>STATUS NAME: Sleet Gray. RACE: Pegasus. SEX: Female. RAD LEVEL: No Radiation Sickness.
>ITEMS WEAPONS: Magical Energy Pistol “Black Powder”. ARMOR: Anti-Radiation Special Containment Suit (+50 Rad. Resist, Basic H.U.D., Manipulator Spell). MED: Magical bandages, healing potions, Rad-X, Rad-Away.
>DATA MAP: Crystal Empire, Northern Boulevard.

I flipped through feature after feature of my new toy. I couldn’t get over it, the shining diamond device around my hoof with a world’s worth of information within. All my life I’d wanted a PipBuck, and now I did, and no ordinary PipBuck either! Forged of diamonds, made for a Princess! I had to hold back a giggle, I felt like a filly on her birthday.

“Sleet.” Scout’s voice crackled through the radio. “Wake up, we’re almost there.”

“Huh?” I looked up, and sure enough shafts of radiant light were cutting through the deep fog. “Really? That was…easy.”

“Easy or not, we’re getting close.” He shook his shoulders, settling his battle saddle into place. “Be on your guard, and take some Rad-X. The levels are jumping.”

I glanced in the upper left corner of my helmet and felt my heart jump. “+5 Rads a sec.” flashed in red letters. I activated the rad suit’s manipulator spell and drew one of the little tablets out of my pockets and into the helmet. Crunching down and swallowing hard, I ignored the chalky taste and checked the radiation counter. I sighed as the number dropped to a less disconcerting “+1”. Hopefully that would be enough, because the light was getting brighter.

For a moment, I believed I had somehow found myself above the clouds again. I had to throw a hoof over my eyes in the face of a glare brighter than the sun. I slowly adjusted to the light and got a glimpse of the centerpiece of the Empire. We were standing in a large open circle devoid of the deathly fog, and dominating it was the Crystal Palace. It stood on four angled “legs” that held up the tremendous tower of diamond. Smooth as glass, the needle structure stretched into the turbulent clouds far above. Taking up the empty space between the “legs” was the source of the blinding light.

A great ball of energy, swirling with multi-colored magic filled in the space. It did not stretch beyond the limitations of the castle, though whatever was containing it wasn’t obvious.

The light was entrancing, but something about it tugged at the back of my mind. It was that damned fuzzy dream I’d had in the crystal caves. I wanted to forget the jumble of unintelligible images, but bits of it kept coming together. I knew it was about Clarity and her family, that much was certain. Something about that light though…

“Sleet? Are you okay?” I felt a hoof on my shoulder as Clouds’ voice came through the radio.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine…” I murmured, not opening my eyes. “I think whatever is generating the fog is in that light.”

“Then we need to get in there and shut it down.” Scout said. “Even if we find the Crystal Heart in there, it won’t mean anything if we get killed on the way out.”

“Then let’s get in there and rip its throat out.” Arterial growled. “I’m sick of this place.” Scout began to protest rushing in, but was cut short when Arterial screeched in surprise.

Snapping my eyes open and whirling around, I saw the griffon had been blasted back from the orb of light. The light had coalesced into a purple hemisphere that looked like a unicorn shield spell. Arterial lay unmoving on his back, I’d have mistaken him for dead if he wasn’t grumbling over the radio. “Damned pony magic…”

“There’s got to be a way inside.” Clouds said as Scout helped Arterial up. “Maybe we can break the shield?”

I looked around, using the opportunity to think as a way to drown out the screaming. Scanning the castle, I noticed a balcony several hundred feet up. It looked like a place where royalty would address the masses assembled below, but now it was our entry point. “Or we could go in from the top.” I said, getting to my hooves and trotting over to Scout. “If you have a rope long enough to reach up there, then Arterial and I can fly up and lower it so you and Clouds can climb in.”

“Do you know if there is a way past that shield from inside?” Scout asked as he sorted through his duffel bag.

I checked my PipBuck’s map data, and found a complete schematic of the palace. Not surprising since the last owner of this thing lived there I thought as I scrolled through. The top-down, green wire frame view of the map was a little disorienting at first, but I quickly spotted a staircase that lead down to a ground floor door.

