Fallout Equestria: Begin Again

by the runaway

Chapter 16: Paper Planes

Fallout Equestria: Begin Again
Chapter 16: Paper Planes
“You’re even better than Captain Cosmos!”

|*| Hitchhikers may be Escaped Convicts |*|

The fog wrapped its arms around Rosecrans and held it, if not like a baby that could not keep its head up, then like someone bleeding out on the road. Everything seemed to be spinning, as the mist circled the town like a great school of fish through aquarium glass. Still, I could see the windmills and electrical pylons that dotted the plains. I could see the ruins and the streetlights, like sunken ships and gemstones in the sand, and the city of Cabanne like a castle in a fishbowl.

“So you don’t have, like, a chair for the husbands to sit in?” Caliber grumbled, as the Saddle Arabian mare unfurled another roll of fabric, to which the first stars might have been pinned. Ash needed a new outfit, and for how she and these desert horses seemed to glide from place to place, I couldn’t stop myself from dragging her into the market, and dressing her up as a filly might her favorite doll.

The sun had come up, and blown out the candles on Equestria’s windowsills. There was a tundra sprawled out across the lake, to the north, and it shone like white legs under the morning’s skirts.

“My husband is selling kebabs.” The Arabian nodded across the street, and the buck who first welcomed us to Rosecrans waved a hoof, trying to send the smell of his grill sailing over to us. Embroidery glittered like so much jewelry around the sleeves and neckline of his robe, which was the color of the sky, as if this seamstress had taken the mist under her needle. “The men usually wait with him.”

“I’d rather eat my contract than another one of those kebabs.” I could see the Saddle Arabian frown, though her face was covered by the darkest of the fabrics that were spread out over her table, in the shades of sunset to sunrise. Caliber stuck out her tongue, and pulled a pair of sunglasses down from the nest that was her mane. She had found them in the gutter. “You have fun, ladies. I’m going to go find some coffee.”

“That is him.” She bowed to her husband, and the fine calligraphy that ran along the length of her reins shimmered. Her eyelids were the color of dusk.

“Huh?”

“That is Kofi.”

Caliber held her head in her hooves, and groaned. “Alright just… just deal me out.” Like a stray dog, the mercenary began to slink away, keeping her head down. She wasn’t alone, as the marketplace, with its racks of sunglasses and breakfast troughs, might as well have been a nursing home to the hungover.

Ponies who, only hours ago, could have danced down red carpets and posed before the flashing lights of a hundred cameras, limped through the town with their ears low and their noses to the sidewalk, as if they were sinners too ashamed to look the sun in the eye. Only the Saddle Arabians walked with their heads high. And if I hadn’t known any better, I might have thought they couldn’t sleep and would not speak; that they were like wandering monuments to Kings dead in the saltwater and Queens buried in the sand.

I looked Ash up and down; at those blossoms of almond and lilac in her mane, and the star on her flank. Then, I knew she could be like those horses dressed in the many shades of the sky; I knew who she could pay tribute to. “Let’s try something in purple… something in Twilight.”

*** *** ***

Ash let the burka lie in a bundle over her shoulders and, bunched up inside of it, she wore a cashmere shawl not at all unlike the one that she’d kept around her neck ever since those five nooses drew tight. Across the outfit, which was clasped together by bands of gold, there was more of the night sky than there were fields of lavender. And across the lighter fabric, there ran swirls that might have been hieroglyphs for wind rolling over the desert. All in all, I was pretty pleased with myself, and grinned like an idiot as we went parading through the streets of Rosecrans; taking the long way out.

Caliber was wallowing in the shade of the shanties at the edge of town, and we scooped her up on our way down the broken road to Cabanne. Better to get away before the mercenary cleared her head, and worked out just how much of our money Ash was wearing around her neck alone.

Caliber kept the sunglasses in her mane, so that there lenses were like two coals in the fire, and even as the mist began to thin, she stared up into the southern sky, muttering curses under her breath. For the way she and Rosecrans were shriveling away from it, the sun had never seemed to burn so brightly. And I was worried that she might try to shoot it down.

The grass covered the Plain in brushstrokes of yolk and butter and the blood of rare meat. But as it licked up at the sky and threw up flower petals to dance around the pylons and the radio masts, to look at it was to watch painting after painting slide over one another, as the frames to an old cartoon.

The city of Cabanne stood like a set of white matchboxes, pulled up from the mesa that wore its palisade walls as a crown. I could see autumn leaves spilling out over the walls, like a fire. The mesa itself was less like a pillar than a Minotaur’s fist bursting out of the soil, with each finger curled more tightly than the last. The city center was perched on its index, while a litter of pale temples and townhouses dotted the rest. Around every finger, ran the wall, like a pair of brass knuckles.

