The hallway beneath the Trottingham Natural History Museum was gloomy, dark, and covered in the broken remains of long dead pony skeletons. I felt the hole in my heart growing wider as my hooves delicately stepped around the bones of the ponies that had died in this tunnel two hundred years ago. The Brotherhood of Steel trotted as carefully as they could in their power armor, but I shuddered every time one of their massive, steel encased hooves crunched a femur into a fine, brown powder. There was no sunlight down in the tunnels to bleach the radiation tainted bones white and each new skull denoted another horrible death that had occurred on this site.

"Why hasn't anypony given these ponies a proper burial?" I asked.

I had to leap over the twisted bones of three ponies, two adults and a foal, that died in each other's hooves. Most of their body had been crushed by what I assumed was the charging raiders, but I could still see the little unicorn's horn and that sense of dread became mixed with a sickening feeling of remorse. More dead ponies when I was still walking around. I should be on that floor with them. I shook my head, trying to shake away the world's strongest case of survivor's guilt, and looked up to see Melody hovering just off the ground, completely avoiding any chance of crushing or touching the skeletal remains. I really envied her wings.

"Because there's no time for a burial, and any fire you start that's bigger than a small cook fire will be spotted by the monsters in no time," Buzzsaw replied, his hoof crushing a few vertebrae with a loud and sickening snap.

"Are the monsters really that bad here in Trottingham?" I asked, continuing my line of questions as I tried to educate myself on the horrible new world that awaited me outside Stable Sixty-Three. I remembered their descriptions of ghoulies living above Stable Sixty-Three and swallowed hard at the thought of the surface being covered with creatures just as bad as ghoulies, or possible even worse.

"Yeah. It's crazy out there. Manticores, bloodwings, and brahmintaurs roam the markets while ghouls occupy most of the Noble District," Shadowbuck said nonchalantly, and I bit my lower lip.

"OK, what are bloodwings and brahmintaurs?" I pressed further, dreading to hear more about the horrible creatures the necrotic balefire radiation had created. At least I knew what manticores were and how I could beat them. Their noses were extremely sensitive and they were exposed to flanking attacks while stinging with their tail. Simple stuff really, especially with a good shield and sword. "Dang it! I need to get my hooves on a sword."

"Bloodwings are giant, mutant vampire bats that can suck all the blood, juices, and organs out of a pony in a single bite."

I had to swallow the bile rising in my throat at the thought of a horrible death at the wings of a Bloodwing. "Note to self, avoid bloodwings like the plague."

"And brahmintaurs?" I asked with some trepidation apparent in my voice.

"Mutated minotaur. Got two heads and four arms. Nasty things. I hear they like to rip ponies in half with their bare hands and put the skulls of their victims on their horns," Bulletstorm said, adding himself to the conversation.

"Cud! Is everything up there trying to kill ponies... including other ponies!"

"Oh. Is that all?" I said, giving them my most convincing, 'Discord may care' smile. Shadowbuck rolled his eyes and I was pretty sure none of them bought my false bravado.

"Not even close. You got voidowls, yao guai, and even more manticores out near the Trottingham Forest to the north, mirelurks and radgulls off the coast and by the river, and our old pals the Royal Flush raiders based out of Piccadilly Rodeo in the West End," the flamethrower Ranger named Backdraft listed and I could feel my ears drooping against the back of my head. I didn't know what mirelurks, yao guai, voidowl, or radgulls were, but if they were anywhere near as bad as bloodwings and barhmintaurs, then I was beginning to doubt my chances on the surface.

"Don't worry, Aria. A mare with your talents at coming back from the dead should do fine," Melody said cheerfully, giving me a reassuring pat on the back as she fluttered along next to me.

"I'm not sure if I can perform that trick more than once, Melody."

"Well, look on the bright side, you've got me along to help you out. We'll clear out the ghouls and have that Stable door fixed in no time."

"Yeah. S-Sounds like a plan," I forced myself to mumble.

"Here we are fillies and gentlecolts. Welcome to Hell," Buzzsaw said with a grin. He pushed a button on the wall and a door swung outward to reveal the museum beyond and...

Hell was kind of underwhelming.

There were still skeletons, that seemed to be the common motif of everything outside of Stable Sixty-Three, their bones defiled, crushed, and thrown about the room with little regard for the ponies they had once been or the horrific manner in which they had died. The floor was covered with a layer of dust as a brownish gray snow silently danced in the extremely dull light pouring through the door on the far side of the room. I could see numerous fresh hoof prints marring the coat of dirt... or was that ash?

Balefire might have burned up so many ponies that the film on the ground could actually be what was left of the ponies of Trottingham. I could be breathing in pony! My eyes widened at that horrifying thought, and I started to gasp for air.

"Wait! What am I doing!"

That's when I realized I was possibly breathing in more equine ash and forced myself to hold my breath. As the Brotherhood of Steel stepped out of the picture frame door and into the museum, Melody and Shadowbuck turned to me with worried expressions on their faces.

"What's wrong, Aria?" Melody asked. I shook my head, looked around and buried my mouth and nose into the collar of my Stable Sixty-Three underbarding.

"What if we're breathing in the ashes of balefire cremated ponies?" I whispered, using the material as a barrier between the crematorium I was possibly breathing in and my lungs. Melody's eyes widened, and she threw her hooves over her mouth to mimic my collar breathing mask trick. Shaking his head, Shadowbuck chuckled to himself.

"Aria, this is just dust. Every pony that died this far out died from the radiation. The bomb hit to the north between the city and the forest. Too bad Stable Sixty-Two was right under the blast," Shadowbuck told me, his voice respectful of the ponies that had died so long ago.

I slowly removed my muzzle from behind my collar and smiled sheepishly. I would trust him on this one, but the thought of breathing in dead pony ashes made the flesh under my coat break out into ever growing fields of goosebumps.

"O-Okay. So where are these ghoulies?" I asked before taking a testing breath. The air didn't taste much different than it had in the tunnels or the Stable. It was a little musty and humid, probably due to the museum's years of neglect. Then I stepped out of the hidden entryway and onto the filthy, debris scattered floor that led out to the Trottingham Natural History Museum and the ruined city beyond.

"We cleared out the ground floor. There's still two more floors above us, and the lobby leads to the stairs so be quiet," Shadowbuck said in hushed tones, and I nodded.

"Yeah. We don't want you Stable ponies flipping out and pulling the entire population down on us when we're not ready," Star Paladin Buzzsaw added with a huff. Melody giggled softly.

"I won't flip out, sir, and Aria's not a Stable pony. She's a two hundred year old Lunar Guard pony who came back from Heaven to help us. I think she can handle some ghoulies," Melody replied with her usual bright smile. Great. Melody had all the confidence in the world, in herself and in me, but I was barely able to stop myself from shaking in my purple horseshoes.

"Yeah."

"Well, let's get this suicide mission over with. I really hope a shield swinging unicorn and a winged stable technician can actually turn the tide for us," Buzzsaw said with such a blasé sigh that I could almost see his apprehension through his armor.

The painting that hid the entrance hallway to Stable Sixty-Three slid closed behind me on surprisingly silent hinges, and I noticed the faded canvas the large frame housed. I could make out a once beautiful portrait of an earth pony couple, the blue mare sporting a beehive of red and white hair and the red stallion looking regal with his tuxedo, neatly trimmed white mustache, and slicked back mane. The painting had aged horribly and a large gash had been recently cut across the necks of the couple. They looked familiar and it didn't take me long before I realized who they were.

The Duke and Duchess of Trottingham had been immortalized in this portrait, their happy smiles almost lost to the ravages of time, and I felt another pang of loss. Duchess Duchess (Yes, she was the Duchess of Trottingham and had been named Duchess.) and Duke Union Jack had been my mother's cousins. They were distant cousins, but I was yet again faced with another reminder that my family, for all their faults, was gone.

"You coming, Aria?" Melody asked. I turned to give her a weak smile as she landed next to me and looked up at the painting with her inquisitive blue eyes. "Did you know them."

"Y-Yeah. No. Kind of. They were distant cousins," I said, and sighed. "Come on, Melody. We've gotta show these Steel Rangers how a unicorn and pegasus takes care of monsters."

"Really now?" Shadowbuck said smugly, and I started. I turned around to see that overly confident smile and glared.

"Really. The earth pony way is all well and good, but you boys could stand for some magical assistance and air support to aid your Brotherhood of Steel. Maybe a feminine touch, too," I said, giving him a smug smile of my own as I walked past him, Melody at my side.

"Yeah. Wings and horns can really help where hooves and power armor can't," Melody added, almost perfectly mimicking my confident canter.

"Mares," Shadowbuck sighed, and followed us as we trotted after the Steel Ranger elites.

As we entered the Ambassador Puddinghead Memorial Hall, I could finally see this place as the museum it had once been. The tattered curtains hanging from the walls had once been beautiful tapestries depicting ancient pony history. In the center of the massive entry hall was an equally massive dragon skeleton. Melody and I were instantly drawn to the skeleton, it was twice the size of the one in Stable Sixty-Three, while the Brotherhood of Steel prepared their battle saddles and armor for the upcoming fight upstairs.

I had been quite perturbed by the sight of the dragon's missing claws, obviously the act of raider looting, while Melody had flown up to inspect the dragon's massive jaws; at least the raiders hadn't taken the mighty beast's teeth. You know, there's something horribly strange and a bit disturbing about museums having dragon skeletons on display.

I mean, think about it. Dragons had been both Equestria's enemies and allies from time to time. The zebra's and Equestria were allied with different factions of dragons during the war. Students at the magical schools had dragon assistants and there was word that a brood mother had lived beneath Canterlot. A dragon skeleton in a museum was actually pretty morbid when you think about it. Did dragons have pony skeletons on display in their museums? Wait, no, there are no dragon museums; we blew the world up.

"HHHHIIIIIISSSSSS!"

We all turned towards the darkened hallway that Buzzsaw had said led to the stairwell and elevators as the most horrifying sight I had ever seen charged out of the shadows like a Nightmare Night horror story come to life. Or undeath, I guess.

The creature's skin hung to it like loose fitting barding, it's mane was non-existent, and its teeth and hooves had been chewed down into sharp points. That wasn't the worst part though. What scared me the most were it's sunken, yellow, lifeless eyes that only seemed to hold rage and an unfathomable hunger.

It locked its horrific eyes on me as it charged, it's mouth open in a ravenous cry for food, and I screamed. Firing off a bolt of lightning, the zombie pony hit the ground and spasmed and flailed until a quick shot from Shadowbuck's pistol silenced it for good. Brain matter oozed from the well placed bullet hole, and I let out a haggard breath.

"I thought you were ready for this, Miss Lunar Guard?" Bulletstorm asked dismissively, and the Brotherhood chuckled at the burly Ranger's jab.

"Hey! You ponies are used to this stuff. Melody and I aren't," I quipped, annoyed not only at the Brotherhood, but also at myself for screaming like a little filly.

"I didn't scream," Melody argued, but we all stopped arguing when a familiar hiss rang out from down the hall again. Then another. And another. We turned to the shadows of the northern hallway as the sound of bony hoofbeats on marble rumbled from the darkness.

"Fall back, Steel Rangers! Use the dragon display as higher ground!" Buzzsaw ordered, and, even though Melody and I weren't Steel Rangers, we flew and teleported up onto the raised dais.

At first only a few of the ghoulish creatures charged through the doorway at a time, (I get their name now) and a well placed grenade or hail of minigun fire would handle the slow, but steady stream.

That didn't last long.

What we had feared had come to pass. The sound of the fighting just brought more and more ghoulies down upon us. The moment Boom and Bulletstorm had to reload, the mass of monsters flooded the main hall.

"Goddesses! I thought you said the first floor was cleared!" Melody yelled over the din of gunfire, explosions, laser blasts, and thunderclaps. I didn't have time to answer with my own hypothesis as I smashed Golden Star's shield into the rotting skull of a monster that had once been a normal pony like me. Ichor, brain matter, and gore splattered my shield's silver surface and the zombie pony went down with a stomach churning crunch.

"The raiders that escaped must have attracted more down from the higher floors before they left," Shadowbuck called back from wherever he was hiding before a silent shot ripped through the left eye of a monster to Bulletstorm's left, splashing the Steel Ranger's armor in a disgusting post modern painting of horrible bodily fluids.

The chaos that had erupted in the lobby made the last stand in Stable Sixty-Three's Atrium look organized and civil. Bullets and explosions decimated decayed flesh and broke bone, but the undead kept coming. The steady blasts and gunfire was almost deafening. I needed to drown the din of battle out and fight. Helping save Melody, the Brotherhood of Steel, and myself was all that mattered now.

