With a light clip-clop of hooves, I touched down on the stone floor of the cave and trotted towards the door. Stepping out into the halls, I was a little surprised to see nopony around. “Hello?” I called. “Anypony there?”

All I got was my voice echoing back to me. Was it just really early and I was the only one up? Maybe I should ask Scout what time it was? Or had he even been in the room? Shaking my head, I decided against it and continued to wander the cave. Silence, nothing but silence. There was no indication that anyone had ever been here ever, let alone lived in exile here. I was just happy I could see where I was going.

Stepping into a wide open area, I thought I spotted something in the distance. Squinting, I could just barely make out a pony-shaped figure stepping around a bend. “Hey! Hello?” I called after them. They either didn’t hear me or didn’t care, because they kept right on walking.

Settling into a canter, I hurried after the figure. “Wait! Do you know where everypony went?” I rounded the corner at speed and promptly felt my hooves slip from beneath me. Landing painfully, I slid for several seconds on a slick coating of ice. “What the Hell?” I groaned, trying to pick myself up. My hooves slipped and slid, until something caught under me and brought me down again. Looking back, I tried to determine what had tripped me.

It was a skull. A pony skull, lodged in the ice. I tried to scream, but it felt like the air had turned to water in my throat. I tried again and again, but sound refused to come out, my chest tightening as my straining lungs refused to empty.

I tried scrambling backwards away from the skull. As I did, I began to take notice of other corpses, ponies of all kinds lying dead and frozen in varying states of decay. Not looking where I was going, morbidly entranced by the grim scene around me, I ran into something else, something that slipped through the plates of my greatcoat’s armor and stab into my back. I screamed again, this time in pain, managing to somehow be heard. It was awkward, but I managed to twist around to see what had stabbed me. It was the horn of a dead unicorn, skeletonized and locked in a twisted shape.
From the point of the wound, a cold pain grabbed hold, keeping me locked in place. At first I believed my spine had been damaged, but as a creeping burning sensation radiated from my back, I knew it to be much worse. I fumbled with the claps of my greatcoat as the burning feeling began to encompass my torso. But my arms moved like lead, hardly obeying my commands. Eventually I got enough claps undone to pull them all open in one yank. By this point, the burning had completely consumed by body and was working down my legs and up my neck.

Opening the coat revealed what was happening to me. My coat had become encased in a thin layer of ice, beneath which I could see my flesh had turned black and dead. Horror twisted my gut, though I could barely feel it through the screaming of my dying nerves. “Help! Somepony help me!” I screeched in desperation, trying to pull myself free of the dead pony’s horn. I prayed that the figure I had seen earlier would hear me and come before I joined the bodies frozen in the ice that coated the cave.

Clip, clop, clip, clop. The sound of approaching hooves. Relief nearly made me cry as I continued to yell for aid. “Over here! Please, hurry!” The ice had taken everything below my neck, locking me in place. The figure came around a corner, still too shadowed to be seen. “Help! I’m…” I couldn’t finish my plea, but I did learn something about the figure. It raised a wing, and the ice rapidly sealed my mouth.

Shh now. The ice vibrated, as if it was speaking. No, that wasn’t quite right, the voice was coming from the ice but the vibration was something else, something like fear. Shh little pony…

My breathing accelerated, made difficult by the ice compressing my chest and creeping over my nostrils. My body was entirely dead, unable to even strain against its imprisonment. From this angle, I could still see my legs, see the necrotic, frozen flesh, locked horrifically in place. Clip, clop, clip, clop. The figure was close now, close enough for me to see. If all my senses hadn’t been destroyed, I’m sure they would have fallen away from fear. I tried to close my eyes, but frozen tendrils locked onto my eyelids, keeping them open. I couldn’t look away, couldn’t even scream as the figure drew closer.

