//------------------------------//
// Chapter One: Lonesome Road 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: The Lost Empire 
// by CopperTop 
//------------------------------//

I see a cold wind blowing through
I see days neither fun nor free

“Beautiful” was rarely a word that would ever be used to describe the Wasteland.  One could have walked―cautiously, of course―from one side of the devastated continent to the other and found little more than desolate terrain, horrific beasts, and irradiated hellscapes to greet them; punctuated by the occasional collection of struggling survivors that were often just as likely to try and kill you as those same merciless monsters that prowled the wilds.  The world was a nightmarish reimagining of what had once existed a little more than two centuries previously, and it frequently felt like the Wasteland itself revelled in educating any who entertained notions that it was otherwise.  To underestimate the Wasteland was to invite death...or worse.
Oh, yes, there were indeed worse fates that one could suffer than merely dying.  In her naive youth, the mare would have scoffed at such an idea.  How could anything possibly be less desirable than dying?  That was before she had become intimately familiar with the concepts of what exposure to intense fields of magical radiation and Taint could do to those unfortunates who weren’t paying close enough attention.  Before she had seen mindless remnants of the ponies of the old world wandering aimlessly, without purpose, until they beheld any other living thing and instantly threw themselves at it with reckless abandon.  Those undead abominations that had once been intelligent, thinking, ponies; but were now feral ghouls driven only by insatiable hunger and fury.
The mare would gladly have embraced death as an alternative to becoming one of those.
Yet, for all its horrors and callous disregard for anything approaching civility; there was still beauty to be found in the Wasteland.  In her own humble opinion, at any rate.
At moments, there was a...tranquility to the Wasteland.  In the dead of night, away from the sparse collections of shanties that passed for settlements these days―and when no monsters were stalking you―there were times when a pony could sit perfectly still, look up into the newfound starry sky, and feel...peace.  As little as six months ago, it would have been a different prospect, she supposed.  Back then the sky had been embraced by a perpetual overcast, enforced by the Grand Pegasus Enclave, which had deprived the surface of once mundane aesthetic luxuries like sunlight and stars.
That had changed in recent months.  A refugee from one of the Old World wartime shelters, known as ‘Stables’, had made her way to the surface, taken a look around, and promptly thought to herself: ‘fuck this noise!’ and had done something about it.  There were a few extra little details mixed in there that varied depending on who was telling the story, of course.  Presumably there was even an actual book out there which contained the genuine truth of the matter.  Presumably.
The details hardly mattered to most ponies though.  From the point of view of many, there had been clouds one day, and sky the next.  They could have cared less about the nature or cause of the change; it wasn’t as though everything wrong with the world had been fixed by that singular event.  Radiation continued to persist in most of the Wasteland, and would for many centuries yet to come.  Monsters and bandits still wandered the land in between bastions of safety that only the mad or foolhardy dared to brave.
That thought evoked a quiet chuckle from the mare.  She often wondered which category she fell into.  She supposed that that, too, varied depending on who was doing the telling.  Be it madness or foolishness, she would not be dissuaded from her mission though.
Unfortunately, the realities of life in the Wasteland precluded her from simply focusing exclusively on her own personal objectives.  A mare could not subsist on determination alone.  Clean water, safe food, medical supplies, and ammunition, were all essential to her continued survival; and obtaining them was not something that she could forgo.  Which meant that she had to either scour Old World ruins in the hopes of getting lucky enough to find what she was looking for, or she needed to barter it from ponies who made their livelihood obtaining those very essentials and peddling them to others.
The traveling mare was not an experienced scavenger.  She had not grown up perusing ancient towns and factories.  Her skill at bypassing sealed doors was limited, and her instincts for knowing where the most useful artifacts were located had never been honed the way they had been for those who had made prospecting their life’s work.  Thus, in the interests of time and expedience, she opted to pay others for what she needed.
Of course, this required a source of sufficient liquid capital.  Again, her avenues for securing funding were limited.  Working at a steady and safe vocation was not acceptable, as she refused to allow herself to be delayed by the months, or even years, that it would take to squirrel away a sufficient bankroll to fund the entirety of her expedition.  That left only the unsafe sources of income, which balanced out their associated risk with short timetables and high payouts.
Her sense of moral justice precluded banditry or slaving.  Indeed, she put a stop to such things whenever she happened across them.  A lingering prudish sense of modesty she’d retained from her old life also put her off selling her body, as many a desperate or more free spirited pony was apt to do.
This all conspired to steer the mare towards a single remaining line of work that both her sensibilities and her conscience would permit her to accommodate: bounty hunting.  Of course, even then her selection of jobs was often greatly curtailed.  She was loath to chase after other ponies unless she could be certain of their guilt of serious genuine crimes.  Far too many a less-than-scrupulous pony eagerly placed caps on the heads of their enemies for what she considered to be trivial offenses―if they were even offenses at all.
Monsters, on the other hoof, were almost never a gray area.  The mutated beasties that roamed the world regularly regarded ponies as little more than menu items, and were an imminent threat to both towns and travelers alike.  Disposing of them was a clear cut necessity, and could pay quite handsomely―depending on the nature of the threat.  The more fearsome and lethal the prey, the larger the payout.
The wandering mare frequently accepted such contracts as a means to acquire the financing and supplies that she needed.  She was just a single pony, and didn’t need much in the way of provisions; so taking the easier―and thus lower paying―jobs was barely even a distraction when it came time to stock back up.  Spend thirty minutes destroying a radscorpion nest, collect a couple hundred caps, buy a week’s worth of food and water and a bed for the night, then head off in the morning towards the next town along her chosen route.
She hardly even gave it a second thought.
Though, as the massive paw tipped by four razor-sharp claws the length of her muzzle arced towards her, she was keenly aware that she perhaps needed to exercise a little bit more discretion when it came to picking those ‘easy’ jobs in the future.  A lesser amount of pay usually meant that the danger wasn’t particularly great.  It seemed though, in this specific instance, that it had just meant that the pony posting the contract had been a cheap bastard.
