The sand came and slowly swallowed the City. It stormed the crowded streets and engulfed everything in a fiery, blazing embrace. Like an angry god, it desiccated, blurred, and buried the memories, the shells, and those who’d been given peace at last.
The sand came but, as strong as it might have been, it was still a weak remedy for the world’s insanity. The desert wasn’t strong enough to tame the shadow that has always dwelled in the heart of the living. A lurking monster with one simple name… War.
α₹₮ ћꜚ₮₹₰ ћꜘ₢₸₮ ћ π₮₫₮₹₰₮ ὦ ћ‽ ⱴ₰ ћꜘ₮῁҉₮῁ ћ ⱴ₸ ћ µꜚ₹ β
“I double dare you,” the red unicorn teased me as a white mist rose around her muzzle.
She lifted her long, curly locks of navy blue mane and pushed them back behind her horn and perked up ears. Then, with her wonderful, puppy and purple eyes boring at my soul, she gave me the most saccharine pout from around the block. It was hard not to obey and the shivers beneath in my hooves made it impossible to assert myself. The chamber was so damn cold.
“You first, Alea,” I muttered back, cowering a little as her wide-eyed creeping face drew closer. “Mares are always first.”
And I sneezed straight at her face… Wasn’t going to flirt for a few days after that. Clumsily, I rubbed her muzzle, only to spread the misdeed a bit more.
“Why the long face, Sharky?” I puffed, holding back my laugh.
A little bit of spreading here and there and, Tadaaa! It was disgustingly perfect. A broken smile on my face, I watched a tiny bit of yellowish green slip off her cheek.
“Sharky?” she grinned. “I thought you hated them teeth.”
Eeyup. Not my fault if she had carved her teeth into razor-sharp fangs when she was younger. She was a reformed raider after all. People called her ‘Sharky’ for that reason. She had also the habit to crunch the life with full tooth to many ponies’ dismay.
She leaped on me and screwed me to the ground. My yelp echoed in the room and reverberated on the walls. Her dank breath washed over my face and she showed off her teeth and snapped then right above my left eyes. I cried out and tried to slip away from her lock. She let out a madly stretched out laugh as a shadow cast over her face, her two purple eyes tainting with the colour of blood. Her face slowly lowered next to my ear. Pinned down, I could only listen. She licked her curvy lips and rasped a raggedy breath.
“You know, little toy,” she cajoled at a horribly slow pace. “I need only one thing from you.”
“What?” I whined, feeling the touch of her canines on my temples, cold, sharp, and avid.
“A towel!” she shouted.
“No, please! Mercy!”
My ears ringing with her cry, she buried her snout in my neck and washed my own snort on my hide. We rolled, yapped, and chided around, the place keeping the screams and shouts trapped, echoing, tick-ticking in my ears.
Breathing and sweating in the cold, we rested on our back, uncaring of the frostbite.
“I’m gonna need a shower now,” I growled.
“Prude,” was her only answer.
She rubbed her hooves together, spreading a bit of warmth beneath the red fur that covered her all. My head rolled aside I surprised myself smiling as I looked at her. She was damn beautiful with her purple eyes and smooth lines. Alea was a pretty mare many ponies on the HMS Canterlot desired. I was making many jealous. We were childhood friends, though, that helped. And her flank, I wished I could have a bite… But her cutie mark, one dagger and a pair of dice jumping out of a magician hat, was a grim reminder of who she was and had been. I had never tried anything. She would have had my head on her shelf if so.
With my stupid smile drawn across my face, she batted my head with the back of her hoof.
“Tick, tick? Anypony inside? You lost in time?” she mused. “Clock’s broken? Wake up, Dervish!”
Glaring daggers in her general direction, I pushed myself on my side and lifted myself up with a grunt.
“It hurts, knuckle-head!” I spat, shaking my head. “Can’t you be less… you.”
“Eh, you’re talking to…” She thrust herself on her backlegs, startling me, and stretched her forehooves in a heroic stance and said with a wink, “… The Monster of Hollow Shades!”
“Dun… dun… dun…” I huffed half-heartedly with a slow sarcastic applause, “yay.”
She stuck out her tongue at me like a childish reprimand. At least until she needled it with one of her teeth. She gurgled, fell aside, and swerved like a beaten dog, a tiny bit of blood trickling on her lips. She would never change and I would never get used to them. Dem teeth! She always had had ponies on edge with them. She had watered down the flame of many lovers before with just a swift bite. Somehow, I was used to it. Not paying attention, I missed her getting up and she pinned me on a wall with her hooves.
“You know I know you like them,” she breathed next to my neck and laughed with a dreadful rasp, “Ah… Ah… Ah…”
I pushed her aside. She dropped and squirmed on the ice that covered the floor.
“You creep,” I mumbled. “I hoped I hadn’t been teamed with you.”
“Still afraid, limp dick?” she teased a second before she lunged, grabbed me by the neck, and pushed me back in front of what we had been studying before she’d started her antics. “You gonna make me sooooo sad if you don’t do it. We had a bet, remember?”
She hit the contraption with her hoof and the clatter ringed in my flopped ears. Cowering, I tried to laser her down with deadly eyes. She pouted, fluttering her eyelids so painfully slowly her puppy eyes made me wallow in remorse. She would own me one day, I swear.
I sighed, trying to erase the click-clicking from my ears, and watched her sport the smile of victory.
“Yeah, yeah…You won, Alea,” I said. “Let’s get over with it.”
“Oh, waffle-head, it’s the game. You bet. You lost,” she snarled. “You gonna have to deal with the challenge. My challenge.”
Trapped in the coldness with icy mist forming in front of our mouths, I pleadingly stared at her.
“Tut, tut, lil’ colt,” she giggled, clacking her tongue in her mouth. “You gonna fulfil the promise. No bargain or anything allowed.”
“Don’t you think we have more important things to attend but your raider games,” I said, rolling my eyes at the ceiling. “Like preparing for the docking. We’ve got a briefing in a few minutes.”
