It is cold in the Stalliongrad region, deathly so, however it is not uninhabitable. Stalliongrad and St. Ponysburg were proof enough of that, and I was growing used to the cold myself. However, nothing could prepare me for where we were going. The Frozen North was a place that rarely saw the light of the sun even before the war. Now, it had been plunged into two hundred years of near-permanent darkness by the cloud curtain, and winter had taken a strangling hold on the region. I could feel it long before we reached the snowline. It was like an itching under my feathers coupled with a rising anxiousness in my throat. Winter was wild and powerful here, and it felt like it was laughing at my pathetic powers which dared pretend to control it.

I took another pull from a bottle of Sparkle-Cola, trying to wash down my anxiety. I had gone through four of the soft drinks since we left Heaven’s Point and I was starting to run low. Damn these for being so helpful. I lamented as I drank the last drop of the bottle. My mind was buzzing with caffeine, the rampant thoughts that came with it helping distract me from the wild weather we were going towards. “Clarity, do you have a general direction we should try first?” I asked, reaching for another bottle.

“North-east would be best.” She said after a moment’s thought. “That’s a good ways away from our last home, and they could have gotten to the hold out there between now and when I was captured.” She glanced back at me pulling the cap off of the bottle. “You should really stop drinking those.”

I looked down at the bottle in my hooves then at the pocket I had drawn it from. After a moment’s thought I decided to save it and put it away with an irritated snort. “So, north-east it is. About how long will it take?”

“Hopefully not more than a day, if the weather is cooperative.”

The itching suddenly worsened, making me twitch. “Don’t count on it.”

“Let me guess, you can’t make the weather cooperate?” Scout asked.

“The Enclave doesn’t spread that far north, so theoretically I could without drawing attention. Realistically though, I can’t. It would have been hard enough for pegasi to control that region before the war, now I’d have better luck stopping the world from turning. At best I could slow down any snow immediately around us, but the drain would be enormous.”

“We’ll find out soon enough.” Scout said, looking up. “We’re getting close to the snow line.”

I looked up as well, feeling the discomfort in my wings surge. The cloud curtain had become a gray roil with snow falling steady faster and heavier. Looking over my shoulder, I could see the transition between the relative calm of the cloud curtain I had once lived above and the no-ponies land we now walked under. I felt like this was when I truly entered the wilderness, at least before there had been some sense of civilization with the ruins and towns. Now, we were alone. Three ponies setting out into the wasteland before the Wasteland.

Swallowing my apprehension, I turned my attention back to the path in front of us. The snow was already growing deeper, we were soon up to our ankles in it. We huddled closer together, not wanting to lose each other in the storm. Not only was the snowfall becoming heavier, but the thick clouds blocked most of the meager sunlight. The world became monochrome, whatever wasn’t white snow was black night. There were moments where the snow mercifully lessened, giving us reprieve from the cold only to plunge us into near pitch dark. At other times the blizzard grew so terrible that we were in a complete white-out, the cold forcing us shoulder-to-shoulder so we could share body heat. And throughout it all we saw no signs of life, no ponies, no buildings, nothing. It was an utterly alien feeling, to have friends so close by and yet to be so fully alone. I found myself hugging Scout and Clarity close with my wings. I didn’t want to lose them to the desert of snow and darkness. Our progress had slowed to a crawl, the now chest deep snow and bone freezing cold hindering us immensely.

Perhaps it was my mind seeking desperately for contact outside our little huddle. I kept imagining figures moving in the darkness between snowflakes. No, not between the snowflakes, it was as if the snow itself had gained a body of its own and was stalking us on a more personal level. It was during one particularly long lasting white-out that the sensation grew unbearable. I imagined something terrible, several somethings, standing just outside of sight. Calm down Sleet, you’re still just paranoid after the giester… No matter how many times I told myself that I couldn’t shake the feeling. I needed some confirmation.

Nudging Scout, I yelled over the gale. “Are you getting any E.F.S. contacts?”

He shook his head. He had long ago wrapped his blanket around his Stable barding and covered the lower half of his face with it. Between the thick cloth and the wind it was hard to understand him. “You feel it too? Like something’s after us?”

I nodded, furtively glancing around us again. Nothing, just snow. “I’m going to try and clear things up a bit.” The itching in my wings hadn’t ceased since we entered the Frozen North, if anything it got worse. Not only was I trying to banish our imaginary stalkers, I was satisfying the itch the weather pony in me felt to tame this wild weather.

I extended my talent into the storm around us. I could feel its power, paradoxically it was like a fire burning out of control. I had to tame that fire, bring it down to something more manageable. I could go about this several ways, removing the fire’s “fuel” was an option, but it would take a small army of pegasi to bust all the clouds feeding this frenzy. Instead, I decided to try spreading the fire out. It would more quickly run low on fuel in the area I designated, which was the area around my friends and I.

I reached into the clouds with my power, pushing against the storm first in a tiny point then spreading it in a circle around us. I didn’t try to take away all the clouds, such a thing would require more direct contact and a lot more power than I had. I took what I got, pushing the fire outward and lessening the blaze in that circle.

Slowly but surely, the blizzard immediately around us lessened. The full sound and fury of the storm still raged, but that was outside our little circumference of peace. The snow was still heavy and cold, but we could move more freely and see a bit better.

The only problem was the strain was incredible. My every muscle was tense and my forehead and temples throbbed painfully. Sweat quickly filled the ridges of my furrowed brown and ran down my face, threatening to get in my eyes and shatter my concentration. “Okay…I…got it.” I managed to say through gritted teeth.

“Can you walk?” Clarity asked in concern.

“Yeah…I…can totally…” I went to take a step and the circle of calm waved dangerously. Another step and it threatened to collapse all together. I had to move the circle with us, which made my brain feel like it was being torn in two. My whole body felt like it was being pulled in many directions at once and a pressure was building rapidly in my head. “I… can...” Something burst in my head. I felt wetness running out my nose and smelled copper.
The break shattered the rest of the tension. The circle collapsed, winter returning in all its fury. I cried out, my tense muscles releasing all at once and throwing me forward into the snow. I landed mostly on my side, the shock of the cold making me gasp. I lay there in the cold, watching the snow around my nostrils slowly turn red, feeling utterly sapped.
After what felt like much longer than a few seconds, I felt Scout and Clarity move under my shoulders and lift my up. I dangled limp between them, having no power to move myself. “I’m…sorry. I couldn’t…maintain it…” I said weakly.
Scout readjusted his grip. “It’s okay, we can keep going.” We figured it was beyond you.
Clarity used her magic to move my mutated wings so they wouldn’t be crushed between them. “Yeah, don’t worry, you did well.” But it wasn’t enough.
Scout snickered, trying for a joke. “I think it’s my turn to carry you to safety anyway.” I’m getting sick of your weight.
I didn’t reply to any of it. How could I? I knew what they were really thinking, and that would color my words. Instead I hung there powerless as they started forward again, dragging me along as blood slowly dripped from my nose into the snow.

