Chapter 16: Missing Pieces “I don't need to understand it! I don't even care!”

Nightmares.

Just about everypony who lived in the horrors of the Equestrian Wasteland has experienced nightmares. Considering the broad variety of terrible things that happen on a daily basis, it would be difficult to find any sane pony that didn't have them at least occasionally. Sometimes they were vivid, sometimes they were vague, but the ones I experienced always left me feeling awful. Perhaps the one thing I appreciated most about being a ghoul was that I didn't need to sleep, even if I did so occasionally. Less time spent sleeping means fewer bad dreams. However, sometimes they still managed to creep in.

I found myself in the midst of one now. I was frozen, paralyzed and choking as I watched my best friend steal my sniper rifle from me. She also pulled out her own gun, turning it and mine on her enemies. They were zebras. A dozen of them, maybe more. They had been chanting around a fire, celebrating. Then that fire turned green and it cast the zebras in a foul light. That light had driven May insane, turning the zebras in front of her into memories of enemies long dead. She opened fire on them, even though they had done nothing to her. They screamed and tried to run, tried to hide, but my friend wouldn't stop. She roared an old, forgotten battle cry and screamed out unfathomable words. Some of the zebras tried to stop her, but her magic and guns were far quicker than their spears. Every single one of them fell. Someone threw off a cloak that had rendered her invisible: it was me. I picked up a spear and charged at my best friend. As the horror that seemed unending suddenly closed to black, my wracked feelings were affronted one final time by a disgusting squelching noise and a heavy thud.

***

I awoke with a start. I couldn't seem to recall when I had fallen asleep, but I was lying on my back, staring up at the cloudy grey sky, a tinge of orange marking the coming of dawn. What I could recall was the painful contents of that nightmare. I would have to tell May about my dream. She had some understanding of psychology, especially for ghouls, and perhaps would be able to shed some light on its meaning.

I attempted to sit up, only to suddenly and strangely become aware of a weight pressing down on me. My eye rolled down as I tilted my head to look at what was on top of me. It was May, sprawled on me like I was a bed of hay. That struck me as odd, but my brain was being almost deliberately sluggish. I prodded May's shoulder to waken her, intending to ask her why we were positioned like this. She gave no response. I prodded her once more, only for her to roll limply off me. I screamed.

May had the shaft of a spear sticking out of her chest, its blade embedded deep enough to have pierced her heart. I felt a sudden surge of panic and skittered backwards until I ran into something else. Shivering as I glanced over my shoulder, I saw the body of a zebra. Not just any zebra though; this had been the one who had killed that beast the night before, and had been the focus of the celebration of the assembled camp of zebras we had come across. Two bullet holes punctured his neck.

I screamed once again. I was still having that horrible nightmare! I scrambled away from the zebra's body, gasping and hyperventilating. I tried futilely to calm myself, but knew the only way to escape this was to wake up. I brought up a hoof and pinched my cheek. Nothing happened. I pinched harder. Still nothing. I slapped myself across the face a few times to just as futile an effect. I finally resorted to dumping a bottle of Sparkle~Cola over my head. All that did was leave me feeling sticky.

A weight like lead dropped into the pit of my stomach as it finally dawned on me. The nightmarish scene before me was real. There would be no waking up from this horror. I fell onto my haunches, then rolled over onto my side, curling up into a ball. I didn't want to be where I was. I wanted to be anywhere else. I wanted to be with my friends. Except I couldn't be. One of them was still back in Manehattan, and the other was... dead.

As the inescapable finality of that word crossed through my mind, I just shuddered. Wave after wave of unbearable, nauseating misery washed over me. It was so deep, so full of despair that I thought I would drown in it. I curled up tighter, trying to warm myself enough to stop the shivering. It didn't help. I wasn't cold, and yet under all that despair I felt like I would never be warm again either. In spite of the despair, I found myself unable to cry. That just made me feel worse. My best friend, who I had known for a lifetime and more, was dead. She was dead and I couldn't even shed tears for her. After everything that had gone wrong lately, I just couldn’t anymore.

***

I don't know how long I lay curled up and shivering, but it was at least long enough for the orange colouration of the dawn sky to fade. I finally sat up, still shivering and nauseous, and cast my gaze about the scene. May... her body was still close by, as was the body of the young zebra stallion. Surrounding them were seven other zebra corpses, all of them dead at May's hooves. Four Stallions, two mares, and a filly not even old enough to have her... zebra squiggle mark thing. Seeing the filly, a gaping hole in her head that I knew was from my own rifle, made me want to cry more than ever. It also made me want to vomit. I ended up only doing the later.

After staggering away to empty what little was actually in my stomach, I wiped my muzzle with a hoof. I winced as I felt skin flake and peel away. My hide was beginning to rot again. I just sat myself down on my haunches, my mind drawing a blank on what I should do. What I could do. May had always been the one with the plan; the one taking the lead. Now she was gone. In the hundred and twenty years spent travelling the Equestrian Wasteland, May and I had almost always been together. What would I do if I wasn't spending my time helping her seek out a cure for ghouls?

As I sat there, wallowing, my bad eye rolled about, taking in the mess that had been made of the zebra camp. A few loose bits of flame hadn't died out, although most of the tents had been burned to ashes. Some of the zebra bodies were singed. May's had burnt flesh on her back from when I had kicked her into the bonfire, resulting in the scattering of logs. One of them had rolled up to and toppled the tarp covered podium. The object it had borne, its strange sickly green glow contrasting the embers of flame, had landed on the ground.