“Nuff said,” she put her hoof on my lips. “You played. You lost. Now stuck out the tongue and do it. And grow up a bit. Wake up.”
I grunted dismissively. She was the one who needed to grow up. Not me. As she watched me closely, I stuck out my tongue in the cold and closed the gap between me and… the thing…
“Come on,” she said, jumping on her clicking hooves, repressing a laugh. “Do it.”
“Yeah, I know,” I countered. She still had a bit of blood on her lips. Fucking maniac. “Just… let me sync.”
“Do it! Do it! Do it!” she cackled. “Or you’re chicken! Gok, bwok, gok!”
She rose on her hindlegs and wobbled her head back and forth with her forehooves behind her back.
“Oh com…”
Then she screamed at me. Screaming back instinctively, she bit in my mane avidly and ploughed me against the metal pole that had been sitting before us all along. I saw stars, tweeting birds, and clicking PipBucks. I was stuck tongue all out against the freezing metal pole. Damn, I hated her for winning every bet.
“Ah, b’avo!” I retorted, grunting with my tongue stuck on the frozen metal. I think she had broke one of my teeth. “ha’’y ‘ow?”
My butt slid slowly on the three inches thick ice-cover. My only bollard was that pole and my tongue, the only rope anchoring me.
Alea stretched her slender legs and lay in the cold next to me with a smug face. Pressing her lips together playfully, she poked my side without a word. Each time she poked, she went it a bit harder until I was gasping for air. Gagging as her painful blow dug in my flank, I slid aside, my tongue still stuck to the pole. My fare abruptly ended when my butt hit a nearby wall.
Alea rose on her hooves and walked up to my sore rump as I moaned in pain. Her hooves click-clicking on the ground she stood next to me. I saw droplets of blood fall down on the ice and crystallise.
“’ou hu’t ‘ou’self,” I warned.
She didn’t care or answered as she sat on my back with a rueful smile. She hummed a song, her head resting in her hooves, a slow trickle of blood going down her lip.
“’ou ‘eavy,” I growled. “’ou ‘ould go ‘o infi’ma’y.”
“You should wake up instead,” she said.
“Uh?”
She lowered herself and whispered in saccades into my ear, covering the tinkering of an unknown origin that engulfed the room, “One little pony sitting in an icy tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
“You’re creeping me out, Alea.”
She whacked my head so hard my snout bit in the ice. My blood joined hers. She cackled, pouncing on top of my shoulders. I rolled aside and departed from her nightmarish grip. Sitting in the ice, I rubbed my sore mouth and my cold tongue, and shook my heavy head. She had hit my eye pretty hard and I could already feel the bruise coming up. Everything was ringing, clicking, repeatedly. With lights. And I could hear dripping. We shouldn’t have left the door of the Canterlot’s hold open. Everything was starting to leak and unfreeze here. I was so gonna be blamed for it.
“Done with your shenanigans, Alea?” I complained, munching on my tongue as she pouted like a foal and I rolled my eyes. “What if somepony finds us in the refrigerated hold?”
“Nothing, nopony ever comes here,” Alea answered flatly. “You should wake up.”
“Except us and your stupid bets,” I retorted. “And I hate that place full of noises and clicks. I’m sure the boat is haunted. Let’s just go get some preparation so we don’t get killed in the city.”
“It’s not like I’m gonna die,” she assured as I heard her thumping her hoof on her chest. “I’ve survived the Wastes. I got to geld some unfaithful Red Eye remnants if you remember. Wake up.”
I shook my head in disbelief as she clacked her teeth together in a bear trap-like thump that made me jump back. After blowing the snort off my muzzle, I wiped it on the icicle fallen by my side. A few drops of water fell on my back and the freezing sensation burnt me. Dripping sounds and clatters filled my ears. I heard a scream. Shivering, I shot a glance back at Alea but she had been silent all along.
“Don’t talk about de…”
“Wake up,” she cut me off robotically.
Blood was dripping out of her mouth… Her maw clanged and clacked… tick, click, tick…
“… Death…” I ended.
I fell silent.
“What,” she spoke with a long deadpan as her tone grew darker. “Wake up.”
But I couldn’t hear but the ringing and click-clicking. I pointed my hoof at her backlegs. Her backside side was soaked in blood, redder and gluer than her hide had ever been. Was it mine, was it hers? Thinking I was playing another game, she looked back. Her eyes grew wider as she took in the situation. It was the first time I had seen her that afraid.
“It hurts, so damn much now,” she cried. “Wake up.”
Her head swerved back in my direction. She tried to speak but no words came out of her mouth, just blood, annoying noises, ticks, blood… She had one deep gash that was cutting her in half. Her innards crumbled on the ground in a steaming puddle. The ice turned red. Water turned redder. And then, she screamed. She screamed until her voice shattered into a low screech. I heard nothing of her call to help.
Nothing… nothing but a click-clicking… Make. It. Stop. I didn’t want to die that same way as she was. I wanted to go home and to flee from here as she died in front of me. I wanted away. Far away. Everything blurred and feel to the darkness. I was burning. Everything but a far-far away tick-ticking that drew me back to reality.
Then everything was gone. The blood. The pain. The ice. The life… there was only Alea, boring at my soul with blank eyes riveted on me. Her colours seemed to fade. Her facial expression melted away like a mask of wax. Only her mouth remained. Her mouth and her shark-like teeth.
“Wake up, Dervish!” she ordered.
The ticking of my radiation meter woke me up. It was just a dream, I thought. I was not in that cold room. No. I was lying on some searing sand, my chest burning like hot embers. Hung at its zenith, the sun was grinning at me, its gnawing light drinking my steaming blood… blood…
“Where…?”
I rolled on my battered chest and crawled across the bloody mess unravelling around me. The hellishly hot city was echoing with yells, gunfire, and far-reaching cries. Yet, my ears turned deaf to the constant complaint. Something had hit and dazed me hard. My right eye was swollen, blinding half of my vision. My own blood had tainted the sand with a long trail. I followed the track and saw a wide splash against a crumbled concrete wall. There still were a bit of silvery grey fur on the rebar that protruded out of the rubble.
