ace sighed and kept his sights on them jay got closer to max and shoved her fave in her mane so she couldnt watch
Max held Jay back, and after a few minutes, the armoured ponies had left, heading back down the canyon, the way Max and the others had come from. She waited a bit longer, until they were out of sight, then stroked Jay's mane. "There was nothing we could have done..." She said, half to Jay, half to herself.
Max stood up and looked at them too. There was no way of knowing if what they had said was true, or if they were just raiders lying to try and save themselves, but there was no denying their execution had been cold and merciless. Each pony had been shot five times in the chest, rather then once in the head, and one was even still twitching...
Max walked over to the pony and gently rolled her over with her magic to examine her. She was alive, but just barely; the wounds to her chest were as bad if not worse than Jay's had been, and there was no chance of getting her back to the hospital. Max sighed, then dug around in her saddlebags, pulling out a dose of med-x; the least they could do was to ease her suffering. As she floated the syringe over however, the mare opened her eyes, and gasped raggedly, bringing up a little blood. She looked at Max and Jay in terror, before rasping her final words; "Please.... My family... Halfbridge..." She managed, before coughing violently, and finally going still.
Jay looked at him She was a bit in shock at seeing a pony die When she was with the previous ponies before max and ace she had seen plenty of deaths but none this close
Max sighed sadly, and used her magic to gently close the pony's eyes. As she did so, she noticed something in her hoof, pressed against her chest; she carefully pulled it free and looked at it. It was a locket, obviously from before the war, showing the dead mare with two foals and a stallion, all smiling. A family.
"If we can find out where this... Halfbridge is, then we will certainly try," Max said, tucking the locket safely into one of her pockets. "Are you alright, Jay?" She asked, looking at her, "Death like this is never an easy thing to see,"
He pressed herself agenst max like a small foul who had been lost in a store But she nodded that she was ok
Max hugged her, and kissed her forehead softly, typing on her Pipbuck as she did so. 'I think you need to come down here,' She sent to Ace.
Soon after that ace was climbing down and was right next to them "Yes max?" He said nuzzling jay a bit
Max motioned to the mare who had just died, and then showed him the locket. "She wanted us to find her family," She explained, still holding Jay gently, "They're in a place called 'halfbridge'." She looked at the other bodies. "Also, I think we should try and bury these ponies somehow; maybe under stone mounds." She'd read in a book once that that was how mountain ponies buried their dead, as they couldn't dig the stony earth up there.
Max nodded, started searching the mare, and then stopped. "Those other ponies must have already taken it all," She said, still wondering who they could have been....