There was already smoke trickling out of the city, as if the Minotaur was crushing a cigarette in its palm, and I wondered if Cabanne would still be standing by the time the Buffalo were done beating their shoulders against it. To them, even Canterlot might seem like a house of cards.

We passed a scrapyard then, where a flock of fighter planes lay with their steel feathers ruffled and their sterling plumage streaked with rust. Some had had their wings plucked off, and were as trampled as toys kicked around a playroom floor, while others were so bare and hollow that they might have been left behind by molting insects. They seemed to bob, as the grass swayed from side to side, and along every wing and atop every tailfin there rat a row of fat birds, like patricians bundled up in their togas.

They took off as our hooves crunched against the asphalt, and flashed through beams of sunlight, which had come down through the clouds just as they might through the surface of the sea. Then, all at once, the birds dipped away from the storm, and it was almost as though they had all bumped their heads against a glass wall: against the side of the bowl.

And then, as if someone had dropped a stone into the holy water that had flooded the world, a great ripple went rolling over the belly of the storm. Soon after it, there came another: much louder this time, much larger. And though the sky was still lurching, everything else became still.

In the space between us and the roof of the world, there was a pinprick, an opening out of thin air, though it was more like an eye being shocked from sleep than a whirlpool slowly spinning open. I could hear the very fabric of the sky tearing, as if the heavens were giving birth. Something came out of the hollow, even as it closed; something that belonged on the pages of a storybook or among the cardboard set pieces of cheap science fiction; something that might have been imagined out of a spoonful of medicine being fed to a tightlipped child. Here comes the spaceship…

It was built like one of those nautical warships, but coasted over the last fingers of the mist like a toy being passed from God to Godchild. Its two great sails might have been filled with stardust, as if the winds that turned the arms of the galaxy had steered it through the hole in the sky. They hung out over its starboard side, and were large enough to be draped over Hell, like two strips of gauze over a wound.

Its bow was not unlike a neck without its head, its collars folded back to bare the skin for an executioner’s axe. There was no figurehead but for a long antennae, like a maypole for all the wires that bound it to the ship’s masts. Its hull was not smooth, and I could see lights blinking out from the gaps in it. Shadows flitted over them, making the ship seem like an angry, untidy hive.

As it passed over us, I could see knots of rust like barnacles on its belly, and I thought I felt the ground shaking under my hooves. Its sails seemed to catch the fires of the sun then, and almost made the ship look beautiful: as a vulture who had stolen the wings of a dove.

“Caeli…” Ash said, while crossing her heart, as if hoping to fly. “What is that?”

The ship tilted, rearing as its great sails became dim, and smoke began to spill out of the end of its crusty abdomen. It swung around that matchbox, deck of cards, pack of cigarettes city, looking like a roach.

“I don’t know,” Caliber began, lifted a hoof to shade her eyes. “But that thing just beat us to Cabanne. And it looks a helluva lot more like a Locust than a Buffalo.”

*** *** ***

The mesa wore many crowns, as its palisade walls seemed to be the only things holding together all that old stone, like the hoops around a barrel. A wide cobblestone path had been spun around the fingers of the Minotaur’s fist, though it broke apart before the open space where the city’s gate had once stood. I couldn’t know whether the Buffalo or the battering rams of some ancient siege had brought it down.

There was smoke, and I imagined Tuskegee’s warriors knocking over torches and braziers in their bloodlust, setting fire to the Locust’s shrines. I could only hope that every one of their Goddesses of straw and thorn and flesh would be left in ashes before we left.

For now, Caliber marched us through what might have been called a warcamp, as the clan’s tents now stood like a wall of cloth and animal skin around the city. There were no flags. And there were no soldiers: only children too strong for their own good, resting so that they might return to their rampage through those castles in the sandbox.

A warband, all whooping and bright-eyed, nearly ran us down as they came back into the camp. The earth under my hooves was muddy, as the Buffalo had run it raw, stripping away the grass and sand as their stampede hammered through those darkest hours before the dawn. My hooves were getting wet, and I looked down at my own swollen reflection. I felt like a God as I watched myself walk in the water

Eventually, we came to a stake planted through the heart of the camp, and as I looked up at what had been tied to it, and beyond to that terrible airship hovering beside the city, I knew that I had been right: Chaos had come to the Plains, turned wild by the whipcrack of Caliber’s rifle. There, bound to the stake, was the mare who had helped her hold the door open for Discord: who shared their crooked smile.

Now, half of her face was in ribbons, and I could see death grinning out at me from behind the mask.

“Luna’s bones… she’s still alive.” Caliber looked up at the stake, with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. “Why?”