A shattering scream made me cringe. It was Alea’s. I buried my ears under my bloodied hooves just before a long jet of red splattered the ground in front of me. What had once been a large and animated plaza circled by magnificent and shiny buildings was now nothing but a patch of ruins. A few cables still dangled down centuries-old poles and were dripping with blood. A spark of electricity reanimated for a glimpse of a second a screen still screwed to an advertisement pole. In this short-lived moment, screeching static then a plain red image flashed back at me.
The sand had covered everything. The roads had changed into beaches. The carts that had survived time were shattered, broken, and probably looted, and the place sweated a perfume of abandonment. Yet, I hadn’t been alone since I had stepped in that city. And I wasn’t talking about the ponies I had made the crossing with.
Locked in the air by an invisible force, a Unicorn mare I knew so well wracked in two separate parts. The bottom halve barrelled through the air past me and disappeared through an open window of a neighbouring construction. The other halve hacked on the ground, ricocheted, and made a heavy and wet landing by my side. With my eyes widened, I heard the neck crack and the horn break. A shiver crept beneath my skin. Alea’s massive navy blue locks fell on the ground and brushed my blood.
I couldn’t tell where I was. My memories were too messed up at the moment, rushing like one rising tide in my brain. Dizziness made things worse. I was shell-shocked and as my surroundings reeled, I struggled to make out my name.
“Dervish,” the dead body of Alea answered for me. “Dervish. Help. Me.”
“A-Alea…?”
She stretched her hoof at me and I tried to cower away. The hoof poked my blood-soaked nose and fell aside. A wave of quivers washed over me and I whimpered. My heart hurt and burnt. I wanted away. The mare’s eyes went empty but her mouth was still wording. She wanted to speak but she was dead. She was already dead! I could see the blood, the bowels! Now dripping with her own blood, her sharky teeth sent a grim message. She had found a bigger predator. It was over. She was dead. No, Celestia, please, no!
“Away,” she whispered. “Go…”
Something blurred across the plaza like an invisible force that could only be seen by the distorted light going through its hide. It grabbed her by what remained of her waist and lifted her corpse off the ground. Her hooves wobbled and, gobbled by an invisible unknown, she vanished in a mist of red paint. Static was whirling out of the working speakers screwed to the walls that still made up the plaza. That music from Tartarus screamed around like an improper, defiant, and sadistic ode to death. Threatening with an incoming sandstorm, the sky wore the colours of battles and fires. A loud echo zoomed over my head and the earth quaked. Somewhere, somehow, a building was coming down.
My mane crawled as a wretched air washed over my bleeding face. It was the breath from an unknown creature that I couldn’t see. The sand levelled in front of me. The print of a claw twice the size of my head bit in the red-tainted ground. The claws clicked on the hard surface beneath, like a talon playing a piano made of broken asphalt. The floor screeched and cracked. I gasped and fell through along with cutting shards of glass.
I had broken through a tiny, hidden glass ceiling that had been hiding under the sand just beneath my hooves. My fall lasted more than I wished and I hit a sandy slope with a loud thump. I yelped as a barb of metal scrapped deep in my back. I rolled with chafing glass and sand showering me and the end of the treacherous steep welcomed me with another fall.
My reckless race suddenly halted when my shoulders crashed on top of a metal cart. My ribcage cracked as my back hammered in the abandoned vehicle. Dust slowly plummeted over me while I was fighting back unconsciousness. I focused on a sunray piercing through a far-reaching hole above my dizzy head. It was tickling my torn up chest and bloodiedface. I was beaten and my stomach was churning from thirst and hunger. Wisps of sand whizzed in the opening I had left in my trail, only to fall into small heaps over my immobile body.
“My name is Dervish,” I repeated, trying to convince myself.
I was a volunteer on the HMS Canterlot, going to Saddle Arabia to help survivors and scavenged old tech. I was born right out in the Wasteland and not one of those fancy, deadly, and horrible stables. I had celebrated my twentieth or so birthday during the crossing with my friend Alea or the ‘monster’ as they called her on the HMS. As far as I could remember, my life had been quite boring prior to the trip. For once, making it to Saddle Arabia would have added the bit of fantasy that so lacked in my daily life in the NCR territories.
Grunting as I raised my head, my eyes fell on my flank and my cutie mark welcomed me. I had a fucking box as a butt tattoo. Not a fancy box. Not one with holes and writings on it or anything. Nothing like that. I had a plain, dull, and annoyingly closed cardboard box for a cutie mark. Much thrilling, very sense, so potential, yay!
The quick memory-check done, I groaned and pushed myself on my rump with my head pounding horribly. Somepony was trying to bore holes in my temples, I swore it. I was seeing specks of white crawling in my vision and my breath rasped in my sore throat. For how long I lay unmoving, I couldn’t tell. I remembered the patched up frigate early that day. I had woken up that morning with a fucking hangover from some denatured alcohol I had snatched in the canteen. And I had lost that bet. After the hold, I remembered getting on the deck for a briefing and thereafter… the bodies… the ruins… That’s when the scream in the speakers began. And Alea… She had volunteered first and I had followed her. She was dead. Now she was dead. I bit my lower lips, dropped my stare, and hugged my legs. Tears rolled on my cheeks. I let that horrible fact sink in. I had been so lucky.
My eyes bawling out, I dropped on the ground and my legs gave way. I was too weak to stand on my first try and barely strong enough to think. At least, it was less hellishly hot here. And more than anything else, I was alive.
I didn’t know where I was. With the dim light pouring from above and lighting my path, I scanned the forlorn area. This underground place was huge; I couldn’t see its farthest wall, drowned in darkness. There were rows of carts parked on the cracked asphalt that littered the ground. A thick lid of sand and dust covered them all and I often couldn’t see through the windshields.
