Chapter 5

Wasteland Friendships

“...And learn to make some friends, Twilight.”

Some zebra shook me awake.

“Xero! Celeriter, expergiscere!” she hissed at me. Looking out my window, I found that it was still dark out.

“Ego nolo...” I moaned, curling up in my blanket. Why was Mom trying to get me out of bed? It was too early.

“Nunc!” she yelled.

I quickly leapt out of my bed. Mom never yelled! Something was wrong, I just knew it. Her pretty amber eyes were red and slightly puffy and she looked really scared.

“Quid iniuriam?” I asked. Why was she scared?

The sound of gunfire echoed out through the village. Automatic weapons? Did a rad-eel make it into town again?

The window lit up a pinkish red color. I knew it was a special type of flare because Star Gazer had used one before.

“Nunc non,” she said quickly, picking my up the scruff of my neck.

“Ow!” I yelped.

“Mammam’s paenitet...” she said, tossing me onto her back.

Star Gazer came out of his room, tiredly rubbing his eye.

“Quid magnum fac?” he yawned. “Quidam similis ad somnum.”

He was soon answered after a burst of gunshots rang out through the dark village again. His eyes widened as he sprinted down the hallway.

“Exspecta!” Mom called out, chasing after him. I held tightly to her neck, so I wouldn’t fall off.

He was in the main room when we caught up to him. Dad’s old revolver was clenched tightly in his mouth, an angry look in his eyes.

Without another word Mom set me down by the closet door and slapped the gun out of his muzzle. I don’t know what she said to him over the banging on the main door.

“Open up or we’ll use force!” someone called from behind it. Her voice was deep and scary.

“Velox! Abscondere in hic!” Mom hissed in a panic. She threw the closet door open, moved the coats and other stuff around, and moved a box aside, creating a little spot for my brother and I.

“Maneas hic, Stella Custos. Custodi fratrem tuum salvum. quicquid audieris, Non egrediuntur. Capis?” she said. Mom... she never used Star Gazer’s real name, either!

She closed the door, and I heard it latch shut.

“Xero,” he said, “Imus ad ludum ludere.”

A game? Yay! Fun!

“Quid venatus?” I asked.

“Abscondere et quaerere,” he said, looking about. “Si tibi vincere, ego voluntas do vos omnes mea candy.”

Candy? If there was candy involved I would definitely win! I nodded my agreement.

The front door blew open, sending a shower of wooden splinters across the room.

“Where the fuck are they!?” the angry scary voice yelled.

“There is no pony at here,” Mom replied, crying. “What are you want?” She may not have spoke Equestrian the greatest, but she knew enough to get the point across.

“You know exactly why we’re here, you stupid stripe!” Through the slats in the door, I could see what looked like a bird with the backside of a lion. She stood on her hind legs and swung the back end of her rifle at Mom, sending her to the ground.

“Mam-” I was cut off by my brother wrapping his forelegs around my eyes and mouth, making my muffled cries silent.

“Vos postulo ut taceret!” Star Gazer begged into my ear.

“Get up!” The... thing yelled. “Get up now, or I’ll bash your fucking skull in!”

“You want caps?” asked Mom. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I could hear just fine. “Food? Guns? I have them! Take anything you want!”

“Eh, I know what I want...” a stallion called out with a laugh. He was really close to our hiding spot. “She’s not half bad looking, even for a stripe.”

“You’re one sick bastard, you know that, Candlestick?” the thing said. “See if you can... ‘persuade’ her to speak. I know they’re here somewhere..”

The stallion snickered again as the thing left, one of the four ponies leaving with her

“Turtle Race, guard the door with Flak Jacket,” He commanded. “I’m gonna teach this striped bitch lesson.”

“No... please, no!” Mom cried. “I can give to you anything!”

I couldn’t tell what happened next, because Star Gazer had told me to cover my eyes. I did, and he covered my ears. He didn’t do that good of a job, though. I could still sort of hear what was going on.

I don’t know what they were doing to her, but Mom cried out for them to stop. She yelled for help, but no one came. They... they were hurting her! I couldn’t let them do that! Dad asked me to keep Mommy safe while he was gone... and... he- he never came back! I needed to help Mom!

I struggled against my brother’s legs.

“Xero!” he whispered, “Prohibere quod!”

I licked his leg. Normally, he hated that and would instantly let go, but not today. So instead, I bit down as hard as I could, earning a yelp from him and my freedom.

“Vos esse delicatus ad eam!” I screamed at them as I charged out of the closet.

“Where the fuck did you come from?!” a green unicorn yelled in surprise. He was the one doing... things... to Mom. A dirty yellow magic surrounded his horn and the small pistol held against Mom’s head.

