12th day of Rising Sun
455 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

Pallas stumbled, losing her balance as a wave tilted the boat. There was a crack as blades dug into the wood of the deck. Pallas swore as she was wrenched around, her leg popping free as she fell on her face. If she’d been wearing her armor, it would have just been embarrassing. Since she wasn’t, it was also painful as her snout hit solid oak and the sharp teeth of her helm’s maw-like visor stuck in the deck.

She looked back, growling, at the metal leg still standing by itself, leaving her bandaged stump exposed, suddenly cold as it was freed. It was almost entirely healed over now, only aching when the weather changed. Or she was trying to sleep. Or she got upset. Or she walked around too much.

It ached a lot, really.

“I told you already, you need to make sure the straps are tight,” Bianca said, as she dropped down from the rigging to land next to Pallas. “Otherwise the leg doesn’t work properly.”

“I thought it was tight enough!” Pallas snapped. She pulled her face free of the deck, leaving a wide bite mark, and got up to her three hooves, leaning on the ship’s railing for support. The ship was one of the smaller ones in the fleet Luna had put together, three dozen ships in total, the largest formerly a grain transport now serving as the flagship and the heart of the fleet, carrying the civilians who had decided to follow Luna across the sea. All told, there were ten thousand ponies, packed onto the ships, the trip only tolerable because of high spirits and plentiful supplies.

Bianca used all of her strength and managed to free the leg from the deck, pulling out half of a broken board along with it. She turned to look at Pallas and frowned, worried. Pallas shivered, flinching as the wind started to pick up. “Are your burns starting to hurt again?” She edged closer, nuzzling Pallas carefully. The burns had mostly healed, and Pallas’ coat had quickly grown back in, but constant pain and itching had made her irritable for months.

Pallas huffed and turned her gaze to the sea, unable to meet Bianca’s gaze. “It’s the salt air. It just… stings.” She refolded her wings, her wingblades gleaming with bronze and a glimmer of green along the edge, like the blade’s cutting surface was formed of pale, dimly glowing emerald.

“I can tell,” Bianca said. “I think Ryujin has a little more of that salve he was using on you before.”

“I used the last of it already,” Pallas groaned. She’d barely been able to sleep the night before, her leg aching like a storm was rolling in and her skin raw and red under her dirty, rime-crusted coat. “I can’t wait until we’re back on solid ground. I miss having actual dirt and rock under my hooves. I keep thinking I’m about to fall and last time I almost decapitated a sailor when my wings popped out on reflex!”

“Are you sure you’re not an earth pony?” Bianca teased.

“Laugh it up,” Pallas sighed. “Can you help me get my leg back on?” Pallas wiggled her bandage-wrapped stump of a back leg. Bianca hefted the metal limb, getting it into place. As she and Pallas pulled the straps tight, the hoof flexed, the blade retracting and the broken board falling away. It had been acting up for a while now, the grit from drying seawater getting into the gearing of the spurs.

“How’s that?” Bianca asked, stepping back in case the blades popped out on their own again. Pallas took a cautious step, the artificial limb unsteady on the wet wood of the deck.

“Good enough,” Pallas sighed, as she tapped the hoof against the ground, extending and retracting the blade in the cloven hoof.

“We should arrive within two days,” said a soft voice. An armored form stepped, impossibly, out of the thin shadow of the ship’s mast. Resplendent Shadow glanced back towards the other ships in the fleet. “Though… this has been too easy.”

“We’ve been at sea for months,” Pallas spat, a trace of blood in it from where she’d bitten her tongue while falling. “I’d hardly call this easy. The wind has been working against us the whole way.”

“This is nothing,” Fluttering Moth yelled down from the crow’s nest, where she was perched like an albatross. “If they wanted to keep us out, they could have done worse than just make us tack against the wind!”

“I’m not sure about that,” Shadow said. “I don’t know if you can feel it, but this place is… thick. Like a miasma of magic that’s been getting more and more dense the closer we get.”

“Does this mean you won’t be able to cast spells?” Bianca frowned. “Because that’d be bad.”

“Of course not,” Resplendent Shadow snorted. “It’s not nearly as bad as the Empire was.”

“The Crystal Empire?” Bianca asked.

