Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn

Chapter 4 - Bad Pony

Chapter 4

Bad Pony

"If that's what it took, why not? You said you were looking for a water talisman. Wouldn't you do anything to bring one back so everypony in your stable would live?"

Even in the distance, I could still see their village burning. Behind me, it was a dimly glowing ember in a sea of shifting snow. Their screams permeated my thoughts. Night Sky's words blackened my conscience. It wasn't right. They murdered those zebras, and they'd do it again if they could.

At the end of the day they'd get their caps.

I trudged through the fetlock deep snow, and at the end of the day, my hooves were still be empty. They did what I could not and could never have. They were doers. They were survivors.

And I was still a victim.

I made the choice of walking away from my only safe means of travel to Poneva.

I chose to be a good pony – at the cost of my stable. Every hour, every day spent out there was another day sheared off my stable's lifespan. I wasted my time – I wasted their time! I threw out the window the time I spent with those mercs, all because I chose to have a conscience. All because I chose not be a monster.

All because I chose to be a good pony.

A darker part of my soul reasoned with me. I should have stayed with those mercs. I probably would've been in Poneva by then. I'd have a water talisman in my hooves and I'd be able to return to my stable, close those doors behind me, and forget about everything outside.

I threw my head back and screamed in frustration, stomping my hooves into the snow. I would have sacrificed those zebras a hundred times over if it meant my stable lived! Those surface dwelling scum shouldn't have meant anything to me!

There was nothing left on the surface to save.

There was a reason why we never opened our doors ... and the wasteland was it.

My stable ... my stable was my world, and my world was my stable. I didn't belong outside. My bloodshot eyes absorbed my surroundings: there was nothing but the chilling breeze as it blew powder over the pale dunes all around me. I was in the middle of nowhere.

Again.

All because I chose to be a good pony. The first ponies I met slaughtered my friends. The next group slaughtered an entire village of zebras. Was there anything that made those two groups different? What use was there being good if everyone I saw, everyone I met ... wasn't? It'd be a disadvantage. It'd make me weak.

It'd make me a dead pony.

For a moment, at Dusktown, I had hope. Hope that the darkness that wouldn't leave that land didn't blackened the hearts of everyone. I knew then as I plodded across the ashen drifts, that there were monsters in all of us.

There was a monster inside of Gail.

I knew that there was one in me too.

For hours that felt like days, I slogged through the snow as the faint twilight of day became darker and darker like light waning through the crack of a closing door. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, and in the distance – watching me were a dozen hunched over silhouettes, stalking through the falling darkness.

Bloodletters.

I tried counting them, but the wind that swept across the drifts distorted their dark, canine shapes with gusts of powdery snow. They blinked red on my EFS at least two or three at a time, before fading away from my range of detection. They followed me, close enough to see me, but not close enough for me to see them.