“Xero!” She cried out, looking at me with horrified, amber eyes.

BANG!

Time seemed to slow down as I stopped dead in my tracks. He... he shot... Mom... There was nothing I could do as her blood sprayed out the front of her head and onto me. I was covered head to hoof in a red mess.

Hollowed gunfire broke out around me as I just stared at her slowly falling body.

“Mammam...”

Star Gazer shoved me to ground, picking Dad’s revolver up and finishing off the three with successful headshots.

He used the speed loader and put six more rounds in before stepping up to the door, taking guard in it.

I sprang into action and grabbed a medical kit off the wall. My foreleg burned with each step, a trail of red following it. I didn’t know why I was hurting so bad; Mom was the one who was hurt!

I opened it up and didn’t so much as search through it as much as just dump everything out and kick away what I didn’t need. and pulled out a healing potion.

“Mammam...” I said, breaking off the top of the purple bottle and bringing it to her mouth. In the background, Star Gazer fired Dad’s gun. “Biberet.”

She was bleeding out a hole in the back of her head and the front. I needed to stop the bleeding. I quickly found what I was looking for and applied it to the two bleeding spots.

“Stella!” I cried out. Literally, tears and everything. I watched as the band-aids did nothing. “Sanguinem non prohibere!”

I hugged her neck tightly, begging for her to wake up. The puddle of red spread out from under us, mixing with my own that was running down from my shoulder.

“Placere...” I pleaded. Everything was so cold, and I felt so tired. “Stella...”

“Xero!” Star Gazer cried out. He turned away from the door for just a second.

That was all the pony hiding around the corner needed to send my brother flying across the living room with a powerful buck. Everything started to fade out as the pony entered the room. She was an earth pony with a very blue hide and a white mane. She had on a suit of strong combat barding.

It was black.

On the shoulder, there was a knife with three rings.

Pewtpewtpewtpewtpewtpewtclickclickclickclick! click! click. click. click... click...

Tweety’s hammer fell on spent chambers, it’s enchanted barrel glowing red-orange from the incredible heat it generated. Slowly, the fine finished walls turned to heavy wooden boards and the hard polished floor planks weathered and warped. A pale light ate away the darkness, turning the grimy male unicorn into a figure more familiar.

The zebra mare looked at me with wide, terrified eyes. A small hole at the top of her right ear made itself known, along with the graze on her left cheek, by dripping a small amount of blood onto the floor.

The lower half of her braided mane was no more, having been cleanly dissected from the rest by one of the magnum rounds. A clatter from Tweety echoed out as the blazing magic around it collapsed.

“Shitshitshitshitshit!” I cried out, dashing over to my saddlebags to recover a healing potion.

When I pressed the purple potion to her lips, she finally broke out of her dazed trance, gingerly drinking the small vial.

“Oh, fuck... I’m so sorry,” I said, tossing Tweety onto my saddlebag. “I- I- I don’t know what happened!”

Shit! I just about killed her!

“It... it’s fine,” Lumens said, rubbing her cheek as the magic liquid stitched the flesh back together. The hole in her ear also closed up, but left a very crude scar in it’s place.

“I-”

“You were having a night terror,” she interrupted. “A horrible one, at that.”

She scooped up the foot-or-so-long clump of braided mane that had been shot off.

“I... I’m so, so sorry,” Please don’t be mad?

“Hey. No harm, no foul, right?” she said with a feigned smile and a half-hearted laugh, tossing the braid in a trashcan.

I shook my head. The remnants of the nightmare stuck like fly-paper. My hide was drenched with an ice cold sweat, making everything I touched very uncomfortable.

“Do... do you want to talk about it?” Lumens asked. She had a small towelette in her hoof and was now wiping some of the blood off the side of her face. It stained her paper-white hide a slight pinkish color.

“No.” Not that. I just wanted to forget that ever happened. It was my fault she had died and nothing could change that.

“Are you-”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, a little more angrily than I wanted. I crawled back onto the couch, facing away from her and fighting to hold the tears back. With a sigh, she hopped onto the far end, reclining back on the chair, and falling asleep.

If there was one thing, one single thing, I wanted to completely forget, it was that night. I didn’t care how it happened, whether it be more head trauma or the use of powerful mind spells, I just wanted that single memory gone. It would come back in bits and pieces here and there, but never in such vividness. Even as I laid on the couch, an hour later, I could still feel the stickiness of the blood on my face and hooves and smell the acrid cordite in the air. Even the phantom pain in my shoulder flared up again, urging me to take an unneeded Med-X. I felt... unclean, to say the least.

