Prologue: Dusty

I was so tired.

Every night I kept waking up in a cold sweat, feeling my sore muscles as the broken springs in my bed made my spine ache. Sure, I could have asked somepony to go to any spare room and drag an undamaged bed for me, but...

I just did not want it.

The cool dry air from the vent above blew my coat, forcing me to huddle myself even more in the already cold room.

The faster concrete walls of this place emptied, the harder they weighed down upon my mind. Before, there were about fifty inhabitants in this part of the block. Now it was just me and the echo ringing out here every night at the same time as I made my way towards the powder room.

Only a few places in the block had functioning lamps. The locals had to replace burnt-out ones with whatever they could—or, to be more specific, with old incandescent light bulbs produced in Stalliongrad. They were large and shone very brightly. And they were sort of nice warmers in the absence of central heating.

I had decided to take a different path; thankfully, nopony paid attention to what a lone mare was doing here.

I had replaced the lamps in my residential part with twinkling fairy lights. The illumination they provided was poor, but lovely.

Reaching out my hoof in the half-light, I felt the cold metal of a tap. There were two taps, but I never noticed the difference between them as both gave me clean ice-cold water. I had no idea why the water pipe in this place had been working so far. Maybe they just forgot to redirect water to some other place, or maybe they just did not want to see us more often than they had to. Who knew? I was happy we still had water in our rooms and fresh food in the cafeteria.

I was also fond of the fact that no-one came to see me. Even though I did not like loneliness, it was the most preferable choice now.

I took a half-empty bottle of medical alcohol from under a sink and poured a little bit over the old dirty handkerchief which I used as a rag to wipe the mirror.

The mirror was always clean. But just as I ran the rag over the smooth surface, I felt a bit calmer. Perhaps I was going crazy. Or had already lost my mind over the past year. I did not know.

After cleaning the mirror, I returned everything to its place. I put the plastic bottle under the sink and threw the rag on its edge, just to be able to repeat the whole process again next night.

When I put my hoof under ice water, I felt for some reason only how badly I was tired, the feeling instantly sweeping over me. Anyway, it would be no more the moment I went back to bed.

I finished washing and hastily wiped my face with a piece of a velvet curtain, once hung in a cinema hall and used by me for all manner of things, then made my way to a workshop, which was that very cinema hall.

And I could not help but feel that I was not alone tonight.

Today the cafeteria was less crowded than yesterday. Two or three ponies were out of sight. I did not know them, but I could work out how many ponies were left in the block.

Where once were five hundred ponies, now it was only eleven left. Except those who had already been off for their rooms, I saw eight or nine in the cafeteria. I was not counting myself; in fact, I did not even exist in a formal sense. Few ponies remembered me here. Maybe somepony in another block, but... Who cared?

Today they served the same thing as yesterday. As the day before yesterday. As the day before the day before yesterday…

I stared at my tasteless Shangai cabbage. Tough like rubber and smelling like old socks. Yum yum.

The remaining ponies dined at the last of long tables, which all had been brought outside and adapted to the needs of the community. There was never any talking or even chewing noises during lunch, breakfast or dinner. The dead silence, bereaved even of the scratching of spoons and forks on ceramic bowls, hung over the cafeteria just as in every corner of the three-storey block. Each of those who sat here tried to eat his portion as quickly as he could and crawl back into his quiet private space, hiding away from the others. Somepony spent his time scrabbling strange philosophical monologues about the meaning of life on the walls, somepony tried to make something useful—like a boiler, for example, to make at least one tap stream hot water. Otherwise, you always had to heat water up, but the voltage was applied only on certain days, usually in three or four hours at night. Of course, you might be satisfied with cold baths, but anypony would agree there was nothing pleasant in it.

There always was nothing to do. I used to have a friend who brought books. Lots of books. But it was so long ago…

However, he was not the only one who brought me something. Cans of paint, brushes or something like that would appear near the far wall every time they brought us food. The most important thing was to make sure that it appeared as if by chance without attracting anypony’s attention, even if others were absolutely indifferent.

Usually I left a note where I wrote about what I needed. And usually it was brought to me. The half-empty cans with remains of paint on the bottom, the dried-up brushes which I had to soak in a solvent for a long time, the different fabrics (sometimes in pretty good condition and untouched by moths) and stuff like that.

I needed all of these. Had I already mentioned that it was a terribly boring place?

“...’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!”

A creak of the door came from the auditorium, making me bounce back towards the dressing room. The moment I managed to make out a pony that in the dark looked like a stallion, I was glad I did not grease the door hinges.

Before the stranger who, like a bolt of the blue, had emerged here late at night could shout something to me, I was already barricading in the dressing room as I tore off my homespun dress. I myself sewed it from different fabrics: some part of it was the velvet curtains of the cinema hall, which was also a theatre at the same time, some part the denim which had once been a pair of old jeans. A stench of engine oil and petrol, as well as a slight smell of bedbugs, stank out the entire affair.

If it was one of the ponies I thought of, my barricade in the form of the old latch would not keep him out for long. However, it would not take me too long either. I just needed to change into more decent clothes.

My night visitor did not start to break down the heavy metal door, but instead loudly knocked three times. How odd. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you!” he cried. “It’s just—”

“What are you doing here at two o’clock?!” The dress was a miserable sight now: all ragged, crumpled. I had spent a whole week making it match my role somehow, but now...

I thought I was growling in anger. But the pony who came here certainly did not hear it. “Well, I could ask the same question to you!...”

“Take five steps from the door!” I cried to him and slightly opened the door. The stranger had really moved away; it seemed to be more than five steps, actually. The space was lit only by candles placed on the stage and a kerosene lamp inside the dressing room, but the latter was now behind me and did not allow me to see the face of the visitor. He could not see mine either. “For the love of goddesses, don’t you shout. Are you new here?”

“Excuse me dear, Miss! I’m very sorry, I swear,” he lowered his voice to a half-whisper. “I just have been watching you for a while—”

“You’re stalking me!” I hissed.

“No no, why would I!” he began making excuses. “I just live next to you, it’s a couple of rooms over there.”

“It doesn’t change anything! Besides, you owe me a new dress!”

“Speaking of your dress!” The pony immediately dragged in a new topic. “It’s amazing! I mean, to sew stage clothes from such materials and to make it look like the one worn by…”

What a flatterer. I did not mind him going on. After all, there was nothing wrong with me standing here in a dark hall at night and listening to praise from a perfect stranger, yes?

“Your acting is not bad, I must say.”

“Not bad?” I felt offended for some reason. Very offended!

“Well, you see, you still have not enough charisma for the role. You’re a mare while it is supposed to be played by a stallion. However, you have played very well for a mare, let me tell you! Even the grim is fitting!”

“How long have you stood there?” I pulled up the lamp to me and slowly began to work around the pony, trying to keep him within eyesight. The stranger stayed in shadows as if afraid of showing something. “An hour? Two? You know, it’s very improper to stand and stare at a defenceless lonely mare who tries to play one of the great and eternal classical monologues so late.”

“Mea culpa. But...” He made a step forward, only that the lamplight allowed me to make out the outline of his body. “I just couldn’t interrupt something so lovely.”

The exit now was behind my tail. My night visitor seemed to be aware of this and was trying to hold me somehow a little longer before I could vanish in the darkness. I did not know why he had decided to engage with me—but, frankly speaking, I did not want to know. Now I would have to look for some new place thanks to him, and I was not very happy about it. “Lovely?”

“It is of scarce occurrence to perceive somepony doing something with such dedication.”

Oh, he was a rascal indeed. But what flattery — horrid and terrible and loathsomely bloated, all-embracing, of a truly cosmic scale — flattery! What immoral and wicked pony one must have been to use flattery when conversing with a mare who had spent six months without any conversations! He literally forced me to stop dead and listen to him! My hatred was immense!

“Look, I know you have no reason to listen to me and talk to me... But maybe I can earn your trust somehow.”

“Why would you want my trust? It’s the first time we have met. The first and the last, luckily to us both.” I had to keep it together and resist his cheap tricks. For you know what would happen next? First we were to start talking, then to visit each other, then to become friends... Bleurgh!

“Your trust and friendship. Don’t you want to share your secrets with somepony as I do?”

“No. I don’t,” I tried to make my voice as persuasive as possible.

I remained in place, but he stepped close. “I think it is just impossible for me to believe you.” He seemed to be an earth pony one and a half as large as me. But I could swear the light did not let me see anything but his damned outline and body shapes. I was just talking to a shadow. Maybe I was crazy after all. “If you did not want to talk to someone, would you talk to me? You could go back to your apartment five minutes ago…”

“Okay, I give up. You win,” I sighed, and somewhat bizarre fatigue fell over my shoulders as soon as I had admitted that I needed to speak with someone. I, like, used to admit it when I read old books on mechanical engineering and thermodynamics during sleepless nights time and time again, but I could always convince myself that I would live without it. This was... weird. This was like the feeling of defeat after a long, hard, but still meaningless struggle. No anger, no rage, just fatigue. Had this Discord of a pony had to come here?!

“I know you won’t accept my friendship for nothing. It would be unfair of me. All in all, I stalked you, scared you and... What is in my power to do for you to start trusting me just a little bit? Look, I’d really like to be friends with you.”

“For me?” I was so puzzled at the question that I found myself putting the lamp aside and sitting down on the floor in deep thought. “Hmm, what you can do.”

“I cannot promise you to get a star from the sky or move mountains,” he chuckled. “But I surely can give it a try.”

“Keep your jokes, please. You’re only confusing me.”

“Does a pony of such wide interests like you have no problems that a pony like me could resolve?”

“Jokes and flattery.”

“Sure, I’m silent,” he replied with a shade of resentment in his voice.

There sure as hell was a lot of things that I’d wanted to get. Hot water, a five-star hotel suite in the Manehattan downtown, universal recognition, a special somepony who was also a DJ on the radio, and much of the other stuff granted to main characters in all sorts of stupid pulp fiction for mares which I’d been reading. So what? They may serve not the best food for reflection, but I too had not the widest range to pick from: either those or sex magazines (where did they get it, to start with?!) or volumes on applied physics.