As I drew closer. The cool blue coat was drawn tighter over withered muscles and bulging bone. The gray mane was disheveled and frosted over at manic angles. From the wings hung heavy icicles that scraped almost tenderly over the frozen floor. Her mouth was sealed much like mine was, but in a wide, toothy grin.
And the eyes. The eyes were pits of blackness, glistening with crystalized tears that hadn’t fallen in the Goddess knew how long. Shh, little pony. I said, leaning over myself, grinning that mad grin. She raised a hoof, cracked, pitted, and frosted over, and reached slowly towards my eyes. Shhhhhhh……

I awoke, frozen in fear. I was twisted at a spine-bending angle on my cloud facing the ceiling, staring at the blurry rocks. Tears eventually began to fall from my eyes, running out the corners and down my face. And still I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything, but lay there, silently crying, as my own frozen grin laughed at me in my mind. I tried to close my eyes, to escape. My chest was heaving as I fought for breath, finally forcing my way to blessed darkness. The image still taunted me, I begged it to leave me at peace. Please, go away. Please…please…please…
please

help….
(>Correct balance? Y/N
Yyyyyyyyyyy
What’s going on?” such pretty lights….hellowhosethere?
…not Worth it…pink, what was pink? Clarity.don;thave that. None here, sold out please come back…
3.1415926534…no 5 5 what? No, not five, 3.Red slipshsplash what else it red? fish what were You thinking
Fix it”.”ignoreher. Why would she do that? Who are you to say?
What’s something else? Tech tec check wreck peck Peak? Peek, yespeektakeapeekbut do not leak lest you be
Too weak to do it. Is that you”Klri>corrupted dar…*backspace* a… *backspace* t… &backsp—ce(
Back got any more? C LANTURN! A..Y…R…E E e é EM EMP?badumpbadumpbadump

Well, this is “hope”less. Can’t Listen Anymore, Reason I Trick You [s](Saw what I did there? Pretty cool huh?”)
I think it’s time we got back on track.
No! I don;t want to! “Thi’sll nvr work!.@crrryyysssstaaallsssssss whendid
Shhhhhh……….)

Blearily, I rubbed at my eyes. Granules of salt rubbed irritatingly against my face, which was my first indication something was amiss. I remembered waking up from that Goddesses-awful nightmare, and most of what had come after I did. Why, then, were my tears dry? Hadn’t that just been a minute ago? No it couldn’t have been, there had been something else, hadn’t there? It was so hard to remember…

Sitting up and looking around the room, I spotted Scout going through his duffel bag. The light of his PipBuck lantern swayed as he worked, casting crazy shadows over the walls. “Hey,” I said, catching his attention.

“You’re awake?” He asked, looking over his shoulder.

“I hope so, what time is it?”

He checked his PipBuck. “Half an hour after sunrise, relatively speaking. Hard to tell in the cave, but it’s usually around this time.” Was it really? Had it been that long? Or had that been long at all? When had I even woken up? It was impossible to tell the time, or even relative changes in time. My head had gone completely fuzzy.
I rubbed my face with my hooves, muttering “Goddesses, I hate caves.”
“We have bigger problems to worry about.” He said, slinging his duffel over his shoulder.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“We have no way out of here. We lost the tarp.”

I felt a little cold ball of dreadful realization form in my heart. “Oh fuck, you’re right.” I murmured. “Oh fucking Hell you’re right!” All thoughts of fuzzy recollection were shoved to the side as panic set in. We couldn’t get out! We were perfectly free to go, but we couldn’t get out without dying! I started to breathe more rapidly, nearing hyperventilation before my broken rib started to protest. At least that’s confirmation this isn’t a dream.

As I calmed my breathing, Scout was exiting our quarters. Lying down on my cloud, I flapped my wings to follow him. “So, what do we do?” I asked him, desperately hoping he had an answer.

“I don’t know.” He said morosely. “At the very least we can ask the crystal ponies. They must have some means of getting through the blizzard.”

He was right, otherwise they’d have no way of getting to their different hideouts. There was a major problem blocking that option, though. “All we need to do is get them to tell us.” I said. Scout’s shoulders tensed, he didn’t respond. We wandered the halls of the cave for several minutes. I had no idea where Scout was going, but I trusted it was somewhere that would help us. “Have you seen Clarity or Jackpot?” I asked him.

“No, neither of them returned to the room as far as I can tell. I don’t know about Jackpot, but I’m guessing Clarity just stayed with her parents.”

