Chapter 4: Frontier Psychiatrist
Fallout Equestria: Begin Again
Chapter 4: Frontier Psychiatrist
“Shh… We’re hunting shitheads.”
|*| The Rook |*|
“Does it hurt?” I had to ask, though his body looked like a shipwreck, hauled up onto the shore. “I mean, can I help you somehow?” The ghoul’s attention stayed locked on the door, and even in spite of that, the door stayed locked. The glass kingdom was far behind us now, as our escape had taken us out of the shadow of the night train, and that strange world of sanitation and insanity: radiation and ancient magic. "You can trust me: I'm a doctor." I barely got the words out without giggling. I'd always wanted to say that.
Whenever I got too close to Charon, my Pipbuck was quick to scold me- You should know better than to hang around with boys like him - and now that, through one word answers, I had learned a little more about what he called ghouls, I knew why. Still, it felt wrong to stand by, without casting so much as an anesthetic spell, and watch him go about saving me with his insides out.
The Slavers were somewhere above us now, as the utility tunnels were like arteries branching out from a heart, and only led us farther from Damascus and the devils before the eye of his window. My fear had left me, as the lights changed to match those of Acheron's Supermarket, and my company treated me more like a stranger than a victim, even as the diagnostic playhouse that was his body distracted me.
"There's a scar on your hind leg that I could probably fix up for you." I said, after skirting around the pale of his gut. He was like some troubled child's oldest plush animal, and would be hemorrhaging stuffing were it not for the age of his wounds. "Or not." Another of his bobby pins had broken, and I heard him mutter an unfamiliar word to himself. I didn't think it could be found in any hymn or holy book.
I got the slightest impression that I was annoying him, but the buck seemed reluctant to express himself much farther than a passing scowl or a curse word uttered under his breath. He might have been called a consummate professional, a hired gun who never questioned his orders, but to me; there was something unsettling about Charon's loyalty to that all powerful Contract. He almost seemed... brainwashed.
The lock clicked, and even then he didn’t smile, but only peered into the hallways ahead, with no expression but for those that had been carved across his face. "There will be ferals here." He said. "Keep that shotgun ready. They might pick up your scent." I floated out the fourth of my inherited weapons, and bent it apart to check the chamber's load. It sounded like some kind of animal tribe had overrun this place, turning it into a wilderness outside the Kingdom's walls. "They're faster than they look."
I didn't think to ask why they might only be interested in me. As I’d already come up with my own, slightly immodest, reason: If I was to come upon an apple orchard, would I really go to a tree whose branches were stricken but for a few, shriveled and discolored fruit? "You have a weapon too, right?"
"I'll keep you alive."
"What if I get injured?" I wondered aloud, worried for what bedlam the green motes that lingered in the air might wreak if swallowed up into a flesh wound. Not to mention the diseases that these ferals might carry.
"That shouldn’t be a problem: You’re a doctor.” So the wheels of our friendship were a little slow to start spinning, there had never been a rusted wheel that the oils of my charisma could not get unstuck!
... Despite thoughts like that, it was nice to have that old electricity coursing through me again, just as it had for every mail delivery to the Overmare, every odd job that I'd made into a mission. And it was no wonder that my fear had been so cleanly cut away. While I had once played the part of a nurse, and more often of a nuisance, now: I was a soldier in Equestria’s army, feeding the fires of her dawn.
Damascus would not be afraid of these wild things in the darkness, he had stayed behind even as that train had come, carrying winter on its back. He would not even think to flee in the face of the devil. "Charon..." I began, worried that I wasn't saying it right. "Can you tell me more about these ferals?"
He didn't answer at first, but then raised his voice until it sounded like it was hurting him, as if throwing his words down the hallway as bait to some hungry, crouching beast. "They've been down here since the war. All this radiation came from a balefire bomb. Set off inside the Installation. Wouldn't be surprised if they were the ones who pushed the button." Wait... ferals were - "Get ready."
A long, rasping sound came pushing through the shadows, and was soon followed by a rhythm of wet, keyed up hoofsteps, as if water that had become heavy with filth was dripping from a broken valve. They carried a figure into the light, and I looked on it as one might a miracle, and the fingers of death seemed to loosen around the world, as if his long and uncontested reign was finally slipping away.
As my eyes followed so many naked tendons - the long, wormy things that made up its body - waves of sickness came over me, though they were sluggish and meek, and only made me sway on my hooves.
There was no character left in this abomination's face, no sense that he had ever been more than a corpse, and unlike Charon: there was no color in its eyes, no life that could be seen drowning.
Without thinking, I swung the shotgun around, and felt the cradle of my magic shatter as it fired. It hurt me, as something like an intense heat shot through my horn, and I watched a hundred pieces of gold melt into the air. The feral stood for a while longer, though the top of its skull had been cracked open before a red smear, and its eyes were dancing around one another, like a pair of dice at its hooves.
It fell like a statue, lifted from its pedestal by a crowd of revolutionaries, and then lay still. “Is it dead?”
I had to ask, as all medical law seemed to have been thrown out of the window long ago.
Tic, Tic, Tic. “I feel nauseous.” I added, as if translating for my Pipbuck, and Charon began walking down the very hallway whose shadows had birthed that awful thing. He kicked one of its hooves out of the way, but walked through the blood as if it were water. “We should try to find something for radiation sickness.”
“Radiation heals ghouls.” … Out the window, off the rock, and into the bonfire. Nothing but junk science. “Speak to the Quartermaster in the church outside of town. He’ll sell you some RadAway.”
We passed an open doorway and, for the light that came flickering through it, I could make out shelves running across almost every wall. "Couldn't we just dig around for a minute?" The smell of blood, coupled with the irritable ticking of my Pipbuck, had made the sickness inside me all too clear. It felt like I'd swallowed a balefire bomb, only to have it detonate, balloon out my middle, and leave me smoking from the ears like in the comic books. "Please." I added, borrowing a cup of sugar from that digital mare.
"I'll go on ahead and clear out any ghouls between us and the stairwell." He bowed his head, as if I were a princess to the Glass Kingdom, and had to be served the world on a silver plate. I wanted very badly to hug him then, though the hallway had almost started to spin. "I was ordered to escort you out of Hell. A corpse cannot be escorted. Follow your compass south, and come find me when you are done."
"Thank you, Charon. Thank you thank you thank you." He barely nodded before marching off into the whispering dark, but I knew that we were going to be the best of friends one day.
The room was more than a little underwhelming, compared to everything else I'd seen tonight, but I counted on a medley of cases, from medical to military, and plenty of overthrown lockers to root around in. A scream went tearing through the hallway behind me, and though it had come from the mouth of a warm gun, I pulled myself out of the steel cabinet in a flight of paper and dust, as if to watch it passing by.
Charon might as well have been in a slaughterhouse, with the ferals playing the part of so many hapless animals. They would stand idly by, as he brought the barrel of his shotgun near, like the edge of an ax. They looked at him as family, or at least as tribe, though he was a wolf wearing their costume of death.
Ignoring the shotgun, like some abrasive house guest in the other room, I struggled to get open a bottle of Rad-x, which I had to hope was better than too little too late. As my magic gathered like a storm around the pill bottle, I began to think that, in the years before the war, our best scientists had not been working on the development of superweapons and megaspells, but childproof lids.
I took more of the pills than I should have, and one dissolved before I could swallow it, leaving the taste of something bitter spread across my tongue. Then, I moved on to a large, black safe on the other side of the room. Its door had been twisted clear of one of its hinges, and lay at its side like a battered shield. If nothing else, it was nice to see that I wasn't the only one doing things the indelicate way.
Holy Smokes! I thought, as I poked my head into the safe. Money! Lots and lots of money!
There were entire rolls of those famous golden coins, like pillars of gold in some dragon's cavernous lair. After floating out one of the bits, and saluting the face encircled within it, I hit the coin against my teeth. I didn't know what this was supposed to accomplish. And it hurt. But I knew that it had to be done.
I built a city in my saddlebags, which shone as if waking to the light of its first sunrise, and I even put in a district especially for Charon. I was sad to see it collapse, to see it melt down into an ocean of gold. But, as the cold groped at my neck, I knew that this was not the place to play Princess.