“You know what? I think I know what you can do for me. This is certainly a bold request, but you have said I can demand anything.”

“Oh, don’t you torment me with suspense.” I wished I knew why every phrase he spoke sounded so bookish. I guessed one reason why ponies might speak like that, but I did not think he had been reading the great playwrights and poets for weeks before he started stalking me. “What is that you want? To bring the joy of love and tolerance upon everypony? To end up it all with sunshine and rainbows? To see the Second Coming of Celestia?”

“I told you to stop being fancy!” I huffed at the stallion. “No, I’m going to ask you for something really extraordinary. Those things you said — they’re just petty whims any filly from underground can handle in two months. But me? I got planned for you an important and dangerous mission full of adventure, pitfalls, pipe dreams and…”

For a moment I thought he smiled. Not that I had seen it plainly, but I could swear I felt it with my gut!

“You do have affection for jokes as I do, don’t you?” he asked.

“A force of habit from my profession, I guess...” I knew he tried to distract me with questions again. Scoundrel. “Nevermind, let’s be back to business.”

“I’m all ears,” he said in a suddenly serious voice.

“I need strings.”

A dead silence cloaked the hall, broken only by the slight humming of the air conditioner.

He seemed to give a neighing laugh. “Oh, you do?”

“Machine-made. G and A, though it would be nice to replace the whole set. My electric guitar is many years old—”

“Good. I’ll come to you tomorrow at the same time and give you strings. A whole set.”

“And what if you don’t come back?”

“Consider me a liar, a scoundrel of some sort, and despise me then,” he said and reached out his muscular leg, offering to bump hooves. “Deal?”

Bump. “Deal.”

What was the difference between chalk and whitewash used for covering walls and ceilings?

None, of course! Well, save for the fact that chalk was easier to work with.

Any normal pony would rather make drawings not on the wall, but on paper and use not whitewash or foals’ wax crayons, but sharpened pencils with the support of an eraser and a protractor. But I certainly was not looking for easy ways!

That stallion had not arrived at the time. So now I had every right to consider him a liar, a scoundrel, and what else did he say? Ah, yes, to despise him!

Of course, I was not surprised. Many ponies usually declared something bigger than they were or they could do; that was their nature. It was better to appear someone than to be someone; that was a slogan of their lives. And then they would lock ordinary ponies here to do all sorts of drawings or other mental work for them, or as they used to say, “to work out the resource spent on you by society.”

I had worked on a lot of projects. This drawing on the generations-old concrete wall was the most ambitious in the new history. Even the greatest geniuses of old did not dare to dream about such things, and—heck of a Discord, if it really worked, I might be considered a good engineer and designer.

It was simple. You had an excess of resources while somepony lacked these resources, so you just took your surplus and sold it to them. It was a common trade, and the stupidest foal in the world could understand its basic principle. But oh, how few ponies could understand that the real trade was not a salvation and not an option.

It was a means of enslavement.

Yeah, I had once disagreed with this statement. Back then it was about trading goods like TVs. What about water or food? What if the pony you were selling them to was not strong enough to take it away from you by force, but weak enough to give everything he had got for just a sip of water or a leaf of lettuce?

You got the point.

Sometimes I felt terrible about what I was doing. After all, I was a de-facto assistant to the enslavers. After all, I was responsible too…

A loud knock came from the metal door.

Did he really decide to come after all?

“Wait a second, I’m... I’m getting dressed!” I started running around the room, looking for an old drapery to hide the drawings from prying eyes. They were not ready yet. Nopony except me and him should not have seen them anyway.

At last, the cloth was found and the wall covered. I threw the organza shawl scooped out by one of my ‘friends’ over my shoulders, and went to the door.

I barely raised the door a halfway up when the stallion caught it with one hoof and pushed up in a single motion until it stopped. “As I have promised, here you go,” he said and handed me his other hoof gripping—I gasped in wonder—guitar strings. They were in a closed cardboard box with all sorts of erased drawings and quality marks. Since no-one both sane or insane would stick and draw them on an old box, I believed without hesitation that they were made at a real pre-war factory. The close inspection showed that I was not wrong. “So why do you need them?”

“Follow me!” I grasped the stallion by hoof and pulled him after me, unable to contain the joy inside. I would be playing tonight! Oh how long I had been dreaming about my personal orchestra of instruments to play music written by me and myself, with pain and misery, to sing a song composed by me. “Come on, what are you waiting for?!”

“It is so simple?” uttered the slightly embarrassed stallion, barely keeping up with me on the way to the cinema hall.

The hall itself was filled with the light of three lamps at once. Frankly speaking, I was hoping deep down that he would come, so I was prepared. I was not really sorry about wasting my supplies as the lamps could shine for a long time.

“You've been waiting for me!” He seemed happy. “So you believed me back then…”

I was prepared very well. I had even fixed up the wiring, which was the reason why the cinema outlets were working again. This place had certainly forgotten the light of bulbs countless years ago, but I needed no light. I needed the voltage for music!

“What are you up to play?” he asked me nervously as I quickly attached the new strings, tuning the guitar and other instruments. “Jazz? Rock’n’roll?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” I answered with a smile, switching on the amp. “Neither. My original stuff.”

“May I listen to it?” he said, looking at me. I did not see his eyes, but I thought they were staring right at mine.

“You may even sing along if you want.”

I played a riff or two to check the guitar, and the sound of it was just divine. Perhaps I felt so just because the fulfilment of any dream seemed perfect to the one who went to it through all the suffering, but for me what I heard on that stage at that moment was perfect. My ultimate dream. The microphone sounded worse, but my voice was not the main thing. The main thing was my guitar.

“What is the name you will give this song?” he asked with genuine interest after taking a seat in the front row right before me.

“It has no name. Just listen to it!”

My lungs ached from excitement. I was shivering and dizzy, and I thought I had a blush on my face. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and licked my parched lips, probably spending all my remaining strength. Maybe I had been overzealous, but the result was worth it.

My night guest, who still did not bother to tell me his name, was in a complete stupor and just looked at me without blinking. Apparently, he also liked what had happened.

I put the guitar on the stage, trying to catch my breath. Playing all the right instruments alone was a pretty hard task that required a lot of effort, but I wanted to believe that I really did it.

The stallion still sat frozen in place and was staring off into the distance. At first I thought he was looking at me, but then I realized he saw something behind me. I wondered what it was.

And I felt cold inside me when I realized what he saw.

“Wow...” he finally mumbled in a barely audible voice.

“Don’t look at it, please,” I said faintly and collapsed on the floor, looking at my nightmare that looked back at me from the old cinema screen.

“Why?” cried the stallion, and in an instant he was next to me on the stage. “It’s... I have never seen anything like this! How? How did you do that?”

“It’s a long story which I don’t tell the first stranger I meet.”

“Remember what we agreed on? I give you strings, and no more secrets.”

“We agreed on friendship!” I protested.

“Do friends keep secrets from each other?”

“Of course. Otherwise there would be no friendship, would it?”

“You look like a smart pony to say such nonsense,” he smiled and sat next to me. “Listen, I’ve never seen anyone in our time who could draw a city, looking at which from different angles you would see a completely different shape. It is impossible to picture a city with non-Euclidean architecture on canvas, but you did it! This is... This is a cultural breakthrough for the entire pony civilization! Do you have any idea what you have created?!”

He kept praising me, saying how great I was, yet he had no idea how much I hated it…

I barely managed to flutter my eyes open, eyelids heavy like lead. I saw the same black ceiling in my room. I guess the nightmares kept getting worse.

So it was all a dream, wasn’t it? That I could play the guitar? That I could paint this horrible picture? That I finally found somepony to talk to in this place?

I thought tears were starting to stream down my face. I tried to restrain this moment of weakness for as long as I could, but then... then I just gave up.

I was a pathetic loser, unwanted and forgotten in this damned hole. All I had was a dream to get out of here, musical instruments that I played for myself and sewing skills. Oh, and a small desire to do theatrics to complete the scene.

Ever since I was a filly, I had been doing all this just because I could and wanted to. When you were locked up among a lot of parental things like your father’s guitar, books or painting supplies, you never wondered where your parents got all these things—you just put them in use. Your parents were too busy anyway, so why not to find a good use to their belongings?

Then I had grown up and joined everypony in work as I learnt various studies at the same time. We, as my dad used to say, never had enough good engineers. And he had done everything possible to make me that ‘good engineer’ of his dream.

Well, tell me, father... were you proud of me now? I wouldn’t say so.

Somepony caressed my shoulder.

“Why do you cry?” He wiped the tears from my cheeks with a dry clean handkerchief. “Does it hurt? Just tell me!”

“I’m totally fine...”

“If a pony is totally fine, she does not lose her consciousness and does not lie down for three days with fever, mumbling deliriously to herself about some nightmarish city…”

“I’m better now,” I said and tried to get out of bed, but my companion immediately stopped me. However, I would still have failed; I simply did not have the strength. “Well, maybe a couple more hours...”

“You haven’t eaten for three days. The doctors said you have a severe exhaustion.”

“They try to inject me anything?”

“They did. You were like you burned from the inside out, and they gave you something. I’m sorry, I’m bad at medicine...”

“And what did they say why I got exhausted?”

“Lack of sleep. And to be honest, I could tell that by the way you looked.” He seemed to notice that the expression on my muzzle had changed. “Why are you surprised?”

“I didn’t think they’d be helping anypony in our block. They just give you aspirin or activated charcoal, and that’s the end of their help. But to send medics…”

“Well, when you fell down unconscious, I flung you on my back and ran to the exit. So maybe it would have been as you said, but when they saw you, they all were in a panic. Look, I know it’s probably none of my business, but... who are you? I mean ... Why are you so important?”

“No way, bud,” I had suspicions that he was not a local. This accent, these manners... He was from the south, from a very faraway land. Clascow? Maybe. “You know a lot more about me than I do about you. It’s no good.”

“I only know your name...”

“But I don’t know yours. Spill it how things are in the south.”

“How did you know that I’m from the south?!”

“Think of it as a mare’s intuition. Please, come on! How are you used to live? How did you get there? Ponies don’t come here by choice...”