The situation struck me. Those carts still had pristine windshields and windows! They were untouched. I saw silver and golden linings etched in the bumpers, wings, and closed doors. I wiped some of my tears, and trying not to feel the void lulling in my heart, I focused on the display of richness in that parking lot. The ponies or whoever who had lived here were rich… immensely rich. The awe soon changed into a devouring curiosity.
Gathering all my might, I stood on my shaking legs and grabbed a rock that had fallen along with me. A shattered window later, I unlocked the door of the nearest cart. The dusty inside was made of high-quality leather and was big enough to fit in more than five ponies. As I sat in the back, I hit my leg on a massive metal box and a searing pain settled in my knee-cap.
It was a radio transmitter encased in the bottom of the cart. The well-crafted seats had been built around it and a round-shaped print on top of it was still visible under the dust on its top. Maybe a bottle. I smiled wistfully. Booze. Pony never changes.
To be honest, it looked like a cart built for parties. On the side of the transmitter, a small diode with the inscription ‘Recording’ written under it still flashed green. Curious, I pushed the black button that throned in the middle of the transmitter. The radio cracked, startling me, and seemed to rewind for a couple of seconds. Then, static blasted at me as the contraption tuned to a joyful female voice.
“Shut up!” I bawled at the box, afraid I could be spotted from the shear loudness of the transmitter.
“...Aaaaaaad welcome back on Stormy High 640-1240 AM, my friends. It’s your forever awaken fellow, Immortal, speaking to you from the top of the Burj. And it’s time for… Brace for it! The neeews. What can I say? It’s another magnificent morning in the city of Bahrneigh, outside temperature… fifty degrees centigrade, one hundred and twenty-two Fahrenhneight. Inside temperature? Eh! Whatever floats your air conditioning talisman? Today’s report… Nothing’s changed. It’s as it has been for years. War, war, war… There is only war. But I assure you, it’s not all bleak. The Pegasus Army that stepped on our shores one year ago after they invaded the Emirates launched another assault yesterday night and… Nah, they didn’t fail this time, those fuckers. They took the Northern Governorate… How’s that good news, you’d say?! No, of course. It isn’t good news. And how can I say that on the radio? Eh, I’m no Equestrian pony. Propaganda is for weaklings! But don’t worry lads. Our allies, the Zebras and Saddle Arabian horses, are preparing a counter-attack against those sub-races of birds. Whatever the Pegasus army sought in our faithful city, they will pay for it with the price of blood. Believe me, I’ve seen what’s coming! Those birdies won’t last on our embankment any longer. The sand and sky will taint red and, who knows, maybe green one day…?”
If only she had knew… Had she been a zebra? A horse? A pony that emigrated here a long time ago so that her bonds to Equestria had been lost? I’ll probably never know.
“We will all see the end of the war, lads. Hardships can’t last forever. Oh, it’s seen that the military police is staring at me from behind the recording booth window. They look pissed, lads.” She emitted a little, cute laughter. “Now let’s listen to some good ol’ music. I’ll tell the tale later on! Now is time for Oasis Baraka, the voice from the desert and her delightful flagship song: ‘Home Sweet Hone’. It was Immortal, always her head hung at the sky.”
A soothing music followed. A strange instrument, maybe a guitar, a mandolin, or a high-pitched banjo, started a tune that was soon joined by a crystalline female voice.
The radio cut abruptly. The cart shook with a series of short quivers and I lay there silent, a trickle of sweat rolling down my back.
Something was there. I could feel it. Something was tracking the scent of blood that had leaked from my stinging flank. Fear clutching my heart, I rose my eyes to just above the frame of the window I had broken. In the reflection of the outside rear-view mirror, I could see that something! My blood ran as cold as ice and I ducked back in. I rubbed my eyes hopeful I could erase the horror off them. I would need more than bleach this time. It was unbelievable.
There in the dark, lifting the carts one after the other, a force was slipping through. A force, I say… I couldn’t see anything but a blurred blueish outline with specks of light peppering the air in between. It snorted puffs of air that crystallised into ice. Then it opened its huge jaw and I saw the sharp teeth. From it slurred a saliva slipping in between the razor-sharp canines like dark water, rendering the ground with black puddles.
I squeaked and crammed myself in the cart, and then I heard it turn in my direction. For the sake of my rear… I was fucked.
The thing forced its way slowly through the inert carts, bending metal and crushing glass in its wake under its heavy and unstoppable claws. My heart beating wildly in my chest, my body was screaming at me to leap outside the cart and run. I couldn’t. I was too weak. Moments before it reached the cart where I was hiding, I looked outside and saw an emergency exit not so far. If only I could limp away towards it. The dim red light above its threshold led the way. My beacon.
The cart bent under the weight of the monster’s legs. The other windows cracked and shattered, spewing like shrapnel over me. I gasped and squeezed myself behind a seat. Its head was inside at a hoof-length from me! It was sniffing for me! The beast reeked a foul stench of rotten meat. Dark sludge dripped out of its wide-open mouth, slithering between the fangs. Biting on my lips, a hoof in front of my mouth, I gagged. It was as if I could taste the stench through my eyeballs.
Somepony screamed somewhere. The beast trashed away, throwing the cart aside in the process. Rolling over, I was thrust butt over head against the inside of the vehicle until it stopped. With my back in pain, my breath was nothing but repeated hiccups.
The beast howled a crippling cry that petrified me. I closed my eyes and repressed my sobs. My head pounded as my heart rate spiked up. My vision blurred and, though I fought back and made no sound, puke dripped out of my mouth. Febrile, I left myself rest a few minutes until a pony’s scream detonated through the underground only to be shushed forever by a dreadful roar.
I couldn’t stay here. My one swollen eye and my flank undermining my movements, I crawled outside the wrecked cart and hit my head on the door frame in the process. As I held my wounded side, I limped towards the open emergency exit. On my way I snatched the rear-view mirror that lay on the ground, now dislodged from its support. It would be useful to check angles, I thought.
A bit of dust trickled from the ceiling as I slipped in between the cracked open emergency door. It was earthquake day apparently.