Something stirred in the hallway, and my nose was caught under the lid of a metal case, for fear of the noise it would make as it slammed shut. I put out my horn, and willed the fluorescent lights above me to stop blinking. Something was breathing. I heard a hoofstep, colored by the same moistness that brought images of stripped bone and softened muscle, of lumbering, to mind. I closed the box with my magic, and then crept over to the room's farthest corner. But the hoofsteps didn't wait for me to find a place to hide.
They carried It to the doorway: a lurching figure whose head hung low and from whose flesh burst broken bones, to give it the silhouette of something brittle and disfigured whenever the lights cut out. Its face was caught in a smile that could never be flattened, and as it slid up against the hallway’s wall, and let the blood that I'd painted there leave its mark, I might have thought the ghoul was laughing.
An unfinished suit of cloth and metal armor held the thing together, and I couldn't say whether the green underneath it came from old strips of skin, or simply poisoned flesh. The ghoul's eyes had been corrupted into a beautiful and absolute blue, like the surface of some sacred water. And, with a snarl that might once have been a word, they tripped over me – as if over toys in a dark room - and I was found.
I swept up the box's lid in my telekinesis, and flung it at the hollow face of this ancient Equestrian, like a square discus. It smashed the thing's empty expression into pieces, and brought a lilt to its smile.
As if I'd knocked what was left of its mind loose, the ghoul rocked back onto its hooves: stunned.
I threw myself towards it, and had the shotgun pressed up under its front leg as I turned towards the south, charting a course to Charon. I felt its ribs break as I fired, and the weapon dug its way a little deeper into the abomination's chest, pushing past ruined bones and untethered flesh like a hammer.
Finally, the feral began to bat at my weapon, even as it bobbed along behind me, with one side of its arcane cradle wearing thin as I sank deeper into the station's utilitarian belly. The shotgun was a crude thing, difficult to rearm and slow to follow one roar with another, and I quickly decided that it was worth less to me than my tail. I thrust it back in one final blowout of telekinesis, hoping to knock the ghoul's jaw clean off. I only heard it groan, and let its warped voice grow soft for the distance growing between us.
A hallway barreled through the passage ahead, and I drew my father's automatic pistol, as if expecting to find more of death's disharmonic instruments around the corner. Even with three rounds left to the gun, I came to a stairway at the end of my chosen path, and turned to fire a light into the darkness that was biting at my flanks. The ghoul came tearing past the pipelines and meshwork floor, throwing its weight from wall to wall like a cripple without his crutch, or a drunk without a friend in the world.
The first round buried itself into the creature's shoulder, and the second passed right through one of its knees. My Pipbuck had nothing to say, though I'd expected it to congratulate me for breaking a bone, or cutting through some vital muscle. Anything that might mean this tireless thing could be slowed down.
I was down to my last bullet, but knew that it was too precious, too perfect, to do anything but put an end to this. I backed towards the well-lit stairwell, not bothering to dance around the stains that spoiled the concrete, and felt nausea pushing its ugly hooves into the folds of my magic, making the pistol sway. The feral pounced, far too late, and I saw it stumble, to crush the spot that I'd only just escaped under its weight.
I swung the automatic in a little closer, and fired into its neck.
I tried, and failed, to backpedal up the stairs, and only managed to bruise and batter my tired, irradiated body even farther. I had started to fight for even the shortest breath, beginning to realize that I was going to die, and tears swelled up to warp my killer into something soft and formless. The feral's voice had been left in ruins, and the raspy howl that came then was almost pathetic, as it climbed its way out of a pierced throat. The hole I'd left was larger than the unraveled flesh around it, and I had to think: This isn't fair.
This unendable beast of peeling skin and broken bones reared up the stairs, and struck me across the stomach, imparting the terrible force of a hundred-year hunger. With all four hooves off the ground, I was smashed into the wall of wire and layered steel, and I imagined my spine snapping at its touch.
Another feeble rasp spread itself thin across the hallway, but the hot, fetid breath that I'd expected to beat down on my senses did not come. The hoof that still pressed into my belly seemed to have lost all of its violence, like a cudgel that had slipped loose of arcane fingers, and I soon realized that the ghoul's limb had broken apart at the joint, leaving only a severed foreleg, going limp on top of me.
I began writhing like a filly with a spider creeping down her collar, and threw the broken stilt down the stairwell, where its cripple of a master lay waiting, as if it might put itself together again.
The ghoul was slumped over a thin railing that followed the walls, trying to pull itself up, as the rest of its severed leg pumped beneath it. I cycled weapons, without thinking to dam up the tears that were still running down my face, and finally defaulted to the baseball bat.
I stood up, as something like fear flickered into its bloated blue eyes. We both knew that this was over.
After bringing the weapon to bear, as if it were an enormous axe, I swung it down across the feral's already hollowed out neck, letting myself slip into the role of executioner, though a country in the throes of war and so many years of poison had already tried, and failed, to do the same to this corrupted thing.
The light left its eyes, and that was enough to make me feel like I'd killed him... like I'd murdered a pony, who had for so long been kept a prisoner inside a husk of his old self. And, for that, I let myself cry.
I don't know how long I stayed like that, hugging the baseball bat as I curled up against the stairs, but with mangled words and a rough shake, I was pulled back into the dank of Equestria's underbelly. "Shut up." Charon hissed. And I tried to obey, if only for the uncut emotion in his voice. "Shut. Up." It wasn't anger: For anger, I might have gone on crying. This was fear. "Reaver... We need to leave. Now!"
The world was sick. And I'd never seen its affliction so clearly painted, as it was across the skies of Hell. The storm still wore its bruises over streams of moonlight, the mountains and the night behind them stood like walls around the valley, the streetlamps drowning out in the East were white and feeble, and there was a perfect, but broken, circle scratched into the earth, though nothing looked quite as sick as the town inside the lines. We stood at the edge of it, on one of the ridges that had drawn this ring into the valley.
I watched Hell in its insomnia, watched it from our perch outside the ruins of the outskirts, from the stone collar that had kept the settlement below from spreading. The stone line poking out of the hillside almost seemed like a blessing now, a savior for the quarantine that it had enforced on this malignant tumor.
We had come up out of the earth as if it were water, escaping a name that was no less forbidding than Leviathan, and now stood halfway up the hill that wore a church as its crown. At the center of the suburban wreckage before us, were great plateaus of concrete, foundations that broke through soil and stone to cradle the secrets of Cerberus and its underworld. Crowding these stages, all separated by empty roads and staircases, were more buildings than I’d ever expect to find in a place so unwelcoming. And to see them was to look upon the homeless, loitering before the mouth of a sewer, like pastry crumbs around lips.
Apart from the collapsing houses that surrounded it, I could not see this place as a city or a settlement, but only as something military or penitential. A great fence surrounded the concrete fields, guarded by brittle watchtowers, barricade walls and countless warning signs. To Charon, whatever Hell had once been meant very little now, but he was nice enough to explain this new, and far more anarchic state.
"Damascus owns the Installation. But he’s the only one who wants it." The ghoul began. "The South side of town, everything under the white lights, is Raider territory. The North side, where the air is green, is infested with Ferals. But when the coin’s tossed, and lands wrong side up: it all goes to the Slavers.”
The north side leaked, as every one of its whitest lights had been buried under a film of sickly smoke, like stars in a stellar nursery. Crimson shone out from the south, as alarms whirled on in silence, to make silhouettes out of strung up corpses and crucified skeletons. It was all so far away, but I could almost count their ribs for the glare of the floodlights behind them. The wind hummed over this heart of darkness, loading the corruption onto its back, smuggling Hell’s sickness out into the country beyond the ring.
“Where are all the ponies?” I asked, fencing out Raiders and the hostile dead.
"On the Coltilde." He turned, as if he could just leave it at that, and stepped out into the middle of the street. It would lead us up to the church, whose golden blood made it seem like the only unspoiled place in this valley of gutted ruins and crowded hostels of violence. "Come on." He called back to me, like a buck leading his daughter away from something that only she, like all children, was still enraptured by.