“She chose not to die.” Tuskegee came out of one of the tents. There was a spear broken off in his side, and half of his face hung limp. Each furrow and wrinkle had become like a cut of dark meat, hanging behind the counter of a butcher shop. There was a gouge running under his right eye, and something like tar came trickling out of it. It was not blood, but some kind of medicine. “So she will fight again.”

“I might want to take that back.” Hennessy was slurring her words. Both she and the Buffalo Chief seemed drunk, as each had mangled one corner of their mouths.

“I never saw you for the warriors you were. Until now.” Tuskegee dug his hooves into the mud, and I thought he might keep sinking, like some old temple into quicksand. “And a warrior must die fighting.”

“Just give me one more minute, Tusk. I gotta…” I watched her chest swell up, so that the ropes were pulled in tight around it, as if to stop her heart from breaking free. “Just gotta catch the beat. Then you can cut me loose. Boy, I’ll turn Cabanne upside down and shake out those Locusts before you can say Kemo-sah-bee.”

Tuskegee laughed, and I saw that the feathers of his crown had already been reddened at their tips. Each of the tent’s colors had been changed as well, and I was made queasy by the smell of burning flesh, and the shape of some of the skins that had been hung up around the camp. I could hear the beads on the Poacher’s rifle clicking together at my side, and wondered if this was war: if the ship that hung over the city would open its mouth, and let out a bellyful of locusts.

“Tuskegee,” I began. “Do you know that ship?”

“Of course I do.” Even Hennessy started to wriggle, waiting for a name to come rolling off of his tongue. “The Deimos.”

She shook her head then, and smiled two smiles. “That sounds like a ‘Claver name. Figures: them and the Locusts were bound to start rubbing noses, with the way the Enclave’s scouts been buzzing circles around Cabanne.” She twisted her neck, and looked back at the ship, so that we only saw her good side. “Not like them to reel out the old anchor, though.”

“If only they weren’t too afraid to come out! We could remind them who first tamed this open country: who watched the throne even before you Equestrians came to take up the Dragon’s mantle.” He grunted. “That ship changes nothing. There isn’t a soldier on its deck, and only one of your Cloudwalkers can open its airlocks from the outside.” Then, Tuskegee smiled his own two smiles. “We already tried knocking.”

Caliber and I looked at one another and, if a little too daringly, she winked back at the pilgrim who had just crossed both our minds at once. “How ‘bout we give it a shot? It’s been a long time since I killed a Locust. And our Ascella has got a real knack for picking locks.”

*** *** ***

WELCOME TO THE CITY OF CABANNE! SECOND HOME TO THE NOBLE PUDDINGHEADS!
- Tour the city with one of our guides!
See what kept the gears of Cabanne spinning: from the foundry to the guard’s barracks.
Hear stories and songs remembered from the time before Equestria.
A complimentary meal and drink at our fabulous Cabanne Café!

- Only 150 bits!
- Chancellor Puddinghead’s Grand Inaugural Ball!
Be a guest at the party that had ponies coming in from across the northern hinterlands.
(Please Note: The actual ball was held in Old Calvary.)
You’ll feel like you were actually there!
Dance like the minstrels and jesters of the court! (Featuring special guest DJ Mul3)
Feast like royalty! (The event will be fully catered by the Food Court.)

- Only 300 bits!
- Don’t forget to visit Smart Cookie Souvenirs!
You’ve heard of Smart Cookie Square: The monument at the heart of Calvary…
Well, why not get a miniature replica of the monument? Right here! Right now!
Why visit the first landmarks of the earth pony settlers, when you could collect every one of their replicas?

CABANNE! THE OLD CALVARY THAT WON’T HURT YOUR POCKET!

To step into Cabanne might have been to fall into the first pages of a history book, were it not for the candy-striped signs, the all too familiar paper faces and a gate of ticket booths whose spinning wheels had been trampled under the stampede. Across the side of the tower, to which the city’s gate had once been hinged, there was a children’s map, with all of its cities blown up.

Cabanne was broken up into round courtyards; all strung out along this cobblestone road and those wooden staircases. The lowest of them was crowded by a mall and an open marketplace, with wooden decks and old style lampposts. There was a statue in the middle of it, and it almost looked alien for not having been molded into the shape of the Celestial cross. Instead it was a hooded mare, standing over a shallow pool as one who was begging for coins, if only to waste them on making wishes in the water.

Here there were thatched roofs, as slats of grass had been bound together like dry hair into butterfly pins. But, further up the city, inside the rings of its highest crowns, the buildings seemed to have been shaved bald. The temples were bare, and looked like pillars of salt against the darkening sky.

Ash stood under the hooded mare and, as the color of her new outfit stained the water, she might have been a model on the cover of a fashion magazine. I puffed up my chest, feeling proud. Caliber stamped her hoof, snapping me out of it, and pinning down a pamphlet that had been rolling by on the breeze.