I can’t recall how long we spent wandering that storm. Much like when I was locked in Talon Mountain, the light here didn’t change much. It had been dark when we arrived and that darkness had only gradually deepened since.

But I didn’t pay much attention to that. I didn’t pay much attention to anything. I was still drained utterly, overtaxed in body and spirit. My nose had stopped bleeding a while ago and now was just stuffy and difficult to breathe through. I almost lamented the loss of the steady drip of blood, it had broken the monotony of the snow. Now all I could see was white, endless white. I began to imagine that white as a piece of paper. Blank, except for those small droplets of blood, like bulletins on a list. But that list had nothing written on it, like it was a list of my life. Sleet’s list, a whole lot of nothing. I thought blearily.

The endless white of the snow and the painful cold were all I could see and feel. My body was completely numb under my coat, I was only aware that it was even still there because it connected to exposed flesh that was so cold it hurt. At some point I had started shaking with the cold, or was that Scout and Clarity shaking? I couldn’t be sure, since I couldn’t feel them carrying me any longer. If I hadn’t been able to see their legs moving out of the corners of my eyes I’d have thought they abandoned me. I wouldn’t have blamed them if they had.

Suddenly, we stopped. Scout had said something which I hadn’t quite heard, so mustering up what little energy I had I managed to ask. “W-w-what is it? Why d-d-did we stop?”

“I’mmm g-getting…something.” Scout stuttered, examining his PipBuck. “I th-think it’s a transmission.”

“That mu-must mean there’sss somepo-pony out here!” Clarity said, sounding cautiously hopeful.

“H-h-here. Lllet me see.” I said, cold slurring my words slightly as I gestured to Scout’s PipBuck. My friends gently let me down, and though my legs wobbled I was at least able to kneel and remain upright. Taking Scout’s wrist, I swapped through multiple menus by mistake, my shaking making me push the wrong buttons until I managed to bring up the radio page. Sure enough all other stations had gone dark, sans one which was just a bunch of numbers that I assumed made up a radio signal. I tuned into the signal, and a mare’s voice came through the speakers.

“-essage repeats. Hello? Anypony there? I picked up a PipBuck reading on my radar, and a three-pony-size blip. Or maybe one really fat pony. Anyway, if you are there you may kinda sorta maybe be in a whole lot of danger right now. I sent the PipBuck the coordinates to my super secluded bunker, so follow that and be quick! Oh, and if you are fat, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it! Message repeats. Hello? Anypony there?”

I shut off the message before it could start again, giving my friends an anxious glance. This mare sounded like not all her screws were tight, but at this rate we’d freeze to death. “I sssay we do wh-what she sssays. How f-f-far is it, Scout?”

After checking his map, Scout turned in what I guessed was the direction of the marker. “N-not too far. C-c-couple of minutes.”

“Lllet’s get moving then, I d-d-don’t think I can stand m-m-much more of this cold.” Clarity said.

Scout and I readily agreed and we started on our way. I was still unable to walk on my own power, so I leaned on Scout for support. Knowing we were moving toward shelter put some fervor in our steps, though it was still difficult to move through the deep snow. On top of that, our stalkers had returned.

It started much as it had last time. I saw little things moving in the corners of my vision. Chunks of darkness shifting unnaturally. I was growing twitchy, my mane standing on end. The damned blizzard was making it hard to see though, and I was growing frustrated as well as anxious. It was when I felt something move through the snow behind us that I couldn’t take it anymore and had to ask. “Ssscout, please tell me your E.F.S. is cl-c-clean.”

He looked rapidly around us and at his E.F.S. compass. “Iiit’s weird. I’m getting these f-f-faint readings that are only th-there for a second before fading out. It’s almost as if…” He looked to the left and his eyes widened. Wrapping a hoof around my neck, he forced both of us into the snow, screaming “GET DOWN!”

As we dropped I shot a glance where he had been looking. At first I couldn’t tell what had startled him. All I could see there was snow, just a big wall of white. It was a split second before hitting the snow that I spotted what was wrong. It was a solid wall of white. There was a rush of air as a massive paw swiped over where we had been standing. “Clarity, run!” Scout yelled, scrambling to his hooves. “You too, c’mon.” He said as he grabbed my overcoat’s collar in his teeth and pulled me up.

Though I had figured out that something was wrong, my more practical mental faculties were still in shock. As a result, when Scout pulled me to my hooves, I didn’t run. Instead I stood there for a second, the cold and surprise overloading my already taxed brain. Scout tried to pull me along, but I couldn’t command my legs to run. And because I didn’t run, I was caught.

I felt something heavy slam into my back, buckling my knees again and sending a lance of pain up my spine. Long claws tried to dig into my back, instead only finding the armored plates Apparatchik had put on the coat. Still, the claws found purchase, and I was pulled away from Scout, up into the cold night air. He screamed my name after me, but it was soon lost to the wind as I was hoisted into the air.

I dangled in my coat, my own body weight keeping me pinned. My arms were locked by the sleeves over my head and my wings were pulled at a joint-straining angle. I was reminded of the wing-locks my brothers learned in military training that they would try on me. Squirming was useless, and thanks to the buttons keeping me fastened in I couldn’t slip out of the garment either. Instead I got a good look at what was holding me, the first real look at our stalkers.

Even this close it was hard to see the monster, and I could finally tell why. It was completely covered in dense, white fur that whipped in the wind like falling snowflakes at first glance. I could barely see the thing’s beady red eyes amongst all the fur, but I could see its massive jaw with uneven, jagged teeth. My heart pounded with primal fear at the size of the beast, and more specifically its mouth. The thing could eat me whole without any problems and though I knew it was useless I fought to free myself anyway.