BZZAP!

"Cud!"

My lightning bolts were of little help. With the ghoulies' deadened nervous system, the electricity wasn't traveling through their necrotic forms as well as it would in the case of a living, flesh and blood pony. I guess the lack of bodily fluids or a heartbeat aided into their electrical resistance too. It took a lethal shot to stun them and I didn't think I could fire off a powerful enough bolt to actually kill them with one blast. Unless I got a headshot; it seemed fried zombie brains stopped working just as fast as fried pony brains.

One of the horrifying creatures launched itself at me, it's pointed hooves outstretched and its mouth drooling with anticipation at a meal of fresh me, and I raised my shield to bat it away like a fly. As it struck my shield, my eyes went wide and my magic began to give. The creature, although rotten and emaciated, was a lot heavier and stronger than I had guessed. It pushed itself over my shield, bucking it aside, and lunged with sharp, snapping teeth aimed for my throat. I threw my hooves up to protect my face, it's vile maw clamping down hard on Toffee Biscuit's Pipbuck. The ghoulie's brown, decayed teeth shattered on the metal casing as I fell onto my back and reflexively rolled, pushing with all my strength, and bucking the creature off of me.

Pfft.

A silenced sniper bullet tore through the zombie's skull and splattered me with gore. I could feel the brownish-green goo soaking into my mane and coat and it made my skin crawl. Part of me wanted to be mad, I had just gotten clean and now I was covered in ghoulie gunk, but the rest of my rational brain threw that idiotic part of me into a Stable in the back of my mind as I looked over to the shimmering Stealth Ranger on the dragon's foot above me.

"Thanks," I said with a nod, and quickly pulled myself back up to my hooves. I think the blurry stallion nodded, but I couldn't tell as his magically hidden form blended back into the chaotic battle around us. Over the shrieks and hisses of the ghouls, I could hear Bulletstorm's minigun unloading on the monsters as he cackled with a slightly unnerving delight.

Thankfully, Melody was using her standard and very effective tactic of firing her flurry of energy bolts down from the safety of the air above us while the other Brotherhood members formed a perimeter of heavy weapons. Boom lobbed grenades and fired missiles into the ever growing mob while Backdraft lit them up with a torrent of flame.

It was Buzzsaw and my job to hold our flank from the smaller stream of zombies rushing in through side doors. I stood back to back with the larger Steel Ranger, my shield raised and my horn glowing furiously.

"Looks like you got your wish, princess! I just wish it wasn't getting us all of these ghoul freaks at once!" he cried before burying his chainsaw into the shoulder of a rather beefy looking ghoul. As the spinning blade of death severed most of the monster's neck, the blade gave off a shrill whine and stopped in the now dead ghoul's collar and sternum. "Shit! It's jammed! Cover me!"

Buzzsaw pulled his chainsaw free just as a ghoul leapt over a bench, pointed hooves outstretched, and watched as the necrotic construct of pony flesh bounced off a glowing blue bubble of magical energy. My horn flared as I wrapped the two of us in my shield and my comrade-in-arms nodded with approval. Ghouls began to batter my protective barrier with their hooves and I had to keep my focus on the spell. Each strike of their spear like hooves sent a pinprick of fatigue arching through my brain, their combined efforts like a small swarm of ants gnawing through my brain. He worked fervently, noticing my determined gaze, and I took deep, calming breaths as the monstrous horde continued to grow beyond the glowing blue wall.

"Thanks princess."

"I told you not to call me princess!" I retorted, and he chuckled as he smacked his right chainsaw against the shield. It roared back to life and a satisfied sneer crept across the Star Paladin's lips.

"Round two you smelly sons of bitches!" he roared, letting out a jovial laugh as I dropped my shield and we tore into the zombies anew. My shield smashed into zombie skulls while his blades ripped through putrid flesh, but it was too late. Even with the occasional hidden sniper shots exploding the heads of the undead army or Melody's weapon randomly transforming our enemies into piles of pink dust, the ground we had given up while Buzzsaw fixed his weapons had allowed too many ghouls to attack our flank. There were too many for the two of us to handle.

We were outnumbered. The entire museum was descending upon us. The heavy gunners and Shadowbuck had already fallen back to the center of the raised dragon platform and Melody was tangled up in a dogfight with a ravenous pegasus ghoul. Where had that thing come from? How could it fly without feathers or skin covering its bony wings?

"Melody! Watch out!" I yelled as the creature swooped down at her, raking its sharp hooves through her mane, and she shrieked as the two tumbled onto a second floor walkway and I lost sight of them.

"Outta fuel!" Backdraft cried, and pulled out a service pistol from a shoulder mount. With the way he fired it, I was pretty sure it wasn't a preferred weapon.

"I'm out too!" Bulletstorm yelled, and smashed his heavy, steel plated hooves through the squishy neck of a ghoul as it started to climb onto the dais.

"Bis-Cud!" I yelled, firing off another bolt of lightning into the skull of a zombie unicorn and watched as the bolt vaporized everything above its shoulders. That was nice, but I didn't think I could repeat the feat again. We needed a weapon with more bite. "Think Aria! Think!"

"Anyway we can get some backup from down below?" Boom called out as he fired his last missile into a pack, sending necrotic limbs flying out of the gout of flame like a macabre confetti bomb.

"I don't know if they'll come, but we can try!" Backdraft shouted back before hitting a button on his right front fetlock. "Stable Sixty-Three! Come in Stable Sixty-Three! This is the Brotherhood of Steel! Shit's hit the fan in the entrance hall! The whole museum's down on top of us! We need your help this time!"

"Yeah!" Melody cheered as she flew into the air, spinning in mid air, and blasted the pegasus ghoul hot on her tail. In a flash of crimson light, the decayed pegasus disintegrated and showered us in a rain of the most disgusting pink dust I could ever imagine. I couldn't think about how absolutely disgusting I felt right now. I had to think!

That was when my flank hit the massive right foot of the dragon skeleton. Looking up at the gargantuan reptile, a small smile began to creep across my face and I laughed. I love being a smart pony. A weapon with more bite!

"Bite! Guys, cover me!" I yelled over the chaos, closing my eyes and taking deep breaths so I could focus.

"What do you think we're doing, Aria!" Shadowbuck yelled as his pistol clicked loudly and was forced to pull a knife off his shoulder harness and hold it in his mouth.

"This isn't the time to be taking a nap, girl!" Buzzsaw shouted, his saws and the Brotherhood's hooves being my only line of defense against the evil legion swarming us. Melody was blasting fewer and fewer ghouls, aiming each shot as best she could before taking it. She was running low on spark packs for her energy weapon too. I really hoped this worked.

"Shut up and let her concentrate! She's using magic!" Melody reprimanded the Star Paladin before blasting another zombie. This time it didn't transform into a pile of magical ash, instead opting to have its raggedy barding erupt into flames and engulf it and two other ghouls in the process.

Focusing all my magic on the dragon's mouth, I wrapped each fang into an aura of blue magical energy; there was a whole hell of a lot of teeth in this thing's mouth. I needed to focus. "Focus, Aria. Focus!"

The teeth began to shake as I heard one of the Brotherhood members scream. My eyes snapped open and I saw Backdraft being pulled down by the undead army. I had to push myself. I had to save them. It had been my idea to clear out the ghoulies. I wouldn't let any more ponies die for me. The Brotherhood of Steel was not going to be another Toffee Biscuits.

"Backdraft!" Star Paladin Buzzsaw screamed, turning to begin cutting through the horde to get to his fallen subordinate.

My horn flared even brighter, a second coat of overglow wrapping around the first, as my magic finally began pulling the teeth free. I started flinging the razor sharp blades through the air, fang after fang decapitating ghouls and ripping through necrotically animated flesh. Bile and gore burst and oozed from the rends and gashes I was leaving in the undead host and most toppled to the floor in ever growing mounds of finally dead zombie flesh. Sometimes multiple zombies were eviscerated by the the foot long, flying teeth and gut wrenching cries of primal rage and terror filled the museum.

Sweat poured off my brow and over my eyes and cheeks, but I continued focusing on my rain of draconic dentistry until I felt myself reaching my limit. There were still a few zombies left and we were out of ammo. I had to push on. I had to keep going. I had to...

I felt something inside my head pop.

My eyes went wide as lights danced across my vision. My heartbeat raced in my ears and I suddenly felt extremely nauseated. The entry hall looked more like a night club slaughterhouse than a history museum.

"That's not good."

Only a few were left alive, which Star Paladin Buzzsaw was already dispatching with gusto as he marched over to the fallen form of Backdraft, and some of the zombie ponies were impaled and stuck to the floor by the bony blades, their gastly cries the only thing telling me that they were still undead. Decayed limbs and heads were scattered everywhere, a minefield of rotten zombie parts, and I smiled as I saw the Brotherhood of Steel turn back to me in stunned silence.

My horn hurt, my head pounded like one of DJ-PON3's songs that I hated so much, (I think they called it club music because it sounded like you were being clubbed over the head by an angry scavenger bird) and my eyes felt heavy, but I did it. I blinked as another droplet of sweat fell into my eyes, and I started swaying on very unsteady legs.

"I-I did... I di..."

Then darkness rushed around my vision and began to overtake me. My legs gave out and I felt myself fall, I didn't even feel the impact as I hit the cold marble dais. As I lay on my side, my head propped against the dragon's declawed foot, I stared up at the skeleton looming over me. If I had been at Princess Luna's school, my dragon might be this big by now. Melody swooped down and took my head in her hooves.

"Aunt Aria! Aria! What's the matter!? Can..."

I closed my eyes, they were so heavy it felt like anvils were chained to my eyelashes, and saw a small green flame the size of a candle flickering in the darkness. It seemed to call out to me with its weak yet enticing dance, but it quickly disappeared as the darkness behind my eyelids was consumed by a blinding white light.

I was swinging a padded shield at a brown unicorn with an electric blue streak through his mane. No wait, I wasn't fighting this stallion. The body I was in was fighting. Something felt off. For one thing, I was a whole lot shorter than I should have been, my neck was craned up to look at the stallion as we sparred.

My senses were assaulted by the sudden overwhelming and tantalizing scents of fresh cut grass and the rows of strawberries to my right. At the moment, I really wished I could control this body and go chow down on the plump, red berries. To my left I could see a mansion, built in a very old style I didn't recognize, and the large estate was surrounded by a high wall that kept a lush green forest at bay.

The short body I was occupying barely dodged a swipe from the older unicorn's attack before countering with one of her own. I figured I had to be in a memory orb. That was the only logical explanation. At least I was a mare. I had heard horror stories of memory orbs that had you locked in the body of a pony of the opposite sex; sometimes they'd even be having sex! At least this seemed to be a wholesome memory, if a little unconventional.

"Great job, princess. You're really getting the hang of things," he told me, his brown eyes kind and loving, and I realized I was in a filly's body. This body was the stallion's daughter. Who had put me in a memory orb of a filly and her dad sparring with shields and swords? It was cruel, especially since this stallion looked a lot like me. He could have actually been my father.

"Daddy! Quit calling me princess! I'm too old for you to call me that. You're a knight, not a king. I'm NOT a princess!" the filly cried in a very familiar voice. My voice. It was higher, like when I was a filly, but it was definitely my voice. She/me swung her/my shield wildly at her father's face. The older unicorn jumped away from our attack and began jogging backwards to avoid the novice shield swings that the little filly-me was launching at my would-be father.

"You'll always be my little princess," my happy father laughed. I stopped, narrowing my eyes at him angrily, and he watched me intently. "Oh don't make that face, princess. You've gotta handle a little teasing if you're going to be a guard when you grow up."

"I am a grown up! Miss Sweetie Belle told me I could get my cutie mark any day now!" I shouted. Sweetie Belle? The singer and Stable-Tec spokespony? What did she have to do with-woah! Sparks began to fly off the filly's horn, and I was dumbfounded. This little filly version of me was summoning lightning magic beyond the tiny bolt I had fired at Golden Star. Massive amounts of voltage danced across my vision and made my/her hair stand on end. "I'm not a filly anymore!"

Suddenly, my vision became tinted by an electric blue light as the little filly launched herself at her father at astounding speeds. Wind whipped at her mane while an electric whine filled the air. The filly's father nimbly leapt aside, and I sailed past him into a large plot of flowers, sending a plume of dirt and plants into my... er, her... um, our eyes. This was getting confusing. She shut her eyes tight as the tears welled up and the burning began to lessen. Then she/we rubbed our eyes and blinked away enough dirt to see her father standing over her.