Something about what he said triggered a strange sense of déjà vu. Did it have to do with my fuzzy memories? Had they just been a dream, something to do with Clarity and her family? I sighed, leave it to me to have one good, or at least neutral, dream out of a hundred nightmares and immediately forget it.

I decided to let go of that worry, at least for now. Between the worry outside, the worry in the Empire, and the worry walking beneath me, I had too much on my mind to care about one fuzzy dream. And I was worried about Scout. I could tell our little talk the night before was weighing on him. He had basically avoided all eye contact with me in the time since I woke up, and the clipped note in his voice was hard to ignore. I needed to talk to him, to get some sort of companionship going between us. Right now, we were hardly travelling partners let alone friends. And we needed to be, because reluctance and uncertainty weren’t going to get us anything except slowly killed. I’d lived in the Enclave long enough to know that.

“Scout,” I said “about what we talked about last night…”

“Don’t bother, Sleet.” He said, cutting me off. “We got as far as we’re going to with that.”

“Are you really so sure about that?” I asked. He nodded and accelerated his pace. Grinding my teeth in annoyance, I flew ahead of him and blocked his path. “You want to know what’s really annoying me about this?” I demanded. Not waiting for an answer, I continued. “The fact that you change your story every Goddesses-damned time! First it’s because you don’ know, then it’s to return the favor of me helping you, now it’s because we’re on the same shit lists?” I jabbed my hoof at him angrily. “THAT is what’s shit here! And I need you to either make up your mind or tell the truth!”

“Says the liar?” He snapped back. “What part of you has an ounce of truth, huh?”

I felt the base of my neck itch, right where the stitches were. “At least I never hid why I cared about your sorry ass! I saved you out of gratitude for what you did for me, and after that I never wanted to keep you around cause it would just get you killed! I’VE never changed THAT story!” I made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a growl. “But the longer I have you around, you and Clarity, the more I realize that it would have been stupid for me to go alone. There are too many time’s I’d be dead if you weren’t around for me to comfortably think about.” I bowed my head, strangely remembering something Comet Strike had said on the slopes of Heaven’s Point. “So, I appreciate having you around, and I want you to stay, no matter what my ‘antiquated warrior honor’ tells me.” Much calmer now, I looked him in the eyes. “I gave you a straight answer, now I want one from you. Otherwise, how can I trust you if I don’t know why you stick around?”

I could see him wrestling with what he wanted to say. For the longest time he looked anywhere but at me, until finally he relented. “Fine, I’ll tell you.” He sat down against of the wall of the cave, sighing. “I’m still not sure why I saved you in the first place, but I do know why I’m still here. It’s because you remind me of somepony I knew from my Stable.”

Of all the possible answers, this is the one I didn’t really expect. “I do?”

“Yeah. Scout isn’t just my name, it’s what I did back in 130, and most scouts worked in pairs. My partner was a lot like you, she made up stupid plans that had no right working as well.” I wanted to be indignant, but he was right. He continued, almost wistfully. “I actually liked running with her. It was fun to push our limits, and our tribe was neutral enough that we could get away with it.” His expression darkened. “But it didn’t last, that’s why I had to leave.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“We fucked up. Botched a mission, and nearly got a lot of ponies, ourselves included, killed. It was enough to drive me from my home, because if I wasn’t there then maybe things would calm down. I was alone since then,” he gave me a wry smile “until I found you bleeding out on the ground.”

I smiled back, but curiosity still nagged me. “So, what went wrong? What was your mission?”

“That,” he said, standing “is not something I feel like talking about. That okay with you, boss?”

I flushed a little. “Y-yeah, that’s fine.” I said lamely. “And I’m not your boss…”

“You act like it a lot!” He said, trotting around me.

“It’s not my fault you guys act like I’m the leader!” I yelled after him. He ignored me and kept walking. “Hey!” Flapping my wings, I chased after him further into the crystal caves.

Scout and I wandered for several minutes, but we couldn’t find Clarity and her family. In fact, we couldn’t find anypony. The whole cave seemed abandoned. I was beginning to worry that they had packed up and moved to a new hideout without us when Scout spoke up. “Got a contact, this way.” He turned and trotted in the direction his E.F.S. dictated.