“Yes,” the crystal unicorn nodded. “It was… difficult, towards the end.”

“What Respy means is that she got her sorry flank kicked by Luna,” Moth put in.

“I did not!” Resplendent Shadow shouted. “Sombra betrayed us all in his quest for immortality. I thank the Princess every day for saving what little she could of our people.”

“What did he do, anyway? Ponies always talk about it, but…” Bianca trailed off.

“It would be difficult to explain in great detail to a non-unicorn. Removing the technical aspects… The soul of a pony has a great deal of power, especially for magical rituals. What Sombra wanted was to give himself a body that would live forever. For a time, I was his right hoof. He taught me everything I know about shadow magic.” Shadow sighed. “He was driven. I admired him, until I learned how many ponies he was willing to kill to fill his ambitions.”

“That’s when Respy switched sides!” Moth noted, fluttering down from the mast, almost getting blown off the ship by a stray gust of wind. “We were all pretty surprised, since she’d been super annoying to fight up until then.”

“Yes, well, waking up one day to your mentor sacrificing almost everypony not under the protection of the Crystal Heart was a wake-up call,” Resplendent Shadow muttered. “I wouldn’t have been able to fight it off if not for my own talents with dark magic.”

“He even tried to kill you?” Pallas raised an eyebrow, frowning.

“His reasoning was that if he was immortal, he could always find another apprentice, given time.” Shadow snorted. “He was completely insane. If he isn’t dead, I hope he’s suffering somewhere.”

The ship rocked as another wave hit it, accompanied by a hard gust of wind.

“Girls, we have a problem,” Moth said, her wings extended to their full width. She was looking towards the sky, where clouds had begun to form out of nowhere.

“That’s a beast of a storm coming,” Pallas muttered.

“It’s unnatural,” Shadow noted. “This miasma - I recognize it now. It’s residue from weather magic. I didn’t think it could get like this.”
Heads turned to look at the clouds as thunder rumbled loudly enough to be heard over the waves starting to pound against the hull of the ship.

“Get inside,” Pallas said. The ship’s captain started yelling orders, sailors taking down the sails to try and protect them from the oncoming storm. “We need to get out of the way.”

Rain started splattering down around them, skipping drizzle and light rain and almost immediately graduating straight to a wall of water.

“Why is it red?!” Bianca gasped, as her white coat was quickly stained with a rusty crimson color by the precipitation.
Pallas stuck out her tongue, tasting the rain.

“It’s dirt,” she said, after a moment. “Not blood.”

“The wind is carrying sand and soil it picked up from the mainland,” Moth shouted over the noise of the storm as they ran for cover from the downpour. “We must be closer than I thought!”

The ship pitched to the side, ponies sliding across the deck. Saltwater sprayed across the deck, smearing the puddles of thin mud collecting around their hooves. The other ships were already starting to vanish, barely visible in the growing fury of the storm.

“Look!” Bianca shouted, pointing up. There was a hole in the accumulating cloud layer, the rest of the storm rotating around it like the hub of a wheel. Within it, illuminated by emerald lightning and surrounded by a pervasive glow like a firefly, was a huge form, with a wingspan perhaps as wide as their ship was long, the edges rimmed with blunt, square feathers.

“Zephyranthes,” Moth whispered. “He’s trying to break up the armada himself!”

“We need to fly up there and take him out!” Pallas shouted. “It’s what we’re here for!”

“In this storm? With you wearing that heavy armor?” Moth laughed without humor. “That’s suicide! We can’t even reach him!”

One of the other ships loomed out of the red rain, the surge of rain pushing it towards their boat. They could see the terrified expression of the crew of the second ship before the two collided, hulls scraping against each other. Part of the railing collapsed, and a half-dozen sailors fell overboard into the surf.

“Get ropes and try to get them before we lose sight!” the Captain shouted. Pallas grabbed a coil of rope with her teeth, rushing to the edge.

“Don’t take wing,” Moth warned. “With the winds like this, you’ll end up in the water and needing rescue yourself.”

“I know!” Pallas shouted, her voice muffled by the rope in her mouth as she tied it to some of the remaining railing, the knot messy and inexpert. She squinted into the water, her night vision not helping in the haze of rain and the confusion of the ocean waves. She spotted a waving, panicking hoof, and threw the rope towards it, the hemp splashing down next to the struggling pony.