"D-d-d-d-daddy! What happened?" she cried, and I could feel her body shaking and her lower lip quivering as the tears started to fall. I didn't feel any pain except for the stinging in her eyes so she was probably more scared than hurt. Was it weird that I felt a need to hug and comfort myself? Was this girl really me? What the hell was going on? He took her in his hooves and held her tightly against his chest as she cried.

"Shhhh. It's alright, princess. I'm here," he whispered, and I felt like I could cry too. I wished I had had a dad to hug me like this stallion was hugging his daughter. She may have sounded like me, but I wished I had been her. My heart, which I didn't know existed in this weird dream, ached, and I yearned to join in the embrace with every fiber of my non-existent being. He looked down on the little filly and smiled brightly. "Well look what you've got there."

She followed his gaze down to her flanks and saw a golden shield, crossed by two blue bolts of lightning as they lay of a bed of green flames. That was my cutie mark! She had my cutie mark!

"Guardian Heart! Is Aria alright?" I heard a mare with a Trottingham accent call out. The girl that shared my name and cutie mark turned her head to see a gray earth pony with charcoal black hair and brilliant violet eyes galloping towards us. She had my eyes! Ugh! I had her eyes! Whatever! I blinked and the world stood still.

My tear that had been falling was suspended in mid air, floating only inches from the ground, and the dust the mare had been kicking up refused to even drift as it held its amorphous shape. The mare's hooves weren't even touching the ground as she flew in mid gallop. I watched in horror as the mare's eyes began to bubble and run like a painting doused with paint thinner and her gray coat bled into her black mane to make a brackish glob that tore away from her form. Then the grass started to pop and vanish into nothingness. The terrifying scene continued as the world around me began to look more and more like a running canvas of watercolors as white light began to pierce through the cracks and holes of the dissolving world.

"What's going on?" I asked, realizing I could finally talk. I looked down at my fully grown body and felt a sense of pause as I noticed the ground beneath me had vanished and was replaced by nothingness. There was a void where the ground should be, but I could feel something solid underneath my hooves. Then I felt an immense sense of loss as I realized the stallion, I think his name was Guardian Heart, had vanished with the rest of the world.

"Welcome," a voice said from the empty space to my right, and I spun around to face the new visitor.

Before me stood the last thing I would have ever expected. In the space of emptiness that the strawberry fields had been occupying stood an alicorn unlike any I had ever seen. The alicorn was vastly different from Celestia, Luna, Cadence, or even the description Shadowbuck had given me of the mutant alicorns roaming the Equestrian Wasteland.

First, the alicorn was male. I had never seen a male alicorn before. I wasn't sure anypony ever had. Second, his coat and wings were pure white, but they were mostly covered by a long black cloak that matched the mysterious alicorn's long, shaggy mane. It stuck out in all directions and if it had ever been combed it would have been a surprise to me. Third, the alicorn's eyes were baggy and sunken in as if he had never slept a day in his life, but the small black gems that shone out from within their shadowy alcoves glistened with a disturbing focus.

But finally, and most disturbingly, the sleepy looking alicorn was standing upside down above me. My eyes widened, and I gave the strange winged unicorn a weak smile.

"H-Hi... Who are you?" I asked while craning my neck to look into the alicorn's tiny black eyes.

"I am Eternal."

"Huh? Your name is Eternal?" I asked. He blinked. I think he blinked. It was hard to tell. Did I surprise him?

"I'm sorry. I do not speak to mortal ponies very often anymore. I am Dream," he responded in a monotonous tone that somehow had a strange rhythm to it. I had heard it before, but I just couldn't place it.

"So your name is Dream?"

"And your life is not your own," he replied, his dark eyes shining with a knowing light.

"What do you mean. What was that... scene I just saw?" I asked. I had so many questions popping into my head, but that one seemed the most pertinent.

"It is what could have been. A life never achieved. A simple dark whisper changed everything. One choice changed the path you must take," Dream said cryptically.

"That doesn't make any sense. Who were those ponies? What do you mean?" I asked, taking a step towards the white alicorn. To my surprise, I stepped up towards him like I was ascending a set of stairs connecting the two of us.

"Our futures are not set in stone. Time is like a river flowing into an ocean. Most timelines lead to the same destination, but how we get there is in the hooves of the living," he answered, and I stopped my ascent.

"Are you dead? Am... Am I dead?"

"No. If you were dead, my sister would be here for you. You are in my realm and within my reach again," Dream explained, and the gears finally clicked into place.

"Then this is a dream," I whispered, but Dream seemed to hear me and nodded. "What do you mean I'm within your reach again?"

"I would not contact you before your trip to Trottingham because I did not know if his influence had completely changed your future. I couldn't. We are outside of time so time no longer affects us. When you still followed that path, the path into the flames, I could not reach you within Stable Sixty-Three."

"You didn't answer who those ponies were," I said, narrowing my eyes at Dream. I grinned slightly as he tensed under my glare and appeared nervous. "I think I'm getting better at this."

"They were the parents you could have had before he interfered."

"Who?" I asked, and Dream seemed to grow sadder.

"Voi-"

FOOOM!

Off in the distance, I saw the first scenery this realm devoid of features finally gave me, and my eyes widened in terror. Out of nothingness emerged a wall of green fire lined with prismatic, ever changing light that rushed across the emptiness at us. It was coming at us fast and I felt my heart drop in my chest. Was this what ponies saw just before the balefire bombs incinerated them? Dream's rhythmic breathing caught in his chest at the sight of the tidal wave of flame.

"Run."

"What about you?" I asked as I began to step away from the rapidly approaching balefire. Weird, the invisible stairs were gone.

"Darkness approaches. I can handle myself. It is not my time," Dream said as his horn erupted in a pale yellow light. Suddenly my body became engulfed in his horn's golden glow.

"How can you know that?" I asked, and Dream turned to me with a sad smile.

"I am not the first of the three. We shall meet again," he said, continuing his cryptic conversational method. "My sister is working to help you. She will find you soon."

"Wait!" I cried, just as the blast of dark fire sought to overtake us. Dream disappeared in a burst of golden sand as the stark white world vanished into the calm, peaceful black of unconsciousness. For a few moments, there was nothing. I couldn't see, I couldn't hear, I couldn't use any of my senses.

But from the darkness came a deep, throaty laughter that chilled my very soul. There was evil in that voice, pure and unadulterated evil. I thrashed in the new void, trying to run from the horrible laughter, but no matter how hard I tried the laughter grew closer. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I needed to wake up! I was about to give up hope until a familiar, female voice whispered in my ear,

"Ugh," I moaned as the dull throbbing in my head woke me from my fitful sleep. I opened my eyes and noticed light flickering across the gray ceiling above me. Was I back in Stable Sixty-Three? No. The gray ceiling was made of stone, not steel, and the light was more of a flickering orange than the white, humming fluorescent lights of the underground bunker.

"Look who's back in the land of the living," Shadowbuck said to my left, and I turned my head towards the sound of his voice. My head felt heavy, and the light of the campfire hurt my eyes. "Again."

"What happened?" I groaned.

"You saved all our lives for one. I guess you were right about unicorn magic and pegasus air power, huh?" Shadowbuck replied as he looked at me from across the small campfire. He was giving me that confident smile like always, but for once I actually liked seeing it. Although, with the state my head was in, I probably had a concussion and wasn't in my right mind.

"Where's Melody? And Backdraft? I saw the ghoulies pull him off the dais."

"You actually hit him with one of those teeth when you cut off the ghouls attacking him," he said, and his smile widened as he saw my eyes do the same. "Don't worry, Aria, he's fine. His armor's pretty banged up and his injuries drained almost all of its meds and potions, but he'll survive. Melody's fine too and probably would have been the only survivor of that snafu if it hadn't been for your little magic trick."

"Yeah," I mumbled, suddenly feeling very thirsty, and reached out with my magic to grab the canteen from my saddlebags. And I reached out... and I reached out...

Nothing!

"I-I can't do magic!" I stammered, rolling over onto my stomach to stare at my saddlebags lying a few feet away from me. I strained and focused until my brain felt like it was about to explode, but no matter what I did I couldn't even lift the flap. A stabbing pain shot from one temple to the next, and I pressed my hooves to my brow. "Ow! Ow! Ow!"

"I figured that would happen. Magical burnout," Shadowbuck chuckled, and I was hurting too much to glare at him. I heard him stand and walk over to me through the steady war march beating in my head. I opened my eyes and looked up at him offering me a syringe of Med-X with his hoof while he held a bottle of wine in his mouth. "Try jish."

I looked at him for a few seconds, my half-lidded stare a mix of pain, exhaustion, and disbelief, before I took the syringe in my mouth, took a deep breath, stabbed it into my shoulder, and pushed the plunger down. Almost immediately I felt a rush of relief and my headache vanished. I let out a sigh as Shadowbuck sat down next to me and popped the cork on the bottle of wine.

"What's that for?" I asked as I pulled myself into a sitting position.

"Med-X for the headache, vino for what ails ya," he said, giving me the bottle and a smile that I felt was much more charming than usual. It was definitely the drugs talking, but as I took the bottle apprehensively and looked around the smaller exhibit hall I noticed we were alone save for the sleeping form of Melody lying to my left. I set the bottle down between my legs and turned my attention back to him.

"Where'd everypony go?"

"They had to get going. We were out of ammo and most of us were out of meds too," he explained, looking into the fire as if his brothers were there.

"They left you behind?" I asked, concerned that the Brotherhood of Steel might have abandoned their brother.

"No. I asked to stay. I wasn't just going to leave you two alone out here, especially with you knocked out for who knows how long. I just hope I don't lose points with Elder Cherry Scones for this." I barely heard that last part as he mumbled it under his breath.

"Why didn't you just take me back to Stable Sixty-Three?" I asked, feeling more like an interrogator then just a pony talking to her friend. Was Shadowbuck my friend? Well, if he stayed behind to help us, then I guess he was pretty close to a friend. Shadowbuck gave a small, exasperated chuckle.

"We tried that, but when Melody called up her brother on her broadcaster, the Overmare interrupted and said that you and the Brotherhood weren't needed and were not allowed back into Stable Sixty-Three until we brought back something to fix the door. Talk about gratitude, huh?" Shadowbuck said sarcastically, and I sighed.

"That's my fault," I admitted, lifting the bottle of wine to my lips and taking a swig. I shuddered at the bittersweet taste and swallowed, feeling a warmth fill my chest and stomach that was actually quite pleasant.

"Really?" Shadowbuck said as he watched me take another sip. This stuff wasn't that bad; it tasted like strong grape juice with a bit of a bite to it.

"Yeah, um, I kinda threw her into a wall." Shadowbuck stared at me. "She slapped me seven times!"

"Oh okay. If it had been six times I would have thought you were a sociopath, but seven is just too many times to get slapped," Shadowbuck joked, and I took a third sip. He held out his hoof, clearing his throat to get my attention, and I stared at it for a moment. "Are you going to share, Aria? They did teach you how to share back in the olden days, right?"

"Heh, sorry," I said, handing him the bottle and watching as he downed a few gulps of the grapey goodness. How do earth ponies hold things in their hooves like that, especially smooth objects like glass bottles of wine. I needed both hooves to hold the bottle and had to use my teeth to safely turn the bottle over to drink. He let out a satisfied breath and passed the bottle back to me.

"Sharing a drink with a comrade in arms, no better way to get to know a pony. You okay? Besides the magical burnout of course."

"Yeah," I said nervously, staring at the bottle with the slight apprehension. Was I really okay? My whole life was gone, I wasn't dead, and now I was having really freaky dreams about a father that I had never dreamed about before. I mean, I had dreamed about having a dad when I was a filly, I think any kid in my position would, but he never looked like that. I always thought of him as some sleazy conpony who had tricked or seduced my mother into cheating on her husband and left her to die.

I closed my eyes and pushed the depressing thoughts into the Stable with the thoughts of my own nastiness. I really wanted some more wine, but Shadowbuck had just put his mouth on it. I glanced over at him, nervous about contracting some radioactive super disease that modern ponies had become immune to, but sighed as the desire to drink away my dream overtook my hypochondria. I took another swig and giggled, feeling a little light headed but very good.

"Wow, it's already hitting you? You're a real lightweight, you know?"