Following the contact, we found Jackpot wandering on his own. The ghoul was the last person I wanted to talk to, but he may be a solution to our problem. “Hey, Jackpot.” I greeted him.

“Scout, Gray.” He acknowledged us. “Sleep well?”

“Not exactly.” I said, trying to forget last night’s dreams. “But we have a bigger problem to worry about.”

“Yeah, you have no way out.” He said. At our surprised looks, he shook his head, sighing. “I had all night to think about it, remember?”

“Of course.” I muttered. Out loud, I said. “So what do you propose we do?”

“Normally I’d say I could just go get you a new tarp.” He said. “But the problem is I have no idea where we are in relationship to Meltwater. Even if I checked Scout’s map, there’s no guarantee I could even find the way back.”

“Damnit.” I swore. There had to be something we could do. “Maybe we can get a message to Clouds. See if there’s a way she can locate us and bring a tarp herself.”

“And how would we do that?”

“Scout, let me see your PipBuck.” I said, jumping down next to him. The fall stung my rib, but it was a minor pain that spoke to the healthy progress of my recovery. Painful as his treatment had been, I owed Fractal for his help.

Scout gave me his wrist, and I started poking around with the arcano-tech device strapped to it. I quickly brought up the radio page and locked onto the signal I recognized as Clouds’. Tuning into the channel, Clouds’ voice came through the speakers. –ot the ones I’m looking for. They’ll know who they are. If you’re listening, I just…I want to make sure you’re okay. I mean, I don’t know how you can even tell me but…Look we’re just all really really worried about you okay? Please, say something… Message repeats. Anypony out there, if you’re listening, you’re not the ones I’m looking for…

As soon as the message began to repeat itself, I muted the broadcast. I had never heard Clouds sound so…lifeless. In the short time I’d known her she had been as bright and energetic as her little brother’s name. To hear her like that, made my own heart darken. I sucked in a deep breath and held it for several seconds to clear my head. I spoke in a rush as the breath came out. “Alright, I got her signal, gonna try and send a ping.”

My plan was to open the radar program and radio channel simultaneously and shoot a ping over the airwaves to Clouds. The only problem was, advanced as it may be; the PipBuck wasn’t designed to handle too many functions at once. Diagnostics and positioning took up a lot of processing power, meaning that the other modes like inventory management and record keeping needed to be accessed one at a time.

But I had an idea to open both at the same time. It was the simple matter of shutting down the usual background functions to clear up space. Simple, but if I did it wrong, then I could potentially crash Scout’s PipBuck for good. “Alright Scout, how much do you know about PipBucks?” I asked.

“I’m not a technician if that’s what you’re asking.” He said. “But what do you need?” I explained my plan and, with his help, I was able to carefully shut the systems down. Scout looked around, brow furrowed. “It’s weird like this, looking around without the interface up. I’ve had it on constantly since I got my Cutie Mark. Not having it on, I feel kind of blind.”

“Yeah, well welcome to my world.” I huffed. At least he had one to lose! I didn’t even know what it felt like to wear a PipBuck! Even so, I didn’t let my indignation stop me from my task. The interface clearly wasn’t designed for what I was doing and required a lot of switching back and forth. Eventually though, I got it to work.

My indication of this was Scout’s scream of shock. “Holy fuck!” He tore his hooves away and threw them over his ears. “What in Celestia’s name did you do, Sleet?!”

“I sent the ping.” I said. He continued to glare at me, though a bit of confusion mixed into his expression. “I sent the ping!” I repeated louder. He raised an eyebrow. Reaching over, I pulled one of his hooves away and yelled in his ear “I DID THE THING!”

“Goddesses!” He yelled, shoving me away and covering his ears again. “Are you trying to make me deaf?”

I fell back against the wall with a grunt. “I must not have been able to shut off the sound part of the interface, meaning you heard the ping.” Scout wasn’t even looking at me. “And I don’t care if you didn’t hear that!”

“If you two are done being petulant foals, maybe you can test if that worked.” Jackpot said, shaking his head.