The pony splashed, not quite reaching the dangling rope.

“Grab the damn rope!” Pallas yelled, trying to wrangle it closer to the struggling form. Her armor’s spurs steadied her as she leaned over the edge, the wood cracking below her.

“Pallas!” Bianca screamed. Pallas looked up, and saw the prow of another ship, not even the same one they’d hit before. It was descending on them like the blade of a huge knife. She jumped back and held onto Bianca with her front hooves as the ships crashed into each other, wood exploding into splinters as their boat broke in half.

Pallas grit her teeth as she spread her wings, trying to get clear of the sinking wreckage. A gust of wind slammed into her like a sledgehammer, forcing her down into the water. Bianca was torn from her grip by the impact, Pallas hitting the surface and sinking like a stone. The salt filled her mouth as the ocean closed over her head.

Pallas kicked and struggled, trying to get to the surface. Her armor dragged at her, her wings sluggish to respond as the cold, murky water fought against her like a living thing. The ghostly green light from above faded as she sank.

Pallas sputtered, spitting up what must have been a gallon of salt water. Her body was burning from where salt had found its way into her wounds, and she felt heavy, exhausted, and like somepony had rolled her down a rocky hill.

“Please wake up!”

Somepony was screaming in her ear. She groaned and opened her eyes, finding herself looking directly into a pair of wet, red eyes that had obviously been crying.

“Bianca?” Pallas asked, her voice rough from dry heaving and the salt. The smaller thestral pulled her into a hug.

“I was so worried! You weren’t breathing and I didn’t know what to do!” She sobbed into Pallas’ shoulder. Pallas looked around, her exhaustion making her feel oddly placid and detached. They were on a beach. Above them, the sky was almost totally clear of clouds, the storm long gone. Broken boards and other flotsam littered the sand.

“What happened?” Pallas coughed.

“Our ship wrecked, and Luna couldn’t get to us,” Bianca said, worried. “She was keeping the civilians safe from the storm. I don’t know if they made it. I can’t hear her anymore.”

“You can’t hear her?” Pallas blinked, starting to come around a little more.

“It’s the miasma,” Shadow said, suddenly at their side as she stepped out of the shadows they were casting. “It’s making minor magic difficult. Magic requires one to use enough force to exceed the ambient magic of an area. In Equestria, it is like a sword cutting through the air, with almost no resistance at all. With how swamped this place is, it is like cutting through mud instead, so precision and speed become impossible.”

“So we don’t even know where she is…” Pallas mumbled.

“We know where she’s going,” Shadow noted. “Our plans were to march to the capital, which is in the north. If we march north along the coast, we’re sure to find a settlement of some kind. From there, we can get directions to the capital.”

“Help me up,” Pallas whispered. Bianca offered her a shoulder to lean on as she stood, the thestral getting up onto shaking hooves, almost losing her balance as her metal leg dug awkwardly into the sand.

“Fluttering Moth is circling us and looking for other survivors, but for the moment, we seem to be alone,” Shadow said. She pointed, and Pallas could just barely make out the black dot of a flying pony against the bright grey-blue of the sky.

“You seem sure we’ll find a town,” Pallas said, looking around. She couldn’t see a plant, or any end to the sand. “This place looks like a desert.”

“That makes things even more likely,” Shadow noted. “Cities and villages naturally form around sources of water. Rivers, lakes, wells, and oceans. We know the capital is to the north. If we travel north, we will be going the right way. If we remain near the coast, it’s likely we’ll find a fishing village or at least a port town. Either might be of some use.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Pallas shrugged. She looked down at Bianca and nuzzled her. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

“It’s you that I’m worried about,” Bianca muttered. “I thought you were dead.”

“What, just because of the ocean?” Pallas snorted. “Not likely.”

“We should go,” Shadow said. “It will be nightfall in a few hours, and if we travel at night we will see cities from some distance. It will also be more comfortable if this does turn out to be an expansive desert.”

“Fine,” Pallas said, spitting and trying to get the taste of dirty salt out of her mouth. “The sooner we get to civilization, the better.”