"Shut up. This is my first time drinking," I replied before taking another drink. My tummy felt warm, my head felt light, and I wasn't thinking about everything at a mile a minute. That was new. And I felt confident! "I love this stuff!" I thought, before reluctantly giving the bottle back to Shadowbuck so he could take a sip or two.

"Wow, you're like an alcohol virgin. Sorry I popped your booze cherry with such crappy wine," he joked, and I felt my face warming like my chest and stomach. Shadowbuck noticed my expression and blinked before coughing uncomfortably. "I'm sorry. That was inappropriate. I shouldn't have said that. I forget that you olden days ponies were a lot more proper than us wasteland ponies. Not supposed to talk about sex, the nobility, the ministries, and religion, right?"

"Yeah," I replied, looking away from him as I fought to hold back the blush that was burning my cheeks. For a few minutes we just sat in silence, watching the popping campfire at the center of our indoor camp. We silently shared the bottle, not wanting to look at each other for more than a few moments. The only sound that broke through the tension was the crack of a piece of wood shattering under the heat of the flames. "Ahhh, awkward silence. My greatest ally." Awkward silence was always there when I talked to a boy. I needed to change the subject. "It's not bad wine. I like it... Where did you find it?"

"There was a safe behind the greeter's terminal in one of the side exhibits. Looks like the info desk mare really liked her red and white," Shadowbuck chuckled while passing the bottle back to me. I shook the bottle and pouted at the realization that we had already consumed half of it. I then smiled at him demurely and greddily chugged down four mouthfuls of the wine. "Hey! Share, princess, share!"

I smacked him upside the head with the back of my hoof, and he scowled at me.

"Hey! What was that for!?" he shouted, and I glared at him after pulling the bottle away from my lips.

"I told you idiots not to call me princess," I grumbled.

"You've had too much to drink," he said, reaching for my bottle, and I hugged it to my chest protectively. "Okay, keep it. But why don't you want to be called princess? Melody and Starshine said your mom was a princess and your brother was a prince. Wouldn't that make you a princess?"

"No, it wouldn't," I snapped, turning away from him. I was angry, but also ashamed of what I knew I'd have to tell him.

"Why not?" he asked, placing his hoof on my shoulder, and I shrugged it away.

"Because I'm a bastard, okay!? My father wasn't my mom's husband. He wasn't Golden Star's dad. My mom had sex with somepony she shouldn't have and I'm the mistake. It's why I never had sex with Bright-" Why did I just say that? It's like my mouth and my brain didn't have a filter anymore.

"So?" he asked, and I turned to see actual concern in his steel gray eyes. I really wanted to kiss him and then punch him in the eye. And then maybe kiss him again. Wow! Was this what alcohol did to ponies? It made me feel good, but I could already see the downside to drinking it. "What does it matter who your dad was? As long as you're a good pony, does it matter that your folks weren't married or your mom cheated on her husband? They screwed up, not you! You're you and your parents and themselves." Not a very eloquent statement, but it really started to tilt my body in the direction of kissing instead of punching. "But why didn't you have sex with your coltfriend? You don't seem the religious type. I, um, if you don't mind me asking, of course."

"I-I didn't because I didn't want to risk bringing another bastard into the world. I wanted to wait until we were married... but I guess Brightlight couldn't," I said, sniffing loudly against the tears that were forming in my eyes. I could still remember the thrusting and the groaning and the moaning. It disgusted me and made me furious at Brightlight and Silver Storm, but I was also angry at myself for not realizing it sooner. "I'm so stupid."

"You're not stupid, Aria. His loss for breaking up with you," Shadowbuck said kindly, and placed his hoof back on my shoulder. This time I accepted it as I started to cry while hugging my bottle of wine. I really missed my Snuggle Bunny doll. I wanted to hold that little stuffed bunny that had been my grandmother's, then my mom's, and then mine. I could picture the little white doll with her frilly lace dress being incinerated by horrible green flames as Canterlot was destroyed by the balefire bombs. No, wait, that weird cloud had killed the ponies of Canterlot. Could Snuggle Bunny still be okay?

"He didn't break up with me!" I shouted. "He cheated on me with Silver Storm! I didn't even know until I walked in on them.... doing it! I should have seen it sooner! I'm so stupid!"

"Aria... I'm sorry th-"

"Did Great Grandpa Brightlight really cheat on you?" I heard Melody ask, and I looked up to see her sitting up in her sleeping bag. Her blue eyes were filled with hurt and shame that made me feel guilty. Why was I feeling guilty? Her grandfather was the one who cheated on me! Her grandmother was a lying, conniving witch of a pony that I wish I had hit even harder during combat practice. She must have seen the anger flash across my face because she bit her lower lip and whimpered, "Are you mad at me?"

"What!? Melody..." I tried to stand way too fast, knocking over the bottle of wine, and the world started spinning. I was barely able to keep my hooves under me as I stumbled over to her. She held me up as I leaned against her, pushing her hair out of her eyes as she inspected me in my inebriated state. She looked just like Silver Storm, but she had Golden Star's eyes. "I-I-"

"You're drunk," she said, her sadness slowly being replaced with disappointment. Why did the disappointment in her voice and eyes hurt so much? She had no right to be disappointed in... Why was I blaming her for what her ancestors did!?

"I-I-Yes. But why would I be mad at you?" I asked, suddenly realizing that I had been mad at her. I had no right to be mad at her just because of what her grandparents did to me two hundred years ago. "I'm mad at Silver Star and Brightlight."

"You're mad at me because I'm a pegasus like her. I look like her. I'm..." she said, tears shimmering in her sea blue eyes. She had Golden Star's eyes. I didn't want to see those eyes crying. Why did she have to have his eyes!? No... I knew why. She had Golden Star's eyes because she was Golden Star's granddaughter too.

"What? No. No, Melody. No. You're my friend. You..." I wracked my brain for something else to tell her. Something that could comfort her, but nothing was coming to me. Not being able to think straight was coming back to bite me in the rump.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, looking away from me with a look of shame that I usually saw in the mirror after a particularly painful reminder of my lineage. Was I being just as bad as Uncle Blueblood?

"Why are you sorry? It's not your fault," I told her, putting my hooves around her in a comforting display. Melody turned back to me, her gaze soft and vulnerable, before she leaned into my hug. I didn't even think about hugging her, I just did it. Maybe I shouldn't try to think when I'm drunk? It was hard for me, but that seemed like the smarter idea. Although maybe that was the booze talking.

"Because I'm descended from them," she said. "They hurt you and it hurts me that they hurt you."

Princess Luna, wherever you are, why did she have to be so kind? Whatever hatred towards Brightlight and Silver Storm I was holding over her subconsciously vanished with her admission of her intense empathy.

"Melody, you're not just descended from them. You're descended from Golden Star. You're my niece. You have his eyes," I told her, smiling as sympathetically as I could. It was hard to think under the influence, but when I let myself go I could sometimes come up with just the right thing to say. Alcohol sure was such a double edged sword.

"I do?" she asked, her smile slowly returning.

"Yes, you do. You shouldn't beat yourself up for what your ancestors did. You're an amazing pony and my friend. You're still you and that's all that matters," I said, and took her in a big hug.

"Thank you," she whispered, and hugged me back.

"Heh."

I broke the hug and turned my gaze to Shadowbuck. He was laughing under his breath and shaking his head dismissively.

"What?"

"You're a real piece of work, you know that? You beat yourself up over your parents doing the nasty out of wedlock, but you tell her that her ancestry doesn't matter. You really need to take your own advice, Aria," Shadowbuck said before giving me his usual smile that had returned to the smugness I hated. It was no longer even remotely charming; even the haze the wine had placed over my mind couldn't change that.

"You're a real pendulum, you know that?" I said angrily.

"What's that? Another one of your replacement curses?" Melody asked. Shadowbuck cocked an eyebrow.

"Let him figure that out," I said, before returning to my sleeping bag. I tried to take the bottle of wine sitting next to Shadowbuck, forgetting that I had burned out my magic, and resigned myself to an annoyed grumble before turning away from my companions.

"I'll take next watch, Shadowbuck. I'm awake now so you should get some sleep," Melody said softly.

"Yeah. Sure. Aria, you should really think about what you and just I said, okay?" he said before sighing and laying down beside his saddlebags. I didn't turn to watch him do it, but I heard it all the same. For the next few minutes, I laid on top of my sleeping bag and stared into the darkness beyond the light of our campfire. There was very little light pouring into the room through the open window, I guessed it must be pretty cloudy outside for there to be no moonlight or stars to brighten the night sky. A gentle breeze blew through the window and brought with it the smell of salt and rain.

"We must be near the sea," I mused, feeling the wine's befuddlement slowly seeping out of my mind. Then I heard a faint beep from Toffee Biscuit's Pipbuck and lifted my leg to see a new note had been added. Actually, an entire book was displayed, entry by entry, in the notes section of my Pipbuck. Golden Star's journal. I heard a soft giggle and rolled over to see Melody smiling at me.

"I thought you'd want to read it. Curio said you got to read a little bit of it so I thought you'd want to read more. I've had that copy on my Pipbuck for years."

"Yeah. Thank you," I replied, and returned my gaze to the little green screen on my leg. I tapped the buttons, bringing up 'Entry 3,' and was surprised to see the date. It was six months after the last entry.

That's how he ended up in Trottingham. He had been shot by one of his own ponies and almost died. Something was nagging at the back of my mind, a suspicion that it wasn't just accidental friendly fire that almost killed my brother. I had no proof, but it all seemed pretty coincidental, especially after Blueblood's erasing me from the papers and the history books. I glanced at Melody as she watched the darkened entryway into the showroom and smiled. At least Golden Star had survived and moved to Trottingham so he could be in Stable Sixty-Three when the bombs fell. At least he had had mom's villa to live in.

I didn't even know mom had had a villa here in Trottingham or that she had left it to him in her will. Reading the diary entry just made me remember that I had never known her. Grandmother had told me stories, but those were just stories told through the prism of a loving mother talking about her daughter's better years. There was always a hint of shame in Grandmother's voice when I asked her about anything closer to when I was born. Grandmother's little girl had shamed our family and, as Blueblood always seemed to remind me, I was a reminder of that shame.

I turned over, looking at the sleeping form of Shadowbuck on the other side of the fire. He was turned away from me, but I could see the steady rise and fall of his breathing that signaled that he was asleep. That steady rhythm that seemed familiar.

"That's the rhythm that Dream spoke in," I realized, feeling quiet proud of myself for figuring out such a mundane detail of my crazy dream. It was just a dream after all. That same nagging feeling sprung to my mind as I looked down at my note screen and noticed a strange discrepancy. There were forty-five entries in Golden Star's journal; with Toffee Biscuit's recipe there should be forty-six notes. So why was there forty-seven notes stored in my Pipbuck?

I toggled down, letting entry after entry flash by without even reading their contents. I'd return to the rest of Golden Star's journal later. Eighteen... Twenty-Three... Thirty-One... Forty-Three...

"Goddesses..." I whispered, my eyes widening in shock. I found it hard to breath as I saw the note nestled between 'Entry 45' and 'Toffee Biscuits' Signature Toffee Biscuits.' A note that shouldn't be there. A note titled 'The Guardian's Prophecy - Quatrain One.'

My headache returned with a vengeance. My horn no longer hurt, but I had a horrible case of cotton mouth and the throbbing in my temples was making its comeback known. I spent most of breakfast, a delicious farewell package of toffee biscuits baked with love by Leaflet, glaring at Shadowbuck as he ate his own breakfast of Sugar Apple Bombs, sans milk. I knew I had been the one to drink too much of that wine, but he was the one who gave it to me and I wasn't going to let him hear the end of it until my hangover was gone.

"I already told you I'm sorry, Aria. I didn't think you hadn't drunk alcohol before. And I definitely didn't think you'd down half a bottle of red wine by yourself," he apologized for the third time. Of course, he had done it after about ten minutes of me training my angry gaze on him so I think I was counting it as apology under duress. I wasn't really mad at him anymore and I knew he had just been trying to help. That didn't mean I wouldn't give him a hard time about it though. "So how's your horn? Did getting some rest get any of your mojo going again?"

"No," I mumbled after swallowing the last of Toffee Biscuit's signature dish.

"Maybe you two should come with me to Big Buck and talk to Elder Cherry Scones. She might know a remedy for magical burnout," he said through a mouthful of dry cereal.

"Chew and swallow your food before you speak, Shadowbuck," I said, pointing a hoof at him to drive my point home.

"Yes, Miss Manners," he replied sarcastically after taking another hoof full of cereal and tossing it in his mouth. I frowned, intensifying my glare, and he just smiled.