As luck would have it, sleep was on my side, and two hours after I nearly blew Lumens’ head off, I drifted away.

When I woke back up, I found myself on the floor; I’d rolled off the couch at some point. After a quick investigation, everything was where, and how, it should have been. A drink from my canteen started off my morning routine of teeth brushing, using the sink in the kitchen to do so.

It struck me as odd that a train car had both a working bathroom and kitchen, along with appliances. The thought didn’t last long as I noticed that something was missing.

Or rather, somezebra.

“Lumens?” I called out, hoping she didn’t ditch me after my little incident.

Nothing.

“She must be out and about somewhere,” I said to myself. Whenever I was alone, I talked to myself. I did it often enough that it usually never occurred to me that I was, in fact, all by my lonesome.

The canteen when back into one of the many saddlebag pockets. Lumens still had my cloak, so I just slipped my bags over my back, strapped Tweety to my left foreleg, and swung my new sword across my back.

‘Went walking around. Be back shortly. -Xero’, I wrote on a piece of wrinkled paper.

The note went on the coffee table, and I left the train car, searching for answers.

New Appleoosa and the rest of the wasteland still looked as they always had. The town had scores of ponies going about their daily business, the wasteland sky had it’s dingy, grimy-grey overcast, and the ground was dull and brown, like it always had been.

As I stepped through the doorway, I paused for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the light. A small mechanical whir buzzed in my head as the iris of the glyph-eye turned and focused. I thought about putting my leg braces on, but I left them by the door, taking note that I wasn’t falling on my face. My knees were still sore, but that would come to pass.

“Ya leavin’?” one of the guards asked as I arrived at the city entrance. It was Potshot, the one who almost shot me the first night I was here.

“No, just checking on something,” I informed him, looking out to the wilds.

“Oh? Well... alright. Be careful,” he mentioned, going back to his post. He seemed hesitant to let me wander along the wall.

I trotted around the area on outside the entrance. There was only one ‘large rock’, as the note said. Nearby, I found a large log, about eight feet long and almost up to my stomach. Nothing around it seemed like something I was looking for.

I was going to have to lift it, or at the very least, roll it aside.

Wrapping a teal aura around the heavy log, I willed it to move. That was all it took to using telekinesis: simply wanting something to move badly enough. The more you thought, the more said object moved.

Usually.

“Come on... Move!” I demanded, gritting my teeth. A pressed shoulder helped the log slowly shift out of the shallow divot it had sunk in.

Underneath was a small metal lock box, no bigger than my hoof, with rust patches forming along the faces and seams. A little shake next to my ear revealed it to contain something tiny and metal. My magic strained against the latch as I tried to force it open. Stomping didn’t work either.

I set the box down on the log and brought out my screwdriver and a single bobby pin. The bobby pin wiggled its way around the keyhole, searching for the ‘sweet spot’ that would release the internal tumblers. As I nudged the bobby pin around the lock, I slowly turned the screwdriver. Whenever I felt resistance, on the pin or diver, I would quickly turn them back and try again elsewhere.

Two minutes later, I finally hacked the lock. It’s treasure: the key to Room 17 in the Turnpike Tavern. It was simple, just a key on a ring with a blue tag.

I put everything, minus the lock-box, in my saddlebag. The bobby pin was damaged beyond another use, so it too was left.

Turnpike Tavern was just as it had been the first time I’d been there. A few ponies were drinking their sorrows and frustrations away at the bar. Some more were sitting at the tables that were scattered about the floor, doing who knew what. There were even a trio of ponies, one of each race, at the pool table near the back.

None paid any attention to the figure that had just trotted in. Back at the bar, the earth pony from my first visit stood, idly flicking through a magazine.

“Ahem,” I cleared my throat quietly after a minute.

The light tan mare jumped. “Welcome to the Turnpike! How can I-” She stopped when she looked at me, her eyes growing wide.

“Hello,” I said with a smile.

Butterscotch leaned in close. “What are you doing here? I thought you were crippled or died or something,” she whispered.

“I was. I’m better now.” I took out the key to room 17 and slowly rotated it in my magic. “I found this...”

“Oh!” she exclaimed in slight surprise. “That room’s been paid for in advance. About a month ago, somepony came here and rented it out for the entire month.”

“Really?” Interesting...

“Yeah. In a few days, I was going to have Shots bust the door down and change the locks.”

“Do you remember what this pony looked like?”

“I recall that he was a greyish ghoul... a unicorn...” She thought a moment. “He was rich, definitely rich. Our thirty day special is one thousand caps, which he paid for up-front, in full.”