Before we got close enough for me to get a better look at either the crumpled church or the Hell stretching out below it, Charon swerved to the left, circling the outskirts of this bastion with me in tow. We hopped over a broken wall that served as the lot's outermost boundary, though it was little more than blasted brick and jagged fencing. As I glanced over my shoulder, I could make out a distant whale's mouth coming up towards the East, and saw it lapping at the flatlands with the steel tongues that were its railways.
I soon caught on to what we were walking across, and my path became broken and complicated for all the graves that I had to avoid treading on. The ghoul didn’t seem to care, and ploughed over the sacred ground as if tilling it in preparation for the next season's harvest. It was a little strange, to see a walking corpse being so callous to those who slept below, as if he was mocking them for giving up so easily.
With my eyes climbing steeples and counting wooden bones, I nearly fell into a hole in the earth. Charon had pulled opened a cellar door, and now waved me into it, as if we hadn't just come up from under the soil. The passage into the church had been built of cobblestone, and I kept my tail brushing up against one of the walls, just to make sure I had something to follow. "Lot of ghouls up there." Charon said, plainly. "More bucks..." He looked me over. "No point trying not to draw attention."
He touched me, almost exactly as my tail lost the wall, and we stepped out into a broad space whose ceiling was crossed by fissures of light, from which their voices fell like gravel. With a hoof tucked behind my forearm, Charon walked me across the room, as if I was the earthy bride to a subterranean wedding. "Get what you need. And get it all. You don't want to come back here alone."
We began on our way up the stairs. "I guess we're gonna have to go our separate ways after this." I said, with a sad smile. "I know we got off to a... rough start." The buck grunted, and I couldn't help letting a little bit of laughter trickle over my voice. "But I'm glad I met you, Charon."
Without a sound, he let me go, and pushed his shoulder up against the door that lay slanted over our heads. I felt nervous. As if I were stepping out into the spotlights of a stage, and not the fires of a holy place turned barracks. I heard rifles clicking like cameras, and lifted a hoof over my eyes as if to shield them from a thousand blinding flashes. But then, Charon muttered something, and pulled me out into the disarray of pews and crude barricades that divided the church's once spacious antechamber.
Ashen banners had been slung over both sides of the patchwork wall, and I mistook the pale animal rearing along the length of them for a three-headed lion, penned up inside the lines and gilded laurels of a broken circle. Both of the weary looking flags had been pinned down under the weight of the ramparts, which were built of everything from the limbs of disassembled Securitrons to a statue of a Princess, whose name could not be guessed for a coat of paint that had long since melted to gray.
There were heads along the wall, and before I caught their clogged-up ghoul’s eyes following us through the gateless barricade, I saw them as trophies on the tips of spears. There were more of them on the other side - where the pews had been swept up into the corners, like pieces of driftwood from a shore, and now sat on pillars of scripture, as if a thoroughfare of heretic bonfires were about to be lit.
It became difficult to remember that these ponies were not on the side of death: but had only cheated it.
They wore barding that was equal parts cloth and plate armor, though the two became hard to tell apart for the weight of an innumerable concert of war. Some had the white lion standing proud on their shoulder and chest guards, or warped along the folds of a cowl, caparison or even a makeshift pattern of gauze. While others, had the name Cerberus stamped along the corners of gas masks, the pockets of satchels or the bandages that coiled around crooked limbs, skinless necks, and even cleaved faces.
But, as if in place of any distinct uniform, they all looked to be covered by more clips of ammunition and holsters, by more bandoliers and belts and bucklers, than the soldiers in the posters and the knights in the storybooks combined. Some had rifles that matched the length of a sword and its scabbard, while others tucked their halved shotguns or heavy pistols away like daggers in the folds of their barding.
We didn't stop moving, and I sometimes had to skip to stay in formation at Charon's side, even as I tried my best not to meet the fog of overcast eyes that had gathered around us as we walked through the church. The entire aisle smelt of ethanol and smoke, of fermented fruit and fermented bodies, of ash and sawdust, and the narrow carpet was like a red sandbank, with tides of playing cards, bullet casings, hymnbook pages and, strangely enough, bottlecaps lapping up at every side.
Still, Charon might as well have been pushing us through the room on a raft, as even the mercenaries shied away from him, and parted together like ripples over the discolored face of a lake.
I couldn't even imagine how the Confessor might react on seeing this: the first of Equestria's churches, turned into something both militant and debauched. "Charon." A voice like liquid copper said, as we reached the place where ponies might once have lowered their bodies before the Celestial cross, to whisper some plea to the mares that turned the world. I peeked around the pierced shield that was Charon's body, and followed trails of smoke to find a fat cigar and the face that it hung, burning, from.
The buck looked remarkably smooth, and wore a security helmet, whose visor had been pushed back to show off bruised, glimmering eyes, and forced the smoke to pool against its tilted glass face like the clouds of a gathering storm. "You made a friend." Yep. "Careful now. Someone might think you bought her... seeing as the train's come in tonight." With one hoof, he tipped his visor to me, and two pillars of smoke rose as if from his ears. "No offense, little miss. ’Tis the season."
The Quartermaster - whose role was made clear by the armory laid out before the gaping altar -chewed on his cigar with something like hunger, and rolled his eyes at Charon through the haze. "Not interested in talking, huh?" He shifted his weight, as if to make a point of choosing me over my escort. "Evening sweetheart." I should say, I felt safe enough for his slovenly charm to step out of cover, and put some distance between Charon and I, even if it was only a hoofstep or two. "What can I help you with?"
"I'd like to know about your shop, actually." I admitted, not yet realizing how thrilled I was to be having something not unlike a normal conversation. "What did you do to end up behind the counter?"
"Risked my hide rootin' around Raider town." He smiled around his cigar. "Set up a neat little operation from out of a footlocker. Made a bundle off all the whiskey and Jet that the townsfolk, if you can call 'em that, were flying too high to keep track of." Charon had become a statue at my side, and I almost thought to try and lure him out of it, to help him make some friends. "Soon enough, the boss had his eyes set on my handsome scheme, and figured he could turn it around - Like he did Hell."
He waved back at the munitions. "Got made Quartermaster for life... Which I figure is like being made one fourth of a King, if you think about it." I giggled, thinking about it.
"Say, you seem too sweet to be herded into a place like this." The buck tilted his head at Charon, as if he couldn't hear us. "What were you thinking: following Smiley around on a night like tonight?"
"Damascus has plans for her." Charon said, and I imagined his words in the plain and punched-down print of a typewriter. He had become a watchful chaperone, a divot between me and the Quartermaster, as if we were teenagers on a date.
"So he threw you into the machine, huh?" I shrugged, as if to say: What can you do? "Well then... you'll be needing a few clips for that 45, and a stack or two of energy cells." He pointed a hoof at each of my pistols, and let it hang in the air, as if waiting for me to reveal an armory tucked under my belly. "Better tag on some RadAway, by the look of it: You're practically glowing."
Pushing him to fish through an array of colorful little boxes, Charon stared the Quartermaster down, and almost knocked the laughter out of his eyes. "Radioactive Mama." The buck began singing to himself, over the rattle of pistol rounds. "Hold me tight. Radioactive - Mama. Treat me right... Radioactive Mama!" He pushed the ammunition over his counter, like a cashier. "We'll reach critical mass... tonight."
Even as I floated out the first roll of coins, I counted three full clips for the laser pistol, and four for the automatic. "Will this be enough for -" I had underestimated Equestria's hunger for lead before, but now knew that ammunition could be burned away like fortunes in a city of casinos. "All of these."
Out of the corner of his eye, the Quartermaster glanced at the tower I'd built, but disappeared behind the counter soon after, leaving a trail of smoke. "That'll be at least two stacks, sweetheart." Jeez, somepony forgot to tell inflation about the war. "And that's a bargain.... Days like these: Ammo doesn't come cheap."
