alicorn.

Our caravan stopped dead in its tracks as the inequine monsters came into view. Gasps arose from several of us, as well as portion of the slaves. We’d only heard stories of these creatures, and every one of them seemed to end with some colloquial admonition of steering clear of them. There were only two, one a sickly green and the other a vivid purple. Their stares were locked straight ahead and it almost seemed as if they were looking at nothing… or maybe everything. It was unnerving to say the least.

As we arrived, the red stallion stepped forward. He was dressed in a dirty, blue cape that looked to cut have been cut from some kind of outfit. His mane was a jet-black, and the expression he wore portrayed a demeanor of professionalism and… something dark. It was hard to get a read on the pony, which wasn’t helped much by the absence of his right eye. In its place a gleaming red cybernetic prosthetic was affixed, making it seem like the pony was looking through us.

“Just in time,” the stallion said simply. “That’s good. I do believe that keeping one’s appointments is imperative towards a positive first impression.”

“Agreed,” Trail Boss responded. “However the journey has been trying on us so, if it’s all the same to you, we’d like to conclude this as soon as possible.”

“Of course,” the stallion said. “Let’s discuss the fine details so you and your people may be on your way, Trail Boss.”

That gave Trail Boss pause, “Y-you know my name?”

“I know what is in my best interests to know,” he responded simply, yet malevolently. Like he was issuing a threat without actually using a single threatening word. “You may call me Red-Eye.”

“O-of course, Mr. Red-Eye,” Trail Boss stuttered as he approached. “Let’s talk business.”

The pair then fell behind the line of armed slavers and alicorns, leaving the rest of us to look on in morbid curiosity. Trail Boss hadn’t shared anything about his plan to replace the missing slave, but over the last two days he’d seemed to grow more certain. Obviously he’d decided on something, but also felt it wasn’t in our best interests to say exactly what that was. The two looked back at us for a brief moment, then nodded and shook hooves. The pair approached us again.

“I understand you all met some trouble on the road,” Red-Eye began. “My… business partner is very much expecting the agreed-upon amount, so merely providing less payment is not an option. However, your leader and I have come to an accord.”

That didn’t exactly waylay our concerns. In fact, the vagueness in the answer seemed to have the opposite effect.

“So what exactly is this deal,” I said when it was obvious nopony else was willing.

Red-Eye shifted his gaze toward me, that cybernetic eye almost seeming to pierce through my very thoughts. A disconcerting grin spread across his face, “I am quite pleased that you asked.”

He waved a hoof and the surrounding guards began to move. A contingent moved toward the wagons, pushing back the Appleoosans as they did. About ten others started walking… toward…

“Wh-what is this?” I stuttered, backing away from the approaching slavers.

“I’m afraid my associate is in desperate need of new followers, unicorns specifically,” Red-Eye said bluntly.

My eyes darted around and came to rest on the slave wagons. That nagging feeling, that sense uniting factor that all the slaves shared that I just couldn’t think of. Only now did I realize that every single slave trapped inside the wagons were unicorns. It also occurred to me that the only unicorns that had been a part of the caravan were myself and that mare that had been shot during the attack.

I looked pleadingly toward Trail Boss. “What are you doing?!” I screamed, a cold, lancing bolt of fear striking my heart. My eyes grew wide and I started to hyperventilate. This couldn’t be happening.

“Sorry, kid,” Trail Boss said morosely. “I’d have given ‘em myself if they’d have me. But it’s for the good of the town.”

“You can’t do this!” I cried.

“No!” a mare in the caravan shrieked. It was Posie, the same one I’d instructed during the attack. “Trail Boss, you bastard!” She tried to run forward, but the butt of a slaver’s rifle bashed into her face, breaking her nose and dropping her to the dirt. The others all looked on in horror, but everypony could see how futile objecting would be.

“It’s gotta be done, y’all. We didn’t come all this way to turn back with nothin’,” Trail Boss said, then looked back at me. “I’ll… make sure Tender and the lil’ one are taken care of, I promise.”

“You stay the hell away from them back-stabbing piece of-” I started, but was cut off by another slaver slamming their rifle into the side of my head. My temple exploded in pain and I heard a disconcerting crack. A chilling numbness fell across my skull as I felt myself fall to the ground. The edges of my vision began to darken.

“Well,” the echoey voice of Red-Eye said, “I do believe our business is now concluded.” He turned away as the Appleoosans were forced back at gunpoint, barely being given enough time to pick up Posie.

Red-Eye turned toward the alicorn, “Let the Goddess know you’re on your way.”

“We already know,” the two answered simultaneously in a creepy monotone. “These are fine specimens for Unity.”

“Just make sure the next crop of alicorns arrives soon,” he said. My vision finally began to fade as the pair of alicorns began to approach.

“Somepony help!” a stallion shrieked.

“You can’t do this to us!” a mare called immediately after.

“This can’t be real, this is a nightmare. PLEASE SOMEPONY, ANYPONY!” another screamed.

I started to come back to my senses. My eyes blearily opened, dried blood flaking off my eyelids. My vision was blurry, but it soon began to clear. I was laying on the floor of a cage, and for a moment I thought it was inside of the wagons. It soon became that this was one was far larger. I tried to lift my head, but a searing pain kept me on the ground. Oh yeah, cracked skull.

Steeling myself, I pushed off the ground and through the torment of the concussion. Although the terror in my heart demanded I stay ignorant, I looked around my new surroundings. All the slaves we’d transported were in a large circular cage. The room around us was some dingy, pre-war facility. There wasn’t any light, save for a dim spectrum illuminating us from beneath.

Shakily, I turned my gaze downward. Below us was an enormous, roiling vat of rainbow liquid. Each color of the spectrum were lined up along each other just like the arches of refracted light, completely going against how a liquid should behave. That was all we could see.

“Oh Goddess,” I whispered. “Please, help me.”

SWEET, NAIVE LITTLE CHILD. THE GREAT AND POWERFUL GODDESS IS ALREADY HERE, a booming voice answered. The panicking slaves were all immediately hushed.

An enormous, purple, spectral face rose up out of the vat. Its features were pony-like, but… wrong. Disfigured. Just beneath the creature’s… skin looked to be dozens of ponies trapped within. The face rose until it was level with the cage and it beamed a smile at us.

WELCOME, MY CHILDREN. THE GREAT AND POWERFUL GODDESS IS SO PLEASED TO WELCOME YOU ALL TO UNITY.

Despite my horrors at the abomination before me, I knew this was my only chance. “Please,” I begged loudly, pressing my face against the bars. “Please let us go. I-I-” tears started to sting at the corner of my eyes as my will began to shatter. “I-I have a wife. Sh-she’s pregnant. I need to- I… I promised.” I collapsed back to the cage floor, despair overrunning my reason. “Please, let me go home to her.”

OH MY DEAR CHILD, the head answered. YOU WILL SOON SEE THAT YOUR EARTHLY DESIRES PALE IN COMPARISON TO WHAT WE SHALL ACCOMPLISH THROUGH THE POWER OF UNITY. YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE A PART OF SOMETHING GREAT AND POWERFUL, A MOVEMENT THAT WILL BRING PEACE TO THE WASTELAND. She approached the bars, almost pressing her ethereal skin against them. We were all given a crystal-clear look at the agonized faces of ponies just beneath this terror’s skin. BUT DO NOT DESPAIR, UNITY SHALL PROVIDE MORE FOR YOUR FAMILY THAN YOU EVER COULD.

The floor of the cage dropped beneath us, and a chorus of damned screams plunged into the vat below. My skin instantly felt as if it were starting to sear off. I tried to shriek, but my lungs filled with the toxin as I was submerged. The rainbow of light became all I could see, all I knew. My body was melting and becoming one with this demon.

“Tender,” I whispered as the surface shrank away into the distance.

“I… love… -”

I… no… I makes us… remember. We are… we… we are…

We awoke. My… no… our mind felt… sluggish. That… dream. We hate that dream. Our sisters were close, but the Goddess… where was she? Why had she abandoned me… no… us. Abandoned… us. To this… pink. The pink… hurts me… NO! US! The pink hurts US!

We stood, hearing the others converse close by. We walked across the tile floor. This place… what was this place? I… no… we knew… once… when we arrived… it was… police? Police station… that was it. Keeping the striped ones… can’t let them go… that was the order that I… NO… that we were given.

We approached the others. We were three now… were we always? Not… sure. They… we…? Not… sure anymore. For so long… certain… didn’t need to… think… Unity knew all… but now…? Are they… they? Or… we? Together? Apart? We don’t like to think about it… we don’t like to remember.

“We have enough striped ponies, right?” one of us asked. “We have…” she struck her hoof on the ground eight times. “That many.”

“No, we have this many,” said the second, stomping the ground seven times. “The scrawny one died when they went through the pink below, remember?”

“All the striped ones are scrawny,” the first responded. “Let us just take those we have and leave this Goddess-forsaken place.”

Yes… I… no… we… must get… away… must not… remember.

“We hate it here,” I… yes… I. I am… an I. An… individual… but I don’t want to be… can’t be… please… Goddess. “This Goddess-forsaken place makes us remember things.”

Remember… no… don’t remember. Remembering… hurts… but I… yes I MUST… REMEMBER!

“Last night, I remembered I used to be a buck.”

By storm128

A white mare with a black mane and red streaks sat inside a large metallic stadium. Her metal appendages were ripped off. Broken wires shot out from the small amount of machinery attached to her flesh. Her body was covered with cuts all around. She vomited a bit as she lay in the grass without any ability to move. A green stallion climbed over from behind a chair above the stadium. He urinated and trickled it down on the mare's face. She cried with tears that had mixed with the piss.

“How, how could I lose to you!?” she said. “I’m a savior of Equestria, how!?”.

The stallion leaped from atop the stadium he pissed from. He bent down, groaned, and pushed a massive poop log that was served on her head.