That triggered something far more frightening. The monster saw my struggle, and it laughed. The deep rumbles from its chest and the gusts of foul-smelling, hot wind from its mouth were, without a doubt, laughter. The fucking thing was smart, it knew it was about to kill me, and it enjoyed my helplessness!

It slowly lifted me up, still laughing, until I was positioned above its open mouth. The cavernous maw below me sent my own gut down a bottomless hole along with all thought. The waves of rancid air from its laughter were making me sick, and the heat was…

Heat, heat! I still had a way to fight! Black Powder was in my coat’s breast pocket, I could maybe reach it! I threw everything I had into my arms and shoulders, trying to lever myself up enough to bite down on the handle of the gun. The monster must had noticed and found it funny, because it didn’t eat me, instead laughing harder. Ignoring it I strained against gravity, normally something so easy for a pegasus, feeling the fabric of my coat cut into my armpits and restrict blood flow. I started it loose feeling in my arms and feared I wouldn’t be able to hold myself up. The gun handle was so close, inches from my teeth, and…

I got it! Falling back down into my coat, I twisted to aim at the arm of the beast and fired like a madmare. It was near impossible to see the thing’s appendage, but by some miracle I hit it and set fire to the monster’s fur.

Roaring in surprise, the monster threw me away and sent me careening into a snowdrift several yards away. Somehow I had kept hold of Black Powder during my impromptu flight, though it wouldn’t do my much good now. The shock of being buried in the snow drift had robbed my limbs of all strength. I lay there, a crumpled heap, having avoided being devoured only to freeze to death. I could still hear the monsters roaring. I only hoped that I had distracted them long enough for Scout and Clarity to get away safely. Images of the nightmare I have in Weather Station Gamma flittered through my mind as I closed my eyes, giving into the cold.

Suddenly, movement. Something shoving the snow aside. Opening my eyes again, I saw pink light generating a gust of magical wind that blew the snow off of me. Out of the blizzard, Scout came up to me and pulled me to my hooves, yelling “C’mon, get up!”

I didn’t argue, though my frozen body had other ideas. Slower than any of us would have liked, we got moving again. I could see the monster that had attacked me in the distance, still flailing and trying to beat out the fire consuming its fur. Clarity kicked up more snow to hide us as we fled, Scout checking his PipBuck obsessively. “C’mon, c’mon almost…here!” We stopped, though where we were seemed no different than anywhere else. “Hey! Let us in! Open up!” Scout screamed, stomping his hooves, which caused the sound of clanking metal.

“Okay okay okay! Hold on, jeez!” The mare’s voice from before emanated from Scout’s PipBuck along with the sound of grinding gears. “I’ve almost got it….”

“G-g-g-guys?” Clarity stuttered, her voice small with worry and shaky with cold. We looked up and saw nothing up pure white.

“OPEN THE DOOR!” Scout bellowed.

All at once, the ground beneath our feet opened up. In an avalanche of snow and bodies, we tumbled down through the new hole. The monsters had lunged seconds before the hole opened, but fortunately it closed just as quickly. I could hear them roaring through the metal hatch we had fallen through.

“Whew! That was close, huh?” The same mare’s voice said, this time from in the room.

“T-t-too close.” Scout muttered, his teeth chattering as he extracted himself from the snow.

“Yeah, sorry about that, the hatch was stuck.” Our savior said, chuckling nervously.

“Well m-m-maybe you ssssshould keep the hinges oiled!”

“Hey.” Clarity said from somewhere, her own voice shaky.

“This tech is two hundred years old! Cut me some slack!” I couldn’t pin where her voice was coming from.

“Those things nearly ATE us!” Scout yelled, his anger granting his voice stability.

“And we’ll freeze to death if you don’t shut up!” Clarity said forcibly.

We would? I didn’t feel much. The world was kinda shaking, but I managed to latch onto her scream and look at her. Apparently she was hugging me and shaking horribly, why couldn’t I feel that? “Immmmmhm ccclll.” My words slurred horribly.

“She’s in advan… hyp…rmia! Quick…way…urry…”

The whole world was going topsy-turvy, like I was spinning out. I knew I was hearing words, but the spinning made it hard to focus on them. Apparently I was moving, but I couldn’t feel my body working. That should worry me, shouldn’t it? It probably should, but I couldn’t really bring myself to focus on it long enough to care.

At some point I stopped moving in a place that was very noisy. Something had been taken off of me and another thing put on and a third thing put in my hooves. The third thing was very warm, which I could feel as a tingly spiking sensation through my fetlocks. Nevertheless the heat gave me something to focus on, and once I did the world stopped spinning enough to let me take stock of where I was.

The first thing I noticed was the source of the noise, which I now recognized as clanking and hissing. It looked like some mad earth pony scientist’s interpretation of the cardiovascular system. I was sitting in front of the heart, a massive boiler with so many pistons and valves coming out of it I didn’t know how anypony could operate it. Radiating out from the boiler was an innumerable number of pipes, traveling into the back walls like cables on a terminal. The whole contraption was giving off lots of heat, which was slowly returning feeling to my body.

I still felt cold down to my core, so when I noticed the thing in my hooves was a cup of hot liquid I went to take a sip. So bad was my shaking that I nearly spilled the scalding liquid on myself, only a sudden magical aura steadying the cup prevented that. The magic wasn’t Clarity’s soft pink, but instead an electric blue. “Careful there.” A mare’s voice said. Following the voice, I finally got a good look at our savior.

She was a skinny unicorn mare with an ashy coat and wild mane the same color as her magic. She wore a long red scarf that looked like a tripping hazard and a rather silly looking pair of goggles. It was as if she had cut a piece of black cardboard into a square, punched two holes for the lenses and stuck it on her face with no obvious means of securing it. “And don’t drink too quickly now, the sudden temperature shift may shock your system. I once had a pony come in and glug down a hot chocolate so fast it cracked one of her teeth! Totally crazy.”

I nodded hesitantly, still shaking too hard to speak, and with her help took a slow, careful sip. The liquid was hot tea, much like the kind Sister had made for me, and sent a surge of heat through me. I could feel life coming back to my limbs, slowly but surely. After a few sips I had stopped shaking enough to speak. “Th-th-thank y-y-y-ou.”