I begrudgingly dug out another roll, and felt Charon's hoof on my shoulder. The buck was staring down at the coins with something that almost looked like horror. And it suddenly occurred to me that I might be getting ripped off. "Excuse me, sir, but Charon doesn't seem to think your prices are-"
There was a howl from behind the counter, and I looked up into a smoky tempest, that was being swashed and spun by the rolling Quartermaster. At first, I thought he was having a sudden and terrible stomach ache, but soon realized that he was laughing. "What happened?" I demanded, with the corners of my lips turning up at the sight of him. "What is it?" Charon covered his face with a hoof, as if in shame.
"You!" The buck pointed, after rolling up onto folded limbs. I blinked dumbly, but felt my face trying to decide if it should blush. "You're serious?" He clicked his hooves together, cackling. "You're serious!"
"Bottlecaps are currency." Charon muttered from behind his hoof. "Those old coins are worthless."
Wait… Bottlecaps!?
It must have been midnight, and the sky could have almost been called bright, though that great storm had yet to pass. And now, there was a fear, swirling through the hollows of my mind, that it never would. That, like so many things in this state of anarchy, the weather had been left without its Gods and Masters.
“I think it’s got modified focused optics!” I said, as I practiced pulling the pistol out of its new holster, with just enough sense not to fire it into the air, and put on a lightshow for all the Hell that hummed below.
The RadAway had left a fuzzy, orange feeling in my mouth, and I was almost afraid to stick out my tongue, and show Charon its new coat of paint. He had actually paid the buck with Bottlecaps. As if they'd all been drinking Sparkle Cola by the case, to leave their own tongues coated in neon.
"Stay away from the rails. Head east until you see a toll booth." Charon was walking in circles around me, making sure that every saddlebag, every holster, was strapped down tight. "Don’t get too close. Not until you find the mercenary posted nearby." He repeated, as he broke out of his orbit and began to drift off along the highway. I watched him for a while, puzzled, thinking that he was only wandering as a rampant windup toy might, and would soon turn back to shake my hoof or pat me on the head.
"I take it that's your way of saying: Goodbye Grace: my friend, my comrade... my sister. Boy am I going to miss that face of yours." I said, in a voice that coasted along, just softly enough so that he might not hear me. "Keep safe!" At that, he looked back, and gave me a curt, noncommittal nod.
I clicked my hooves together, and let out a little giggle, delighted by how military it all seemed. I was getting orders, like a soldier under the leonine banner of Equestria's dawn, drafted to teach evil a thing or two about old world law. I watched Charon walk away, and saw him steering towards the war camp that spilled out from under the church - which my Pipbuck had named The Light at the Edge of the World. It was a gathering of tents, as if for a circus or market, though each had been drained of its complexion, its polka dots and checkers, leaving only the color of that bloodless lion, its golden ring, and the night.
After seeing tall, bowbacked figures - who walked on misshapen legs, and looked to be carrying great weights at the end of each arm - ambling through the camp, I turned away from it, if only to pretend that they had been imagined. Instead, I looked to my Pipbuck's map, as if begging it for a way out.
The valley, which had been named The Middle Passage, deserved its title, as it now ran clear as the middlemost channel of three. Another clearly waited to the north, at the foot of that star-scraping black mountain, and to the south, which was little more to me than stern, gray faces and sashes of moonlight, my Pipbuck promised another strip of this sedated earth. But, for now, I could only go East.
I took to the broken road, and hummed to myself as I went. Dark was the night, Cold was the ground. Streetlights, like fireflies in the distance and plump stars hovering over my head, kept me company against an otherwise empty world. They came to warp my perception of the night, leaving the sky as something still and lightless, and everything apart from the highway as a black, opaque mass.
It was an eerie kind of loneliness, as only the unusual strip of rock or the whispering bough of a tree could be seen on either side, as if the valley was dipping its fingers into this last river of white light. The heavens tore into one another, putting on a show for the moon, as if it couldn't be allowed to know that, when its back was turned, they would come together as friends, and darken the dawn.
Time marched on, leaving a trail of white steps along the road ahead of me. But I didn't feel any need to catch it, and walked to the slow rhythm of my own song. I heard the pluck of raw and impressible strings come to join my wordless hums, and our two voices shared the song, to tell of a lonely night where even language was lost. Only after it was over, did I start to wonder why it had faded, not to silence, but static.
I spun around one leg, and found a star bobbing along my freshly beaten path, as if it had never left me. "Okavango?" I held a hoof over my eyes, as the youngest of all Cerberus' salvaged machines blinded me under its stare, and turned loose a parade of cheery, multilingual beeps. "How were you doing that? GNR doesn't go east of Hell." The spritebot replied with a symphonic fanfare, and I had to shush him.
"Why did you come back?" I didn't know whether I should accuse him of abandoning me, leaving me to Charon and Damascus and all that was good in the Kingdom of Glass, or thank him for coming all this way to play me a song. He made the guns on his southern pole whir, and coated the sound with a short section of heroic, Equestrian music, leaving me happy to see him. "Do you think you can handle yourself out here?" He tried to nod, and nearly tilted off of some predestined axis, adorably enough.
"Okay, you can come." He was a Cerberus security officer, after all. "But I'm supposed to meet someone near the toll booth a little farther along... to get our orders." He was clearly impressed, and ooed by way of a long, sweeping beep. "I know, right?"
Even without a voice of his own, Okavango could not have been any less like Charon, and might have cheered the ghoul to madness if the two of them ever met. If we were going to be best friends, I would have to get them to like each other. And I started wondering how best to trick them into a slumber party.
"Don't float too far away." I said, after looking out over the road’s black banks, with the cold pushing its hands into my shirt. "And try not to play any more music until we know what's out here."
After a while, I caught myself skipping along the highway and, almost at once, realized that Okavango had put on another record. I let it play, and only turned as the song began to sway into a calm. "Belay that order." I whispered, as if cheating some nearby commander. "Do you know anything by Sweetie Belle?"
*** *** ***
If our objective hadn't been built across the highway, like a bridge, I might have wandered by, bobbing in a stream of crotchets and quavers, of words like moonbeam and stardust, all crossing the decades from gossamer lips. But I couldn't miss it. That, after all, is the nature of a toll booth: it's unavoidable.
Weighed down with lights of many colors, from blinking pinpricks of red and yellow to the usual white flood, it stood out as a gateway into the East, cut out of the darkness no differently than the rifts in the clouds. A tall, mesh fence rose up at either side of the highway, herding travelers into its bejeweled mouth, and I stopped myself well before coming into it, like a bird before the jaws of a crocodile.
Instead, I steered us off the edge of the highway, to stumble into some rocky badland, rising and falling around it. "Stay close to me." I whispered, and got a quiet and conspirative little beep in return.
The lights along the road made it a great deal easier to find my way, and soon enough, I had come to the bottom of a crease in the earth, which pressed into the skin of Equestria’s belly like the tip of a spear. It rose at a mollifying, but steady, angle, and eventually had me looking down on the highway to my right. I tripped over the rocks, and might have been wearing bells for how they clicked against my hooves. But then, I heard a soft, steely click that spoke clearer than any proclamation of war.
“You for me?" I nodded, without thinking, and her sigh sent a city coasting through the night air. "I ask for a spotter, so they send me a pinup girl and her floating music box." The mare's voice was silver, to match the luster of a long-barreled and ladylike revolver, though it had a growl running under it, like the babble of a faraway river. "Cerberus never gets my order right."
"Are you going to shoot me?" I asked, at a whisper, wishing that I had some kind of passcode to give her, to let her know that, in the light, we stood under the same colors. "Will saying Damascus help?" She didn't answer, and I looked down, as if to make sure that my hooves were still there. "Damascus."
What I thought I heard then almost sounded like a giggle, but was quickly changed into the kind of noise that somepony would only make if they were trying to get a giggle to sound tough.
She couldn't quite shake the smile out of her voice though. "Well, welcome aboard, Lamplight. Come on over and bundle up. We might as well get cozy." If anything, she seemed to be enjoying how crudely this operation was coming together. "Just drop the curtain on that magic act, alright?"
"Oh..." My horn let out a fit of embers, as it dammed up the light. "Sorry. I'm not really used to... black."