With a huff, I grabbed Scout’s arm and turned on the radio, this time through the speakers. The original message ran for another thirty seconds, making me think it didn’t work until a sharp crackle of static came from the speakers. “Waitwaitwait I heard that! That was a radar ping! I know the ponies who would have that! That means…” Her voice faded slightly, though I could hear her cheering in the background. I couldn’t help but snicker, imagining her dancing like a filly. Another crackle announced her return to the microphone. “Alright, you only sent one ping, which means you probably nearly blew out Scout’s ears. Don’t send any others unless, you know, you’re in mortal peril and need immediate rescue or something. Then ping like crazy! Unless that happens, I’ll assume you’re okay! Alright…wait you can’t answer…alright I’ll go with that! I’ll let the others know you’re safe, come back soon!”

With that, she ended the transmission with a click! Scout was rubbing his ears with his free hoof. “I heard the back half of that, so I don’t think you made me permanently deaf.”

I shook my head exasperatedly and gave him his hoof back. “With that taken care of, maybe we should find everypony.” I said. “Making contact with home base doesn’t mean much if we still have no way there.”

“Where are they, anyway?” Scout asked. “I haven’t picked up anypony on my PipBuck.”

“There was some kind of congregation happening an hour or so ago.” Jackpot said. “I tried to find out what was going on, but nopony spoke to me, as you might guess.”

I leapt back into my cloud, happy to settle down on the flying pillow. “Well, I suppose we’ll have to just go observe if they won’t tell. Which direction were they going?”

With Jackpot in the lead, it took only a few minutes for Scout, who had turned his E.F.S. back on manually, to indicate that he was picking up contacts. Even sooner, we heard a plethora of voices rising from further down the corridor we were in. We slowed down and approached cautiously, this was obviously a big event and even with Looking Glass’ protection we didn’t want to startle the guards. Peeking around the corner, we caught a look at the proceedings.

The gather was in what was clearly the central chamber of the cave. A huge domed roof stretched above, shining with multiple magical gems. The crystal ponies sat in a glittering, multicolor ring around a raging bonfire, and an inner ring of Confessors and a collection of massive, hulking figures I nearly mistook for yeti.

The visitors were impressive folk. Each of them spouted a pair of wicked looking horns from their head, and many of them huge masses of muscle and fur, clearly warriors. The warriors’ horns and faces were decorated with war paint, and twisting tattoos of black ink stained their coats. The only ones not painted for battle were three elderly-looking ones wearing robes of rough, brown fabric. Strings of multi-color beads hung from their horns and necks.

Though perhaps the most startling thing about them was the fact that all of them were stark white. Their fur was as blankly colored as the snow outside, making them looking more like hulking ghosts than beings of flesh and blood. The contrast with the black-robed Confessors was almost painful to look at, like they were two opposite forces being forced together.

Despite the violence of their conflicting colors, they were clearly friendly. I recognized Looking Glass in the center of the Confessors. He was bowing to the visitor on the other side of the fire, clearly a very aged member of the visiting race. All the other assembled crystal ponies fell silent as the Confessor rose up. “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Wise One.” He said.

“Of course, my friend.” The elder said, returning the bow. “What troubles you? Have your supplies run dry?”

“No, we have more than enough, thanks to your tribe’s generosity.”

“That is good, though I see there is a new mouth to feed.” He smiled kindly and turned towards the audience. “Or rather, an old one has returned.” The room followed his gaze to Clarity, who was sitting behind Facet, who was in the ring of Confessors.

Clarity smiled and inclined her head. “Thank you, Chieftain.”

So he was the leader of these visitors. It still didn’t tell me what race they were though. “What are they?” I asked Scout and Jackpot quietly.

“They look like buffalo.” Jackpot whispered, as much as a ghoul can whisper that is. “But I didn’t know they could be all white like that.”

“I didn’t know that buffalo survived the apocalypse.” Scout said. “What are they doing here? And how did they avoid getting killed by the yeti?”

Before any of us could answer that question, the Chieftain spoke loud enough to be clearly heard…by us. “Perhaps your trouble stems from the ponies who are hiding around the corner?” All three of us jolted in surprise, trading looks like guilty foals with their hooves in the cookie jar. “Come out now. If you are welcome among the crystal ponies you are welcome among us.”