“Right here.” I said, smiling and pointing to the spot on the map. “If we find that staircase, we have a direct route.”

“Alright, here.” He handed me a lengthy coil of nylon that I hung over my shoulder. “Be careful, we don’t know what’s up there.”

I nodded and spread my wings, leaping into the air. Flying while wearing the radiation suit was incredibly awkward. Once I got over the orb I had to kick off the palace walls to keep gaining height. Arterial simply zipped straight up, seemingly unhindered by his own suit.

I was short of breath by the time I finally wrapped my hooves around the edge of the balcony. A safety railing ran around the edge, which I gratefully used to haul myself up. Arterial was just standing there, like a neon yellow gargoyle. I didn’t have time to question it, since I was too busy flopping over the railing like a beached sea pony.

“Quiet!” Arterial hissed at me, giving no consideration for my exhaustion.

“Shut up, this suit is hard to fly in.” I gasped at him. I had landed on my back and was looking at him upside down while I waited for my wing muscles to stop aching. Swifter than I could react, he dropped down and wrapped a clawed grip around my throat. I squeaked in surprise, but rather than hollowing out my neck he held up a free talon in a shushing motion before slowly pointing into the castle.

Unable to move, I rolled my eyes up to see what he was pointing at. Because the image was upside down, it took me a moment to recognize what I was looking at. When I did, it took even longer to believe it. The balcony led into a massive hallway, wide enough for a cadre of ponies to walk abreast and at least thrice as tall.

This made it very accommodating for the dragon sleeping in it.

The tremendous curled form had its back to us, but there was no mistaking the dragon for what it was. It was at least ten feet tall, and about as long.

I pried Arterial’s talon off my neck. “It’s a young one…” I muttered.

“You call something that size young?”

“Yeah, look how stocky it is.” I traced its outline with the tip of a wing. “It probably only started growing to adolescent size a decade or so ago. And the radiation hasn’t helped, look how stunted the wings are.”

The most striking thing was what the radiation had done to it. Crystals grew through rough scars in its scales, like cancerous tumors. Blood and pus seeped from around the growths, staining the green scales. I felt a pang of sympathy for it, at least my mutation was cosmetic and easy to hide.

“And how do you know all this?” Arterial whispered

“Enclave schooling teaches dragon anatomy. They are the biggest threat to a society above the clouds after all.” I felt a burning at the back of my neck and glanced over my shoulder to see Arterial glaring daggers at me. “One of the biggest threats.” I amended quickly.

The griffon snorted and turned back to the dragon. “We need to take it out, no telling when it will wake up. If it’s just an adolescent, the scales on the underside are still soft. If we fly over we can end it quickly.”

“Why not wait for Scout so we can get backup?” I asked.

“We don’t know when it will wake up, we go now.” Silently, he took off, his wing beats infinitely quieter than footsteps. I sighed and set the rope coil down gently. No sense in it weighing me down. I quietly relayed the reason for the delay to Scout and Clouds through the radio before taking off. With a mental command, I triggered the suit’s manipulator spell and levitated Black Powder into the ready position. The incineration pistol would only be of limited use against the incredibly flame resistant dragon. Archeological samples of infant dragon scales suggested they could withstand molten rock. Still, it felt better having the gun than not.

It didn’t take long for us to position above the adolescent wyrm. Arterial slowly alighted on his rear lion paws, drawing his gun and lining up a shot on the heart. He would need to get this right the first time, or the monster would wake up and end us.

I stayed above the beast, watching for signs of movement. The scarring was worse on the head. Its jaw was pulled open in a permanent snarl from the emeralds tugging at the mouth, and a clear diamond had completely replaced its eyelid. I could see its eye through the diamond, an angry thing, burning with hatred for the world. I didn’t blame it, considering its disfigurement.

I turned my head to look at Arterial, who was at this point just beginning to line up his shot. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw something move. Snapping back to the dragon, I stared into the eye. It looked back at me. Right back at me…

I slowly moved to the left, and watched the eye move with me. A stone dropped into my gut. “Arterial, it’s awake!”