“How how how, how could you kill everypony, even burn down our haven!?” she screamed.

The stallion peered into her eyes, the scent of poop disgusted him.

“Fuck you” he said.

The stallion then grabbed her jaw. She moved her head away, but his strength could not be turned away from. With one motion, the skin on her face began to rip apart. A lot of blood dripped out from her mouth as her jaw dislocated. Her lower jaw collapsed under his pressure. It separated from her face and a puddle of blood sat below her. She squirmed, but then laid still.

The stallion smiled and tore off the leftover skin on the jaw. There was nothing but white bone and teeth, with blood smeared on its surface. He put the jaw bone on his head and giggled like he was a pretty princess. The puddle enlarged with the trickle of blood from her face.

The stallion then went his way out of the derelict football stadium. He hummed Ave Maria as he strutted away. The sun-bleached any life that would exist. No matter what you are, death will follow you in the end. This he pondered as he went. The bone tiara on his head shook as trotted. He turned his head and dropped the tiara. It sat alone in the sand where no pony would ever care.

A giant flame could be seen off the distance to where a large settlement was. Buzzards that flew above feasted on the corpse. Their hunger would not be dispelled. They bite and chew on her body like no tomorrow. In a few seconds, she was a bundle of bones. Her mane and tail were so bright with color to the life that had been.

No pony knew who the stallion was. He came suddenly and without remorse. Heads plopped off without any ability to pause. Their brains slapped the ground into squished pieces of flesh. Guns fired at the merciless monster's destruction. Their bullets could not harm him, nor could they pierce flesh. All the way, ponies died in droves. Their stomachs cleaved in half, their eyes squished into a gooey paste. It continued until a standoff between two. She shot at him and used whatever she could. Her robotic limbs were used to tenderize her own self. She struggled with all her might. He just laughed and gave a single strike. Her spine collapsed, it jellied into a soup. Her brain could not compute.

Made by BleedingSequine

“Welcomzzztt tooooooo Kkrrrzzttre’s zzzztttloooooooow!”

Jury Rigger winced at the warbling, static filled voice crackling out of a snow covered speaker box, the unicorn filly’s heart hammering in her chest at the eerie silence being broken. The squealing of the rusty iron gate to the walled town of ruins she’d stumbled across had been bad enough, but that bizarre automated message playing along with the movement was much worse.

Raiders or monsters might overlook a squeaky gate moving in the wind, but a cheerily raised voice, even filled with pops and hisses making most of the message indecipherable, was just advertising her presence. The crunch of hooves in the snow behind her proved the point and the pale orange filly’s bright green eyes widened in fear, shaking her brown and yellow mane from her vision and scanning the dead woods she’d blundered through to find the place.

She couldn’t see them yet, but the gravelly voiced moans and snarls echoing back to her brought a cold sweat to her coat beneath her tattered winter gear. Feral ghouls.... Just perfect! Even if she had more than a hoofful of rounds for the .44 revolver floating up in her emerald magic, the poor gun was held together with little more than duct tape and hope at this point, it could break down on any shot.

Rather than fight, Jury turned back to the gate and went to widen the narrow gap she’d opened that had caused the stupid dinner bell message to go off to begin with. It was tall and still sturdy despite the decades since the war, the wall it was set in dense brick that would hold off most wasteland monsters short of a hellhound.

“Welcomzzztt to-Welcomzzztt to-Welcomzzztt to….” Unfortunately the damn automated message still functioned well enough to go off. Every. Single. Time. that she moved the heavy gate, shoving frantically as the shuffling noises of the undead rose to a gallop behind her.

The drifts of snow concealed years of rotten leaves and soil burying the bottom of the gate, along with the skeletal corpse of a pony pressed against the inside that Jury’s panicked shoving uncovered. She wrenched at the frozen foreleg reaching under the gate towards her to get enough movement out of the barrier, absently noting the faded blue and yellow barding sleeve and nearly freezing in surprise when she found what had blocked the gate so firmly.

A pip-buck! Whoever the Stable-pony with the 19 on their back was, they’d gotten caught doing the same thing she was apparently, only trying to get out instead. The valuable, foreleg worn, arcano-tech computer was wedged under the gate tight. Jury turned to buck at it when her magic wasn’t enough to pull it free and gulped, spotting the first of the ferals charging out of the woods with guttural growls and roars.

“Welcomzzztt to” CLANG! “Welcomzzztt to” CLANG! “Welcomzzztt to” CLANG! Clenching her eyes shut behind her tattered Wonderbolts goggles, Jury bucked hard behind her over and over, nearly falling on her belly when the gate finally popped free and moved a few more inches.

Giving a yelp as she caught herself, Jury scrambled around and dove for the narrow opening. For once she was grateful she was so underfed, her clearly defined ribs under the tattered winter coat squeezed through with no issue. She couldn’t help an exasperated snort when her flanks got caught for an instant, of course she still kept some padding back there… She came loose with only a moment of scrambling however, prancing around to snatch the pip-buck up in her telekinesis and throwing her body against the gate ahead of the zombie horde charging her.

Jury slid the latch on the gate shut with a bare moment of relief, then screamed when the first of the ferals slammed into the barrier and the latch snapped off in a shower of rust, forcing her to remain inches away from the snapping teeth of three undead ponies with more on the way. Being skinny and scrawny might have helped her get through the gate, but it also meant she didn’t have the weight to hold it long, already her braced hindlegs were trembling.

Thinking fast, Jury’s terrified green eyes swept all around her, settling on another pony corpse half hanging out of a little guard shack by the gate. This one was nothing but bones in white and yellow rags, the tattered remains looking somewhat similar to the first body somehow.. Their skull had been caved in, leaving a blackened stain on the weathered wood shack that led down to a snow covered lump she clutched at with her magic.

Surprised at the weight when she finally yanked the rock loose, Jury dragged it close and nearly got knocked off her hooves for her trouble. More zombies had joined those reaching through the gate and fumbling at her barrel, a glance over her shoulder showed the next several to hit the gate would be too much for her to hope to keep it shut as she just barely managed.

Straining with effort, Jury threw her meager weight against the gate again and slammed the… rather odd looking rock where the pip-buck had been wedged. Thankfully, it seemed like the dense stone (that for some reason looked like a loaf of bread?) was as good a fit and indestructible as the pip-buck was, allowing her to cautiously pull away from the gate and breathe a sigh of relief at the ferals snapping and shoving against each other to no avail.

“WelcomWelcomWelcomWelcomWelcomWelcomWelcomWelcom….” Jury pinned her ears back as the gate speaker went bonkers at all the ferals pushing to get in, dusting the pip-buck off and trotting towards the hidden village she’d found.

Hopefully there’d be good salvage, enough to keep her going another month, or week, or even day… She was definitely here for the time being, short of finding another exit or climbing the wall elsewhere. Judging by what she could make out down the lane she followed, her view inside supported what she’d seen from the tree she’d climbed outside the gates to spot the secluded village.

She had hopes it was as abandoned as it looked at least. No raiders, no monsters, no settlement of somewhat rational or not ponies, just an empty ruin. The sign she’d uncovered buried in the snow at the roadside a few miles back that led her here was the only advertisement she’d seen and that was prewar. If she was lucky, Sire’s Hollow was a hidden gem just waiting for the salvaging.

Trotting into the center of town, Jury’s head panned back and forth trying to make sense of things and not making much headway. It was a fairly intact complex of ruins for the wasteland, lots of cozy little homes she’d passed on the outskirts leading to a main street of businesses and a central fountain full of frozen, scummy water.

What was weird was most evident standing before the cracked stone fountain however, it looked like the town was divided right down the middle, and that the two sides had fought a war… She turned her head left to go over it again, eyeing the sturdy and very old fashioned looking businesses, spotting a dilapidated book store and bakery right off. Turning right, she saw upscale and cutting edge wartime buildings in the style of the big city ruins she’d explored before, including a smoothie shop and what looked like a perfume shop by the oversized spray bottle shaped sign.

There were numerous corpses scattered around just in eyesight, most centered on the fountain as the bizarrely marked and fortified border between the two halves. Walking about slowly to dust these free of snow for a closer look, she saw most were frozen in the act of combat with each other.

There were tangled piles of ponies who’d fought hoof to hoof, knives and other crude melee weaponry, along with a few firearms rusting away to ruin as she paced further out in a widening circle. The buildings on the left showed scorched burns of magical energy weapons fire, while those on the right had more of those weird, bread shaped rocks lobbed through the walls.

After checking it all over, Jury scratched her mane through her tattered red sock hat and frowned, the ones of the left were all dressed in white, while the ones on the right were wearing blue. What was the same however was the yellow accents to the familiar barding, including the faded number 19 each wore… These were all Stable-ponies, but Jury thought they all only wore blue, like that silly little cartoon Stable-buck on all the Stable-Tec ads.

On the one hoof, she felt disgusted and sad for all these idiots who’d come back to the surface she’d grown up on. As a filly, she often prayed to the Goddesses asking why she couldn’t have been born one of the lucky few to come from a safe place like they did. It obviously took no time at all for them to repeat the mistakes of the past and for the wasteland to corrupt them like it did all ponies.

On the other hoof however, Jury couldn’t help an internal squee at the prospect of finding a Stable nearby. Even if these ponies had abandoned it and left little behind, just the location of such a place could go for a ton of caps to the right buyer. It may be close by if she was lucky, but it probably wasn’t too far off even if she wasn’t. All she had to do was poke around and hope for clues along with the supplies she’d hoped to find here.

That left picking where to start, so Jury turned right without much debate. The fancier and newer looking part of town was more likely to have valuable salvage after all, plus she could see the glow of flickering gem lights in the shops that would make searching easier. With a rumble in her tummy, she made for the smoothie shop first, while making a mental note to hit the bakery on the other side of town soon after.

