Author's Notes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D9RLLVVtL1_TVZSHW3z7jeoCyEU1WHtJdZ-vQfMi0PQ/edit

Cadance = Passion
Twilight = Reason
Spike = Pride
Taya = Hope
Moonbeam/Chrysalis = Love
Kat = Pain
Blaze = Rage
Luna = Fear

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The three of us appeared in a small forest glade. I expected it to be time for more messages, but then Moonbeam and two bowing changelings appeared. “Is this a memory?” I asked.

“It is,” my guide replied. “The tree in you is making you see things again. My glade has more water and is much more impressive.”

“Cool.”

“You say you have a message from Navarone?” Moonie said, leaning forward slightly. “Where did you run into him?”

“Nav rescued us from an underwater city controlled by magical beings of water, my queen,” the same changeling said. “He brought us to pony territory and cut us loose with enough gold to get here.”

“An… underwater city? How did you survive? And what were you doing there?”

“There are pockets of air,” the other changeling said. “And we… survived on whatever emotions we could find. I was disguised as a guard on a noble’s vessel. It was attacked by pirates and I was left for dead on the sinking ship. The seaponies saved me and brought me to the city.”

“And I was infiltrating a dog pirate clan,” the other said. “We were hit by a storm and went under. The seaponies saved me, too.”

“...Seaponies. Hm. What was Nav doing there? Did his ship sink?”

“He was there to meet with the water beings. Apparently he brought two more to the city!”

“My oh my, what is my precious little human up to?”

“From what we gleaned and overheard, they’re looking for some manner of magical artifacts, along with more of the beings of water. They intend to collect all of them together.”

“Hm. Perhaps it’s time I spoke with Celestia. It seems she’s hiding some things from me. So, what was his message?”

“He sends his greetings, along with a promise to visit within the coming months. I’m inclined to believe something he seeks is nearby.”

“Oh, that would be delightful,” she said with a cute grin. “Did he have anything else to say about me?”

“W-well… He told us you had been captured by… Princess Celestia.”

“He speaks the truth, though he may not have mentioned that he helped her fight me. It is no matter. Did he say anything else at all?”

“Only one thing,” the other said. “B-but… It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to repeat.”

“Ah. Yes, Nav is fond of his lascivious remarks. I’ll make sure to speed a few things along to impress him!”

“He’s an amazing hero!” one said, his tail wagging slightly. The manic look in his eyes led me to believe it was the crazy one. “We were down there for so long, but he pulled us free like it was nothing!”

“Nav has a habit of pulling off all manner of surprising things,” Moonbeam said. “You will have some time to rest here in the capital, so I’m sure you’ll hear all about Navarone’s exploits. He even has his own statue!”

“So, my queen, what do you intend to do with us?” the sane one asked.

“First, you are going to tell me everything you know about Nav and those he is with. All of his followers, his ship, and especially any of his lovers. He’s been too far away for me to spy on for long…” The two of them shared a short look. “Then, you will tell me all you know about this city, its inhabitants, and its rulers.”

“What about… us?” the guy asked.

That made her blink. “What about you?”

“We don’t have anywhere to go…”

“Oh. After my ignominious capture, I was forced into a treaty with the ponies. Part of that is a guaranteed source of food. You will be given a place here until I have need of you. Now is Nav still with that dragon hussy?”

The memory turned grey, so I walked over to kiss Moonie on the nose. “That’s weird, mommy,” Taya said.

“No it’s not, you’re weird!” I walked away from my buggy love, though. “It’s good to know she’s spying on me, but it’s honestly not that surprising.”

“I like her, but do you really want to live underground?” Taya asked. “Isn’t that kinda bad for us?”

“It is bad for us,” I said. “That’s one of the other big problems with her, aside from the mysterious deal. That said, there’s no reason in particular for her to continue living underground, aside from the convenience of not having to change your capital city. Let’s say your only choices were royals. Who would you pick?”

“Celestia,” she immediately replied. “You’re already a national hero in Equestria, so it would be super easy to explain it. You’d gain all of her authority, we’d live in the most comfortable palace in the world, I’d get access to all her forbidden spellbooks, and you can continue fooling around with whoever you want since you literally own her. It’s a win across the board and I still can’t understand why you didn’t just marry her when we brainwashed her.”

“That’s because you lack empathy,” I said, reaching down to pinch her cheek. “It feels wrong to brainwash someone into loving me.”

“You’re, like, the only one who thought so,” Taya said. “Doesn’t that mean we’re in the right?”

“No, I won because I had the better arguments that convinced enough people that I was correct. To start with, brainwashing in general is bad. But adding on forced marriage just goes a little too far for me.”

“So Celestia’s out of the running?” Taya asked. “Don’t tell me you’re seriously considering that bird brain.”

“Gilda is extremely smart and marrying her would have… advantages. It would also have difficulties. I’m doubtful about her.”

“I’d rather have Moonbeam than Gilda,” Taya said. “And if she can spoil us as much as Celestia, I’d say the two of them are on par. But Celestia would be better for your reputation, I think.”

“Choices, choices… So what’s the takeaway from this one?”

“What did you think about your time in Atlantis?” Fear asked, making Taya jump.

“That’s Fear,” I said.

“...Luna?” Taya asked.

“She’s probably the scariest person I’ve ever met. She’s also done several terrifying things to me. And to answer the question, I didn’t really think much about it. We went down there, spent a few minutes talking to some of the prisoners, met with the leaders, then left. I haven’t really thought much about it since, though seeing Aurora and the ex-pirates was interesting. I guess Sketch also became an employee, so there’s that.”

“You think so little of events that change others so much,” Reason said.

“And that’s Reason, of course,” I said.

“...Twilight?” Taya asked. “Reason? How did that happen?”

“I’m still trying to figure it out myself. And I guess I did kinda change history in Atlantis, didn’t I? I rescued two of the sailors directly and kinda sorta helped the rest out. I also got their leaders to agree to abandon their thrones to follow me on my mad quest. So why is Fear here? I don’t remember really being afraid.”

“You were, for a few reasons,” Fear replied. “First, you thought being in the clutches of five water elementals while so far away from your crew was scary, because they could easily wipe out Flo and change you without anybody finding out. Second, because you had no idea if they’d agree to your proposal and you had already been through so much getting just as far as you had. And third, because you didn’t know if they’d let you, the only human, leave the supposed safety of their underwater prison.”

“You’re always tense, so I didn’t notice,” Taya said with a shrug. “But do you really think the elementals would have tried keeping you down there?”

“According to Flo, they decided to let me stay free by a single vote. And given what Aqua did to me, I have no doubt in my mind that they would have forced me to become a sea princess or something stupid like that.”

“So why did you take the risk?” Fear asked.

“Because as Pain put it, I had given up. I was going to take any risk, no matter how big or small, to forward my goal. The way I figured, I warned everyone beforehand that I probably wasn’t the best leader and everything would likely end up with us all horribly dying, so it was only fair for me to go full retard.”

“Wow. Thanks for having our best interests at heart, mommy.”

“What, suicide wasn’t bad enough to kill your faith in me? Oh man, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

“Don’t be silly!” Taya said, jumping up to hug me. “I could never lose faith in my mommy! You disappoint me a lot, though.”

“That’s why I was doing my best to keep your expectations of me low.”

“Then you shoulda been a worse mommy!” She slid down, her smile disappearing. “I never really understood how much all of this affected you. Why don’t you ever explain your motivations to me? Or how you feel?”

“Because communication is hard. This coma is our dam-breaker. I’m done with the secrets and nonsense between us. You get to see how I feel firsthand.”

“Firsthoof.”

“That too. Now, shall we keep this gravy train rolling?”

“Are you sure that’s your desire?” my guide asked. “I think you can guess what’s next.”

“I knew it was coming,” I sighed. “I was hoping I’d get through it before Taya arrived, but it seems the fates conspired against me yet again.”

“W-what are you… Oh no. Is it t-the bunker?”

“It is,” my guide said with a nod.

“Taya, I didn’t tell anyone but Celestia the full story. We are about to walk into a nightmare. I don’t know how much of the sheer terror I felt will transfer into the coma, but I’ve run into a few boss rooms. This will probably be one of them. Are you ready?”

“My momma ain’t raise no bitch,” she replied with the most adorable grin ever.

“I love you. Let’s do it.”

My guide giggled and her eyes finally flashed, sending us into the darkness.

Taya and I appeared in a narrow shaft. I immediately pushed her out the doors and jumped right as the first elevator crashed down. She was still struggling to her hooves when the second crash knocked her back down. I yanked my sword out and faced down the long hallway as she caught her breath.

“W-what was that?” Taya asked.

“Elevators.” I took a quick stock and discovered all I had besides my clothing was the sword and a flashlight. “While you’re here, expect to see and hear things that aren’t actually there. Also be prepared to fight at all times, because the bunker can manifest spirits to hunt you.”

“So is the plan to kill on sight?”

“You can’t kill what’s already dead. If it’s at all possible, wait for my order to start attacking. Especially if it’s a clown. Not everything here was hostile, just the vast majority of it.”

“Is this where you started?” she asked.

“It is. I fell down that shaft right there and hit both elevators on the way down. Hitting them broke the cables and knocked them down right as I hit the ground. Then I walked this way for a few minutes before running into a room full of skeletons. Shall we?”

“Where’s the guide?” Taya asked as we began moving.

“The spirits may or may not show up in boss rooms. We might see or hear some of them later. But in the bunker, the flashlight was my guide. When I fell down the shaft, it shattered. I guess something haunted it, because it worked fine when nothing was around, but started to freak out whenever the dead were acting up.”

It didn’t take us long to come across what I assumed was Artyom’s skeleton on the floor. I started hearing whispering as soon as it came within sight. “Do you hear that?” my filly asked.

“Yes. This is the first body I ran into, the first sign I had that humanity really did exist in the past. I heard whispering around the bodies back then, too.”

“I… can’t really understand it, though,” she said. “What’s it saying?”

“Who cares?” I continued walking and she jumped to follow. “Most of the spirits had sob stories. I don’t see why his is supposed to be special.”

“Then why did you stop?”

I blinked and realized that I had, in fact, stopped. Not only did I stop, but I knelt down and picked up the skull with a trembling hand. “A-Artyom?” my mouth whispered.

“Whoa, is that the ghost?” Taya asked. Instead of waiting for a reply, she used magic to rip me away from the body, making me scream. Thankfully, she slapped me upside the face, finally killing the possession.

“What the fuck?” I said. “Taya, destroy those bones!”

Before her horn could light up, I heard the rattling of a chain and something started choking me. “DON’T YOU DARE!” someone behind me screeched. Taya gasped and jumped back. I finally looked up and saw a very pissed off Russian ghost lady floating over me, using the collar and chain connecting us to try and choke me.

“First you steal my body, now you try to kill me?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“I won’t let you touch him!”

“He’s kinda already dead!”

She stopped trying to kill me and floated over to his skull. “Oh, my love… Why must I be chained to one so heartless, so vile?”

“Wasn’t this your fault?” I asked. “Didn’t you try to take over my body or whatever?”

“How was I supposed to know it was occupied?! You have no… no light! Your filly shines so brightly, but there is nothing in you! And now that I have seen who you are, I have no desire to be attached!”

“Good, I’m looking for a way to get my own soul. I don’t want a used one that’s already claimed by a god or whatever. Maybe I can trade you to Death for the soul of a viking or something!”

“Surely a pure soul would be worth ten of those barbarians!”

“Their god carried a hammer. Your god was nailed to a cross. Now, will you stop bitching and let us keep going if we carry the skull? I promise we won’t watch if you want to do weird things to it.”

It was obvious she wanted to keep complaining, but she managed to rein herself in with some visible effort. “You are correct: He is dead. There is no sense crying over the vessel when I know I will find his soul in the next life.”

“So can I try killing her now?” Taya asked.

“Only if she starts choking me again.” With luck, she’ll shut up and disappear again.

“I can hear your thoughts,” Ava coldly replied.

“Then why are you still here? You should know exactly how wanted you are.”

“I cannot always manifest, but something about being here in this bunker… You are in this coma to better yourself, or so you say. From your actions, I see how little you’ve learned. My god preached love and betterment. I know he was once yours, too. Perhaps I can help show you back to him.”

“Oh boy. So the things you’ve seen over my shoulder haven’t convinced you yet that Jesus probably wasn’t really all that divine? My assumption is that he was just a mage who liked helping people. And the old testament God was likely just some dude who drank from a magic fountain and started ruling over people who didn’t.”

“Perhaps. But there’s more to religion than God. Shall we continue?”

I started walking, the ghost easily floating behind me. “So are we just gonna accept this?” Taya asked.

“Sure, why not? I don’t know how to make her fuck off, I doubt you can kill her, and I’m tired of hearing her complain.”

“‘Kay. So who’s God?”