The dragon rolled to its feet, putting its harder side before Arterial. The twisted head reared up towards me, mouth open wide. I dove straight down towards its back, landing at the nape of its long neck as fire engulfed the spot I’d occupied moments before. I was thrilled to have made it out uncharred, but now I was bronco riding a very upset dragon. I managed to wrap my arms and legs around one of its back spines, anchoring myself in place as it bucked wildly. “Sleet! What’s happening?” Scout’s voice came through the radio.

“The dragon’s awake!” I yelled back, holding on as fast as I could as the wyrm turned. I faintly caught a flash of yellow as Arterial zoomed into the air.

“Start shooting, damnit!” The griffon barked at me as he swept around the dragon’s head, barely dodging the snapping jaws. He peppered it with gunfire every chance he got, but the bullets hardly scuffed the gemstone scales.

I wanted to, but I was barely keeping myself latched on, and in all the shaking I’d lost my gun. The dragon had begun stomping through the hall, letting lose ear-splitting roars that shook the walls. At some point my legs slipped loose, causing me to bounce on the mutant’s hide with each earth quaking step. I'm going to be bruised to shit after this I thought begrudgingly.

I felt something dig into the back of my neck and pull me off the dragon’s spine. “Get moving, Gray!” Arterial roared, flinging my unceremoniously into the air. I managed to right my battered body and start flying again, just in time to swoop out of the path of the dragon’s tail.

During my dive I spotted Black Powder lying on the crystalline floor. I picked it up mid-swoop and flew under the monster, searing its underside with bolts of super-heated magical energy. The dragon roared in pain, trying to crush me under foot, but I was already on the other side and climbing.

But Goddesses damnit my suit was heavy. I found myself struggling for breath as I ascended, leaning against the wall for support. All pegasi have a bit of innate magical anti-gravity to help with flying. Mostly it was used by foals for vertical crawling out of their cribs, right now I was just using it to rest as I clung to the castle walls like a spider.

Unfortunately the dragon did not feel like letting me get away with it. It tried to leap at me, gouging frighteningly large claw marks in the diamond walls, but I was too high up. I managed to smile through my panting as I watched the beast flail, feeling an unfamiliar twinge of superiority. Yeah, take that you over grown salamander. I thought victoriously. It decided not to let me have the victory for long. Instead it tried something different, and knocked me loose.

Rearing back, I was at a loss for what it was doing until it snapped forward and crashed its head into the wall with titanic might. I didn’t have time to push off the wall before the shockwave jostled me loose. I screamed as I fell, unable to get out of the tumble. I had the presence of mind to kick the wall so I wouldn’t fall into the dragon’s waiting jaws, but that had the side effect of making me crash down on its back, right by the spines.

The pain whited out my vision as one of the spines tore a massive wound in my rear left leg. I thought for sure the limb had been impaled, but the fact that I was sliding down the monster’s back and pulling the searing pain with me suggested otherwise. I hit the ground hard, tears and sweat blurring my sight as I checked the damage.

The spine had torn through suit, skin and muscle to leave a terrible gouge in my quadricep. Blood poured freely, and if I didn’t treat it quickly I’d go into shock. But first I had to deal with the dragon, thankfully distracted by Arterial for the moment. I needed one perfect blow, just something that could end this all in a second with no way of screwing up…

For an instant, I forgot all about the pain as an idea hit me. “Scout! How do I turn on S.A.T.S.?” I croaked into the radio.

“It’s a magical trigger, you need to turn your Eyes Forward Sparkle on first.” He said.

“So how the Hell do I do that?”

“It’s the little switch on the left side of the screen, press it!”

I found the switch easily and flicked it. For an instant, static filled my vision before clearing away to the PipBuck’s HUD. A little cartoonish pony face with two “X”s in the eyes and its tongue sticking out between its teeth appeared in the upper left of my vision. Next to it flashed a little message “YOUR LEG IS CRIPPLED!” Thanks, I didn’t know. I thought angrily.

I didn’t have a chance to worry about that, because the dragon had finally swatted his annoying fly. Arterial made a strangled noise of pain as he was hit from the sky. The dragon was about to crush his head, when something hot and bright struck it. The beast turned, annoyed that I was still alive and firing, because somehow fortune smiled enough to have Black Powder land near me.