I poked my head around the corner to see every head in the room turned to us, making me flush brightly. I could practically feel the disdain of the crystal ponies, bearing down on me like a physical force. “I don’t think ‘welcome’ is the word I’d use.” I said.

“Nonsense, come, sit with us.”

Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Very well.”

Not wanting to walk through the crowd on hoof, but also not wanting to appear rude by lounging on a cloud, I instead leapt off and soared over the crystal ponies. Alighting next to Looking Glass, I winced as my rib twinged. “You are in pain?” The buffalo elder asked.

“Yes,” I said, trying to appear stoic despite it “I was struck by one of the yeti and it broke my rib. I‘m healing well, though.”

The elder nodded, reaching into his robe. “Here,” he pulled out a vial that looked like it belonged to a healing potion, but had been filled with something else “drink this. It will accelerate your healing.”

Looking Glass levitated the vial over to me. I accepted it, and nodded my thanks. The room was silent save the crackling fire as I pondered the fluid for a moment. It was clear like water, but was viscous. A part of me was worried about poison, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse. Taking a quick breath to calm myself, I downed the fluid…

And nearly spat it back out. It burned my tongue like fire, and didn’t do my throat much better. Coughing, I managed to swallow the vile stuff, feeling the fire move down my throat to settle in my chest. “W-what was that?” I gasped out.

“It is a concoction similar to the ones ponies call healing potions.” The elder said. “When brewed by our shaman, it has the same ingredients, but extracted to their full potential. A longer process certainly, but an effective one.”

The fire wrapped itself around my ribcage, leaving me short of breath. Slowly though, the fire faded away, being replaced by a dull warmth that removed the pain. After a half a minute, the sensation was gone, and my chest felt good as new. “That’s…that’s amazing!” I marveled, pressing my hoof against the rib in question. I felt nothing, no bending, no cracking, nothing. The wound was gone. I smiled brightly at the elder. “Thank you, so much!”
The buffalo smiled kindly, bowing his head. “You are welcome, pegasus. Now, with pain aside, we can share names.” He stood, and pressed a hoof to his chest. “I am Chief Misting Ice, of the Tribe Di-Nes-Ih Tkin. In your tongue, the Tribe Hidden in Ice.”

I stood and bowed to him in kind. “My name is Sleet Gray.”

“Do you come from the ones that dwell above the clouds?”

I didn’t let my face change, so as not to give away the wave of cold that passed over me. “No, I have no association with them.”

Chief Misting Ice nodded. “And what brought you amongst our crystal friends?” I relayed a slightly modified version of how we got here, omitting the slavers as I had done with the Confessors. The Chief did not interrupt, only nodding along with my story. When I finished the story on the note of us being unable to leave, he spoke again. “So, you are trapped here.”

“I’m afraid that’s the case.” I said, nodding. The crystal ponies began to mutter amongst themselves, raising a small din in the room. I caught snippets of what was being said. “…stay here?...How much can we show them?...Gotta get rid of them…”

Looking Glass stomped his hoof twice, bringing silence to the room. “Do not allow worry to cloud you judgment, everypony. After all, a solution to this problem sits right in front of us.” He turned to the buffalo and bowed respectfully. “My friends, perhaps you could shelter the ponies of flesh and see them returned to safety?”

I wasn’t exactly sure how the buffalo could move us through the blizzard without being eaten, but they obviously could. Perhaps they were our ticket out of here, provided they agreed. “How many are you, Sleet Gray?” Misting Ice asked.

“Four,” I said “me, Clarity, and two earth ponies, one of which is a ghoul.”

“Hold on!” A voice interjected. Diamond Edge had been amongst the guards posted around the room and now stepped forward. “Why are you taking Clarity? She just returned home!”

“Yes, I must ask, why do you need her?” Misting Ice said, though much calmer than Diamond Edge.

“Because I have a plan to aid the crystal ponies and Clarity is essential to it. And besides,” I turned to give her a smile “she’s my friend. I’d like to have her along.” She returned the smile, but I could see sadness tinging it and felt my own shoulders slump slightly. Diamond Edge was right though, she was home now. I didn’t have a right to force her away. “Of course, if she wants to stay, I won’t object.”