Before Ava could start proselytizing, we entered the large greeting room that had been turned into impromptu food storage. “Why are there so many skeletons here?” Ava slowly asked. “They… they told us this place was sealed!”

“They were keeping humans here to eat,” I said. “See how most of them are missing limbs? One of the visions I had was of your husband trying to get in here. The guard said it was food storage.”

“Gross,” Taya said.

“How… how could this have happened?” Ava slowly whispered. “E-everyone here was so kind at first!”

“Another vision I saw had one of the leaders talking about how their farms kept breaking down. Were there food shortages?”

“T-there were… problems upon problems… But how could we do this to each other?!”

“Discord. He visited the bunkers one by one, clearing them out. This bunker got a signal from the other groups of survivors, but chose to ignore it. That means they never got the warning.”

“...So it is his fault my Artyom perished.”

“It’s his fault that all of humanity perished. You can read my mind, right? Why don’t you already know all of this?”

“I dug into your memories once. I quickly decided it wasn’t worth it.”

“Lucky,” Taya muttered, kicking a nearby bone. “So why aren’t these whispering?”

“They stopped being humans before they died,” I said. “And cattle don’t have much to say.”

“I wish I could slap you right now,” Ava said.

“Sucks for you.” I continued walking to the next door. Through it was the barricade where Artyom got shot. Since I didn’t want to hear more of her sob story, I refrained from pointing it out as we entered the next large room.

“This is where we were given our jobs,” Ava said, looking around. “And this is where my first bad feeling about this place came in…”

“See that third door?” I asked. At the moment, it was the only one that was open.

“...I do,” she slowly said.

“There’s a furnace in there. If there were any undesirables, they murdered them on the spot.”

“So how did you find that out, mommy?” Taya asked.

“Because that was the only door open before, too. I almost got cooked. Taya, blow open the middle door.” Her horn lit up and she started cutting through it. “You don’t want to blow it up?”

“We’re underground, mommy. The concussion might burst our eardrums. You gotta be careful when using destruction magic. But I do kinda wanna blow it up…”

“At least one of you has common sense,” Ava said, rolling her ghastly eyes.

“You’re kidding, right?” my filly said. “I’m an idiot compared to mommy!”

“I just don’t know everything, I’m impatient, and I like explosions,” I said. “And seriously, fuck this place.”

“At least on that, we can both agree,” Ava said, finally smiling.

“What’s on the other side of the middle door?” Taya asked.

“A short hallway, followed by an elevator shaft.”

She nodded and pulled the door back, then carefully set it against a wall. “Ready when you are.”

“Thank you for coming to help me, Taya,” I said as I started walking again. “Facing the bunker again on my own would be… difficult.”

“Right, just pretend I’m not here,” Ava said.

“I’m trying, but it’s harder when you talk,” I said. We finally got to the elevator shaft and I peeked up. “I’m not really sure how to go about this one. The elevator is gonna fall when I start going up the ladder. I’m honestly not sure your legs will be able to climb it. If we pull the elevator down now, the shockwave might destroy enough of the rusty ladder that we can’t move up.”

“Let me see if I can teleport,” Taya said. Nothing happened. She went cross-eyed to look at her horn. “It… isn’t working. What if I ride on your back, catch the elevator when it falls, then slice it apart so we can drop it without hitting either of us?”

“Works for me.” I knelt down so she could latch onto me, then carefully stood. She was just on the verge of being too heavy and climbing the ladder wasn’t going to be fun. “Good?”

“Yep!”

“If possible, use magic to hold the ladder rungs in place, too,” I said. “As old as they are, they might collapse under us both.”

“That gives me an idea,” she said with a scary tone.

“What kind of idea?” I asked as I finally started climbing.

“I can rip these things from the wall when we’re done and bring them with us. If we run into another shaft like this where you can’t fly, I can let you use them to climb.”

“You can’t just create magic rungs?”

The elevator finally started rushing toward us, so she concentrated on it instead of talking. That let me focus on holding on, so I wasn’t complaining. About a minute later, the elevator was in pieces at the bottom of the shaft and we were finally at the top.

“You work together well,” Ava said. “Is this coma for you or for her, Nav?”

“Yes. Was this the orientation center?”

“It was,” she said with a nod. “We were taken into a theater and shown the laws of the bunker along with all of the highlights and other information we needed to know. Unfortunately, it didn’t include anything about rapist priests, mass starvation, or cannibalism.”

“That’s how they lure you in,” I said with a nod. “When I came here, I passed through the theater. The ghosts used it as psychological warfare, so we’re using Taya to get through it quickly.” We started moving over to the only open door, which led to the theater of horrors. “There’s another door on the far side of the theater. You need to cut through it as quickly as possible, because the room will start affecting us as soon as we get inside.”

“Would destroying the projector help?” Ava asked. “It should be simple for magic to crush it, should it not?”

“It probably would,” I said. “Taya, at the back of the theater will be a projector. When the movie starts, that’s where the light comes from. If we don’t get through quickly enough, can you crush it?”

“Are you really just gonna make me do everything?” Taya asked.

“Consider it your chores,” I said. “Just uh… Don’t tell any of the normal ponies that your chores include digging through haunted bunkers and killing things.”

“‘Kay.” We finally got into the shitty room of horrors. As soon as we got up to the seats, the projector kicked on, only to get turned into a ball about the size of an orange. “Your chores are so easy, mommy!”

“Good. Just know that there’s a lot more coming, including some combat, so don’t go overboard. This is an endurance run.”

“Got it.”

Without the projector, the feeling of unease in the room was gone. Taya quickly had the door open and we continued on to the catwalk with the map. “This is where I first realized how large the bunker was,” Ava said. “I have no idea how they built it in secret.”

“They weren’t the only ones,” I said. “I know there was at least one in America and another in Europe. The two we’ve been to so far were probably only held in place by the spirits residing within.”

“So what’s our path?” Taya asked.

“This path takes us to the park. Once we get there, we go to the church, then up to the command center. From there, we’ll go through the living quarters and run into a boss named Ivan.”

“I-Ivan?” Ava gasped. “That butcher?”

“The very same. He looks extremely scary, but he has no idea how to fight. After we get past him, we’ll come to an iron forest with a hostile hunter. After the forest is more hallways, then the mall, theme park, medical, and finally industrial with the slavemaster.”

“...The slavemaster injured me,” Ava slowly said. “And Artyom must have had to face the hunter and the butcher himself!”

“Assuming they were still alive at that point. We’ll start running into hostile spirits when we get to the park. Ava, how well do you know this place? Most of my time was spent roaming through hallways. If you can get us to the exit faster, I’d be grateful.”

“You just want to be rid of me quicker, don’t you?”

“No, the bunker was traumatic and I don’t want to subject my filly to it for longer than necessary. I also don’t want to subject myself to it for longer than necessary. I might even stop blaming you for trying to take my body!”

“Hmph. The path you took is the fastest available, minus all the aimless wandering you were forced into. I can cut that down. Between me and your filly, we can get through here in no time. Allow me to be your guide through this valley of darkness.”

“Okay, Virgil. Shall we progress to the next layer?”

She smirked. “Still a religious reference, so I win! Right this way, Lady Navarone. There’s an elevator at the end of the catwalk.”

We started walking again, Taya’s hooves clanging against the metal floor. “So how do you feel about mommy’s forced transformation?” my filly asked.

“Such a thing is an affront of nature,” Ava replied. “It is unfathomable to be parted from the body given to us by our lord. I understand your pain, Nav.”

“Shit sucks hella hard, but I finally got a light at the end of the tunnel. Speaking of which…” We were at the end of the walkway, in front of the open elevator. I pulled my sword out and pried the elevator back, then jiggled it a few times before pulling the sword out and stepping back. A few seconds later, the cable broke and it fell down a floor.

“Knowing everything that’s coming makes this much easier,” Taya said.

“Oh yeah. And having people with me makes it a lot less spooky. Even if, you know, one of them is a ghost.”

“Thank you for not discriminating,” Ava said. “Now shall we?”

I knelt down so Taya could hop on my back. When she was secured, I started climbing again. “We’re going to run into a fucked up little girl right outside the elevator. Smoke that bitch on sight or she might eat us.”

“Are you sure we can’t reason with them?” Taya asked. “Maybe Ava could talk to them or something.”

“Fine. Be prepared to smoke them on sight.” We finally got to the top. “Anything out there, Ava?”

She floated out the door and looked around. “I see the girl. She’s hidden in the gloom a few meters away. At the moment, she looks normal.”

“Right, I forgot it’s also really dark in there. The flashlight won’t cut it. Taya, light.” She summoned a small ball of light that expanded when we finally slid into the large room.

With the light, we could easily see the girl skipping toward us with a smile on her face. “Ava, you’re back!” When she got close and saw us, she skidded to a halt. “L-living?! How?!”

“Be at ease, little one,” Ava said. “They are trapped here and merely seek to escape. I am guiding them through.”

“Y-you can’t! Although… The pony is super cute!” She teleported forward to hug Taya, making my daughter squeak and start shivering. I ripped my sword out to stab the bitch, but Ava grabbed the hand with the sword and somehow stopped me. “She’s so warm and fuzzy! I’m supposed to eat the living, but I couldn’t hurt something this cute!”

When she let Taya go, Ava finally released me. “Shall we continue on, then?” Ava asked. Taya immediately jumped to my side, shivering. I put my hand on her head and started walking. “The church is not too far, thankfully.”

“I have a feeling we’ll run into a few more spooky scaries,” I said. “Taya, be ready. I doubt they’ll be as… friendly.”

“...She was so icy,” Taya whispered.

“So do you intend to run through here or do you intend to fight?” Ava asked.

“If it’s hostile, we kill it. If we can’t kill it, we stop it. If we can’t stop it, you make faces at it while Taya and I run.”

“Understood, oh fearless leader,” she said, almost sounding amused. “I should note that they’ll probably be drawn by the light.”

“Good. It’s time for some payback.” That made my filly giggle.

“Payback for what?” the little girl asked.

“I have a grudge against the undead. If you weren’t with Ava and also cute, I’d sic my filly on you.”

“Something that cute can’t be mean! She wouldn’t hurt me, she’d just cuddle me!”

Taya rolled her eyes and made the girl’s head explode. Thankfully, her lifeless corpse fell to the ground instead of moving to attack us. “Sorry, I couldn’t deal with that anymore.”

“She wasn’t hostile!” Ava said. “Your mother’s rule only included hostiles!”

“She’s undead. Of course she’s hostile. Come on, mommy. Back me up on this!”

“Taya, don’t go around exploding the heads of people you don’t like. Self-defense only, unless you have permission. But since we’ve determined that you can kill the undead, I’ll let you handle most of the small fry, since my sword only works on one at a time. We’ll work together against the bosses.”

“Makes sense, I guess. I hear shuffling.”

“More ghouls are coming through the gloom,” Ava said. “I’m picking up… several.”

“Taya, remember that this is an endurance run. Practice killing with the absolute minimum amount of force. I already know how powerful you are, so there’s no one to impress.”

“Ugh, fine. Blowing them up is more fun, though. Let’s see… According to Twilight, ghouls are a subspecies of vampony. So I’d need to go for their heart, right?”

“Ghoul might be a misnomer. You’re lucky you didn’t see the girl’s actual form, because it was legit horrifying. Just assume you need to go for their brain.”

“Got it.” Her horn lit up and a dark bubble appeared over us. A moment later, a light that should have been blinding appeared above us, illuminating a large amount of the room we were in.

It was obvious the place had once been beautiful. A few dead trees here and there made me assume it had likely been a park. The playground was large enough for a few dozen children. What was left of the church still looked pretty nice, minus the skeletons decorating it. The twenty undead beasts shambling toward us did a lot to mar the beauty, too. All of the skeletons hanging from the ceiling didn’t help, either.

“Should I wait for them to get closer to see if they’re hostile, too?” Taya asked. “Apparently I can’t upset our unwanted guest.”

“Don’t be petty. Just kill them.” She snorted and all the undead started collapsing, leaking black fluid from their ears and nose.

“Surviving here would have been much easier with magic,” Ava said. “We probably could have escaped!”

“Escaped to what?” I asked. “This bunker is in the middle of Antarctica. You’d freeze to death the instant you got out of the elevator.”

“Another bunker sent a rescue team,” she said. “They didn’t know if there was anyone left alive, so we were struggling to get to the top before they left. The elevators were sealed, but we didn’t know where they actually were. I went to the top of the shaft and Artyom went to the bottom. I made it, but I couldn’t get them to work. Apparently he didn’t make it…”

“...Why wouldn’t everyone left alive abandon everything to work together to escape?” I asked. “This place was a nightmare among nightmares.”

“The internal communication system died first, so the message didn’t spread far. We happened to be holed up in a control room when the message came in. And of course, to an angry, raging cannibal, hearing that there’s a rescue team coming is almost definitely just a sign of your prey trying to escape.”