“It’s no problem, can’t have the yeti eating anypony! Can you drink up on your own?” I nodded jerkily. “Awesome! You get warm, I need to go check my radar.” With that she scurried off, somehow not tripping on the scarf.

I scooted a little close to the boiler, thankful for the heat. My greatcoat had been laid out next to the huge machine to dry. There were dents in the plating where the monster, I guess they were called yeti, had grabbed it. I had been wrapped in a large wool blanket that was soaking in the heat of the boiler quite nicely. I wasn’t long before I had the shaking under control, though I still felt chilled to the bone. Still, the heat was comforting and the dull orange light the boiler gave off was making me sleepy. It had been too damn long since my last full night’s sleep, maybe I could rest now that we were out of danger.

“…cause of Sleet.” I heard Scout’s voice say. My ears perked up at the sound of my name and I glanced over my shoulder. He and Clarity were huddled together just out of the light being thrown off by the boiler. They were keeping their voices low, so I had to strain to hear them over the boiler. “We never should have come.”

“And what else could we do?” Clarity asked angrily.

“I don’t know, but anything would be better than this!” He snapped back. “We are trapped, Clarity! The dumb risk didn’t pay off this time!”

Dumb risk? I was reminded of when Scout had yelled at me for the exact same thing not long after we found Clarity. I felt like I was being thrown into the cold again, it was my fault we were in this predicament. If I had been stronger, we wouldn’t have been blinded by the storm. And even so, if I hadn’t been arrogant enough to try, I wouldn’t have been dead weight when we ran from the yeti. And in the end, it was my fault we came to this Goddesses-forsaken land in the first place. All the dumb risks I took had brought us here, trapped underground. I pulled the blanket over my head, hugged myself with the ugly, mutated wings and wallowed in my failure.

For a few minutes there was silence, then Clarity spoke. “We’ll find a way out. Then we’ll find my people and complete this mission.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Scout muttered pessimistically.

The sound of hoof steps approaching heralded Clarity magically lifting the blanket to look at me. “Sleet?” She asked. “You okay?”

I returned the look, hoping my distress would be attributed to the hypothermia. “Cold.” I said simply.

“Me too, can I share the blanket?”

I blinked in surprise, then nodded. “Yeah, sure.” With a wing, I held the blanket open for her.

The crystal mare got under the blanket and pulled it closed with her magic. “Sorry I’m still wearing this.” She said, referring to her cloth disguise, which was soaked in melted snow. “I’d take it off, but Scout says I shouldn’t until we know more about the pony that saved us.”

“S’okay, you’ll dry quickly.” I muttered. “You two are doing better than me anyway, it shouldn’t hurt you.”

“We were only thrown into one snow pile.” She reminded me.

“True.” We sat in silence for a bit before I spoke up, or at least tried to. “Clarity, I’m…”

“What’s it like?” She asked suddenly. “The sun, I mean.”

“The sun?” It had been so long since I’d seen it, I had to think about my response. How to describe the sun? It had been such an ordinary thing when I lived above the clouds, hardly something worth talking about. But then it came to me, the memory from when I had first escaped Talon Mountain and had seen the sunrise, the words coming along with it. “You know how you glowed so brightly when we first freed you?” She nodded, smiling happily at the memory. “It’s a bit like that, only constant. A giant ball of light and warmth that bathes the world below in comfort and happiness, every day of every year.” I found myself smiling, but it faded quickly. “At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be. The Enclave stole the sun away for themselves. And then we saw it so often that we forgot just how special it was.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Yeah.” I whispered, gazing at the ceiling, imagining the warmth of the sun on my feathers.

Clarity followed my gaze upwards, looking past the ceiling as I did to the sky above. She was silent for a moment as we sat there in contemplation before saying. “Well don’t worry. Once we beat the Enclave we can remove the cloud curtain, then the surface can have the sun again.”

I couldn’t share her optimism. “Provided I don’t get us all killed first.”

“Sleet, you can’t think that way…”

“How can I not?” I spat back, my anger flaring. “How many times have you two have been in peril just because you follow me around? We were just nearly eaten, for Luna’s sake!”

“What happens to Scout and I isn’t always your fault, Sleet.” Clarity said, her own voice hardening. “We aren’t pets that follow you and run in the way of bullets.”

“I know you aren’t but….damnit, you remember those robots in the factory? That was me! I turned them on!”

Clarity was taken aback by the admission, staring wide eyed at me. “You…turned them on us?”

“No! No, I activated the security because the raiders in there attacked me!” I covered my head with my hooves, feeling sick. “I didn’t know you two were following me, but that doesn’t mean a fucking thing! I nearly killed you two, even though I didn’t want to! And if you just keep following me around sooner or later you will get killed and it’ll be all my fault!”

Clarity fell silent as she pondered that. We both stared at the boiler, throwing off its orange light and hissing steam, equally lost in our thoughts. Eventually, Clarity spoke up. “What makes you think it’ll be your fault if we die?”
“Think of the things chasing me. The Enclave, the slavers, and my position with the Shadow King is tenuous at best.” I didn’t have any fire left in my voice, just weary resignation. “I’ve done nothing but run since I came down here, and the more who run with me, the more likely that somepony will trip.”

“So what? Just because it’s dangerous we shouldn’t help our friend?” What parts of her body I could see were gaining that jagged, angry shape she had in Sombra’s castle. “We should leave you to face all your problems alone because if we die it’ll hurt your feelings? Isn’t that a little selfish?”

Her words were like a blow to the head. My mind spun and I couldn’t speak, only stupidly stutter out incomplete thoughts. “I…I never…I couldn’t…” Selfish, wasn’t that what Swift Winds had said? That I could never leave well enough alone and accept what I had. I had friends, for the first time in my life I had real, honest friends, and because of the danger I was in I was trying to push them away? Would they be any safer anywhere else in the Wasteland? After all, those yeti had nothing to do with the Enclave, or Cat O’ Nine Tails, or anypony who wanted my head.

Clarity saw the impact her words had on me and softened a little. “Listen, all I’m saying is that we care for you and want to help.” She placed a hoof on my shoulder and I saw her smile in the shadows of her hood. “Nopony should have to face the world alone.”

Slowly, I returned the smile. “Thank you Clarity.” I said, hugging her. The rags illuminated from within as she glowed with happiness and I felt warm the whole way through.

Scout was watching us with a curious expression. “We still need a way out of here.” He said, though it was with more optimism than I’d expect.