Unfortunately, the awful reek of rotten food assaulted her nose as soon as she opened the cracked glass door. The counter bearing a trio of rusting, heavy duty blenders was heavily laden with a pile of fruits and vegetables that had dissolved into an amorphous heap of stink that made her gag.

Jury held her nose and poked around behind the counter anyway, the empty ache of her belly making even the pile of rotten refuse tempting. She was relieved it didn’t come to that at least, finding a couple jars of Zap Apple preserves and peaches in heavy syrup. She nearly inhaled the latter, looking around the back and following the mellow green glow of a terminal coming from the manager’s office as she munched the heavenly, decades old food.

‘Things have been getting worse with those damn Celestials, I heard there was another fight yesterday. At least back in Stable 19 they stayed in their half and we stayed in ours, ever since we came back to the surface though, things have been getting tense. Overmare Flare told us to do the same up here, but we have to listen to them proselytizing across the border about sticking to the old ways and worshiping Goddess Sunbutt instead of glorious goddess Luna. The war wasn’t her fault, it started under their precious Celestia! Why should we praise her and abandon the goddess who brought us into the modern age? Why, we wouldn’t have survived at all without the Stable and all its technology they turn their noses up at now. I know we shouldn’t fight, but how much blasphemy are we expected to take? Every day things get a little worse, it’s all falling apart slowly but surely. I’m worried all it will take is a spark for things to get really bad, so Essence and I have been thinking of heading out on our own somewhere. We’ve been putting supplies aside in her safe and I’ve got my key safe in the register so…’

Jury’s eyes lit up as she perused the journal entries on the unsecured terminal. Jackpot! She often read little scraps of the past for opportunities just like this, ponies leaving little treasure maps behind. As she fumbled at the register to find the key mentioned, she had to admit it was partially curiosity too, mulling over what she learned and not liking it.

It took bashing at the bullet ridden register with her hooves to get the drawer to finally open with a loud ‘Ding!’ while she ruminated on the thought, but Jury gave a victorious whinny when she pulled the tray of useless old world bits aside to find a tarnished silver key. That done and with nothing more of immediate use to scavenge in the smoothie shop, she trotted back outside and looked around in thought. Which shop belonged to this ‘Essence’ mentioned in the terminal entry?

The answer leapt out at her when she glanced towards the shop next door with the giant perfume bottle sign. Most of the letters were scorched or rusted away, but she saw several Es had survived and the shadow of where the other letters once were was enough to puzzle it out.

She barely made it halfway in the door when a clanking noise made her ears flick warily, locking on to a rusty robot making its slow way out from behind the counter of the shop that still smelled strongly of… everything actually. All the broken bottles littering the shelves had combined into one fantastic stink.. At least it was a Ponitron cashier clomping out to greet her, the least dangerous and most often harmless model of Robronco robot. Jury still drew her revolver in her magic and pointed it towards the potential threat, slowing to a stop as it spoke in a staticky voice.

“Greetings Customer! Would you care to sample our newest essences today?” The Ponitron bellowed in its halting electronic voice, leaving Jury annoyed as she trotted cautiously in the shop and made to look for this safe.

“No, umm… just browsing, thanks.” Jury huffed and tried to sidle around the slow moving robot, making for the rear of the shop.

The robot gave a negative sounding beep from its glass domed head, then spoke in a cheery voice and turned towards her as she came close. “Oh please, it’s free and the very latest from Mistress Essence. Try a sample of our tangerine tear gas!”

Jury had a bare moment to blink in confusion at the robot’s happy shout, then the nozzle mounted in its chest spewed out an orange cloud of choking gas that made her fall back in pain and revulsion. She’d never seen or smelled a tangerine as a child of the wastes, but she seriously hoped they weren’t really so sickly sweet. The closest she could come to the smell was the nasty orange flavor of Rad-Away, in gaseous form, and 20% more vile. It was also 1000% more painful, her vision blurred with tears and her eyes burned immediately, her gasp of surprise only taking more of the horrid stuff down her lungs, which instantly rebelled at the treatment and started coughing it back out uncontrollably.

She backpedalled away from the clanking torture-bot happily trying to corner her, barely able to hear it warble proudly “Wonderful isn’t it? One of Miss Essence’s newest line of designer essences! Custom made for our Celestial neighbors, try Apple Acid next!”

Judging by the name and past experience, Jury had no desire to try another ‘fragrance’ and dove aside, barely avoiding a puff of green gas that drifted over to a rusty set of shelves that corroded on contact with the noxious stuff, spilling more bottles to the floor that added to the stench and only made breathing harder..

She couldn’t see much through her burning and puffy eyes, but Jury fired blind at the thing to make it stop. Half the quartet of .44 rounds missed entirely, while the last two managed to hit center mass with a ping against metal and the more satisfying sound of sparks and grinding metal as it fell to a heap.

Staggering toward it twitching on the ground, Jury coughed and sniffled as she reared back and stamped on its glass domed head repeatedly, not stopping until it was a broken ruin under her hooves. That done, she wove her way to the back of the shop and curled up behind the counter with tears streaming from her bloodshot eyes, angry and still scared by the close call. She’d dismissed it as mostly harmless when it did as so many robots did and acted like the world hadn’t ended around it, nearly paying a high price for letting her guard down around a piece of the old world winding its way down to ruin..

The safe turned out to be just what she was hoping for. Jury exited the Essence shop with a full belly and bloodshot eyes some time later, roaming her way over to the other side of town. While the half of Sire’s Hollow she had explored so far had been full of prewar ruins in the most modern style of architecture around before the end, the other half looked like something out of a storybook of ancient times.

Of course being constructed of such crude materials meant the ruins were in a worse state of destruction than the other side of town, many nothing more than the burnt husks of foundations that had crumbled away in the decades since the war. The bakery and nearby bookshop were made of sturdier stone with traditional earth pony craftsponyship however, giving Jury a couple more places to look over.

She passed the remains of several old fashioned catapults around the bakery, nearly tripping over a pile of more of those bread shaped rocks waiting to be loaded and lobbed towards the other side of town. When she poked her head in the bakery itself, she gaped at the piles of more of the rocks and realized they weren’t bread shaped, they were bread…. Sort of…

An experimental bite nearly chipped a tooth and she tossed the heavy lump away. The faded, hoof painted sign she passed on the counter reading; ‘Made with 100% Ancient Pony Grains’ made her hopeful the ingredients were more edible and still around in the back. Jury made her way where the looming bulk of a huge stone oven took up most of the kitchen and started poking around.

What she did find still rattling around in the various ingredient tins was more like gravel than food, though she did find a few things she had to think on near the oven. Numerous metal molds had blackened chunks of more of the stone like bread in odd shapes, which she eventually recognized as the strange pieces of armor the skeletons in the white Stable barding wore outside.

With her curiosity getting the better of her, Jury blew the dust off a heavy open book on a small table in the very back, reading over the blocky script mouth written by the earth pony skeleton she found huddled on a small cot in a back room. Knowing what happened here wouldn’t really do her any good, but there was always the chance for another clue to something useful at least. Plus she was genuinely interested now, how had these Stable ponies fucked everything up so completely, turned on themselves when there were so many other threats in the wasteland?

‘...One of those uppity Lunites complained about my bread again today, suggested I ‘tweak’ the recipe so there’s less crust! Overstallion Firelight’s right, they’ve got no respect for tradition over there, the crust is the best part!

As if that wasn’t enough, then they started harping on about Luna being the better Princess right in my shop! Well I put Mocha in her place alright, told her it was Luna’s fault the world went to hell, she was in charge after all. Goddess Celestia never should have left the throne to her sister I says. 1000 years of peace and harmony under our goddess after all, when it only took Luna a couple decades to blow it all to hell. Well, she didn’t have nothin’ to say to that, let me tell you! She got all snippy and red faced, said she’s never comin’ back for my delicious bread again, well good riddance! Got plenty of loyal customers on this side of town already, don’t need Lunites coming over with all their fancy modern ideas to ruin things like their goddess ruined Equestria!.’

The random journal entry she read over just confirmed her initial thoughts about this weird town, they really had all lost their minds arguing over the best goddess. The entries she skimmed over after that just got worse, tensions rose to the breaking point with the other side of town, eventually turning from squabbles into scuffles, then a fight here and there. Finally one fight over their twisted beliefs went too far and ended with one of the dead baker Cracked Wheat’s loaves of deadly bread smashing a pony’s skull open.

After that most of the journal was filled with short entries concerning how much work the baker took on for the war effort, cooking up ammo and armor both in his shop that supplied the old fashioned ponies here the means to fight their modern armed counterparts on the other side of town.

“Idiots…” Jury muttered under her breath as she slammed the book closed and scooped up what usable odds and ends she had found, huffing bitterly at the senseless stupidity of it all.

She’d seen communities fall apart on these lines before. Holy war… No wonder the place was a ghost town, these fools got to fighting each other over which Princess was best. These Stable ponies had every advantage, came back to the surface after riding out the last couple decades of hell, built what had been a thriving, well defended settlement, then they tore it apart from the inside.

It was all so stupid and pointless it made Jury angry and sad as she made her way to the last mostly intact building, flinging open the heavy oak door to what had been a huge bookshop and slamming it shut behind her with a forceful buck.

Jury barely had time to take in the musty, open room full of shelves on all sides before an ominous creaking sounded out all around her. A moldy book bonked her on the head, drawing her eye up to the nearest shelves shaking and shuddering above her.

She squeaked and dove aside just ahead of the whole thing coming down on top of her, then was forced to prance on as the crash set off the other shelves all around her. One after another fell like dominos, shaking the whole building as she scrambled nimbly through it all. Jury skidded to a halt inches away from one shelf coming down in front of her muzzle, then leapt out of the way of another coming down on top of it, the whole while getting pelted with more heavy books falling like rain.

