Luna was concerned. A good few of her trackers and scouts had gone missing. Sure, the southern regions of Equestria were still mostly uninhabited by Her Little Ponies, but the buffalo tribes still thrived in the deserts and plains, and the Saddle Arabian caravans braved the harsh region well enough to call it a “pleasant journey” compared to their homeland. The fact that most of them went missing around the areas closest to the Great Swamp led her to believe they'd befallen a sad fate of being consumed by an errant beast of great size.

She quickly stopped sending her soldiers there, she wasn't going to lose any more good stallions to that wretched place. But her evaluations of Avarice's movement speed, considering how long he'd been in Dock End after his interaction with Moss Stone, told her he was now in the San Palomino Desert anyway. However.... “I'm sorry your Majesty, but we simply are not prepared for a search of such a desolate place.”

Luna sighed in resignation as her lieutenant informed her that her small company of pegasus trackers could not head into the desert to seek out the crafty and well-prepared Avarice any longer. “I understand. It would seem that we must let him go, for now. The nearest settlement is Las Pegasus, we'll head there before we give up entirely.” At the lieutenant's nod of confirmation, she focused back to looking out on the hot and dry expanse of sand that began the San Palomino and ended the Marehave, and began the tentative border of Saddle Arabia. “I must inform them, in case he decides to traverse the sands rather than try to stick to the dirt.”

Luna summoned a quill and scroll, beginning a letter to Sultan Neighezid II detailing what she knew of Avarice, and to be wary.

[ $ ]

'This is so cool.' Konrad thought as he used a rusty smithing hammer with a broken handle that was fixed with green changeling resin of his own production and a broken branch from back in the swamp. He was using a curved and indented anvil-shaped stone he'd found in the middle of the hot, dry, unforgiving desert to shape a strip of bronze he'd taken from some of the armor he still had from his second day in Equestria with a nearly-broken bevel shear that only worked thanks to his new-found strength forcing it to move. 'Making my own shotgun shells out of bronze, using my coat to collect the potassium and other things I need for the primers and cordite. I feel like MacGyver, even if I'm using these skills to make shotgun ammo.'

Konrad lamented that he couldn't get his hands on enough intact scroll to make easier paper shells, he'd barely had enough intact disposed scroll to make the lead wads. He'd use some rabbit leather, but he wasn't confidant in it not swelling after firing and getting stuck. 'Don't these people throw away a letter after it's been read?'

Elsewhere, a certain blue archmage sneezed as he was casting an erasing spell on the now read-through letter from his student, and promptly began writing a response on the same scroll.

'Damned recycling ponies! If this was earth, I'd have more random shit to work with.' Konrad lamented, easily figuring that the nature-minded people were concerned enough of their environment that they already recycled, meaning nothing of what he'd need of that sort was easy to come by. That's life. However, he was just collecting the materials and preparing the shells for a proper casting later when he had access to a forge, and could properly size a tube to hammer the bronze to so it would actually fit in the receiver and barrel.

Konrad hissed and dropped his tools in pain as he clenched his stomach. During this, a flash of green fire emitted through his clothes which began to loosen as they grew bigger, and he grew into them as his hands became his long, deadly claws and the gloves morphed to match. His long, deadly tail also sprouted out and spread the coattails of his coat apart as he was doubled over in agonizingly painful hunger, making him look like he was supposed to be Sasori from Naruto rather than The Merchant. {Forgot to eat again Rookie? You know keeping a form besides our true one takes up a lot of energy.}

'Shut up I know! I'm not used to working tools like this with these claws damn it!' Konrad cursed his alter-ego viciously before he reached into his coat and easily ripped a hunk of meat off one of the many corpses back at Ichor's hive, and ravenously shoved the rotting meat into his maw under his bloodstained bandana, trying not to moan in rapture at the flavor as his carnivorous body sent a rush of endorphins into his brain to continue, and he complied by reaching into his coat for more.