I closed the creaking door behind me and found myself in an immense and half-torn staircase that rose and descended far in the building. I was given two choices… up or down. For sure, going up would be nice. Time had preyed on the top of the building and what had surely been a tower was now an open-pit towards the sun and sky. Rays of light grimly illuminated the ruined staircase. Going up was tempting, but outside… there were those monsters, invisible and powerful. I couldn’t risk myself up there. And downstairs, there was darkness.
Depressed, I wondered if I could just stayed there and wait for the night. My stomach growled at me and I realised how sore and cracked my lips were. Staying here was a stupid idea anyway.
I needed water and food quickly and I chose in despair to go towards the unknown below. My path only lit by the worn-off red emergency lights that counted the underground floors, I went downstairs. Minus one floor… Minus two…
The twenty-fifth floor below the earth marked the end of my staircase trip. My head reeled and I held myself against a wall, leaving small peps of blood on the bare grey concrete. The air was cold and my breath formed a white mist in front of my beaten muzzle. The heat from the surface couldn’t reach out here. I slid against the wall until I came to a stop, my hooves folded under my sore body. There was nothing to pay heed at but the slow and ragged breath of mine, and a slow dripping. I looked around for the drip sound. I saw a small pond of water streaming slowly from a crack in the wall. A smile dashed on my face.
The taste was of rock and charcoal but it was still water. I drank avidly each drop that came to me, moistening my lips with the few I could spare. I couldn’t even breathe a thanks to Celestia. Speaking was hurting too much. Even patting my lips with humid hooves was painful. I stayed there ten maybe twenty minutes until I let myself drop aside the small rotten pond that had formed under the wall over the last two centuries.
Sitting uncomfortably, I spotted the rear-view mirror at the bottom of the stairs where I had dropped it. I too far from me to reach it with my hooves. I was losing all of my stuff today. I had left my radmeter up there…
“Oh… fuck me…” I rasped.
I hit my forehead so hard my vision went white. I had left it up there with the blood of Alea. Holding my head, I could do nothing but blame myself. I had lost my stuff, bags, food, everything. And I had lost Alea. Especially her. Why her. Why had she to die? She was dead. The claw of anxiousness closed on my heart. I curled up on my spot, squirmed and kept my hooves tight around my backlegs. Hot tears crawled over my face and slipped in the pond next to me. I’d be blamed when I’ll be back on the boat. Had to watch out for teammates. And everypony wanted her in their teams. I’d be blamed. Me. Just me. I was dead. And who could tell if I wasn’t in a deadly irradiated area? I coughed. That wasn’t helping.
I sighed, blew my muzzle on my forehoof, and looked back at the rear-view mirror. I concentrated, focused, and pictured my mind reaching out for it and floating it back to me.
It never happened. I scrubbed my empty forehead with a regretful smile crawling on my face. I wished I was a Unicorn. Everything would have been so easier. I was just lucky to be an Earth Pony.
I wiped the tears off my face and rubbed my watery eyes. Couldn’t see properly. I wiggled my ass on the dirty floor and carried my poor lonely ass to the mirror. Holding it between my hooves, I settled it so I could see the frail stallion I was. Skin had sunken over my bristle cheeks and ribs. My light blue mane was falling over my reddened face. Red from tears… Red from blood. The same silvery grey fur I had seen scratched on some barbed metal earlier patched me up along with dirt, caked blood, and a weird black goo.
I shuddered with anxiety. The beast had drooled on me back in the car and the sludge had glued to my mane. I reached my locks with the back of my hoof and tried to scrub the dirty substance away. Hairs and fur stuck together to my hoof, entangled and nasty. After a few minutes fighting off the foul-smeeling goo, I surrendered. Grooming myself was too much of an ordeal. I let myself lie on the ground with the broken rear-view mirror balancing above my forehead, puffing up the few less scrawny strands of my mane up with short and focused breaths.
A shushed whisper popped in my ears that perked instinctively. I had reached the end of the staircase when I hat hit the twenty-fifth floor below the ground level. There, a massive metal door had barred me from advancing. I had try to pry it open but the rust of the locking wheel was far too thick to break. Though the door was massive, I had seen some made out of thirteen tons of steel. Stable-Tec underground hostels knew the deal.
Anyway, the door I had in front of me was still too heavy to force my way through. Somepony had scratched on the metal door and had etched marks in the white paint that had once covered it. I supposed those markings belonged to the pony or zebra skeleton that rested in a corner. I pressed my cheek against the floor. I could hear whispers coming from under the gate, through the blade’s width crack left between the ground and the piece of metal. I crawled closer to the slit and eavesdropped.
“Okay, I don’t want this to be bloody. Give it to me and you won’t be hurt,” somepony growled rudely, his voice growing in power as if it was coming closer to the door. “I just want what you found in the room. Give it to me nicely, then we can all go home without calling any spawn on us. That would be nice of you, dear.”
“There are strangers coming into town.” Somepony answered rudely. “I won’t let you fuck this up. Go fuck your own wretched lineage.”
“I won’t repeat myself,” the menacing voice threatened. “I won’t let you jeopardise our plan.”
I heard a shard of metal click back and fro and mayhem broke lose behind the door. Thunder rumbled through the underground building and the walls shook wildly with bits of paint detaching from them. Somepony liked explosives. I rolled over and away from the door and backed up in a corner. It’s only then that I saw light and flashes of thunder coming from under the door with rust falling into clumps from its hinges. The light pouring in the slip beneath the gate was suddenly barred by a set of hooves.
An order than came like a dreadful sharp scream blared from behind the door. Gunfire grew louder and the orders went drowned in the din. A swoosh resonated and a yellow and orange taint flooded through the crack. Nearly petrified, I pressed myself against the farthest wall. A salve of bullets ricocheted against the door and the echoing ping sound made me sick.