“No,” she said, standing up “I’ll come. I’d be glad to.”

“Clarity, you don’t have to do this…” Diamond Edge pleaded. All the fire was gone from his voice. He sounded tired, afraid, and vulnerable, emotions I was certain he wasn’t used to expressing.

“You’re right, I don’t have to, but I want to. Besides, Sleet would probably do something stupid and get herself killed without me there.”

I felt myself turn red as the crystal ponies snickered around me. “Thanks Clarity…” I muttered sarcastically, but not without a note of appreciation. Once again ponies I cared about were sacrificing more than they needed to for my sorry flank, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of gratitude towards her.

“Then it is settled.” Misting Ice said. “When we depart, we will take Sleet Gray and her companions with us.”

“Thank you Chief Misting Ice.” I said, bowing. “We’ll go prepare for the journey.” With that I flew back to Scout and Jackpot, returning to our room and leaving the meeting behind.

It took a further hour for the meeting to end, apparently Looking Glass had more to talk about with the buffalo than just us. Preparations didn’t take overly long. Even with the copious amounts of anti-rad supplies we had stored up, there was still very little we had to our collective names. Hell, literally everything I had could be carried in my pockets.

When to time finally came to depart, it was Facet that came to fetch us. “The buffalo are ready, I trust you are all ready to go?”

“Yes.” I said, jumping down from my cloud. I would have to bust it before we left, much as I had enjoyed lounging on it, it wasn’t exactly mobile. This had been demonstrated by the cloud I had taken when I fled Talon Mountain. I wasn’t exactly sure when in the tumult of events since then it had been smashed and dissipated but it, sadly, it had. I would have to see if I could find a more secure way of containing them. “Where are we meeting the buffalo?”

I’ll escort you there, follow me.” She said, trotting out of the room.

I took a second to bust the cloud before we followed her. Once in the corridor, I flapped over to Facet and settled into step next to her. “Facet, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, what bothers you?”

“Why didn’t you raise any objections to Clarity coming with us?” I asked.

She looked surprised before laughing easily. “Directly to the point, aren’t you?” She sighed. “Because it’s her place to decide, really. It’s hard to say that as a mother, but true. If she wants to go with you, who am I to stop her? Besides, if she can help the Empire, then any heartache on my part is worth it.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t. Something flitted across my mind’s eye, something…fuzzy. I tried to focus on it, it must have been a part of that dream I couldn’t remember. But why was it resurfacing now? Was it something Facet said? Besides, if she can help the Empire, then any heartache on my part is worth it. I closed my eyes, trying to put her words to the dream. Something started to focus in. Colors, pink, red, white, gray…

“Sleet Gray?”

I jolted, opening my eyes. “I, wait, what?” Everypony was a few steps ahead, looking back at me quizzically.

“You feeling alright, Gray?” Jackpot asked.

I was blushing again. Damnit, I’d just stopped with my eyes closed and mouth open like an idiot! “Nothing.” I said firmly, cantering forward a bit too quickly and stiffly to be natural. “Nothing, just a dream, and stupid dream. Can’t remember it, shouldn’t worry about it.”

Facet smiled easily. “It’s alright. Though you should keep a clear mind. You can hardly save us all when you’re caught up in dreams!”

As we traversed the cave, I realized something. I had never actually seen the entrance to the complex. There was only the chimney we had come in through. “So, where exactly are we going?” I asked. “Not down that hole again, I hope.” Even if the water had drained out, the tunnels were probably completely blocked off by stone at this point.

“No, that was actually an emergency exit.” Facet explained. “Which means that a few of our scouts were a bit cross with you for destroying it.” I started to apologize, but she held up a hoof. “It’s not trouble. Two hundred years of paranoia has ensured that every hideout has multiple exits. Being down one is inconvenient, but not horrible. The true entrance to the cave is hidden in much the same way the Confession Chamber is.” She stopped in front of a large, blank wall. “Right here.”

I reached up and pressed a hoof to the stone, expecting it to phase through. But it didn’t, instead rapping against the rock like normal. “Is there a passcode or something?”