"Must be nice." She patted the earth beside her. "Way I hear it: you're fresh out of the box. No more than a few hours old." I made my way over to her, making sure to skirt my hooves around every stone. "Turns out your first big adventure in the Equestrian Wasteland is gonna be a good old-fashioned stakeout."
"A Stakeout?" I sounded it out, though familiar with the word. "Like in True Police Stories?" I slumped onto my belly, and slid over to the end of the ridge. Everything above my neck was lit up by the toll booth's floodlights, and I couldn't bring myself to go any lower, as if the darkness might drown me.
A shadow lay beside me, and even as I saw it for the curled up pony that it was, it began to move. "Can that thing sit?" She pointed up at Okavango, who now hovered just above the surface of the black water. "Sit." She whispered, making him out to be some kind of domesticated animal.
I reached out, and took Okavango in my hooves. He was only about the size of a filly's head, and it wasn't all that difficult for me to cradle him at my chest, letting all four spindly needles branch out behind me.
"Are we going to be partners?" I asked, after the spritebot was tucked in.
"Sure." I saw her shrug, as if she didn't know how much that answer meant to me. "Charon isn't really the type to get jealous." The mare straightened herself out, and sat on her haunches. Her posture was soft, but I could tell that, shoulder to shoulder, she'd still be taller than me. "But for now, all that means is we'll be watching this horrorshow together." She waved down at the toll. "Damascus figures that, if there's something going on between the Raiders and that train, this's our last chance to find out about it."
"Is that important?" I furrowed my brow, wondering how mutilated corpses, strung up as if they were works of art, and ponies harvested like apples in apple-bucking season, wasn't damning enough.
"Just because they're both... what d'you Stable ponies call them? ... Sinners?" I nodded eagerly, as if I wouldn't have understood any other word. "Doesn't mean they're sinnering together." I opened my mouth to correct her, but thought better of it. "Raiders are dangerous enough, but they could get a lot worse with a Slaver holding their reins, whipping 'em into a frenzy. If the Coltilde rounds them up, they could have 'em running at Hell like a stampede, or tearing along behind the night train like a pack of hyenas."
"So we're looking out for some kind of messenger..." I nodded. "An ambassador from the Coltilde: As evidence that the Slavers are trying to rally up the tribes?"
"Right. But I've never seen a tribal eat a pony's beating heart clean out from inside them." She said coolly, leaving the picture that I had of the Raiders smeared in a far more unsettling shade of red. "The Slavers know as well as we do: These de-generates aren't getting trussed up into an army. You might be able to put a leash on a wild dog and walk it, but strap it to another and you'll still end up with just one dog. More likely they're doing business: buying the ponies they've gotten bored with, and haven't strung up yet."
I was suddenly shaken, as if everything she'd been saying had only just hit me, coming in a single wave of that Raider red. Okavango beeped, looking up at me with his big, starlit eye as I squeezed him a little closer. "You treat that thing like a baby." She said, without any scorn in her smile. "I'll bet you even went ahead and gave that little lightbulb a name." Names! I thought, and hurried to stamp out the fire.
"I'm sorry! We all forgot to introduce ourselves." From the look on the mare’s face, she wasn’t buying into the calamity. "This is Mister Okavango Delta: Acting Chief of Security over all Cerberus facilities." A roar of applause sounded out from his speakers, and I could only try to speak over a smile, instead of scolding him. "And I am Grace... from the Stable." I needed to get some titles under my belt.
"Oka-van-go." She sounded out his name, like she did with most of the longer words. It wasn't as if she was struggling to pronounce them, but more that she enjoyed feeling them roll off her tongue. "That sounds more like a military call sign than a name..." We both stared at her, with flat brows. "Hell, alright: I'm Caliber, glad to meet you." She took my hoof in hers, and shook me by it.
Caliber's coat hinted at a sober, yellow-beige bale of straw, and just above her nose, was a constellation of white freckles, like scattered stars. If I were to look at her face as a romantic, a poet drunk on spiced wine, then I might have compared it to the pale and starry horizon of the sunrise that had rolled over so many farms in the Equestrian heartland, if only for how the floodlights set a fire in her barn-red mane.
Her hair looked to have been shorn off sometime in the last few months, as it had grown up into a surf of alpaca wool, turning at its tips like the mane of a teenage rebel. My mother might have called it puffy and, turning around with her nose in the air and her skirts in a flurry, declared it a hopeless case.
It curled around her ears - one of which wore what could easily be a permanent burn at its tip. As if to outdo this injury, an old bandage covered her left temple, and it was small enough to hint at a severe precision wound, left by anything from a bullet, to an ice pick.
Her eyes were brown.
“Likewise” I felt Okavango trying to do a little bow, though she hadn't noticed. “So… Partners?”
“You got it." Our hooves parted. “We might not be Cerberus girls, but a contract's a contract, right?" Caliber wouldn't have fit into the church any better than I had, and I wondered why, apart from their dejected bodies and feudal countenance, the ghouls were the only ones who got to wear that old name. "One condition, though: Damascus threw the word Dawn at me more times than I could count. So, if you feel a lecture on The Last Light or The Reclamation coming down the pike, try to get me out of earshot."
I tilted my head, as if she had started speaking in another language. "It's a nice idea, but you two can keep it - Deal me out. The wasteland’s not a dance you want to try cutting into. I'm just happy to be taking orders from someone who’s deluded, instead of absolutely fucked-up... for a change."
I didn't really know what to make of that, and a silence fell as the mare leveled her rifle over the lip of the ridge, and dipped into the shadows to peer through its blue-eyed scope. "Caliber..." I waved my hoof around in the black, searching for her shoulder, and only found it after she had pulled away from her gun.
"Why do I feel like you just climbed up onto a soapbox?" She asked, cutting me short with a crooked smile. "We had a deal: You keep your hooves nice and dirty around me."
"But-"
"Nuh-uh."
"But Equestria-"
"Quit it."
"At least-"
"I think your thing's asleep." Her eyes had darted to the rough and tumble sphere, which I still held, cradled against my chest. I looked down at Okavango, and saw that his galactic light was pulsing, slowly fading on and off, reminding me more of a deep breath than a heartbeat.
“Whoa." I said, forgetting Caliber's blocked ears as quickly as I had the toll. "Do you think he can dream?”
“Not many of us can anymore.” She frowned, staring into the void from which the tide of his light came. “I gotta say: that’s not the first thing I’d think of, hearing the name Cerberus.” She leaned into the pulse, and I watched the starlight come and go, buried somewhere deep beneath the soil of her eyes.
"Listen, Lamplight... you can just ignore what I said before." She looked up at me, breaking the constellation of blue eyes in brown eyes in gold. "Don't let me sweep my dust over your dawn. I was talking out of turn: went and forgot that it's only been a few hours since you came stumbling into the world, with those stars in your eyes... You must be feeling pretty tender."
"Yeah." I looked out over the toll, where the Raiders might have been mistaken for children in a playground. "I mean... I'm out... I'm gone." I swung out a hoof, theatrically. "Forever."
"Tell me about it." She reeled in her rifle, and pressed it into her chest just as I had done to Okavango.
"What do you mean?" I asked, needlessly; a little flustered at the chance to lay it all bare. "About what?"
"Everything, honey." She let out a giggle, but quickly tried to swallow it away. "We've got nowhere to be until morning. And even a Slaver knows better than to come out East when the moonlight's been bottled up like it is." And yet, there we were: Out East. "So go for it. Shoot. Take a load off - Hell, make it a bedtime story. Burn through the letters, 'til there's nothing left but Z. I'll wake you when the show starts."
"The storyteller isn't usually the one being put to sleep." I argued, fairly sure about this.
"Hey, I got my hours in last night. And the most exciting thing I've done today was hang around the church, trying to get my damn battle saddle fixed. Besides, sitting on this ridge isn't exactly hard work." She kicked up some dust, as if to prove her point. "Once you realize how long that story of yours is, you'll see how much you need the rest." I tried to convince myself that she was wrong. But too much of me wanted to flush the last day out, to get it someplace other than my mind.
