(story extract)
 
“So this is Quebuck, huh? Very… uh…” My gaze rose to the tall buildings, some seen down streets collapsed and bowed against one another. Pockets of radiation clicked everywhere in the main avenues, the snow having melted into a muddy slush from the heat still being emitted by arcane generators beneath the roads, steam billowing lazily into the air from sewage grates. Every now and again, you could see the skeleton of somepony from before the war, a pile of bones laying in front of a building, not yet buried by the snowstorms. We walked carefully, staying silent most of the time, almost afraid to talk over the sounds of the wind whipping through the canyon-like structures that were the city streets. The place as a whole just really felt eerily more dead than the rest of the wasteland, even colder than the ice and snow that covered the place. As we passed beneath an elevated railway T-junction where one avenue connected to another, I glanced up at the building opposite, stopping in my tracks. Minty took a few steps ahead before noticing, my gaze fixated upon the facade. He turned around, following to where I was looking.
 
“Twintails? What is~~… oh…” We stood there, looking up at the faded blue, modern-looking structure that was once a city building, and focusing on the strange shapes that were burned into the facade; the girders of the elevated T-junction were imprinted in stark, prominent shadows across the face of the structure, and even the glass on the windows. Blurred forms, but unmistakibly pony in shape, were seared into the brick at varying heights. Some were standing on the upper platform, some were at street level, and some ~~ without the shadows of wings - were high up on the wall, frozen in time as they were falling, jumping I suppose, wanting some sort of death before the bomb hit them. Poor bastards. The shadows seemed to be offset, pointed more to the southwest of the city, and high up. Air burst… I guess the missile was off course, a zebra-made Balefire warhead could no doubt have turned an entire city into ash if it were aimed right. It was so eerie to see these things still around after two centuries, ghosts from the war, immortalized as negatives on the hard walls and piles of ash. We didn’t linger around long.
 
Following and winding through the streets inside the city, faded billboards and posters that were facing away from the detonation or protected in the shadows of the skyscrapers advertized a concert at a music hall. Glancing at the local map, it wasn’t too far from where we were - this seemed to be the entertainment district. ‘One Week Only, the famous Tom Neighrer live in concert!’… wait a tick. Tom Neighrer? The Tom Neighrer?! Okay, yeah, I think we might have to take a detour - the late, great Tom Neighrer’s remains deserve better than rotting behind some stage curtain somewhere. He was a brilliant preformer from before the war, I so dearly loved his satire and humorous teaching methods… boy, of all the songs I knew, why did this one pop in my head? I found myself faintly humming a song as we began to walk along, Minty looking over at me curiously. “…we will all bake together when we bake, there’ll be nopony present at the wake! With complete participation in that grand inceneration, nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak! Oh, we, will, all char together when we char…”
 
“What in the name of the goddesses are you singing?” Minty stared at me, a quizzical and concerned look on his face. Granted, based on the current world situation it was quite macabre, but that didn’t take away from the fact it was catchy as hell and darkly satirical… or, was darkly satirical, at least. It’s a Tom Neighrer classic, deal with it!
 
“Notice the posters ‘round here? Tom Neighrer - THE Tom Neighrer - was in concert when the bombs dropped! The least we can do is give what’s left of him some kind of burial, right? We can afford to take a detour, not on a time limit, are we?” The unicorn beside me blinked a few times, eyerolling and turning his gaze back to the buildings, looking back down the road, thinking. After a few moments, he let off a sigh, dropping his head.