“I can maybe help with that.” Our savior said, trotting back into the room. When Clarity and I hugged, the blanket had fallen enough to reveal my wings, so when the unicorn made her unexpected return I rushed to hide them again. “Uh, I kinda saw them already.” She said apologetically. “But you shouldn’t hide them, the feathers are really pretty!”

If Clarity’s words had been a blow to the head, that was a punch to the gut. “I don’t hide them because of the feathers.” I muttered. Though I should.

“Oh, um, well uh…” She kicked a hoof against the floor before remembering why she came in here. “Oh yeah! Follow me, I can get you all back topside and un-eaten!” With that she whirled around and cantered back the way she came.

The three of us traded looks, now I was sure this mare was a few clouds short of a rainy day and the others agreed. Still, we had little choice and she had saved us from being devoured once, so we followed her deeper into the bunker. I had retrieved my now-dry coat and after putting it back on, cantered up to the mare. “So what’s with the giant boiler?”

“That’s the heart of the whole operation!” She said cheerily. “And it’s not really a boiler, since it doesn’t do any actual boiling of its own. This whole area is over a massive geyser field, that thing collects the hot water and steam for us to use!”

“Wait, us?” Scout asked, having caught up.

“Yep! The super-secluded bunker used to be some Ministry of Wartime Technology thing, but was repurposed into a resource-generating plant after the bombs fell! This thing is HUGE and over most of it is a town connected right to the geothermic system!” Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks. It was so unexpected that we ended up walking several steps past her before realizing what happened. Just as soon as she stopped, she started up again by exclaiming “Oh! That’s right! I never introduced myself!” Dashing forward, she grabbed my hoof in both of hers and shook. “Hi! I’m Clouds!”

“Clouds?” I said, confused. “Not to be rude or anything, but that sounds like a pegasus name.”

“Well, yah see, my full name is Steam Clouds, cause you know.” She pointed to her Cutie Mark, which was of three interlocking bronze gears with steam hissing between them. “But most ponies call me Clouds, or Steam, I’ve even heard Head-In-The-Clouds, but I don’t think they meant anything mean by it.”

It took a while for me to process what she said, since she spoke so quickly, but the mention of a town jogged something in my memory. “You wouldn’t happen to know a ghoul named Jackpot would you?”

“Yeah, I know Jack I…wait a minute.” She fell silent again and jumped between the three of us. She examined my coat, Scout’s PipBuck, and finally (too quickly for any of us to stop her) she lifted Clarity’s hood before gasping in excitement. “You ARE them! Jack told me about you three and how you saved him and the others! And now I saved you, that’s AWESOME!”

“That is pretty convenient.” I said, not quite recovered enough to reciprocate her excitement. “But how can a town survive with those monsters out there?”

“It’s the geysers! The town is built up around them, and the heat keeps it from snowing too heavily. You saw how they were covered in white fur? They use that to hide in the blizzards, but with no blizzards in town they can’t hide so they don’t attack!”

“Why not? They were big enough that I don’t think a small town would give them much resistance.” Scout questioned.

Clouds took a breath to continue her explanation, but paused to consider something. “It’ll probably be easier if I just show you, follow me.” She continued walking and we followed. After several minutes of wandering halls with hissing steam pipes and sporadic emergency lights, we came to a large room with an equally large terminal in one of the walls. “Welcome to my lab!”

“Whoa…” I whispered in awe, looking about the haven of tech. The giant terminal was the most obvious thing in the room, but there was plenty of other scientific apparatuses and wonders to take in. I galloped over to a workbench that housed the disassembled remains of a suit of magical power armor. This was a much more heavily armored model than Enclave gear, and lacked wings, but it was still impressive to behold. “This is incredible!” I said, picking up the helmet.

“Isn’t it?” Clouds said happily, trotting over to me. “That’s a Steel Ranger right there! Or at least the suit of one. Found it in the workshop when I moved in. Try the helmet on!”

“Are you sure?” I asked, unable to hide my excitement. She nodded and I slipped the helmet on. It was made of a pony larger than I, but the cushions easily cradled my head allowing it to fit nicely. The lenses over the eyes gave everything a slightly green tint and there was a filter of some kind on the muzzle that was a little uncomfortable and smelled weird, but other than that it was surprisingly nice to wear.

Then it got even better. Clouds pushed a few buttons and booted up the helmet’s spell matrix. Instantly the lenses lit up, throwing the whole world into stark reality. The filter activated, the air becoming cool and fresh as I breathed in. What impressed me the most was the H.U.D. that appeared over my vision. Ever since I met him, I wondered what Scout’s E.F.S. looked like, and now I knew. In the lower-left corner of my vision a compass flickered to life. When I looked at Steam Clouds, a small green bar appeared on the compass that corresponded with her position. “This is SO COOL!” I said, grinning even though nopony could see my face.

“I know right!? Isn’t it amazing? I’m trying to get the whole suit up and running again, though since I rebooted the spell matrix I got the hard part out of the way. I think a few weeks more of work and I can get the whole thing online.”

“What else is supposed to go in this?” I asked. Once she had pointed it out I noticed that the display wasn’t complete.

“User diagnostics, weapon and ammo management, mission logs, all sorts of stuff!”

“Sounds like a PipBuck.”

“Stable-Tec and the M.W.T. did work together, so it’s possible there was some crossover.”

“Hey.” Scout said, cutting into the conversation. Clouds and I both turned to him, having completely forgotten about the other two. “You were going to tell us about the yeti?”

Clouds was quiet for a second before saying. “Oh! Oh yeah, I was! Sorry about that.” She galloped over to the huge monitor bank and started rapidly hitting keys.

“Killjoy.” I muttered, trotting over to them.

“And take that helmet off, it’s freaking me out.”

I pulled the helmet off, shaking out my mane as I did. “I really want to keep this thing.”

“Sorry, I need it, and it’s a bit too heavy to fly in.” Clouds said. “But it would be awesome if you could get me some of that Enclave armor!”

“I can’t exactly send in a requisition form, but if I do you have to promise to let me play with that some more!”