“Don’t expect my story to be long,” he said with a bit of blues in his voice and leaned back in his chair. “I was born in the town of Petrolstation, in the family of auto-mechanics. Well: my father was a mechanic, but my mother was his slave. Before me, she gave birth to some freaks or mares while my father wanted an heir to whom he could pass on the secret of Ignition.”

“Ignition?” I asked. I had actually talked to the locals several times, or as my ex-friends called them, ‘savages and barbarians wasting precious resources of the surface.’

“When I was like them, I worshipped the Eight Cylinders and the Angel of Full Tank. Our— Their religion was based on a couple of scrap papers from some ancient book on auto-mechanics. This secret of Ignition is no more than a skill to repair and put engines on new chariots, which has been passed down in our family from generation to generation…”

“Have you ever driven a car?”

“Oh yeah, I had my own war chariot, and I changed dozens of them when I was young and served in Impenetrable’s army.”

“Young? You’re, like, no older than me...”

“A colt becomes a stallion on a three thousandth day from his birth. The same time he swears an oath to fight in all wars for the glory of Impenetrable.”

“And how exactly does it happen?”

“Nothing complicated. You are shoved in a cage with a baby ant-lion and forced to fight until one of you dies. After that, you’re honoured to spend time with a mare. She’s usually brought straight to wounded and bleeding you. The seniors need to see what you’re worth, because if you’re weak in body at least a wee bit, you are mere meat to feed others—”

“Funny,” I decided to withdraw the conversation from this topic. “What did battles look like?”

“I was a kaze. I jumped from my meat-wagon onto a chariot of our enemies and dug my teeth into the driver’s throat. Eventually I was promoted to a harboomer, then a driver. I even drove a battlewagon once!”

“And what is it like... to kill someone?”

“Uh. Hm...” He was seriously puzzled by the question. “I didn’t give it much thought.”

“But there’s something you think about when you kill, isn’t it? Why, what for?”

“I did it to get into the Parking and to drive all over it on a chrome combat chariot, which always has a full tank of guzzolene, side by side with Impenetrable!” he exclaimed, then stopped short. “At least, it was so until the light of truth dawned on me.”

“What kind of light opens the eyes to all of you?” He was not the first who talked about some truth revealed to him. I had met a lot of these ponies before him. Perhaps four or five thousands.

“Well, eventually I became rich and respected enough to buy a slave. She was brought from some place in the north—”

“What’s the point of slave trade?” I interrupted him. “Many ponies in the wasteland are willing to part with freedom just for food and a sip of water.”

“Slavers don’t trade some ordinary goods. They trade rare mutations and, vice versa, a complete absence of ones. Ponies with some special skills or good appearance. This is a product in demand. But please do not interrupt me.”

“Okay. Tell me more. You bought yourself a slave mare from the north. And then?”

“She always had a book with her. An ABC-book,” he uttered the last word. “She never left it alone.”

“Did she teach you reading?”

“I learned by myself. It surely took me a while... Anyway, in a year or two I could read what was written on those scraps of paper.”

“So what was it?”

“That this ancient book is a manual for modelling.”

I thought I was going to laugh my flanks off.

“When I told them what it really was, they banished me. I wandered in the wasteland from caravan to caravan. Everypony needs grease-monkeys after all.”

“And how did you get here?”

“Caravans delivered guzzolene to your town and brought water back. I ran into one of these stuck in the desert. Their mechanic had fallen ill with night fever and died, the driver was eaten by ant-lions, and only two pony shooters survived. We agreed that I would help them to repair the engine and drive to their destination. Good thing they had a route map. And so I ended up here…”

“So what, they killed those two and decided to leave you to fix up cars for his personal army?”

“Not really. I asked him to take me. Your people is not like most of the wasteland’s inhabitants. You have knowledge. Books. Technologies. He said I’d have had to wait in Block B until he decided where I would be most useful... And so I met you.”

“Welcome to the block. I’ve been here six months.”

“You were born in this settlement. Why are you not with others?”

“There was a time when we were but a little group of ponies. Our numbers were twice as less as they are now. That was about three years ago. I was one of the first ones to come out, and guess who we found? The locals. Well, that’s what I used to call them. I’ve always thought they are the locals and we’re those who came later... The situation could get to bloodshed, but I did everything I could to avoid it. I taught them medicine and basic mechanical skills when my people hid underground, preparing to reclaim a place under the sun... In three months time these ponies, the ones above us, became part of us.”

“That simple?”

“My compatriots thought that we could win only through the blood. I believed that if we made the locals equal to us and didn’t force them to bow before us, we could live better. Violence... You can solve your problem with violence, but for how long? Those ponies were sick, drank dirty water and worshipped the radio tower outside. I won’t lie, teaching them was hard and they barely understand my speech, but I tried! After three months, they could make a simple bandage, clean water and finally stopped kneeling before that Discord of a radio tower, allowing us to take and use it for our needs. And now they’re part of us. You can’t tell which one was a savage and who lived all his life underground. Well, perhaps you can. You are one of them, after all.”

“But there are always those who want to take something by force. If not you, then from you. Maybe you were just lucky...”

“How long ago have you learned reading?”

“A year ago...”

“It’s quite possible for your slave to be one of ours. We have a good relationship with slavers. After all, we were the ones who taught them how to look after slaves so they could live longer. Yes, I don’t support slavery, but it was one of the ways to carry the light of knowledge further. From slave to slave, from trader to trader, from caravaneer to caravaneer... Another year or two, and there will be more southerners able to read and write. In a dozen years, if everything goes as slow as it is now, your people will be like us. I myself came up with this idea. Before I got here.”

“I don’t understand... You are an engineer, aren’t you? But you’re not bad in medicine, you can twang music and stuff...”

“I’ve been many professions. I was an archivist, a nurse, I even used to perform before we came to the surface. The only thing I’ve probably never paid much time is playing guitar and other instruments... Hey, don’t look at me like that. There’s not much to do underground. I was just trying to do something to keep me from getting bored!”

“Why are you here?” he whispered. “What did you do?”

“There was a revolution a year ago. He seized my father’s power, and I... I led those who were loyal to me and my family against him.”

“So why are you not their leader now? I don’t believe you could lose!”

“I could. And I did.” Those were unpleasant memories. “When my father’s brother seized power with the support of our soldiers... I raised all who I could, and went to him. Just to talk. He brought against me and the hundreds of ponies behind me a hoofful of soldiers, among whom were my sister and her husband... They were waiting for the order to shoot. I don’t know how long we stood in front of each other, waiting for the blood to spill, but when I heard one of them clicking the safety lock, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I told them to leave and I gave up. When the next day came I was waiting for the gallows.”

He was shocked. “Why did you do that?”

“Because I couldn’t let them die! Nopony! Discord take me, power is not worth blood!” I screamed. “I begged him to execute me but not to touch them. He decided to hang me on the very tower so that I was still alive when crows would peck me. When I heard his sentence, I said nothing. I could have asked those who believed in me to tear him apart, but I didn’t. Power is not worth any blood. Violence begets only violence. Maybe I did a very stupid thing back then, but could I live knowing that there was blood on my hooves? I have nightmares just because I failed those who believed in me, but if it had happened, I’d have rather hanged myself.”

There was a silence. I did not ask him where we were—the room around us certainly did not belong to me, as I thought before. We were on the surface, and right now it was a night. A moonless, dark, deserted night. I realised it when a gust of dry cold wind brought some sand into the open window. My friend got up from his chair and went to the door.

“Wait. Why did they leave you with me?” I prevented him from leaving when he opened the door, behind which I could see some part of a corridor brightly lit with electric light.

“They needed somepony to stay here for days. They were afraid your heart would stop or your lungs would fail. But now that you’re awake... I think I need to talk about it and get back to the block.”

“Why? Stay here and get some sleep. You can do what you have to do in the morning.”

“Really?”

“Sure, friend.”

When I said ‘friend,’ he seemed sort of... upset?

That was it.

They gave me half an hour to pack. A hot shower, a hearty breakfast and some new clothes. I did not believe this day would ever come, but they were able to find someone crazy enough to take this job. I just couldn’t believe it.

After I got into a skin-tight polo neck and drew a pair of trousers on my hind legs, I reached inside the cabinet and fished out my old, wrinkled grey gown. Despite I was an engineer as I was told by the test to determine my profession (if we were given a job according to our cutie marks, I would have been an expert on wet cleaning), I was fond of medicine. The sciences helped ponies, but this one helped them most. And besides, who would ever think of shooting at doctors? A doctor is a true jewel amidst the dirt of crossroads, and we also had a long-standing agreement with slavers.

They also gave me a PDA. As he had said, there was an emergency beacon on it to track my location if anything happened. Unfortunately for them, I knew something about computing.

And on top of that, a holster with a pistol inside. I never liked weapons. It was as much heavy and bulky as I was a pretty bad shooter. The latter, though, was the reason why they had been looking for someone to escort me. Oh yeah, according to scouts returning from around Equestria, those places got not a single drop of petrol, not to mention that it was highly unlikely for a car to overcome the mountain ranges.

Nevertheless. They could not find such an idiot who would agree to do it for almost a year—and here, just take it.

I was ready for a journey now. I had the gun, the PDA, some clothes and essential supplies: canned food and a ‘bottomless’ flask—a military flask that contained a small water talisman. You would be out of water only if you broke the artefact.

And I actually had my own plans for this journey. I would try to run away, to vanish in any large settlement, and voila: say buh-bye!

I threw my organza shawl over my head to cover myself from the midday sun and went to the outside gate. They usually did not put a lot of soldiers at the gates, and at the moment there was only one. I had always said that we needed to strengthen the entire perimeter, not just the inner walls, but he—my uncle—was not up to reveal all our cards to the outside world.

I said hello to one of the soldiers outside. I noticed how frustrating it was for him to talk to me. Maybe he remembered perfectly well how he and my sister were aiming at me, or maybe he still wished I had been hanged. I had no idea. I was going to leave this place, and I only wished I could have stayed and helped them.

Behind the outer perimeter, in the shade of a rock, sat a pony dressed in an old and shabby leather jacket with a police bulletproof vest. His muzzle was covered behind a ragged gas mask, and he was spending time sharpening his knife, only to test its resulting sharpness on his own body. He was a unicorn like me, yet he clearly prefered to hold the blade in his hooves.