It only took a moment of looking at that thing before a fresh wave of emotion cut through my despair. I was suddenly and intensely furious. My friend was dead, and that... thing! It had been the cause of her slip into insanity. It was responsible for all of this! I got to my hooves, finding them heavy, but managed to plod over to the strange object. What it was I didn't know, what it did I didn't care. All I knew was what it had caused, and that it needed to be gotten rid of.

I raised my hooves up, feeling strained in doing so to the point of using my wings to keep them up, then brought them down hard on the object. All that did was bruise my hooves. I tried again, slamming even harder. The blackened earth beneath the device cracked, but the device itself was annoyingly durable. I repeated the process of slamming my hooves against it a dozen times more, but all I managed to do was make a mess of my hooves and bash the thing about a quarter of the way into the ground beneath it.

I fell to my haunches and just glared at the object. The ache in my hooves became more and more evident as my rage ebbed away, the despair that had preceded it flowing back in to take its place. I again found myself transfixed by the pulsing, swirling, sickly colours within the object. I began to suspect the device had some kind of magic. Seeing it had instilled rage and insanity in May, worshipful reverence in the zebras, and in me it brought out a sense of confusion and entrancement. I just spent the next little while staring at it, transfixed, the gears of my brain grinding away for answers.

My brain stumbled across an answer, but not the one I was looking for. The words of a cold, ugly, scarred unicorn mare played in my mind. “When that resolve of yours finally breaks, remember what I told you...”

The last words that Emerald had spoken to me when she and her troop of Steel Rangers had massacred the ghouls of the Trottingham Necropolis. With the memory of those words came flooding back other memories; those that Emerald herself had forced into my mind with her magic. She too had seen her best friend killed before her eyes, and she had suffered through innumerable hardships, just as I had. Was that it then? Was I to end up a broken, bitter, ruthless mare like her? Was this the end of my hope? Or perhaps I would simply lay down and die, or turn feral like May had and lose all sense of self. I would have given anything to avoid either fate, scared as I was. That and more I would have given to have my friend back.

Before that train of thought could pull away into extremity, it was swiftly derailed. An obtusively pink apparition plucked away the foul memories like slides removed from a projector. It was Pinkie Pie again, unwilling to let me drown in my despair now as she had then. I clung to her once more. Even as I grasped, my mind slipped in one last dark pondering: Would May still be here had she something like this of her own to hold onto?

***

Pinkie Pie had always been the most optimistic pony you could ever meet, or even imagine. Even during the height of the war, she remained chipper and joyful. Although I had never been a member of their close circle of friends, I had always been fond of the Ministry Mares, especially her. I chose to believe that she had appeared to me in my time of desperation for a reason, and clung to the notion that not all was lost. After spending some time clinging to the image of Pinkie Pie, I finally felt I had a little strength with which to stand again. I was alone in a foreign land, I had lost my best friend to feralism, and I stood surrounded by the bodies of the innocent zebras she had murdered in a fit of rage. I didn't have any idea of where I would go next, or what I would do when I got there, but there was at least one thing I could set right then and there.

Carefully, I began to move the scattered logs back towards the middle of the zebra camp. I stacked them as best I could, but they were already charred and smouldering, so it wasn't as neat and tidy as it could have been. Once I was finished, I carefully went around to each zebra body, shutting their eyes if they were open, and gently pulled them atop what would become a funeral pyre. I hadn't known these zebras, but at least I could save them the added insult of leaving their bodies to rot, or be fed upon by wild animals.

Once I had the eight bodies set amidst the logs, I glanced at May's body. I considered burning her body as well, but decided against it. May was my best friend, and I wanted to bury her and give her a proper marker to remember her by. I pulled over the heavy tarp that had previously covered the object the zebras were worshipping. I threw it over top of the zebra bodies, then dumped the fuel from my lantern onto it. I lit a match and set the pyre ablaze.

I just sat and watched the pyre burn for a few minutes, but turned away when the heat began to dry out my already scabbing skin. As I turned, my hoof caught on something and I tripped. I found the culprit to be the cloak that had turned the young zebra stallion invisible, tangled up with the spear he had used to slay that creature. It seemed like an eternity ago that May and I had watched him drag the carcass back to his tribe. I tucked the cloak into my saddlebag, then collected my rifle and Rottingtail's revolver, reloading both before slipping them away. I gave Stronghoof's Legacy a sad glance, knowing that it had killed that filly. I knew I was being irrational, but I couldn't help but feel like the meaning of that name had now been tainted.

I gently lifted May's body back into the caged cart. The tarp that had previously covered it when Apex had used it was still inside, so I used that to cover her. I sighed a deep, mournful sigh, and then stepped out of the wagon. As I turned around, my eyes were once again drawn to the glowing zebra artifact. I just stared at it, wondering what to do about it. I hadn't been able to break it, and frankly didn't want anything to do with it. I couldn't shake the feeling that if I just left it there though, it could potentially cause more bad things to happen. I moved to retrieve it.