“Deal! Now then…” She hit one last key and brought up a collection of pictures on several monitors. Each detailed a different part of the yeti’s physiology. “A few years back Jack and his ghouls managed to kill one of the things and brought it in for study. They seem to be descendants of pre-war cave trolls that were living in the Frozen North when the megaspells hit. Mutations include the thick fur that not only insulates them from the cold but also disguises them in the snow.” She tapped a few keys and zoomed in on a drawing of an eye. “The biggest one is their development of the ability to see heat.”

“That’s how they can hunt in the snow.” I said catching on.

“Mhm! It’s also how Jack and the ghouls can move around without drawing their attention. They don’t have body heat, making them effectively invisible. It’s not perfect though, the yeti also developed increased intelligence. They barely count as sentient, but it lets them compensate for weaknesses.” She bit her lip and kicked the ground. “Jack’s group used to be a lot bigger, then they tried attacking the yeti cavern. The things learned that weapon fire generates heat, so they let themselves be put under suppressing fire until the guns heated up enough to track.”

“That’s horrible.” I said, cringing.

“Yeah, but it works in our favor too. Not only do the geysers keep the snow back, but the heat they put off effectively blinds the yeti. It still means the damn things are drawn to Meltwater like moths, but they just kinda stand menacingly on the town’s outskirts.” She sighed. “Anyway, that’s your lesson on the yeti, any questions?”

“Yeah, how do we get past them?” Scout asked.

“I don’t know why you’d WANT to.” Clouds said. “I mean, other than getting out of the North, what else could you need up there?”

“There’s something we have to take care of.” I said. “We can’t be waylaid here for too long.”

“Weeellll…” She said, worrying her lower lip. “I was working on something that might help living ponies mask their heat. It’s still a proto-type, but I’ll see what I can do about getting it up and running. In the meantime, you can all go topside and check out the town. The elevator is at the end of that hallway over there.”

“Sounds good.” I said, standing up. “We’ll try and find Jackpot, so contact us through him when you’re ready.” Clouds nodded, already distracted by her computer work. We easily found the elevator and ascended to the town.

Steam Clouds had called it Meltwater and I could see why. A steady rain was falling with rivulets of water pouring off the roof of the small shed the elevator occupied. What little snow hid in the shadows of awnings was clear slush and the air was fuzzy with thin fog. I slipped my wings away as we stepped into the humid air, so very different from the terrible cold we had been fighting through. The ground shook slightly and with a great whoosh a column of hot water and steam shot up a couple blocks over.

The town itself was fairly solid, the buildings were either concrete, above-ground extensions of the bunker or metal repurposed into housing. The ground beneath our hooves felt weird, it was soft and springy from all the water seeped into it. I realized with sense of strange nostalgia that this is what soil was supposed to feel like, soft and alive instead of frozen and dead. Scout walked over to one of the streams of water dripping off the roof and held his PipBuck up to it. “Amazing.” He muttered when it didn’t start clicking. “I’ve never seen so much fresh water in one place.”

“No wonder this town seems so big.” I said, looking around. “It’s got enough fresh water to last everypony their whole lives twice over.”

“This must have been what it was like before the war.” Clarity said, watching a pair of ponies trot by. They both looked well fed and clean, at least by Wasteland standards. “When ponies didn’t have to worry about getting their next drink or meal.” She looked up to the sky, her hood slipping back slightly. I could see droplets of water glimmering on her crystal skin. “Imagine if all this could go to the rest of the Wasteland.”

“It would certainly make things much better.” I said. At first I wondered why Meltwater wasn’t trading freely with the rest of Equestria, but then I remembered the yeti, who had effectively blockaded the town. Something would have to be done about that. But not now I reminded myself. “C’mon, we should find Jackpot and touch base.”

The others agreed and we set off. After asking a few locals for directions, we learned that Jackpot and his crew lived in a repurposed ammo storage facility near the edge of town. On our way there I had to repress several loud yawns. With the adrenaline rush of the yeti attack a distant memory, my body was desperate for the chance to sleep. On top of that we were walking on treacherous, slushy ground and my sleepiness was not helping my efforts to stay upright. After the third time of nearly falling on my face I spoke up. “Maybe we should find a place to sleep instead.”

“I don’t think this place gets a lot of tourism.” Clarity said. “Would there even be an inn?”

“It’s worth looking.” Scout said through his own yawn. “I could use some sleep too.”

He went over to another pony on the street to ask them about a place to stay for the night. I trotted in a circle and tried not to fall asleep on my hooves. The warm air was compounding my sleepiness and I caught my head nodding every few seconds. The movement wasn’t helping much for keeping me awake, and if I didn’t stop I’d probably run into something, but it was better than nothing.

It was during a turn of my little circle that I spotted something. A glimmering in one of the alleyways. It was something metallic and polished to a mirror shine, making it glint even in the shadowed recesses of the alley. Curiosity took hold, and I trotted towards the alley. As I got closer I swore the glint moved away, as if afraid of me. I froze, not quite sure what it was but not wanting to spook it if it was a living thing. But what living thing could possibly glimmer like that? Slowly, I took a step. It backed up. Another step, again it backed up. I leaned in without moving my legs, squinting into the darkness. I could just barely make something out, like some sort of mask.

As if it read my thoughts, the glinting mask turned and bolted down the alley with nary a sound. “Hey! Wait!” I called, galloping after it. Faintly, I heard Scout yell after me but I paid him no heed. I needed to know what this thing was. The glimmer flitted in and out of sight as it shot down the alley. The smell of rancid trash made my already bleary eyes water, so I couldn’t get a good look at it. Was somepony wearing that mask, if indeed it even was a mask? I didn’t know, but I was determined to find out.

The glimmer rounded the corner at the end of the alley. I burst out into the street after it, head snapping every which way to try and spot it. Eventually I caught sight of it, the little silver glimmer ducking into another alley. I ran towards it and was about to gallop into the alley, but ended up smacking into somepony in my haste. “Watch it, smoothskin!” A gargling voice snapped at me.

I recognized who I had run into, the last time I’d seen the blind mare she’d been glowing like a pony-shaped bolt of lightning. Because I was so eager to chase after the glimmer, I didn’t make the connection between her and the town. “Sweet Spot? What are you doing here?”

The ghoul mare’s ears twitched and she tilted her head quizzically. “Sleet Gray? That you?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t see…” I cut myself off, flushing slightly, but I had already said it.

“Oh please, don’t start that.” She said in a tone that said if she had eyes she’d be rolling them. “Not everypony missing a pair of eyes is sensitive about it. I got bigger things to worry about, like being dead.”