And of all thing he sat there and cut himself. Seriously, he was a nut-case.

I knew he heard me talking to that soldier. With all his appearance, he wanted to show indifference to the world around, but his ears twitched as if trying to catch every sound.

“What is your name?” I asked him. Not that I really cared, but I had to travel with him for some time. Certainly not to the point of making friends, but still.

“Call me whatever you want,” he gravelled. His voice made my ears hurt. Hoarse, low, indistinct. Let’s just hope and pray this pony was not of those who liked to talk.

“Well, then...” And how was I supposed to call him? Mister Sadie-Maisie? Leather Jacket? Wheezy Voice? But if to think about it, there was one option. “Gas Mask. Are we going or what?”

Chapter 1

View Online

Blood dripped from under my armour onto the hot sand. I had a pair of ribs broken, but nothing more than that. Too little to worry about. I was still able to move, fight and drive.

Undoubtedly, the itch of burns and the smell of petrol coming from me were strong and annoying. Some could be long accustomed to this scent and a look of severe burns when the flesh began to look like molten rubber, contracting and cutting itself—but even those shied away from me and turned their noses. Like their muzzles could feel something other than concentrated snoot-snuff.

A few moments ago I had entered an old, dilapidated concrete building. It had once been a roadside diner, though its purpose did not really change with time.

I loudly struck a metal disc hanging above the doorway. “Do work. For a car. Any job,” were my words.

Having noticed me, the ponies just squinted and returned to their business as if nothing had happened. Some were drinking booze, the other sniffing snoot-snuff with masks put on their faces, but mostly everypony was arguing or eating maggots.

So either none of the locals had an extra car or nopony wanted to trust me a job. I could surely walk all the way back to the north on hoof, but it would take me a lot more time.

Not that I was in a hurry, though.

When I was about to leave, somepony whistled. Not out of surprise or something, but as an invitation to come closer. I turned around and saw a pony gesturing me to the corner. I made my way there, trying not to disturb the visitors.

The stallion, dressed in a robe sewn from different pieces of pony skins, sat on a mat spread on the floor. “Need a car, huh?” he asked. He wore a pair of lensless glasses and had some sort of chip threaded into the bridge of his nose. I glanced at three other ponies beside him. They boasted sloppy tattoos depicting a long set of numbers ‘1’ and ‘0’, and brand marks in the shape of a chip. “Say something, Calculator divide you!”

Sworn to the Horde of Zinc Calculator, aren't you.

I nodded my head at the others.

He took the hint. “Brothers, I gonna ask you to leave for now. I have to discuss the will of Calculator with this infidel.”

“And what we’re supposed to do, Bit?”

“Go kick foals or something! Piss off!” He gave one of them a bonk on the head. The three stallions hurried away, and their boss gestured me to sit down.

“A car. Full tank. No matter how many cylinders,” I told him my terms.

“I have an old buggy. It’s enough guzzolene to get to Wild Appleloosa or so if you drive on the Black Road…”

“No way.” The Black Road was an old caravan route from Fillydelphia to Petrolstation. It had earned its name for oil and turbid petrol that constantly poured from tank cisterns onto the sand, so over time a long black oily line appeared on the wasteland map. “The Black Road is not an option. It may suit battlewagons, but raiders will quickly intercept buggies or any other transport.”

“Well, then you’ll have to ask someone else for guzzolene. But I guess you’re no stranger to this,” he grinned at me. “And I’m no charity. Do one thing for Calculator the All-Cyphering, and the car is yours. I can even look if I have a couple of high-octane cans…”

My significant silence seemed to quite eloquently make clear all he wanted to get as an answer.

“Okay, listen here. There’s a heretic, stole from us a thing we had to put onto the altar of Calculator. You bring the thing to me...” He showed me a hoofmade map with approximate search radius marked on it. It was someplace in the middle of the desert nearby a dried-up riverbed. “You get the car. And yeah, I have one special wish for the case.”

I took out my own map and began to redraw some notes from his. As I had no normal paints, I had to use my blood, the more so because it soaked the piece of paper pretty well.

“This traitor has a son. Little cunt. He does love him so much, even more than his ma. Anyway, before you kill the heretic and return the artefact to Calculator, I want him to... suffer. Make it long.”

“Show me,” I put the map with some fresh notes back. “The car.”

“Don’tcha believe me, huh, do ya? Okay. Let’s go. You’re gonna love it.”

What could one like me see through the scratched glasses of military binoculars?

The desert. The endless white sands which were carried to and fro by storms coming from the Boundless Sea every few days. Sometimes they swallowed entire settlements. Other times they opened the way to some new places—to the delight of scavengers.

I used to know several ponies who dreamed of building a car that could cross the Sea. They believed that there were green forests and water, all the joys of life they had only seen in old pictures just waiting for them across in a distant faraway.

How funny.

I was looking around the area through my binoculars when I noticed a faint patch of light at the dried riverbed bottom. It was too far away and I could not say what it exactly was, but from a distance the thing looked like a trailer. It was about a kilometre or so.

On closer examination, the trailer turned to be looking as if a routine landslide had discarded it down, and it hardly contained something valuable inside—or what I was looking for. The bastard and his pipsqueak could roam anywhere in these sands. Of course I could’ve just slit throats of those scouts and steal their car, but in the place that I wanted to go nopony would appreciate that. I didn’t aim at getting into troubles.

The wagon left the air of somepony bumping around the place. The ashes of a campfire and a cloth stretched over the sand to collect moisture seemed to have been set recently.

Perhaps the campfire was a week old. Only perhaps. But the moisture collector... I clearly observed the traces of night dew on it, and somepony should clearly have been around to collect the water.

I sniffed. Nothing unusual to the air: the midday heat, the burning hot stones, the dust. And a subtle odour of salt and a bitter-sweet smell of old bones above it all to complete the mix-up. There was however something... weak, but something you could not confuse.

The scent of morphine. The scent of hospitals and medicine. It was coming from the trailer, if only slightly dumped by some visceral reek.

I upholstered my revolver and cocked it. I cautiously approached the rusty door, then gave it a push. It opened with ease. Someone had recently used it.

I inspected the threshold through the open slit. There could be tripwires or something, and I would not want to die so stupidly.

There were none. Frankly speaking, the fact that it opened inside was quite strange, for the doors like this always opened outside. Somepony had altered it to make it more comfortable. Clever, but how much did it help him?

In a swift motion, I flung open the door and pushed my revolver forward. It was dark, stuffy and smelled of petrol and fresh shit. I went inside. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, but the place turned out to be pretty boring: the hollow shell of a trailer filled with some garbage like broken dishes, ragged clothes and hell knows what else.

No furniture remained there but a plastic table and a couch with the pulled-out filler and sticking-out springs. I noticed a gun gun pouch on the table, which I immediately put to my belt.

Two ponies sat on the couch. Both had a sick skinny look, apparently suffering from hunger and thirst. My first thought was they were dead, but as I listened closely I could discern their low breathing.

Well, okay. One was adult and the other a petty colt not even worth to be meat. If they were the two I needed, the thing I was looking for could be theirs. I had to check this out.

“Shhh...” The skeletal pony who seemed older hissed through his pitted lips like a snake. “Hush now…”

He looked at me with his blind eyes.

“You one of ’em?” he croaked as he stroked the head of the foal. “Those worshipping the machine? The machine prints every day, oh yessh it does, printing and printing and printing…”

“I’m on my own.”

“Ah, so just a wanderer.” He smiled, flashing his rotten teeth and gums. “I’ve got nothing for you, wanderer.”

“No you do.” I grabbed the colt he was caressing and put the small body on the table. He weighed probably a little more than a light machine gun.

The stallion cocked his head to the wall and silently laughed. At least for a pony stripped to the bone, these convulsions he made could make up for laughing.

I pulled my knife out of the sheath hanging on my foreleg and gushed the foal’s belly with one swing. The smell of fresh blood oozed in the air.

The father paid no attention to what was happening. I pushed my hoof into the colt and began to rip some useless offals like intestines, kidneys and other parts inedible in raw condition. The only things I did not throw on the floor were his liver and heart. Taking the foal’s liver in my hoof, I went to his father and shoved it all into his mouth. He did not even try to spit out the piece of raw meat, caught in convulsing. I made him chew every little bit and swallow the mass.

“I won’t kill you,” I said as I grabbed and hold his bloody, insane muzzle in front of me, “until you say me.”

“Calculator the Almighty!” he didn’t stop cackling. “Why nopony ever looks around?” His words confused me a little. “Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“What I know is that you have it.”

“You! You have it! Haha!” He poked me with a trembling hoof and laughed. Was he talking about the gun?

I removed the pouch from my belt. Its shape was similar to a gun’s, but the weight was lighter. I wonder why I did not notice it earlier.

When I opened the pouch, I saw... a remote control... of some toy.

The pony stopped laughing. He sat staring at the rusty ceiling, drooling, licking the blood from his face.

“What did they take from you,” he croaked a faint whisper, “that you’re willing to take everything from others?”

There was a smell of petrol in the air. I looked under the table where it was the strongest and found a canister. It was only a half full, but that was well enough for me.

I poured it on the foal’s corpse, the table and some part of the walls. The petrol streamed down the floor and outside, mixing up with blood.

There was still some petrol left in the canister. I poured it into the mouth of this pony. He resisted and I thought I almost made him choke.

Having stuffed his belly with guzzolene, I got outside. My magic flashed in a spark, and the trailer caught fire. I thought I heard somepony screaming.

I even relaxed for a second. But then I looked towards the Sea.

A sandstorm was coming my way. Not the strongest I had ever known, but still dangerous. When the wind accelerated to high speeds, it lifted a cloud of sand into the air and carried it to the mainland. Gusts would knock you down and sand would blanket you to the gills, clogging into your nostrils and ears…

Good thing I had a yak skin with me.

If I had not set the wagon on fire, I would have taken refuge in it. But alas, I had to be content with what I had.

The stallion gripped the remote control like a relic.

“Calculator the Almighty!” he mumbled trembling in awe as he looked the trinket over. “The gates to the Kingdom of Fifty are opened to me! He will bless me! He will bless me!”