A morbid curiosity started to creep into my mind as I approached the object. May had gone crazy at the sight of this thing, and all those zebras had died because of it. Why? What was it about this thing that had triggered it? Why were the zebras worshipping it, why did May recognize it, and why did I have no idea what was really going on? I suddenly felt overwhelmed with the need for answers. May had spent her entire life pursuing an answer to the ghoul problem, only to trip at the finish line. The absolute least I could do was find out why.

I gingerly picked up the strange object, the sensation of holding it making me tingle for some reason. I slowly carried it over to the cart and placed it inside the cage. It was hardly heavy, in spite of its durability, but I wasn't taking any chances. Its odd shape prevented it from rolling around, but that glow coming off it would be a great big signal beacon for flying predators. Pulling the invisibility cloak back out of my bag, I threw it over the device. The tarp covering May's body would have been more than big enough to cover it as well, but somehow I felt it would be disrespectful to have May sharing a covering with the thing that had been her doom.

I didn't know where I would go, what I would look for, or who would ultimately have the answers I sought, but all I really had left was time. I spent a little bit more of that time watching the zebra pyre burn until it was almost exhausted, then returned to the wagon and hitched myself to it. I didn't know how long I would have to search, or how far I would have to look, but I figured my best odds of getting closure on May's fate would be to find more zebras. Ones who might have knowledge of the artifact and its purpose. I felt like I was trying to barter with the universe itself, but then, I was a merchant. Sort of. I would have given anything to have May back, but since that was impossible, I would have to try and get something else out of it. Something to make sense of the senseless waste.

***

Flying alone was miserable. There was no conversation, no radio playing, and not even the knowledge that a friendly presence was nearby. I was on my own for the first time in over a century. While doing delivery runs by myself while running my own company had been fine back in Equestria during the war, the fact that I was alone now was far more pronounced by the absence of familiar companionship. Even as a ghoul my life had been reasonably predictable. If somepony asked me where I saw myself in ten years, I would have known the answer. Now, I had no idea.

I began flying back and forth over the zebra lands, looking for any signs of civilization of any kind. Water sources, animal herds, roads or railways, or even more of those hide tents they seemed to live in. All I found was more desolation. The Megaspell that Equestria had used against the zebras had been universally and unflinchingly destructive. A dark thought crossed my mind. Had those zebras been the only survivors? Had May's outburst been the last nail in the coffin of zebras as a species? I knew that couldn't be true, given how tenacious ponies had proven to be in the face of the end of the world. That didn't stop the thought from being frightening.

I was greatly relieved to come across a set of railroad tracks as the afternoon wore on. The railway had been the chief route by which Equestria and the zebras had traded resources in the time before the war. The zebra lands had been rich with coal, and they in turn had various needs for the abundance of gems Equestria had within its borders. I may not have understood the politics of war, but as a merchant pony, I had come to grasp the economics of it quite well. That was how the whole terrible conflict started; coal was getting harder for the zebras to mine and deposits were becoming scarce, so they demanded higher values of gem in return. However, Equestrian merchants eventually refused to keep increasing payments, feeling they were being extorted. Throw in some poverty, a little piracy, misplaced patriotism and a lot of politics, and everything spiraled out of control.

I descended slowly towards the railway tracks as the thoughts invoked by seeing them here in the zebra lands played through my head. I hovered just above them for a moment and took it all in. Like everything else in the land, they were scorched. The wooden ties were little more than charcoal and the rails themselves were deformed and blackened. An experimental touch of my hoof caused one of the ties to simply crumble to ash. While some tracks in Equestria had been refurbished by various wastelanders, I found it highly unlikely that these ones were used by anyone.

In spite of that fact, I began to follow the tracks. The zebra lands may be largely barren and desolate, but much as ponies tended to seek the ruins of their former settlements for protection and community, there must have been at least some zebras who did the same. A railway was quite possibly the quickest way by which I might be led to one, rather than searching blindly back and forth. I briefly mused, as I began to travel along the line, if anyone else knew that tribe of zebras. Considering how few and far between they were, it struck me as unlikely. I really hoped that the survivors were at least holding together. Even with their losses, they still had each other to rely on.

I was following the tracks north, back towards Equestria. Perhaps they lead to a trading post or small border settlement. In a way, the railroad tracks were a blessing, the lack of a plan leaving me in desperate need of direction. At the same time, that blessing felt empty; a hollow replacement for the noble goal May and I had pursued for more than a century. I got the feeling that as soon as I reached the end of those tracks, May's dream of curing ghouls would die too. I was nowhere near as smart as May, had no knowledge of magic, and there was nopony I knew that would be able to finish what she started, even with her research notes.

I didn't really mind that I was getting closer to Equestria. A longing was building in my heart to go home and leave everything that had happened behind. As much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn't though. Not until... that was just it. I only had one idea of what to do, and I feared that it wouldn't be enough. I was afraid that the hole left in my heart by the loss of my best friend would never be filled. I was afraid that it had all been for nothing. A century of friendship and effort and pain endured together, all for nothing. Yet still I followed those tracks. Maybe if I kept following them, the things I was afraid of would eventually fall behind.

***

As the day wore on, I got closer and closer to Equestria. Closer and closer to the end of the line. On the horizon I could see the jungle that stood on the border between the two nations. I briefly wondered what a place like that would be like now, between the megaspells and the time in the wasteland that followed. The tracks seemed to be leading right to it, but well before I could reach it, something else became visible against the stark emptiness of the broad, flat zebra lands. It was a train platform. Momentarily spurred by curiosity, I flew up close to it, setting my cart and its contents gently down before detaching myself.

