The hollow thump of the axe echoed in the clearing as I chopped at the tree trunk. The handle reverberated with each swing, and every hit jostled more snow from the top of the tree. The sun was blaring down overhead, and the snow had finally stopped. I levitated the axe back, and wiped away the build-up of sweat on my forehead. I inspected the tree and found that the axe had only cut a few inches out of the trunk.

“Do we really need more firewood, Dad?” Said a voice from the side.

I looked back at the filly behind me. She was sitting on a flattened rock; juggling snowballs in the air with her telekinesis. The orange sphere of magic slowly grew in size as she added more snowballs into the trick. Her horn barely emerged from the bulky red coat and blue hat she was wearing.

“We do if we don’t want to freeze tonight, Amber.” I responded. The temperatures dips when the sun went down were enough to warrant danger from hypothermia. It was better to be safe than sorry with the stockpile of firewood in this situation.

I coughed and turned back towards the tree. I brought up the axe and inspected the tool. The wooden handle had several large fissures running through it, the stone axe edge was flattened and the rope that fastened the two parts together frayed out in all directions.

We needed a new axe. At this point, it was like I was trying to chip away stone with a fork.


“How many trees do we honestly need?” Amber asked. “There’s gotta be enough wood on the sled for tonight!”

She was right. I glanced behind me. The sled sat in a small crevice underneath a jutting rock. Dozens of foot long half-cylinders of wood rested on it. Enough for a few days at least…

I sighed, “We should get as much as possible, we can’t be sure if the weather will stay like this, and the less we’re outside, the safer we’ll be. My eyes swept around the clearing, “You know what I told you, don’t you?”

Amber screwed up her face, sticking her tongue out at me. “There are deadly monsters out here who would just love to eat a little filly like me,” she rocked her head back and forth, and rolled her eyes. “I'm not a baby anymore, Dad; those old ghost stories don’t bother me anymore.”

Yes, old ghost stories. The longer she thought of it that way, the easier things would be. I had saved my eternal gratitude for Celestia that she had been born a unicorn, and not a pegasus, although I should have saved half my appreciation for Hazel Dust-

Hazel Dust…

If only things had been different. But that was an old and finished path.

Either way, even with the non-stop snow and ice storms, and the irregular day cycles, with clear weather like this, and a keen eye, one could see the distant ruined spires of Canterlot just peeking over the mountains in the distance.

It was easier not having to explain things, and for that I was thankful. As long as she never levitated herself over the tree line…

Something smacked me upside the head, and I shook snow out of my mane. I turned towards Amber, and noticed one less snowball than before.

“Hey, you’re just standing there, doofus, staring at the tree!” Amber cried. She threw the rest of the snowballs at me, one by one.

“You’ll never beat the WHIRL,” I shouted back at her.

I levitated the axe and spun it with the handle to deflect the projectiles, but it was no use. The gauntlet of spherical ice overwhelmed my old unicorn self, and by the time the assault ended, I wash half pony, and half abominable snow pony.

Amber laughed at me as I shook the snow off. Today was going to be an alright day.

Something snapped in the forest around us, and several more snaps followed. It was the harsh fracture of small sticks…the telltale sign twigs cracking.

Someone… something was in the trees around us, and judging by the amount of sound, more than one.

I levitated the axe upright and stepped close to Amber. She huddled closer to my forelegs, and we both did a double take around the clearing. Nothing was visible through the thick foliage… yet.

“Dad… what was that?” She whispered, frantically whipping her eyes back and forth around the area.

“Just stay calm, sweetie, and keep close.”

The cold hadn't killed everything. Most of the birds and wildlife had frozen to death in the first few weeks, and most of the ponies before that, the ones that had survived the upheaval anyways. Sure, timberwolves had been common in the first few years, but even they had tampered out after a while.

This had made the task of collecting food easier. The rare winter herbs and flowers that managed to survive the freezing temperatures would only be more rare with more herbivores around. The fact that it seemed like Amber and myself were the only two things eating these things was a miracle. Combine this with disappearing carnivores and it did seem like our luck had been holding steady.

Up until how, that was.

This was the first sign of life in a few months, and of course it would be like this.


I kept my voice low when I spoke.

“Listen, Amber, I want you to take the axe and run back home.” I knew she was going to interrupt so I kept going. “We need that firewood if we want to survive the night, and I can’t manage to control the axe and the wood, so please, just get home as quickly as possible and close the entrance. I’ll be right there, okay?”

I let her take the axe with her magic, before releasing it with my own. “Just swing at anything that isn't me, alright. And I do mean swing.”