I made a mental note of the newfound information, my Pipbuck giving off a soft chime. “Anything else you can tell me about this ghoul? A name or anything?”

“Uh, let’s see... He did have an odd coat.”

“An odd coat...” I repeated.

“Yeah, the coat he had on was a heavy, brown, winter coat, with a fuzzy white liner.” The mare ducked behind bar, and began to rummage around underneath.

“What’s so strange about that?” I asked, looking over to where she had disappeared.

“The coat itself wasn’t what was strange, it was the symbol embroidered on the back.” The bartender jumped back up with a piece of paper and a pencil in her mouth.

Using that strange earth-pony talent of mouth-writing, she scribbled on the sheet. By time she had finished drawing the three rings and the blade, I knew what she was drawing. The NZRA insignia.

“Done,” she said, spitting out the pencil.

“Hm.” I picked up the drawing. For being done by mouth, it was actually really good.

Somepony from the NZRA had been here and rented out a room for an entire month for a dead hitmare. Since I had found the key, and it hadn’t been used by Flintlock yet, it was safe to say that she hadn’t made it to New Appleoosa. Whatever ‘Galvano’ had left for her was probably still in there, if he had actually left anything at all. I needed a few more clues about where to go next, though.

“Do you know where he went, by any chance?”

“Sorry... No, I don’t,” Butterscotch said with a shake of her head.

Crap. “Well, thanks for your help.”

“Wait,” she said as I was headed up the stairs to Flintlock’s room. “He had a strange accent, too. Sounded like he came from far out east, past the mountains.”

“Thanks,” I said again. That was a little better. The wasteland was a big place, and now it was shrunk down to a specific area. I sighed as I trotted up the stairs, realizing that where I would have to go was a huge place. Calling it a small corner of the wasteland was an understatement; it probably made up a whole corner. Luck must have been with me, as I would have gone there anyway.

With the key wrapped in my magic, I unlocked the door to Room 17. Slowly, I pressed the lever-style door handle with a black hoof. As soon as it was unlatched, I brought out tweety, unsure of what might await me inside. The door squeakily swung open and-

Nothing. The room was completely empty, other than what was in my room. The bed, table, dresser, desk, and everything were all in the same place. The only thing different was what was on the bed.

There, sitting on the gaudy floral-print comforter, was a small cloth sack tied shut with a rope. Next to it was an audio tape with a note on it saying ‘Play me’.

“Do I play the recording, or check the bag first?” I thought to myself aloud. I wrapped my magic around the bag, but let it go without picking it off the bed. “Let’s see what’s on the recording.”

“Miss Flintlock,” the recording began. The voice was that of a ghoulish male: deep and gravelly. “Thank you for your cooperation. As I’m sure you already know, we are very pleased with your work, as we have been time and time again. However, the seasons change, and Alpine is no longer in need of of you. Goodbye, Miss Flintlock.”

The scratchy recording ended with a clicking once, then, strangely, again.

The bag started to hum.

And then beep quickly.

“AH!” I yelled.

By the fifth beep, I had the bag in my magic and flying out the window. Through the window, actually.

A second later, it exploded. Bits of shredded shutters and shards of glass blasted into the room in a flurry of pain.

“Maybe I should have checked the bag first...” I groaned, rubbing my sore, magic-strained brain. Ducking behind the edge of the bed was a better idea than I had anticipated, as it had taken most of the shrapnel that didn’t end up imbedded into the walls or my body.

Shuffling over the debris of the explosion, I took a peek out of the destroyed window, noting the crack running the entire height of the room.

“That can’t be good,” I said to myself.

Much of the siding of the Turnpike had been damaged around the window, along with the window below and ones off to either side. Above, the yellow, magic-neon sign sparked and zapped angrily, missing large chunks of it’s lettering. It was now the JRNPI VERI.

“WHAT IN THE BUCKING HELL HAPPENED!?” a mare’s voice yelled out.

It was Butterscotch.

“Uh... Hi Butterscotch,” I said with a weak smile.

“Don’t you ‘hi Butterscotch’ me,” she spat.

“I can explain.” I hoped I could, anyways.

“Oh, yeah?” she practically shouted.

“There was a bomb...”

“-and then I threw the bomb out the window. That’s what happened.” I tried to explain.

“Right, as you have said before...” Lily said. “But since we have no proof of the alleged bomb, we cannot, unfortunately, neither prove nor disprove your claims.”

Butterscotch, Vodka Shots, Lily, Lumens, and I were all in the Mayor’s office, doing our best to sort the mess out civilly. It was irritating, to say the least. We had been going around in circles about who was to blame and who was going to fix the damage.