"Ugh! Back down into the negatives, Shadow!"

"Um, Shadowbuck, I have a question." Melody asked, raising her hoof politely as if she were in a school classroom.

"Yeah?"

"Why would an earth pony know how to fix Aria's horn?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"Yeah, why would Elder Cherry Scones know anything about magical burnout?" I added as I started to pack up my sleeping bag. I noticed my headache was starting to dull a bit and realized that the breakfast was helping with the hangover. I lifted up a silent thank you to Leaflet and Toffee Biscuits, wherever she was, while looking down at her Pipbuck on my foreleg.

"Why wouldn't she? She is a unicorn after all," he replied, finally speaking with his mouth clear of food, and I just stared at him, confused.

"I thought all Steel Rangers were earth ponies. You know, Applejack's 'earth pony way' and earth pony tech and stuff," Melody said as if she were trying to summarize a text book passage on the Ministry of Wartime Technology.

"Yeah, well, that's true. Almost all Steel Ranger power armor was made for earth ponies, it gave us an edge in the war since we didn't have unicorn magic or pegasus flight. Actually, almost all Steel Rangers are earth ponies. That doesn't mean we don't need unicorns for spell matrix work and research so we have scribes. Most scribes in the Steel Rangers are actually unicorns."

"Okay. That still doesn't explain why a scribe would be your leader," I added after finally tying the gray sleeping bag to my saddlebags. Shadowbuck sighed.

"Jeez, am I gonna have to discuss the length and breath of Steel Ranger politics with you two? Look, when an Elder dies the local chapter votes in either a Head Scribe or a Star Paladin as the new Elder. After Elder Litwick died, we voted Head Scribe Cherry Scones as our new Elder. Simple as that," he said with a huff before turning his attention to his empty weapons on the battle saddle. Shaking his head, he sighed again. "Okay folks, let's get to looting the upstairs before we leave. Don't wanna let raiders get to the pre-war goodies before us. There might even be some ammo and weapons up there that we can use."

"Why would there be ammo and guns in a museum?" I asked as I shrugged my saddlebags over my flanks and struggled to hook Golden Star's shield onto the hook on the back of my armor.

"You'd be surprised," Shadowbuck said as he walked over to me and grabbed my shield in his teeth.

"Hey!"

"Let me help you with that," he said kindly. In one fluid motion, he had my shield on my back and smiled. Gah! Why did that stupid grin have to go back to being charming.

"You know I'm still mad at you," I told him before letting out an exasperated breath. "But thank you."

"You're welcome. Now come on Stable ponies, we're burning daylight and we got a lot of ground to cover," he said, leading us out of the display room.

"I'm not a Stable pony."

"Okay, Stable pony and two hundred year old aunt of a Stable pony, let's go," he said as he put on his helmet, and chuckled as we followed him back into the corpse filled entrance hall.

The stench was overwhelming. In the heat of battle, I remember the ghoulies' fetid breath and rotten flesh smelling bad, but a night of true decay had given their horrid stench a new life. Or maybe it would be more appropriate to say a new death. Melody and I gagged, coughing as we held our noses to the collars of our Stable Sixty Three barding. We watched the face plate extended over Shadowbuck's mouth as it allowed him to breathe through his armor's rebreather.

"Guh!" Melody croaked as she backed away from the wall of stench and back down the hallway.

"We can't go in there! It smells horrible!" I shouted after joining Melody a good twenty feet back. The smell was slowly expanding, but it hadn't reached the door to our former campsite. Shadowbuck turned around and shook his head.

"Just hold your breath and run," he said simply before he turned back towards the far hallway and trotted away. I scowled, turning my attention to Melody as she gave me an extremely weak smile.

"Ready?" she asked with an extremely strained cheerfulness that I knew was the farthest thing from genuine.

"I guess," I moaned, and braced myself for the horror that was to come.

Killing raiders? That was a shock to the system that I was still dealing with, but I knew it was a necessary evil to stop another Toffee Biscuits from being killed by bad ponies. Killing ghoulies? Terrifying, but no different than slaying any other monsters that would harm innocent ponies. But this smell? This was the stuff of nightmares.

We lit our Pipbucks' light spell and rushed past the corpses as fast as we could, leaving Shadowbuck in our literal dust as we kicked up two hundred years of accumulated sediment. Melody flew past me as I ran down the dark hallway the ghouls had come out of yesterday, her wings flapping for dear life as her cheeks bulged with the strain of flying while holding her breath. Galloping up the stairs, I found that the air on the first landing was cleaner and collapsed in a heap, gulping down breath after breath of precious oxygen. I didn't care anymore if I was breathing in pony ashes, just as long as it didn't smell like death and rotting ghoulie.

"Yeah, sorry about that. We couldn't really dispose of the ghoul corpses without attracting more monsters," Shadowbuck told us as he started climbing the stairs up to us. I shot him the dirtiest look I could muster up as he retracted his helmet's face plate.

"I hate you right now, you know that?" I spat, literally and figuratively, as I tried to get the taste of that foul air out of my mouth. Shadowbuck smiled nervously.

"I said I was sorry."

"Let's... let's just keep going... and we're taking another exit out of here... when we're done," Melody said between gasps of precious stale air.

"Yeah. Sure," I grumbled, and we both followed Shadowbuck up the stairs, our Pipbucks and his armor's lamp lighting the way.

"Everypony stay close, especially you Aria. We don't know if there's any stragglers up here and you don't have a usable weapon without your magic," Shadowbuck warned as we entered the second floor atrium dedicated to Medieval Equestria.

"Thanks for reminding me. I'm sure my headache isn't enough of a reminder of that," I snapped, making sure my voice had just enough bite to it for him to notice my foul mood. My eyes took in the rusted suits of armor and the broken displays with a pang of regret. Such treasures left behind, unable to be saved down in Stable Sixty-Three. It was a tragedy in and of itself.

Paintings and tapestries were torn to pieces and pieces of medieval armor, twelve hundred years old or more, were strewn across the exhibit hall like worthless bottlecaps or scrap metal. Some were crushed under years of bony hooves, and most were dented and twisted into the oddest shapes. Also, the strange stains on the ground and walls made me really hope that ghoulies didn't have to defecate.

The ghoulies had done a good deal of damage to this place over the centuries. Or perhaps this was just the steady march of time without the care of ponies to fight back the advancing entropy. Perhaps the ghoulies were the ultimate embodiment of chaos and entropy and our constant struggle to hold on to life and some semblance of order and... Ow! Too much thinking for this much headache.

"Oh! This is so cool!" Melody said as she sat on her haunches and picked up a surprisingly intact silver helmet designed to look like a wolf's head. Her Pipbuck started clicking rapidly, and her eyes widened in shock. "What the hell? Radiation?"

"Get rid of it, Melody!" I shouted, and she quickly tossed the helmet away.

"What's that about?" Shadowbuck asked, looking around the room for something I couldn't see. "My suit's not detecting any signs of radiation in here so why was that helmet ticking like there's no tomorrow?"

"Nickel. Back in the medieval era, any time some noblepony wanted silver plated armor, blacksmiths would regularly use a nickel/silver alloy to skim a little of the nobility's silver for themselves. There was no way to prove if it really was silver or an alloy so almost every blacksmith did it. The silver in itself is fine, but the nickel absorbs and holds radiation like a sponge. Anything silver in here probably has a good deal of radiation stored up in in. Unless it's truesilver, that stuff is magically treated. Doesn't rust and can repel most magic."

"Like your shield," Melody added. I nodded, glancing at my brother's favorite weapon/armor as it lay uselessly strapped to my back.

"So it's a magical shield, huh?" Shadowbuck commented.

"Yeah. It's made of truesilver, moonsteel, and gold, three strong magical metals. That's why it can deflect energy and bullets," I explained, smiling sadly as I continued walking through the hall.

"It got a name?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"Your shield. Most awesome weapons and armor have cool names. My dad called my stealth armor the Stealth Suit MK I. I figured out a way to upgrade it to allow Stealthbucks to recharge off the spell matrix so I renamed it Stealth Suit MK II," he explained, giving me a proud little grin. I rolled my eyes to hide my true feelings. I was actually quite impressed with his father and his achievements with his suit of power armor. It was a feat of arcane technology that he should be proud of, but I wasn't going to admit that to him. "So what's your shield's name?"

"I-I don't know. I don't think Golden Star ever named it."

It was true. Golden Star wasn't the kind of pony to show off or talk himself up. He always got the mission done so he could get his squad back home. It was like pulling teeth with him to get him to talk about his missions with me. I sincerely doubted that he would have ever thought to name it.

"Then why don't you give it a name, Aunt Aria?" Melody said as she inspected a mural too high up for the ghoulies to reach. I knew the mural, I had seen the original in Canterlot. It was a depiction of Princess Luna and Princess Celestia turning Discord to stone at the Battle of Canterlot Mountain.

"Yeah. What's the first thing that pops into your head when you see your shield?" Shadowbuck asked as he moved over to a tipped over trashcan to inspect it for anything we could use.

I stopped in front of a side door and looked at the shield on my back again. This was Golden Star's shield. He had commissioned it and had it forged when the war started and he was about to go off to the military academy in Manehatten. He carried it into every battle against the zebras. He would show me different tricks with it as a reward for doing well in school. It was his offensive weapon and his aegis against Equestria's enemies who would seek to hurt him and his homeland. Well, until one of those enemies had been his friend.

"Wait."

"Wait what?" Shadowbuck asked, pulling away from the trash can. "This isn't nickel too, is it? I'm not picking up any rad readings."

"No. I'm sorry. I was just talking to myself. I think I've got a name," I said, giving him a smile of my own in apology.

"Oh yeah?" he asked as he turned his attention back to the trash can. "Hmm... couple bobby pins. Nothing else useful in here."

"Um, I was thinking Golden Star's Aegis," I replied.

"Oh! I like it," Melody said as she fluttered down next to an information terminal. She pressed a button, grimaced when the computer wouldn't turn on, and then smacked it on the side of its casing with a hoof. With a beep and a hum, the screen came to life and cast Melody's smiling face in a deep green glow. She giggled. "Yep, I still got the touch."

"Seems kind of a mouthful to me," Shadowbuck said, stowing the bobby pins in a forearm mounted pouch, before trotting slowly over to me. Why did a stallion need bobby pins? Shadowbuck wore a helmet most of the time so I really doubted he cared about his mane that much.

"And Stealth Suit MK II isn't a mouth full?"

"She's got ya there, Shadowbuck," Melody laughed as her wingtips flew across the keyboard with practiced ease. There was a beep and I could hear Melody whisper, "And I got you too, my pretty. First try. You gave up way too easy, Miss Terminal."

"I usually just call it the Mark Two, thank you very much," he said smugly before nodding his head off to the side. "Looks like you found the curator's office. It locked?"

"Uh..." I said, realizing I had been standing in front of the curator's office the entire time and hadn't even noticed it. I stepped aside and Shadowbuck tried the door, but the handle wouldn't turn. "Yes."

"I'll take care of that," he replied, crouching down to the lock as a blade like tool extended from his left fetlock with the press of a button. He grabbed one of the bobby pins from the pouch in his teeth and set to work at picking the lock.

"Ugh! Is that one of the ones you just got out of the trash?" I asked, thoroughly disgusted at myself for even thinking about kissing a mouth that held garbage pins on a regular basis.

"Maybe. So you're gonna stick with Golden Star's Aegis?" he asked through clenched teeth while the pin and blade turned slowly.

"If need be I'll call it Aegis. Happy?" I asked, and he grinned around the bobby pin.

"Yup." The lock gave off a happy little click and he spit the pin back into his pin pouch. "And double yup. Don't see anything on E.F.S. so you wanna give this room a once over? You seem like the type that would really like a curator's office."

"And what type is that?" I asked, giving him a look that wanted him to take as 'If you make a fossil joke like your buddies, I'm gonna turn you into one."

"An egghead who really likes history," he said simply, and I blinked. He turned to me and shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly before trotting off towards the bathrooms at the end of the exhibit hall.

I looked at the now unlocked door to the curator's office and tried to read the faded and chipped words on the plaque mounted next to the wooden frame.

"Dr... of... rott?" I whispered, feeling a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Dr. Of Rott was not a good name to have in a museum full of zombie ponies. How did Shadowbuck know it was safe inside the office? He had said something about E.F.S. What was E.F... Eyes Forward Sparkle!? Eyes Forward Sparkle was just an idea in Stable-Tec Monthly back when I got blown two hundred years into the future. Did they actually get the Friend or Foe system working and put it in Power Armor and Pipbucks? Looking down at Toffee's Pipbuck on my wrist, I clicked over to the 'Options' menu and smiled at the option to 'Turn on Eyes Forward Sparkle.'