Not wanting to leave the cart, I limited myself to hovering just above it to get a view of my new surroundings. The train platform was almost by itself, but there were old, worn paths all around it. One of these paths I followed with my good eye, my gaze reaching what looked like a tunnel into the ground. Looking past the tunnel, I could see an area of ground that was uneven, cracked, and riddled with holes and collapses. Around the area were ruined bits of what might have been a small village once, all surrounding that little cave mouth.

I slowly put the pieces together in my head, concluding that this was a coal mine. Bits of carts and tools occasionally stuck out of the collapsed sections of ground, supporting that conclusion. There was even a bit of mangled rails near the mouth. I could only guess that Equestria's megaspell had caused the mine to collapse, taking the surrounding settlement with it. This of course meant that there wouldn't be anyone here. I sighed and drifted back down to the cart.

It was getting late in the day and I was exhausted. While I still had no need to sleep any more than I had for the past century, I was physically and emotionally played out. I curled up beside the cart after pulling out a blanket to lay on. I knew that even if I did manage to sleep, I would again be plagued by nightmares. I was far too tired to care, and at least with nightmares I wouldn't have to face anything real.

***

I didn't manage to get any rest at all. After laying next to the cart for what must have been a couple hours, my ears perked at the sound of approaching hoof steps. Looking up, I could see the dim light of a lantern pole further up the tracks. It was too far away to see what was carrying that light clearly. However, someone approaching meant I couldn't try to go to sleep again. Even if they weren't raiders or the like, plenty of wastelanders would have little qualms about scavenging a wagon like mine. The fact that I was a ghoul would, sadly, make some folks more willing to do so.

I got up, carefully pulling Stronghoof's Legacy out of the cart as a precaution. The wagon creaked as I did so, and the noise of it apparently reached the approaching light bearer. The lantern pole stopped bobbing for a moment, allowing me to make out half a dozen figures silhouetted against its light. From the way they stood, it was apparent that they had taken notice of me as well. I could have gotten a closer look through my scope, but I didn't want to accidentally start a fight. Not now. After a pregnant pause, they began approaching again, albeit a bit more slowly than they had been moving before we had taken notice of each other.

Eventually the one holding the lantern pole stepped out in front of the rest of his group to come towards me by himself. I heard the clicks of a battle saddle loading. I raised Stronghoof's Legacy and lowered my mouth to the trigger. Eventually the lantern bearer stepped into full view. It was another zebra stallion, but he was distinctly different from the ones May and I had... encountered. He was wearing what looked like light police barding, with a familiar gear-shaped logo on one shoulder, embossed with the number three. Coupled to that was a battle saddle bearing two military assault rifles. Strangest of all, he was wearing a Pipbuck just like May's.

The zebra stallion and I just stared at each other for a few moments, weapons pointed at each other, but not firing. The zebra finally broke the silence, “You are a ghoul,” he stated a bit bluntly. Perhaps more surprising was the fact that he spoke fluent Equestrian.

I nodded slowly, “I'm not going to eat you or anything,” I said with maybe a touch more spite than was necessary. Given all that had happened though, I wasn't about to take any flak for my condition. His comment drew my attention to the fact that my skin had almost completely reverted to its necrotic state. May's unfinished cure hadn't even lasted two days.

The zebra stallion nodded and his posture loosened, his mouth moving away from the bit of his battle saddle. He shook the lantern pole twice and I heard hoof steps come our way from where he had left the others he had been with. “I ask your forgiveness for my wariness, but my companions are in rough shape.”

I blinked, curious. “What happened?” I asked with a touch of concern. I didn't notice immediately, but the concern for my fellow equines was soothing compared to the mix of other painful emotions I had run through that day.

The zebra stallion looked back at his companions, “We were following these tracks through Crescent Moon Canyon. We thought we would be safe, but some of the jungle beasts disagreed. We did not lose anyone, but we have been travelling for the better part of a day on injuries needing proper time to recover.”

I nodded. May had, in her rage and madness, harmed a number of innocent zebras. It struck me as an odd, yet seemingly feasible possibility that this was an opportunity to balance things out. That, or destiny was mocking her. Even if it was though, I had no intention of ignoring equines in need of help. It's what May would have wanted... mostly. More than that though, I wanted to make things... I couldn't exactly make them right, but I could make things better for these folk. “My name is Ditzy,” I supplied. “I'm a travelling merchant. I might be able to help.”

The zebra allowed a small smile onto his muzzle. “I am Zanthe.” As he spoke, the other five figures entered the range of his lantern. There were three more zebras, and two ponies. Each of them had at least a small weapon, and barding with the Stable-Tec logo on it. While Zanthe's was proper security armour, the others looked like they had been patched and cobbled together to function as such.

Then, after noticing the Stable-Tec attire and Pipbucks on all present, I noticed that two of the mares were carrying foals. One was an earth pony colt, snoozing soundly, his left hind leg bandaged. The other took me by surprise. A zebra filly at first glance, but atop her head was the horn of a unicorn. As well, a rusty reddish tint covered the fur on her legs. The unicorn mare carrying her trotted up beside Zanthe. She saw me and took a step back in surprise, but no farther.

Zanthe gestured to the mare, “Ditzy, this is my wife, Cauliflower, and our daughter, Moon Chaser.”