The steering wheel in the middle of the door suddenly vibrated as somepony grunted behind. The whell cracked and finally gave way, rolling aside. I rushed under the staircase and squeezed myself in its shadow. The wheel finally clicked and the pony, or whoever was behind, backed up in a twist of fate. A wave of bullets rammed once again in the metal door. I let a breath of relief as nopony came back to action the handle.
The door exploded in a tide of flames and debris. Knocked back by the force of the explosion, the bent door blasted inward and smashed into the stairs in a flying heap of rubbles. Heat burnt my face and, showered with concrete, I crooked back further in my hiding spot and tried to avoid the flames.
“GET IN!” a brownish Pegasus shouted gravely at comrades I couldn’t see. “Retreat!”
As he limped in the staircase I could get a better view of the brown Pegasus. His armour was a patchwork of sheets of metal and the tips that mounted his wings were strewn with blood. His yellow mane was tangled in the bits and screws that held his barding in place. Two twin turquoise Pegasi mares stormed in the staircase, one with her khaki green mane fuming with fire.
“It’s madness coming upstairs,” the untouched mare cried out. “Spawns and stalkers are on the loose!”
“It’s them or here! And you heard the report, a warship docked in the SG!”
“Move up!” a fourth voice screamed from behind the frame of the blown off door. “NOW!”
The three Pegasi rushed higher in the staircase, took off, and slipped over the stairs as fast as their wings could carry them. A fourth Pegasus came into view, the metal demijohn strapped to his side undermining his balance. Linked to it, a long hose led to a thin, straight metal pipe which tip was on fire.
The Pegasus bit on the trigger in his mouth and the contraption sparked with a stream of black oil spurting out of the tip. A wave of heat washed over my face again as everything caught fire in front of the flamethrower.
The heat stopped with a wet and sloshy tearing sound. Blood splattered all over the debris strewn at the pony’s hooves. The Pegasus’s head hit the ground, detached. Both wings wracked off of behind the beheaded body and fell on the ground too. A final blow cut the flaming tip from the rest of the weapon and sent it fly far away from the oil that started leaking off the arm. Finally, the dead body slumped over in a wet squashed squish.
Above the bloody heap stood a zebra. His face was rounder than normal and topped by a short and brush-like mane. He was definitely young. A blue and golden ring dangled from his right ear. A blue necklace was hung around his neck. Breathing in short and hastened puffs of air, he had knives mounted on retractable strings strapped to his hooves. He had one sawed-off shotgun strapped to his back that time hadn’t spared. Blood covered his dark grey and cream hide, trickling down to his hooves. He had moved too fast for me.
The Pegasus’s head was still rolling on the ground when I looked down at it. Diverted by a pebble, it fell in the small pond of water I had drunk from. Fine little bubbles escaped from its mouth.
“Oh, Celestia…” I gasped.
‘Oh, Celestia’ indeed… Idiot.
The zebra pulled me out of my spot and sent me flying through the door threshold with an incredible force. My back hit a sturdy piece of metal and I bumped over. Flailing, I found myself on my back, a knife at a speck-length above my right eye.
“Please, please!” I blubbered, waving my hooves at him. “I d-don’t want no trouble.”
The zebra took a step back and, as he kicked his forehooves on the ground, the knives strapped on them rotated back to a safety position. He still had me pinned down with all his weight on what seemed to be an old vending machine.
“I see no wing on you, birdy,” he spoke ominously.
He was scanning me from tail to top and smirked. His eyes narrowed and his face crept dangerously close.
“Who do you serve?”
“Eh… what? Who?”
The question had come like a whisper with cold and terrible apprehension. I was shaking. Sweat was slithering down my back and falling from my brow into my eyes. His eyelid narrowed at me and I laughed out of fear.
“I- I serve nopony. I’m not even from here! I- I came on a boat, from Equestria- ah… Aaah!”
His eyes went wide and he kicked his left foreleg next to my head, breaking the glass of the vending machine to bits. His knife clicked and sprung forth and he threw a punch towards my neck. In all my misfortune, I looked upward and froze the glimpse of a second. Above us, a blueish form had just materialised out of the nothingness. Latched to the ceiling like a monstrously large spider, its open maw gaped open. I saw long and crooked appendices aim then leap.
“WATCH OUT!” I yelled.
I pushed the zebra away just when I felt a painful nip in my neck. Building on the momentum, I dodged the ethereal limb that smashed in the vending machine. My heart on a speeding rampage, I rolled behind a heap of rubble that had fell down from the ceiling and hid. Fatefully, the beast roared and launched itself at the zebra who rushed to the staircase and disappeared.
The monster in the young zebra‘s tread, I again found myself alone in a dimly lit underground level that had nothing to do with a parking. With only the far rumble of the pursuit echoing down to here, I finally rose on my shaky hooves.
“What’s wrong with this place?” I stuttered, a hoof on my now red dripping neck, a flesh wound that still burnt like fucking Celestia’s sun.
The place seemed to have been the security office of the building. Many desks once pristine and shiny were left to rot here, overturned and smashed to bits. Terminals of an unknown brand lay on the ground, broken only for a few. Those which remained alive were screwed to one wall, suspended over one long desk that had had several chairs in a row. Ponies or Zebra had sat here to observe the building and beyond. In the middle of the room a small crater marked the place where the fight had all begun. I looked away and took in how vast the room was. I had found the security level of the building.
At that point, I spotted hoofprints cast in the dust that blanketed the area. Prints that weren’t mine. Tracing back the path, I was led to a large opening in a wall. Explosives had left a blackened hole around it that could let five ponies goes in all lined up. Cowering in with shivers of apprehension, I face the dimly lit room. To the dark ashes strewn on the ground blood soon joined. Among the black and grey ashes a pair of Pegasi sat in their own blood, their neck slit open in such a gory way that it made me gag.
“What the fuck is going on in this city…?” I sighed tiredly.
The room was as large as the one I had just left. Yet similar, it struck me with dread. A cold rush of quivers crept up my sweaty backbone. My beaten eye stung from the dust that swamped the air and my side still hurt. Each time I was prodding my painful ribs, my hoof came back a little redder.