Pressing the button and toggling the selection to 'Yes,' I marveled as the little yellow compass bar and health readout appear to the left of my vision and the ammo and weapon condition mod to my right. I turned my head and the bars remained, but the compass changed position and reveal two yellow bars that corresponded to Melody and Shadowbuck's position. This was amazing! No wonder Shadowbuck was so confident about the office. Stable-Tec were a bunch of absolute geniuses!

And then I noticed three red bar appear in the same direction as Shadowbuck.

"Shadow! There's three red bars in the bathroom," I called, and he put his hoof to his mouth to silence me. I watched, absolutely terrified for the Steel Ranger, as he activated his Stealth Suit MK II and his shimmering form ducked into the Mare's restroom. A few moments later, I heard a sharp screech and a sickening crunch as one of the red lights winked out.

"Just some radroaches! Come here you little buggers!" he shouted, and another crunch caused a second light to extinguish. I sighed with relief at how easy these radroaches were to kill, until a big brown blob streaked out of the bathroom and made a beeline straight for me. "Crap! One got away."

I reached out with my magic for my shield, my eyes wide with surprise, as the radroach scuttled across the dirty museum floor as fast as its grotesque little legs could carry it only to have my horn spark uselessly in response. I had already forgotten that my horn wasn't working! I spotted a dented bronze breastplate on the floor a few feet to my right and lunged for the broken armor. Grabbing it with both my hooves, I spun around just in time to raise it and block the giant bug as it leaped at my face.

I deflected the airborne insect off the breastplate and it landed on its back, hissing and clicking its disgusting mandibles at me. I brought the impromptu shield down hard on the radroach, an angry growl escaping my lips. It's chitinous body burst under the pressure of my attack and the little red bar disappeared. However I wasn't done with this little monster as I hopped on top of the breastplate, over and over again, until I was damn sure this thing was dead.

"And stay dead!" I shouted, huffing angrily at the pulped roach underneath the breastplate, and turned to see Melody and Shadowbuck watching me with bemused looks on their faces. "What!? I don't like bugs!"

"Okay," Melody snorted as she fought to hold back the giggle fit burning in her throat. Shadowbuck just smiled.

"Always smiling, aren't you Shadowbuck?" I thought, giving them both a nasty look before turning back to the curator's office and opening the door. I heard Melody giggling as I slammed the door behind me. I need to work on my 'shut up' look. At least it had worked on Dream.

I was surprised to see that the small office was relatively clean. There was a layer of dust covering everything, just like in the museum, but the shelves were lined with books and the terminal on the desk cast the room in its dull green glow. I walked over to the bookshelves, awed at the sight of the faded book covers, and grabbed one titled 'A Study of Zebra Magical Heritage' with my teeth.

Poof.

My tongue was coated in a layer of brittle paper as the pages disintegrated in my mouth. I spat the book out and scraped my tongue with my teeth as I tried to get the ancient paper debris and its horrible taste off on my palette. After I washed my mouth out with water from my canteen, which was easier to get out of my bags thanks to my Pipbuck's sorting spell, I poked a few of the books with my hooves. Time, radiation, and neglect had left the pages in the books so brittle that they turned to dust with the slightest touch. It was so sad to see so much knowledge disappear before my eyes that I wanted to cry.

I shed a tear for the lost tomes, my teardrop falling and leaving a tiny dark circle on the hard wood floor, and turned my attention away from the books and to the desk and terminal. As I approached the desk, my eyes spotted a dusty nameplate at the end of the desk. Taking a deep breath, I blew as hard as I could and kicked up a cloud of dust off the nameplate and the desk behind it. I coughed, fanning away the dust until it thinned enough for me to see the name on the little placard.

"Dr. Hoofentrotter, Curator"

"Dr. Hoofentrotter? What were you doing here?" I whispered, suddenly realizing that I knew the pony who had occupied this office two hundred years ago. Dr. Hoofentrotter had been a teacher at the Royal Guard Academy, Royal Guard History and Monster Defense were his subjects, and I had always found his classes interesting. He had been a proctor at the Academy and a senior fellow at the Canterlot Royal University for almost twenty years when he apparently had a fight with Sergeant Drill Bit and quit. That was about three months before from my graduation and I never knew where he had ended up. "Well, at least you found a much better job, doc."

Sitting down behind the desk, I looked out the brown stained window at the dark blanket of clouds in the skies.

"Looks like rain." I looked around his office, feeling a little like a big time museum curator as I did, and smiled as I saw the faded portrait of Dr. Hoofentrotter, a very distinguished earth pony with a light brown coat and a gray mane, as he held in his hooves a mustard colored pegasus mare with black and gray streaked hair. She was still very pretty, even with the crows feat and age around her dark pink eyes, and, for some strange reason, she looked very familiar. I couldn't quite place it, but I knew I had seen her before.

"I didn't know you were married, doc," I said sadly. Looking at the computer screen, I saw it was open to an e-mail Dr. Hoofentrotter had left open so many years ago.

D.D.
I hope you are well and you are not overdoing things. You are there to learn and find some common ground ponies and zebras might have that can help bridge the gap between our warring societies, not play the hero in a forbidden temple.

If you're right, and you usually are, then these zebra legends about these 'Eternals' might be the common ground/enemy Equestria needs to at least start peace talks. Those prophecies you found are way too chilling for the zebras to ignore. They are a superstitious lot after all.

Things are getting far too tense and there has to be some way to make peace... I sure hope the MoM doesn't intercept this, they might hit me with some sedition charges for even hoping for peace.

Ahuizotl's been dead for years and you're no longer an adventuring archaeologist, you're retired so please act like it. We're not as young as we once were. I always worry about you when you're away, you know that, so don't give me any lip about me being a worry wart. Just, please, take my advice. Find what we need and get home safely.

I've been asked to be Stable Sixty-Three's curator if the worst should happen and I have passage for the both of us. Daring, the sirens are going off! I have to get downstairs as fast as possible. I think it's happening. Find someplace safe. I really hope it's just a false alarm. If not, stay safe and good-bye.

I love you,

Hoof

(Failure to send message.)

Ahuizotl? The villain from the Daring Do books? But I thought those were just fictional stories? They were great books, I loved them as a filly, but why was Dr. Hoofentrotter writing to a fictional character? And why would he get a portrait commissioned of him with a fictional character? I remembered now where I had seen the mare; she looked just like an older Daring Do. Had he lost his mind near the end? Was that why he left? Had he been fired?

I was about to leave, feeling extremely confused by the revelation about a pony I had once known, when I saw a framed photograph on the desk, dust obscuring my view of the picture, and I picked it up gingerly between my hooves. I wiped away the dust with my right hoof and was shocked to see a photo of a very young Dr. Hoofentrotter as Daring Do herself kissed him lovingly on the cheek.

Daring Do had been a real pony!

I was about to return the picture to its rightful place on the desk when I felt another pang of regret. This photo was precious to the old doc, it was him with the mare he loved, and it looked like he never got to say good-bye to her. If I just left this photo here, time or a raider would take it and it would be destroyed for sure. I quietly slipped the photo into my saddlebag next to my books, feeling slightly wrong as if I was stealing it, and returned my attention to the computer. I felt a little guilty for taking it, but I was preserving a historical artifact, just like Dr. Hoofentrotter and Daring Do did. I was an archaeologist who had known the ponies in the historical documents I dug up. I was the world's first fossil/archaeologist.

As I pressed the 'Esc' key, the screen flashed, and a new screen took it's place. 'Enter Password.'

"It needs a password? Ugh. Okay, what was that stupid command prompt that brought up the backdoor subroutine again?" I asked myself, trying to wrack my brain to remember the code for the frowned upon act of hacking a terminal. We had been taught how to do it at the Royal Guard Academy during my first year, in case a suspect had time sensitive data on a terminal, but the dull pain around my temples was making calling upon that older information a lot harder than it should have been. "I know this!"

"Set Terminal, forward slash, inquire," Melody said from the doorway, making me jump in my seat. She giggled and I smiled back at her sheepishly. "Trying to hack the curator's terminal?"

"Yeah," I said, typing 'Set Terminal/Inquire' into the password box and a string of code appeared. Most of it was garbage, but occasionally a six-letter word would pop up among the garbled letters and symbols. My eyes were immediately drawn to one word, Daring, so I selected it and pressed 'Enter.'

'Entry Denied. 1/6 Correct.'

"What? Her name wasn't your password?" I growled under my breath.

"Need some help?" Melody asked, and I shook my head. She rolled her eyes and started trotting out the door. "If you get three wrong, turn the computer off and then turn it back on and try again. Otherwise you'll get locked out."

"Thanks," I muttered as I scoured the code for more words.

"Temple," I said as I hit the enter key at the selected word.

'Entry Denied. 2/6 Correct.'

"Grr... How about relics?"

'Entry Denied. 1/6 Correct.'

"Gah! This thing is busted!" I growled, and began to reach my hoof towards the red power button at the bottom of the screen when I saw one more word.

'DeeDee.'

I knew the smart thing was to back out and let it reset before the computer locked me out, but I also knew that it would change the password to one of the other four passwords in its data banks. I could be here all night. Or worse, I'd have to ask Melody for help. Asking Melody wouldn't be that bad, but I could hear Shadowbuck's mocking jabs at how 'It's okay. You are from the olden days' and 'Well, the elderly do tend to have trouble with technology.'

Okay, to be fair, Shadowbuck hadn't really mocked me like the rest of the Brotherhood of Steel had, but I didn't want to take the risk. So of course, I took the risk on the computer instead, highlighting 'DeeDee' and pressing 'Enter.'

'Access Granted.'

"Yes!" I cheered as the computer revealed it secrets to me. However, my jubilation was quickly stymied by the revelation that the majority of the computer's secrets were just interoffice memos to Dr. Hoofentrotter's staff and more love letters between him and Daring. Those I kept, for posterity of course, and I scrolled down until I saw two choices that didn't lead to lunch options or meeting times.

'Open Safe' and 'Open Display Case.' I looked around the room, not seeing a display case or a safe anywhere in the room, and sighed.

"Might as well," I said and hit the 'Enter' key for both options. After I hit 'Open Safe' I heard a faint click come from near the door, and after I hit 'Open Display Case' I heard nothing. However that was soon followed by Shadowbuck calling out,

"Hey! The display case just popped open!"

"I did that!" I shouted, pride obvious in my voice, as I trotted out towards the door. Looking outside, I saw door to the display case across the exhibit hall that displayed medieval weapons was now ajar. "Nice. I wonder where the safe is."

"If there's a safe, they're usually either next to or under the desk or behind paintings," Shadowbuck said as he trotted over to the open case.

"Hey! Don't go looting the case I opened without me!" I cried before finally noticing that the painting by the door was now being propped away from the wall by something.

Removing the painting with my hooves was a trial in itself, I wasn't going to just throw such an important painting on the ground like it was an apple core or some gum. Actually, I'd never throw gum on the ground either. That's just rude; it would stick to somepony's hoof and make a mess. After carefully setting the painting down on a dusty old chair, I opened the safe to find a bag of bits, a nine millimeter pistol with a mouth grip in a shoulder harness, three boxes of bullets, and a book on top of a bound pile of papers.

"Wow." They had been perfectly preserved inside the safe, I couldn't see any sign of decay or age. Was this safe made my Stable-Tec too? I equipped myself with the gun, after loading it of course. I knew I wasn't very good with firearms, but any weapon was better than no weapon at all. Finally, after pushing the bits and ammo into my saddlebags, I turned my attention to the book and the papers.

Tales of Chivalry, by Dr, Hoofentrotter.

Nice. I'd been waiting for this book to release back in my time. An in depth look at the tactics and lives of some of Equestria's greatest knights, a book right up my alley. Next time I had some free time I'd have to read it. However, the real treasure hidden in this safe was made clear to me when I opened the cover of the bright blue folder. My eyes widened as I read the title page, my hooves shaking with disbelief.

Daring Do and the Last Crusade by Trot and Hoof. Final Draft.

I was holding the final draft of the last Daring Do book! I had read every single book in the series, and now I had the chance that no other Daring Do fan had ever or would ever have again. I let out a delighted little squeal as I bounced up and down like a little filly waiting in line at a Ministry of Morale amusement park. I was so ecstatic that I didn't even beat myself up for not thinking of the obvious connection between Dr. Hoofentrotter and Daring Do's authors Trot and Hoof.