“Man, fuck everything about that,” I said. “I’d rather die in the nuclear firestorm than go through that bullshit.”

“Precisely my thought as well,” Ava sighed.

“Is that the church?” Taya asked. We were finally getting close to the large cathedral. Now that I could see it better, I realized it was more run-down than I had realized. The entrance looked more like a gaping mouth than a door.

“That would be it,” I said. “We haven’t been hit by any visions yet, but there might be one when we get inside the church.”

“Would you mind stopping a moment so I could pray?” Ava asked.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “Do you really think god’s gonna hear you all the way in hell?”

“Naturally.”

“Fine, whatever. But you have to deal with the guilt if something eats me and my filly.”

“Don’t be a baby. You’re in a coma anyway, so you’d just respawn.” When we walked into the church, she gasped. “W-what happened to the statue?!”

“It was defaced,” I said. “Literally.” It looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the face of the big Jesus statue in the entrance hall.

“And someone put holes in his hands and feet,” Taya said.

“No, those are supposed to be there,” I said. “Remember that god who was nailed to a tree I mentioned earlier? Meet Jesus.”

“The god with the hammer sounds cooler. Who wants to worship some dead guy on a stick? Can I walk around while she talks to herself?”

“No, stay by my side at all times.”

“You should have more respect for the foundation of western culture,” Ava said. “You’d think an American would have at least some tolerance for Christianity!”

“After seeing that the ponies have gods of their own, I don’t see why ours are anything special. Hurry up and pray so we can leave. Preferably silently.”

She rolled her eyes and floated over to the Jesus statue. I’m not sure how she managed to kneel down while floating in the air, but she did it.

“So what’s the point of this?” Taya whispered.

“Personal comfort,” I replied. “It makes you feel better about not actually doing things.”

“Or it allows you to give thanks for the things you are given,” Ava said. “If we only turn to God when we need things, what manner of children are we?”

“Just don’t ask questions about it, please,” I said. “You’re just giving her more opportunities to waste time and annoy me.”

“I hear something coming,” Taya said. “From outside.” I pulled my sword out and turned to face that way. It turns out to have been a waste of time, because Taya crushed the zombie’s brain as soon as it came into sight. It crumpled to the ground. “More are just gonna keep coming.”

“I am finished,” Ava said. “With luck, His guidance will see us through.”

“I prefer mommy’s guidance. She knows where all the enemies are.”

“Let’s see if we get a spooky vision,” I said as we finally walked into the worship room.

“What kind of—” Taya was cut off by the appearance of a small group of five survivors huddled around a fire. There was a pot of red liquid bubbling over the coals.

As soon as we saw them, they noticed us and jumped to their feet. Since I still had my sword out, I sliced the closest one open. The others grabbed their large clubs and started charging, but Taya’s horn lit up and each one collapsed, leaking more blood.

“That kind of vision, apparently,” I said. “Not at all the one I had before.”

“So why did you attack?” Ava asked.

“Why wouldn’t I? The sooner I get done here the better. I have a magic sword and my filly’s special talent is murder, so violence seems like the fastest solution. The only ghost I’m here to talk to is the clown.”

“Good, so let’s keep going,” Taya said, continuing to walk further in. I joined her and the bodies and fire disappeared. “Where to next?”

“One door leads to Igor’s sex dungeon. The other leads to a ladder that goes to the command bunker.”

“What?!” Ava shouted. “There’s a ladder right here?!”

“Yeah, I’ll show you.” Taya let me take the lead and they both followed into the main bishop’s office. “See the wall here?” I asked, pointing at an area that was more warped and discolored. When they both saw it, I kicked in it, revealing the ladder. “This goes way, way up to a room full of monitors and shit. I had another vision in there that made me think it was the command bunker.”

“He… he could have skipped… the entire bunker! He could have gone straight there!”

“See there? Mommy’s a much better guide than that dead guy!”

“It’s a tight fit, though. You might be squeezed against the wall a little.”

“Are there a lot of areas like this?” Taya asked. “Where I’ll have to hold onto you?”

“Yeah, there are several ladders, some of which are pretty tight.”

“Should I just turn into a human?”

“No, you’ll destroy your feet on the glass and rust without any shoes. We’ll make it work.” I knelt down so she could hop up on my back, then started the long climb up.

“I can’t believe this was here the whole time,” Ava said. “Are you sure it’s the right command center?”

“No. This place is massive, so I doubt there was only one command center. Taya, is this too tight?”

“I’m good. The closer I get to cuddle to mommy, the better!”

“So just what was running through your head the first time you came here?” Ava asked after a minute of silence.

“Oh shit, oh fuck, I’m gonna die, what the hell. It was pretty much that on repeat for a few days. Add in being kept awake with magic for nearly a month and you get some unpleasant results.”

“My mind was pretty much consumed with getting mommy back,” Taya said. “And killing undead to sate my bloodthirst.”

“Taya, you’re prey. You don’t have bloodthirst.”

“How can I be prey if my special talent is murder?”

“Back in my time, cows killed more people than sharks. That doesn’t mean we ever considered them anything other than dinner, though.”

“Well, sharks were basically extinct anyway,” Ava said. “So it’s not like they’d kill many.”

“They weren’t when I got taken. Point is, you’re a cute widdle filly. That makes you prey, regardless of what you do to fill your time. Send a light up the tunnel. I want to see how far we are.”

Taya’s horn lit up and a few lights appeared. They all started floating up the tube and stopped along the way to create a path. Thankfully, it wasn’t too much further. “So did you really just climb this blindly?” Taya asked. “What if the top had been locked?”

“The undead were surrounding the building. It was up or death.”

“And it likely saved at least a day’s travel time,” Ava said. “When we first got here, the bunker was a breeze to get around. But after things started breaking down, people would erect barricades, lock up elevators, and knock down walls. The place was an ever-changing labyrinth of nightmares.”

“Yeah, I fucking bet. I’d much rather take the nuclear holocaust. At least then your soul could go somewhere instead of being stuck in a hellish limbo.”

“At the very least, I’ve gotten to see a lot more of the world while attached to your side. It truly is a beautiful place, even if many of the denizens in it are troubled.”

“I bet you’ve seen a lot of mares, too,” Taya said with a giggle.

“More than I ever wanted to. I do my best not to watch.”

“You’re just jealous that I’m happier fucking tons of random strangers than you were fucking your loving husband.”

“No, I’m horribly depressed that you’re abusing your body this way. You’re destroying your self-worth little by little with each new partner. Part of why you feel so miserable all the time is because instead of getting emotionally close to someone and letting yourself become whole, you try to fill the missing gaps with sex.”

“Yeah, well, you’re dead, so what would you know?”

“What she said makes sense to me,” Taya said. “You know it’s bad for you, you just don’t want to admit she’s right.”

“Oh look, we’re here,” I said, reaching up to push open the door. Taya beat me to it and blew the top off with magic. I finally pulled us out and let my filly climb off. “Are your legs okay?”

“They’ll be fine after a few minutes of walking,” she said with a nod. “So is this the same control room?”

“No, thankfully,” Ava said. “Shall we continue?”

“Let the speedrun continue,” I said. “We won’t get any achievements since magic probably counts as any%, but I’m fine with that.”

“Is that supposed to make sense?” Taya asked.

“Not to you.” Nobody ever understands me… And since I know nobody is reading this, nobody ever will! And if anyone does, it means I have some killing to do…

We finally started moving again. When we got to the hall, we went left. “So why say things that don’t make sense?” Taya asked.

“Well, you talk about wanting to have sex with me all the time, and that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense to me!”

“Yeah, and what I say usually makes perfect sense to me.”

“It was a reference to video games,” Ava said. “Any% refers to cheating. Achievements are in-game trophies you get for various things. If you make references like these, you need to at least explain them! Otherwise, you just make everyone else feel like the butt of the joke.”

“...She actually does make some sense!” Taya said, honestly sounding surprised. “Are you telling me there were normal humans?!”

“Most of us were, in fact,” Ava said. “Navarone was deeply neglected as a child, so he developed poorly.”

“I’m literally right here,” I said. “And I really don’t like being reminded of it, so wait until I’m not around.”

“I… kinda can’t,” Ava said.

“You can tell me more,” Taya said. “I was neglected too, so I understand…”

“Don’t you start with me,” I said.

“I wish you would start mothering me!”

“I have been mothering the shit out of you lately, missy!”

That made her giggle. “You have! And I love it, mommy!”

“Good. Now, we’re coming up on another fight. This time it’s skeletons and they can’t die. The room is also full of traps. As soon as the skeletons spawn, force them all to the ground. That should break enough bones that we can get through easily.”

“Got it. Could that Jesus guy tell me where an entire room full of enemies is, along with how to kill them?”

“Taya, stop it,” I said. “Don’t get her started, please.”

“You say Jesus and God all the time but you never explain it!”

“Then read the Bible on my bookshelf. I made sure to keep a single copy for looks.”

“I think it’s time for a Bible lesson!” Ava said. “Today, we’re starting in John…”

“Oh look, the barricade,” I said. “That means the door should be opening right about…”

Sure enough, the new door slid open. Inside was the dormitory full of bones and traps. “Wait, that room looks familiar,” Ava said.

“I had a vision of you and Artyom, before.” I led the way inside. Taya quickly followed, her horn lighting up. “They spawned as soon as I triggered a trap. They despawned when I got to the other door. We might be able to get all the way through without triggering any traps, but they might spawn anyway and then we’d be surrounded by undead in a room full of traps.”

“Twilight taught me a new spell on the way to the Zone,” Taya said. “One used to trigger traps. Want me to use it?”

“Cover your ears, trigger them, wait a few seconds, then uncover them.” She and I both covered our ears, then she used magic to trigger all the traps. The only gun was the shotgun, thankfully. There were a few bear traps, a single large spike that fell from the ceiling, and a confetti cannon.

As soon as the last of the confetti hit the floor, the bones started shaking. “I wonder if I knew any of them…” Ava said as they pulled themselves together.

“Probably. Taya?” Her horn lit up brighter and all of the skeletons slammed to the floor. I pulled my sword out and started picking my way across, slashing at any arm or leg that got close.

Taya followed behind, chuckling at the bones wiggling around. “Aren’t you glad you had me trained to be the best attack filly ever?” she finally asked.

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you need to ever say that.”

“Hm… Did you ever come up with another inappropriate yet adorable nickname?” When we got out of the room, the bones stopped moving around.

“Yes. You’re my little hornyhorse,” I said, tapping her horn.

“I love it!” she said. “Best mommy ever!”

“I should have said a longer prayer,” Ava sighed.

“You’re just jealous that you don’t have an adorable filly,” Taya smugly replied.

“...The joy of motherhood is something I never got to experience,” Ava slowly said. “It surprises me that there are those who would so casually throw it away.”

“We’ll be coming up to the first boss soon,” I said. “Ivan the butcher. He looks pretty spooky. I’m not sure how well magic will affect him, so let me take him.”

“You sure, mommy?” Taya asked. “If you’re too scared, I wouldn’t mind!”

“How could I possibly be scared with a filly to protect? I have to be brave to keep up your spirits!”

“Why would I be scared? I have magic to protect me! But you’re a sweet defenseless lady, so I gotta keep you safe.” I flicked one of her ears. “And this is the thanks I get!”

“He’s scary, but not that good in a fight. I was able to take him on even with all my injuries. Now that I’ve had more training, he should be cake.”

“...Then why are you making him up to be such a big baddie?” Taya asked. “Does he really count as a boss?”

“It’s a boss of a dungeon I’ve cleared already. I’m just railroading two newbs so we can get the XP and loot faster.”

“Another videogame reference,” Ava said. “Basically, it means she’s been through here already, so her experience makes it much easier. Because it’s easier for her, she can guide us through much faster.”

“Maybe we should keep Ava after all,” Taya said. “It’s nice to actually understand what you say!”

“I guess I need to get more obscure. I was hoping Russia would still be a cultural wasteland, especially after religion took over again.”

“If you don’t want to be understood, why say anything at all?” Ava asked.

“Mostly to annoy people,” I replied with a shrug.

“I knew it!” Taya shouted, slapping a hoof against the floor. “Why would you want to annoy your own filly?!”

“I dunno, because it brings me a sick kind of joy? Like, I’m seriously fucked in the head. You realize that, right?”

“At least you recognize it,” Ava said with a nod. “And admitting your problem is the first step to solving it! Since you’re using this coma as a chance to change for the better, wouldn’t you say it’s time to leave that mean-spirited habit behind?”

“I’d say it’s time for you to go fuck yourself.”

“I can read your thoughts,” she replied with a giggle. “I know you agree and are gonna start working on it!”