The monster turned, its massive girth easily reaching me in only a few steps. As it loomed over me, it began pulling its head back, jaws gaping, but not to eat me. I saw flicking light in the back of its throat, and wondered faintly if my nerves would be destroyed before I could feel myself burn.

Turn on S.A.T.S. you idiot! The little pony in the back of my head screamed at me. Suddenly, the world froze solid. Nothing moved, at all. Even the fire building in the dragon’s throat had stopped in time. A dialog box suddenly appeared in front of my eyes.

“Welcome to the Stable-Tech Assisted Targeting System (S.A.T.S.). Highlight your target and select to continue.” Parts of the dragon became highlighted in green, with each part giving me a little percentage. On a whim, I mentally “clicked” on the dragons head. Beep! A list appeared on the right of my vision, the first entry reading “Target: Head”. A bar at the bottom right was reduced in response to the selection. I “backed out” and the list emptied, the bar refilling.

I had to suppress my thrill of excitement. This might not save me. I needed something to stop the dragon from breathing fire, and I needed it quick. I knew this frozen time was all perception, I couldn’t stay here forever. There was one option available to me, it was risky, but I had done something similar before. Admittedly, that had been with a mechanical device and not a highly mutated abomination, but I felt it worth the risk. I just had to hope the ponies that programmed S.A.T.S. had similar schooling to me.

I visualized my target perfectly, based off the old anatomy charts I’d been made to memorize above the clouds. Beep! I wanted to cheer as the system targeted something inside the dragon “Fire Gland”. I targeted that once, consuming the whole bar. “Special Attack: Winter Weather Pony” appeared in the list. With a quick prayer to the Goddesses, I “clicked” accept.

Time flowed again, but in slow motion as my body operated on its own. My wings flared to the side and I felt the well of cold power rise up inside me. I flapped once, and frost began to spread across the dragon’s chest. Everything returned to full speed as the monster unleashed the fire stream at me, or at least tried to. Instead, thick black smoke poured from its mouth, clouding my vision but leaving me un-charred.

“Arterial, now! It can’t breathe fire!” The wyrm was hacking up smoke, clutching its chest in agony as it tried to generate a flame. My griffon companion leapt from the ground in screeching fury. He flew to its head, pressing his gun to the un-crusted eye and emptied the clip directly into the socket, and through it to the brain. The dragon roared, flailing as blood and pus poured from the destroyed eye. Slowly, painfully so, it weakened before finally collapsing, dead.

“Yes! That worked!” I screamed, double hoof-pumping the air.

“What did you do?” Arterial asked, landing beside me.

“I used S.A.T.S. to freeze its fire gland. The Enclave’s education system finally paid off!” I tried to sit up, but the blood rushing out of my leg sapped me of strength and knocked me right back down. “I still wish they had a better weather training program…”

The griffon’s face was implacable as he looked down at me. “If you can freeze internal organs, why not freeze the heart?”

I stared back at him for a long, uncomfortable stretch of seconds before responding. “Shut up, it worked. Get me a health potion and go lower the rope.”

“Dear Cadence,

I hope things are going better since my last visit. I’ve hardly had a spare moment since returning to Canterlot, but there’s something I want to give you. Consider it an early birthday gift! This should help you get from place to place in the Empire much more quickly. It also makes for a quick evacuation, so even my brother will like it! This is only our first field-ready prototype, but I’m hoping to create a network of them across Equestria. Maybe then we can visit each other more often?

Love,

Twilight Sparkle”

I sucked down the last of a healing potion as I scrolled to the end of the letter, one of many from a correspondence between Princess Cadence and the Ministry Mare. I felt a little voyeuristic reading them, even though the message senders were two hundred years dead. I pushed past the feeling, hoping that I could find something that may help us get out of this damned Empire alive.

“You okay, Sleet?” Clouds asked, trotting over to me.

“Hm?” I looked up, the tube from a mostly-empty pouch of Rad-Away in my mouth. I took one last pull of the tart medicine and spat the tube out. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just reading.”