When the dust settled, Jury was buried under a mountain of musty books and bruised all over, but alive and able to slowly dig her way out. The bookstore had fared less well, making her groan in frustration and despair as she took it in. The door out was blocked....

Several of the heavy oak shelves had fallen on top of each other against it, presenting a major obstacle to getting out as just an experimental telekinetic tug with her horn proved even the rotten wood was too heavy to pull free. Books littered the floor, making her progress through the room difficult as she searched for another exit with increasing panic.

By the time she reached a gloomy corner of still intact shelves labeled ‘Antiques’, Jury was despondent, trudging to the clear little nook that looked like it had been made into some kind of camp and falling to her haunches with a fearful whinny. She was trapped… She’d been lured in to this rotting town that seemed determined to fall apart around her and get her killed, now it looked like it may have succeeded. She had a little food and water now, but that would only last so long, hopefully long enough to find a way out…

Sniffling miserably, she eventually looked up and saw she wasn’t alone. A cracked and worn leather chair had been dragged behind the small desk for looking over books in this section, the surface littered with a lantern, piles of thick tomes, a few snack cakes and bottles of water she scooped up wearily, and a white barded skeleton presiding over it all from the seat. It was a unicorn, a pool of blackened blood staining the seat it was propped up in, sitting before a large book held open with a ratty quill pen lying on the brittle pages.

Giving a tired sigh, Jury took a look at the flowing script written there. She’d already poked around in this hellhole enough it got her caught in this mess, she may as well read what this pony had written in what looked to be his last moments.

‘...were all wrong, fighting over one goddess or another. How could we have all been so stupid? Was it just because of the Stable? Following Stable-Tec’s experiment about living in balance and harmony with another community just kept us separate and distrustful. Maybe it was my fault, mine and Stellar Flare’s… We were always squabbling before we went underground, time just made it worse. If it wasn’t bickering over Celestia and Luna, it would have been something else.

Here at the end, I see now neither one is the true deity of this wasteland we found ourselves in after coming back to the surface. Luna and Celestia both were goddesses of order, day and night, push and pull, balance… Harmony. No, what rules this world is neither of their blessed souls. Chaos rules here, disorder, disharmony, dissonance… Discord, he’s the true god of this world now..

My Punkie-wunk taught me a word from all her fancy arcane theory and spellcraft that stuck with me all these years, Entropy… I looked it up again to write here for whoever finds this. The first definition was probably the one she meant, she loved egghead stuff like it anyway. It says entropy is; A thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.

The second definition is simpler for old bucks like me though, a lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. A gradual decline...that’s what happened here. We got so caught up fighting over which half of a pair meant to balance each other was best, we became unbalanced and descended into chaos, we fell to discord.

Blaming the spirit of chaos sounds better than us just being stupid enough to let a disagreement disolve into fighting another miniature war after surviving the big one anyway. I thought about coming here for the entrance to our side of the Stable, but I don’t have much time left and I don’t want to die down there. Maybe I can leave behind a warning for any other survivors out there trying to rebuild after we’re gone before I die though.

Discord or not, always be mindful of the tendency of things to fall apart over time, like this whole sad, ruined world. Fight back, try to remember the magic of harmony and friendship, fix what’s broken and remain ever vigilant against entropy. Be better than we were.’

The last words trailed off into an unsteady ink blotch and Jury’s lip quivered at the stallion’s last words, reflecting how they applied to her and the situation she was in now. Entropy… Just as he said, everything about this town was run down and falling apart, dissolving into chaos that had now trapped her.

After a few minutes however, she bucked up and took heart in the warning he tried to leave behind. The ruins of the old world may be run down and falling apart, but there were still ways to take the rotting bones of the old and build something new, to survive, to fight back.

Wiping her eyes and putting on a determined expression, Jury stood and started sorting through the detritus of fallen books and broken shelves, bringing order to the chaos as she sought out the entrance to this Stable he’d mentioned. The dead stallion’s final message did what he hoped and may even save her life, providing not just the information that there was a way out hidden somewhere here, but hope too.

Everything about Sire’s Hollow may be crumbling away to chaos and trying to kill her, but she wasn’t going to die here. Jury was going to live, somehow…. Entropy wasn’t going to be what killed her.

By Crazyperson

“Listen up, you lickspittle idiots!” The Paladin was in a real huff today, wasn’t he?

“We lost contact with a squad at 2100 hours, this is no longer a training exercise. Do I make myself clear?” Jeez, you’d think we were in a warzone. Let's face it, this is probably just some squires trying to skip out on training. Wouldn’t be the first time some punks thought they could hide out and pretend they got lost. Still, I had a job to do so might as well. Hell of a retirement plan from the front lines, you spend your best years fighting the scum of the waste, then they stick you to babysitting squires till you can’t even work your power armor anymore. Elder Sharp Sides had a sense of humor, whatever, better go knock those punks heads together.

“Paladin, get these kids back to camp I’ll find the straggler,” I grunted and trotted over to my armor.

“Sorry, orders from above, this needs to serve as experience in search and rescue operations. Take the trainees Blackbox.” Great, babysitting kids while looking for other kids. I should have taken a bullet fighting Red Eye’s assholes. “Understood, come on, you punks! Saddle up, standard gear lets find these lost souls!”

I bucked my armor’s belly, and it reared up backplates opening for me. As the plates closed around me, I activated my radio to get more details. “Lighthouse, you get roped into this too?”

“Hah, yeah designation Gamma 01, I'm taking the brats up to a hill. Were to establish overwatch for a third squad if they don’t show up soon.” Of course, Elder Sharp Sides was taking this way too seriously.

“Just another day at Everfree Forest.” Lighthouse chuckled and cut the transmission.

“Damn straight,” I muttered, I trotted ahead of the squires assigned to me. We set up camp some sixty meters from the forest. Our campsite was placed overhead on a hill, as a standard procedure, we started bringing squires here for training. Everfree was practically alive, a pulsing beast in its own right, spewing out the worst the wasteland had to offer. The hellhounds relocating nearby only made The Order and me all the tenser. Still, a perfect place for survival training and a hell of a lot of untapped resources for the brave and stupid enough. Unlucky for me, Applejack’s Rangers counted among the brave and stupid kind.

“Crusader Blackbox, we’re ready, sir!” I turned to the brats under my command. Bartz, Nikola, and Thyme, nice enough kids when it comes down to it.

“Alright come on, stay together, standard patrol formation, you see something you call it out.” I started down the path into the valley below. “Oh, almost forgot we’re designated Gamma 02, switch your short burst to frequency 12.34.” I sighed and led us through the ravine. “Stay sharp, what weapons did you choose?”

“Huh?”

“Weapons soldier, keep up!”

“Oh, right.” Nikola stammered, “a-as squad leader I assigned us energy weapons to minimize the chance of jamming in a moist environment.”

“Not bad, now just make sure you don’t turn one of your comrades to dust. Remember, any incident for friendly fire could be costly.” Always the same shit, kids eager to shoot lasers at everything. Well, it doesn’t matter, the wildlife tended to leave you alone if you went in groups.

We entered into Everfree, the canopy of trees instantly blocked out the light of the moon shining above us. I turned my headlamp on; the squires followed suit, turning their helmet lights on. In a moment's notice, the world had changed. I felt like we had stepped out of Equestria into a strange alien world. Beams of light filtered through the trees, casting the forest in ominous shadows. Our own lights banished the darkness, revealing more of the hostile planet. Critters, small and some the size of your hoof, scampered from the light. Offending eyes stared at us from the shadows, always just shy of our headlamps. I could hear the kids quicken their pace behind me, I couldn’t blame them, being alone here was enough to drive a stallion to drink.

As we delved deeper into the forest, the footing became tricky. Gnarled roots and holes dug by Celestia knows what forced us to slow down. Despite my years of experience screaming at me otherwise, I was forced to keep my head low to illuminate the path. I wasn’t at war, I really didn’t need to worry about some slaver nut splattering my guts with an anti-machine rifle. But it was hard you know, you spend your whole life from one fight to another, and if ponies ain’t trying to kill you, suddenly it feels weird.

“Omega 01 to 02, how copy?” My radio crackled to life.

“Hard copy 01, what's up?” I pushed through some low hanging branches snapping them.

“I found a trail, hooves all over the place, looks like our missing ponies went through here.” I heard Lighthouse’s kids say something I couldn’t make out. “Yeah, it looks like the kids were in a hurry.”

Hm, did they try to run and hide? That’s a long way to go just to avoid further work. “Hey, Lighthouse, what Crusader was in charge of that team?”

“I’m not sure-bzzt- Ga-bzzt- huh-bzzt- C-bzzt- in.” The transmission died after some interference. That shouldn’t have happened, we're in pretty close range.

“Lighthouse respond, Lighthouse, do you copy?” I stopped, and Nikola bumped into my flanks.

“Sir?” he rubbed his nose with a questioning glance.

“H.Q, please respond, this is Gamma 02 reporting in.” I gritted my teeth. This wasn’t right, not one bit. I should have felt it sooner, squires slacking off was one thing, but I should have paid closer attention to our surroundings. The world had gone quiet, worst it seemed as if the air itself has gone still. The peering eyes of the wildlife had disappeared, we were no longer of interest or worry to them. Something else drove them away from the area, I suppose it had to be a predator. I really have lost my edge working daycare for these kids.

“This is H.Q; send your traffic.”

“I lost contact with 01, I’m encountering interference, can you hail them from your end?” I powered up my weapons, feeling a weird tingly feeling in the back of my neck. I shifted my head slightly, Bartz bringing up the rear was just spacing out, looking at everything but focusing on nothing. Nikola was muttering something to himself, his eyes on the ground. Thyme, the smarter of the three, which wasn’t by a sizeable margin mind you, was looking around nervously. These dolts would have been shot dead by Red Eye’s slavers.

“Hey!” I stamped my hoof on the ground.

“Ah!” A beam of angry red light hit me square in the chest, leaving a bright red spot on my armor. I froze in place for a moment.