Blue lightning crackled as the lethal paw that was half the size of the mare’s body stopped dead upon the magical barrier just a few scant inches above her head.  The force of the impact caused her to wince away reflexively from the strike, her cyan eyes stealing a quick glance at the dangerous appendage as it lingered atop her protective shield.  When it drew away, it was joined by its partner as the Kodiak reared up on its hind legs in preparation to bring both of its massive clawed limbs down upon the stubborn barrier that had dared to spurn what should have been a singular killing blow.
The unicorn seized the moment and glared at the offending super-sized ursine.  Her horn released a torrent of cyan energy, blasting her attacker in its chest.  The Kodiak roared with such intensity that it set the molars in the back of her jaw wiggling.  Unfortunately, it seemed that it was a bellow born not of pain, per say, but rather indignation that something as puny and pathetic as a mere pony would have thought to lash out and defy its efforts to make a meal of her.  It certainly didn’t seem at all dissuaded from its imminent attack.  
Not confident that her shield spell would be able to withstand the full brunt of a combined assault from the Taint-altered bear, she reasoned that it was time to reevaluate the situation and come up with an alternative to her usual tried-and-true standard of ‘blast the monster with magical death beams until it was dead’.  With a brief moment’s concentration, and a flash of energy, the mare vanished from where she had been standing.  A heartbeat later, she materialized about twenty yards further back, just in time to see the eruption of snow as the massive ursine monster’s paws came crashing down.  The ground trembled with the impact, reverberating up through her own hooves.
There was a moment of confusion on the Kodiak’s face as it closely examined the ground where its target had been standing, followed by cursory inspections of the bottoms of its paws as it sought out the crimson smear that should have been all that was left of the mare that it had just tried to flatten.  The unicorn used these precious moments to float out a collection of scrolls from her bags, briefly scanning their contents as they swirled around her.  In a few seconds, she located the spell that she had been after and swiftly filed away those that had not been chosen.
The flurry of motion from the floating reams of vellum had attracted the attention of the Kodiak and, with another furious snarl, it charged the unicorn mare with a rate of acceleration that seemed impossible for a beast of such massive bulk.
“My, you’re quick!” the pony exclaimed as she dashed aside at the last moment.
The bear plowed through the snow, sending a sheet of it cascading over the mare.  She shook the ivory powder away, and directed her attention to the scroll that was still floating in front of her while her opponent was still floundering in an attempt to get back up on its feet and try for another attack, “let’s put a stop to that,” she said as she took in the flowing script of the parchment.  The aspects of the desired incantation firmly in mind, the unicorn directed her attention back at the Kodiak, and blasted the ground beneath it with her horn.
Ethereal tendrils burst forth through the snow, manifesting into ghostly links of chain.  Moving with the speed of striking serpents, the conjured bonds encircled the monster, constraining its limbs and bringing it crashing to the ground.  The beast roared with outrage, snapping at the magical bindings and flexing its powerful limbs in an attempt to break them.  The glowing chains strained as they fought to keep the Kodiak contained.
The mare’s eyes widened with concern at the sight.  A pony would have been completely helpless while encapsulated by that spell, and the spectral chains wouldn’t have quavered in the slightest.  She felt herself taking several cautious steps back as she plucked a book from her other satchel, “quick and strong,” she murmured as the pages of the tome flipped past her face under the urging of her horn, “that’s almost cheating…”
There was a second, much louder, roar from the Kodiak, followed by a flash of light and a sound much like shattering glass.  The mare glanced up from her book and hesitated, staring in stunned amazement as the magical chains disintegrated and vanished before her eyes, releasing the monster that she had been counting on them to hold fast until she could find the appropriate magical solution.  The Kodiak was obviously much stronger than anything that the designers of the spell had anticipated would be restrained by it.  Which was profoundly unfortunate for the mare.
She promptly flipped back through the pages of the book she had been pursuing as her needs abruptly changed.  The massive beast was already back on its feet and charging at her again as she found what she was looking for and cast the enchantment.  The book still gripped tight in her telekinetic grasp, the mare bolted beneath the lumbering behemoth.  A flurry of powder shot up in her wake, splattering the Kodiak in the face and bringing it to a startled halt as it shook the obstruction from its eyes and looked around for its prey.
“Yoo hoo,” the unicorn greeted, tapping the beast on its shoulder.  It glanced around in obvious confusion, staring blankly at the unicorn mare who was inexplicably standing calmly on its back.  The book floated nearby, gripped in a cyan aura as it flipped to yet another page.  The unicorn spared a look at the grimoire just as the Kodiak finally decided that it didn’t much care about how the pony had gotten onto its back; simply knowing its location was entirely sufficient.  It reached around with one of its powerful paws to smack her off.
The mare’s horn flashed just as the clawed appendage approached her.  She glared at the offending paw and held up a single hoof.  Much to the Kodiak’s surprise and consternation, the little pony’s outstretched limb somehow proved to be more than sufficient to stop its strike dead.  The sudden loss of momentum from the attack put the monster off balance, and the mare took ready advantage of that.  Reaching out and wrapping the paw in both of her forelegs, she pivoted on her hind hooves and flexed her back.
The Kodiak let out a meek little grunt as it found itself mysteriously airborne.  It was a perfectly legitimate assumption that the multi-ton mutated beast had never before been tossed around by anything at all in the course of its life; much less a pony small enough to have been gobbled up in a single bite.  As such, its brain was at a loss to explain what was happening to it currently, as it was deftly flung over the mare’s shoulder and slammed down onto the ground with enough force to evacuate the air from its lungs.
The unicorn was a little out of breath as well.  These spells had been far more than she had anticipated casting when she had come out here.  For all of her efforts thus far, she hadn’t actually done much more than inconvenience the ursine either.  It was disoriented and winded for the moment, yes, but hardly seriously injured in any way―other than its pride, perhaps.  If this fight went on for much longer at the rate it was, the unicorn was certain that she was going to burn out her horn before she’d dealt with the threat.  Then she would be in real trouble.