“Ahem.”

“Oh, yes, your reward!” He opened his shoulder bag and pulled out a gas mask filter. “Snoot-snuff! Fresh! And clean! You’ll love it—”

“Where. Is. My. Car.”

“Rejoice in what you have, infidel!” he cried and was about to tuck away the remote control to his bosom, but I stabbed his hoof faster than other fighters even knew what happened. He gritted his teeth, gulping a cry of pain. “Freeze!” he yelled.

Every visitor, everypony who ate meat or sniffed petrol and snoot-snuff, glanced at us. Well, no—those who were sniffing did not give a fuck about us.

“Where. Is. My. Car.”

“It’s been two weeks. Calculator’s armies don’t stay in one place! Come on, I gave you snoot-snuff, so the deal is done!”

I took the remote from him and pulled my knife out. The fighter did not flinch a bit, and none of his supporters did move a muscle. The wasteland was a huge place, and they would get a chance to take their revenge later.

Taking the snoot-snuff as well, I got up and went out. As long as this place did not belong to them, I knew that nopony would follow me. There could still be a pony that would cut their throats and eat their hearts some deep desert night.

The settlement was small. Only the fact that it was on the wayside of the Black Road helped it survive somehow. Caravans with guzzolene went to the north, ones with water and ammunition to the south. And this was the place where they 4 -______ steel or hoof crossbows.

“Look how many shiny little idols!” Tinker backed off the counter—a pile of garbage covered with foal skins—and started throwing any ammo he could find onto it. Bullets were scattered around the tent, and the dexterity with which the hunchback was digging through rubble was enviable.

In the end, he was able to find half a magazine for the rifle and three rounds for the revolver. If it was not for the fact that I was fucked up with a car, I would call it a great day. That aside, it was just shitty, but not too much.

Tinker would most likely give this remote thing to the Horde fighters either in exchange for something or just like that. Or they would just take it by force when they brought more soldiers here. Petrolstation was a fine piece of the pie. Who would not want to get the endless sea of free guzzolene?

The desert never stopped expanding, devouring everything that was on its way. It had consumed the ocean. One day it would consume the mainland.

I came from the north. When I had departed to the south, I thought I could find a place where it would be... quiet. Silent. I had been able to walk to the place where the shore used to be. Now there was just a huge cliff under which the ocean of sand raged. Sand and sand only, stretching up to the horizon.

I had known a group of madponies who built a ‘ship’ to cross the Boundless Sea. I did not know what had happened to them when they disappeared from my sight, but I watched them through my binoculars for a long time, until the sunlight began to dazzle me.

There was nothing in the south. No silence. No peace. It had weighed down on me even worse than it’d been in the north. So I had had to walk back on hoof as I had run out of guzzolene.

I had a car in Peatbog. Long ago I had hidden it in such places where no scum would ever guess to look for... I needed only to get there. There were another week and a half to Wild Appleloosa. After that, if I was lucky, I would get a train to New Appleloosa. Peatbog was in a stone’s throw away from there.

A gunshot rang out nearby.

I plummeted onto the sand and listened to what was happening around. Shots was a rare case in the desert; more often you could hear the roar of engines.

There were no shots anymore, but I remembered where it was coming from. About half a kilometre from here. I just had to climb the dune and see everything from there…

It was that time of a day when the huge red disk of the sun was just coming up over the horizon from the east. So it was about four o’clock in the morning. While all normal ponies were sleeping or collecting water from moisture collectors, I saw five wankers trying to storm a mountain. Or rather, a settlement hidden in the said mountain.

Judging by their looks, they were hooked for quite some time. With blue noses, glass eyes and the inability to think sensibly, they shot anywhere but the spotlight—a distinctive feature of any cannon fodder.

Those like them were usually sent on fighting reconnaissance. A true scout should have been around to watch what was happening through binoculars. However, the only fact that the defenders had firearms was enough for me.

A second shot thundered in the air and blew off an ear to one of the attackers. The shooters were just having fun. And the blue-nosed were just a good, moving target.

Given tire marks and oily spots on the sand, this settlement often received caravans. And all I had to do was get to Peatbog. If they did not take me as a guard to their truck, I would climb under the bottom.

But they would not let me in for anything; I had to do something useful first to prove my worth. For this, I was going to bring them a scout. There was an unspoken rule among settlements and camps of the wasteland: help those who interfere with your enemies. Reputation can save you at a critical moment.

The landscape reminded me of something. I could not yet remember what it was, but it was ancient. From times before the desert.

There was, in my opinion, only one point from which you could observe the main entrance: the tail of a plane towering from under the sand. It was not high enough to gain advantage in combat, but enough to be a good vantage point. Why good? Because if I were him, I would be able to spot someone coming under the tail of the plane and kill him.

The pony lay in a small depression in the ground. He covered himself with sand to make himself less visible. But judging by the dim light from the settlement, somepony was watching us too. The scout heard me only when I got down to it. The sand failed me. Before he could do anything, I stunned him with a blow to the ear and threw him off the hill, coming down after him.

Making a pony do what you need was very simple—aim a revolver at his head! The scout, though obviously nervous, did not try to escape as I was escorting him to the fortress. The attackers who had previously tried to kill guards with their hoof crossbows noticed me; I heard three more shots from the entrance, and the attackers were gone.

“Fuck! You messed it up!” cried one of the guards standing on the wall.

“Come on, Buttercup. You would’ve lost anyway,” the other ponies laughed. “Ask him who he brought here.”

“A scout,” I replied.

It called ‘guess which one is going to die faster from overdose.’ Sort of a game that sentries did love to play. And they tended to go pretty crazy if someone happened to mess with them playing.

“Bullshit! The one with syringes would’ve been dead in a few seconds, I’ll tell you that!”

An engine stuttered, and the gate began to slowly move aside, driven by the force of the bus.

Suddenly, “A caravan! Three trucks!” came from above the tower which had a spire similar to an antenna.

“What d’ya say?!” one of the guards shouted in return.

“Leave the gate open, you deaf fuck!” was a loud answer. Three flames flashed on the tower, and I heard beeps of car horns nearby.

“Hurry up, we’re waiting for guests,” they urged me, so I gave the scout a kick in the ass and went inside after him.

The interior of this place consisted of ruins belonging to a very old building. The walls were partly destroyed to make a parking lot for trucks. One of the sentries jumped off the wall and approached me, demanding to give all my weapons.

The balance of power was not in my favour. They had at least three soldiers with a flamethrower and firearms on the gate. And I guessed there was a machine gun on the tower. Not much of a choice for me. By that moment the scout had already been restrained and led somewhere inside.

“You stay here and don’t move, m’kay? If you need anything, save it for later. Got it?” said the pony.

I did not answer, looking around the courtyard which was big enough to fit a dozen trucks with cisterns in tow. And ponies here seemed to be engaged in sawing planes on separate sheets of metal. Apparently, the walls had been built just this way.

Why so many planes? More than anywhere else. And besides, there had to be was a military facility nearby, or where else did they get so many weapons from the war times?

I squinted at a shabby inscription on the wing of one plane. Imperial Airways. So many years had passed, and it did not collapse yet. Wow.

Airport. The whole place was an airport buried under the sands. I literally stood on structures of at least fifty meters in height and half a kilometre in length. And they certainly had more fighters down below, a clusterfuck of fighters. Now I could hardly call it a fortress, rather a true citadel…

There was another thing that worried me, though. These ponies did not look like other inhabitants of the wasteland. They looked healthy. They did not rave constantly about water. Their smell was not a fetid stench of meat. On the contrary, this smell... was something familiar, but I could not guess.

The arrival of the caravan took my mind off. Several trucks drove to the access point, leaving behind a black oily trail of guzzolene. But some cisterns in tow had nothing dripping. As far as I could guess, they were probably empty. What would be otherwise the point of carrying so little fuel that it did not even leak?

I got perplexed. If they were delivering guzzolene here, what were they taking back?

Somepony whistled. That was that soldier. Having attracted my attention, he waved to me to come closer. I did not keep him waiting.

And I understood now why some cisterns were empty: they were to be pumped with water. The water poured down on the floor in streams, but nopony paid any attention to it. And puddles of precious liquid were growing in size…

Why were they so blasphemous about water? They didn’t kill each other for it. They just treated water like it was... water.

Crazy fuckers.

The soldier stopped by a corner fenced off from the rest of the hall. He lifted the canopy. “The boss wants to see you. Don’t try anything stupid.”

I had no idea what was the reason to fence off a small piece of the room, but I stepped inside. Some folders, papers and other stuff filled up the space behind the canopy. The table with a monitor emitting a bluish glow was near the wall. A pony was working at the computer, but in the dark I could barely see anything.

“Would you take your gas mask off, Mister?” he said. I kept quiet. “All right, whatever. Come closer, please.”

I did as he said.

“You have a gun. It is not often that you meet a pony with firearms in the wasteland... Where did you get it?”

A silence was my response.

“From the north, I see. You can play silent as long as you want, but I can make a difference between a self-made and a good factory weapon.”

Unfortunately for him, it was not a factory one—it was custom-made.

“And since you are from the north, now you’re moving back, am I right? The watchers mentioned you had been walking from the south, Mister.”

“Leave misters for yourself.”

“As you wish. You have been walking from the south, that’s what does matter most.” The pony took something out of a table drawer. “I can’t give you a reward for the scout. You deserved it, no doubt, but... I can offer you a job, wanderer.”

I twitched my ears to show him I was listening.

“I can give you something to help you with your journey back to the north. But you will also do something for me in return.”

“Go on.”

“We need to bring one pony to the Crystal Republic. She won’t be a problem. We’ll provide her with everything she needs. Just try not to let her die.”

“Not interested.”

I turned around to leave, but the pony continued. “You’re going north when everypony is running south. The Horde, the Iron Birds... they all run away from there, but you go back. The fewer ponies around the more comfortable you feel, don’t you?”

I did not know why, but I found myself frozen in place, waiting for him to finish.

“Just listen. In the Republic they can fulfil any whim. Their possibilities are unlimited. You just have to get—”

“Try better.”

“So you’re interested now.”