“Yes, I think we should keep her,” Taya said. “You can get a soul of your own and we can just keep her like a pet! Then she can tell me all your secrets when you feel like being difficult!”

“For one who once called pride a weakness, you sure fall victim to it a lot,” Ava said. “Is it so difficult to admit that I’m right?”

“A bodysnatcher isn’t entitled to answers,” I said, flipping her off.

“Oh, you’re just mad about my smug, better-than-thou tone,” she said, reaching down to pat me on the head. I felt it, unfortunately. “Didn’t you say humiliation was something you enjoyed, though?”

“What would your husband think about you hitting on a woman?”

“...Honestly? He’d probably be into it. I wouldn’t, though. No matter how much of it I’m forced to witness, I have no desire to be with another woman, especially you.”

“Ouch, my feelings.” Before I could continue complaining, I saw a light up ahead. “You see that?”

“I do,” Taya said. “What is it?”

“When I first came into the room with Ivan, it was bright and sunny. I ended up in another illusion, this one from my own past.” Taya gasped in surprise and started galloping forward, but I snatched her tail before she could get far. “Don’t be dumb, you’re better than that.” She groaned and started walking next to me, grumbling.

The light got brighter and everything started heating up as we got closer. All the memories started coming back to me and I slowly drew the sword as we neared the room. “Sure you don’t want me to kill him?” Taya sweetly asked.

“He’s mine. I’m done running from him in my mind. I’m not afraid of that monster anymore.”

“I’ll do my best to stay out of your way,” Ava said. “But do remember that we’re attached. If you move too quickly, you might get choked on accident.”

“You can read my mind. Follow me in such a way that it doesn’t happen. Surely someone who survived to the end of the bunker can manage at least that.” She sniffed at me, but didn’t say anything.

The three of us finally stopped right at the entrance. Instead of a room, we saw a large outdoor picnic from back in my time. I could see my family preparing food at the table. My sister was near the pool. After taking a deep breath, I walked over to join her.

Since talking to her would probably take longer, I just sliced her head off and kicked it into the pool. That turned it black instantly and the butcher started ascending. Being near the black tar was probably a bad idea, so I backed up to give him enough room to get out.

Soon enough, Ivan the Butcher was revealed in all his horrific glory and the illusion vanished. “Wow,” Taya said. “I thought you were exaggerating, but… Nope, you were right. Fuck that monster up, mommy!”

In response to that, the butcher turned toward her and roared. That was a bad idea, because I jumped forward and slashed at him. He deflected with his knife-hand and tried punching me, but I side-stepped it and kicked him between the legs. This particular undead abomination apparently didn’t have genitals, so all it did was give me a second’s reprieve. I used that time to stab straight at him.

He tried grabbing the blade. There was no time for him to realize his mistake. By the time his fingers hit the floor, my overpowered magic blade pierced his rotten chest. Since I knew that wouldn’t bother him much, I ripped the sword up, slicing it out through one of his shoulders. Somehow he found the strength to swing his knife at me, but I blocked his arm with one of my own and kneed him in the stomach.

That knocked him back a few steps, giving me time to lift my sword again. This time I swung low, slicing through one of his legs before he could recover. The demon lost his balance and fell to the floor. Despite that, he was still glaring up at me and groaning, trying to claw his way forward. I sliced through his knife arm and walked around to his side so I could use a foot to pin him to the floor. When he couldn’t move around as easily, I finally impaled his skull against the ground.

His body started seizing, making me stumble back. Taya caught me with magic and finally began incinerating the corpse. Ivan… screamed as he burned. He didn’t gurgle or roar like before, he screamed and cried like a normal human.

“How… how is he still making noise?” Taya asked.

“You don’t want to know the answer to that question,” I said. “So what did you think?”

“Well, you were right. He was scary, but he wasn’t really a threat. Why were you so worried about this place, again?”

“Because it was incredibly traumatic. Before, I said I wanted to have this over with before you got here. But to be honest, I’m glad you’re here.”

“Why would you ever go to battle without your attack filly?” Taya asked, her head tilting. “I can’t keep you safe if I’m not there!”

“I won’t necessarily agree with that, but I think trying to go through here alone again would have ended poorly. And I think having only Ava would be even worse. So thank you, Taya. You’re my favorite pony daughter.”

“Hah, I knew I was y—Wait, pony daughter? I’m not your favorite period?!”

Since Ivan was mostly gone, I finally walked over to reclaim my sword. The ancient metal was still cool to the touch. “Shall we continue, then?” I asked with a smile.

“Should you not first address your filly’s concern?” Ava asked.

“There are no winners in the favorite game when it comes to parenting, so there’s nothing to address. Now, when I first encountered Ivan, I ran as quickly as I could, wherever I could. I’m sure there’s a much faster route. You’re up, Ava.”

“I guess I am. Taya?” Taya’s horn lit up and I got grabbed with magic. “Now, shall we address your filly’s concern?”

“Ivan respawns, Taya,” I said. “Is now really the time for this?”

“Why did you adopt Eva, mommy?” Taya uncomfortably sweetly asked. The crazed look in her eyes seemed a closer fit to Luna than a filly. “Am I not good enough? Was my love not enough? Or was I too creepy?! Were you too scared of me, so you wanted to get a precious little cute daughter?”

“Is that all you want to know?” I asked. “It’s simple. She put me in a position where saying no wasn’t an option.”

That made her blink in complete surprise. “Um. What? Of course you could have refused!”

“Not without breaking her. You weren’t there, Taya. In that moment, if I refused her, I honestly think she would have shattered. My decision to adopt them had absolutely nothing to do with you.”

“...So you did it for her, not for you.”

I feel like we’ve had this conversation before. “Yeah. The way we rebuilt her mind is special. In this time, she is quite possibly one of a kind. My name has a prestige of its own. Bringing her into my family will be the best way I can keep her safe from afar.”

“I don’t buy it,” Ava said. “Fess up!”

“Wait, you were lying?!” Taya screamed, actually trotting in place in rage.

“Not completely,” I said with a shrug. “Everything I said was true. It just wasn’t, you know… the whole truth.”

“I can’t believe you, mommy!”

“Good, you shouldn’t,” I said. “I’m a complete scumbag. Of course, the whole truth is probably worse, so you’re gonna be even more mad in a second.”

“She’s about to start hurting you,” Ava said. “Out with it, missy.”

“I can’t say no to cute changelings.” Taya’s mouth dropped.

“Try again,” Ava said.

“I can’t say no to cute smiles…” I sighed, finally hanging my head. “Eva nailed it. Completely and totally nailed it, Taya. The look of hope and adoration, the twinkle in her eye, the sound of desperate desire in her voice… I couldn’t say no!” And besides, I’m that girl’s everything anyway. There’s no reason not to make it official.

“Oh. Is that all?” Taya asked. “You almost got me angry. Well, let’s get going, then.” Her magic finally released me, so I started walking to the exit.

“You’re just gonna give up?” Ava asked. “Wait, why does that only almost make you angry?”

“I already knew mommy can’t deny cute grins. That’s why I’ve been practicing! I just didn’t know Eva was so far ahead of me already…”

“...And you’re not angry over how completely and totally irresponsible and dumb that is?” she asked.

“Why would I be? I can’t be angry at Eva for doing the same thing I am! That would be hypocritical. If she gets to manipulate mommy, so do I!”

“So, which way?” I asked. We were finally out of the butcher’s spawning room and in the hallway leading away. We had the choice between straight, which led to more hallways, or right, which was a tunnel someone bored after everything fell apart.

“Why would either of you manipulate her?!” Ava yelled. “And how can you be okay with your filly saying something like that?!”

“Because it aggravates the fuck out of you,” I said. “And also because she’s been scheming and plotting since I found her. Taya is special in her own way. It was my mistake to try to protect you from it instead of teaching you how to put it to use. But that will be changing soon, Taya.”

“That sounds super ominous,” Ava said. “Aren’t you curious about what your mommy has in store for you, Taya?”

“Nope! She’ll tell me when she’s ready. I’m so excited!”

“So which way?” I asked with a grin.

“I don’t know what you’re so smug about,” Ava said. “Being proud of ruining this filly is disgusting. Your mother intends to teach you to properly scheme, so you can be trusted on your own. She wants to use you!”

“Perfect!” Taya said with a huge grin. “You ruined the surprise, but I’m still so happy!”

Ava stared at the two of us with a look of such complete loss that I couldn’t help but giggle. After a few long seconds of me laughing at her, she finally looked down and said, “Go right…”

“Thank you,” I said, finally turning right. “But for what it’s worth, I don’t intend to use my daughter for evil. It’ll just take some training for her to operate away from me.”

“Good. All the more time to spend with mommy,” my filly said.

“So what happened to this place after you left?” Ava asked.

“I’m pretty sure Celestia sent Luna to destroy it,” I said. “Apparently that sent a lot of very pissed off ghosts all over the place.”

“Why wouldn’t you allow your zebra to free them all, like you’re doing with the other bunker?”

“My zebra? That’s racist.” She actually slapped me. Her hand slipped through my head and gave me brain-freeze from hell. “Yeah, you don’t get to do that again. It hurts too much.”

“That sounds to me like a good incentive for you to behave,” Ava said with a grin.

“How very Christian of you to get your way with threats. To actually answer the question, Zecora didn’t know how yet. Also, this place was considerably more evil than the other one, so it would have been more dangerous. I didn’t even know Celestia was going to do it until it was done and it’s not like I could have stopped her.”

“...So it is likely my Artyom is still haunting this world.”

“Yeah, probably.” She sighed in despair, hanging her ghostly head.

Even with her shortcut, it still took a while to get to the iron forest. We had to deal with Ivan one more time. Since he wasn’t proving effective, the bunker hit us with another few small-time encounters. Each one was a breeze.

“How far do you think we’ve come?” Taya asked when we stood before the jagged metal trees.

“We’re about a third of the way there,” I said. “Unless Ava knows a few shortcuts.”

“I do,” she said. “With your filly, getting through the mall and the medical area should be easy. We can remove a few barricades and make the path much shorter. We’re probably closer to three-eighths of the way through.”

“Then let’s get going. There’s another boss in here. This one is ranged, so you might need to take him out for us, Taya. He has wolves as pets, so I’ll focus on keeping those away.”

“I could kill those, too,” she said. “You don’t need to exert yourself, mommy.”

“It gives me something to do,” I replied, pulling out my sword. “It’s a bow, so we won’t hear it until it’s too late. Keep up some manner of shield.”

“I didn’t run into Ivan after he went crazy, but I did have a run-in with the hunter you’re talking about,” Ava said. “That bow of his was monstrous.”

Right when her last syllable sounded, something bounced off Taya’s shield, making the entire thing flare up. “That was a lot stronger than I thought it would be,” Taya said. “But still nothing compared to what we faced in the Zone. I thought you said human weapons were tough, mommy.”

“There’s a huge gap between a bow and a gun,” I said. We finally heard growling and the dogs started running from the trees. I took a few steps forward and readied myself. The first one lunged directly at me. I waited for it to hit the shield before impaling it. I ripped the sword out through his skull, letting his freezing body hit the floor.

The other dogs spread out in front of us, not daring to get close. “What do you think, mommy? I could take them all out in a heartbeat.”

“Way to make me feel useless. Go for it.” Taya’s horn lit up brighter and all the remaining dogs began collapsing, one after another. Another arrow bounced off the shield, this time in front of my filly. I looked back and finally saw the hunter hiding midway up one of the trees. “See him over there?” I asked, pointing the guy out. “He’s in a tree about a dozen meters out.”

My filly grinned and a white light shot out of her horn, heading straight towards him. Everything above his knees stopped existing. Both of his legs fell out of the tree with meaty-sounding thuds. “You’re not useless, mommy. You make a great spotter. And you’re the best at ordering me around!”

“Magic would have made surviving here much easier,” Ava slowly said. “Despite being at your side through so many events, it still surprises me when I see what it can do.”

“So what do you think?” Taya asked. “Magic’s stronger than human weapons, right?”

“Absolutely not,” Ava said. “Nav, have you told her about Hiroshima and Nagasaki?”

“No, but I did tell her about how our weapons destroyed the planet and we had to rebuild it. I’ve yet to find any evidence that magic’s destroyed the world, so—”

“Discord’s a magical creature,” Taya said. “And didn’t he use magic to make all the old fountains of magic dry up?”

“Alright, I’ll grant you that. Magical creatures can be stronger than nukes, but human inventions are all about accessibility. Nuclear weapons give everybody the ability to pull the trigger on an entire planet, not just one or two select beings. And your shield can hold against an arrow, but you saw what happened to the magic shield Watcher was under at the bunker, when the cannon hit it. If they had two cannons firing, his squad would have been wiped out before he could lift his own shield.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to test it later,” she said with a nod. “You ready to get through the forest?”