I always miss the little things, but this time it didn't matter.

"Hey Aria! Everything okay in there? I think I found something you might like!" I heard Shadowbuck call, and I saw Melody pop her head in through the open door. I turned to her, smiling like an idiot, and giggling like mad.

"I think she found something she likes already," Melody laughed, and landed next to me. "So what do you have there?"

"The last Daring Do book! It's the last Daring Do book, Melody! It was never published!" I cheered before I gently tucked it and Tales of Chivalry into my saddlebags. I needed to find someplace safe to keep this stuff, but where would they be safe in all of the Wasteland?

"Daring Do? The children's books?" Melody asked.

"They're not children's books! They're young adult's books! They're thrilling adventure novels!" I argued, stomping my hoof angrily.

"Okay. Okay. They're young adult's novels. Congratulations on a great find, but I think you'll like what Shadowbuck found in the display case even more," she told me before flitting back out the door.

I followed Melody back into the second floor exhibit hall where Shadowbuck was equipping himself with an entire case full of medieval weapons.

"Hey Aria, you're the walking textbook, how many caps do you think we can for these things?"

"Caps? Don't you mean bits?" I asked.

"Bits? Those things are damn near worthless these days. Bottlecaps are the universal currency of the wasteland," Shadowbuck said, and whistled before picking up a short sword with a golden hilt and a red scabbard enameled with golden vines. My eyes were drawn to the nameplate underneath the sword, and I gasped. "Wow. This should fetch a pretty big sum of caps."

"Leave that alone! We're not selling any of this!" I cried, wrenching the sword out of his mouth with a flare of my magic. Then the electric blue aura imploded as my brain exploded with a sharp, new pain. "Ow! I shouldn't have done that."

"Yeah," Shadowbuck growled while rubbing his jaw painfully. "What was that for?"

"These are historical treasures. They belong in a museum like down in Stable Sixty-Three! That's the Sword of Everfree!" I yelled, clenching my eyes shut against the throbbing in my temples.

"Everfree? Like the forest?" Melody asked before a shocked look of epiphany caused her jaw to drop. "Like Sword and Shield Everfree?"

"Yeah. That sword belonged to the family that controlled the Everfree Forest and what's now Ponyville... or was Ponyville. Their oldest son died, or disappeared, fighting along side Sir Golden Lance the Bold and this was his family's sword. This-"

"Alright, enough with the history lesson. Are you saying we just give all this loot to Stable Sixty-Three?" Shadowbuck asked, disgust and disbelief apparent in his voice.

"I guess. I mean, some of these have no real historical significance. The warmaul was Sir Warhammer the Unyielding's, the shield was House Mane's family coat of arms, and the sword is the Sword of Everfree, but I guess we could try to sell the rest of this," I said as I surveyed the 'loot' with my right eye closed. For some odd reason, keeping one eyes shut actually made the headache hurt less.

"Ugh... Okay. How about this. We'll get Melody to bring any of the big history loot back down to the Stable and we'll sell the rest. Does that sound fair, Aria?" Shadowbuck relented, showing a lot of maturity by seeking compromise. I watched him for a moment, trying to figure out what his deal was. He seemed reluctant to let the artifacts go, but he also seemed like he wanted to make a deal with me.

"Why do you have to keep bouncing back into neutral territory? You're making things so much harder for me! Do I hate you or like you!? Ugh!" I screamed in my head before sighing, defeated.

"Yeah. That sounds fair. Melody, would you be willing to fly the sword, shield, and the maul down?" I asked, slinging the sword and scabbard over my shoulder, before adding, "And maybe a painting?"

"A painting?"

"How about we finish clearing out the museum before we make some more trips down to the Stable? We gotta go through that stink cloud, remember?" Shadowbuck said, cracking his neck loudly and giving me another grin. "We got a few more offices, a few more exhibits, and another floor above us to check, so let's get rolling."

The rest of the second floor went pretty smoothly. A healing potion and some bandages in the Stallion's Restroom's medical box, a few caps and some Wild Pegasus in a security guard's locker, and, to my utter delight, a bottle of Sunrise Sarsaparilla in a kiosk at the base of the stairs. I absolutely loved Sunrise Sarsaparilla. When Shadowbuck saw my grin, he moved his head like he was rolling his eyes at me, I couldn't see his eyes with his helmet on, and passed the bottle to me.

"You like this stuff?" he asked as he held it out to me.

"Oh yeah! Much better than Sparkle-Cola and a lot better for you too," I said before frowning at the bottle. "But it's probably gone flat. It's been in this desk for over two hundred years."

"Give it a try," Shadowbuck said, and popped the cap off with his hoof. The bottle gave a fizzy hiss and I saw the steady stream of bubbles floating to the top of the dark brown soda. It wasn't flat! If Celestia and Luna were actually up there, they were definitely smiling down on me right now. He flipped the cap over to reveal a little black star and grinned. "Looks like it's your lucky day."

"Ooooo! A Star Cap!" I cooed happily, and took a sip of the bubbly root beer. It tasted almost as good as if I had bought it two hundred years ago. It was a little flatter than usual, but still really good. "Thank you."

"No prob. Hold on to that cap. Let it remind you of better days. Now come on. We've got one more floor to go," he said, trotting up the stairs and leaving us behind.

"I think he likes you," Melody teased, and I looked down at my pre-war soda pop, watching the bubbles burst on the surface for a few moments before taking a sip.

"Yeah, well, he's a dumb steelneck," I said before drinking my soda and hiding my face in the shadows, not wanting her to see the blush spreading across my cheeks. At least one advantage of being brown instead of white is that it was a lot harder for ponies to see me blush. I downed the rest of Sunrise Sarsaparilla much faster than I would have liked, and marched up the stairs with Melody following me and giggling the whole way up to the third floor. Well, up until we reached the big steel gate blocking our entry into the third floor.

The gate reached all the way to the ceiling and blocked everything past the landing. It was pretty sturdy, the ghouls hadn't been able to even bend it. Looking through the diamond shaped gaps in the gate, I could see an Ancient Zebgyptian exhibit, the skylight above illuminating the hall in the dull glow of overcast Equestrian skies.

'Exhibit Hall Closed By Order Of The The Ministry Of Morale.'

"Well... that's unexpected," Shadowbuck mumbled as he surveyed the obstacle in front of us.

"So I'm guessing the pegasi scheduled a real downpour for later today," I said, looking at the roiling clouds through the skylight.

"There are more pegasi?" Melody asked, hope and anticipation heavy in her voice. Shadowbuck spotted the small lock and sighed.

"Nope."

"What? Then why is the sky covered in clouds like that?" I asked as he fished out a bobby pin and extended the blade on his hoof.

"Because the pegasi closed up the sky when the balefire bombs blew up Cloudsdale. They abandoned Equestria and now the weather runs wild," Shadowbuck hissed through his teeth as he began to pick the lock. "Buncha cowards."

"I'm not a coward!" Melody shouted, stomping her hoof and furrowing her brow.

"Never said you were, just saying the pegasi up in the clouds are. You're a Stable pony, Mel. You're made of better stuff then them," he said, eliciting a smile from Melody and a click from the lock. "There we go. At least we don't have to worry about ghouls in here. Thank whoever you want for small miracles."

"Yeah, thank Celestia. Let's split up and cover more ground. We've got E.F.S. so I think we'll be okay. Nothing showing up for me," Melody said, and Shadowbuck and I nodded in agreement.

"Sounds good, Mel. We're gonna take the exhibit hall. Aria, you take the bathrooms. Let's get this done as fast as possible, get the important crap down into the Stable, and get going for Big Buck. Star Paladin Buzzsaw said I could stay to help you, but I don't know if Elder Cherry Scones is gonna like me being out with you two for too long." Shadowbuck ordered.

"Yeah, yeah. I got it," I said, rolling my eyes and giving him a half-hearted salute while Melody nodded and flew off into the exhibit hall. "Hey!"

"Yeah?" Shadowbuck asked, turning around just in time for me to pull out two of my three ammo boxes with my teeth. I hated not having magic, I felt crippled having to use my teeth all the time. How did pegasi and earth ponies do it? I placed the boxes on the ground and slid them across the floor to him.

"You've got a nine millimeter pistol on your battle saddle, right? Here. I found this in Dr. Hoofentrotter's office safe."

"I was wondering where you got that piece," he said, nodding towards the pistol on my shoulder.

"Yeah," I mumbled, frowning at the sight of his attempt at a charming smile. "Just make sure Melody stays safe. Okay?"

"Aye, aye captain!" he joked.

"That's the Navy, Shadow. I was in the Royal Guard and a lieutenant."

"Lieutenant huh? Fancy. You know, with a sword on one shoulder, gun on the other, a shield on your back, and fully decked out in armor you sure you're not a wastelander instead of a lieutenant, Aria?"

"Just take the bullets and be happy, Shadow," I shot back and trotted into the Mare's Restroom before he could say anything else. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of another snarky comment; I was having the last word this time. "Wait... Was I just playing hard to get? I wasn't! I really hope he wasn't thinking that I was playing hard to get! Ugh!"

"Let's see... bobby pin and bottle caps in the garbage, nasty habit you got there Shadow, but if bottle caps are the new bits, then I hit the jackpot," I said as I poured my 'loot' into my saddlebags. My Pipbuck chimed and a little display telling me I had two bobby pins and twelve caps appeared in the top left corner of my vision. "Interesting feature, Stable-Tec."

The bathrooms gave up a lot of medical supplies, such as a few rolls of medical bandages, two potions, a syringe of Med-X, and a bag of Rad-Away, but little else. With the exception of a few more caps, there was practically nothing of value in the four washrooms on this floor. I shook my head, letting out an exasperated breath, and trotted out into the Zebgyptian exhibit. The displays were completely intact, almost everything inside was inside the cases were untouched. A few of the more fragile items, such as woven baskets and wooden casks, had already decayed and begun to fall apart, but most of the jewelry and sculptures were perfectly preserved.

CRACK!

I whipped around, looking for the source of the loud noise, only to see Melody floating above a large, golden sarcophagus while bucking a crowbar lodged in the top of the luxurious coffin. The sarcophagus, depicting some ancient zebra pharaoh with an ankh in her mouth and wearing a jeweled tiara made of gold, was standing on a pedestal at the end of the hall.

"Come on! Open up! I know you've got gold in there," Shadowbuck yelled as he pried at the sarcophagus with his hidden hoof blade.

"What are you two doing?" I asked, wondering what Shadowbuck was doing out here. I wasn't angry, just curious. You'd think I'd be angry at the desecration of a historical artifact/coffin, but I could care less. It was a filthy zebra mummy so who really cared if we broke into its sarcophagus.

"I remember reading that these mummies were buried with their treasures. The locks on those cases are too hard for Shadow to open so we're gonna pop this bad boy open instead," Melody explained as she kicked the crowbar again. The sarcophagus gave another loud crack and the lid wobbled on its hinges.

"Why do we need caps and gold so bad?" I asked, really wishing my magic was working. If it had been working, then I would have been able to rip that lid open without any trouble.

"Cause helping ponies still costs money, especially when we go through ammo and supplies like we did in the lobby. The Elder's gonna kill me if I don't come back with something worth selling or a whole lot of caps."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's bad enough that we used up all of our ammo and meds helping Stable Sixty-Three, don't get me wrong, we wanted to help, but I stayed behind to help you girls too. I might need something big to get on Cherry Scones' good side again," Shadowbuck explained, worry evident in his voice. Whoever Elder Cherry Scones was, she sounded like a real stickler when it came to the Trottingham Steel Rangers' budget. "That was one of the reasons Buzzsaw let me stay, I had to bring something awesome back and some ancient zebra treasure might be just the ticket for some extra funding. Saving Trottingham ain't cheap, ya know?"

"How would you even be able to get a good price for ancient treasures? Who would pay for ancient jewelry in a post-apocalyptic society?" I asked, my inner egg head shining through.

"The Queen's Court would. The queen and her high muckity mucks would pay a ton of caps for anything fancy like what's in these cases. It might finally let us get our hoof in the door at Trottingham Palace," he said, pulling as hard as he could without risking bending his lock picking blade.

"One more should do it!" Melody shouted before taking off towards the skylight. When she reached the roof, she stopped, turned around, and dove back down, hooves first, straight for the crowbar. She slammed her hooves into the metal bar with such force that the sarcophagus cracked open just as she had promised. "Ow! Damn it!"