***

In my defense, I had never seen a pony-zebra crossbreed before. After a little while spent staring, Cauliflower had brought my attention back to the rest of their group, each bearing various bandaged injuries. Shaking my head clear, I moved to the cart and pulled out a half-dozen healing potions and a roll of mundane bandages. Cauliflower took them in her telekinesis and smiled appreciatively, moving to administer them to her companions.

Zanthe addressed me immediately; “You said you were a merchant, yes? How much?”

I shook my head, “I wouldn't feel right charging,” I said. “I am curious about your story though.”

Zanthe blinked and tilted his head. “Well, alright. Stories have value too. My family and I come from a Stable. Specifically, Stable 3. It was built at the base of the mountain upon which Canterlot once stood.”

As I recalled, Canterlot was still standing, just poisoned by that cloud thing. “So did it open up recently?” I asked.

Zanthe nodded, “Yes and no. The poison megaspell used on Canterlot, we discovered, was eating its way inside. Even the Stable could not keep it out forever. At the discretion of the Overmares, we waited as long as we could in order to allow surface hazards to dissipate, but eventually we had no choice but to abandon our home.”

I followed the story, even if my lazy eye kept rolling down, but then blinked. “Overmares? Plural?”

Zanthe answered: “One zebra, one pony. Our Stable was intended to raise post-war generations to avoid the discrimination that made the Great War so much worse.”

I was intrigued. Although Stable-Tec had been messing around, they apparently had at least once success. The half-zebra, half-unicorn was, by herself, evidence of that. “So, are you all family then?”

Zanthe smiled, “Yes. The other zebras with us are my father, mother, and sister. The other pony is Cauliflower's brother, and the colt carried by my sister is his son.” He sighed a bit, “Her parents did not make it out of the Stable unfortunately, nor did my brother in law's wife.”

I frowned, bowing my head a bit in respect. “What about others?”

Zanthe shook his head, “Many of us had different ideas about how best to live outside the Stable. Some stayed to form a settlement, others, like us, made their own path. I wished to visit the homelands of my ancestors, and my family came along with me. What about you though; what is an Equestrian ghoul doing so far outside its borders?”

I frowned. “I was... looking for something with my companion. She didn't make it.” I hung my head.

Zanthe bowed his head respectfully for a moment. “What is it you were searching for?”

I answered, mostly. “A way to restore ghouls to their former state.”

Zanthe tilted his head, looking intrigued. “Given what I have seen of ghouls, this cannot have been an easy undertaking.”

I nodded. “When her unicorn magic failed to fix the problem on its own, she decided to look for answers in zebra magic. I won't claim to understand any of it, but she figured since balefire bombs were a zebra creation, their magic might have the missing solution to reversing it.”

Zanthe nodded in understanding. “We were taught about the conflict between ponies and zebras in the Stable, in the hopes that living in harmony together with that knowledge would prevent both sides from repeating past mistakes. It is a shame that my ancestors' kin wrought such destruction.”

I sighed, shaking my head. “Given what I saw back there, Equestria wasn't any kinder in response.”

Zanthe gave a small smile and raised his head a bit. “I do not think you or I can be found accountable for what was done before our time.”

I shook my head, “Actually, I was there when Cloudsdale was destroyed. That's how I ended up like... well, this.”

Zanthe blinked, looking surprised. “I did not realize ghouls were so long lived.”

I sighed once more. “Yeah, my friend was from the wartime as well. In all those years though, she never managed to finish her work, and now I don't think anyone ever will.”

Zanthe nodded, giving a sigh as well. “This world, sadly, seems to have a habit of taking things from everyone who steps hoof into it. We're not the only ones who lost family in the exodus from the Stable. The best we can do is move on with what we have left and our heads held high. If we let the wasteland win, then we are just as guilty of our own loss as anything.”

I perked my ears as Zanthe said 'guilty of our own loss', and my mind turned back to the thing guilty for a substantial loss just the day before. The wasteland had taken my best friend from me, and as I had told myself, the least I could do is find out why. I didn't know the extent of Zanthe's learning in the Stable, but I did know that he had a heap more education than anyone else I was likely to run into. As well, if the object was some sort of zebra artifact, the fact that some zebra culture was preserved through his Stable meant there was a chance he'd know what it was. It may have been pinning my hopes on a long shot, but I had never planned on just giving up.

“Um, Zanthe...” I began, “before my friend died, we did find something. She wasn't able to tell me what it was, but it seemed important.”

It was Zanthe's turn to perk up his ears. “Oh? Then perhaps your quest was not in vain after all. What is it you found?”

I moved back to the cart and opened it, careful not to disturb May's body as I moved to retrieve the invisibility cloak, and the object it concealed. I used the cloak to gently carry the glowing object out of the car and set it on the ground, pulling back the corners to reveal the object to Zanthe. Its glow brightened the area considerably, dwarfing what light his lantern pole provided.

Zanthe just gaped at the object for a moment. “You come from the time of war,” he began cautiously, “but you do not know what this is?”

Did that mean Zanthe did? I shook my head. “I was just a mailmare back then.”

Zanthe seemed transfixed by the object for a little while, a sensation I could recognize for having felt the same thing myself. “This... is a great and terrible weapon of destruction.” He said the next part in a whisper, “A balefire megaspell.”