“Yep. Ivan can follow us through here, but I don’t think the hunter respawns. Last time, I let them fight each other. Ivan won, but probably only because I killed a lot of the dogs.”

“Want me to keep the shield up, just in case?”

“Until we get through here, yes. I thought shields were normally visible all the time.”

“I learned a new kind at the tower,” she said. “It’s an adaptive shield that only activates when something is incoming. It uses more magic to activate, but you don’t have to keep it active all the time. It’s good when you don’t expect to run into much.”

“I guess those guys are useful for something, at least.” We finally started moving. Since I was apparently only good for spotting, I put my sword away and started looking around. “This place really was pretty before everything went to shit. It’s a shame that psychopath hung bodies on half the trees.”

“That was something else, actually,” Ava said. “There was a fight for the forest, if the rumors were true. One of the combatants used some kind of catapult to launch dead bodies into the forest to try to disease the hunter and his dogs. Most of them ended up getting stuck on the metal trees. All of the hunter’s victims ended up in a lake that was supposedly more blood than water.”

“Yeah, I found that,” I said. “It was… gruesome.”

“This place really sucked,” Taya said. “I don’t ever wanna live underground, mommy.”

“Yeah, fuck that. You’re one cave-in away from Mad Max meets Fallout.”

“Wouldn’t that just be Fallout?” Ava asked.

“Fair enough. How long did you guys last after everything broke down?”

“About two years,” Ava said. “But it’s hard to really define what the breaking point was. Not everybody here lost their minds. Most people here were kind and decent. If it weren’t for a few monsters at the top, I feel we would have survived even with food issues. The death of our patriarch probably did it. When his heart gave out, everything became a downward spiral…”

“Igor murdered him,” I said. “That creep was keeping sex slaves and the patriarch found out about it. I had a vision about it in the church.”

“Oh. That… is not what we were told, but I’m not surprised. Did you have any visions of me and Artyom?”

“Yeah, most of them were about you.”

“Wait, really? And you never told me?”

“I thought you knew everything I knew. Why would it matter? I never saw anything too weird, though I did experience some of your thoughts.”

That made her ghostly face blush, turning it a dark blue. “M-my thoughts? Like w-what?”

“Wanting to be a mother. It was the first time I ever felt the desire for life inside of me. It was… alien. I also felt your love for Artyom. I’m sad to say it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever felt and I doubt I’ll ever be able to match it.”

“That’s hurtful,” Taya said. “You still don’t love me, mommy?” She didn’t sound overly hurt, so I doubt she was being serious.

“There’s familial love and then there’s romantic love. After feeling someone else’s emotions, I can safely say they’re different.”

“Or you’re just bad at love,” Taya muttered.

“I’m glad to give you something to strive for, Nav,” Ava said. “I don’t really know what to make of what you felt. I suppose I have no right to complain, given I’ve felt all that you have since we became attached.”

“Wait, you feel what I do?”

“It comes with knowing what you think. Do you remember when Taya cast the spell on that thief in the fortress at the Zone? It let him see me. I did my absolute best to tell him there was a hostile elemental inside of you, but he couldn’t seem to hear me. Either that or he couldn’t understand what I was saying. I knew how much she horrified you and how helpless you felt, so I tried to do what I could to help.”

“Yeah, that guy’s kind of an idiot. Thanks for trying, at least. Please don’t share my feelings with anyone else.”

“Not even to tell your filly that you really do love her?”

“Not even then, no.” Taya giggled and bumped up against me. “She’d get all smug and smarmy about it. She might even demand an ear scritch or something as proof.”

“You’re so mean, mommy,” Taya sighed.

“I learned it from watching my family,” I said, patting her head.

“Whoa, you finally told me where you really learned it! What’s the occasion?”

“I dunno, fuck it I guess. That’s the same reason I told Pinkie about god. She didn’t seem impressed.”

“So who’s god?” Taya asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said with a shrug.

“And I’ll tell you now,” Ava said with an uncomfortably large grin. I thought about trying to stop her, but I knew it was gonna happen eventually and the longer I fought it the longer I’d dread it. So I turned my mind off and tuned them both out, doing my best to listen for any other sounds instead.

The forest wasn’t too large and apparently it connected directly to the mall. The entrance was sealed off, but Taya was able to cut through it with no problem. All too soon, we stood at the entrance to one of the last bastions of capitalism-that-was.

“This place is huge,” Taya said, looking up in wonder. “How did they build it under the ice?”

“That’s the power of squatting,” I said. “The only thing Russians are good at, aside from losing Cold Wars.” We started walking in, looking around the immediate area for any traps or ghosts. Thankfully, it seemed clear.

“And winning World Wars,” Ava said. “We took the brunt of Germany’s wrath in both wars, if you’ll recall.”

“I’ll grant you the second one, but you succumbed to madness in the first one.”

“Fair,” she said with a shrug.

“How many world wars were there?” Taya asked. “That sounds horrific!”

“Four,” Ava said.

“Whoa, four?” I said. “I only knew about three, the last being the one that wiped us out.”

“The third one involved China, but I’m not a historian either. It’s all a moot point now.”

“You know all about old games and culture, but you don’t know the details of the third world war?” I asked. “Come on.”

“I took a class on memeology at university,” she said with a smug grin. “I can translate just about everything you’ve said so far!”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You took memeology instead of history? My god, no wonder there was a third and fourth world war. We deserved to die!”

“It was a required course! American propaganda was so good that we had to learn how to recognize it!”

“You mean the propaganda of having food, freedom, and not freezing to death in gulags?”

“No, the propaganda of private prisons, politicians that took money from giant and unaccountable corporations, and the blending of money with power so deeply that it turned into an oligarchy of wealthy families ruling it all. America was once great. By the time it all ended, it was a shadow of its former self.”

“You have more context, so fair enough,” I said with a shrug. “I could see things heading that path when I was around, so I’m not surprised that’s where it ended up. Did we at least keep the Constitution?”

“There was a very short second Civil War when a president and congress both agreed to remove a few of the first ten amendments. The army turned on them in an instant and they were all tried for treason, then hung. The world was holding its breath for an authoritarian military take-over, but they handed power back over to politicians after an emergency election.”

“...And everyone just let the army get away with hanging elected politicians?”

“I said it was very short for a reason. And I called it a Civil War, but it was widely regarded as a coup. That said, the emergency election also acted as a way for all the people of the country to decide whether or not what the army did was just. The leaders of the coup agreed to be hung afterwards if the people deemed it necessary. In an overwhelming landslide, the people agreed to free them. The president who won said the people had spoken and agreed to imprison them for murder instead of killing them for treason.”

“That’s shitty, but understandable. Also really cool. It sucks that I disappeared when I did. I wouldn’t mind watching something like that happen in real-time, or participating in that vote.”

“Humans are crazy,” Taya said. “I love it! If you’re gonna cut back on the belly rubs and ear scritches anyway, I think I should just become human forever.”

“I really don’t want you to, but you’re immortal now anyway. If that’s the path you want to go, I won’t stand in your way anymore.”

“Really?!” she asked, looking up at me in joy.

“I mean, I think it’s dumb. But you do you, I guess.”

“Best mommy ever,” she smugly replied.

“The human body is clearly superior,” Ava said. “Especially if you get to keep your magic. It’s a win across the board, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t see why it’s dumb. Giving up the body humans created in their hubris to take on the form of God is admirable.”

“Looking different just invites trouble. Even as a tree sister, Taya still looks like a normal pony.”

“You’ve managed just fine so far,” Taya said. “I think you just want all the attention yourself! You just wanna be the only human!”

“So you’re calling me a liar.”

“You just called yourself a scumbag a few minutes ago! Doesn’t that include lying?”

“Sometimes,” I said with a shrug. “But my reasons for wanting to keep you a pony aren’t selfish. I don’t want you to do it and I don’t think it’s a good idea, but compared to turning yourself immortal, it’s really not that big of a deal.”

We finally came to a large barricade. It covered the entirety of the first floor. “So how did you get through here the first time?” Taya asked as she began cutting through it.

“I went through stores,” I said. “Each one was super haunted. I almost died a few times. Eventually I found an entrance to an employee tunnel in one store and I took that for a while.”

“I have a feeling the bunker is growing restless,” Ava said. “I’m sure the spirits aren’t happy you’ve been bypassing them all so easily.”

“They can suck a fat one.” The new hole in the barricade was finished, so Taya pushed it forward with a clatter. It disappeared into a black void. There was nothing on the other side of the hole. “That’s eerie.”

“So uh… What now?” Taya asked.

“Ava, do some scouting for us.”

“What?! Why me?”

“...What, are you kidding?” I asked. “Best case scenario, you get sucked out of my body and back into what’s left of the bunker. Worst case scenario, you can’t see anything and we have to go around.”

“If you’ll recall, we’re chained together,” Ava said. “Anywhere I get sucked, you get sucked.”

“That’s kinda hot.” She sighed in disgust. I giggled and started walking over to a store, bending down to grab a chunk of debris as I went. Taya sighed and followed. When we were close, I threw the rock through the window. Instead of shattering, the glass pane just disappeared. “See there? Super haunted.”

“We should send Ava to scout,” Taya said.

“Oh yeah. If they start sucking on her, I wanna feel it!”

“I hate you both,” Ava petulantly replied, thankfully floating through the window for us. Nothing happened. “It looks clear to me.”

“Taya, don’t eat anything or drink anything. Do you know the equinequins Rarity has in her shop?”

“Yeah.”

“There are humanoid versions of those called mannequins. If you see any of those, destroy them immediately. And if you see Ivan, let me know. The mall is the last place I saw him.”

“If you’re scared, I can go first,” Taya smugly said. I flicked one of her ears and stepped through, pulling my sword out. As soon as she hopped in behind me, the glass appeared behind us again. All the lights started coming on and shelves started appearing. Once each one was in place, they started getting covered in cages. As the cages formed, bones began taking shape inside of them.

“Great, it’s a haunted pet store,” I said. All the undead critters were shaking their cages, trying to get out. “Freeze ‘em.”

Taya’s horn lit up and a cone of cold shot out, encasing the cages in ice. “Why even pull the sword out, mommy?”

“Fuck you, I’m not useless!” Unfortunately, the barricade ended where the store did, so we couldn’t just kick the window out.

“Then why did we go to the wrong store?” Taya asked. “I mean, I did my job with no problem. I thought you were the navigator?”

“Ava is the navigator, you little shit. I’m here for emotional healing. Besides, there’s a back door.” I started leading the way to it. Taya giggled and followed. Whenever any of the cages rattled, I sliced through them with my sword, stabbing through the skeletons.

“Twilight offered to make me a skeletal pet,” Taya said, peering into one of the shaking cages. “They don’t seem very fun, though.”

“Undead rats might be good as scouts or message-carriers,” I said. “But no, I wouldn’t want anything like that as a pet.” The back door was locked, but it yielded to a kick. The storage room it led to had an open doorway leading to a tunnel. We started following it along our original path.

“Who’d want to live here, anyway?” Taya asked.

“People who know their only other option is death via nuclear fire,” I said. “If I didn’t know the history of this place, I might have made a similar choice, if I had the option.”

“Artyom tricked me,” Ava said. “He told me we were going somewhere safe and let me assume he meant an island country. Had I known I would be trading away the sky and the soft ground for my life, I wouldn’t have taken the journey.”

“I think I’d rather die in the firestorm than linger on like a cockroach,” I said. “Humanity was dead the moment we pulled the trigger on a nuclear holocaust. It took a while for our collective corpses to stop twitching, but it was only a matter of time. Better to get it over with than wonder when your bunker would fail or everyone would go crazy from being cooped up.”

“I guess surviving is better than dying,” Taya said. “I mean, you always tell me life is crazy and you could die any day from any number of causes. It’s the same in a bunker. Well, if you don’t know their history…”

I could see a dead end coming up, so I went into the next open door. It took us to an empty storage room. The door leading into the store was slightly ajar. I walked up and used my sword to push it the rest of the way.

This time, mannequins began spawning. When ten of them were in place, they all got decked out in pretty pink tutus. After a few seconds, a large grandfather clock appeared on the far side of the room. It chimed and the mannequins started dancing in sync with the ticking of the clock.

“That’s kinda eerie,” Taya said. “Want me to make them ash?”

“If we go out there, I have a feeling we’ll end up as part of the dance. So please, burn it all.” She smiled and her horn flashed. The room was engulfed in flames for just a moment. It was long enough to turn everything into a fine white powder. “Rescue me if I start dancing.”

“Only after I watch for a few seconds.”

I rolled my eyes and walked into the room. Without the clock, it was uncomfortably quiet. Nothing happened to me, so I walked up to the glass. “It seems clear. Come on.” Taya started walking over. I used my sword pommel to smash the window. A loud alarm went off and I saw two skeletons wearing mall cop uniforms running our way. “Oh shit, it’s the fuzz!”