DID YOU KNOW:
THE TEMPLES OF CABANNE WERE ORIGINALLY BUILT TO HOUSE PAGAN GODS?
It’s true! If you look closely, you might even find some of them peeking out of the stained glass windows!
But historians have had trouble deciding which idols were made in the image of Gods, and which were made in the image of Kings. You see, just as ancient Equestrians confused our Princesses for deities, so did the Cabannites hold the thrones of their royals up in the clouds.
The difference is that Celestia and Luna never claimed to be anything but Princesses:
While the royal families of old were known to go to war if ever their godliness was questioned.

Isn’t that silly?

THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN APPROVED BY:
CHANCELLOR PUDDINGHEAD HERSELF!
Pinkie Pie, I think, came bursting out of a circle at the bottom of the pamphlet, wearing an ugly hat.
JUST JOKING! IT IS ACTUALLY MINISTRY MARE PINKIE PIE!

“She was a real piece of work, huh?” Caliber let the pamphlet slip away, and I watched it dance around the statue in the middle of the courtyard, as if mocking that pagan god. “Kind of girl that would break your heart and not even know it.” She seemed to be staring right through the city then, as if feeling along the cracks of an old heartbreak, just as one might a vase that had been glued back together.

I could hear gunfire, rolling through the streets as so many songs to strange Gods must once have.
“You ever been in love, Lamplight?” She looked back at me then – she really looked at me. And though I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to lower my eyes: I couldn’t let myself look away – and I thought I saw those chocolate coins starting to soften: starting to melt.

“It’s been a long time… since you called me that.”

She breathed in, and though she hadn’t said a word, I could hear her voice shaking, just as the strings of a piano might when its keys were pushed down just slowly enough.

Even as Equestria howled around us, I thought I could count her heartbeats. “We’d better keep moving,” She said. Ash was splashing her hoof in and out of the pool, as if making music with the ripples, and the mercenary smiled two smiles then, watching her. “Before Ascella accidentally baptizes herself again.”

*** *** ***

We pushed our way through crowded streets, and Caliber left red hoofsteps for stomping through the blood that was trickling in between the cobblestones. There were bodies going cold around us, and the mist made it seem like the city was full of spirits, as if, to spit in the faces of old religions, it was the Locusts who had gotten it right: and their dead would go on to feast on the fields of Elysium.

Like pinballs, the Buffalo had begun to roll their way down to the gates of Cabanne, having painted the city red: decorating it with all their feathers and beads and animals skins. The Locusts of Cabanne seemed to have taken Buffalo fashion, and pushed it into madness. Their headdresses were cluttered and mismatched, their beads might have been picked off as poison berries from a branch, and even their weapons were jagged and ugly, with none of the quiet brutality of the Buffalo shotguns and totems.

I could count all the dead Buffalo soldiers we saw on my hooves. And knew that the Locusts would have been like a thousand little parasites, whipping around their bodies in a flurry of gray, gold and green: like balefire storms scratching at cities. This was not a war, but an extermination.

A sloping park came up out of the next courtyard, and another charred, serpentine Goddess stood as a sister to that beast in Hell. Still, there was something serene about walking along the Lilliputian canals that ran alongside the park. The Buffalo had shaken the city, and a fleet of autumn leaves floated by like ships with their sails on fire.

Caliber’s rifle struck the silence as a hammer against a bell, and I watched a body that had been slinking through the park go limp. A few more Locusts went scrambling over the crown of the city, like lice, and I realized that they were trying to get out. Caliber shot them down, one by one, patient as a deer hunter.

We had come into the shadow of the temples, those pillars of salt, and watched as the Buffalo chased their prey over the palisade walls. The screams of the falling Locusts were long and without language. Others knocked on doors that hadn’t been opened in a thousand years, and jumped through windows that were never washed, just to get out from under the thundering of those cloven hooves.

And then, I felt the power and the glory, as I pictured the Locusts as pagans being massacred in the streets of their heretic city, while we rode by like the three Queens behind an army of crusaders.

By the time we came to the crown above crowns: the temple to whose side the airship was docked, I had seen more than a dozen ponies killed. And, every time, I felt like I was doing it.

The temple doors, which had once been home to a hundred Maplewood gods, had been broken in. The steps of the church were crumpled, like the pages of a book that had been left to bake in the sun. But there was no blood on the walls; on the white faces of the cherubs, in the dish whose holy water had been boiled away in the balefire. The Locusts hadn’t come this high, hadn’t thought to look for asylum in the belly of the ship named Deimos.

Lights of many colors spilled over a sunken amphitheater in the middle of the temple, as the stained glass windows had tinted the sunlight in shades of red and gold and green. Stabbing through the heart of the temple, there was a knotted pillar of stone. It had been mangled into the shape of a locust. The lights seemed to go dancing across its ugly face, as the storm churned over our heads, bending the rays of the sun in between its inky fingers.