In spite of Zanthe's whispering, I let out a very loud gasp at what he told me. I had been in posession of a Megaspell?! If there was any colour left in my face, it drained away as that revelation hit me. I had stomped on the thing in anger. I was lucky I hadn't incinerated myself, not to mention whatever else would have been in the blast radius had I set it off. I fell to my haunches as the weight of that truth washed over me. I was dumbstruck, words from Zanthe not registering as my mind reeled.

In that moment of revelation, several things became clear to me. The zebras of that tribe presumably did not know that their relic was a weapon of terrible destruction, else they wouldn't have been worshipping it. The very thing that they had been worshipping turned out to be the entire reason May and I had come to the zebra lands in the first place, and the sight of it had driven my friend insane. It wasn't that hard to deduce why either, even if I wasn't the smartest mare around. May hated zebras for what they did to Equestria, and she had recognized the balefire bomb on sight. She had seen her perceived enemies in possession of the very weapon that their ancestors had used to destroy our nation. She didn't get the chance to consider whether or not they knew what they were in possession of. She had already gone mad from the sight of it. I slumped to the ground and wept, fearing that the realization of the pointlessness of my best friend's death would drive me mad as well. Now that the tears had finally come again, they would not stop.

Then I felt a hoof in my shoulder. I stopped weeping for a moment, looking up at the hoof's owner with my bleary, tear flooded eyes. It was one of the other ponies; the one with the colt snoozing on his back. “It would be rude of me to ask how your friend lost her life, but clearly it's very heavy for you. When we were escaping from the Stable, I lost my wife. I'll tell you what Zanthe told me: dwelling on what you lost will blind you to what you still have to live for.” He smiled softly and glanced to the colt on his back.

I sniffled, wiping my eyes with a foreleg. A few more bits of skin flaked away along with my tears. I tried to think of what I still had. For a while, I just drew a blank. May had been my oldest and dearest friend. However, she hadn't been my only friend. My thoughts drifted back to Craterside, where Rottingtail was training the ghouls there to defend themselves without relying on Apex's thugs. I thought about Bright Light, off someplace else with her followers, possibly even free of persecution and thriving. May wasn't the only friend I had lost either: Gizmo, Stronghoof, Blinkie Pie, Bonus Track, and many of the residents of the Trottingham Necropolis, including Apple Crumble, who had been Rottingtail's nephew. He had been at least as enraged by that death as I was by May's, and yet he had eventually moved on. I had been able to move on in spite of all their deaths as well, partly in thanks to May. I had to count on being able to move on without her, with the help of the friends I still had.

***

I provided Zanthe and his family a chance to rest by looking out for them, not needing to actually sleep. When morning came, I shared what I could spare with them. They would likely need the supplies more, being slower on hoof than I was in the air. Going forward, none of us really knew what else they might encounter, but I would be heading back towards Equestria. It was familiar territory that I knew the dangers of already. I needed to get back to the friends I still had, and lay the one I had lost to a proper rest. Thankfully, I could do so by following the railroad tracks again. They would take me through Crescent Moon Canyon, and back onto Equestrian soil.

I had decided to hold onto the balefire bomb, although that had more to do with not really knowing what to do with it than anything else. There was perhaps the slim chance that someone else would be able to use it and the work May had already accomplished to finish her goal, but it certainly wasn't going to be me. Hope was all I had left either way, so I got going. Perhaps something would occur to me along the way. If not, maybe Rottingtail would have some insight. He actually had some battlefield experience, and might know of a safe way to store or dispose of the bomb. At least I had inadvertently discovered that it would be difficult to set off by accident. It probably needed a special trigger or detonator of some kind.

I departed from the abandoned rail station not long after Zanthe and his family had gotten underway, heading north along the tracks. As I drew closer to Equestria, I saw the jungle looming up ahead, which I had only previously seen from a great distance. Crescent Moon Canyon ran alongside it, the large valley that had gotten its name from the shape it carved out of the land when seen overhead. My trip was remarkably uneventful. Treks through the Equestrian wasteland were often dull, but without someone friendly to speak with, it was almost unbearable.

Several long, boring hours passed as I made my way to the canyon. Once there, the sounds of the nearby jungle provided a small comfort. Comfort in the fact that there were other living things nearby, diminished by the likelihood that if I actually met one of them, it would be in a fight. I sighed internally as I flew on, keeping close to the ground so as to not lose sight of the tracks.

As I wearily travelled on, my lazy eye rolled to the side. What I saw made me stop dead in my tracks.

It was nothing more than an empty, forgotten shell of a large school building, barely standing on ruined foundations. What might once have been a sprawling quad was now dirty, blackened, and empty. Ruined bits of statuary stood atop a pair of brick gateposts, and I could only guess what they had once depicted. The place felt like what it had become: a graveyard. A faded sign on one of the gateposts confirmed what I suspected: what I had found was Littlehorn.

In the days before the war, it had been a school for gifted unicorns under Princess Luna. Halfway through the war, a massacre here had led to Princess Celestia's abdication, and by extension, the founding of the Ministries. The details had not been very clear, with the reports saying only that a zebra had used a previously unknown weapon to kill everypony at the school. Why it happened was never made clear, but in the eyes of Equestria's public, it wouldn't have mattered anyways. A school full of children had been slaughtered. There was no justifying such a horror.