“They’re not fuzzy, they’re skeletons!” Taya’s horn lit up and their legs got knocked out from underneath them. They continued trying to crawl toward us. “And now they’re worthless.”

“The fuzz is another way to say the law,” I said. “Let’s keep going.”

“So how do we know we’re going the right way?” Taya asked.

“Ava, we going the right way?”

“Yes. The mall follows along a natural chasm, so it’s mostly straight. The entrance we took was along one of the side paths, but it looks like the back path we were just in took us back to the main area. Does anything look familiar?”

“No, I was in too much pain at the time to pay close attention to my surroundings. Light was also harder to come by, since all I had was a broken flashlight. I just know I went from the mall to the carnival area.”

“It surprises me that you were able to go in such a straight line,” Ava said.

“I used the 3D map in the opening area to plot a general path. I found another map in the mall area that I used to finalize everything. I ended up dithering around in the theme park and medical areas due to ghosts. We’ll be fine with a guide and a Taya.”

“Now you’re speaking of her like she’s a possession,” Ava said. “Is that not demeaning?”

“Nope,” I said. “She enjoys it.”

“I do,” Taya said with a nod. “Mommy’s the best owner ever! All of her toys love her so much!”

“I wonder how much of that is the pull,” Ava slowly said.

“Most of it,” I said with a shrug.

“That and the ear scritches,” Taya said. “Nobody cares about dignity when it’s time for belly rubs.”

“There’s another barricade up ahead,” Ava said. “Should we try cutting it?”

“It didn’t work last time. Let’s go over. Taya, there’s an invisible net separating each layer. You’ll need to cut it for us to be able to fly over.”

“Do I also need to toss you?” Taya asked.

I stretched out my wings. It was the body I had during the bunker, so the feathery wings still matched. “That shouldn’t be necessary. We’ll go up to the second floor. There should be no or fewer barricades up there.”

Her horn lit up and she sliced a huge hole in the net. “Is that enough?” she asked as the material fell to the floor.

“Yep.” I carefully picked her up and tried taking off. It was just a little too much weight. “Alright, let me get a running start.” I set her back down and walked a few meters away. When I was far enough off, I ran forward, took off, snatched her up, and managed to just barely clear the net with her in my arms. Since I didn’t see any reason to stop, I evened out and continued flying in the dead space between the floors.

“How far should we go like this?” Taya asked.

“As far as we can. It’s faster than walking and this is the right way.”

“So why is this working?” Ava asked. “We couldn’t cut through. Why is flying over acceptable?”

“Who knows?” I said. “Don’t look a gift flight in the feathers, or whatever. We’ll ride the air as long as we can.”

“Your stories made this place seem much worse,” Taya said. “You should praise me more for making it so easy for you!”

“I already praised you enough. Don’t get a big head.” She huffed and puffed, but didn’t say anything else. That was good, because keeping myself between the second and third floor was pretty difficult with my shitty wings and her heavy body. Thankfully, even if we did hit the net above us, we’d only fall a few meters into the net below us.

Everything was going really well until I smashed into something directly in front of us. It was very loose, but still enough to bounce the three of us backwards onto the lower net. “What was that?” Taya asked. She was trying to sit up, but the net we were on was moving too much.

“It was probably a piece of the net cut from the third floor,” Ava said. “My guess is that it’s been limply hanging down and we hit it since we couldn’t see it.”

I knew trying to stand would be difficult, so I pulled my way over to the edge. Taya realized what I was doing and joined me as I very carefully climbed over the railing onto the second floor balcony. She was having a hard time getting over, so I helped pull her to the solid ground.

“So now what?” she asked.

“Now we continue walking,” I said, doing just that. “We got lucky enough to avoid injuries this time, but I’d rather not risk hitting another invisible net and falling at an angle weird enough to break anything. It would take too much magic to heal.”

“It should take another fifteen or so minutes to get out at this rate,” Ava said. “We’ll need to return to the first level to leave, though.”

“I already see two barricades down there, so we’ll wait until we’re there to descend.”

“Why didn’t they barricade the other floors?” Taya asked.

“Getting to the higher levels was difficult,” Ava said. “All the staircases were guarded and the elevators were welded shut. For a while, the mall area was the middle of a pitched battlefield. As ammo started running low, tensions started soothing. Still, those on higher floors usually managed to hold onto their positions despite everything. I’m surprised we don’t see more bullet holes everywhere.”

“If I was living here, I’d do my best to cover them up,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to be reminded how I almost got killed every time I look around. Although I imagine at that point, almost getting killed was a daily occurrence anyway.”

“Life was tough,” Ava sighed. “Some parts of me wished I had stayed with Artyom until the end. We would have died in the bunker regardless, but at least we wouldn’t have been alone.”

“Hope is what keeps people going,” I said. “And your hope of escape was the fire that pushed you both along. Would living a hopeless existence with no chance of a future really be that much better than dying a horrific, shitty death?”

“Yes,” Ava said with a nod. “Even without hope, with Artyom by my side, I was able to cope.”

“I’d rather die with mommy than completely alone,” Taya said. Thanks for dragging me down with you. “Especially if it was completely alone in a place like this.”

“I guess love acts as a decent enough alternative to hope. I’ll try to remember to ask Doppel which tastes better.” I don’t know why, but that made my filly giggle. I didn’t want to know why, either, so I pointedly ignored it.

“So why did that make you giggle?” Ava unfortunately asked.

“She really liked my lust,” Taya said with another chuckle.

“I imagine it tastes better coming from someone more hormonal,” I said. “My lust is usually just background levels. It’s probably much better when you’re actually in heat.”

“That’s exactly what she said,” Taya replied with a nod. “Well, she didn’t mention you at all, but she said the part about it tasting better when you’re in heat.”

“...And you’re just okay with this?” Ava asked, looking down at me.

“She’s as old as she’s ever going to get,” I said. “I’m not going to refuse to let her use a part of her body and I’m not going to take issue with the fact that she enjoys something everyone else enjoys. I will step in if I think she’s going too far or if I don’t approve of her partner, though. I told Doppel at some point that Taya was fair game, as long as she was using a body I would be okay with.”

“And you don’t see anything wrong with a mother and daughter sharing the same partner?”

“Doppel doesn’t count,” Taya said. “For one, she’s the maid. Two, she’s a changeling. Three, she’s sluttier than mommy. And four, let me have this! I never knew it could feel that good when done right…”

“I’ll give you three outta four,” I said. “Changelings do count and saying they don’t is racist.”

“Yeah, well, I learned from watching Twilight,” she sarcastically replied.

“You both might be lost causes,” Ava said. She honestly sounded super upset about that, which was a little surprising.

“There is no limit to God’s forgiveness, last I recall,” I said. “If I got down on my knees to beg for forgiveness for my wicked ways and actually improved myself, I’d still get to go to Heaven.”

“But you don’t want to. Both of you openly scorn the thought of it.”

“Well duh,” Taya said. “We’ve met, what, three gods now?”

“Hera, Athena, and Discord,” I said with a nod. “Plus Celestia, Luna, and Arachne. So that’s three human gods, two pony gods, and the spider god. We also know Zeus and that smith guy are out there, so that’s another two human gods. Given the history we got from Athena, it seems clear to me that the Christian god was just a human hopped up on magic. Things just got lost in translation after several thousand years. When you factor in that there was also probably a few doses of Discord’s meddling in the Bible, I honestly struggle to see how you can still believe. I’m pretty sure it’s the sunk cost fallacy, but it’s rude to assume.”

“What’s that?” Taya asked.

“Let’s say I start a company and put two thousand bits into it. Everything goes well for five years and I expand, sinking another two thousand bits in. Everything goes well for another five years and I expand again, this time putting in four thousand bits. Suddenly things start going south. The company’s too big, logistics are impossible even with the right people, and we’ve flooded the market beyond repair. This is where the fallacy comes into place. From an outside perspective, it seems easy to see that you should cash out while you can and retire. But from my perspective as the person who spent fifteen years building a business, I don’t want all of that time, money, and effort to go to waste. Instead of doing the right thing and quitting before I lose too much to recover, I go all in on a sinking building. In Ava’s particular case, she spent her entire life believing in God, then she spent her much longer unlife begging for salvation from that same God who forsook her the first time. She’s spent essentially an eternity believing and to back out now, even though the possibility that she’s wrong is incredibly high from any logical viewpoint, would be really difficult. Admitting all that effort spent believing and worshipping was effort wasted is too much.”

“Oh,” Taya said.

“Go fuck yourself,” Ava very coldly replied.

We continued our walk to the theme park in silence. When we got to the entrance, Taya cut a hole in the net for us and I used my wings to gently float us down.

“So what’s in here?” Taya asked. “I uh… I see some scary looking birds.”

“Last time I was here, this was a safe zone,” I said. “I ran into a friendly ghost clown who kept everything else away from me. If we run into him again, he is not to be harmed. I almost definitely owe him my life.”

“Got it,” Taya said with a nod.

“...Popsy?” Ava asked. I was kinda surprised she was still speaking to me, to be honest.

“Yep. Did you know him?”

“I worked with him at the theme park,” she said. “I always loved watching him with the kids. He had a way of putting them at ease, even when things started going downhill. I’m happy to see his good soul survived intact.”

“Well, let’s go say hi,” I said. Taya and I started walking. Ava followed behind like an obedient puppy.

“I never thought I’d see this place again,” Ava said. At the moment, we were just passing through the ticketing booths.

Once we passed through them, the birds finally took notice of us and started circling. “Should I take them out?” Taya asked.

“If it’s hostile, kill it,” I said.

She grinned and her horn lit up. A large fireball lit up in the center of the largest mass of undead birds. It exploded outwards and knocked a huge chunk of them out of the sky. The rest scattered and started flying toward us separately. Taya started cackling as her horn lit up with a white light. A few seconds later, a huge lightning bolt shot out and connected with the closest bird. It chained to the next and the next and the next until all of them were tumbling from the sky, smoking.

“That’s quite the lightshow!” a new voice said. We both spun toward it, my hand going to my sword. Thankfully, it was just everybody’s favorite clown, Popsy. “What kind of guests have you found for me today, Ava?”

“The kind who are lost and in a hurry, I’m afraid,” she replied. “Though it’s so good to see you again!”

“I really wish the two of you had stayed with us,” he said with a sigh. “Keeping the children smiling was a lot harder without you. And it would have been good to know your soul was at least resting among friends, rather than in an uncertain fate.”

“I was alone for a very long time, until Navarone found me,” Ava said, patting my head. “I’m traveling with her now. We need to get out of the bunker.”

“And to do that, you’ll need to get through the theme park,” he said with a nod. “I’ll show you all to a place you can rest for a little while. I’m sure getting here must have been hard on you.”

“Not this time,” I said. “Though I’m grateful for the offer.”

“Sure you don’t want to show your filly some rides?” Ava asked.

“Ponies have rides, too,” Taya said. “I don’t know if I’d trust something so old.”

“She talks!” Popsy said, leaning forward with a grin. “That’s a neat trick! Little Miss, are you interested in a career in showbiz? Between that lightshow and being able to talk, you could make a mint!”

“But all ponies talk,” Taya said, her head tilting. “Why’s that special?”

“They don’t when we’re from,” Ava said.

“Let’s get going,” I said. “I don’t want to risk Ivan or the hunter catching up.”

“They can’t get too far into the theme park,” Popsy said. “We’ll need to go farther before we’re safe. Follow me.”

And so we followed the ghost clown of old. He seemed to be in a pretty good mood and was happy to talk with Ava about old times. Most of those times were about doing good things and being super happy. I decided not to write them down because it just made me more depressed about his fate. Since no one else is reading this, that shouldn’t disappoint anyone.

Right?

“This place really didn’t seem all that bad at first, huh?” Taya said. “I figured things would have been awful from the start.”

“We lived comfortably for over ten years,” Ava said.

“I was here longer, for about fifteen years,” Popsy added. “Looking back, there were signs that things were going downhill, but… Well, it’s not like we could do anything but hope and pray.”

“Don’t speak to them about prayer,” Ava bitterly replied. “They’ll just be mean to you.”

“I could never be mean to Popsy,” I said. “He saved me without trying to snatch my body!”

“Didn’t you say you’d forgive me for that if I helped guide you?” Ava asked.

“Probably. That seems like something I’d say. Just because I forgive you doesn’t mean I can’t mention it every now and then, though.”

“That’s kinda mean, mommy,” Taya said. “She seems miserable enough to be attached to someone like you. There’s no need to rub it in her face.”

“Fair enough, I guess. I’ll try to cut back.”

“...Bodysnatch?” Popsy slowly said.

“It was an accident!” Ava said. “I realized your vessel was empty, but I wasn’t truly trying to take it over! You just died and I slipped in while poking you!”

“Sure, uh huh. Whatever I guess.”