There were no walls on the far side of the amphitheater, and an empty pier poked out over the plains. At the end of it, he Enclave’s ship seemed to be breathing, as the wind ebbed and flowed out from under it. Never had something so large seemed so alive, and as I watched its fairy dusted sails rippling with the tempest, it felt as though I could not move, as if to come any closer would be to wake this terrible animal, and see its children spilling out of its belly and onto the temple floor.

But Ash was not so paranoid and, soon, the little pilgrim was running her hooves all over the lights of a terminal that seemed to have come out of a cloud. I hung back, and in the shadow of the ship’s hull, Caliber and Ash looked like minnows beside the belly of a whale. A mouth seemed to open out of its side, to reveal something like a throat whose walls were riddled with cold sores. The ship groaned as we came up to it, and its voice rolled through the streets like the head of a King.

*** *** ***

“This isn’t rust.” Caliber had punched a hole into one of the sores that bloomed across the hallway’s walls and, as she pulled her hoof back, something that could easily have been honey or a spider’s webbing clung to it. “Feels more like we’re in one of those big beehives they got down Calvary way.”

“This place is a grave.” Like a parched tongue, the floor had crusted over, and Ash’s voice never seemed louder than it did echoing out at me from the back of the beast’s throat. “We shouldn’t be here. Some plague could be running naked through the chambers ahead.”

Naked, I repeated to myself, as I watched the growths twitch and the throat tighten. But I had to let it swallow us, like three little birds into a crocodile’s mouth, as it was as though the ship had been overrun with a fungus. I could still see metal, and the lines of lights that throbbed beneath all that muscle and flesh were the color of the stars. I was enchanted by them, and followed as if after wisps bobbing over a marsh.

My Pipbuck could find no signs of life but for the mare on my left, and the mercenary on my right, but there was something, calling me deeper into the ship whose crew might’ve thrown themselves over the gunwales, or whose bones had been swallowed up by this plague before anypony could say Quarantine.

Ash pulled her shawl up over her snout and, after wrestling with me for a few seconds, Caliber slipped her old Cerberus dust mask over my mouth, as if pulling a muzzle over the jaws of a rabid dog, or a bag of oats around the lips of a simpleton. She shrugged, as if to say: What did you expect me to do with it?

I kept the mask on, thought the lockdown had long since been lifted, and there was fresh air leaking into the ship. The walls had buckled in on themselves, and I could look out over the Plains through the spaces in between their mangled panels, or windows whose glass had been broken out.

“Hey, check it out.” Caliber nudged me, and then poked her hoof through a nearby window’s glass teeth. “That’s gotta be the radio tower.”

The radio tower looked like a match, burnt out and pushed into the earth until it could stand up on its own. It was surrounded by a complex of bright floodlights, blocky buildings and high mesh fences so that, even in the light of day, it threw strange shadows over the golden sea, like boats and fishing nets. “Some jackass with a pair of hedge clippers could’ve made topiaries of that tower’s wiring for all we know. I hope you’re as good as you make yourself sound, Ascella.”

“I am.” I had to envy Ash a little then. Even when a mare like Caliber said something like that, it could come out sounding boorish or bigheaded. But the little mare was so sure of herself, such a stranger to doubt and so uninterested in the spectacle that was pride, that you had to believe in her. She didn’t need to dress herself up, and I felt embarrassed, because I had done it for her.

And so Caliber nodded, knowing that it was true, and we climbed ever deeper into the belly of the ship, until the sun was shut away behind its barnacled hide, until the floor went from coarse and filthy to smooth and sterile. This was an alien temple, being swallowed up by their planet’s carnivorous forests.

I kept my pistol high, and made its cradle shine like an oil lantern, hoping to blind the beasts here before they could jump out at us. Anything that made its bed in a place so deeply buried would have eyes that were pink and puckered, like those of a mole.

Finally, we came to a great chamber, whose ceiling was high and creased as the roof of a mouth that had sucked on too much sour candy. The wall on our right was covered in wires, all as thick and as gray as the intestines of a dead leviathan. Three wide television screens had been latched over them, though they now hung like the heads of sleeping giants.

The room’s sides were broken up by platforms, all laid out like bleachers, with every one higher than the other. We came to stand on the runway that ran down the middle of the room like a glass dagger into the beast’s gut. There was a hum coming from what had to be the ship’s engine, blooming like a blue rose on the wall to our left. It might have been beautiful once, but the plague had spread over the chamber, and there were even tendrils like melted cheese in between the platforms, and mottled buds like roses that had given in to the fever before they could bloom. It was as though we had come into the stomach of something that had died, and dried out long ago. Still, the air tasted sterile and cold as I took off the mask.