A memory drifted through my mind of May once again. Back when I had first met her, and led her and the ponies she had been tending to back to Ponyville for shelter, I had showed her the view of Canterlot. She had been terrified when she saw the pink haze covering the city, and cried out 'not Littlehorn'. I could only surmise that the megaspell used on Equestria's former capital had been the same as the weapon that was used here. It had been naive of me back then to think it was a smokescreen tactic, but I had been so reluctant to face the possibility of all that death.

Moroseness washed over me as I realized this had been where it all fell apart. While the war had been raging for years before, this was the place where everything took a sharp downhill slide. This was the point of no return. I touched down and slowly trotted into the schoolyard, driven by I know not what. Where once had stood a playground, now stood a memorial, dedicated to the ponies that had lost their lives here; students and teachers alike. I detached myself from the wagon and trotted up to it. I somehow felt that paying my respects here, more than just honouring the innocent victims of this massacre, would also be a show of respect for everyone else that had lost their lives in the Great War, and since. Or maybe I just needed to get away from my own present.

I seated myself in front of the memorial, glancing up to the top, where Princess Luna's cutie mark and an epitaph for the victims were carved into the obsidian block. In spite of the years passing and the world ending, the stone retained a polished finish. I suspected it had been enchanted so it wouldn't have to be cared for manually. It wasn't hard to imagine why that route had been taken; I can't think of anyone who would want the grim task of looking after such a dark reminder. It was strangely ironic that the memorial of this tragedy had survived an even greater catastrophe, which had stemmed from the one it canonized.

Below Luna's cutie mark were the names of the teachers, followed by the students. I began reading them over quietly to myself. Curiously, reading of these other victims did not increase the weight in my own heart over my friend's death. Rather, it made me feel a bit ashamed of how I had acted. May was my friend yes, but she was only a single death. I had let my closeness to May blind me to the fact that her tragedy was but one of countless others in the wasteland. May's life may have ended in tragedy, but she had lived her life in pursuit of something greater. She wanted to do something for the ponies of the wasteland, something that would matter. Unlike the foals on this memorial, she had lived a very long life, helping so many others. I was glad I had not succumbed to my grief, as I could think of no worse insult to May's memory than to forget all the good she had done.

As I continued reading the names on the memorial, I stopped as I neared the bottom. Two names stood out at me, as I had recently heard them uttered. 'Shoeshine' and 'Mirror', both of which were followed by the surname 'Cure'. My mind exploded into a sudden burst of activity when I read those names. The missing piece fell into place at last. May's hatred of the zebras, her dedication to the Ministry of Peace, and likely everything in her life that followed had begun here, just like the Ministries and the escalation of the war. Here, at this site, May had lost her family. Whether they were siblings, parents, or children, I could not have said, but that hardly mattered. The weight of it was all the same.

***

Time passed as I sat there in front of the Littlehorn Memorial. How much time I don’t remember, but it was a lot. Enough, I hoped, to pay my respects to every stallion, mare, and foal that had perished in that horrible tragedy. Perhaps more time still was owed in memorial of the ponies and zebras that had died in the Megaspell holocaust, but the wasteland itself had been quiet enough for that. After that long time of sitting and praying and reading the names, I stood up, ready to do what I needed to.

I trotted back over to the cart and pulled the tarp off of May’s body. She looked almost peaceful, like she might have been sleeping, but for the fatal wound in her chest. I felt like I had received a wound near as bad to my own heart, but maybe, with time, it would mend. At least I would have the opportunity to try, and wait, and hope to find out. I removed the spear from her chest gingerly, a pang hitting me as I remembered that in the end I had been the one to take her life. She was far from the first ghoul I had ever killed to spare them from feralism, but she was far and away the most important to me. If she had been turning feral less suddenly, she might even have thanked me for the mercy.

Using the shaft of the spear and a rusted piece of metal from the playground, I fashioned a crude shovel for myself and began to dig. I started the hole that would be my best friend’s grave a few feet from the Littlehorn memorial. Far enough away that I wouldn’t disturb it, but close enough that I felt she would be near her lost family. Time seemed to slow to a crawl once again as I dug. I only stopped for a moment to light my lamp when night fell, then continued. By the time I was finished, a last glance at May’s Pipbuck told me it was well after midnight.

I sighed as I looked over May’s body, setting the shovel down in the cart next to the balefire bomb. I was spared having to take anything from her corpse like conventional wasteland wisdom would suggest, as all of our supplies had been on the cart to begin with. The exception was her Pipbuck, but I had neither the knowledge nor tools to remove it, so I left it alone. I wouldn’t have known what to do with it even if I could get it off. Knowing how Stable-Tec built their things to last, it would probably still be there and working long after May’s remains had crumbled to dust.

With one last sorrowful glance at her, I took the tarp and wrapped it around her body like a shroud. I kneeled down and hefted her onto my back, then turned and trotted slowly out to the hole I had dug. I could feel the weight of my lost friend upon my back with every step, and it was a great relief to actually reach her grave. I knelt down gently and dipped my wings, allowing May’s body to slide into the hole, coming to a stop with a dull thud. I stood back up and looked down with a long, sad sigh.