She nodded her head, and we crept closer to the sled. It wasn't as much wood as I wanted, but it would have to do.

It needed to.

“On one.” I muttered. More twigs snapped around us, louder this time.

Something burst out of the trees on the right, and smacked into me, knocking me into the sled. The back of my head smashed off the logs of wood, and stars burst into my vision, as static exploded from the ears.

I saw Amber scream from my quickly darkening vision, and she swung the axe at the creature stood atop of me.

Green blood splattered down on me. It was icy cold, and chilled deep into my fur, seeping through the coat I was wearing. The daze in my head lifted slightly, and I saw myself running next to Amber. The orange glow of magic covered her horn, and shrill screams filled the atmosphere behind us.

Trees swept by as we stumbled through the forest. The snow had covered our earlier tracks, and now we moved through the area on feeling and instinct alone. The hoofsteps behind us were growing closer as we passed from tree line to tree line. As we approached the cliff overlooking from the valley where home laid, one of the creatures darted from the trees and leapt at Amber.

She shrieked, and the two collided with an explosion of limbs and snow. Amber ended up on the bottom, and the creature reared its hooves to stomp down on her.

“NO!” I screamed, as I barrelled into the monster. Air left my lungs and the two of us rolled away. The ground underneath gave way to air, as the momentum pulled us over the cliff and down into the snowy abyss below. I wrapped my hooves around the creature’s neck and orientated myself to be on top. The ground approached in a flash of ice and rock, and Amber’s scream was the last thing to hit my ears before the impact took my consciousness.

Thoughts drifted back to me in a haze, and eventually my ears slithered open. The sun was low in the sky, and the evening chill was already working its way into my body. I looked behind me, at the crushed body of the creature I had used as a makeshift fall mattress. It had been completed flattened against the rocky floor, and I had landed in a softer pile of snow. Its body twitched periodically, legs kicking as the nervous system died. Green blood flowed over the rocks.

Changelings. Of course.

Of all the creatures to survive the arctic wastes, it would be the species directly responsible for the situation, and in numbers enough to threaten everything else.

But that could be dealt with later. Right now, I needed to get back home. Standing on shaky legs, and ignoring the brutal pounding in my head. I limped back through the woods.

---

I emerged from the trees in front of the cottage. My vision swam unevenly, and a deep nested sensation of nausea reeled through my gut. Something was wrong.

I shook my head to clear my eyes, and slowly made my way to the cottage door. I blinked several times to ensure my eyes weren't playing tricks on my, and the feeling in my stomach worsened.

The reinforced shutters covering the windows were smashed in, and insulation littered the snowy ground. Massive cracks penetrated the siding on the cottage, and steam slowly hissed out through the gaps. The front door had been broken off the hinges, and the interior door was missing completely. Green blood sat frozen in the snow, leading both into and out of the house.

I crept closer, dodging the sharp splinters of glass, wood and siding, and peeked inside the building.

Our home was gone. And gone was being generous. I stepped inside the entrance to the living room.

The chairs had been ripped to shreds, the fabric flung across the room in every direction. Deep, dark stains of green covered much of the room, and huge slice marks were imprinted into every inch of the floor and walls.

I turned towards the kitchen, only to meet an impasse of snow. The roof had collapsed, and the room was buried underneath a ton of ice and debris.

More blood stains led around the living room and down into the basement. I followed down into the darkness.

Or so I thought.

A massive chunk of wall had been blown out of the far wall, right near the ceiling, and the evening light crept in through the hole. The shelves lining the basement were empty. All the supplies; the food, the clothing, the insulation, all the storage and building materials had been taken. Everything was gone, all those years of work now amounted to nothing.

Amber, Hazel Dust and I had lost Canterlot.

Then Amber and I had lost Hazel Dust.

Then we had lost civilization.

Now I had lost my home and my daughter, the last few things precious to me in this world.

Now I had nothing.

Of course I was wrong again. Something glinted in the light of the setting sun. I strode closer and found the object wedged into the back wall. It was stained everywhere with a dark green. The handle had been replaced, the edge had been sharpened, and the rope that fastened the two parts together was new.

Maybe, just maybe, I could get back some of the things that were precious to me.

I drew the axe from the wall and squeezed up through the hole in the ceiling. More snow greeted me outside. I frantically stepped towards the tree line, desperate to find where they had taken Amber, when I tripped over a pile of snow. The pile shuddered and hissed at me, and the snow parted just enough for me to see the black, chitinous creature underneath.

The shell on its stomach had been crushed open in a massive hoof-wide hole. Bits of chitin and blood pooled in the snow beneath the creature, freezing into icy orbs with the cold temperature. He… It… didn't have long left, maybe even less if it didn't give me what I wanted.

