Fallout Equestria: Pie and Predation

[Dalinale]

Doc secures the cuties in the middle section of the bus. He gets a few garments of clothes he saved and pit it over them like a blanket to keep them warm. "Shh, everyone rest now. It is night time, for good dreams," he tells the little abominations in a calm voice.

The chatty meat lumps quieted down on his command.

He then rummages through his saddlebag and gets out some food for Butch the dog, who earned himself a meal. Doc will fill a bowl or pot with water as well. He then turns to Bertly. "Thank you for your help."

[Remove appropriate food items from your inventory.]

"I live to serve!" Bertly said, sounding about as enthusiastic as Butch was trying to wolf down two hundred year old canned food.

Tell her to save me some Moonshadow typed slowly back, before descending yet another staircase.

Moonshadow went down the stairs without issue; the ceiling was ribbed, while torch holders poked out between every pair of pillars carved into the wall itself. Soon, however, she found herself standing in front of a chamber that looked more like a museme set than a functioning room.

The room itself had a simple layout; to her left were two very old looking desks with two very old looking wooden chairs in front of them, the desks messily covered in papers and each having a ink well and quill present. To her right was single very large filing cabinet, eight cabinets high and ten cabinets wide and with a top bearing the load of several large square baskets, as well as a large wooden dresser with opaque glass doors that were dusty enough determine what was inside was impossible.

The far end of the room was slightly raised, and had a small square alter of sorts, one with a flat head and a rounded base and four lit candles on top of it, one on each corner. Directly behind the alter was a small, abstract marble statue of a alicorn wearing a shawl, about the size of a filly; the statue's features were vague, but a pair of wings and a horn was present, but there were no signs of a mouth or eyes.

Directly behind the alter was a set of large stone doors that blended in rather well with the walls themselves; they didn't appear locked, and were cracked open, just slightly.

Choro actually pauses for a second at Mirror's final statement. She hadn't considered magical history quite in the light of that philosophical viewpoint before, but... Mirror is not wrong. The wizards of antiquity were trailblazers of a different sort, codifying and creating spells of their own, from Starswirl on down. They had no grand history of predecessors to look back upon and revere. They just got down to work. They tried to make things better for ponies, did their best to understand magic and use it to build a better world.

Just like Twilight Sparkle did. Was that why Professor Strata had... Could you consider the arcane sciences a progression of that...

No. No, she can't. She can't just... throw all that aside, put all that history behind her, even if the Everfrost princess had touched upon a good point. Sighing, Choro hefts the case high for the last stretch, chuckling dryly with affected mirth. "Well, if you consider me 'evil', so be it. At least it's a change from most ponies just thinking of me as a filly in a silly hat."

With a final relieved heave, the chest of money is aboard the bus. Choro smiles at the ever adorable cuties, looking over to see if Doc could do with any assistance before returning her attention to Mirror. "I take it you knew wizards in your homeland?" The little mage turns her head, raising a curious eyebrow at the foreign unicorn. "And they subscribed to this 'knight of the mind' philosophy? They abstained from dark magic?"

"I knew many wizards. Some use dark magic, but most do not. There are no magic laws, but illusions are not popular, and magic that can change ponies thoughts and feelings are also not liked." Mirror replied, "My sister is a wizard, but I do not think you would want to see her."

"My distraction for Moonshadow involved extreme exertion," Stellar explains. "A cold drink is refreshing - I assure you I'm quite warm in my barding."

Mirror relaxed, and nodded in reply.

"Why was lethality necessary?" Viridia asked. "I mean. it sounds like if students are capable enough to be part of that, then it's kind of a waste to make sure they get killed? Like, I'd rather have one very talented student and one quite talented student than just one very talented student."

The ghoul closed her eyes briefly before replying.

"It wasn't, but you'd have to understand what the Emperor did to keep the nation from collapsing. The Emperor used to be thought of being the one to move the sun until Alicorns were discovered, and when most of the country learned that the Emperor had no special powers, the moral authority his ancestors had almost evaporated overnight except for everyone in the same room as him. When he came to power, he altered the government's stance on shrines and temples so that they became part of the bureaucracy; they really didn't fund it too much more then they had, but they made it so that participating in shrine activities was the most basic aspect of being Neighponese. About halfway though the war, though, there were several members of the higher ups who were closely aligned with the Imperial ideology, the same people who'd support the new Emperor. The board that made the new tournament thought the nation itself was impure after accepting the use of guns, so they thought that the most suitable penance was to have some initiates ritually kill each other to make it clear that the individual value of a solder was lesser than it ever had been and that one Neighponese solder needed to fight with the skill of many more in order to survive, or something stupid like that. They might had some sort of master plan that involved creating a new army core that was even more elite and smaller than it already was, but I never learned of it."