I must have become too old if the first pony I met could so easily convince me to get on such nonsense. Fulfil any wish. Anything you want. I thought I had already heard that somewhere.

But on the other hoof... What if they would be able to give me silence?...

“So what do you think? I can easily provide you with a transport to get to Wild Appleloosa. Then, do as you see fit…”

“Haven’t agreed yet.”

“I’m not here to beg you. If you don’t need it, fuck out.”

The moment of silence.

“Where is your car?” Discord damn me! Why did I say yes?

I could definitely say that he was fucking smiling. “My caravan. I have more trust in battle wagons.”

“What is your name?”

A unicorn mare dressed in a rumpled grey lab coat stood before me, and she had asked me a question. This question. I seriously did not remember anyone being interested in it.

“Call me whatever you want.”

“Well, then...”

Her lab coat had a slight scent of medical alcohol, she herself of coffee. It took me a while to realize what it was, as well as that her entire town smelled of fresh herbs. They ate vegetables and fruits. I did not remember anyone in the wasteland eating them.

It was noon. The white-hot desert was flickering and wavering in a haze as far as eyes could see. At this time of a day, ponies crept to their shacks and silently waited for evening or night when it would be terribly cold. But the cold was much better than this hell of a Tartarus.

They had left me waiting outside the perimeter. Their boss had not been able to talk a place for me and this D... What was her name? Whatever. The caravaneers had refused to take us with them. So we would have to steal a ride. Not that it was so difficult.

“Gas Mask.” Why did they always look at the mask? I had a knife, a revolver and an assault rifle too. “Are we going or what?”

From behind the wall came a long whistle.

Chapter 2

View Online

There are loved ones in the glory,
Whose dear forms you often miss;
When you close your earthly story,
Will you join them in their bliss?

“So what you feel, sir,” Lieutenant addressed me that way out of respect, not rank, “how many stripies are there?”

“Three infantry companies at the very least. One armoured as well.”

“Isn’t it a lot to defend a sorry amusement park?”

“For a park, a lot. For a feeder base, not enough.” I put the binoculars away. “Use laces, knives, or gun-butts. I guess you know how it is done.”

“Yes. Let’s move,” Lieutenant ordered.

We made our way down the grassy hill, our guts cautiously pressed to the ground. Skulking in the tall grass plants, we slid along the railway line. The weather was to our favour: the night was foggy and moonless.

We were the first shot that soon would turn into the Equestrian Army’s full-scale advance. It was high time to drive the stripies off our land. We had already retaken Old Appleloosa; the rest of the South was the next step.

Before the war, Wild Appleloosa was a good place. There was a huge open-air amusement park that had been operating all around the clock. When the war started, they’d closed the park and built a lot of barracks, warehouses and stuff.

The old park was still there though, and we were moving from the railway to it. They had given us the orders to capture a prisoner to interrogate, a radio boy of the stripies, who must have all the cyphers and frequencies for their waves. If the HQ knew what the enemy was going to do, the losses from our side would be much less.

Nopony would save us if we failed.

In the joyous days of childhood,
Oft they told of wondrous love,
Pointed to the godly Empress;
Now they dwell with Her above.

“Turney, what’s the time?” Lieutenant spoke quietly to the other sergeant.

“Five minutes to three, sir,” he whispered back.

“We don’t have time to wallow. Anypony saw the tower through the fog?”

I pointed to the outline of a two-storey building. “They’re in the administration quarters. The park was managed from there.”

“So we gotta cross the street and they’re bloody many.”

“Sir—” I said to Lieutenant, “May I?”

“Go ahead, Sarge.”

I’d visited this park a lot with my sister. Even though it had been years ago, I remembered the streets and alleyways rather well. To get to the bank, you should follow either along the street or down a narrow alley previously used as a way in for park workers. The security pony used to make it effectively impossible to sneak in through it, but what it was now as I guessed…

You couldn’t blame the stripies for being asleep. Most likely, last night their general noted on his map that the enemy forces were a hundred kilometres away and took off his trousers for a peaceful nap. We were going to strike them in an hour.

It’s easier to be invisible in dark streets if you’re sneaking up all on your own. Less hooves, less stomping. Less smell. Though each of us soldiers could boast that our noses felt nothing but gunpowder, it wouldn’t be quite true. I’d know the whiff of stripies anywhere…

One pony stood guard in the alley. Luckily, he was drowsing, being aware of what was going on around, but barely able to keep from sleeping. I punched him in the nose with one hoof, the other simultaneously stabbing him in the heart. The raging sandstorm concealed what had happened from the others and swiftly covered the tracks, burying the corpse underneath. I waved to Shank and his pack of five goons to keep up.

“There’ll be bluebirds over…” Lieut was murmuring a song under his breath as I read his lips. He was the last to come in and closed the door behind. A weird, unnatural silence wrapped the wooden shack. “Start searchin’,” he whispered.

But all was quiet. Yes, there was a fierce tempest roiling outside these flimsy walls, but inside it was as if everything had been dead. Shank’s boys began looting the ground floor, making a lot of noise. I stripped my mask off and took a deep breath of fusty air. As much as I wanted to smell anybody other than my posse, their stench was overwhelming. I needed something to help me find the sneaky bastard.

There was nothing personal between me and that Listener. I just needed to hop on the Steel Snake— Ugh, on the train. I’d have to huddle between fresh meat and moonshine for the Horde, but what could I do? It’s better anyway than a few weeks of walking from here to New Appleloosa.

As long as we stayed away from the Horde’s patrols, the way from New Appleloosa to Peatbog would go just fine. I didn’t worry about myself. The most they could do was either butcher and eat me or force me to sweat up down in the mines. But the unicorn would suffer a fate much worse.

She sang really great. It’d be a shame if she wound up dead for no fucking reason.

You remember songs of heaven
Which you sang with childish voice,
Do you love the hymns they taught you,
Or are songs of earth your choice?

These guys wouldn’t be getting to the first floor until morning, so it was worth my while to take care of the place myself. As I went upstairs I found nothing but the fresh corpse of a mare lying on the dirty mattress, and a pile of planks stacked on top of each other like an antenna. A pyramid of pony skulls was laid round the contraption with ‘eternal candles’ inserted in the eye sockets. Not-yet-rotten, torn-off pony legs were nailed to the antenna itself. I stepped around the altar and noticed that inside was what seemed to be a military radio station. Shank needed it to communicate with ‘the gods’ as he’d said so I didn’t dig up the pile. A wire ran out from the aerial ending in a set of broken headphones.

Lieut got upstairs after me. “You found the radio, but where’s the stripie? I don’t see any codes here. Is he carrying them?”

“Most likely. What if he got the fuck out for good?”

“So it means we follow the backup plan,” Lieutenant picked a few bombs from his belt. “We have twenty minutes.”

We had to find the radio operator. I thought I knew where to look. “It’s enough time.”

I approached the bloodied body that was lying on the mattress, belly down. I stopped beside the mare, knelt at her, and gently turned her over on her back.

Her eyes were gouged out, muzzle skinned, belly sliced open to extract something. She’d probably been pregnant.

I sniffed the mare. If my nose were correct, she’d been murdered a couple of hours away. She’d also been fucked quite many times, the last one not so long ago. Her scent would prove useful in catching the local prophet’s odour.

The smell that was similar to the mare’s traced off the corpse. I went to one of the walls I thought of where the trail ended. I tapped it lightly and listened. It echoed with the sound of a hollow.

There surely ought to have been a passway to that closed alcove, but I felt too lazy to look for the right spot. Either way, the shack was dilapidated and did not resist a proper bucking.

There, a room about the same size was hidden. That it was all hung with severed dried heads served as the only difference. The floor was strewn with cut-off faces that somebody had used as masks.

The centre of the room was reserved for candles arranged in a circle with radiating rays. The pony crouched inside and was whispering softly, probably praying. I moved closer to him to see what he was doing with his forelegs.

He was pinning something that looked like a baby foal. I grabbed his neck and dragged him out. “Here you go.”

Shank was already there, standing and attentively staring at the antenna. I shoved the masked fucker ahead; he wore the mare’s face on his muzzle.

Lieutenant looked down at the stripie. “Why seal up a whole room in this building?”

“Maybe they split the room up.”

“Whatever,” Lieutenant walked over to the stallion cowering on the floor. “Chisel, gimme the ax.”

One of Shank’s fighters handed him a woodchopper which hang at his side. They used to chop meat with it.

“Now—” The axe clanked. After the first blow, the pony’s head was still on its place. Blood spattered my boots. “Imma—” After the second blow, it finally came away from the body. “The Lis’ner.”

One broken radio and so much trouble.

Shank clutched at the chopped head and held it above him. I put my gas mask back on.

“Carry me, warriers. Now I rule the world!”

Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, by and by?
Is a better home awaiting
In the sky, in the sky?

The story was not that long.

Even before I arrived in Wild Appleloosa, I had known whom I should be searching for. He was one of the rare few I could agree with at all.

In exchange for the opportunity to shorten the journey and get from Wild Appleloosa to New Appleloosa in a day, I had agreed to snuff a couple of ponies.

Was it so hard to guess?

“You don’t want to say something, Gas?” Dusty put the guitar down. “Why is this Shank or whoever he is so happy? Why are you all in blood?”

I waved her off. This mare didn’t understand a wee bit and kept pestering me with questions.

“Look, you and I are… I don’t know… a team of sorts? I’m just curious what you’re doing, what to expect from you… Is it so hard to even tell me where the fuck you disappeared?”

I snorted.

“Yeah, do it again, I dare you. First you get beat up and then you go behind my back and talk to that idiot about what a great wife I’d make for him… I might be a mare, but I can slap you. And it will hurt, believe me.” She sighed as she picked up her belongings. “You’re not going to tell me what this show-off is all for, are you.”

“The Iron Serpent.”

“Train? It’s still working?”

“Mhm.”

“Oh. A few dead bodies is now a ticket’s cost for a ride?” She marched out along with me. She stopped and glanced at the rusty thing decorated with the nailed-up remnants of ponies and buffaloes in different ways. “Why am I even surprised in the first place?”

Shank’s goons were loading stuff into the cars. As much moonshine as fresh buffalo meat bought at the settlement’s slaughterhouses. She chose to jump into an already loaded car which still held plenty of room for pony passengers.