She looked over at the groaning Kodiak, seeing that it was already well on its way to recovering from being flipped.  Her mind raced, thinking over her varied yet distressingly limited arsenal of spells.  Unfortunately, she was at a loss to come up with any that would do much more than inconvenience something on the magnitude of this monster.  Her beam attacks only irritated it.  It could break free of any enchantments that she could conjure to restrain it.  The most powerful augmentation enchantments to her speed and strength that she had available to her only seemed to barely place her on par with the Kodiak’s own.
It appeared that heavier artillery would be necessary, the mare realized with a resigned sigh.
The tome of ineffectual spells was slipped back into her saddlebags at the same moment that she used her telekinesis to slide a small jet black object from its compartment on her leather barding near the holster which held a lever-operated shotgun.  She floated the unassuming piece of polished metal out in front of her, briefly taking in the delicate aesthetics of the device.  Despite appearances, however, the weapon was far from fragile.  Indeed, the Kodiak that she was fighting could have stood upon its edge with all of its weight bearing down, and not have bent it in the slightest.
Such was the nature of those enchanted artifacts into which the fractured souls of ponies had been imbued.  A relic recovered from castle ruins in the Everfree Forest, the records in the bombed-out remains of the Manehattan Ministry of Image hub had indicated that the artifact had been intended to be given to Princess Luna as something of a belated coronation gift.  Apparently, it had been modeled after a similar weapon that the alicorn had wielded prior to The Nightmare War.  Obviously the gift had never made it into the hooves of its intended recipient; but it had at least managed to be put to good use since its recovery.
The mare held up the device and her magic depressed a small release built into its side.  Two limbs articulated out from the ornate riser until the object, which had been only about a foot in length while folded up, was nearly as long as she was from nose to tail and locked snugly into place.  Glyphs carved into the sides of the collapsible bow began to glow with silver light.  As they did so, a tendril of white light bridged the two opposing tips of the bow.  To try and physically pull back on that ethereal ‘string’ would have been folly though.  This weapon had not been designed to use conventional arrows, after all.
As the Kodiak finally regained enough of its sensibilities to stand back on its feet, the unicorn withdrew a gemstone from a pouch hanging at her side.  The briolette cut ruby glimmered as it caught the light from the glowing glyphs on the bow.  The mare brought the teardrop shaped precious stone into contact with the ‘bowstring’, and the scarlet bauble instantaneously transformed into a proper arrow, with its barbed head resting upon the riser.  Tendrils of visible energy rose like smoke from the glowing crimson arrowhead.
The large ursine monster glowered at the unicorn mare that continued to stare it down, not grasping the significance of the object floating between them.  Being a creature of a singular instinct, it merely roared another challenge at her, and charged forward.  The mare stood her ground and raised her readied weapon.
With a thought, she released the arrow.  The Kodiak rose up before her, intent clearly visible in its tainted, glowing, amber eyes.  There was a scarlet flash of light that very nearly blinded the unicorn.  Unflinching, she watched as the ursine monster crashed down before her.  Tendrils of gray smoke danced around a blackened charred hole in its back that was big enough for her to stick her head through.  She watched the smoke for several long seconds before finally collapsing the ancient weapon back into its carrying configuration and tucking it back into its compartment.
She drew out a knife and began to saw off one of its ears as proof that the deed had been done.

The mood in the warm little tavern shifted perceptibly when the unicorn mare walked in.  This far away from the ‘beaten path’ that was Old Central Equestria, ponies that weren’t part of a caravan were a rare and curious sight.  Most of the ponies struggling to make their lives in the Wasteland tended to congregate near the larger ruins, like Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Hoofington, and Seaddle, where there was plenty of salvage and supplies to be scavenged.  There weren’t many places like that in the north that would attract ponies.  So when somepony showed up who wasn’t there to trade, it was noticed.
Typically, this resulted in curious glances and hushed musings from those few hardy ponies that were doing their best to eek out a living in the harsh winter terrain.  Hunters, trappers, fishers and the like who had learned over the generations where what little bounty there was to be had in such a place could be found, trading their meager surplus of furs and leather to caravans for weapons and hardware that couldn’t be foraged for.  A lone mare like the pink unicorn that had shown up a few hours ago asking about available work had spurred quite a bit of speculation from the bar’s patrons.
However, it was not a chorus of curious musings which rippled around the occupied tables now as the leather-bound unicorn marched briskly towards the bartender.  Her staccato steps and focused gaze brought a tense silence over the crowd, and an abrupt end to the conversation that the golden colored unicorn stallion who owned this establishment had been having with one of his regulars.  His emerald eyes locked warily onto the approaching mare before recognition blossomed across his features.
“Hey!  You’re back,” an uncertain smile tugged at his features as he watched her, “how’d things go?”
His answer came in the form of a dour glare from the unicorn and a large white ear which was rather unceremoniously flopped down onto the bar.  The barpony stared at the severed piece of ursine anatomy for several long seconds, as if not quite believing what he was seeing.  Then his smile became much more genuine, “Sun and Moon, you actually killed him?!  Hey, guys; this little mare killed Fang!” his horn began to glow as he looked back at the unicorn mare, beaming, “well, you sure earned this,” a small sack of caps floated out and dropped onto the bar top, along with a cleanish looking glass, which was soon filled with scotch that was so watered-down that it was nearly clear, “plus a drink, on the house.”
The unicorn mare slammed her hoof down on the table hard enough to tip over the small shot glass and spill its contents on the polished wooden surface.  The barpony jerked in surprise, staring wide-eyed at the mare.  She could hear several ponies shifting around uncomfortably behind her as every eye was drawn to their exchange.  There was even the faint sound of metal scraping against leather as one or two of those ponies loosened firearms in case things got out of hoof.  Whether or not things indeed escalated to the point of violence was entirely under the control of the barpony, the mare thought acidly, not taking her baby blue eyes off of the golden stallion.