“I’m so sorry!” Nikola put his front hooves together, pleading, “please don’t report me!”

Sigh.

“Enough, you’re lucky I’m in here, or you’d be scooping me up into your saddlebags. Now pay attention, you’re looking for your comrades in a hostile environment.” I threw an accusing hoof at Nikola, “quit looking at your hooves and take stock of the situation, surroundings, your squads formation, think!”

“Bartz, by Celestia's flanks, you look like you’re in Luna’s moon, a Manticore could have you halfway down its gullet, and you’d still be a mile away!”

“Thyme!”

“Sir!” She straightened.

“You clench your ass any tighter, and I could squeeze diamonds out of it, being alert is one thing, twitching at every time the wind rustles the leaves is another. Take a deep breath, calm down, and focus your mind.” I sighed, shaking my head, “are we clear?”

“Yes sir!” they retorted in unison and spread out to cover all sides.

“Outstanding!” I turned back around, scanning the forest for life. The stillness was all that greeted me, and it made my skin crawl.

“This is H.Q; come in Gamma 02.”

“This is 02, send your traffic H.Q.” I narrowed my eyes in anticipation.

“Gamma 01 is not responding, Squire’s distress pulsers are not responding either. Were prepping a full armored squad, in the meantime, we need your squad to investigate 01’s last known position, how copy?”

What?

“H.Q, my trainees are not prepared for a live search and rescue operation. I advise they retreat while I proceed on my own.” I gritted my teeth, H.Q had to be sniffing glue or something. Two trainee squads are missing, and they want me to take these kids with me?

“Negative 02, we don’t have the pony-power to spare, the armored squad is coming from the second outpost at Apple Acres. Use caution and fallback if you encounter trouble, how copy?”

Son of a- “Hard copy H.Q, proceeding to 01’s last known location, 02 out.” I heaved a sighed and looked to my disappointed squad. Frankly, I didn’t care if they were disappointed, better they live to try again than die in this godforsaken forest. “Don’t look so surprised, were in the middle of a forest teeming with Celestia-knows-what, and you couldn’t even properly cover your asses while I talked to H.Q? You want to prove me wrong, shape up, and do not let your guard down for a second, is that clear?” I opened my helmet, letting them stare into my cobalt eyes.

“Yes, sir!” They straightened, a fire immediately started burning in their eyes. Now those were the eyes of soldiers!

I took charge, and we started hiking north of our current position. With the thick foliage, I could only curse as we ran into a hidden ravine. I jumped down, my metal hooves splashing into muddy water. The trainees slowly climbed down one by one, before we climbed up the other end. It took us a good hour to traverse to Lighthouse’s last known position.

The sight was not promising, we passed through the brush into a worn path from hooves beating down the ground. The trail led further into the forest, the trees canopy drowned out Luna’s light here the thickest. I could not make out a sliver of natural light as the path was engulfed in utter darkness. I trailed my headlamp over the beaten way to find a disorganized mess of hooves. None looked older than today, worst some looked fresh, and the deeper prints made by Lighthouse’s armor were everywhere.

“Sir, look,” Thyme’s light illuminated the foliage.

“Scorch marks,” true enough sections of leaves and tree bark had been burned through. A clean-cut of a magical laser bolt, the tree trunks were burned clean through leaving perfectly round holes, and the ground itself had marked as if somepony fired on the ground. I trotted up to light the way through the path. Several hoof prints led into the unknown, though my light did little in banishing the oppressive dark.

Click click click…

“Hm? Did you hear that?” Bartz said behind me, I strained my ears, and the sound detectors in the armor amplified to adjust.

Click click click…

What is that, sounds like someponie's chattering teeth. “Circle up, watch all sides, I need to contact H.Q.” I turned my radio on.

A loud ear-splitting screech shattered the quiet of the forest. My radio instantly turned to static. My armor’s HUD flickered but persisted, and the light of our lamps flickered for a second. Everypony tried covering their ears, but the sound seemed to pass right through us to rattled our bones. “What the hell!” Nikola took off his helmet, sitting on his haunches.

Bzzzzzzztttt

Nothing, just static, that…screech or whatever the hell that was, was interfering with our radios. “Okay, now I know why we couldn’t reach 01.” I glanced back to make sure everypony was alright. “Status?”

“All good,” Bartz threw up a hoof.

“I’m fine, Sir.” Thyme nodded.

“Fine, but what do we do, Sir?” Nikola donned his helmet and tapped it for good measure.

“Well, we march out of here.” Everyponie’s heads snapped up to look at me, “or we look for our comrades.” I opened my helmet to look at them all in the eye once again. “Don’t answer before knowing what you’re getting into, this was a deliberate move. Something or someone knocked down our calms, they knew what we were using them for. There’s no shame in a tactical retreat to wait for reinforcements.”

Everypony shared a look, and damn it if I wasn’t kind of proud of them at the moment. “We don’t leave Ranger’s behind, Sir.” Nikola shook his head and puffed up his chest. “We look for our comrades.”

“Alright, stick together and watch your flanks, I don’t want anything sneaking up-on-us. That clear?”

“Yes, Sir!” The kids smirked at one another and got into formation.

“Alright, let’s take the road well-traveled then.” I chuckled, trying to make light of the situation, for their sakes, and a bit for mine as well.

Weapons powered, lights searching, we followed 01’s hoof-steps further and further into Everfree. The wind started to pick up again, rustling the tree leaves, making the swishing sound feel more terrifying than it was. The lack of noise from the local wildlife was disconcerting, hell it was downright frightening. The things that live in Everfree hardly ever hid from us out of fear. Yet now they were gone as if they were never there in the first place. The windblown trees were the only companions willing to hiss at us, and whenever the wind died, that sound came again.

Click click click…

The damn sound had the squires jumping at every shadow, their lights would swing violently one way, then track the bush lines slowly back. The noise followed us, and it was always at the same distance, it never got louder, and it never grew quieter. Each time it came, my ears twitched, and I wanted nothing more than to start firing into the tree-line, to shut up whatever was following us. The wind blew particularly loud, the trees hissing grew into a roar, and I heard hurried footsteps track across our left, the clicking followed, this time louder and much closer…much too close.

Click click click…

“Did you hear that?” The squires circled up, lights searching I snapped to the left my guns following my line of sight. I glanced at my E.F.S to see the directional compass free of lines, save for my squad.

“Sir”

“Quiet Thyme,” I snapped lightly at her, I strained my ears but only the trees steadily growing quieter came through the sound-pick-up. When the air died down, none of us dared to move, I could hear my heart thump rhythmically against my chest. The seconds ticked away, and my own breathing became audible to me. I swallowed a lump in my throat and slowly stared down the path again. “Lets’ go; don’t let your guard down.”

“Roger,” Nikola was the only one with the nerves to answer steadily, everypony else just nodded, but the trembling in their frames was evident to me.

I learned early on; the quiet is a soldier's nightmare. The silence eats away at you, it robs of you of your sense and denies you sleep or even the clearing of your mind. Time becomes an insufferable crawl, seconds seem to tick away minutes apart, and noise, of any kind, sound a thousand times louder, and a million times more threatening.

Click click click…

“Shit!” Nikola hissed, he tried but failed to hide the curse under his breath. My armor picked up the sound clear as day. I swallowed again and looked down to find the end of the hoof-steps. But, just at the end of the hoof-steps laid a discarded magical energy rifle.

“Sir?” Nikola stepped up beside me. He focused on the discarded weapon, the barrel smoked a sign of repeated fire. He scrunched up his nose and stepped up to examine it closer, there was….something covering the rifle. I blenched almost throwing up in my mouth, I have seen things in war that will never let me sleep peacefully so long as I live. But this, this wasn’t pony-made this goopy slime was thick and white-ish in color. It was stuck right in the middle of the rifle side, splattered against it, like it had been hurled at it. There was a stringy bit off goop trailing into the dirty ground, and on closer inspection, it was scorched at the end, cut off by a laser bolt.

I stepped away and looked up to the surrounding area, the hoof-steps formed into a semi-circle, three ponies, two sets left of me, and one set of deeply imprinted hooves to the right. Lighthouse stood there, I looked to the brush line to see it scarred by heavy machinegun fire. Exploded bark from 5mm bullet fire, and a path plowed through by something substantial.

There’s no way Lighthouse abandoned his kids.

“Sir, I found more hoof-steps.” Nikola made me snap my head in his direction. Sure enough, more prints picked up about ten feet from where we were. I nodded, glanced more at the forced clearing, and trotted up to Nikola. Two sets of hoofprints, well to be precise two sets of hoofprints and half of another. I stepped back and put my hoof out to keep everypony else from stepping into the fresh tracks. I squinted my eyes, lowering my head closer to the ground. The two sets of hoof-steps were facing outwards. The Half-steps looked to be facing back where we came from. I tilted my head and stuck my hoof against the ground to feel it soft and muddy. There wasn’t a drop of water around us, and the soil around the area was dry. I stood up to my full length and brought up my soiled hoof up to my face. The mud, it was colored black and…red?

“Ah!” Thyme screeched and turned her lighting the path. “Something touched my back!” Everypony snapped into a combat stance and circled up. I whipped around with Thyme just behind me. I looked at her back to see a wet spot on her barding’s back. Another drop landed on her I put up my hoof to keep her from turning and knocking into me. “What is that?” She moved, albeit with frenzied caution to stand beside the drop. The ground beneath her had a small spot darkened by the dripping mystery liquid. I looked up, my headlamp traveling up to the canopy of leaves. Just above us, covered in the mystery goop, was a helmet. The front top was smashed open, two holes broke right through the hardened material, destroying the headlamp. The mystery liquid dripped, and I caught it on my armored hoof, it left a bright red spot that shined against our light.