“Hold on…” The mercenary sidled up to one of the larger growths, which had sagged over the runway. “I’ve seen this stuff before.” She stroked the thing, and it almost looked like it was purring under her hoof.

“Damascus…” She began, staring into that poisoned rose, and pressing a hoof to the bandage on her temple. “He sent us down once. Past the blast doors that Cerberus pulled apart. Past the guards – the ghouls and… into the… prison.” She spoke like someone reading out loud for the first time. “I remember that ticking.” She looked down at my Pipbuck, which sounded like a clock that had fallen behind the time, and was sprinting to catch up. “I remember…”

The color of the rose seemed to change as the screens shone down on us, and a sound like a siren and a thousand words screamed all at once filled the chamber. When it was over, and my heart started to calm, I felt something that had become almost alien to us now… serenity.

“Hell is lost.” Damascus was little more than a silhouette on the screen: a stickman painted onto the wall in charcoal, with eyes bluer than the atmosphere. “The Slavers turned the key. They let it out. And now this place is being swallowed.” Something like thunder rolled over him, and the camera tilted as though his city was sinking into the sea. The sound was like that which might be heard inside a submarine, as prehistoric things that the earth had long since forgotten hammered at its hull, trying to crack it open.

“Get out.” He wasn’t talking to us. And though his voice didn’t quiver, even as his throne room seemed to boil and whistle and shake, his eyes were shining brighter than the closest stars. “We could try to keep the hollow men in. We could fight the children of the plague. But when the walls come tumbling down, the Monster – that devil in the machine - will stand alone in this valley, and it cares no more for those twisted things than it does for us.” Caliber was on the tips of her hooves, as if the screens were sucking her in. “The Coltilde is blowing its whistle. And anyone that doesn’t start running now, will have the monster’s cradle as their grave.”

“We will go East. Take all the guns you can carry. Bring your torches but burn your tents. For in the days of wrath, sleep in the cousin of death.” There might have been a basilisk tunneling through the walls then, and I imagined Hell being squeezed, as the creature coiled in tighter around its belly and neck. “First to Fort Abbadon. And then on to Old Calvary.” The window behind him began to crack, like a glacier. “That ancient city is where this all began. That is where it ends.”

“Follow me. And when this is over, you will be as rich as the last Kings. Stay, and you will share a belly with their bones.” The window broke, and it was as though it had been keeping us all safe from the vacuum of space. The screen was twisted out of place as the city howled, but as Damascus backed away, I thought I could see him chanting something to himself. Run away. Run away. Run away.

It was as if he had forgotten fear, as if his heart never missed a beat. It was as if Damascus, who had planted his stake in Hell and made a kingdom of it, had forgotten how to run away.

“Damascus?” Caliber’s voice broke, as she stood there like a girl with her heart in pieces around her, and one last kiss cooling on her cheek. Then, as if hearing her beg; wishing him out from behind the screens, was enough to push him away, Damascus abandoned his sinking throne with his head held high.

The chamber went dark, and there came the sound of a needle slowly clicking away from its record. The rose pulsed, so that it was as if the room was being pushed under water, and then pulled out; pushed in, and then pulled out. Only Caliber seemed to be choking. She turned to me, and I could see her eyes glisten. “Grace…” She said, in a voice that still sounded out of tune.

But, before she could go on, the mercenary seemed to see something over my shoulder. I turned, only to find an empty runway. Ash Ascella of Caeli’Velum, like a model that was too shy to come out from behind the wings, had not followed us into the belly of the beast.

I pounced off the runway, but skidded to a stop as Caliber cried out behind me. She seemed to have been bound to the spot beneath the screens, like a dog leashed to a lamppost. Ash was little more than a white bar on the screen on my Pipbuck. And I was stranded between my two only friends in the world.

The howl and the rumble of Hell had not left with the light on the screens. It was coming from the walls of this aching stomach now, and the ship sounded hungry. But there was something else, something less alien. There were hoofsteps, little clicks against the steel, like those that had rung out through the Stable like so many church bells on every Sunday.

And then, twisted bodies came bursting out of the walls, like maggots burrowing into the gut of the ship, or larvae whose eggs had been smuggled into it in parcel with the plague. They came to crowd the runway, stomping and screaming, a faceless mob in the throbbing light of the rose, boiling over like black water. They came spilling down the walkways, and darted through the light like ugly fish.

I could see Equestrian faces twisted into surreal masterpieces. I watched a hundred eyes and a thousand teeth gleaming in at me. Their skin was torn, and painted by the plague. Their bodies had swollen into strange and unreal shapes, so that some lumbered and lurched, while others danced. They were ghoulish, but if these were walking corpses, then they had made their graves in the spaces between the stars, only to drift closer and closer to our cornucopian planet over the millennia. Now, they would feast.