So I told her. Absolutely Everything. And it almost felt... good, like taking off a yoke, or breathing out.
As I was talking, with the floodgates pulling apart for Shady Sands and that throne in the mountains, breaking down for Saber and the mare-merchant, Caliber picked something out of her satchel, lit it, and put it in her mouth. Soon, another light began to pulse, as she breathed in a pinprick of fire, and colored the night air with smoke. I watched the cinders, as they rose and fell, and felt the weight of it all rolling off my back. Her breath became warm, draconic, even as my own words sang me to sleep.
Day One had been long and dark, like twilight in the polar circle, and I’d become tired for so much less.
Our forefathers left us this place. They carved themselves so many thrones, so many empires, and were still washed away as if taken by a flood of holy water and wrath. Now, they stand before the gates, guarding the Kingdom in the Skies, keeping it for all who prove themselves worthy, who prove themselves strong. Just as they did in the beginning, in the darkness before the first dawn. Just as we will, in the darkness before the last. Every sin, every life we end - by word, or by fire - will pave the way. And if we cannot, if you cannot, learn to judge, to become an instrument of the Goddesses, your light will go out.
You saved the Stable. Did you know that? Of course you didn't. You and that child of an Overmare. You would have thrown us all into the howling dark, you would have wiped us out. If I hadn't tipped the scales, and made you heroes, martyrs, instead. You killed her. Did you know that? Of course. We all knew that. We have both made sacrifices that weren’t ours to make. We are both murderers. And we are both heroes. But, in their eyes, there can only be two sides to the coin. Only one of us can wear their crown of thorns, and be shut out into the long night. I should hope you already know which one of us that is.
My little Gracie. I do like the sound of that. Grace Marie. How do you think that one fits her, darling? *giggles* I suppose it does sound a little fancy. It came from your side of the family, after all. Some ancestor, a grandmother, yes? Her name was Marie too. Please tell me you like it, darling. Oh, thank you. She's got your eyes, and your hair. She should have that name, too. Look at her, our little golden lion. This is our chance to start over, to leave all that darkness behind. You can show them that they were wrong. You can be a father. A good man... Everything is going to get better. You'll see.
…Can I hold her?
They aren't all worth saving. Remember that. Sometimes, there is no price to pay, no penitence. Sometimes, blood can be spilled as if it were water, and it will sink into the ash, leaving no mark on the earth. I am not Celestia. I am not Luna. And, if I were given the key to the Kingdom's gates, I would lock them, and leave this wasteland to collapse into the sea. But I have no such key. And the Goddesses would hold the gates open, and have their country saved. So be it. Who am I to question them?
Equestria is dead. And there is nothing we can do to bring it back. I wonder, how long will it take you to see that? How many times will you let it chew you up, and spit you out, before you see it like I do? Celestia is dead. Luna is dead. But we... we are alive. And that damn War will not be the end of us.
Hush now, Quiet now, it’s time to lay your sleepy head. Hush now, Quiet now it’s time to go to bed… Hush now quiet now may Luna guide you through the night. Hush now, Quiet now, until the morning light. Goodnight Gracie… Honey… Oh, come see… I think she’s dreaming…Honey?
Forgive me...
Forget me.
*** *** ***
I opened my eyes, and found the valley blanketed in white, as if the storm had not passed, but burst. The clouds had become an unshaped and colorless veil, draped over the tallest mountains' peaks, as those ships of gray, those black seas and reefs of moonlight, had turned into a great, white surf. It was day.
"Mornin'." Caliber still had an eye pressed to her rifle, as if nothing had changed for the setting of the moon. "I would have made us some breakfast, but Raiders in the light don't do much for the appetite."
Misshapen silhouettes now became mutilated bodies, and even the vague and faceless nightmares of the eventide began to seem preferable to these ugly savages: ponies that lived like a roving collection of animals both wild and rabid, from dogs fighting over meat, to pigs rolling up in their own filth.
"I had a hell of a time keeping your robot quiet." She went on, as I twisted my neck, in search of so much as a shrunken, pale disc to remind that the sun was still out there somewhere. "Finally got it to go play lookout over the metro tunnel, to give us some warning if the Slavers come." I patted at my chest, as one might the pillow of some escaped lover. "Not before it got that damn song stuck in my head, though."
Caliber wore a rumpled, beaten-blue vest over a white shirt, whose sleeves looked to have been torn off like those of a mare stranded in some merciless and uncharted desert. Her collar was dark, and came in around a thick, once-white scarf that hung low under her neck. Its knot was round, and reminded me of a heart, but served as the roost to some kind of dust mask. Her front legs had been wrapped in straps, and cloths of rusty colors, breaking apart only to reveal a small device on her right, and a pistol on her left.
“Good Mornin’, Good Mornin’.” She started grumbling through the song. And, strangely enough, made sure to hit all the right notes. "All of a sudden he just jumped right up from under ya - started spinning around like he's the entire valley's alarm clock - telling us all how: Nothing could be finer than to be in Canterlina... We'd have been cooked if the raiders weren't all fucked out of their minds." With a lazy kind of flair, she mimed getting punched in the head. "No way they didn't hear. But it only got ‘em blaring GNR static from the toll's speakers. And I sure didn't need any help staying awake after that."
“Would they really be doing this to themselves.” I poked my head out over the ridge, to watch the circus tearing on before us. “if they knew they had a meeting with the Slavers this morning?”
“Are you kidding? There isn't one Raider less than an hour away from a shot, be it by glass or needle or pistol. That’s what makes them so dangerous; in a fight, you might be run down by a buck with more Dash in his system than blood, or gunned down by an expert marksman who decided that life as a town guard was getting too boring. If you're lucky: you get one of the drunks.”
I realized that, being an earth pony, Caliber couldn't actually use the terrible, black rifle whose scope had been her eye over the toll. Pieces of a disassembled battle saddle rig poked out of her satchel, and I wondered if she could have resisted taking shots at the wild things below if it were whole. The symbol, smeared above her rifle's clip, matched the mercenary's cutie mark, to leave them both with what, at first, appeared to be a simple black crosshairs aimed into a field of white.
“Caliber..." I began to ask, gingerly. "What are we going to do if nopony comes?”
She looked up at me, and I saw that there was a path of dust running from her belly to her neck, where her body had been laid down against the ridge. "We make sure nopony goes."
Just as the silence dug a pit between us, Okavango returned, and brought a fanfare with him, which got no more than a twitch out of Caliber, and a muffled yelp from me. "Looks like we've got inbound assholes." The mare said, after straightening out her rough and tumble vest. I couldn't be sure, but it looked like Caliber was only just holding back a smile. "Slavers? ...How many?"
He beeped three times, just as he had done to make a count of The Circles. "That's enough for a roundup... Hell, considering the kind of firepower they've got tucked up in the Coltilde, that's enough to wipe this place off the face of the valley." And, to my own surprise, I found myself hoping to see it happen, to see this malignant toll put to the torch of an even greater evil.
"Fuck eggshells." She said, as if a sudden and violent hatred for eggshells had overcome her. "We'll be walking on a damn minefield." She poked a hoof up at Okavango. "And I want radio silence from you, pal. With my battle saddle wrecked, I can't say whether I'd stand up to a Slaver. And both of you just got spat out of the underground. So no singing. We can't let this play out wrong."
She pulled her rifle away from the ridge, as if pulling a friend to safety from the edge of a cliff, and began to holster it at her side. It could, quite easily, have been as long as her spine. "The Quartermaster had a lot of weapons lying around. Couldn't you have traded that one in for something... smaller?"
"Are you crazy!? I would never do that!" I might as well have plucked an open nerve. "This rifle is the only reason I made more of myself than a corpse bleeding out on some snow bank, or a whore putting out on some street corner." Her frustration, like little beads of spit, flew past me: directed more at whatever cruel twist of fate had left her beloved weapon no better than a sword stuck in its sheath.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know…” I said, trying to settle her down, even though I had no idea how any mare might become so loyal to a gun. “Isn’t there somepony in Hell who can fix your battle saddle?”