“Okay, um, how’s your leg? Any pain? Any more breaches in the suit? Any symptoms of blood loss? Any…”

“Clouds, I’m fine.” I said, cutting her babbling off. I had been sitting against a wall after my injured leg had been wrapped up in magical bandages and the suit was rebound with duct tape. A slip-shod means of sealing the breach, but effective. I was still drinking Rad-Away like a dying mare. By the time the dragon fight was over, I had accumulated enough rads in my body for to suffer from minor sickness. According to my PipBuck, I was now clean of any corruption, but I was still taking extra precautions.

“Okay, okay, good. Just making sure, you know?” She shuffled nervously for a second. “Find anything interesting in the reading?”

“A couple things.” I said, browsing through the past few logs I had read. “Apparently the Princess was good friends with Twilight Sparkle. They have a lot of messages between each other. A lot of it is kind of trivial, but apparently Twilight gave Cadence a gift that will help her ‘move around the Empire’.”

“What do you think it is?” Clouds asked, sticking her head over my shoulder to look at the screen. “Some sort of rail system?”

“I don’t know.” I said, getting to my hooves. “But we should get moving.” I started trotting towards Scout and Arterial who were discussing out next move on the other end of the hall. I had only gotten a few steps away when I noticed that Clouds’ dot on the radar wasn’t moving. I bit back a sigh and turned to her, slumped against the wall. “Hey, Clouds.” She looked up and I gave her the brightest smile I could muster. “C’mon, let’s go. We’re almost done.” She smiled back thankfully and got to her hooves, following me.

We joined the stallions (was that right, with Arterial there? What was the male word for griffon anyway?) who had been talking in their own radio channel. Seeing us approach, they switched back to the open frequency. “What did you find out?”

“I checked the map and there is a fairly direct route to where we want to go.” I said. “According to Princess Cadence’s old logs, there is a device somewhere in the castle that may help us move around, but I don’t know where it is.”

“We’ll worry about that when we have the fog taken care of and have found Clarity.” He said. “Let’s move.” I pointed him in the right direction and we set off. I kept my E.F.S. turned on, giving me compass directions, a monitor of my overall health, and the incredibly important threat indicator. Right now, all I saw were friendly little blue bars that corresponded with the positions of the others around me.

As we walked, I decided to listen to a few of the recordings on the PipBuck. I had managed to route the audio into the rad suit helmet, rather than the PipBuck’s external speakers so the sound wouldn’t give us away to any lurking monsters. I selected one recorded not long before the end of the world, Princess Cadence’s kindly voice filling my helmet.

“I cast a spell on Shining Armor today meant to detect a changeling’s presence. When it told me that the stallion standing before me was not a bug in disguise, it didn’t make me feel any better. He is almost never in the castle anymore, and refuses to let me leave without a regiment of guards at my back. He even put a continuous shield spell around the Heart’s chamber. He’s says he’s been getting closer to the source of the threats against me, but I’m convinced he is overreacting. We are not isolated from the strain of the War, even here in the Empire. These threats are nothing more than somepony voicing their frustrations, and I can’t stand the thought of my love silencing those voices for my sake.”

More paranoia. Was it all linked to Sombra, considering his connection to the Empire, or was his return a result of the fear from the War? Perhaps it was both, one working off of the other like a tremendous engine of terror.

We came to a doorway, a fairly plain one given the grandeur of the palace. It was a simple wooden thing, not unlike the door leading to Sombra’s throne room in Stalliongrad. The room beyond may have once been a simple antechamber, but had been converted into a guard outpost. Most of the room had been cordoned off by security booth and a turnstile, our door leading to the lower chamber on the other side.

Once the door was opened, a little red bar appeared on the E.F.S., coming from the guard booth. Scout raised a hoof, stopping us just before we entered the room. The guard booth had a door facing us, silently he motioned me toward it. I crept up as quietly as I could and tested the door. Locked, no problem. Raising a wing, I touched the tip to the keyhole and channeled my power into it. Frost covered the knob, and a slight mist fell from the keyhole. Stepping back, I raised Black Powder and nodded to Scout, mouthing “three, two, one…”

On “one” I fired, the sudden extreme heat change shattering the metal. Scout rushed forward, shoulder checking the door open and falling into a firing stance. He hesitated for only a second before firing, the hunting rifle attached to his battle saddle giving a mighty CRACK! The red bar disappeared from the compass. He nodded and stepped aside. “See if there is anything good on it, I’ll get the other door open.”