“Blood”

“S-Sir?” Thyme’s breathing became shallow, I looked at her to see her staring upwards; her eyes wild with fear. Everypony else was looking up, Nikola’s lower lip was trembling, and Bartz flopped down on his haunches his jaw hanging open. I took a deep breath, my heart started to thump against my ears, despite my armors climate control environment; I felt a drop of cold sweat slither its way down the back of my neck. I clenched my mouth with my nostrils flaring against the mic inside my helmet. My ragged breathing mixed with my increasingly faster heartbeat, and I gathered the courage to look up.

The treetops were gnarled with strings of the mystery goop. The thick slimy lines of goop attached treetrunk-to-treetrunk, branch-to-branch, creating a network across the treetops. Tangled, or more like stuck against the goop, were a handful of ponies. I didn’t bother to look at my E.F.S; they were already gone. I dared not focus on the damage done to their bodies. I don’t think my stomach could take it.

“B-Brussle’s squad,” Nikola broke the horrified silence, the words sent a shudder down my spine I worked hard to suppress. Celestia above, they were just kids! I dared look at the face of one of the dead, their glassy stare fixed in sheer terror.

“There’s nothing we can do here, form up and let’s go.” I was surprised my voice didn’t shake because seeing those kids cut me deep. Flashes of slavers using slaves as cannon fodder flashed across my mind.

Shit.

“there's only four.”

“What?”

“F-four, Sir I only count four bodies, where are the rest of them.” Bartz’s voice quivered with every syllable.

Right, Brussel's squad was here, but where was Brussel, for that matter where was Lighthouse’s squad. “Form up, come on!” I growled to keep from quivering when I spoke. I trotted ahead, and everypony filed in behind me more alert than ever.

“What got them?”

“I don’t know, but it got them good, did you see-”

“Quiet, Nikola, you too, Bartz, Crusader Blackbox is concentrating!” Thyme hissed just a hoof-step behind me.

So we ventured deeper into the foreboding darkness, this whole place was blackened beneath the tree canopy. At times, a beam of light would trail above just ahead of me, probably the wisest choice any of the squires had made today. Whatever killed Brussel’s squad and probably gotten to Gamma 01, could be out there laying in ambush.

“Light!” Nikola hissed from the rear, Celseita, they jumbled up their formation. I’d scold them about consistency, but protocol on proper unit structure was the last god damn thing on my mind right now. Some twenty feet ahead, a flashlight illuminated a tree creating a fork on the road. There was something huddled against the tree, casting an ominous shadow against the tree trunk. I kept my weapons trained on the slumped figured, all light sources focused on the figure. With trepid steps, we inched closer, all of us ready to bring that thing into a whole world of hurt if it was hostile.

“…”

“It talks!” Bartz rushed up to my side.

“…”

“It’s a pony!” Thyme rushed ahead of me.

Stupid girl!

I hurried behind her and everypony followed. Against the tree laid huddled up, one of Lighthouse’s squires with blood pooled beneath him.

“Thelightsafethelightissafe,” he rocked back and forth, clutching something against his chest. I looked at the flashlight on the ground, and I grew pale, it was a… occupied helmet.

“Oh, Celestia… is he holding onto someponie’s?” Thyme could hold it no longer, she hurled her stomachs contents into a nearby bush.

I cringed and opened my helmet to let the frightened kid look at my face. With any hope, my ugly mug might bring him comfort, or get his attention. “Kid, are you okay, are you injured?”

He failed to respond, just kept rocking back and forth, muttering gibberish. “Thelightissafethelightissafe.”

“He’s in a trance,” I put my hoof on his shoulder, but he didn’t register that either. “Damn it, any ideas?” I looked at my squad. Thyme was gasping, recovering from the ordeal. Bartz could only stare at what the pony was clutching greedily in his fetlocks. Nikola stood by the occupied helmet, he lifted a hoof with what I could guess to be morbid curiosity to touch the helmet.

“NO!” The pony before me screamed bolting from the tree, he dropped his price possession and dove at the helmet. Nikola jumped, skittering away from the helmet while the pony grabbed the helmet, snuffing out the light against his chest. There was a crunching sound of glass beneath a metal surface.

“No,no,no,no,no!” The pony scrambled to his haunches. He picked up the helmet, its contents falling out of it with a wet plop against the dirt. Thyme looked on, horrified her light fixated on the ground. “No, no, no, no, no!” The crazed ponies wild eyes shifted rapidly while he hugged the broken helmet against his chest.

“Calm down kid, it's alright,” I tried to put my hoof against his shoulder. Something flashed from his belt. It caught the light of Nikola’s flashlight. Metal contacted against the side of my exposed face, and I fell to my side dazed. A hoof trench knife, with a metal-studded band to sick your fetlock through. The studs doubled as a striking weapon.

“It touched me!” I could hear bells ringing in my ears, along with the frightened ponies screams, he swung wildly at the dark until everyponie’s lights concentrated to him.

“Light, the light!” He dropped the trench knife fell on his haunches. He looked ecstatic to once again be bathed in light. Though everypony looked horrified at him, his front armor was red, covering the Ranger’s logo on his chest. The sight was grizzly as his relieved face displayed a manic smile.

“Keep lights on him!” Nikola barked, but he also trained his rifle on the pony.

“The light, it can’t take me, it can’t drag me from here… Lettuce!” Everypony jumped in place. The pony scrambled around the ground, looking for something. “Lettuce!” He grabbed the treasure he had dropped. “Were safe, the light Lettuce, we’re safe!” This kid was just yelling nonsense. I closed my helmet and took a steadying breath. This kid was nuts, I need to knock him out, we can drag him back out to H.Q. Still, I had to look at the brighter side, we found a survivor and the damn clicking noise had stopped following us. I felt a shiver run down my spine. The clicking was gone, why the hell didn’t I notice it the clicking had been absent?

“Damn!” I turned my light on the bushes behind me, “form a perimeter!”

“Sir?” Nikola moved to look at me.

“Form a perimeter right now, damn it!”

Click click click

There it is, “move it!”

“No!” the crazed poney grappled with Nikola, dropping the trench knife and his “Lettuce,” or at least what was left of him.

“Damn it get off!” Nikola struggled to get the pony off him, his rifle squeezed against the crazed pony, and Nikola blocking its line of fire.

Click click click

It’s getting closer! “Nikola!” I couldn’t move, damn it if I move; that’s another gap we can get attacked through.

“Sir, I can hear something coming!” Thyme shrieked, trembling in place.

“Where is it, where the hell is it!” Bartz swept his light across the bushes opposite off me.

CLICK CLICK CLICK!

“Get the F-!” A loud wet plop cut Nikola off. He looked at me, stunned in place.

Plop.

“N-no!” the crazed pony dropped his gaze down to his chest and fumbled around his belt. He forgot he lost his knife when he grappled with Nikola.

I looked down, stringy goop was stuck against Nikola’s back-left fetlock. Another was latched against the crazed ponies' abdomen. “Sir?” Nikola’s voice sounded like a frightened little colt. I lifted a hoof, but the goop went taught.

“Aahhh!!” Nikola got pulled off his hooves, he dug at the ground but was dragged into the bushes at an alarming speed.

The Crazed pony followed after him screaming and kicking. “The Light!”

“Open fire!” we might hit them, we might kill both, but I would not let them suffer the same fate as the rest.

The air repeatedly cracked with my heavy machinegun fire. The two Fifty caliber guns flashed in the darkness. Angry red laser beams cut through the foliage, the leaves around instantly caught fire burning!

Something, I don’t know what screeched an unholy sound so piercing I swore my ears were bleeding. “With me!” I broke into a full gallop after them, the two lines on my E.F.S rapidly grew farther away despite this.

“Help me!” Nikolas screamed, sounding farther and farther away. “Help!”

“Were losing him!” Thyme galloped ahead of me. My armor allowed me to run practically indefinitely, but its weight and size made me slower than a pony unburned by the load.

“Yell, don’t stop screaming!” I shouted with all my might, the lines were fading fast, this thing was fast, even if carrying two ponies.

“No!” Nikola screamed in immense pain, then silence. One of the lines faded from my E.F.S.

No, please, Celestia, no! I pushed my armor as fast as I could go. I broke through some thick foliage and slid to a stop. The crazed pony laid in a pool of his blood. I sat on my haunches and picked the broken pony up, his head rested against my armored fetlock. “Where did they go!”

Tears fell freely from his eyes, there was a bit of blood on the corner of his mouth. I looked down at his wounds. No, he wasn’t going to make it, but damn it, he could still help me save Nikola!

“Come on, kid, where did they go, where did that thing take my squires!” I shook him a little.

He blinked away the tears, a bloody fetlock plopped against the side of my armor sliding down. “The” he gasped, choking down a sob, “light….the light!” He gasped out before going limp in my arms.

“Sir!” Bartz burst in after me; he gasped for breath looking around frantically.

“He’s gone,” I let the kid down gently and got to my hooves.

“Wheres Thyme?”

Bartz question snapped me back to reality, I looked around, and my eyes widen. I looked at my E.F.S to see a fading line. “Heading southeast, let's go!” I went into a full gallop plowing through any obstacles in my way. The line was growing farther but not as fast as before. Good, I refuse to lose another kid, I’m going to grab her and -forgive me Nikola- get the hell out of here. I had to cut my losses I had to! Two squads lost, and one of my ponies taken. “Thyme, where are you?” I slowed down when Thyme’s marker grew close enough. Bartz followed suit, and quiet as a mouse we stalked through the jungle to find a clearing. Well, clearing in the sense that the forest hadn’t claimed the place. Then again, depending on who you asked, maybe it did. Nature, however, mutated claimed the spot. The tree canopy kept the place in utter darkness.

Slime coated the mossy ground of a massive tree with an enormous opening at its trunk. A cave entrance to the creature's lair, no doubt. The E.F.S signal was coming straight from there. Actually, quite a few E.F.S signals were coming through now. The proximity, it seems the creature's jamming ability didn’t jam signals at practically point-blank range. Shit, if they were inside, they were as good as dead. I should take Bartz and get out of here.