She sighed, venting the last strains of her temper. "Not a one. And it figures: Right when I land the contract of my life, I have to stick around a place where even the merchants moonlight as mercenaries. Don't get me wrong. Damascus sure knows how to make some good out of a hired hoof - He always has us doing stuff like this: Raider Wrap-ups and the odd cartography run: Good work. But the buck doesn't get that mercs need to be maintained, just like any other tool. I mean, we don't even have a medic."
“You guys should start a union.” I said, trying to cheer her up.
"Yeah right." She giggled, as if to tell me that I’d won her over. "It can't be ethical to mark radiation down as a health benefit." Her rifle might have purred then, as Caliber ran a hoof along its barrel. "And none of those damn ghouls could patch together a decent battle rig to save the skin they have left."
It was really a shame that everypony couldn't be a unicorn. "Tell you what..." I began, already loosening the holster on my leg. "Why don't we share?" I floated out my father's automatic pistol.
“Whoa…” Her eyes widened, becoming almost childlike as the word rolled on. Okavango came up beside her, and stretched a beep out as far as it would go, turning the two of them into wolves: howling at the moon. I swung the passover weapon from side to side, to let its silver barrel catch all the light that had been left to us. The two of them followed, and bobbed together like apples in a basin.
As I coiled my magic around her rifle, Caliber broke through the hypnotics. "Hold on there!" She started. "You aren't gonna... hit anybody are you?" Hit... or pistol-whip? "I've seen a couple unicorns do that."
"I promise not to hit anypony with your rifle." I swore, even as I filled the space between us with a thoroughfare of ammunition, and holstered the pistol behind her shoulder. "I have a baseball bat... see?"
"Y'know, you're actually pretty good at this, Lamplight." Caliber swung a hoof out around us, as if she was trying to point at the world. "And thanks, by the way." Even if I hadn't taken her rifle, the look in the mare's eyes then would have been more than enough to pay the balance on some old exile's pistol.
We settled back into the dust, and watched the new world circus play out below us. Wire bags of cramped, glistening meat lay against the toll booths, and defamed bodies looked to have been strung up, or nailed down, all across the gates. Skulls, and even fleshy clumps that were only just recognizable for what was left of their faces, stuck out of the gaps on pikes, as if to warn off any eastbound travelers.
The road had been streaked in red, and I imagined some poor pony being dragged into the slaughterhouse that had been constructed, if only in the minds of the animals, here. I could only bear to watch the ungodly toll for how far away it was, and for how little the wind carried its scent.
“How much longer will it be?” It was a long way to the metro tunnel's open mouth, but the wait was whittling away at my nerves, and the beasts - who fought and fornicated before us - weren't helping.
"Can't say." She shrugged. "This mist will be slowing 'em down some."
“Mist?”
She scratched her chin, rooting around for a way to explain. "... So it's like we're inside a cloud, right? Well, that’s the valleys funneling in moist, night air. Turns everything this far East to soup most mornings."
As if to prove her point, Okavango wandered off towards the north, and soon became little more than a black smudge, like an old cigarette burn on a bleached tablecloth. "Anything else you wanna ask? We're coming up over the brink now."
"Actually... I'd like to know more about you." She tilted her head, as if blindsided by a filly half her size.
"Of all the cool shit you've seen out here -" I nodded. "Not Damascus or Charon or Cerberus -" Another nod. "Why?"
I shrugged. "I think you're pretty neat."
"Celestia, what a compliment." She threw up her hooves, as if I was a hopeless case, and hadn't changed for all my time on her long, dusty chaise couch. "Can I get that in writing?"
All of a sudden, an orchestra came tumbling over itself from the north, and in the throes of its music, I recognized the beeping and blustering of Okavango Delta. "Looks like you'll have to unravel this enigma some other time." She said, with her eyes narrowing as a train whistle rose to drown out the spritebot.
"Their window's closing... it has to be now." The Slavers were coming, to make their deal with lesser devils, to ready the stage that would see me take my first life.
Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Red Lightning: The power of your personality inspires die-hard loyalty from your followers. When you drop below 50% health, your companions temporarily gain much greater resistance to damage.
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A far better chapter than the last one. I think it was because the more colourful descriptions were short, and immediately followed by a clear statement:
All of a sudden, an orchestra of came tumbling over itself from the north, and in the throes of its music, I recognized the beeping and blustering of Okavango Delta. "Looks like you'll have to unravel this enigma some other time." She said, with her eyes narrowing as a train whistle rose to drown out the spritebot.
Here we start with a nice way of saying "loud noise from the North," and it's quickly followed by "it's a train." I'm not left floundering for several lines before being told what's actually being described, like I was last chapter. When metaphor alone is being used it's also much clearer:
"Wire bags of cramped, glistening meat lay against the toll booths" is very obviously corpses. The conversation also helped a lot to liven things up and keep the pace going.
I'll have my eye out for chapter 5 :)
2995736
I was right! 
I won you back! 
I was right?
I actually know what I'm doing!
Now, I'm not going to agree that Frontier is written any better than Sinnerman.
(I'll give you this, though: it sure reads better.)
But you'll be glad to know that, if the two have different styles, it's because of a change in Grace that only unfurls from here.
It's a little worrying to think that, like you, others might have become entangled in my purple prose.
)
But here's hoping that, like you, they'll press on!
You are a hero! A beacon! A role model!
(And if you ever leave me again, I'll eat seven gallons of ice cream
Hmm...
Over all, it's a better chapter than the previous one, but I don't approve of the coloured words near the end there. The pink ones were kinda hard to read, and it seems like a fairly pointless gimmick to have to rely on.
Grace's internal monologue was better than it ever has been before this chapter. It still has that charming abstractness, but it's always followed by a normal solid statement that helps things make a bit more sense. I don't have to interpret the words, because the translation is right there, but I can still enjoy the words for what they are.
Some of her thoughts an observations made me laugh out loud. I can never tell if she's joking, or if she really is that childish.
This fic is well on its way to becoming one of my favourites. It'll need quite a few more chapters before I go declaring it incredible, but I really have enjoyed what I see here, and it honestly seems to be getting better each chapter. Once you find your footing and settle into things, I'm sure this could turn into something remarkable.
Looks good again and those slavers are probably gonna wish they never slaved
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When you said I don't approve of the colored words I thought you meant Caliber and her Fuck eggshells line.
But I agree that they don't really work. At least, not in FIMfic's format. The trouble is, I want to make it clear that: Grace is asleep, and that each paragraph is spoken by a different voice. I'll go see what I can come up with.
"Once you find your footing."
Damn it, there's the catch.
But if anything will get me steady, it's all these comments. They're really helping to sober me up.
I might even have something like a formula. (Even if it's as simple as: lyrical-lyrical-lyrical-lyrical-literal)
So I assume you had the same problems that FuzzyFox did with Sinnerman?
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This part must be looking pretty familiar, huh DP?
Well, you know what's coming... probably. And it's going to be even better this time... probably.
2998194 yes it is
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Eh, not so much a problem as it is a preference. I have a reasonably high tolerance for purple prose, so Sinnerman didn't bother me, but I like it better here.
Very interesting, as usual. I can only reiterate that this is the most original take on this crossover that I've ever read. However, if I may wax pedantic for a bit, there are some minor things that keep throwing me off:
- Dialogue. You're consistently punctuating your dialogue incorrectly.
To be blunt, that's all sorts of wrong, and it throws off the trippy rhythm you've got going with your prose. In standard "X said" construction, you use a comma at the end of the dialogue, not a full stop.
- Colons. Personally, I think you're overusing them in places where they don't really belong, but more to the point, you don't have to capitalize the word that follows the colon.
- Plausible descriptions. As fun as your imagery is, it doesn't always make sense given the context. For example:
The language is great, but it lacks internal consistency. Logically speaking, how would a pony who's spent most of her life in a Stable know what a discolored lake looks like? Grace might have read about lakes and even seen pictures of some, but using that sort of descriptive language implies more familiarity with the topic than she has.
I have to say I like our newfound companion! With Okavango and Caliber, what can possibly go wrong for Grace? Great chapter, I agree with Fuzzy, Y1, and Silvernis on most of their points, but those are improvements that will simply make a good thing even better!