“You better add a zero to that bounty,” the mare growled low in her throat, holding his emerald eyes with a cool sapphire stare.
He balked for a moment, and then managed to recompose himself, looking appropriately indignant, “hey, the agreement was for two hundred caps,” he reminded her sternly, “you can’t just go and change the deal―”
She slammed her hoof on the counter a second time with more force than before, silencing the stallion, “the deal,” she stressed, the word dripping with venom, “was for a yao guai.  That was a fucking Kodiak!” she jabbed her hoof at the ear nearby, “now you’re going to pay me the two thousand caps that a monster like that is worth,” she leaned across the bar, her gaze burrowing into the stallion, “or we’re going to have a problem.”
There was a moment of genuine fear in the stallion’s eyes.  They flickered almost imperceptibly, and then he relaxed, smirking at the mare, “well, if that’s the way you feel about it,” there was a chorus of metallic clicks that echoed around the bar’s interior as just about every one of the patrons drew and readied their weapons.  He reached out and hooked his hoof around the payment, pulling it back towards him, “since the bounty was for a ‘yao guai’, and you didn’t actually kill a yao guai, then you never actually fulfilled the contract, did you?
“Oh, and that’ll be ten caps for the drink,” he nodded his head at the spilled liquid.
The mare cast her gaze briefly around the bar, noting the dozen or so ponies with their weapons pointed at her.  She kept her expression even as she took in every detail, and then looked back at the barpony.  Her words were unexpectedly calm for somepony at the business end of as many gunbarrels as she was, “let me see if I understand this correctly: you’re going to stiff the pony that just took out a Kodiak all on her own?” she cocked a wry smile at the stallion, who was suddenly looking nervous again, “does that seem particularly...wise to you?”
The mare’s horn began to glow and a shotgun slowly levitated out of its sheath.  The brass lever beneath its stock swung out smoothly before slamming back into place, chambering a fresh cartridge.  She calmly floated the weapon in front of her and pointed it at the stallion, whose attention was now acutely focused on the firearm.  His surprise was absolute, as well it should be, given that the pink unicorn mare was still very much the focus of a dozen other firearms being pointed unwaveringly at her head.
In fact, the weapons were so steady in the grasps of their wielders that one might have described those ponies as, ‘statuesque’.  It took a full five seconds for the barpony to come to the realization that he was the only other pony in the room besides the mare who was moving at all.  Every other patron wasn’t so much as twitching an ear, though each set of eyes betrayed their absolute terror as they comprehended their paralysis.
“Okay,” the stallion swallowed, his eyes not leaving the barrel pointed at his face, “let’s not be hasty here.  The truth is that I don’t have that many caps,” he insisted, almost pleading with her, “I don’t think the whole town has that many!
“The best I can do is five hundred, honest!”
The mare believed him.  A small town like this, so far from the bigger cities, and not exactly frequented by traders?  However, the other side of the bit was that the ruby that she had used to deal with that Kodiak had been worth a little bit in excess of five hundred caps all on its own.  Not that she was likely to come by anypony selling gemstones of that quality out here…
Money was just a means to an end anyway.  The mare floated her saddlebags onto the counter, “in that case, I’ll have to settle for goods in lieu of payment, I guess.  I was just going spend every cap of the bounty here anyway,” she shrugged, hoping that the stallion didn’t notice the sweat starting to bead up along her brow.  She was restraining a lot of ponies right now, and holding her shotgun, and manipulating her bags.  If she had to maintain one more simultaneous spell, she was going to stroke out for sure!
“Two weeks worth of food and water,” the mare said in a strained tone that she hoped sounded as though she were angry, and not overtaxed by her magical exertion, “and every healing potion you have back there.  Now.”
The stallion nodded his head vigorously.  His horn glowed and a parade of Cram cans, Fancy Buck Cakes packages, and Sugar Apple Bombs boxes streamed into her open bags, along with a couple dozen bottles of water and several phials of purple medical fluid.  All the while, the unicorn continued to clench her jaw as she struggled to keep her spells going.  If she faltered for even a second…
After what felt to her like an eternity, the barpony had finished stuffing her saddlebags with everything that the pink mare had demanded and waited to see if she was going to make any further demands of the town.  Even if it had been her desire to turn this into a genuine robbery instead of fair compensation for her efforts, she knew that she didn’t have the time.  She donned her bags and calmly holstered her shotgun again, trying her best not to look too relieved to no longer be manipulating them with her horn.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” she said, nodding at the stallion, “now I’m going to be going on my way,” she looked around at all of the unmoving ponies that were pointing their weapons at her, “I encourage all of you to keep this little exchange in mind before you start entertaining any wild ideas about ‘coming after me’, are we clear?” she was met with silence, and so repeated, “are. We.  Clear?” a smattering of grunts replied this time, and she nodded, “good.”
Calmly, and coolly, as though she couldn’t feel her spell about to fizzle out at any given moment, the mare walked leisurely out of the room.  She desperately hoped that none of them noticed her legs quivering, or could see her eyes watering as she maintained the spell for far longer than she ever had in her life.  She could have held one or two ponies still like this for hours.  Even a half dozen would have been doable for thirty minutes or more.  A dozen ponies though, along with their respective weapons?  Even she would never have expected more than a few measly minutes.
She heard the door close behind her and let out a gasping breath, panting with exhaustion as she reached her limit and could no longer maintain the spell.  Inside, she could hear a dozen surprised exclamations and the sound of several ponies falling over as their bodies found themselves required to support their own weight once more without any forewarning.  She desperately hoped that they would all heed her threat and not come after her.
Once outside of the town, the pink unicorn sighed with relief and plunged her head into the snow.  She could hear a faint sizzling sound as her overtaxed horn came into contact with the frozen water particles.