…

Damn it, I can’t, not when they’re this close and alive. “Bartz,” I hissed beneath my breath.

“Sir,” he whispered back.

“Go back, get the hell out of here and warn them to stay away from here.” Once you leave the creature’s range. I think the calms will work again.” One life, if I can save one life, my old ass can rest in peace. Well, pieces, I guess, I won’t let the bastard eat us, I’ll set my spark battery to overload and blow us all to hell. If I die, I won’t be lunch to some unholy creature of radiation.

“Sir, you can’t be serious!” Bartz stuttered, and he was shaking like a damn leaf, but the kid refused to leave.

“God damn it, this might not end pretty, and I need somepony to get out of this one alive you hear me?” I glared at Bartz and shoved him with the armors extra strength for good measure. He fell back, sprawling on the ground.

“We can’t afford to let our reinforcements come in blind. Get out, and get a transmission out to H.Q.” I glanced back at the cave entrance, besides there won't be anything left of the bastard to scrape into a test tube.

“Sir, please don’t die.” Bartz sniffled and wiped his armored foreleg over his nose.

Damn it, kid.

“Not planning to, now go.”

Bartz nodded, then tentatively trotted away into the dark forest. Alright, once more into the breach then. I swallowed a lump in my throat, and I peeked inside the cave. Slowly but surely, I trotted inside, deeper underground. The beast’s clicking began to echo off the walls, the further inside the sound started to overlap. For the first time in my thirty years as a Ranger, I noticed just how bloody loud my breathing was inside my helmet.

I stepped on something squishy, and I resisted the urge to shake inside my armor. With no small amount of strength, I managed to look down. There was some slime on the floor, and on closer inspection, there was slime all over the damn cave. “Sweet, Celestia, just what the hell is this thing.” I took another calming breath and trotted through the slime. The walls were caked with the stuff, dripping from the ceiling with long trails of slime before hitting the floor with a disgusting splat.

I gazed down at my E.F.S, the markers were close now, but I couldn’t hear or see any signs of survivors. My instincts, once raised and honed, now screamed at me to run, flee this place and never come back. Yet, the tunnels beckoned me ever onward, the thoughts of my comrades prostrate before the beast to devour smothered any thoughts of cowardice. I crouched low, powered up my weapons, and aimed my guns further into the cave. My heart pounded against my chest, waiting for the creature to rear its ugly head. In that brief moment, I realized I didn’t know what it looked like. I think that only terrified me more, My back legs started to vibrate in place in fear. My armor also informed me I just pissed myself, as sweat dripped down my face. I wasn’t much of a reader, but I vaguely recall a book saying something about the monster is scary until you shine the light on them.

I heaved a sigh and straightened up, freezing up here would spell death for us all. I trudge forward, albeit at a slower, more methodical pace. Maybe five minutes or ten had passed, I honestly lost count, time having long been put in the back burner. I arrived at the entrance of a chamber. About a meter from the entrance laid a body, or the remains of one. I shone my light on it, to see skeletal remains covered in that slime. The clothes on the body brought old memories to the surface. Red Eye’s slavers, I remember when they were trying to burn away Everfree. This poor bastard was probably picked off from the rest. I stepped closer, and a hoof-full of critters fleed from the holes where they were hidden. They scattered from the light, and I couldn’t get a good look at them. But, their flight brought my attention to something. A satchel wet from the slime nestled beneath the skeletal hoof of the slaver. I also noticed something dry and red on the wall. I followed the bloodstain up to see a poorly scribbled message.

The Light.

I scrunched my nose and looked back to the corpse, just like the kid. Mutterings about the light, a puzzle I had yet solve, and that clearly involved the monster that killed him and my comrades. The satchel then, I carefully opened it, lest one of the little critters in there gave me a heart attack. Inside were red sticks with tops.

Flares.

I looked towards the opening and narrowed my eyes. Celestia, I hope you’re really watching out for us, and this isn’t some bullshit from the nutjob priests of the waste. I slung the satchel over my neck, careful to keep it away from my gun barrel. I trotted into the cave’s chamber, and I almost wet myself again.

I could barely contain the fear-induced whimper that lodged in my throat. I had to swallow it down to keep from falling onto the ground out of sheer terror. I felt as if I had been swallowed into the belly of a monster. I tried to shine my light on the ghastly sights covering the wall. The slime was everywhere I couldn’t even see the cave walls anymore. The disgusting goop clung to the wall like a film layer that dripped onto the ground. Straight above my head was a hole, it was six meters in diameter, and it was so pitch black my light could not banish away the blackness.

I had to close my eyes and force myself to look down, lest I freeze in place, staring into the abyss. Though, the rest of the cave didn’t fare better. White, pulsating sacks laid clumped together just straight ahead of me. The sacks even lined the walls of another tunnel ahead of me. I dared not think what lied beyond it, hell I didn’t plan on going further either. I looked around, my comrades had to be here. I did my best to ignore the pulsating sacks that covered most of the walls around me.

I noticed some balls of thick goop, on the wall to my far left, I trotted towards it, squinting at them. It took me a moment, but I realized it was the missing ponies I was looking for. The goop had them plastered against the wall in some kind of cacoon. If I were a betting pony, the cacoons were probably for later consumption. Just next to my comrades, another cluster of white sacks pulsed erratically. Not one to allow me to get killed by whatever the hell they were. I trained my guns on it and flashed my light against them.

My jaw plunked against my armor. The light illuminated the inside of the sack, hell, it wasn’t just a sack. The damn things were eggs, and I was surrounded by hundreds of them. Probably, thousands more were beyond the second tunnel. The creature inside, wiggling impatiently, was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I have lived many years in this blasted shithole we call Equestria, but I have never seen anything like this… thing. It frankly looked like it didn’t even belong in this world. The creature had a long scorpion-like tail with three sharp prongs curling into each other, like a claw from those old claw machine games littering abandoned outlet malls. At the end of the tail, I couldn’t get a good look at it, but I’m pretty sure there was an opening. The carapace along the spine for I couldn’t describe it as anything else were several plates of chitin that seem to rattle. Curled up were four sharp-looking legs with strange webbing between them. Its eyes, for it, had four divided between its maw were beady and yellow. While its mouth had four sharp mandibles that looked like it stabbed and fed its prey into its mouth.

With some effort, I tore my gaze from the monstrosity and swept my light across the sacks. The critters were of several sizes, but they all looked similar. The only difference seemed the stage of life cycle meant some were without tails yet. I shifted my gaze up to see more sacks above my comrades. I didn’t have enough bullets, and honestly, firing my guns would just attract the other ones.

Oh hell.

The realization was like a bucket of water dumped on me. There had to be hundreds of the bastards, and they were bound to come back any second. With that, bowel loosening thought, I set to free my comrades so we can get the hell out of here. I brought up my right hoof and flicked my wrist. A foot of sharpened steel slid out where my forearm armor met my hoof armor. Carefully I dug into the goop cutting away at it. I honestly couldn’t tell who I was freeing. But, not even halfway down the goop gave way, and I caught the pony inside. Clad in power armor, Lighthouse hung lifelessly against me. I frowned. I laid him down against the ground and opened his helmet, hitting the emergency switch hidden behind the ear. The helmet cracked, and he looked no worse for wear.

“Wake up soldier, come on!” I hissed gently, smacking the side of his cheek. His mouth trembled before opening.

“AAHHHH!!!” I scrambled back, as dozens of critters crawled out of his mouth. I scrambled to my hooves. A challenge with all the slime. I trained my guns on my friend. The bio-signs the E.F.S read. It was fooled by those little bastards, eating Lighthouse from the inside out! I roared and squeezed the littler bastards under my hooves. They squealed and screeched like unholy beasts that they were. The rest scattered, and I panted, looking at my hooves caked in viscera and blood. I looked over Lighthouse’s body to see puncture wounds about half a foot in diameter across his back. Damn it, these things were able to puncture through my armor, I really had to get the hell out of here.

Though my hopes were no longer high, I set to work on the last two. Thyme and Nikola, both showed life signs, but I gave Lighthouse one last look, before turning back to the task at hoof. I got the sack about halfway open revealing Thyme. I rather unceremoniously poked at her mouth with my blade. I opened her mouth and thanked Celestia when no bugs crawled out. I finished the job and plopped her down against Lighthouse’s body. I didn’t like having to use him as a prop-up pillow, but better that than the slimy ground. I worked on the final pod, peeling away at the goop around Nikola’s muzzle. When I got most of it out, he came too. His unfocused eyes blinked at me before they focused on me.

I smiled, feeling relief. I could take these two out of this nightmare. “Mmm!” Nikola’s eyes widened like dinner plates, he struggled violently against his constraints. The goop still around his muzzle didn’t allow him to speak. The message was, however, clear. I turned around on a dime with weapons trained and ready. The creature, or maybe it was a different one in its full horror, stood against me. Or it should have in my mind.

The moment my light touched it, it shrieked like bloody murder! The creature, a sickly pale yellow writhed in pain as its carapace hissed and boiled in the light. Every message soon became apparent. Even the dark canopy of the deepest part of the forest made sense now. The light hurt it, and it hurt bad. Tendrils of acrid smoke emanated from its tortured body, the bubbling boils burst into a bloody mess. The chitin plates on its back vibrated, making that clicking noise from before. Like a rad-roach when the light was turned on, it scurried away, trying to avoid the deadly fire from my headlamp. I smirked, a wave of courage swelling inside me. I turned back to Nikola to get the hell out of here!

Shit!