“Why not check the recording again?” I asked. Surely there was something that could prove my innocence. Apparently, there was suspicion that I had fired an explosive weapon within the town, which was ‘illegal’.

“We can’t. We already tried. The audio was set for a one time playthrough,” she said.

There was a tense moment of silence.

“How much are the damages going to cost to rebuild, Butterscotch?” the lilac unicorn sighed, brushing a hoof through her peachy mane.

“The damage to the infrastructure is greater than it seems. We have to rebuild the entire middle of the western wall, replace all the windows we lost, and we need to remake the sign,” Butterscotch replied.

“Okay, but how much is it going to cost?” Lily asked again.

“Four-thousand, five-hundred caps,” she said flatly. “That’s not including the caps I’ll lose with the rooms being closed. I’m trying to run a business here.”

My head fell to the desk.

“I don’t have that much,” I muttered. I’d never that much. The most I’d ever had was about fifteen-hundred; just enough to get me out of a jam if I needed it.

“You could cut your losses and sell your gear,” Lily offered. “That revolver of yours should fetch quite a few caps.”

“No.” Not Tweety, and not my cloak, which were all I really had. “Even then, I wouldn’t have enough.”

The tension in the air was so thick, you could almost cut it.

“Eugh...” the mayor groaned. “I’m feeling generous today.”

Everypony’s and everyzebra’s attention was caught.

“Butterscotch, I can credit the caps from the town’s excess money banks to you,” she said. “As for you, Xerophyte...”

“What?” I replied. Would I have to work it off or something?

“Get the hell out of my town.” She didn’t say it meanly or angrily, just seriously.

“What!? Why?” Lumens interjected. The only reason she was here was because she was the Butterscotch, Lily, Vodka Shots, and I walking toward the town hall. She was also the only one I really knew in New Appleoosa.

“Butterscotch wants her tavern fixed. I don’t want ponies knowing that I chipped into their emergency funding. And with Xerophyte here, chances of that increase,” Lily explained. “If he leaves soon, the townsponies will think that he paid for the damages and left. Simple as that.”

“I agree,” I stated. It would be insane to turn down a generous offer like that.

“I’ll have Six Star escort you out when it’s time,” she said. She got up and opened the door out of her office. “I’ll get those caps for you, Butterscotch.”

“I guess this is ‘goodbye’, then,” I said, standing at the gate I had entered when I arrived.

Potshot was on guard duty nearby, slowly scanning the horizon for anything that moved. Sheriff Six Star was there, too, even though she knew I wasn’t stupid enough to do anything.

“I guess so...” Lumens replied. It broke her heart that I had to leave, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.” I’d made it this far in life, right?

“Here,” she said. She reached into her saddlebag and brought out flat, rectangular package that was wrapped in brown paper and twine, which I took in my magic. “Don’t open it yet. Do it later.”

“Thanks.” I slipped the odd gift into one of my own saddlebags. I was unsure of why she wanted me to wait, but I obeyed her wishes.

“Do you have everything, Xero?” asked Six Star.

“I believe so,” I said, taking inventory of everything I had. “Cloak, gun, saddlebags, sword, caps, Pipbuck... Yes, that’s everything.”

Something hit me hard in the chest, sending me to the ground and onto my back with an “oof!”

“I don’t want you go!” Lumens sniffled into my chest and neck as she held me. I had a feeling this would happen.

“Hey, hey...” I tried to comfort her, stroking her striped mane. I wasn’t very good at it, but at least I could try. “It’s alright, I’ll be fine”

“No you won’t!” she cried. “You said that last time and- and- you practically died! You did die...”

I let her sob it out, but it was another minute before she got off of me.

“Better?” I asked, moving part of her disheveled mane out of her eyes. She shook her head, making the end of the remaining braid I had shot off the night before swing back and forth.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” she whispered sadly.

“Xero,” Six Star said, using her firm, authoritative voice.

“Yes, I know,” I called back before turning to Lumens again. “Listen, I’ll be back. There’s things I have to take care of... things... that won’t take care of themselves. But I promise you, I will be back.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She wrapped her forelegs around me in a tight hug.

“Just so you know, I don’t really think of you as my big-little-brother,” she whispered into my ear. I could feel myself turning red as a memory from years ago surfaced. She snapped me out of it with a kiss. “Bye, Xero...”