I coughed uncomfortably. “Yeah, I guess that would take…er…priority.”

“Just a little, yeah.” I felt my cheeks heating up as if she were radiating her displeasure at me. “Why are you in Meltwater anyway?”

“We were kinda attacked by yeti, had to take refuge in the bunker.”

She chuckled, her boiled voice making it sound like grinding rock. “You had to deal with Clouds? I almost feel sorry for you.”

“She isn’t bad.” I said, feeling a need to defend the loopy mare. “She’s working to help this place!”

“Yeah, yeah I bet.” She said, waving a dismissive hoof. “I just zone her out.”

I snorted in annoyance, remembering why I didn’t like this mare. Spitefully, I said. “Well I hate to break it to you, but Clouds is planning a visit with Jackpot.”

“Clouds come out of her cave? What’s the occasion?”

“She’s working on something for me. When it’s done we’re going to meet up at Jackpot’s place.” Sweet Spot groaned and I felt a rush of satisfaction. “Now, could you be so kind as to take me there? I don’t want to miss my appointment.”

Sweet Spot looked like she was going to tell me where I could stick my appointment, but was cut off as Scout and Clarity came galloping up to us. “Sleet, what the Hell was that all about?” Scout asked with an annoyed growl.

The distraction of running into Sweet Spot made me forget that I had ran off on my friends. But what was I going to tell them? I had spotted something shiny that may or may not have been a hallucination induced by lack of sleep? Mind spinning, I spouted the first excuse that came to mind. “I…wanted to go for a run.”

My friends exchanged disbelieving glances. “Run from what?” Scout asked.

“Nothing, just go for a run.” I did my damnedest to keep my face impassive. “You know, for fun. I mean, I was falling asleep on my hooves.” I bounced a few times, as if shaking out my legs. “Gotta keep the blood flowing.” An uncomfortable silence fell, punctuated by Sweet Spot’s snickering. “So! Anyway, I found Sweet Spot, what say we go to Jackpot’s place and sleep there? Sound good?”

“Yeah, follow me.” Sweet Spot said grudgingly. Without looking to see if we were following, she headed off.

As we walked, I scanned every alley we passed, trying to catch a glimpse of the silver mask, but to no avail. That didn’t stop me from trying, and eventually Clarity noticed my twitchy behavior. “Is something wrong, Sleet?”

“What was that?” I asked, or at least meant to ask. It came out as a loud yawn instead. “Nothing, nothing. I just tired. Mind playing tricks.”

“Tricks enough to have you run down random alleys?”

I was in the middle of another yawn when she said that, the shock turning it into a coughing fit. “Wh-what do you mean?” I choked out.

“I saw you, that wasn’t just some random run. You had seen something down that alley and ran after it. I want to know what.”

“It was nothing, seriously!” I said, hoping she would drop the topic.

“C’mon Sleet.” She said sternly. When had she learned to talk like that? Had she hung around Sister too long?

“I uh…thought I saw something…shiny” Sweet Celestia and Luna you sound like you’re five. “Shining! Something shining in the alley! And when I approached it, you know.” I waved my hoof as if shooing away a fly. “It moved away, so I chased after it.”

I expected her to laugh, but she didn’t. Instead, there was a note of worry in her voice as she spoke. “Do you have any idea what it was?”

“Not really, it kinda looked like a mask but there was nopony there to wear it.”

“How odd.” She said a bit too calmly, looking at me from under her hood.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I said, shoulders slumping.

“Hardly, I think you’re just tired.” She said around her own yawn. “Goddesses know I am.”

“Yeah, but at least you can get a full night’s sleep.” I said wryly.

“Not as often as you think.” She muttered.

“Well you smoothskins can have fun with your sleep real soon, cause we’re here.” Sweet Spot said, cutting into the conversation.

“Here” was a rather underwhelming square of concrete with a steel door and no windows. “You live here?” I asked, not believing it.

“Remember how you acted when you first woke up around us?” Sweet Spot asked. I flushed and nodded, but then remembered she couldn’t see the nod and stammered out an embarrassed ‘yes’. “Well, you got over it pretty quickly, most ponies don’t. We may be allowed into Meltwater, and we may be irreplaceable for the town’s survival, but we sure as Hell aren’t welcome.”

“That hardly seems fair.” I muttered sympathetically, knowing what it felt like to be an outcast, though not as extreme as this.

“You get used to it, besides I can’t see how shitty our place is, so I don’t care.” Despite that she was still able to find and open the door with practiced ease and let us in. Inside was, if anything, more desolate than out. Most of the walls were bare, pockmarked here and there with holes from shelving units long since torn down. A single light bulb embedded in the center of the ceiling flickered mournfully, casting more shadows than it dispelled. The only other thing in the room was a door leading to an elevator.

The sepulchral room sent shivers up my spine and I wondered how anypony, dead or alive, could stand to be here. “So, where are the others?” I asked, looking around the tiny room. It was abandoned save for us, and frankly I didn’t think that the group of ghouls could stay only in here anyway.

“The lower levels. The bunker extended under most of the town. A few hallways collapsed years ago, cutting this place off from the rest of the bunker. Perfect little island to shove the ghouls onto, eh?” She opened the lift, allowing us to all cram in. Even though I knew she was perfectly sane and wouldn’t kill me, being shoved into a tight space with Sweet Spot reminded me of my first night in the Wasteland. The creaky and rattling lift didn’t ease the tension I felt, it sounded to my ears like the screech of a ghoul horde.

After a short, uncomfortable ride, we arrived at the lower levels. This section wasn’t all that different from Steam Clouds’, though it was significantly more run down. Water leaked everywhere, lights flickered on and off, and as we walked down the hallway there were patches of clammy cold where water sat stagnant in its pipes.

“How do you live in these conditions?” I asked, shuddering as cold water dripped on my head.

“Well it’s not like we ghouls need a lot of accommodations, heat and cold don’t mean much to us and it’s not like we have to keep food fresh.” She growled irritably when she stepped in a puddle. “But even ghouls have standards, we just haven’t gotten around to fixing most of the place up yet.”

It turned out that “fixed up” just meant “less leaky”. As we moved deeper into the ghoul’s home we stopped getting dripped on every few seconds, though the heating and lighting didn’t get any better. Still, after the time we had in the blizzard and the perpetual rainstorm over Meltwater the chance to get dry was welcome.