Compared to the other room, this one had a fantastic display of military tech. Or I thought it was military-related. The decrepit walls were marked with old bullet holes. Large and flat terminal screens still flashed greenish images, recorded by cameras scattered across the city. Unused shells had flooded out of a turned-over ammo box and had sunken in the blood that covered the floor. What screamed that all this was military to me was that every piece of furniture was etched with the same symbol: three stripes shaped in lightning bolts and encased in one smooth circle that showed only one break on its top. It was some scary insignia.
Papers had been thrown on and off the desks and the ground hastily. Some had been stomped on and often, they had been left soaking in the gore that had spread on the ground. Looking down at some, they all bore the same red stamp of secrecy.
The fight that had occurred here had been violent and quick. In the flashing light that lit the scene, I thought I understood what had happened. The few desks that had drawers had been broke to shreds and their content had been looted. I looked back at the other room through the hole dug in the wall. Was that zebra chasing for those documents? The Pegasi had probably took all the juicy stuff.
I turned back at the two Pegasi that lay immobile in their own grim, the colour of their fur and mane barely visible under the crimson red of their own fluids and green light coming from the monitors. As I had seen with the Pegasus that had shouted orders, the sergeant probably, they all wore patchwork pieces of metal that could barely be called armour.
Yet something caught my attention. Sewed to the leather patch that covered their shoulders, they both had a round black fabric that sported a white inscription: ‘1st’.
They had a makeshift battle saddle and both carried the same weapon: a long and thick wooden rifle that was definitely semi-automatic. It wasn’t built like the assault rifles I had often seen on Applejack’s Rangers back in Equestria. Those weapons were old and not produced in masse. They looked to me more the product of an artisan that had to use spare parts to build replacements to weapons that couldn’t be repaired anymore. And they were fucking heavy! Using my own weight to dislodge the rifle that seemed the most intact to me, I struggled to get it out from beneath the heavy cadaver. Finally, it went off and I fell face first on the ground, the weight of the weapon carrying me down with it.
Rubbing my head, I looked back at the other room. There were obviously nopony there but witnessing one of those blue monsters appear into thin air had me on edge. I felt watched and it drew me to an insane paranoia.
Taking some random papers on a desk, I started sweeping the coagulating blood off the weapon. I needed it. Wanted it. I had lost all my stuff. I needed to survive. The top of the rifle had a broken support. Maybe it had a scope a long time ago and, maybe, it had served during the Great War… Who knew?
Now partially cleaned – I would still need to clean the inside string – I left the weapon on the same desk and went back to the two bodies. I needed one of those armours. Then I spotted the saddlebags strapped to the flank of the closest one. Food! There must have been some in there. My stomach growled with glee with the hope of finding anything eatable inside.
As I approached, an intercom cracked and I jumped, slipped, and ended in the pool of blood. In the cold and dank of the room, my flank washed in blood that wasn’t mine, I heard a voice rising from an earplug that dangled from one of the Pegasus’s flopped ears.
“Team Four report.” the voice urged. “Team Four report!”
“Team Four here, we’ve got what you wanted, the proof about Luna… Maybe a location,” a grave voice answered in the channel. It was the one of the green Pegasus I had seen earlier. “We’ve been ambushed, a bit of a resistance from one zebra. One wounded to bring back.”
Luna? Wait, what?
“Do you think we have been busted. Spied on?”
A pause ensued, followed by a short-lived stream of swears.
“I think, Sir. We had a welcoming party down the special security booth. I think we were followed. We need to get rid of that zebra as fast as possible.”
“This communication channel isn’t secure anymore,” the order snapped. “Change to channel Zeta. Over.”
The transponder went silent and left me all alone in the coldness of the room. What proof about Luna? It had been proven she was dead yeah! The fuck!
After trying to scrub the blood off my flank with the papers around me that still wasn’t soaked, I chose to snatch the Pegasus’s saddlebag. I was lucky. The Pegasus had a bottle of an amber liquid that smelled like alcohol. But more important, he had a square of bread packed in a dry tissue. The bread was crispy like a piece of glass but to my empty stomach, what a hell of a meal!
Sitting in silence in a chair I had scavenged in a corner, my eyes never leaving the hole in the wall that served as an entry, I finally felt my heart coming back to a healthy beat. After making sure I was undoubtedly alone, throwing bits of wall and balls of folded paper around, I finally stopped focusing on that blackened opening. I still threw some furtive glances at it from time to time, though.
I think I expected Alea to pop her head around the corner, a shark-smile adorning her face and crying ‘jokes on you, bitch!’ as she jumped on my backside and batted the back of my neck. But I was dreaming, as always.
Crying, I went watching the screens as I savoured bitterly my small bread. The city was a ghostly desert, empty and covered with a thick cloud of sand. A sandstorm was gaining momentum and one by one the skyscrapers I could see on the videos gradually disappeared. It would still be hours before the real storm hit the city.
On one of the streaming cameras, I could see the HMS Canterlot anchored in the City’s bay where once a massive harbour surely had made the inhabitants proud. Sometimes, the speakers carried a gunshot to me or a shadow, but nothing more. I felt alone down here.
Scanning the room around me, avoiding to look directly at the two bodies that began smelling, I found a door cast in the wall far away from the hole pierced in that chamber. In the chiaroscuro, I hadn’t seen it.
Painfully, I lifted my sore rump off of my spot, went to the bodies and finally unstrapped one of the battle saddle with a grimace. A few minutes cleaning it afterward, I put it on and found myself wondering how to clip on the large rifle. I was fearful I couldn’t handle such a chunk of wood and metal.
The sides of the battle saddle were devoid of straps or clips and it was only when I turned my head over that I found why. Unlike the majority of battle saddles I had seen in my life, this one had been designed to support the weapon above the wearer’s shoulder, probably to give a steadier grip and provide more accuracy. But to be honest, it was probably meant to balance the horrible weight of that semi-auto rifle I’d scavenged. Five minutes flew by until I had finally lumbered myself. I ripped off the black herald sewed to the shoulder of the armour, afraid to be targeted by a faction I knew nothing about, then headed for the door which, as I had expected, was locked.