“Nah, I’m sleeping alone,” she said, stopping me with a light bump on the nose when I wanted to hop in after her. “Go to the other car.”

There were chuckles from behind.

When the train was about to take off, Shank came over running and carrying a guitar. “Wait! Play ‘gain hottie, be dear.”

Shit. Would this day ever end?

I couldn’t see Dusty, but I could smell everything. Every little thing. She was sick. She was tired. She’d spent the whole day distracting the attention of the previous Listener’s fighters by arranging a free concert for them. There were Shank’s wives of course, but judging by conversations all the ponies were pissed the fuck off about their dances.

Yet, Dusty didn’t refuse them.

“There are loved ones in the glory…” Dusty started to sing the old song.

Chapter 3

View Online

The steel wheels rattled smoothly. The locomotive’s diesel engine roared. Sand swooped around. A never-ending desert landscape.

I was sitting on the roof of my car. Being inside was... different. I always loved to gaze through the window when I was on board. That scenery of meadows and trees, of lakes and rivers just outside my reach. Towns, villages, puny decrepit way-stations. And that for some reason... Stop. What’s wrong with me? I needed a distraction.

A colossal swirl of dust stood out on the horizon. Such usually was left behind a warband of no less than twenty cars. They were going approximately three to four hours faster than the train and probably should have been near Peatbog by now. We still had about half a day’s journey to it.

The sun was getting pretty close to the horizon. It must’ve been around ten to eleven in the morning, I guess. It must’ve been awfully hot, I guess.

We couldn’t get all the way to New Appleloosa. The place, though not under the Horde’s direct control, collaborated quite closely with its masters. We’d have to drop off in a few hours and move on hoof. We’d reach Peatbog by tonight before you know it...

But something was weird. Last time I came here marshes were starting from somewhere nearby. Now there’s the desert spreading all around. Everywhere.

Enormous white clouds raced across the sky. They once used to be called thunderclouds and had been dark blue or lead-coloured. These were dry and white.

The cool wind that whipped my face carried a faint, barely recognizable scent of gasoline coming from the warband.

“There are loved ones in the glory…”

What’s the meaning of this song? I was in no mood to reflect.

“That’s all?” She turned her face to me. “Usually stallions promise you the moon...”

“But I can’t promise you to yourself.”

The unicorn looked at me questioningly, then laughed, flashing her white teeth. “Okay, that’s not bad.”

“Better than what you’ve heard before?”

“Yes. Much better.”

She opened the picnic basket and handed me a bottle of water.

“And,” she continued, resting her head on my lap and looking at the five-storey buildings in the distance, “and everypony says I’ll be living as the Empress herself if I’m with them.”

“Rose,” I touched her shoulder. “I’m not a prince charming from fairy tales. I can’t give you riches. You already have whatever you wish. All I can give you is me. Wholly. And...”

“Don’t.” She leaned her head against the oak tree we were sitting under. “I give up.”

I moved closer to her. She looked at me and whispered softly, “You won.”

Then she kissed me. And I felt that I would do anything for her. Do so much more than I could imagine.

I retracted the binoculars from my eyes. Dusty kept watching with her looking glass.

“What is this place?”

“Peatbog.”

“It doesn’t seem like a town,” she said, apparently referring to a pile of hoofmade pile drivers sticking out of the ground. “If only like a bunch of some weird things… How did you manage to hide a car in a place like this? Where’s the bog, speaking of?”

When I was here back then a dozen years ago, there were humongous swamps of rotten trees. I thanked the lone oak tree that still stood amidst the broken lands now.

The area was deeply rutted with tire treads — rather fresh ones. The Horde’s warband had cruised all over the place. Right above Peatbog. The fading light of the day made it hard to see anything more than that, but the malodour of gas persisted. As if they were still walloping somewhere nearby.

I retained some memories about the place. Particularly, how one could get inside.

An entrance was possible to be found by smell. It leaked in through the sand mass but was very weak. I recalled the approximate location of the entrance. Everything else was up to my nose.

A dozen steps forward from the oak. Three to the right. A score forward…

“Don’t move,” I ordered Dusty as I pointed at the tree. A mare’s scent would only hinder my affair.

The barren land that had replaced what once was a swamp was enormous. There had been many entrances leading underground. I could not tell if I smelled the scent of the passage nearby or the one brought by a wind — no, wait. I found it.

I was digging the sand as fast as I could until my hooves started to pound on the metal.

“Can I go now?” Dusty called out.

I nodded.

The lid was too bulky to lift. The hinges had been all rusted, sand always getting in the way. I tried helping myself with magic, but it wasn’t working out very well.

Dusty decided to join me. With her telekinesis, it went considerably faster.

“What’s down there?” she inquired, peering into the dark.

I jumped down. “Stairs area.” The lid was three or so metres high above the floor. “Come on.”

“It’s dark. Do you have—” I lit up the flashlight fastened on my shoulder. “Thank you.”

I examined the sand-clogged stairwell. Since the place still was habitable, all the right passages were supposed to be marked. Maybe not for an outside looker, but undoubtedly when inside.

Of the four doors on the landing, only a single one led further. Probably straight down to the sewers. As far as I could recall, there’s a path through it that went to the metro. Through the metro to the shopping mall; then to the surface again.

It was bizarre.

The place had been full of ponies not a while ago. Burnt-out fire-pits, cold lumps of week-old meat here and there. But I didn’t see a single corpse, and most importantly, I didn’t catch the local inhabitants’ smell. That putrid mix of bodily stench and gasoline. Something else was present in the air, but I could not work out yet whatever it was. And I didn’t like it in slightest.

All the way, the silence bore an ominous air. I took note of traces of a struggle evident around as we made our way through the sand-swept metro tunnels. It could’ve been just a simple slaughter, but I wasn’t one to guess what exactly. Dried-up blood coated the walls and floor, broken shanks scattered everywhere. Someone could have attacked Peatbog, but for what reason? Yes, the locals had got fuel, some water, and a lot of glittery garbage, but they used to easily share it with everypony for food and guzzolene. Well, okay, let’s assume somepony had razed Peatbog down. That meant they’d managed to locate the entrance to the underground while it was quite a task even for me… So what? I remembered the pre-war apartment blocks to stand apart from the rest of the area and those were the tallest buildings. The place became anything worth a town only down in the metro tunnels which you could get into only if you knew the path. The locals must’ve dug up something. But what? Who might be interested in it? The Horde? …The Iron Birds? No way. Crazy bullshit.

“Ponyville Underground… Hey Gas? Look, there’s a map!” Dusty beckoned me with a hoof. “I don’t really know where we are, but there’s a line of sorts over here. Route, maybe? What do you think?”

From one end of the metro towards the centre of the map spiralled a yellow line. The other ones were faded, indistinct and barely recognizable. I shook my head.

“How we’re supposed to find the way then?”

I waved ahead. My estimations told me there were still two train cars before we’d get to the station. We’d marched past five cars since we got out of the sewer. Very quick, yeah. But you’d never know what sort of a trap you could run into down in these burrows, so I decided against taking any chances.

I stepped off the half-buried train onto a relatively clean platform and looked around. There must be reliefs featuring a rather simple plot-motif around somewhere. Something like, ‘Then the sky cracked in two, from end to end, and a great sheet of flame poured down through the rift, and a brother turned arms against a brother’. At least that’s what they told us.

My flashlight’s beam skimmed across the ceiling but found nothing. Hmm. If you looked closely at that spot, you’d think there was something similar to Her image... Yes. That was it. That’s it!

“Park.”

“What park?”

“The station’s name.”

Empress Celestia’s Park station was close at hoof from the mall. You’d need only to go through another station, the factory, then descend the sewers again, and presto: you’re right in front of the parking. If all went well, it’d take another hour or two to cover the distance.

“Hold on. How do you know what this station is called?”

The question floated in the air unanswered.

As far as I could remember, the next station was supposed to have a techs’ quarter jointed with a scrap warehouse. They gathered scrap metal to assemble cars, at least it’s what they used to do in the past. Hopefully nothing really changed; I did not want to think about what they could have done to my sweetheart. She’d got some things precious dearly to me…

I wondered how could it have ended that way. Peatbog had sunk into the earth apex-deep. Before it was one or two storeys of the ancient apartment blocks sticking out above the ground; now even those were buried beneath.

I’d once heard a thing. A prophecy of sorts preached by a loony who’d managed to gather a flock around him. He was ranting that Sun had robbed us of the Greater Water to test all the creatures touched by Its rays. About if we were capable to stood firm and survive the Grand Trial, as he’d called it, to accept Its gift in the end. Water would return after the trials and hardships were suffered. Well. It’s going to last long, as it seemed to me… So much for ranting and preaching in recent times.

To get to the factory station, you just needed to choose another tunnel. Which we did. There was no train this time and the corridor went hollow, giving me a chance to spot just one more little detail. The roof was supported and hardened like down in mines. I had not seen anything of it for my first time here. Yeah, the tunnels were constantly under the pressure of the sand, but people were not afraid of some part collapsing on their heads. In the time I was absent, they had reinforced the ceiling decently and thoroughly as if to cover themselves from…

Something crashed nearby. The noise echoed across the tunnel from the station that lay ahead. I sped forward, Dusty apparently copying my movement.

Shit. That smell. I could swear it boded something really fucking bad. No matter how hard I tried to remember, the odour elusively escaped my memory.

The station greeted us empty. Those who visited it had already left. Not so far, my nose told me, keep moving to the factory. Long ago the locals had dug a pass through the very sand. The one and only way to get out of from the metro and to, ah, the ‘ground level’.

The smell hinted there were five of them. Maybe less. One of the ponies was different from the others, fear betraying the lack of his allegiance to them, while the rest of the group reeked of grudge. I slowed my trot to a plodding gait.

I saw five dim shapes. Four ponies wore black rubber attires, and one looking like a fitter shambled with them, his figure somewhat crooked, a speed counter stitched into his chest.

These four reminded me of the smokers. The Horde employed them as a certain kind of fighters. I thought I’d heard they were long gone. Nonetheless, if it were truly them, it’d be no wonder I felt that iffy.