I stepped into the booth and had to hold back a shudder. The corpse of one of those strange, light-less crystal ghouls lay on the floor. It looked more like a pony-shaped void than a body. The booth was very sparse, just a chair, counter, and clipboard with entry logs attached to it. The ghoul, once a unicorn, wore a guard’s uniform. I rifled through its pockets, but found nothing. I was about to give up and rejoin the others when I noticed something under the counter.

There was a holotape recording attached to the underside of the counter with duct tape. I downloaded the recording onto my PipBuck and gave it a listen.

“Lock, take an early lunch break.”

“Lunch break…” I muttered. Flipping back through the audio recordings, I checked the timestamp on Princess Cadence’s final log on the final day. Noon. Cadence had gone to the spa during lunchtime, not minutes before the bombardment began. Cadence said Shining Armor was almost never in the castle, and with her gone on her spa trip the castle had been devoid of royalty during the end. They probably thought the castle left in good hooves with their staff, but if there was a subversive element…

Perhaps Shining Armor hadn’t been paranoid enough.

“Sleet, let’s go.” Scout called out. I got up and galloped out of the booth, my mind spinning with conspiracies and questions.

As we descended the staircase the “click click clicking” of the radiation meters grew steadily louder. We dosed up on Rad-X and Rad-Away, but they could only do so much. If we didn’t have a way of shutting down the radiation soon we’d cook with or without the suits.

Reaching the bottom, we wasted no time and threw open the door, spreading out into the chamber below the palace. The massive lower chamber was engulfed in light, tendrils of illuminance extending from the center. Two crystal needles, one from above, one from below, met in the center, holding between them the object of our mission. The Crystal Heart, a large cool blue gemstone sat suspended between the needles, emitting the tremendous light.

But it was clear the Heart was sick. Fractures burning with noxious green energy that leaked the terrible mist spread from the center. It seemed a miracle that the thing hadn’t been completely destroyed.

Standing in front of the Heart was a shadowed unicorn, its horn alit with purple magic. For a second it seemed like it hadn’t noticed us, but then it turned it head. His coat was pure white with a blue mane. He wore golden armor with an ornate sword belted to his side. As he turned fully to face us, the purple aura spread to the sword handle and pulled it from the sheath. With no preamble, he charged.

Since I was on point, it was naturally me who the unicorn came for. I leapt as high as I could, beating my wings to avoid the sword thrust. Scout and Arterial pulled their weapons and fired. From their flanking position, they should have ripped him apart, but a shield of violet energy sprang to life, absorbing the bullets.

The unicorn turned to Scout, slashing horizontally at the survivalist. He leapt backwards, dodging the slash, yet a slash opened across his suit’s chest. “What the fuck?” He cried. From the air above him, I drew Black Powder and fired as fast as I could, hoping to overload his shield.

It didn’t work, but it certainly got his attention away from Scout. I gained altitude as quickly as I could, getting out of the sword’s reach, magical and all. I was not, however, out of his magical reach. I felt an alien sensation wrap around my rear hooves and the unicorn latched onto me telekinetically. It became a struggle of my physical strength versus his metaphysical, and it was clear who would win. The only thing that gave me a chance was the fact that he needed to dedicate attention to shielding himself from the others’ attacks.

Still, for the moment I was in the air. I scanned the chamber from above, hoping to find anything we could use as an advantage. From my vantage point I was able to spot another figure, a much more familiar one, on the other side of the Heart. She was easy to spot, since she was still wearing her bright yellow rad suit. “Clarity!” I screamed, turning on the speakers on the suit as high as I could.

The figure looked up, as if surprised. “Sleet?” She asked over the radio. “What are you doing?”

Before I could answer, the unicorn below let out a roar that echoed unnaturally. A blast of magical energy threw Arterial, Clouds and Scout back, which for me meant that he could focus all his power on pulling me from the sky. I screamed in pain as I slammed into the ground, the helmet of my suit cracking and distorting the display. I rolled desperately to the side as the unicorn stabbed straight down, cracking a hole in the floor beneath us.