I trotted out east, toward... wherever it was that I thought I should go, which was just east. I thought I could get a lead in New Appleoosa, but all I managed to do was get myself kicked out. The only real information I got was from Butterscotch: a grey ghoul with a heavy winter jacket. The voice on the audio tape sounded like a ghoul, but who's to say that it wasn’t a unicorn with a voice changing spell. The only thing I could do to get a better heading on was to actually got to one of the settlements in the east and find out more there. My first stop would have to be Starward, a town slightly bigger than New Appleoosa just on western side of the Royal Mountains of Canterlot, and a ways to the south of the once majestic ruins of the capital. It wouldn’t be a long journey back home; four or five days at most. I could travel around the mountains, but that would easily add a week, along with seven days of provisions and ammo that I didn’t have.

Actually, I did have the ammunition for the weapons I had, which were just Tweety and the Zebra Resistance rifle. I knew I wouldn’t encounter anything that would require more than them. That is, if I stayed on the road and didn’t pick a fight with a Steel Ranger squad or an Alicorn. I also wanted to stop in Starward to refill what I would use up over the next few days as I traveled, since it was the last place I could before actually crossing the mountains.

When it started to get dark, I decided that I had better find a place for the night. Looking around, I found nothing that could be used for a camp. No nearby buildings to crash in, no half-destroyed houses, no St-

To my left was a vaguely familiar cliff face. My map told me that Stable 24 was nearby.

I was only just past the giant cog-shaped door, in the atrium, when I started to hear strange noises. Down one of the dark halls, I saw multiple pairs of glowing red eyes. My EFS counted 12 hostiles, 0 friendlies. At that, I galloped out of the Stable, jump-levitated across the small river that was more of a creek now, and continued searching for a safer place to rest.

The still slightly irradiated remains of the Toll Gang’s makeshift fort came and went, the Pipbuck on my leg clicking as I neared. It was only two rads per second, but that still added up. I took a detour around. Irradiating a large part of the highway was not what I had intended to to when I gave that mare a grenade. I noticed that none of the bodies were still here, either having been taken away by scavenging animals or completely vaporised by the arcano-nuclear blast.

I continued on into the darkness of night. Far to the west, miles past New Appleoosa, a thunderstorm brewed. I couldn’t hear the thunder, but the show the lightning was putting on was almost entrancing. I thought of trotting backwards for a while, but was quickly denied when I had to shoot a radscorpion off the road.

“Keep your eyes on the road at all times...” I said quietly to myself. I hadn’t even noticed my EFS counter change I was so tired. I was going to have to rough it pretty soon if I didn’t find a place to rest. It was another half mile to the canyon where I’d met Canteen, Clips, and Coverfire, but other than that, there wasn’t anything around.

“There. That seems like a good spot,” I grumbled.

There was a very, very, large tree off the main road a ways. It’s trunk was easily three feet across, and had to be as tall as a three story house. Most of the leaves had fallen off, and the ones that remained were either dead or dying. An experimental buck found the trunk very solid. I picked one of the shriveled leaves off a branch and examined it.

My Pipbuck gave a short chirp, heralding a note that appeared in the top corner of my vision.

>New location discovered!
>Old Minotaur-Oak Tree

I looked back to the tree. It’s bark wasn’t rough and deeply ridged like most oak trees, but instead was very smooth and had an almost stone-like texture. It was definitely a hard wood. A very hard wood. But nonetheless, it would do.

I jump-levitated myself onto one of the larger branches, then again up to the next one. I stopped on a branch about twenty feet off the ground, far from any predators looking for a midnight snack. My zebra instincts kicked in and I balanced on the the branch on my rear legs. I took a couple steps and managed to get back to all fours. Carefully, I laid down, using my right foreleg as a pillow while the other three hung toward the ground. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was safer than sleeping on the ground... in the open.

I dozed off to sleep fairly quick, even if it was light. Very light.

There was a scream. It was loud, but also very distant. At first, I thought I was having another dream. I was still unsure about why I kept having those... dreams. To call them that was wrong, however. The terror I felt reliving each one was... unnatural.

The scream sounded as if it were in great agony. The first thing did was check my EFS. When it came up with nothing, I guessed whoever or whatever it was had died or were outside of my EFS’s range. I waited a few more minutes, hoping whatever it was would make itself known so I could either avoid or take care of it.

Nothing made a sound, nothing game into range. Ten minutes had passed and I decided to go back to sleep. It was 3:47; I’d be leaving my tree in a few hours. With my eyes closed, I drifted off into another light sleep.

I woke up feeling not so refreshed. I groaned and rolled out of bed. About three-fourths of the way around, I realized something.

I wasn’t in a bed.

I fell from my perch, grabbing myself in my magic and pulling up as hard as I could. I had managed to slow my fall enough that when I landed, it wasn’t much different than if I had just hopped off the ground.