I levitated the axe over the changeling and snarled, “Where is my daughter?”

Its eyes rolled back and forth in its head as the changeling tried to focus on me. “Daughteeeerrrr…?” He spat spittle and green all over himself as it spoke. “Food.” It mumbled as several legs twitched.

I pressed the axe down into the wound. “Where did you take her?”

It squealed, reeling back into the snow. “NORTH! NORTH!” It shrieked out, curling into a fetal position as I removed the axe.

I glanced towards the northern tree line, and started walking. I found cracked branches, and the faint signs of hoof prints left in the snow. Following them through the woods, I crept along the path as the sun set behind me. The light faded into darkness, and the cold emptiness of the sky chilled the earth. My breaths came out in huge swathes of evaporation as I continued through the trees.

Once again my thoughts went back to the changelings. Why would they want my daughter? So many had attacked just to get at us, and there was no way one little filly would be enough to satisfy the amount of love they required. Then again, for a species that used love as a food source, maybe the last two sentient creatures capable of producing love were a valuable commodity that was worth the risk. But that was working under the assumption that Amber and I were the only ponies that could have found, and under the assumption they couldn't survive on other means of food.

Lost in my thoughts, I barely noticed as I emerged from the tree line to face the mouth of an enormous cave. As my hooves scrapped over the rocks, I glanced into the dark abyss ahead of me. A warm wind howled out at me through the cave’s opening.

So that was how they kept themselves from freezing. Dig deep enough and the earth will keep you warm.

Casting light from my horn, I ventured in. The floor was absurdly slanted downwards, and I not so much as walked as I did slide, down into the darkness. Huge amounts of moisture glued itself to the cave’s ceiling, and the stinking aroma of something rotting came from further in.

It didn't take long for them to notice me. The cave branched off into dozens of small tunnels, barely large enough to squeeze through, and as I passed, the eerie feeling of being watched firmly remained in my stomach.

The first changeling threw itself at me further in. I had just stopped to adjust my telekinetic grip on the axe when it lunged from the ceiling above in a hiss of screams and a flurry of bites. I was faster, though, and brought the axe into the creature’s neck. It splattered and seized on the axe, choking on its own blood, before it fell still and slid off the axe. It hit the ground with a wet thwack and twitched.

Two came at me the next time, rushing from opposite sides of the tunnel. I swiped at the first one with the axe and embedded the weapon in its foreleg. The changeling tumbled to the ground as the second one tackled me into the tunnel wall, and latched its fangs into my left cheek.

I screamed, as the hot sensation of blood quickly bloomed on my face. I ripped my face away from the changeling, and it tore away a piece of fur and flesh. I kicked him back with my forehooves and lunged, driving my horn into the softer shell on the bottom of his chin straight out the top of its head. It’s death scream died on its lips, as the changeling slumped onto of me.

I tore my horn out of its face, and turned back to the first changeling, who was still struggling to remove the axe from his leg. A few stomps of my hooves ceased its movement.

More hissed resonated behind me, but the creatures stayed out of the illumination of my horn as I kept going.

Finally, deep inside the cave, where the heat was warm enough to be uncomfortable, the top of the tunnel gave way into a massive clearing. The sides of the tunnel widened considerably and the rocky walls disappeared deep into the darkness.

It was here I stopped.

I dropped the axe, and focused on my illumination spell, as I cast light out into the cavern. The nauseous feeling returned to my gut.

Dozens, if not hundreds of changelings, lined the cavern and its rocky outcroppings. I was completely surrounded, and they did not shy away from the light this time.

A single changeling stepped forwards from the crowd, larger and more armoured that the others, its chitinous armour darker and bulkier than the others.

I stared at the creature, and spoke. “Give me back my daughter.”

It opened its mouth with a long hiss before speaking. "Why...?" Its voice was deep.

I stood there, panting, and covered in green blood. “You’ll never get my daughter’s love, you monsters! There's no way she can keep all these changelings alive!”

The changeling leader cocked its head, peering at me with its empty eyes. “Love…?” He asked quizzically. “Ponies are food.” He said emotionlessly.

The blood on my face didn't feel so warm anymore. "Food..."

It made clicking noises with its mouth, as if in a form of laughter. "Ponies eat plants. Changelings eat love." The changeling licked its lips. "Or meat."

Some pieces of the puzzle slowly clicked into place.

It made sense why all the wildlife had been slowly disappearing from around the area. Amber and I had just been the last ticks on a very long checklist.

The changelings around me crept closer.

“And now we have two meals.”