I stared straight into the beady eyes of one of the creatures barely a few inches from my face. The light on my headlamp forced a blood curling screech from it, and it dove against me. Its weight and my surprise sent us both tumbling into the ground. I put my hoof between its mouth and as it tried to clamp down on it. Hundreds of tiny fangs broke themselves against my armored forearm, and the four mandibles unable to gather enough torque desperately tried to puncture through my forearm. All the while, it screeched violently as it burned against my flashlight. Its two front legs stabbed wildly, barely missing me.

“Get the hell off me!” I yelled and brought up my free foreleg. I flicked my wrist and drove the full foot of steel into its soft underbelly. The creature screeched and stabbed once more, driving its pointed limb into my shoulder.

“AAAHH!!” With every bit of strength I had, I drove the blade deeper before pulling down, and I felt a mess of the creature’s insides spill on me. It wriggled once more before flopping down on top of me. I pushed the thing off, and pain shot down my shoulder. I rolled over it; the sharp limb still stuck inside me. I placed my hoof against it and pushed.

Mother fu-god damn it!

The limb swiftly went out, bloodied a good six inches. My medical injector got to work with a potion, slowly repairing the damage. I gulped down air, taking a moment's rest; I know damn well I can’t afford it, but still. I slowed my breathing down as best as I could just have to grab Nikola and get out of here. I moved to free Nikola to find him dead. I shut my eyes forcefully, cursing everything to hell and back. But there was no time I needed to leave. I grabbed Thyme and tossed her over my back, if I let the armor do all the work, we could be out of here in no time.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

Damn it all to hell, some cosmic entity really just want us dead! The clicking was overwhelming thousands of them, overlapping over one another. Then the yell from before, only magnified by a thousand voices! My armor systems glitched up, my light flickered, and I flopped on my haunches, desperately covering my ears. Gods, Celestia, Luna, whoever the fuck was listening make it stop! In a desperate attempt, I turned off the outside sound receivers, and the screech fell to manageable levels. Still, my armor was sluggish, the glitches from the high-frequency screams were frying my systems. So I did the one thing I knew how to do. I dropped Thyme and started firing, I fired into the abyss. The screeching changed tune from unbearable to painful in mere seconds. The high caliber rounds broke the monsters apart as they fell from the hole raining down like a plague. Then they came from the tunnel. We were going to die down here, so I went with my last resort. I deactivated the armors safety features and set the spark battery to overload. I ejected from my armor, and it violently tossed me against the disgusting ground. I scrambled to the armor and grabbed the satchel, I prayed for the first time in my life, as I wrapped my fetlock around one of the sticks and snapped the top off with my other hoof.

Yes!

The cave was flooded by a red phosphorus light, I tossed the flare on Lighthouse’s remains, and I grabbed Thyme. I threw her on my back and galloped out as fast as my legs would carry me. My heart was pounding painfully against my chest, while every nerve in my body was alive with adrenaline. They gave chase almost right away, and Celestia above, I hope most of the bastards stay behind to die!

Of course, my luck didn’t hold up, I could hear them nipping at my hooves. Without the power of my armor, I wasn’t nearly as fast as I hope I would be. I grabbed another flare, struck it against the cave wall, and flooded the cave with red lighting. I grasped the flare in my mouth and poured on whatever energy I could muster into galloping. With ragged breaths, I burst out from the cave. The flare holding out of a few more minutes started to fizzle. The monsters at my hooves screeched, and maybe being hunted was driving me crazy, but I swear I could hear the glee in their disgusting yell. I looked back, and I dropped the flare in my mouth. I moved to the aside, then started to zig-zag. Goop strings flew past me, shot out of their arching tails.

I struck another flare against a tree, shadows danced above me, and the ground gave beneath me. I didn’t get the chance to yell. Thyme and I both rolled down into a ravine before landing painfully on the rocky bottom. I rolled to my back, noting once more the lack of light. God damn tree cover went on forever! These bastards could hunt here with impunity. I rolled on to my stomach, and pain shot up my right foreleg.

“Grrr!” I gritted my teeth and sat up on my haunches, the flare in my mouth landed a few feet away. I tried to stand until a tremor rocked the ground. The leaves shook violently as if crying in fear when the ground erupted just east of us, cracks snaked across the floor, and eventually, the earth caved in creating several dips. I fell on my hurt leg, but the smirk on my muzzle made the pain bearable.

That’s right, eat shit and die assholes!

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

Fuck, that’s right; we weren’t alone; I scooted against the ground standing wasn’t an option, my back legs were killing me. I gritted my teeth, sliding towards the satchel. I grabbed a flare and popped one tossing it next to the one already lit. That should keep the buggers at bay. “Thyme!” I groaned, scrunching my nose, and Celestia above the pain on my foreleg was like having nails hammered into my hoove. I managed to scoot myself over to her fallen form. I sat on my haunches and propped her up against my chest.

She’s small and weighs like a feather, hardly a soldier’s physique.

I cracked a wry grin, an odd thing to focus on right now. But I think I knew this was how it was going to end. Something inside me either gave up or realized I walked into my death when I went into that hive. Still, I’m going to draw out my shitty fate, and Thymes as long as possible. I reached into the satchel and cracked open the last few flares. I tossed them around us, and I held Thyme close to my chest. It wasn’t much, but I’m going to use everything I have left to protect her. Even if she followed me into death right after. I at least hoped they just killed us, not drag us back to some other dark pit.

The first of the flares flickered, dimming the red hue around us. Maybe sensing our impending demise, Thyme moaned pityingly in my arms, she subconsciously pressed herself against the warmth of my chest. Well, perhaps she won’t feel any pain, and she’ll die unconscious. I glared at the shadows just outside the reach of the flares. The creature's yellow eyes glared at us; they seem to shine with a predatory gleam. I think I might have pissed myself again, but with the end in sight, I don’t think I felt the fear I once felt. Acceptance came with its own brand of bravery and a numbing of the senses.

Click click click click click

Another light source flickered, dimming our safe heaven. Why they didn’t shoot the goop at us and attacked us was beyond me. Maybe the things were sentient enough to enjoy the wait, hoping to watch us squirm. Then again, instincts, probably told them if they shot the goop at me I’d shove one of these flares in their mouths. They knew I was cornered, and once my last defense was down, they were going to move in for the kill.

Another flare flickered out, dimming our heaven and the screeched eagerly. A few stepped into the light only to hiss back in pain. I shuddered and gently rubbed circles Thyme’s forehoof, Celestia this wasn’t how I wanted to die. Shit, I didn’t want to die period. Damn it all, my breath started to come out in short and shallow gasps. Just brave the light and make it quick already, you whoresons. Let me and Thyme die quickly; if there is any mercy left in this damn world, let it be quick. Two more flares went out, the last one looked to be dying as well. A small light encroached by shadows most foul, shit, maybe I should have been a poet instead of a soldier. Might have been killed in a less shit way. Or not killed at all, but beggars can’t be choosers.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

Their disgusting grunts and screeches were now so damn close. In the paleness of the fading red light, I could catch their carapace clinking together. Their tails arched ready for a strike, or a shot of that damn goop. I closed my eyes and held Thyme tighter, I didn’t have the balls to stare the bastards in the face when the time came.

The screeches became terrible out of nowhere. Shrill and painful, and as I squeezed my eyes shut, I couldn’t help but feel the pressure of light against them. The sting was very familiar, a pain from spending so much time in the shadows. My chest was filled altogether with a light, almost pleasant feeling. Hope, it was something I only ever felt when rising out of the bloodiest battles and the direst of situations. But there was no way, this feeling had to be a trick. But, against the dread, against fear and resignation, I cracked my eyes open. The light was so bright and phosphorous I put my good hoof up to my face to look at the source. A flare, but this wasn’t survival flares; these were used back in the war in the thick jungles of the Zebra Empire. They'd be shot into the air, and they’d burst like a brilliant sun.

For the monsters, it might as well be the sun in all its mighty glory. The rotten bastards convulsed and climbed over each other in the vain attempt to escape the sundering light. But it was useless, their carapace boiled, giving off an acrid smoke, others combusted before writhing and curling in on themselves. The furthest of the creatures started to scurry back into the forest. Leaving smoking trails in their wake. Their retreat was promptly cut off by explosive fireballs blasting them apart and cooking the rest. I knew those explosions, they were Equestrian HEAT incendiary burst grenades. Deadly weapons used for the heavy jungle warfare on the Imperial front.

My neck almost snapped when I whipped so fast to the opposite side of the ridge. Eight majestic figures, with their dark armor making them pop in the mesmerizing light. They lowered their stances, and reality came rushing back to me.

Oh shit!

I ducked and put myself atop Thyme just as the gunfire started. Heavy machinegun fire and grenade explosions drowned out the screams of the dying monsters. Wet chunks of bug meat splattered against my back, along with the dust of stone being cracked and rendered to dust from explosions and armor-piercing bullets. I flattened my ears against my skull in a vain attempt to avoid tinnitus.

Then like a storm cloud coming and going, it stopped. The explosions, the heaving of the ground, and the screeches. An eery quiet settled for a few dragging seconds. I almost thought I went deaf until the moaning sounds of the bugs started. The sky flare died out, and beams of light filled the darkness. The eight mighty armors of war slid down into our ravine, now a graveyard for the blasted monsters. They scanned the area, shooting anything that still dared to live after their impressive display of firepower.

“H.Q, this is Ripley, I got two survivors. Moving to secure them for extraction.” A metallic female voice barked in front of me. I stared up at the Ranger, squinting through her bright headlamp.

“Understood H.Q, have a medical team on standby, they look wounded.” The headlamp went off, and the helmet opened. Curly hair burst from the helm with dark brown eyes staring down at me.”Don’t worry, Crusader, we're taking you home.”

I smiled, it was one of those smiles that cracked your face and hurt. A booming laugh tore itself from my belly, and I hugged Thyme to me with my good Fetlock. She moaned something incoherent, and her eyes fluttered open. Her pupils struggled to focus before she fell unconscious again in my arms.

Rest up kid, let's get you home.

By ValiantKnight