“Yuk,” I said as I sat down, tasting the sour gunk inside my mouth. Even after falling out of a tree, I still wasn’t awake enough to stand. A stretch loosened my stiff muscles, causing my neck, back, and knees to pop. As usual, brushing my teeth followed shortly after.

I proceeded my journey to Starward and ate breakfast on the go. When the canyon came up, I had to stop. Not because of a raider or a wild animal, but because of how odd the canyon itself was.

Towering above me were sharp cliffs. They didn’t go far in either direction, but they were tall. The highway I was traveling on wiggled between the two plateaus like a snake trying to get through a maze. The large masses of brown rock didn’t seem to have any purpose to be her other than to just exist. To the northwest side of the northern plateau was an earthen ramp, and the only way up. It looked more like a washout of dirt and rock, but something about it seemed oddly pony-made. I would have liked to explore it, but I didn’t have the supplies. Not only that, it would be a great place for raiders to hide out.

They truly didn’t have any reason being here. The surrounding area was mostly flat, except for the mountains further to the north and east. They were still another day’s trot away. I could probably reach them by tomorrow afternoon.

I was getting thirsty, so I began looking for one of my canteens. While searching, I found something interesting.

The package Lumens had given me.

“It’s definitely ‘later’,” I said at I took off the brown paper. “Whoa...”

It was a book. Just a simple black book with a gold band running across the top and bottom. It didn’t have any sort of markings on the cover.

However, on the inside of the cover, were two pictures. The bottom one was of Lumens. She looked like herself, the picture having been taken within the last year or two. The other one... was the one of my brother before the two of us had left that one fateful day.

I don’t know how long I sat there in the middle of the highway looking at the two photos, but a flicker on my EFS brought me out of my trance.

One friendly. And it was in the canyon.

Fortunately, I didn’t see anypony or anything in that direction, so I flipped to the first page of the book.

Xero,

Through my research, I have found many practical uses for different glyphs and runes of both zebra and pony origins. I have put the simpler ones in this book, along with a few more difficult ones. I hope that this book comes in handy. You may want to read through it a few times first, though. A mistake could change something as useful as a healing ward into something dangerous, like a remote detonator. Be careful, some of the things in this book are experimental, and are marked as such.

~Lumens

P.S. Thanks for letting me do some quick studies of your cloak. I think it will be quite useful in the development of easy repair limbs.

Flipping quickly through the large tome, I found that the entire thing was filled with notes and how-to’s on the alternate arcane arts. There were pages on healing wards and how to construct them, practical and impractical uses for light producing runes, including artificial sunlight. Even the possibility of teleportation rings was a topic of interest. The last few pages were dedicated to modifications, like turning an explosive matrix to a frost burst matrix, or adding a speed enhancer to a repair rune to increase its fixing rate.

I put the book back in my saddlebag after skimming a couple pages; I had things to do and places to be. The trot through the canyon was slow, as I was being cautious. I could have sworn that the scream from the previous night came from somewhere in this direction, and I didn’t want to join whatever it was.

About two hundred feet into the canyon, my EFS flickered again. There were still no hostiles, but the one friendly marker bounced between ‘1’ and ‘0’. Whatever or whoever it might have been wasn’t going to be alive much longer.

As I walked, I managed to find about where the blue target was by trotting back and forth to either side of the highway, watching the little blue blip on my EFS shift back and forth, as well.

“Hello?” I called out. No reply.

“Hello...?” I called out again, more questionably.

I moved toward the target, nearly to the point of being on top of it. There was nothing around me at ground level, which must have meant they were somewhere above or below. Looking up, I saw a very bright, electric blue hoof hanging over the edge of a small outcropping that would have been just big enough for a single pony. The top edge of the cliff was about four stories off the ground, with the outcropping about halfway in the middle.

“Hey!” The hoof didn’t move so much as a hair as I circled around it. The blue tick mark seemed to line up perfectly with whoever it was.

I picked up a small stone in my magic, about the size of a prewar bit, and tossed it up at the pony. There was a groan and the hoof receded back onto the outcropping. Another stone found it’s way up and this time, there was a response.

“Ugh... hello?” a mare groaned back dryly. “Is somepony down there?”

Some shuffling sounded out from the overhang and the mysterious pony finally revealed herself. Well, her head anyways. I assumed she was an earth pony, due to the lack of a horn on her head, but didn’t rule out that she could have been a pegasus.

The right side of her face was dominated by a white paint-splotch. Her messy mane was a much lighter blue, almost white and hung loosely in her metallic grey eyes. She was actually kinda cute.