Well... that was anticlimactic. The fact that I didn’t know how to lock pick a door didn’t help either. Swelling my cheeks with air, I pondered what to do. I wasn’t going to buck it open, was I?
I went for the busted open desks. I wasn’t going to go away without something, really. It would feel like failure and apparently with my partner dead, I wasn’t going to go back to the HMS with empty hooves. And Alea… I sighed. ‘First in, last out’ she’d said back in the boat. Well… It didn’t turn out that well. It never did apparently. I buried my snout in the hollow of my shoulder.
After I unstrapped the uncomfortable rifle off my back, I let myself slid against one of the busted open desks. Resting with my butt sitting in the dirt, my face only lit by the light of a nearby terminal, I looked down at the heap of papers. Beneath a lying long cable caught my attention. That must have been important. I threw the papers away, there were enough of water droplets on those. I had to focus on something relevant. Tears. Are. Bad.
It was a interphone linked to a transmitter. I had seen some before. I think I knew how to operate one. My hooves hesitated over the range of buttons. I checked if there was still remaining power. If the microphone was still well preserved. I found what seemed to be a switch. I pushed clumsily. Static was the only thing I could hear on all the frequencies. No, that can’t be. Then I switched to the left and heard somepony.
“HMS? HMS? Canterlot? Is that you?”
Silence. I bashed my hooves on top of the transmitter.
“HMS! HMS? Please.”
“Stop it! You’re saturating the frequency,” a gravely voice cut in the static silent and I held my breath. “Yeah, Captain of the HMS here. Report.”
“Alea is dead!” I cried. “We’ve got caught by monsters. I’m alone.”
“Where is the rest of your team?”
“Dead,” I whimpered. “I’m trapped in an underground. I don’t know where I am. I’m alone.”
“Calm down, son,” the captain soothed. “You’re not alone in that mess. Other teams reported hidden assailants. We’ve ordered a retreat to the HMS.”
“They are invisible!” I warned wiping my leaking nose.
“What?”
The radio cracked with static and a buzz shut down the conversation for two horrifyingly long seconds.
“I’ve seen Pegasi and a Zebra fighting each others. They were talking about Luna…” Silence. “Captain?!”
“Here is Sergeant Stuka, First Pegasus Army. Do you have it!?” a Pegasus’s avid and menacing voice urged. “The weapon? Did you bring it?”
“Captain,” I howled at the microphone.
The transmitter fumed, buzzed, and clacked with an arc of electricity popping up from under its top.
“FUCK!” I screamed, throwing the intercom to the ground.
“What?” the captain blurted, his voice fading as he backed off his microphone. “Who’re you?”
“The Word of Genesis, did you bring it here?” he repeated.
“Wait… No! The fuck you’re talking about? We’re here to take back any survivor. T’find tech for the homeland.” the captain explained. “How many are there left? And the fuck of a weapon are you talking?”
“Soldiers? Maybe five… eight… nine hundred still fighting actively, Sir,” the Pegasus answered. “Two thousands with the mares and children in the camps. And there are probably Five to six thousands enemies still alive left in the city. Then there are the traitors. Fuck them. We’ve done a good job, though. Luna told us to wait for her to come back. She promised us the Word to end that city! We’re true to our oath. We fight!”
“Wait, what are you...”
“Captain,” the Pegasus cut him off with a creeping calmness that sent shivers down my spine. “Tell me. Did we win?”
“Win… what?” the captain blurted out, unphased with the Pegasus’s train of thoughts.
“The WAR!” the captain blared back frantically. “Did we win the war?!”
“Wait, no!” Voices rose in the background, voices the captain didn’t wait to silence with an order. “No, we lost… Everypony lost. Everyzebra lost. Equestria is no more. There was the balefire. The Zebra Empire is no more too.”
“Oh...” somepony had a sudden realisation. “So Luna…”
“Luna’s dead… Don’t tell me you’ve been fighting for two hundred years,” the captain asked bemusedly.
“Loyal to the crown. Loyal to the core, Captain. We are the Night Guard. Loyal ‘til the end, generation after generation,” the voice trailed extensively and broke into a wicked laugh. “She’s dead… Luna is dead. She lied to us… No, she won’t. She was betrayed. We must avenge her.”
“You. Are. Insane.”
The Pegasus snorted. “Back in the day, you would be put in martial court for that foul language, Sir.”
“The fuck you’re talking ab… What’s happening in this city!?” the HMS Canterlot’s captain roared through his own intercom.
“This city is cursed, Sir.” the sergeant answered. “We need the Word to make it end.”
I heard screams coming from the captain’s side. My eyes deported on the screen where I had seen the HMS Canterlot anchored in the bay. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The air around the warship was frizzling and vibrating as if monstrous heat distortion was engulfing the warship. The frigate quaked violently and I heard loud scream coming from the transmitter.
“Oh.” The Pegasus let out a long sight. “They are quite on the schedule today…”
The Pegasus, that Stuka, and I were apparently watching the same thing. An invisible talon clutched around the frigate. I could see the metal bend and crack through the image. And the screams. It reminded me Alea’s. Oh, Celestia. The sounds that a far and still alive CCTV carried to my little greenish screen chilled me to the bone. The thing I couldn’t see lifted the warship above the sea level like a toy. lifted the warship above the sea level! Then the invisible hand smashed it down. The wreck crashed and shattered in a massive storm of metal, blood, and screams.
“My friends…” the Pegasus said, his voice tainted with something that I couldn’t say if it was delectation or pity. “Welcome to Bahrneigh.”
[α Ω α]
>>> Footnote!
>>> Dervish
>>> Specials:
>>> Strength: 4
>>> Perception: 6
>>> Endurance: 5
>>> Charisma: 5
>>> Intelligence: 5
>>> Agility: 7
>>> Luck: 6
>>> Thanks to Kkat for writing Fallout: Equestria