Melody flittered back from the sarcophagus, her face twisted in pain, and landed gingerly on three of her hooves. She held her right back hoof up, thick crimson blood dripping from the side of her leg, and she hissed at the sight of it.

"Melody! I've got some magical bandages. Let me take a look at that," I said as I ran to her side. I didn't know much about medicine, but I knew magical bandages weren't going to cut it with this cut. It was deep and she might have gotten ancient zebra mummy dust in the gash on her leg. I pulled up my Pipbuck's magical inventory sorter and had it bring a healing potion and my newly acquired bandages to the top of my saddlebags. "Here. Drink this while I wrap your leg. That was pretty reckless, Melody."

"Yeah. Sorry Aria," she apologized, and downed the healing potion. Wrapping the leg wasn't so easy, especially without my magic. I knew some first aid basics, but I had always used my horn to apply medical dressings. As I tried to wrap the slowly closing wound, Shadowbuck let out a huff and took the bandages from me.

"Let me take care of it, Aria. You're the walking history book so you can go see if any of that zebra crap is worth anything," he ordered as he deftly began wrapping Melody's leg.

"I could have gotten it," I growled, reluctantly leaving the field medicine to the Steel Ranger as I climbed the short set of stairs up to the mummy's makeshift tomb. I mean, really, what else would you call a cold, lifeless museum filled with undead monsters other than a tomb?

The mummy was a shriveled, dried out husk of what used to be a zebra. It's entire body was wrapped in gray, tattered bandages. What I could see between the wrapping was tight, gray skin. I couldn't see any stripes. Without fur the zebra almost looked like a pony. Atop its head was a beautifully crafted golden crown, adorned with emeralds and rubies, and around its neck was a golden ankh like the one on the sarcophagus' lid.

"You are one ugly, formerly striped pile of bones," I whispered as I reached out for the crown with my magic only to have my horn spark uselessly. I rolled my eyes, trying to make myself remember I couldn't use my magic, and reached out my hooves for...

Laughter. Dark, deep laughter.

"What?" The laughter grew louder inside my ears. I looked back to see if my friends were hearing it, but Shadow was just putting the finishing touches on Melody's bandages. Turning back to the mummy, I recoiled away from it. It's mouth was hanging open with a slight curve to its dried out, cracked lips. It almost looked like it was laughing at me. Just like the laughter in my head. Just like the laughter in my dreams.

I felt a chill run down my spine. I shuddered, and I could see my breath hanging in the air in front of me. I blinked, and for a split second I saw the green flame flicker across my vision. Then, the laughter suddenly stopped. I let out a sigh, releasing the tension that had suddenly wound me up like a ball of yarn, and shook my head. Was I going crazy?

Thump! Thump!

"Did you hear that?" I asked.

"Hear what?" Meldoy asked back, testing how much pressure she could put on her magically bandaged hoof before it hurt.

"I-I thought I heard something," I said before reaching for the crown.

"You're just being paranoid, Aria. Need any help with that?" Shadowbuck asked as he started to walk towards the sarcophagus.

Thump! Thump!

"No, I got it," I said, and turned back to the mummy.

Thump! Thump!

The mummy's eyes snapped opened, glowing green with the same unholy light as the wall of flame, and a red bar appeared on my E.F.S. Before I could think, before I could scream, before I could do anything, the undead zebra let out a terrifying hiss, far worse and more unearthly than anything the ghoulies had mustered, and lunged at my neck with its loosely wrapped hooves.

"Ahhh!" I screamed as the zebra pharaoh's weight toppled me over and I fell hard on my back. It roared at me, dust and rancid breath filling my nostrils and knocking me for a loop. The world around me spun, my vision swam, and I coughed and hacked against the filthy breath burning my lungs. Oh, and my headache was getting worse by the moment because the universe obviously never wanted me to get my magic back.

Pfft. Pftt. Pew! Pew!

The zebra's shoulder exploded with a cloud of dust puffing out its back as red laser blasts scorched its bandaged torso. The creature of out of every filly and colts nightmares roared at my friends before sneering at me with brown, rotted teeth. What can be scarier to a filly who grew up in a nation at war with zebras than an undead zebra that could not be killed?

"Darkness approaches!" it whispered into my mind before charging Shadowbuck. Bullets and laser beams riddled its body, igniting dried flesh and sending rivulets of corpse dust out of each bullet wound as it sprouted, and still the undead zebra continued it's charge. It slammed into Shadowbuck with enough force to send him to the ground with the vile zebra mummy on top of him.

I wanted to help, but my body wasn't working properly. As I tried to stand, my knees buckled and I fell hard on my face. My eyes were watering as I started hacking up blood, and I stabbed at my Pipbuck wildly. I needed another healing potion!

The zebra cried out a string of random sounds that I could only guess was some ancient zebra language before Shadowbuck started spasming on the floor.

"What the fuck!? My legs!" he shouted as Melody continued to fire at the undead horror. Why hadn't she taken off already? Was she afraid she'd hit us if she attacked from a higher vantage point?

The mummy's body erupted into flame as it turned on Melody, hissing as its eyes burned an awful hate straight through her soul, and she screamed. I jabbed my Pipbuck and turned my head to grab a potion from my saddlebags. Biting down hard on the potion's cap, I fought as hard as I could not to cough up the restorative drought as the purple liquid rushed down my throat. I felt the burning in my lungs begin to recede and my headache beginning to lessen as the potion took effect.

I spit out the bottle and rolled over, gasping for air, as Melody flapped her wings hard. She was trying to take off, but the zebra was approaching much too fast for a creature in its state of immolation and decay to be moving. I pulled my pistol out of the holster as the flaming inferno that was the mummy leapt at Melody. The mummy sailed through the air, vaulting off a display with a grace that I thought only a pegasus could pull off, and wrapped its burning hooves around Melody's waist.

It hissed and bit down hard on her legs as it pulled her back down to earth. She screamed, the fire catching off her coat and starting burning her flesh and braid, as they both plummeted hard into a display case that shattered underneath them. The reanimated corpse reared its head back, its mouth open wide, as it let out a vile roar. I lined up my shot, desperation and fear sending cold jolts of adrenaline through my body. I couldn't let her die! I promised Elegant Star! It lunged its head towards Melody's throat, going in for the kill, and...

BANG!

I dropped the gun from my lips as the back of the mummy's head exploded, brain matter splattering all over a display case holding a silver scarab beetle pendant. I looked down at the pistol, realizing that I hadn't pulled the trigger, and spotted an orange unicorn, dressed in a white lab coat rushing over to Melody.

"Compass!" I cried as I pushed myself up to my hooves and rushed over to Melody. She had barely been able to roll away from the mummy when the shot rang out, but she was completely still a few feet away as what remained of her coat smoldered and gave off the disgusting smell of cooking meat. Compass flung the burning corpse away with his magic and pulled a super rejuvenation potion out of his doctor's bag. Pressing it gently to Melody's lips, Compass cradled her head in his hooves with a tenderness that came from love and not simple medical procedures.

"Come on, Melody, drink this. You're going to be okay," he said, tears shimmering in his brown eyes, as Melody sipped at the potion slowly. She pushed away from it, coughing hard as tears ran down her red, cracked cheeks. "Melody, you've got to finish the potion."

I was crying, silently praying to Celestia and Luna that she would be okay. I was even praying to that weird alicorn, Dream, just to try to cover all my deity bases. I didn't know if they would hear me, but I needed Melody to be alright. Her body was burnt and raw, a good portion of her mane and coat were seared off, and her breathing was labored and ragged. The black char that had been the skin around her waist almost caused me to vomit and the smell of her and the mummy was absolutely gut wrenching. I knelt down next to her, holding her hoof gently while biting my lower lip in an attempt to keep my breakfast down.

"Please drink the potion, Melody. We've gotta save your Stable and... and have adventures like Sir Golden Lance and Sir Swift Strike and Sword and Shield. We can't do that unless you drink the potion," I cried, nuzzling her hoof as Compass pushed the potion back to her lips.

"Please Melody... I love you," Compass said, tears falling and pooling on the inside of his glasses, as he poured the potion down her throat while pouring his heart out to her. She swallowed the purple liquid slowly, but as she did I could see her burns beginning to fade. The blackened skin became red welts and the strips of lesser burns were vanishing. Compass pulled out a regular healing potion and held it to her lips too. "Here. One more. Drink it."

As Melody drank, the wounds started to melt away more and more. Her mane and coat would have to grow back normally, but her wounds had been healed by the miraculous potions designed by the Ministry of Peace so many years ago. Melody opened her beautiful sea blue eyes and smiled weakly at Compass.

"Hey you big knucklehead. What are you doing here?" she rasped, placing a hoof on his cheek as Compass bit both his upper and lower lip while fighting back the urge to cry even harder.

"Eagle Eye Compass here brained that flaming pile of bones and saved all our lives," Shadowbuck said from over my shoulder, and I almost jumped out of my skin. I would have been mad at him for scaring me again, but I was too happy that Melody was going to be okay to let that bother me. "And don't worry, I'm fine. My legs started working again the second 'hero boy' killed the mummy."

"You did? You saved me? Did... did I hear you say that you loved me?" she asked, and Compass nodded, trying his best to smile brightly at her.

"I love you too, you big idiot," she replied, taking him in a very weak, but very sincere hug. She kissed him softly on the cheek, and Compass blushed profusely. I could even see the red flush through his orange coat. How could a pony who was as outgoing as Melody be with a pony as shy and introverted as Compass? I guess opposites do attract, and not just with magnets.

"Not that I don't mind the help, Compass, but what are you doing out here?" Shadowbuck asked, drawing my attention away from my injured niece and back to glaring at our Steel Ranger companion. This was becoming our regular thing. "What!? It's a good question!"

"You like making me hate you just enough, don't you?" I thought while narrowing my eyes at him.

"I-I heard that Aria had been hurt so I decided I'd come help and I can see you guys need a medic. It... it just took me some time to get my things and convince my dad and the Overmare that I was leaving... And convince myself too. I eventually had to just sneak out with Starshine's help," he explained, never letting go of his marefriend as she held him close.

"Good ol' Starshine. He might be afraid to leave the Stable again, but at least he's brave enough to stick it to the Overmare when she needs a good sticking," Shadowbuck joked, all three of us turning our gaze to him with a mixture of looks ranging from embarrassment to shock to my usual glare. "Heh, sorry. That came out wrong. So what we gonna do with old striped, dead, and crispy?"

"Well, the crown and ankh look intact," I said after turning to appraise the smoldering corpse a few feet to our right. Thankfully dead bodies didn't burn hot enough to melt gold. I watched as Shadowbuck trotted over to the body, took the jewelry from the mummy's corpse, and gave the mummy a strong buck to its skull just for good measure.

I pursed my lips, finally glad to see that the source of the horrible laughter from my dreams was dead, but I was worried about what the zebra pharaoh had said. It was the same as what Dream had told me. Darkness approaches. With my crazy dreams, this mummy rising from the grave, and the weird prophecy in my Pipbuck, I just couldn't shake the feeling of intense dread that was clouding my mind. Hopefully this was over.

"I'm just glad he's dead," I said under my breath.

"He? Aria, that was Queen Cleopatra. Didn't you read th-" Melody said before covering her mouth against a fit of coughs.

"Melody! Do you need another healing potion?" Compass asked as he began to fish out more potions with his magic.

"No. I'm okay. Just got a little tickle in my throat. That's all. I think it comes with being burned alive," she laughed, weakly but still with a hint of that jovial nature we all loved.

"Wait. The mummy was a she?" I asked, turning my head towards the corpse one more time. I swallowed hard, fighting against my subconscious mind as it started to drum up the memory of that horrible, distinctly male laughter. I stared at the zebra's charred face, my heart beginning to race in my chest. It wasn't over. The mummy wasn't the approaching darkness. I looked down at my Pipbuck, the screen mysteriously set to 'The Guardian's Prophecy' note, and then back to the mummy.

I could have sworn it was smiling at me.

Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Bookworm: You pay much closer attention to the smaller details when reading. You gain one additional skill point when reading books.
New Quest Perk: Versatile Combat Telekinesis: Your skill at wielding more than one weapon with your telekinesis has greatly increased. When using melee or thrown weapons, you can now use two weapons at once without penalty. Of course, you've got to get your horn working again before you can even try to use this new found skill.
Science Skill: 50
Author's Footnote: Special thanks to my editor/pre-reader Chimpso for the help with editing.