“Hey, there,” she said with a tired, raspy chuckle. “I thought I’d be stuck up here forever.” She coughed into her her forehoof and wiped it on whatever she must have been wearing. “I’m, uh... in a bit of a bad way. Up here. Think you can, you know, get me down, uh... there?” she pointed a blood smeared hoof to a random direction that was mostly downward.

“Uh, sure...” I said. She must have been pretty hurt if she was coughing up blood. My horn started to glow it’s sparkly teal color, and I wrapped my aura around a vaguely equine shape object, noting that it didn’t have wings.

“Owowowowowow!” she cried out as I began to lift her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I think I broke my leg,” the mysterious mare called back down in a pained tone.

“Which one?”

“Right foreleg. It doesn’t look right...”

“Okay.” I reached up again with my magic, forming it around her and being as careful as I could to not turn or rotate any part of her. She hissed in pain, but didn’t protest.

Now that I could finally get a good look at her, I noticed she was covered with white markings. They way they looked like they were just splattered on kind of made her look.... well, kind of like a blue cow. She was wearing the grey-blue suit of what I recognized was Stable barding. For a wasteland pony, she was also quite clean. The saddlebags that hung at her sides were crushed, shredded, and stained with fresh blood and... purple... stuff. A standard Pipbuck clung to one of her forelegs, the one that was clearly broken.

Wait.

Every seasoned wastelander knew not to wear Stable barding. It offers almost no protection and was like saying: “Hey, everypony, look over here! I’m an easy target!” There was no doubt about it. She was definitely a stable pony.

She was also bruised, battered, and had a chunk of flesh missing off her shoulder. The flesh looked like it had been torn or possibly bitten off. It was a miracle that she hadn't bled out. Blood caked the barding, and mixed with the dusty earth, turning it a red-brown. She was right in thinking that her right foreleg was broken. The entire thing was one large, deep purple bruise, and was much more swollen than seemingly possible. Right above her PipBuck, where she had another white paint-splotch, the bone seemed to be trying to break through the skin. It looked like she had an extra knee.

“Thanks...” she groaned, laying in the middle of the highway.

“No problem,” I replied, taking out one of my canteens and offering it to her. She grabbed it with her white teeth, tilted her head back, and chugged away.

“Hey, slow down a little. You’re going to choke on it.” I said just as she dropped it. She let out a deep, throaty cough, tiny red specks coming out with it. “Oh, that can’t be good...”

“I guess this is it, then...” she sighed, closing her eyes. “Goodbye, cruel world...”

The counter on my EFS bounced between ‘1’ and ‘0’ again, staying on ‘0’ a little longer than before.

“Hang in there.” I flipped through the dozens of menus on my Pipbuck, looking for something that could help her.

“Nah, I’m not... worth... it...” the blue earth pony said, trailing off. She wasn’t, honestly. I didn’t know her, she didn’t know me. We didn’t owe each other anything. What would it be for the wasteland to claim one more? A Stable pony, nonetheless. I could easily have left her behind, or shot her in the head to put her out of her misery.

I would have, too, but something, somewhere in my mind, told me to save her. To do better, be better. I didn’t know what it was, but it was there, practically screaming at me. Maybe it was my conscience. Or perhaps I was finally going crazy. Either way, I was going to try my best to save her.

Finally finding what I was looking for, my Pipbuck pulled up the things I needed: Med-X and my only syringe of Hydra.

“This might hurt a little,” I said as I injected the Med-X. It wouldn’t completely dull the hydra, but that little bit helped. Tossing the vial aside, the hydra followed the painkiller. Slowly, I pushed the plunger down on the end of the red canister, the chemicals within mixing to form the regenerative elixir.

At first, nothing happened. I thought that it might have been a dud, but a sudden twitch from the unconscious pony made me think otherwise. She cried out in pain as the bones in her leg snapped back into place with audible pops. Something in her chest also popped back into place, earning yet another scream. I cringed, flattening my ears in attempt to block out the cries. I knew what it felt like, and I knew that it hurt more than getting the bones broken in the first place. She eventually fell silent, having passed out from the intense pain. Again, my EFS bounced from ‘1’ to ‘0’ and then back to ‘1’, before staying there.

It was a few more minutes before I did anything else. I contemplated leaving. She would be able to handle herself, right?

I dropped my head and sighed.

“I can’t just leave you here...” I picked her up in my magic and hefted her across my back, minding my sword. She was a little smaller than an average sized pony, about a head shorter than myself. With what remained in her saddlebags and what was currently in mine, plus her weight, I was practically over-encumbered. The walk until she woke up would be slow.

To be continued....