{No, you're in denial. You need to accept this is your body now. It isn't healthy to-.}

“FUCK OFF!” Konrad spat furiously before he continued gnawing through a bone. 'I know damn it! I fucking...understand...alright?' Konrad asked, more to himself as he sniffled through his very small and efficient nostrils and his eyes closed, trying to cry from tear ducts that didn't exist anymore as his eyes didn't need moisture, his mandibles loosely holding the limb he'd been eating before dropping it and he curled into a tighter ball as his breathing hitched, choked sobs working up his throat. “I know....”

Konrad lost himself to a one-man pity party for a good while, clinging to the rock he'd been working at for an anchor. It wasn't until the sun set and the moon rose that Konrad hesitantly gathered himself, and finished eating the dirty and sand-coated limb to sustain himself. He was now completely carnivorous. He could eat fruits and vegetables, but they'd only be filling and not actually supply his needy body with what it needed. Luckily he was nigh immune to disease, so he could eat the most rotten things so long as they were meat and he'd be fine.

Konrad was glad he'd found a copy of his own Token sticking out of the sand a few days ago, because he could use some light to gather his ten or so unfinished shotshells, and the blue flame provided a clear and soothing light he felt he needed right now, pursuers be damned. It was actually a more intense flame than normal fire, as could be suggested by the blue color, and it burned eternally unless doused with water or smothered. He idly hoped those who found his Token out there in the multiverse were responsible with the flames it could produce, remember; only you can prevent forest fires.

Thankfully this wasn't a forest, so Konrad took a flint from his coat, and struck the rock so sparks would land in the brazier of the iron torch, which quickly took them in and ignited in a steady blue dancing flame, allowing him to easily find his tools and his work to store, and decided to drop stealth for now, he was sick of running at the moment. {Giving up?}

'No, just...tired of running. If they find me, I'll fend them off. I'm tired of staving off a confrontation. It might get the message across not to mess with me.' Konrad then began trekking into the desert, completely unconcerned for supplies for the fact his coat supplied all he needed. He was like a specter, an otherworldly entity in the way his gangly, vicious form, concealed beneath thick dark leather aside from his wicked tail, all cast beneath a bright blue flame just screamed that he was not of this world.

Apparently, a lot of people agreed.

“GAH~!” Konrad screamed in agony as something punched clean through his leather coat and into his left shoulder between his chitin plates. At this, his reflexes caught on instinctively and he jumped away, only to be pummeled by similar projectiles in a hail of what he could tell from his rapid side-stepping were crossbow bolts! Only the first shot penetrated though, the rest didn't since his retreat lessened their impact. When the barrage was over, Konrad's enhanced eyes could notice the trail he'd left in the sand, he'd easily side-stepped at least half a football field within a few seconds! Just what kind of speed does he have now? He'd overstepped the limit of the small volley of bolts by several yards!

“Where is it?!” Konrad heard from the direction the bolts had come from, and he looked to his torch to see it'd been doused from his rapid movement, obscuring him from sight.

“I don't know, keep vigilant! Our Sultan's messenger said to be wary of the creature Princess Luna warned him of as we continued our trek towards Equestria. If we have warded it off that is good enough in my book, just don't let it get too close.” Konrad listened in to the obvious commander's words, accented as they were in a far more middle-eastern accent than the old-English and middle-English he'd gotten used to in Dock End.

{Saddle Arabian soldiers, snipers specifically. Crack shots, powerful crossbows. Don't be sighted again. The only reason we survived that was luck, and since it was night they went for a volley rather than a direct focused attack.} Avarice informed, remembering some of the things Moss told them about the reinforcements the Bullgaria/Equestria border was expecting.

'But Moss told us that nearly a month ago, just how long did these guys take to start hoofing it to the border?' Konrad asked, only to quietly gasp and duck under an incoming bolt that nearly went through his head. 'Holy shit! They can see me in this darkness?! I can barely see them! And I have thermal vision!'