“Ow,” she hissed, keeping her horn buried in the snow, “I’m going to have a migraine tomorrow for sure…” she muttered to herself.  There’d been no help for it though.  According to what had passed for a ‘map’ of the area, this was supposed to be the last settlement she was going to pass through.  Nor was there going to be anywhere for her to scavenge supplies from until she got to her destination.  If she hadn’t topped off on supplies here, she wouldn’t have had enough to make the trip.
Getting back was still a gamble though.  She was counting on being able to find food and water once she got there, but the truth was that she didn’t even know if ‘there’ was even still, well, there.
“Everypony told you this was a stupid idea,” she said as she raised her head once more and stared northward.  Her friends hadn’t said it quite that bluntly, of course.  It had been far more obliquely implied that maybe it was a better idea for her to remain in Seaddle.  The temptation to do just that had been strong, there was no denying that.
At no moment had that temptation been stronger than right now.  Up to this point, things had been largely academic, in a way.  She’d been free to turn back at any moment, or even make a life for herself in one of the many more robust settlements in the Wasteland.  Tenpony Tower and the remnants of the Ministry of Arcane Science, which had rebranded itself  into the Twilight Society, had been especially tantalizing―if a little presumptuously named.  The ponies there had practically begged her to stay when they learned who she was.  Her first-hoof knowledge of their heritage would have been invaluable to their efforts.
“If this doesn’t work out then...maybe,” had been her answer at the time.
Turning around and going back to Manehattan would be so easy right now.
The unicorn floated out two sheets of paper.  One of them was an ancient atlas of Equestria-That-Was.  It was actually a little too ancient for her purposes, dating well back to somewhere in the late 700’s post Nightmare Moon.  Princess Luna hadn’t yet returned, among other things, and while her goal wasn’t pinpointed on that map, she still had a fair idea of where it was supposed to be.
The second piece of paper was a moderately current map of the Wasteland.  By comparing the two, she had been able to approximate her progress.  Assuming that the Wasteland map’s scale was reliable―and she had since learned that it was tenuous, at best―she should reach her destination in...ten days.  That would put her at the extreme range permissible by her provisions.  If it wasn’t exactly where she thought it was supposed to be, she’d be able to spare one, maybe two, days of looking around before having to turn back, lest she run out of food and water in the middle of nowhere.
Given how thoroughly she had just burned her bridges with this hamlet, the mare wasn’t sure she’d get a second chance any time soon if this didn’t pan out.
All of that was predicated on the theory that her goal even still existed anyway.  So many places had been wiped out on the last day of The Great War...
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “just a little faith,” she whispered to herself, “have a little faith.”
Resolved to see her quest through to its conclusion, the pink unicorn got back up on her hooves and resumed her journey north.

The Wasteland didn’t feel beautiful anymore, the unicorn decided by the seventh day.  The perpetual overcast had resumed, but not because the Enclave had seen fit to renege on the treaty forced upon them by the actions of the Lightbringer and seal up the sky once more.  She concluded that the simple fact was that pegasi didn’t actually live this far north.  What she was experiencing right now wasn’t the result of too much control being exerted over the skies, but rather no control at all.
Thick, dark clouds extended as far as the eye could see in every direction.  Even at the peak of what should have been ‘daylight hours’, the world was dim.  At night it was so intensely dark that even the illumination that she conjured forth with her horn felt like it was being smothered by the blackness.  Not that there was all that much to illuminate anyway.  There were no rocks, or trees, or...anything.  It was just a flat expanse of ice and snow that didn’t seem to have an end.
Every night, she felt compelled to turn back, but by the time morning arrived again, she had resolved to go ‘just a little bit further…’.  In a few more days, her food situation would force her back despite her resolve, but that day had not come yet.
“What possessed anypony to settle in a place like this anyway,” she muttered to herself as she pressed through the latest snowstorm to manifest, “give me The Baah-Hamas or Barnbados any day,” not that she was sure either of those long ago favored winter time vacation destinations even existed anymore.  Perhaps if this trip didn’t pan out like she’d hoped, she could try and see if they’d survived, “if I’m going to be wandering around in the middle of nowhere looking for ancient cities, it might as well be someplace warm…”
The wind flared up at the thought, as though just to accentuate her point.  She flinched away briefly from the snow whipping past her face, and found herself feeling beset by additional doubts about her quest.  This storm had been raging for hours, and it was showing no signs of abating any time soon.  She could try and make camp and wait it out...but that would cut into the already scarce time she had afforded herself to search for the Empire.  It was just some wind and snow anyway.  When compared to the things that she had faced down since awakening in the Wasteland, what was a little weather?
Again she felt herself being violently buffeted by a chilling gust more potent than the last one that nearly tipped her over.
“A storm with a sense of dramatic timing,” the mare seethed through her gritted teeth as she pressed onward, “great,” she glared defiantly upward, “I suppose you’re just waiting for me to say: ‘at least it can’t get any worse’?”
In spite of her expectations to the contrary, there was not an answering bluster this time.  The pink unicorn grunted and continued trudging along through the snow.  She’d only advanced a few more paces before something caught her eye through the billowing snowfall.  Initially, she wasn’t even certain that she had actually seen it.  At first glance, she had taken it to be another pony, which confounded her quite superbly.
After a few tentative shouts without a response though, the mare rethought her initial assumption.  Not only had they not replied, they hadn’t moved either.  She crept cautiously closer.  As she did, her visibility through the storm improved somewhat, and she concluded that whatever she was seeing was far too tall and much too slim to be a pony.  It was also holding impossibly still.
A statue of some sort perhaps?
That notion filled the mare with some measure of hope.  If it was a statue, then that meant that somepony had built it, and nopony built statues out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  That meant that was close to somewhere, and the only ‘somewhere’ that was supposed to exist out here was the Crystal Empire!  While she was still pretty sure that she couldn’t have reached the Empire proper, there was every possibility that she’d stumbled upon one of their smaller satellite colonies or even a military outpost of some sort.