We had entered a large room with a number of tables and various other things scattered about. This was where we found the first other member of the salvage team. It was the unicorn stallion who had served as the team’s demolitions expert. He was slouched at one of the tables, a number of empty bottle surrounding him. He looked up at our entrance, and when he saw my friends and I he leapt up, magically lifted a bottle and yelled “INTRUDERS! I’ll bash yer heads in!”

Sweet Spot groaned and pressed a hoof to the bridge of her nose. “Caber, I’m the blind one not you. Can’t you see I let them in?”

The bottle lowered slightly as he lost some bluster. “Well, err, they coulda coerced yah. By force.”

“Of course they could of.” She said patronizingly. “Don’t you recognize them?”

He squinted at us for a long time before shaking his head. “Nope.”

“Will this help?” I asked, spreading my wings through the slits of my coat.

Caber jumped in surprise, throwing the bottle against the celling where it smashed and rained glass on him. He didn’t seem to notice as he rubbed his eyes and gave us another look. “I’ll be, yer the ponies frem the ‘ospital!”

“Congratulations, you want a medal?” Sweet Spot asked.

“Got any beer?”

“NO!”

“I didn’t know ghouls could get drunk.” Scout said.

“Oh its possible, just takes a load a’ booze!” Caber said, grabbing another bottle in his magic and taking a swig.

“And he should know better than to waste caps on it.” Jackpot said as he entered the room. “Getting just one pony drunk is horribly inefficient.” He walked over to us with an amicable smile and shook my hoof. “Good to see you alive, Sleet Gray.”

“Good to be alive.” I replied. “Though I didn’t make it out,” I glanced back at my mutant wings and the happiness I felt at seeing the friendly ghoul soured. “completely unscathed.”

“Huh.” He said, looking at my wings. I started putting them away again, not liking the attention. “Well, could be worse. You coulda became one of us!” That didn’t cheer me up, and when Jackpot noticed he changed the subject. “So what brings you around here? And how’d you get through the yeti?”

“It’s actually because of the yeti that we’re here.” I said, cobbling together a story on the fly. I damn well couldn’t tell them who we were now. But what was a plausible reason for a group of scavengers to enter the desolate Frozen North? A memory flashed through my mind, the map I had seen in the Stable Tec factory, and a lie came with it. “We were planning on visiting his Stable.” I said, gesturing to Scout. “But we got a bit too close to the snowline and the yeti attacked. They chased us deeper into the blizzard, if it wasn’t for Steam Clouds they’d have caught us.”

Jackpot nodded in understanding. “Yeah, Clouds contacted me. Said she’d be dropping by to deliver something for somepony, though she wouldn’t say who. Wanted it to be a surprise.” He chuckled. “And some surprise it is! Of course you three are welcome to stay, we never got the chance to properly celebrate you helping us anyway!”

“Actually, we were hoping to get some sleep.” Scout said harshly. “Cause, you know, we still do that.”

“Scout, what the Hell?” I reprimanded under my breath.

“No, it’s fine.” Jackpot said. “Been two hundred years since I’ve had to sleep, sometimes forget that other ponies need to. There’s a barracks in this section that we never got around to taking the beds out of. Follow me.”

A few minutes later we were settling into the barracks. I thanked Jackpot for his hospitality, and he promised to wake us if Clouds showed up while we were sleeping. The beds were musty and old, but no worse than most other places to sleep in the Wasteland. The walls of the barracks were lined with bunk beds, each of us taking one. Clarity and Scout each took a bottom bunk, but I fluttered to the top of mine. Talking with the ghouls had distracted me from being underground, but now that we were alone I was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic and any altitude I could get was welcome.

I bid my friends goodnight, closing my eyes. But, as I was quickly becoming accustomed to, sleep eluded me. In spite of my exhaustion my mind spun with countless doubts and worries. Would my plan to betray Sombra work? Could we leave Meltwater and escape the yeti alive? And despite Clarity’s reassurance earlier, I still feared for my friends.

“Damnit.” I muttered, rolling over in bed for the umpteenth time trying to get comfortable. I looked down towards my friends. Clarity had fallen asleep quickly enough. I marveled at how a pony so vulnerable to emotions and who had gone through so much could sleep so peacefully. And Scout, the twitchy survivalist, who slept like a rock. Except there was something wrong, when I looked at Scout he was hunched under his blanket, shoulders tense. “Hey, Scout.” I said under my breath.

“Hm?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Hey, I’m the liar, not you.”

He tuned to glare at me over his shoulder. “Was that supposed to be funny?”

I flinched at his glare. “Look, I sorry about getting us stuck here…”

“I’m not angry about that, Sleet.” He interrupted. “It’s the sort of thing I’m coming to expect from you.”

“Then what’s wrong?” I asked, trying not to let the sting of his last comment color my voice.

He was silent for a long time, to the point where I thought he had fallen asleep. Finally, he spoke up. “I…didn’t leave my Stable under the best circumstances. It’s not that I hated being down there or anything, actually I kinda liked it, it suited me.” He pulled up his PipBuck’s map, which I could partially see over his shoulder, and scrolled to the little gear mark that signified Stable 130. “But after what happened, I can never go back.” He looked back at me, his eyes tired and resigned. “You know what that feels like, don’t you?”

I thought of my family, neighbors, almost everypony I’d ever known laying shattered and frozen on the Wasteland. “Yeah, I do.”

Scout rolled over again so I could only see his back. “Get some sleep, Sleet. Getting out of here is going to be a challenge, and I need you alert.”

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. For a long time I laid there, my mind spinning as if caught in a tornado. At some point, I closed my eyes and a short time after that I feel into a sleep troubled by dreams of Stables, yeti, and silver lights.
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Footnote: Level up!
New Perk: Crash Course- One week in the Wasteland will teach you more than a whole semester of fancy book-learning, provided you survive. You gain a +5 increase to your Science and Medicine skills.

Author's Notes:

Mother of all things holy was this chapter a nightmare to get done! Between computer troubles making me lose half my work early on, having to scrap the end of it at least three times, and a marked increase in my schoolwork it's been a challenge and a half to get this done. But now, at long long last, its complete and ready for the reading public! I hope you all enjoy, I highly encourage comments and criticisms and I thank each and everyone for reading!