I froze the world with S.A.T.S., targeting the unicorn’s face with a blast from Black Powder. Our close proximity put me inside where his shield had been manifesting, so the bolts of super-heated orange magic struck home. Three slow-mo shots burned into him, causing the unicorn to recoil, his growl of pain seemingly reverberating off of the air.

“Sleet, stop! That’s the Prince!” Clarity screamed.

“He’s trying to kill us!” I screamed back, rolling onto my hooves and putting as much distance as I could between the Prince and I before he recovered from the shots.

“That’s not him attacking you, there’s another soul living inside his body.”

“What?”

“I can’t explain now, but I can fix this, please! You just have to get out of here, he won’t attack me.”

That didn’t change the fact that he was attack me, though, and gaining ground fast. I was saved from being ran down when Arterial, screeching a battle cry, flew in from the side and raked his talons along the burn marks I had left in the Prince’s face. His distraction was giving Clouds time to fix the breech in Scout’s suit and me a chance to get over to Clarity. “How is he even still alive?” I asked, running over to her.

“I said I can’t explain, just go!” She turned to the Heart and I saw a pink glow as she triggered her magic, the Heart radiating in response.

“Clarity, it isn’t time to purify the Heart, remember?” I put a hoof on her shoulder. “We only have one chance to get this right. We need to stick to the plan or…”

“To Hell with you plan!” She screamed, whirling on me. I took a shocked step back I got my first good look at her through the helmet. Her kaleidoscope eyes were so bloodshot I could hardly see the colors of her iris. Her opalescent coat had turned grey, almost black as the ghouls. Her lips were stained red and splatters of blood were on the helmet. Her voice was wet and rough, and whenever she wasn’t speaking she coughed out blood. “Don’t you see, Sleet? I have the chance to end our exile! I can return my people home, right here, right now! I can fix all of this.”

“And what happens when Sombra comes?” I tried to keep my voice even and speak reasonably. “Will you be able to fight him off? Can you deal with his armies? How about the monster living out there, right now, in that fog?”

She shook her head, eyes closed tight. “No, no, no. This is why Mother told me not to tell you. I can’t listen to you, Sleet. Just run now.”

“Wait, Facet? What does she have to do with this?” But I was getting a rising feeling in my gut that I already knew the answer to that question. My fuzzy dream, the one I had back in the crystal caves. “Wait…she told you to do this, didn’t she?”

“You found us talking about it in the caves. You were practically sleepwalking, she said you wouldn’t remember.”

Like blowing dust off an old window, the picture started to become clearer. I remembered hearing my name being said, I remembered listening in on the conversation. How Facet told Clarity to ignore my plan and purify the Heart, no matter the danger. “But why? Why didn’t you argue back?”

“How could I go against my Mother?” She said, hanging her head. “Sleet, I trust you, but she was a Confessor long before you or I were ever born. She knows what is good for our people better than you ever could. She knows what needs to be done.”

“But Clarity, look at yourself!” I said, pointing to her reflection in the crystal floor. “Would she really sacrifice her daughter for this? For something that might not work?”

She was quiet for a long time before whispering “don’t you do things like that all the time?” She turned away from me and lit up her horn, focusing on the Heart.

I stared at her back, dumbfounded. Slowly I turned to watch the battle. Shining Armor had harried Arterial into a corner, the griffon bleeding from several cuts. Scout was on his hooves and firing, but his shots were completely ineffective. Clouds was yelling something, I think at me, but I could only hear that condemnation again and again.

Don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t you?
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Footnote: Level up!
New Perk: Signature Strikes- Your long battles in the Wasteland have taught you its inhabitants well. Your knowledge of weak points causes your attacks to ignore up to 5 Damage Threshold.
Quest Perk: PipBuck Training- You’ve become skilled in the usage of PipBucks! The Stable-Tec Assisted Targeting System and Eyes Forward Sparkle functions are now unlocked. Medicine and Repair bonus increased by +5

Author's Notes:

What's that? An update? Can it be?

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!