The mare charged forward, encouraged by the sight, and hoping that as she got closer to it she would catch glimpses of whatever other structures had surely been built around it.  Any sort of shelter would be quite welcome, if only briefly while she attempted to regain her bearings.
Her pace faltered though when she got nearer, and was finally able to get a good look at the ‘statue’ without the falling snow obstructing things too much.  It was certainly...equine, in shape; but none would ever mistake it for a pony up close.  The gaunt contours made it seem almost like a skeleton, and she was of the notion that its white color wasn’t a result of being covered in snow.  Indeed, what was perhaps most off-putting of all about what the unicorn was looking at was that it wasn’t covered in snow.
The unicorn mare had a copious accumulation of powder on her own backside, and that was in spite of her perpetual movement through the storm.  Whatever this thing was should have been half buried by now.  What was even more worrisome was that, even looking at it now, it didn’t appear that the snow that was falling at this very moment was even coming into contact with it.  The billowing flakes just seemed to pass right through, like it wasn’t even there.
I must be hallucinating, the mare reasoned; though she could have wished that she was a bit more confident of that hypothesis.  Not that it would have been a good thing that she was seeing visions of spectral equines.  Certainly that was a sign of something far more seriously wrong with either her health or psychological well-being than merely being a little cold and wet from the snow.
Ponies wandering through deserts see mirages.  This place is a lot like a desert, she thought to herself, glancing around at the barren wintry Wasteland, I must be seeing whatever it is that snow-mirages are called…
Barely audible beneath the howling wind of the storm was the distinct rattling of a throaty growl.  She swallowed in an effort to quell the lump of fear that had formed in her throat.
Mirages don’t make sounds...do they?
The unicorn started trembling slightly, and she was pretty sure that it had nothing to do with the freezing temperatures.  Her eyes still locked on the ivory hopefully-a-hallucination, the pink mare decided that her best course of action at the moment was to back away slowly from whatever this thing was until it was out of sight and then try to go another way.  However, when she tried to move, she discovered that her hooves refused to budge.
No...that wasn’t it, the mare quickly realized.  It wasn’t that they refused to move out of any sense of fear-induced paralysis, her legs physically couldn’t move!  She stole a glance down and, to her horror, she saw that her fetlocks had somehow become encased in ice.  Even more terrifying a realization was to see that the ice was spreading up her legs before her very eyes!
Somehow she managed to only just barely quell the panic that was threatening to overwhelm her sensibilities and focused her mind enough to conjure a spell.  Tight cyan beams of light lashed out from her horn in rapid succession at the encroaching ice.  Wherever she struck it, the ice cracked and shattered, spraying frozen shards in every direction.  Yet, somehow, it wasn’t enough.  The impossibly quickly materializing ice was spreading with terrifying speed, regrowing over the places she blasted faster than she could remove it.
The unicorn frantically increased the intensity of her blasts, even though she knew that she would risk injuring herself if any of her beams wandered too close to her flesh.  The way that she saw it, a few mild burns were much preferred over being encased in a solid block of ice!
Her magical strikes began shearing off larger chunks than before, and yet it still didn’t seem to be sufficient to stem its spread.  That panicked lump in her throat returned with a vengeance as the ice encroached up past her shoulders and sought to seal in her torso.  She ratcheted up the intensity even further, slicing away at the ice that was creeping up around her ribcage.  She cried out more than once as her blasts pierced completely through and scoured her own flesh; only for the ice that she had removed to return even thicker than before and further up along her body.
“Why are you doing this?!” she screamed at the alabaster visage standing before her even as her horn lashed out at the icy sheets climbing her neck.  She couldn’t even cant her head to get a better angle for her beams anymore.  Without the ability to fight back its progress, the ice simply flowed up around the trapped unicorn mare, thickening itself along her sides and neck.
Her horrified eyes locked onto the lanky equine form in front of her.  Even if she wanted to look away, her entire body was frozen in place.  She could even now feel the first tendrils of the dauntless ice creeping up around her cheeks and over her mane, “what are you?!” she received no reply, save for the continued low chattering growl which was undeniably emanating from the mysterious figure.
“Stop!  Please!” her pleas for mercy went unheeded, eliciting no reaction at all from her assailant.  If that was even what it could be called.  It still hadn’t so much as twitched since she’d laid her eyes on it.  Her ears briefly filled with the crackling of ice before all sound was abruptly muffled entirely.  She could feel it creeping down her forehead, joining with the ice engulfing her cheeks.
“PLEASE!”
Then she was unable to say anything else at all.  Every part of her body had become entombed in frozen translucent crystal.  The pink mare reached new levels of terror that she had never before experienced as she comprehended her imminent doom.  She couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even breath!  She’d be dead in minutes if she couldn’t figure something out.
Teleport, you idiot! Fucking TELEPORT NOW! She screamed within the confines of her own mind.  Yet, even as she formed the thought, she knew that she would never actually be able to cast the spell.  She was too afraid, too panicked, too doomed!  Too many questions scurried through her mind like lemmings, making any attempt at clear and coherent thought a futile effort.  What was that thing?  What did it want?  Why was it doing this?  How was it doing this?!  Every time she even attempted to devote her attention to casting a teleportation spell, the unicorn’s mind circled back around to those same pervasive questions.
I’m going to die, the mare realized, her thoughts finally deciding to rally around a singular, less than helpful, thought, I’m going to die, right here, right now, her oxygen starved lungs began to burn now, pleading with her to take a breath; but there was none to take.  The burning grew more intense, and darkness started nibbling at the edges of her vision,  I’m going to die without ever finding out what happened to him…
Lightning flashed in the dark clouds above as the blizzard continued to rage around her.