Throughout the whole wasteland from northern peaks to the Boundless Sea, you wouldn’t find thugs more barking and psychotic. Whoever they caught could leave any hope to pass away painlessly, since they did not kill a victim till they found a way to burn them with fashion. A savvy lot, duh. I’d seen it with my own eyes when they stuffed a foal in a corpse and burned him — the incineration itself being only the cherry on the top, that’s it.

The grease-monkey belonged to here. The locals had a soft spot for fitting themselves with mechanical parts left from damaged cars. The smokers were probably dragging him to some hole to burn alive. Nopony would miss the bastards if I finished them off, right?

The smokers walked in a single file, dragging the chained grease-monkey behind. He had probably spotted me but kept silent. Smart guy.

I pulled out my knife, crept up to the last one in the line, and stabbed him in the heart. Before the body fell, I plucked my knife and flung it at the back of the next pony’s head. I used the butt of my assault rifle to knock the last two, then just broke their necks.

“Freeze,” I croaked as I grabbed and yanked the chain.

The tech-pony, which had tried to escape, stopped dead in his tracks upon seeing Dusty. “I-I’m but a humble servant to Ignition! Don’tcha hurt me!” He attempted to hide behind my legs. “Let me live! I-I can help! Yes yes! I know where the car is! Rogues, aren’t y’all? Y’all’re able to drive the vehicle, yes y’all are! I gonna show you, y’all… y’all take me along! Save me!”

I just wanted to know for sure he was blabbering about that particular car. “The car?”

“Eight cylinders! It soars ‘bove the ground as it goes, for real! Faster than wind! If ya can crank it… Ya’re a ‘corn, aren’t ya? Real ‘corn?”

“Show the way.”

“Oh yes, yes, of course! Bird be showing the way! Follow Bird!”

The grease-monkey’s coat was a burnt-all-over mess. I dared not to guess if he looked so from foalhood, but his scarred flesh bore no fresh marks. He also had no tools or instruments, and had that general look of a shady character.

“What happened?” Dusty asked. “Will you tell us, Bird?”

He nodded his head as a skeleton would nod its skull at the top of the tubular body. “Oh yes, Bird be tellin’! They came from ‘eavens! They descended in strings of light! Many, so many warriors of theirs! Ours blocked the paths, but theirs git booms to blow us! Booms! Oh, so many! Tunnels caved in, only sand and sand and sand ev’rywhere! They took mares and foals as they saw ‘em, techs too. Our warriors barricaded in the Temple of Ignition to defend archangels from infidels… But those infidels y’all git down, they said they killed our warriors and ate their hearts! The Temple stands unprotected! Dark days indeed…”

“What is the Temple?” Dusty asked.

“Shopping mall,” I said.

“Shodding maul… Wut? How dare ya!”

I smacked him upside the head. “Silence.”

“Git it. I git it. Bird be silent. Bird be good!”

What had been a network of tunnels and cavities in the sand where cars and trucks used to be made in the name of religion and belief, as well as a nearby station housing the apprentices, might be described as ‘nothing’. The factory was completely emptied. No cars, no scrap metal, no machinery. Not even shit. Desolate as a fuck.

“How long?” I inquired.

“Twenty moons ago. The battle was long, very long. ‘Eavens fell upon us. We fought as much we could!” He started all over again. “But gods of Ignition were angry with us. They let the infidels win! Still I was in the Temple! Infidels didn’t make it to Mother of Archangels!”

“Tone it the hell down.”

“Yesh, if you s. Infidels didn’t make it to Mother of Archangels. Gods git her hidden behind a wall! Nopony but me could make it there. I knew the paths. I be leadin’ you there but we must be fast. I heard infidels ‘ave brought Brute to break the wall!”

Perhaps they had refrained from using explosives in fear of damaging the car or collapsing the rest of the system down on their heads. The whole half of the metro had sunk down the sands since my last time here.

“Not first time?”

“Infidels came before, yes. We fought them off. They always got good meat. Oh so tasty, oh so juicy!” My unicorn companion looked like she was going to throw up. “Now they got ours! The rest are down in mines. Diggin’ metal for Brass Calculator. Only brass and nothing else, more and more! Gods gonna punish ‘em! So was it written!”

I never loved religious zealots. They usually were a fine lot until they messed with you, but that fact did not prevent them from always being out with preaches and looking for troubles. I’d been following the grease-monkey for no more than quarter an hour, and my ears had already got numb.

Metallic clangs pierced the air. It was as if a massive anvil were repeatedly struck with a gigantic hammer, the noise coming from the upper floors. It seemed the Horde had driven a brigade of breakers to pry open the gate to the ‘archangels’. And what we needed to do was to get first to our car and then the fuck out of there.

Once it was a spacious shopping mall. They called it The Planet or The Star or something similar — I couldn’t quite remember. The atrium sported a huge iron-wrought assembly hanging at the level of the first floor, a symbol of the mall. You would not be wrong to guess that the structure was sphere-shaped.

The construction had before been covered with some stuff. Facing of sorts depicting… something I did not recall. But now… But now there were only bare iron rods transformed into a grand brazier. The whole mall was like a slaughterhouse. Crucified corpses stuffed with stones. Piles and piles of burnt, coal-black bodies — not of the locals, though. Some soldiers of the Horde had murdered the others in the most brutal, fucked-up way possible. What thing had they found that they had to kill their own storm-troopers? They didn’t call on the smokers to do such trifling job. The smokers cried for tortures and fun in the quantities comparable to genocide in cruelty. Burn, kill, burn again, so that there’s not even ash left! As for those left alive… They’d better been burned.

Bird’s words had proved truthful. In a course of twenty days, maybe fewer, Peatbog had hollowed out. Given what he’d said, stallions had been killed on the spot, mares led away to make wives or cows at dairy farms, foals sent to mines or Undercity to dig shinies. Those younger could even get lucky and fill the ranks of the boom-kabooms. Those who didn’t would become meat to feed others.

We were going upstairs. From the second and last floor, you could get to the cinema where the pathway led outside, at least that’s what had been earlier. Now everything could have changed, but as Bird had told there was another exit literally at hoof. Right in front of the cinema theatre.

About a dozen fighters were standing in a dead-end on the second floor around some big son of a bitch that was banging on a metal door. Sledgehammers were tied to his hooves to make the blows he dealt even more terrifying, the door crushing under his forelegs.

“They’re more, many more! Others are not far away, waitin’ and watchin’ as they be opening the door! This one is a strong door! Very strong!” Bird whispered. “I was behind all tryin’ to crack it open, but it git some smart lock! All symbols and marks… Divine Providence! Yes it is!”

We had to open the door from the inside and pull it up. It might be hard and sturdy for the locals, but if it went the way it was going now, the door would be wrenched from its hinges. Somepony had to be the diversion.

“Lead her,” I ordered Bird as I passed my rifle and flashlight to Dusty. “She will open.”

“How?” the unicorn asked as she stiffly accepted the weapon.

“Security lock. Zero, zero, zero, zero. Pull it up.” Hopefully she would get it right.

The tech and the mare disappeared swiftly. Thankfully the sound of their steps was drowned in metal banging on metal.

Now shall we dance fillies, shan’t we.

I stepped out of hiding and cocked my revolver. Supporting the barrel with magic, I put three rounds out of six into the lesser ponies as I moved. Not that it made much sense to kill them. Others — those that were ready in ambush above — would realize something was wrong down there. And who knew how many more there were.

I only needed Brute to notice me. I got something special for him.

Brute was a paragon of attraction, his muzzle skinless and jaws covered with chrome.”Wanna play?!” He was ready to lash out at the mere fact that I was standing there and pointing a hoof at him. “Me like play!”

One of his minions aimed a hoofed crossbow at me, but Brute smashed his head off. “Two ponies enter, one pony leave!”

The gargantuan bastard charged forward and was right next to me in an instant. I had jumped away to evade his mighty stomp, but he fetched me a back-hoofed slap with his other foreleg, the sheer force sending me flying against a wall. Got a collarbone broken, it seemed.

Those thugs who had been spectating Brute in action just a couple of minutes ago were now galloping to the exit as promptly as they could.

I attempted to stand up, but Mr Chrome Face was already upon me, staring straight into my eyes and reeking of rotting meat. “Yer skull good! Me like skulls!” He grasped my head and tried to squeeze grey matter out of my ears. “Wanna drink yer brains!”

I mustered all my flexibility, twisted out of his grapple, and delivered a powerful kick. The monster howled as my hind hooves connected with his teeth. He staggered but managed to keep footing, still irrevocably losing a chance to catch me.

Open the bloody door! Open up!

I barely escaped being crushed under a double hit of the sledgehammers as I crouched and rolled away. I felt the building starting to fall apart.

There was a long creaking sound. The rusty mechanism started working, and the door slowly slid up.

“Me help! Me help ya, Calculator!” Brute bellowed, any interest in me lost.

He scrambled on the floor, darted to the door. Both sledgehammered forelegs slammed into the door so hard it finally came off its hinges and flung into the dark.

Before the bastard could swat the knocked-out Dusty like a fly, I loaded two bullets into the back of his skull. Still not so sure he was dead for good.

The mare recovered quite quickly. I shouted at her to get in the car. I myself was going to revive its dust-covered engine.

“I lead you to Mother of Archangels! Get me—” I put the last bullet into Bird’s forehead. No time to cut him. I needed to charge magic into the engine as fast as a fuck! “Turn the key!”

Dusty did as I’d said. The engine roared but zapped me slightly. I quickly got behind the wheel and habitually put on the radio.

“Riot in Fillydelphia! Grid six lost! Colonel Carrot refuses to follow orders—”

I looked at the old photo tucked in a gap between the dashboard and the windshield.

“Water is ending, supplies insufficient! Darn sand stuffed the wells!”

Rose…

“Peace killer!”

Rose.

Go!

What?

“Go! Go! Go go go! Faster!” Dusty, having grabbed my wounded shoulder, was shaking the hell out of me. I threw a glance at the entryway as lots and lots of Horde ponies were spilling inside.

Oh, what a day…

Apocalypse After Us

by Doof Ex Machina

Prologue: Dusty

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3