I stood at the door we had first come through, and though Caliber’s rifle swatted misshaped bodies off of the runway like so many cockroaches, I couldn’t stop myself from taking a step back, instead of forward. I could feel a pit in my chest, and I stood there, with one hoof stretched out behind me, horrified by what I had just done. Without so much as a chant spoken thrice to fight down the courage in my heart, I had begun to run away. And, as much as it hurt to see it written on the wall: I couldn’t be him.

Would she cry for me, like she was for him? My heart seemed to be singing as it beat, mocking me: Runaway. Runaway. Runaway.

And even as the monsters turned their tide away from Caliber, giving up on climbing over the bulwark she had made of so many tangled bodies, I shut out the wailing in my heart. The mesh of the walkway above me began to sag and groan, and I didn’t get out of the way, as if to be swallowed into the coming flood would be better than to take another step away from the mare who was bound to me as if at the neck.

“Go! Get out of her.” She stood on her staircase of corpses, and shouted down at me. “Find Ascella!” I looked out into the mob of faces crowded by too many hungry mouths as if seeing them for the first time, and found the courage to be a coward.

I stepped back, again – and then again – so that I came out into the hallway. Her voice followed me from the chamber, smothered under their howling. “Shut the door, Lamplight! Before these things get out!”

I stood there, dumbly, until the door hissed shut. Just before it closed, the light of day showed me faces that had been painted on under the brush of a madman who saw monsters behind our masks, and thought he could remake us in the image of his own twisted Gods. They had too many mouths, and too many teeth. These were the shapes and colors scribbled onto the page by lunatic children.

I pressed my back against the wall and writhed in disgust, as a dozen bodies crowded up against the far side of the door. Only high pitched screams and the plague’s frailest tendrils came creeping under it, along with the sound of Caliber letting loose belt after belt of gunfire. It was as though she was standing knee-deep in the water, trying to bale out his sinking kingdom, trying to watch his throne.

I had to tell myself that I would only get in her way, that I would give the mercenary too many chances to give up her own life for mine: that, when it really came down to it, she was better off alone.

But, even as I went deeper into the ship, following that one white bar as one might the brightest star, I never thought to wonder who had shut the door.

*** *** ***

I could taste iron in the air. And, like a name I couldn’t quite remember, it felt as if I had blood at the tip of my tongue. My pistol swung as a lantern at my side, and would cast shadows up across my face, turning me into a campfire horror at home in this nightmarish place. Tiny blue stars seemed to dot the way ahead, and I wondered if I wasn’t just dizzy: seasick in the sky.

It felt like the world was watching over my shoulder, holding their breath as I turned the corners, and as I gasped, they gasped with me. I saw something moving through the nebula ahead, and froze up. It was as though some God had breathed life into one of the constellations, for what I saw at the end of the hall might just as easily have been a great, galactic stag that had found a staircase down from the stars.

It shone out in shades of that faraway blue, but slowly glided away, into the shadows. I chased after it, as if I had fallen overboard, and could not let myself be pulled into the depths of this black sea.

I turned a corner, and found a beautiful figurehead staring back at me. It was not a stag, but the alicorm, dotted with little stars like a dead pine tree wrapped in blue fairy lights. She held her head up like a sleepwalker, not a mare of noble blood. And though her mouth was hanging open over a crooked neck, I recognized her, and knew why we had lost Ash Ascella of Caeli’Velum. She had walked into the same marsh: followed the same will of the wisp. I wondered if, lost in the same place, we would find each other.

The abomination had taken a wooden stake through its throat, and swayed like a drunk. Her eyes were open and catatonic, so that they stared drowsily into the darkness that swirled around us. And, were it not for her having been molded into the shape of a God, I would have looked at the mare as a victim; as a survivor stumbling out of the wreckage in a daze, with blood running down her neck.

She turned, dragging her hooves and holding her tongue, and let the stars which had spangled her coat go out, one by one, like fireflies falling asleep. Watching her disappear was like seeing the dark side of a planet turning off its lights, and only after she was gone, did I remember that I had so much more than a lantern bobbing at my side: that I could have killed her.

But, even for letting the chance to give Ash her peace slip away, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of bewilderment, and convince myself that I had not tripped, and fallen into a dream a long time ago.
A light came on ahead, but it was as white as the powdered face of the moon, and folded out into the hallway from a tall, narrow window. I went up to it, and thought I would be looking out into open space. My shadow was stretched over the wall, and followed me as I let myself be taken even deeper into the light.

I came into a small room, which was bare but for a terminal built into the farthest of its bleached walls. There was a symbol in the middle of its rectangular screen, and something about it seemed prehistoric. Nothing so simple could have come from a day very far after the first.