“It doesn’t sound like you’ve forgiven her,” Popsy said.

“Of course she hasn’t,” Ava said. “She never had any intention to from the start. She just says things to manipulate people and then hopes they forget about it afterwards.”

“That’s not true!” I said. “I just don’t care about most people enough to remember my promises.”

“Is that supposed to be better?!”

“Remember, this journey is about self-reflection and healing,” I said. “And admitting my problem is the first step, right? You should be happy that I’ve come this far!”

“You might make a pretty good clown,” Popsy said. “I love the audacity and how you can keep such a straight face! You’d be the perfect performer!”

“Sorry, I’m already employed. Besides, I’m terrible with kids.”

“Understatement of the year,” Ava muttered.

“That’s too bad,” Popsy said. From what I could remember, we were just over halfway through the park. “If you’ve changed your mind about resting, we could take a short break somewhere around here. At this point, we’re completely safe.”

“How do you feel, Taya?”

“What’s left after this?” she asked.

“The medical area and the industrial area,” Ava said. “I know they both had their own sets of monsters.”

“The medical area had super fucked up doctors who captured me and injected me with nanites,” I said. “I had a few visions in there about them doing human experiments on Ava. It was pretty spooky.”

“No they weren’t,” Ava said. “I would remember!”

“Not if the nanomachines took your memories,” Popsy said. “There were… rumors about things like that. I never knew it was actually true, though.”

“So we’ll need to watch out for them,” I said. “Plus there’s the slavemaster in the industrial place. All we need to do to defeat him is free his slaves by breaking the chains binding them. Magic will make that a breeze, assuming you feel up to it.”

“I can do that with no issue,” Taya said. “But those doctors worry me. It might not be a bad idea to wait here for a few minutes to let me recuperate some magic.”

“Take us somewhere she can sleep,” I said.

“There won’t be anywhere too comfortable, but I can do that,” Popsy said with a nod. “Right this way!”

We continued following him. His stride picked up, now that he had a more definite goal in mind. To my surprise, I realized he was leading us to a large ferris wheel. “Why are we heading toward that thing?” I asked.

“The top is the safest place in the bunker,” he said. “You’ll understand when you get there. I’ll have to wait at the bottom, though.”

“Weren’t there also rumors about this ferris wheel?” Ava asked. “Something about it being special?”

“I started those,” Popsy said. “After so much time, it was the only ride that we could keep going. I began telling people it was blessed. That kept bringing people back, even when they were scared. As it turns out, the rumor I started turned out to be true.”

“That may have been magic,” I said. “Have you heard of thoughtform?”

“I’m a clown, little miss. If it doesn’t have to do with making people smile, I don’t know much about it.”

“Turns out magic is a real thing. It acts on faith and belief. If everyone in the bunker believed the ferris wheel was blessed, that blessed it. Everyone’s belief is likely what’s keeping this area safe even now.”

“That sounds inspiring, but complete baloney,” he said. “I just got lucky with my rumor.” We were finally standing in front of the lowest bucket. Instead of being a shitty two-seater, it had a bench that followed the walls. He opened the door for us and bowed. “Go on ahead, my ladies. The view from the top will be worth it! I’ll stop it while you’re up there and give you a few hours to recuperate. How’s that sound?”

“It sounds good to me,” I said, walking onto the thing. It began shaking in a way that worried me a little, but it didn’t fall. Taya joined me a moment later and Popsy swung the door closed.

“Ready?” he asked, walking over to the control panel.

I carefully took my seat. When the bucket steadied itself, Taya eased herself up on the other side. “Go for it,” I said. He pulled a lever and started waving as the ancient machine roared to life. After it had a few seconds to warm up, it started shaking and finally spinning. Dust and rust started falling around us, though none made it around the little roof covering us.

“So why are we going all the way up here?” Taya asked.

“I’m sure there’s a reason,” I said. “Being up here will let us see anything coming, anyway.”

Despite sitting unused for nearly an eternity, the machine still moved pretty quickly. We began slowing down before we got where we were going. When we finally ground to a halt, our bucket shook a few times before going still. After a few seconds of silence, I blinked and appeared outside under a bright and sunny sky.

“W-what?” I said, looking around.

“Wait… what’s going on?” Taya asked.

After a few more seconds, a third person appeared sitting next to me. This was a human woman about my size who I almost immediately realized was Ava. “Whoa, I have a body!” she said, looking at her hands in wonder. “What is this?!”

“I guess this is what he meant,” I said, finally looking down. Everything under us looked like a completely normal theme park, including a few hundred other people wandering around. Even the ferris wheel looked new. “It’s like a real theme park!”

“This is crazy!” Taya said. “Did you see anything like this last time?”

“No. I did get on a few rides, but I didn’t have any visions while here.” I finally wrapped an arm around Ava’s shoulder and leaned into her. “Well, we’re here to rest. Might as well get comfy!”

“Allow me to give you what small comfort I may,” Ava replied, grabbing me and carefully pulling me down so that my head was on her lap. “You’ve had to walk all this way. It’s the least I can do.”

“I bet your hair’s gonna end up braided,” Taya said with a cute little grin. “It’ll be good payback for all the times you do it to me!”

“I thought you’d be happy your mother was doing your hair,” Ava said. “Nav seems to rely on me for it a lot, so I’m usually happy to assist. I do believe it might be wise, in this situation. It’s likely we’ll run into more opponents and having your hair braided and safely tucked away is better than letting them grab it.”

“Agreed,” I said. “Go for it. I’m gonna zone out and let my mind rest. After going through so much of the coma, I need some time to reflect.”

“And I’ll try to sleep a little,” Taya said. “It’s not really all too comfy, but I’ll manage.”

“I suppose I’ll try to enjoy having a body while it lasts,” Ava said. “And I can do without any naughty comments, thank you.”

“Your hands feel nice in my hair, so I’ll be nice.” She chuckled and we all fell silent.

Some time later, the machine jolted back to life. I sighed and pulled myself off Ava’s juicy lap. It’s a shame she’s straight…

And also a ghost, I guess.

Taya didn’t wake up immediately, so I poked her with a foot a few times until she sat up. Right as she did so, the sunny sky disappeared and we entered the gloom of the bunker once more. “Ugh, we’re still here,” she said. “Gross.”

“We don’t have much further to go,” Ava said.

“Taya, shield, now!” She only looked surprised for a second before her horn lit up. It was just in time for an arrow to bounce off. Thankfully, I thought to look down to make sure it was actually Popsy waiting for us. Turns out, Ivan figured out how to work the controls. I hadn’t seen the hunter, but I figured they had to be working together to get to us.

“Where’s Popsy?” Ava asked. “What did they do to him?!”

“Forget him, what are they gonna do to us?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Taya said. Her horn lit up brighter and Ivan’s arms and legs fell off. She grabbed them with magic and threw them away. “Where’s the hunter?”

I looked over in the direction the arrow came from, but it was too dark to see far. There were also tons of things for him to hide behind. “I don’t see him. This ferris wheel isn’t going to stop with no one manning the controls, so we’re gonna need to jump when it gets to the bottom. We have to do it at the same time to stay under the shield.”

“Got it,” Taya said. “Just tell me when.”

I stood and carefully got onto one of the benches. Taya followed, making the bucket tilt uncomfortably. We were finally getting to where Ivan was trying to do the worm, so I said, “Now!” The two of us jumped. I pulled my sword out and impaled Ivan as we both hit the ground.

Another arrow bounced off the shield as I pulled my sword out. Taya shot a light toward where it came from, but we couldn’t see him. “Why are they working together?” Taya asked. “I thought you said they fought each other last time.”

“They did. But this time, we’re kicking the bunker’s ass. The old rules might not apply anymore. Incinerate what’s left of Ivan and then we’ll continue to medical.”

“What about Popsy?” Ava asked.

“What about him? This is a memory fragment, not the real thing. I’d certainly like to see him again, but it’s not like this is the real him.”

“Mommy’s like that all the time,” Taya said as Ivan’s body started to burn yet again. “She even bragged about how she killed me and her family in a dream world!”

“I wasn’t bragging, I was just stating a fact.” When there was nothing left of the butcher but ash, I said, “Point the way, Ava.”

“Are you not concerned with the hunter?” she asked.

“He’s a hunter. I’m sure he could hide in this place for days while we look for him. There’s no way he can get through Taya’s shield, so we’ll just kill him if we get the opportunity and ignore him otherwise.”

“I could just blow up everything,” Taya said with a big grin.

“That would waste too much magic. Ava, let’s get moving.”

“Ugh, fine.” She pointed the right way and off we went. “I can’t believe you’re just going to abandon him!”

“It’s not him. We’ve already been over this.”

“Forgive me for not being completely heartless!”

“No. Get your shit together.”

She grabbed the collar around her neck and yanked on it as hard as she could, presumably trying to break it or something. It was exactly as successful as I thought and she finally let go with a groan. “I hate you!”

“Join the club,” I replied.

“Should you work on not being heartless?” Taya asked. “I think it’s a pretty useful trait, personally. But it does get old sometimes outside of combat…”

“Allowing logic to dictate my actions isn’t the same as being heartless,” I replied, patting her head. “There is only a single Taya in the world. All other imitations are just that: Imitations. Why feel remorse by killing a knock-off? Why feel sentimentality for a fake? Generally speaking, things like that are people trying to take advantage of your moment of hesitation. If you don’t hesitate, it catches them off guard and gives you an advantage. I’m not acting without heart, I’m acting with tact.”

“You probably would have thrived in this bunker,” Ava said. “All the rest of the monsters did!”

“Now you’re just being mean. Something that you should probably take into account is that I’m literally not human anymore. Being fused with a tree did something to me that made me even worse.”

“That and you’re a soulless abomination,” she replied with a huff.

“Yeah, that probably also doesn’t help. Point is, cut me some slack. I’m not normal like you.”

“I’m a ghost! How am I any more normal than you?”

“Mommy’s easily got you beat in the weird department,” Taya said. “You complain about the same, though. You shouldn’t let her instigate you like this.”

“She started it!” Ava and I both said.

“Are you sure I can’t try killing her, mommy?” Taya asked.

“We’re chained together. I don’t want to have to drag her ghostly remains.”

“Telling lies again,” Ava said. “You like having a real human soul around to interact with. You think I’m different, don’t you?”

“All humans are,” I said. “Hera and Athena had to spell it out for me, though. Ponies are part fey, part animal. They lack the human spirit.”

“You mean spite?” Taya asked. “I still haven’t gotten it down yet.”

“That might be a part of it,” I said. “But there’s gotta be more to it than that. Humans are more than hate and violence. Popsy and Ava are proof enough of that. I’ll try to get more information from Athena later.”

“All the more reason for me to become one,” Taya said with a nod.

“Wise,” Ava said. “To be human is to be close to God. All of the races of this world are just mankind’s hubris run amok. Nav, do you truly plan to bring the humans forward in time?”

“If I can do my best to ensure they won’t destroy everything I’ve built, then yes. I hope you’ll accept that as part of God’s plan or whatever instead of trying to stop me.”

“Our motives may not be the same, but our goal is clear,” Ava said. “If humanity truly can be saved, it is our duty to do so.”

“No offense, but I plan to have you long gone by then. If I can find a way to send you to the afterlife, I’ll take it. You deserve a rest and I really don’t want to be haunted.”

“What, I don’t get to see this epic story to its conclusion? Where’s the fun in that?”

“I thought you hated me.” Before she could reply, an arrow bounced off our shield. “What, the guy is still out there?”

“Quitters never win,” Taya said. “Don’t judge him, mommy.”

“He’s just a sore loser,” I said, crossing my arms. Thankfully, they both shut up so we could walk in peace.

The hunter tried shooting us three more times before we made it to the large doors leading to the next area. To be honest, the medical facility was the place I was dreading the most.

“What did you see in here?” Ava quietly asked as we began walking in. “You said you had visions of me…”

“While I was walking in the halls, I was swallowed by a black void.” Ava gasped and froze. “When I came to, I was in your body, lying on a table in an examination room.” Her eyes widened and her hands started shaking. “An intercom clicked on and I got some instructions. I obeyed each one until it was something I couldn’t do, then something took over my body and did it anyway.”

“I remember,” she whispered. “It… it’s all coming back to me… The black void!”

“Yeah, that shit was spooky.”

“The things they did… H-how?! It was… it was inhuman!”

“To be honest, I don’t know how things deteriorated,” I said. “You’d think the scientists could have flooded the bunker with nanomachines to force everyone to stay compliant.”

“That may have worked until Discord got here,” Taya said. “But didn’t you say that some guy with sex slaves killed their leader?”

“That seems like a Discord-esque move to me,” I said. “Go after the guy with the easy weaknesses and use him to induce strife amongst the rest. I bet he sat back and watched the monkeys going at it with a huge grin on his sick, twisted face. Bastard.”