...No, she realized, almost as an afterthought; that wasn’t lightning, and it hadn’t been coming from the clouds.  Just barely perceptible through her cloudy vision, the dying mare saw the as yet unwavering ivory figure...flinch, ever so slightly.  There was another flash.  This time, it recoiled much more perceptibly.  Its head pivoted sharply, the faintly glowing blue pinpricks of light in it eye sockets looking away from the frozen unicorn.  There was a third flash, and this time the light seemed to crash over the creature like a physical wave, staggering it.  Its jaws opened, stretching far wider than should have been possible for any equine, and it emitted a piercing screech that she heard quite clearly even through the nearly foot thick ice sheet that had surrounded her ears.
When the fourth and final flash of light hit the creature, the mare felt it too.  For her, it was the barest of tremors. while the monster that had entombed her was shattered into a thousand tiny flakes of snow, blowing away into the aether with the raging winds.  It was dead and gone.  Of course, in less than a minute, she would be too.  At least she had been permitted to see it vanquished by...something, before her own life ended.
As though on cue, the Pony of Death appeared.  He was here to take her away to the afterlife.  A desiccated corpse of a pony dressed in black rags and a tattered crimson cloak was standing before her now, where her killer had stood mere moments ago.  A white ghost, replaced by this black wraith.  Slung at his side was a tarnished silver scabbard from which a brass sword hilt was visible.  Odd, the mare found herself thinking, as she had been certain that Death was supposed to wield a scythe with which to reap the souls of the departed.  That had certainly been the description that every common folk tale had contained.
Though, she supposed, it was probably unreasonable to assume that those stories had gotten every detail right.  After all, if only ponies who had died were the ones who saw Death, then who exactly was it that was supposed to have delivered those descriptions of his disposition?
Pale blue orbs of faint light peered up at her from beneath the faded scarlet cowl of his cloak, framed by mummified flesh.  He was a horrific sight, the mare thought to herself, just what the pony who claimed the souls of the dead was supposed to look like, she decided, whatever other details those stories might have overlooked.
Death closed his eyes and leaned his head forward, touching his horn gently against her icy sarcophagus.  It started the glow faintly just as darkness finally overwhelmed her vision.
He’s taking my soul, she realized with her final thought…
Then her world shattered into pieces.
No, that was wrong.  It wasn’t the world that had shattered, it was the ice!
The mare gasped loudly as her lungs sensed that there was no longer any obstruction and took in a breath so deep that she was certain that the effort was going to inflate her with so much air that she would float away like a unicorn shaped balloon.  That did not actually happen, of course, despite any feelings to the contrary, but the effort was certainly far more than her body appreciated and the mare immediately transitioned from the single desperate inhalation into a fit of hacking coughs.  Her lungs had clearly resented their recent mistreatment, and it felt like they were now trying to secede from the rest of her body in protest as they sucked in every cubic millimeter of air that they could get between hacking fits.  
She gasped and coughed for what surely must have been a full two minutes.  Eventually the fit subsided and the mare was able to breath normally once again, but she still felt quite drained by the whole experience.  She was alive though.  It was almost impossible to imagine, but she had somehow survived…
...Which begged the question of why Death was still hanging around, staring down at her.
“Can you stand?” Death rasped at her in a voice that sounded like his vocal cords were made out of two sheets of coarse sandpaper being rubbed together.
She blinked up at the walking corpse that was tasked with escorting the souls of dead ponies to the afterlife.  Was...was this what being dead felt like?  Had she not survived after all?
The cowled stallion glanced around through the snowstorm, his pale gaze searching, “it’ll come back soon, and it’ll have friends,” Death looked back at the pink mare, “I can’t chase away more than a couple of them, so if you can stand, now’s the time.”
The mare blinked again, her oxygen starved brain starting to tie a few more synapses together in an effort to help her make sense of what was happening, “I’m not dead, am I?”
Death cracked a smile and let out a chuckle that sounded more like cough than any variation of a laugh, “hardly,” he scoffed, “shit, you’re more alive than I am,” he reached out a rag-bound hoof, his expression looking more serious, “we need to go.  Now.”
The mare nodded absently and took the offered hoof, registering the sensation of grabbing onto a dried out date as she allowed herself to be pulled up onto legs that were still a little uncertain.  Death’s eyes passed briefly up and down her frame, “can you run?”
“Maybe just a trot first?” she said, noting the slight tremble in her voice that matched the one in her joints.
He glanced around once more and then nodded, “better than nothing,” his tone suggested that he wasn’t entirely convinced of that, “follow me,” he turned and trotted off through the snow, the pink unicorn following in his wake on her unsteady legs.
“What was that thing?” the pink mare asked, sparing a look over her shoulder.
“A wendigo,” came the tart reply.
She balked, nearly tripping over her own hooves as she gaped at Death, “a wendigo?  Those are just old mare’s tales!” she protested, “they’re made up to scare foals into behaving.”
“And do you remember what wendigos did in those ‘old mare’s tales’?” the desiccated stallion asked sarcastically as he peered back at the mare.
“They…” the unicorn mare’s voice caught briefly before she continued in a slightly more subdued tone, “brought eternal winter,” her eyes tracked the billowing snow, “and froze ponies in ice,” the parallels were not lost on her.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Death shrugged, “it’s probably just a coincidence, and that wasn’t actually a wendigo.  You weren’t actually encased in a block of solid ice from which there was no escape; and this isn’t actually an unnatural blizzard that never ends.”
“But where did it come from?” she protested, “wendigos haven’t been seen in Equestria for over a thousand years!” 
“It probably came from the same place they did that first time,” he said, “though I don’t ever remember those old stories saying exactly where that place was.”
That was certainly true enough, she thought.  When you were talking about legends that were multiple millennia old, details on a lot of plot points were hard to come by.  More so when those legends were supposed to have just been made up in order to teach young foals valuable life lessons.  Even running through every variation of the First Hearth’s Warming Tale that she’d ever heard, the mare couldn’t recall any version which discussed where the wendigos had come from, or even where it was that they had been banished to.  It had always sufficed for the narrative that they had been the source of the misery being suffered by the tribes of old, drawn by their growing hostile feelings towards one another, and that they had disappeared in the face of the newfound friendship kindled by certain members of those tribes.