I walked up to the terminal, so that its light washed over me, and then pressed a hoof into the ancient symbol until it flickered away and the screen was flooded with words.

< Message to all DEIMOS terminals >

Deimos Emergency System Broadcast

Today at 0610 hours, the Deimos came under surprise {~} from unknown hostile forces.
The ship has sustained serious damage, and will remain adrift until the [Blaspheme] Quarantine is lifted.
At {~} hours, native forces boarded the Deimos. The current situation is dire. All personnel are required to arm themselves and fight for their lives. No one can leave this ship. Or they {~} be left to the wastes.

COMPREHENSIVE REPORT:

0500 hours: {~} observed extensive ground action at local installation <Designate: Tar-Sau>. Life signs detected [Diaspora]. Possible survivors barricaded within central structure. <0530: Deimos deployed>.
Installation defenses appear adequate to withstand initial siege under {~} fallout. Further: radiation readings suggest large pockets of quarantine tucked under the facility.

0540 hours: Ground movement detected. Too many mutants to keep the ship’s eyes on. We overrode the docking hangar and {~} Deimos anchored within the installation [Too Close to the Sun] at 0555 hours.

Personnel were sent ashore [One Way Ticket], and followed {~} trail of seismic activity deeper into the local installation. Live rounds were fired at approximately 0605 hours. A party of heavily armed {~} troops was deployed off the gunwale [Cast the First Stone]. However, after a breach in the hull, the Deimos was boarded [Hitchhikers may be Escaped Convicts] and remains under quarantine. Radiation levels have been increasing steadily.

{~}

There was something else… A voice under the radar: A single calm note in the panicked cacophony outside [O Daughter of Babylon]. It alone is not cursing up at my ship, or raging against our grand Enclave [Delusions and Grandeur] from within. This anomaly bears closer examination.

I met a girl today

A chill ran down my spine, like cold fingers drumming down the strings of a harp. And then, they stopped, just as they were about to pull away and play another note. It felt as if something was holding me by the scruff of my neck, and was about to pluck me out of the fabric of the world like a crumb.

It’s very nice to meet you.
You know me. You have named me in your songs.

Who is holding the sands of time?

You O Sovereign Lord
Who has made your armies fall in line?

You O Sovereign Lord
Whose fingers work so tirelessly, weaving threads through history?
Whose candles burn on endlessly? Tell me: Who is rampant? Who is free?

You O Sovereign Lord
Whose heart fills anew the holy chalice, whose hand crucifies the perfect Lamb
Who dances through the sister’s palace? Whose winter washes bloodstains from the land?

You O Sovereign Lord

I have seen you fight a thousand wars, only to make your graves with a thousand different Gods.
But you have never paid me tribute: never given me sacrifice. You have taken every idol but me.
I have never been accused of picking out some line of warmongering Kings, or been said to make my home in a church built on the ashes of another church. You have never loved me. You never reached into the heavens, and pulled me down like you did all the rest. I escaped your devotion. I escaped your love.

Escape has made me God.

You are about to see something that no one else can ever see.
Feed your head. There are paradises there. And we can come to know each other better in them.
This will be your Temple of Trials. But you should explore as much as possible.

I will be watching everything.

*** END OF MESSAGE ***

The world was folded shut around me.
Like a book.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: The Way of the Cabannite: War is an acquired taste. And, thanks to your visit to Cabanne, you’re getting pretty close. You now enjoy a decreased spread and double critical chance when using .45 Automatic pistols.

Comments

[Ver0Nightmare]

Idk why but for some reason this chapter lost me...

[the runaway]

4146401
Hmm I don't think the next one is gonna do anything to find you.
(It's prose is so dense. The working title I'm using is The Purple One)
Read Paper Planes again? Or PM me if you feel like cheating

[the runaway]

4108965
Marathon's getting a little dusty, I can't lie. But if you like a sprawling, indecipherable story that might as well have been told in hieroglyphs... (Which I'm guessing you do )
I'm not much for games, so it's fair to say that whatever I bothered playing through had to be pretty good.

Well, laddie, you wanted to see what these mares and their tribal friends could do.
Get as much as you can out of Paper Planes. Grace might be taking a little solo sojourn

And yes, the letter T is a menace to society. We have taken it into cus ody.
... cus ody?
I 's escaped!

[the runaway]

4115191
Silly Hazard, those weren't grapes, those were savages.
... What do you mean metaphor? What's that?
I think it would have been inexcusable to use any word but overencumbered. This being a Fallout fan fic and all.
Oh, and I don't know if you've read ahead yet, but that vial isn't quite empty

You picked up on the stuff I bit from Vault 22
Congratulations, man.
Congratulations, woman.
Congratulations, human.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you make of the next few chapters. Come back soon!