“I have a request,” Ava said. “Can we explore this place to find out what they were doing to me?”

“It’s obvious,” I said. “They were testing nanomachines on you. Things like Flo and Jonathan. Scientists all across the globe were working on the same thing, so I don’t know why you’re so shocked.”

“You feel no curiosity at all,” Ava said. “That’s so… sad, to be honest.”

“It does get a little old,” Taya sighed. “And she’s so hard to impress, too! She watches all kinds of super unique and cool things with this bored, dopey expression on her face. It really makes adventuring a drag sometimes. It also makes getting her gifts impossible.”

“Then don’t get me gifts,” I said. “I don’t need more stuff anyway and it saves you time and effort. Now, let’s get going.” Instead of waiting for them to keep bitching, I started walking. “Keep an eye out for huge voids of nothingness. I’m not sure if magic can fight it or not.”

“If you truly want to skip everything, we can get through here relatively easily,” Ava said. “It’s really only four turns, though it’ll be a lot of walking.”

“Even if we did go investigating to find out what was here, we wouldn’t be able to find anything because all the paper rotted and none of the computers work. We might see some visions, but we haven’t found any useful ones yet. So I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t get through as quickly as possible.”

“Then keep going straight,” Ava said. That’s just what we did. Thankfully, the conversation ended. Listening to both of them whine really got old.

It took us about five minutes to get to the first turn. After that, it was another ten minutes to the next. We passed several open hallways in that time, along with a few angry skeletons that yelled at us.

“It’s easy to see how you’d get lost in here,” Ava said when we came up to the third turn. “There are so many hallways leading in every which direction. I honestly believe they made this place like a labyrinth on purpose, in case any of their subjects escaped.”

“I could see that,” I replied. “Which makes it all the more surprising and lucky that I managed to even make it out the first time, let alone make it out going the correct way.”

“It’s not like you’d ever let yourself die somewhere like this,” Taya said. “If anything, you’d want it to be in a bed surrounded by your herd.”

“They’d probably be the ones killing me, either out of jealousy or by smothering me on accident.”

“Pick either Moonbeam or Celestia,” Ava said. “On the off chance that Celestia ever somehow reverts back, she won’t be able to kill you if you’re married to her. And if she tries to kill you while you’re married to Moonbeam, it would mean war with a race almost as powerful as her own. Moonbeam has done so much to change herself based on your words. It’s obvious she cares about you a lot and values your words. I feel like the new Celestia would be a decent match for you and if not, tweaking her would be easy.”

“I hadn’t considered marrying Celestia to prevent her from killing me later, but it does make sense. I’ll have to see what the visions show me later, and what Moonbeam has to say about her deal with Discord.”

And so everyone shut up again, letting us go back to getting through the super creepy medical ward.

When we got to the fourth turn, Ava sighed in relief. “I can’t believe none of those were blocked. We should be to the next area within five minutes, assuming all goes well.”

“You just jinxed it, so obviously things are gonna go tits up.”

“What’s that supposed to… Oh.” Sure enough, the void was approaching behind us now.

“Taya, hit it with light!” Her horn lit up and a bright white light slammed into the void. It couldn’t push the darkness back, but it slowed it down. “Run!” The two of us started sprinting forward. “Ava, make faces at it!”

“Got it!” she replied. I couldn’t spare time to check if she was actually doing it, but I had faith.

Every few meters we went, Taya left another ball of light. I was really hoping that meant she was slowing it down enough, but the ghosts had to be super pissed at this point. In the doom and gloom ahead of us, I started seeing shapes appear. I ripped my sword out in time to cut a walking skeleton in half.

Taya slowed down a moment to let me take the lead. I cut every shambler down, clearing a path for the two of us. It did slow us down, but looking back would slow us down even more.

“You might wanna run faster,” Ava said. “It’s uh… getting closer.”

“Make angrier faces!” I shouted. Taya groaned and sent a cone of light ahead of the two of us, turning all the undead to ash. Since the path was clear, we picked up the pace.

We began hearing whispers right around the time we saw the entrance to the next zone. When we were about ten meters away, Taya squeaked and managed to pull up next to me. I saw that something was pulling slightly at her tail. After that, I felt something else pulling on my braid. That’s when I remembered the darkness had an awful suction effect.

Clearing the entrance felt like a miracle. The pulling I felt vanished when we crossed, but we continued for almost a block into the huge sector. We only stopped because the path forward was blocked by a huge pile of rubble. I carefully sat on a large block while she fell onto the floor.

“That looked unpleasant,” Ava said. We were both panting too much to answer with words, so I flicked her off. “Catch your breath soon. You were loud coming in, so the slavemaster will probably be here soon.”

“H-how’s he f-fight?” Taya asked.

“Chains with ghosts attached to the ends,” I said. “Break the chains and free the ghost. Once you break all of them, he’s done. This should be the easiest one so far, though his ghosts might be able to get through a shield.”

Taya got back to her feet with a sigh. “You’re gonna make me do everything again, aren’t you?”

“That makes it sound like you won’t enjoy it. Once we free his ghost slaves, they’ll point us the right way. Let’s get hunting.”

“I’ll let you lead the way,” Taya said. “I guess you’re useful enough as a body shield, too.”

“Gee, thanks.” I finally slid my sword away and picked a random direction to walk. “By the way, we’re going to avoid going into buildings, if possible. Undead can spawn there and a lot of the stuff inside the buildings are dangerous.”

“‘Kay.” After three or so minutes of aimlessly walking the streets, Taya froze. “I hear something. It’s… rattling.”

I pulled my sword out and started tapping it on the ground. “WE’RE OVER HERE!” I shouted out. After that, even I could hear the rattling. “STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET, JUST WAITING TO BE ENSLAVED!” Taya giggled as the first of the chains came into view. “Let a few more appear.”

When the child on the end of the chain saw us, it began screaming. Three more chains rounded the corner and all four began flying our way. Taya’s horn lit up and something sliced each one in half. The slavemaster roared and I laughed. This time, I heard rattling and some stomping. Another chain turned the corner, though it didn’t approach.

“Pull back,” I whispered. We started backing up, though we didn’t move our eyes away from the crying chain. “When he comes into sight, destroy all of them at once.”

“Got it,” she whispered back.

Before he could turn the corner, the chain watching us jumped forward. Taya freed that guy before he could get close to us. The stomps stopped before starting again, this time much faster and in the other direction. “Shit, after him!”

Taya and I started running forward. Unfortunately, the evil dude knew the city better and we couldn’t see or hear him by the time we got to where he ran. There was a kid pointing in the opposite direction, though.

“So now what?” Taya asked.

“I guess we follow the directions we get, for now. Hopefully that pussy will come back.” With that in mind, we started walking in the other direction. The kids let us go four blocks before another one pointed us to the right. That only lasted a single block before we had to go into a building.

“What do you think?” Taya asked when we were standing in the entrance. There was definitely some rattling inside, but I didn’t know if it was the slavemaster or machinery.

“Well, this is where they’re pointing us. Stay by my side and be ready to attack anything.”

“Got it.” She pressed herself against my leg and we entered the dark building. “So is the goal just to get to the other side?”

“Hopefully.”

When we got to the main room of the factory, there were a ton of moving conveyor belts. Each one was covered in cans that were in various states of readiness. Some machines around the belts added things like labels, rotten black contents, and lids.

“What are those?” Taya slowly asked.

“My people had ways of putting food in metal cans to preserve it for long periods of time. That’s what this is doing, but I don’t know what that black shit is. Tear out three sections of the belt. That should destroy the entire process. We shouldn’t get near the machines until they’ve stopped.”

Her horn lit up and five sections got sliced off. Each fell to the floor and the cans on top of them all scattered. The belts on the remaining sections tried to continue moving for a few seconds before an alarm went off and everything shut down with a loud klang. Dozens of cans fell from the sudden stop, spilling that gross black stuff all over the place.

“I’d say that did it,” I said with a nod.

Unfortunately, the alarm drew in five pissed off undead engineers, each wielding a large wrench. They looked at the huge mess before shouting and sprinting at us. By the time I could pull my sword out, each was dead on the floor with fluids leaking out of their ears and noses. “I’m the best attack filly ever,” Taya smugly said.

“Let’s keep moving.” She huffed, but followed.

The conveyor belt area took up the main bulk of the building. Once we got through it, a short hallway took us to the other side. There wasn’t a ghost there, so we just continued straight until we hit a roadblock with the fourth ghost. He was pointing left, so that’s where we went.

“I hear rattling again,” Taya said. “I think it’s chains this time.”

“Good. This time, instead of breaking the chains, grab them and drag the asshole out.”

“Got it. Should I call out this time?”

“Scream like you’re hurt.”

“‘Kay.” She took a deep breath and started screaming bloody murder. I hoped the rattling was getting closer, but I couldn’t hear anything over her.

After about ten seconds of it, I grabbed her face so I could force her mouth closed. The rattling was uncomfortably close. I let her go so I could pull my sword out.

“It’s behind us!” Ava said. Taya and I both spun around. Three chains were rounding the corner. They saw us at the same time and started screaming.

Taya’s horn lit up and a light surrounded the chains. She tugged and tugged and tugged until the chains finally broke with a screech. “W-what?!” We couldn’t hear any more rattling, so hopefully that killed him.

“Let’s keep going,” I said. “That gives us a few more directions, at least. If we’re lucky, we can get out without even killing him.” We started walking again. “Man, I’m really tired of being in here. This place sucks.”

“Well, we’re almost out,” Taya said. “It does kinda suck.”

“I’m gonna go ahead and guess the takeaway from this memory is that there’s nothing to fear from this shitty-ass bunker as long as I have a super-powerful mage by my side,” I said. “And since my daughter is now an eternafilly, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Sounds like a good lesson to me,” Taya replied with a nod. Another ghost appeared to give us directions and we turned right. “Is that a ladder?”

“It is,” I said. It was on the other side of a pile of rubble and we could only see the top of it. The way behind us was clear, thankfully. “I’m gonna go back a few steps to get a running start. Wait here. If you hear rattling, run toward me immediately.”

“Of course. I gotta keep you safe, right?” I flicked one of her ears and began walking. I didn’t need to go far, so I ran forward, spread my wings out, took off, and grabbed my cute filly. We flew over the rubble and directly into a chain that slapped me in the face. It slammed me into the debris, pushing Taya under me.

She immediately floated me off, giving her a clear line of sight to two more chains. She sliced both of them in half and set me on my feet. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“H-heal me,” I groaned. It felt like my forehead was bleeding and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was broken. I’m honestly surprised it didn’t straight up knock me out.

It only took her a second to put me out of my misery. When she pulled away, she asked, “How’s that?”

“Much better.” I picked her up and jumped down to the bottom, letting my wings slow our fall. “Let’s get climbing before it comes back.”

We walked over to the ladder and I knelt down so she could climb on my back. When she was secured, I started climbing. “More rattling,” she said. “I don’t see it, though.”

“From the barricade!” Ava shouted. Taya’s horn lit up and vaporized a chain that was trying to reach us. I could hear more rattling, so I knew it wasn’t over. “Inside the building behind us!” I couldn’t see what Taya did to that one, but the rattling finally stopped.

I was almost to the top, so it wasn’t much of a relief. The hatch at the top was too small for us both to use at the same time, but I could easily feed her through. “He’s gonna attack when we get to the top,” I said. “I’ll let you go through first. He’ll probably go for my feet, so be ready to repel him.”

Her horn lit up again and a large shield surrounded us. “Even if his ghosts get through it, they won’t have enough room to reach us now. It costs a lot of energy, but if that’s the end, it’s worth it.”

I certainly wasn’t going to complain. When we got to the top, she climbed her way up and I helped push her the rest of the way through. The last three chains reached for me the moment my hand made it above the top, but they couldn’t get through the shield. I easily climbed out and soon we were both facing Ava’s corpse and the final elevator.

“That’s my body,” Ava said.

“Sure is,” I replied. “Let’s get to the elevator.”

“Should we pay any kind of respects?” Taya asked.

“Why? If you want to talk to her, she’s right above us.” I started walking. Taya shrugged and followed. Ava stared at her skeleton as we slowly walked past.

Before we could get to the final door, she said, “Wait.” I sighed and stopped. “Thank you for letting me work with you, Nav. I know you didn’t really want me here and I know I annoyed you at times. Unfortunately, we are stuck together. To be honest, I don’t really want to be merged with your body, either. I’d rather be freed so you can have your own soul.”

“Well, that’s the ideal result. I’ll do my best to make that happen. And I’ll do my best to actually forgive you for being a bodysnatcher.”

“Good. Farewell for now, my dear Lady Navi.”

“Bye, Felicia.” Taya and I finally walked to the elevator. It opened for us, revealing Flo’s glade on the other side. We walked through without a backwards glance.