“Where are we going anyway?” she asked, discovering that their brisk trot had done wonders to help her body recover from its previously oxygen deprived state.  Her heightened respiratory rate had undone most of the harm that she’d suffered.  The pink mare increased her speed to a respectable canter, which the withered stallion matched easily.
Death looked over at her, that amused little smirk on his lips, “where else?  The Crystal Empire, of course!”
Had she really been that close?  She peered ahead, but she couldn’t hardly make out all that much through the falling and swirling flakes of snow.  The storm had reduced visibility to mere tens of yards.  Frankly, the mare had to wonder how it was possible that he could have any notion about which way they were even heading.
“How much further until we’re there?”
Her question was greeted by another round of his coughing laughter, and that was all the reply that she received, much to her chagrin.  The pink mare was about to repeat her inquiry with a little more forcefulness when she thought she spied something through the churning snow.  She cast her gaze in that direction and her jaw went slack as she beheld a grand crystalline arch, half buried in the snow.  Before she could remark on it, she saw more shapes taking form through the storm.
They were no longer running through a barren snowy field, the unicorn realized; they were on a street!  To either side were buildings constructed of polished stone, and nearly consumed by the falling snow.  Though, as they progressed, she noticed that the depth of the snow was decreasing.  More than that, the blizzard itself seemed to be abating as well.  Though, as she cast her eyes back the way that they had come, the mare quickly realized that this was not because the weather was truly shifting.  Behind them, wind continued to howl just as fiercely as it had been, and the snow fell in thick sheets.
Ahead of them, it was a completely different story.  With every step they took, the air around them cleared more and more.  In as little as a quarter mile, she was even able to see the sky again.  An inexplicable circle of clear blue, which allowed sunlight to shine down through it.  As she spied what that light was hitting, her canter slowed once more to a listless trot.
The scene played some amount of havoc with her mind.  It was all at once both familiar and alien to her.  She had been standing in this city as little as a year ago, as far as her internal sense of time was concerned.  Yet, even in this remote place, there was that look of age and neglect that coated the whole of the Wasteland.  Perhaps the dilapidation of this place wasn’t quite as objectively bad here as it had been in most of the cities that she had traveled through during her trek, but this was different.
The mare had known this place, intimately.  She had walked these streets for years, living with the ponies here.  It was easy for her, intellectually, to accept that places like Manehattan and Seaddle looked like absolute shit as a result of the balefire bombs ravaging them; she’d never known what they looked like up close and in detail before then anyway.  This though...she had known this place.  Seeing it like this...it hurt her in a way that beholding the devastation of no other city had.
Yet, she knew that it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.
The castle’s faceted spires still stood, reaching high into the heavens.  While they might have been inundated with snow, all of the buildings around her were largely intact.  Unlike so many other places in the Equestrian Wasteland, there was little sign that zebra missiles had devastated this place as they had the rest of the pony nation.  That revelation certainly raised a few questions in the pink mare’s mind, but they were secondary concerns.
What truly mattered though was, “...I’ve made it.”
Death glanced over, cocking a brow at her breathless statement.  The snow continued to ebb as they slowed all of the way to a walking pace, and then it finally vanished completely.  The biting cold of the winter weather was gone as well, replaced by a comfortable warmth that seemed so out of place in such a distant northern location.  She looked behind her once more, her eyes tracing over the snow which had stopped so abruptly.
As though sensing her question, the desiccated stallion supplied an answer, “remnants of an ancient magic,” he said, gesturing at the snow, “the storms don’t touch the castle, and the wendigos don’t dare approach either.”
“Why not?” she didn’t take her eyes off the curiously smooth ring of snow that encapsulated the center of the ancient city.  As best she could estimate, it formed a perfect ring around the castle about half a mile in radius.
“Like I said: ancient magic,” Death repeated.  He then directed his gaze to the central structure and bellowed with far more volume than she would have thought him capable of with his gruff voice, “hey, everypony!  We’ve got company!”
Before she could ask the stallion who he was talking to, she spied movement within the castle’s windows.  Scattered heads poked out, peering down at them.  She counted a couple dozen, but suspected that there were likely quite a few more who were not visible.
“Master Archie, you’re back,” a baritone voice caught the mare’s attention, and she glanced down at the base of the castle where a few ponies were approaching them from.  The speaker was an older opal stallion, flanked by a pair of mares who looked to be around his same age.  One was a dusty garnet color, the other a pale topaz.  Preceding them was a fourth younger looking pony adorned in very ornate ceremonial armor and bearing the banner of the Crystal Empire upon a pike mounted to their barding.  All four stopped before them, the opal crystal pony glancing at her, “who’s your friend?”
“Actually,” Death...er, ‘Master Archie’ said, glancing at her with his pale blue eyes, “we hadn’t gotten that far yet.  Sort of had a ‘thing’ to deal with when I found her,” there was a rumbling chuckle in his throat, “everypony calls me Archie,” he pointed a hoof at her chest and then moved it to each of the other three ponies in turn, “these are Agate, Jasper, and Citrine.  They’re in charge around here,” that last comment earned the mummified stallion a few abashed looks from the other ponies.
“It’s nice to meet all of you,” the unicorn mare said, nodding her head to each in turn, “and you can’t imagine how much it means to me to find out that there are still ponies here,” and crystal ponies at that, she noted; though they were not nearly as lustrous as she remembered, “my name, is Starlight Glimmer,” she cocked a wry smile, “I, um...used to live around here, actually.”
As was to be expected, that revelation drew some rather surprised looks from all five of the ponies, prompting a nervous chuckle from the unicorn.  Trying not to sound too awkward, she broadened her smile into a grin and waved, “heh...I’m home!”