I swear you're trying to drive me out of town! What purpose will I have if there are no mistakes to correct? So I mean, good job on your editing skills! These comments get shorter as you get better!
Or maybe I'm just tired or something. Still, I caught these, so it must be your improvement, not my regression!
I do believe you want past* here
expected it* to, would make more sense I think.
I'm guessing this isn't s'posed to be an orchestra of came...
Nitpicking!
Double spaces! Also, when doesn’t Gracie look at things as a romantic?
And that's that! I quite enjoyed this chapter, especially Grace's dream and the conversations with Caliber! You also manage to make a metal spritebot pretty dang expressive and friendly, Okavango is best boombox! I wait with bated breath for the next installment of our golden heroine, time to see what these slavers are up to!
Toodles
~Fluttersyke
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kind of romantic. Not the usual 
).
Well, I guess I have to go study up on my Dialogue.
That colon looks so wrong to me, (Said the proctologist) So I guess I have to scrap everything I think I already know... and begin again
Fluttersyke sent me a link and a message that should help. As for Plausible Descriptions... I could make up some cockamamie canon like: Grace studied old magazines so hard, that she might as well have grown up out in prewar Equestria. But, to be honest, I never even think about it. The language here would be pretty dull if Grace could only draw comparisons with the Stable. (they parted together like lather in a sink full of dishwater.)
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I guess she meant this
But I'm sure glad you liked their conversations (considering they took up almost half the chapter
That's one of the things I'm working really hard on: Giving each character their own voice, right?
Anyway, thanks babe.
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Actually, I have been getting the impression that Grace did, in fact, study more about prewar Equestria than ponies who grew up in other Stables. She just seems very, I dunno, cerebral about the differences between the wasteland and old Equestria. That, or she's just loopy (which works, too). She still doesn't know what a lake really looks like, but I'm not surprised that her mind would go there in the first place.
Also, call me crazy, but I think the dish water thing works. It's not exactly sweeping or romantic, of course, but using language based on Grace's life in the Stable would impart a certain tactile immediacy to the description.
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Uh, regolit. I think your drunk uncle is showing...
I thought you were always too pissed that she wasn't a stallion.
And I didn't know you liked Caliber?
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Oh, she definitely did. More than most of the ponies in her own Stable, in fact.
But you make a good point. And, now that I look back at it, I see what you mean about the dishwater.
And, though I had to look up tactile immediacy, I can appreciate the weight that kind of impact might have.
She throws out a lot of childhood imagery, sure. (Why not: bubbles in a basin full of bathwater. Bonus points for Alliteration!) But I probably could fan the deck a little more, you know?
Grace is so adorable.
Two A.M. and I've got somewhere to be in the morning, but I just finished reading this chapter and I want to comment on it while it's fresh in my mind. First, a couple of mistakes:
only one*
thing's*
they're*
started*
Also, your colon use is a bit strange.
You might as well have used a comma. I don't know if it's wrong, but it's certainly doesn't sound right to me. Why use a colon anyway? I think it puts too much emphasis on the stunned part, whether you meant to do so or not.
Your comma usage is iffy as well. You've got a lot of your sentences chopped up in bits and clauses when they don't have to be or even shouldn't be.
Commas can be considered to be both breaks in syntax and pauses in voice, brief as they may be. Do these sentences sound more natural when you read then out loud as you've written them, with the highlighted commas, or without? You do this so much that I didn't need to write down any specific examples—I found them quick enough in retrospect. You should think about your sentences as blocks of thoughts. If you're going to break them up with commas, do it in a way that makes sense and flows right. There was a howl from behind the counter, and I looked up into a smoky tempest what? A smoky tempest that was being swashed and spun by the rolling Quartermaster. Your comma cuts the thought in half for no reason. When I judge how well written a story is, I put by far the most weight on the execution of actual storytelling elements (character, pacing, plot, etc.). I consider grammar issues trivial in comparison—any editor can fix those, and most serious writers only make them as oversights. But for you, I don't think this is a trivial issue. Yes, the same idea goes through either way, but the flow gets messed up. And when you've got a style as dependent on rhythm as yours, you can't mess up on the flow.
Unfortunately, the commas might not be the biggest grievance I've had in reading this chapter. I think you need to approach your writing with a bit more... awareness? There are things that I've noticed that I feel like most readers just glaze over. But if I notice, someone else will too. Some of your paragraphs are riddled with problems like this one:
Firstly, there's the comma thing again. Then, there's the vague bit about the voices. Whose? Whose voices? I know you mentioned the source in the prior paragraph, but consider this: You're talking about two different people in the first clause of that sentence, and then you go on to describe something else, the fissures of light, and then you mention the voices while also throwing in a simile. With so much going on, it's easy to get lost. Then you say forearm when you mean foreleg. Then you say "as if" again, which, I'm sorry, you really do say too much. Now, the subterranean wedding bit. It isn't wrong, but I'm going to suggest that you sometimes use figurative language that you ought not to. Metaphor and simile help us understand things through a recognition of likeness, and the more alike the comparison, the more powerful the metaphor or simile. Writers like Margaret Atwood do this really well. Yes, Grace and Charon walked as though in a wedding, and the place was subterranean, but is describing the scene as a subterranean wedding really what you want to do? What about all the wasted connotation? In how many ways are the two scenes alike? In how many ways are they not? In how many ways does Grace and Charon walking together underground not remind you of a subterranean wedding? Another example of this:
Yes, the ploughing action (
) is described in this, but describing it as "in preparation for the next season's harvest" doesn't do anything for us. Maybe the description would be more apt if Charon had done what he did for some collection purpose, but he didn't. The description seems extraneous. And some of your descriptions aren't just excessive, they also don't make sense.
I don’t get it. Are these pillars of scripture stacks of books? How are these pews sitting on top of them unless they were lifted up and placed on top? And how can this be the case if they were “swept” into the corners (as though in a storm)? The bonfire bit makes me think that the scripture isn’t in a pillar at all, but more of a heap. Also, we already know that the driftwood is from a shore—where else do you find driftwood? It’s redundant to say so, and though it certainly isn’t that big of a deal, you should always aim to create the most effective descriptions, and you don’t do that by saying more than you have to to get your point across.
Sorry for going all Negative Nancy on you. There's a lot you do right, much more than you do wrong. But you know that. I hope you know that. I just think that you need to be aware, and I don't see anyone else mentioning these issues (maybe I'm just uptight
).
P.S. If you ever get around to editing this chapter, make sure you fix the dialogue. I looked at your more recent chapters and saw that you've got it under wraps, so I didn't get into it.
I've got to admit. I really like your writing style. Maybe it's because its not terribly different from mine (at least, when I want it to be. I'm either terribly concise or overly descriptive). I'm also glad to see we're introducing more characters. Caliber sounds like she'll be an interesting companion for however long she hangs out with Grace. That, and a long-range character is always a good addition. I'm also getting the distinct feeling that the sledgehammer is coming around for another swing in the next chapter. (i.e. some serious business goes down), mostly due to that well-timed cliffhanger ending. Keep it up!
Now, for that part where I point out things that may have escaped your attention.
...I heard rifle's clicking like cameras,... The apostrophe here is unnecessary.
...strangely enough, Bottlecaps lapping up at every side. Now, I see and understand that later on, bottlecaps become more significant, but at this point, Grace has no idea of their value, and so they should not be capitalized. If it were me, they probably wouldn't be capitalized whatsoever, but that part is up to you.
“I think it’s got modified focuses optics!” I'm going to assume you meant "focused," but even still, the sentence sounds "off."
a short section of heroic, Equestrian music: Leaving me happy to see him. The colon here doesn't seem to fit in here. It breaks the pacing of the sentence. You'd be better off just using a comma.
...And try not to play anymore music until... while anymore isn't a misspelling, it fits better in something like "I don't hurt anymore." A simple space between any and more will solve that right quick.
I feel I should thank you. If it weren't for the PM you sent seven weeks ago, I likely would never have (or not found until much later) found this fic, and that'd be a crying shame.