There was nopony to attend May’s funeral but me. Nopony to speak words for her, or talk about the things she had achieved in her life. Nopony to listen if I were to be the one talking about her. All I had were our memories. Some of them were blurry, and in a hundred and twenty years, I had probably forgotten a fair share of them, but they were all I had to offer her now. I lowered my head and prayed silently that somewhere, out beyond the Equestria that we all know and live upon, she could be with her family again. Mirror, Shoeshine, Buttercup, and any others she had so long been bereft of.

My prayers finished, I began to fill the hole back in. I choked on my tears as the finality of burying my friend hit me the hardest now that I was doing so. I managed to hold back on being sick to my stomach with the grief, thankfully. With each clump of dirt I placed atop her wrapped body, I made the loss ever more real. At the same time though, acknowledging that loss was also helping me steel my resolve. May was gone, and nothing I could do would change that, but for her sake as well as my own, I would continue to live, and to strive to make the Equestrian Wasteland a better place. Whether for just ghouls, or for everypony.

I finished filling in May’s grave, then looked around. I couldn’t do anything as formal as the obsidian monument to the Littlehorn victims, but I would not leave May’s final resting place unmarked. Trotting over to the school’s outer wall, I retrieved a chunk of stone and dragged it back to the grave. It was a rough hunk of marble, but it was largest piece that was free of its own fractures. I set it down as flat as I could manage at the head of the fresh mound. I didn’t have a chisel or hammer, so I had to make do with the hunk of metal from my makeshift shovel to score the stone. It was not pretty writing, nor was it as resistant to fading as proper engraving, but I knew May would have understood that I did the best I could with what I had.

Here Lies Mayflower Cure

In life, she was kind, generous, honest, and brave.

She never stopped trying to help those in need.

Now in death, she rejoins those she loved.

Although the words to mark May’s grave came easily to me, it took some time to actually carve them correctly with only the rusty piece of metal. By the time I finished, dawn was breaking. At least I assumed it was, by the lightening of the clouds from black to grey. My engraving finished to the best of my ability, I pushed the stone back upright with my nose. Once it was set, I dug some of the earth around it and set it into the ground so it would be better anchored. With that, I concluded laying my friend to rest.

Before I could be sure May's rest would be peaceful, there was one last thing that I needed to take care of. I turned my gaze back to my cart, and to the Balefire Bomb that was on it, still concealed by the zebra’s magic cloak. There were many things I could do with it, but none of them seemed appealing. I couldn’t just leave it somewhere, but I had no desire to bring it back into Equestria either. I did not have the knowledge or skill to disarm it. I wasn’t afraid of it going off by accident after the stomping I had given it in my rage before, but just tossing it someplace could leave it to be found by someone who might know how to use it.

I decided at last that, since I could not dispose of it, I would have to hide it. That way, it would be safe from discovery, or from any force that might accidentally set it off, however unlikely that might have been. I retrieved the cloaked megaspell from my cart and flew it past the outer wall of Littlehorn, setting down near the edge of the nearby jungle. The jungle was thick, albeit sickly, and likely filled with mutated beasts. Very few travellers would have any desire to approach it. Mercifully, the spot I landed in was free of any such deterrents, for the moment at least.

I used my improvised shovel to clear away some of the underbrush, trying to do so quietly to avoid unwanted attention. Mercifully, none came, and I was free to begin digging. I dug the hole three times as deep as the bomb was wide, then used the zebra cloak to gently lower it down. I did not leave the cloak in the hole with the bomb; I was far too experienced in the wasteland’s challenges to give up something so useful. After filling in the hole thoroughly enough that the light from the device was thoroughly smothered, I turned away and began to trot back to the wagon.

I had only taken a few steps when I stopped, a thought crossing my mind. What if I found somepony who could understand May’s work, or had the know how to finish it? May had thought a Balefire Bomb might be the last piece of the puzzle for fixing the ghoul condition. Would it really be right to just abandon and forget about the thing? May had died for it after all. Of course, I knew the odds of finding another pony with May’s expertise were incredibly slim, but once that thought slipped in I found myself unable to shake it.

After debating with myself for a moment, I trotted back to the hole. I broke the piece of metal from my makeshift shovel and laid it right on top of the small mound beneath which the bomb was buried. Small, rusted, barely noticeable, the hunk of metal would go unnoticed by any of the jungle’s creatures, and be easily overlooked by any scavengers who might happen to pass through. I would know where it was though. If I ever found somepony who could finish what May started, I would know where I had left it. Even if I never found that somepony, I would still know.

With the marker in place, I returned to the wagon. I took a long time hitching myself up to it after stashing the zebra’s cloak in the back. It occurred to me that I didn’t really need to haul the whole thing back to Craterside, but for some reason the weight brought me a small comfort. Like I was back doing deliveries again. Although this time the only thing I would be delivering was news. The ghouls there, especially Rottingtail, deserved to know what had happened. After taking off, I hovered for a while over the Littlehorn memorial, and May’s little headstone beside it. By the time I worked up the nerve to leave, dawn had come again.

Footnote: Status Update!

Current Status: Non-Feral Ghoul

Lucidity: Moderate

Ghoul Tip: Don’t saddle yourself with burdens alone. Remember that stress is the enemy of lucidity, and sharing your feelings and concerns with friends is the easiest way to relieve it.

Bonus Perk Added: My Past Is Not Today – You don’t let what has gone wrong in your life stop you from trying to be your better self. You gain much higher resistance to the threat of feralism, regardless of radiation levels.