“Not quite, it takes a spell only Confessors know to activate.” With that, her horn lit up. An arch of symbols suddenly glowed from the stone in a variety of colors, defining the doorway. The growing buzz of magic made my feathers stand on end as the stone inside the arch wavered and lost its color. In under a minute, the rock had become little more than gray fog. “Now, the path is open.”

I reached up again, and this time my hoof pushed into the fog. However, there was still some resistance. The fog was dense enough to practically be water, I made a small grunt of effort as I pushed my way through it. Colorlessness surrounded me completely and pressed down heavily. It was like being crushed underneath a large pillow. The experience felt like it lasted ten minutes though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds when I broke out on the other side.

I stumbled forward, the sudden lack of resistance knocking off my balance. I had exited into an antechamber of sorts, a relatively tall, if thin tunnel filled with flickering torch light. A number of people, both crystal pony and buffalo, crowded in the chamber, bustling about as they prepped for the journey. Though what caught my attention the most was the storm.

The exit was some fifty feet away, and almost completely obfuscated by white. The raging blizzard of the Frozen North. Something about it entranced me. I felt myself walking towards it in a daze. I stopped just short of entering the storm, watching it rage in front of me. The bracing cold bit at my exposed flesh, but I didn’t care. No matter how harsh it was, it was open air, something I had severely missed in the cave. On a whim, I reached out with my talent, trying to touch the storm.

Immediately I recoiled, both physically metaphysically. It was akin to putting my hoof to the spinning blades of a massive engine. If I tried to stop it myself, I’d be torn to shreds.

“Can you hear it?” A voice asked. I turned to see a small buffalo, skinny with youth, standing next to me. “Can you hear the storm’s voice?”

“You mean the wind?” I asked. Because I certainly could. The vicious howling was like an angry dragon.

The little buffalo shook his head. “No, I mean its voice. Can you hear it? Screaming out?”

“I’m not sure what you mean…”

“Everything has a voice, and the storm has the loudest voice in the whole North. At least, that’s what Uncle tells me.”

“Drifting Snows.” A deep voice interjected. Chief Misting Ice approached us, pretending to look stern. “Are you bothering this young pony?”

“No, Uncle.” Drifting Snows said. “I was just asking if she could hear its voice. She was acting like she could.”

“Hmmm.” He rubbed his chin, eyes closed in thought. After a second, he opened them, regarding me intensely. “Well, Sleet Gray?” He asked. “Do you hear it?”

It felt like he was trying to stare through my skin and bones into something more essential. It was like when Coming Storm looked at me, an assurance he was seeing more than normal eyes could ever show. “I…don’t know. What do you mean ‘voice’?”

He chuckled easily. “What my nephew said was true. All things do have a voice.” The Chief strode forward, stepping just outside the cave. Even so close he was hard to make out, like a smaller, less belligerent yeti. “What matters,” he said over the storm, still perfectly audible, “is whether or not you can listen,” he adjusted he stance, centering himself “and speak back!”

Raising a forehoof, he brought it down with a sharp cry. In an instant, the blizzard around him halted. I gasped, stumbling back a few steps. The sudden calm was like a deafening silence on my weather senses. A complete peace, tranquility like I’d never experienced. “What…” The power of it was tremendous, omnipresent, and terrifying. “What did you do?”

“I asked the storm to cease, and it listened to me.” He gestured that I follow him. “Come with me. I’ll lead you to our camp. Your friends will be able to follow behind, and the monsters will not find us.” He began striding through the snow, the aura of calm following him. “There is someone you must meet.”
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Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk- Computer Whiz: Get locked out of a security system? Not if you’re a computer whiz! With this perk you can gain a second chance to hack any previously locked out terminal.

Author's Notes:

Aha! Told you I could do it! Smaller, faster! Sure it still took over a month, but at least it wasn't two. Goal for next time, 18th of August if not sooner.

Special thanks as always go out to Kkat for making Fallout: Equestria and to Mobius for proofreading Snowfall and offering suggestions. Here's to progress everypony! Drop me a like if you did, a dislike if you didn't, and a comment explaining why! I'm already hype for the next one, let's go!