“Missed, can't see it now. Must've scurried off. We have a prowler captain.” A mare's voice intoned, getting an irritated growl from the commander's voice. Konrad really, really wished he could see them, but he was scared stiff of being exposed and suddenly becoming a Plaga pincushion.

“Just keep vigilant in scanning our surroundings. We have a duty to reinforce Equestria's borders alongside our fellow soldiers already helping secure their border. Remember; this isn't just to help an ally, we're being paid enough gold to help our country build capital to grow on, so we do this for our families! A single fugitive is not worth the delay.”

{Hm, so the Saddle Arabians are practically just glorified mercenaries...they need money....} Avarice hung the words a bit, and Konrad's concerns suddenly flew out the proverbial window.

'We need materials....' Konrad thought with his mandibles chattering in excitement, and he totally ignored the couple of bolts that nearly hit him as he began crawling at speed further south into the sands. After he'd covered enough ground and avoided the mass of heat signatures in the dark, the snipers stopped taking shots at him and he stood back up to continue walking normally, taking the chance to yank the bolt in his shoulder out at last. 'Find a town, find a blacksmith, make ammo, teach smith how to make new weapon designs depending on their current levels of technology, they carry this knowledge to the capital, they begin to profit, become a power....'

{Potentially pull support back from Equestria if they don't pay more....} Avarice warned, getting Konrad to pause, and hiss.

'War...why can't it ever be so simple?'

{Nothing ever is Konrad.}

[ $ ]

After some rethinking, Konrad decided not to introduce the advent of firearms to Saddle Arabia. This was reinforced by a few things. One, Saddle Arabians were VAIN! Konrad was slinking in the shadows of the first town he'd come across, not knowing it's name as of yet. And so far, even with this being a small, walled-in town, just about every well-clothed horse he saw was garbed in silk, flowing robes, and excessive amounts of jewelry. Every mare had at least one golden bangle, necklace, or earring, not mentioning rings. Every stallion had at least a golden ring. And the sexual objectification! There were mares lewdly portraying their bodies with bikinis, sarongs and the like everywhere, and even some stallions wore little more than a thong!

It was awesome.

Especially since horses were much larger than ponies. The average horse mare stood at seven feet, and the average stallion at eight feet. This also translated to their muscular toning and their sizes and shapes, being very generously voluptuous for the mares in general, and it was hard not to see a stallion who wasn't ripped. Almost none of them were as beefy as Logger though. Konrad shuddered at remembering the stallion he'd almost considered a friend. The stallion may be small in mass compared to almost all these horses, but he still knew the jovial tan stallion could likely out-lift any of them.

All this told Konrad and Avarice however, that letting this country become opulent would be horrible for it's citizenry. A spot of poverty would actually do some good for their general disposition. If they could afford to waste resources on such frivolity considering they were a desert nation, then letting them get rich would be a mistake. The rift between the rich and poor would become such a gap that social graces would deteriorate, and the general happiness he was witnessing would actually lessen. What sort of lies was this country's leadership feeding it's people that they think they need MORE money?

{Calm down there Fawkes. We don't need to go all revolutionary. We're just a Merchant.}

'But a Merchant can choose their clients. And I don't feel like pandering to any “official” channels at the moment.' Konrad groused as he perched in the shade of a tall building. The architecture reminded him of Constantinople from Assassin's Creed Revelations. It would seem that Saddle Arabia was oddly styled after the Ottoman Empire rather than Arabia. But Konrad nearly flunked history AND geography, so what did he know?

The town was a very notable size however, just shy of a city really. The baked tan clay and stone border walls were clearly meant to keep any sandstorms from burying the buildings as there was a notable dip between the sands of the desert outside and the town proper, about a quarter of the way up the wall in fact. When Konrad disguised himself as a horse stallion, and asked around, pretending to be a traveler, his average response was that this was the highest the sand usually got, but regardless the entrances to the city had large staircases leading near the top and dropping down into the town so regardless of the height of the shifting dunes outside, the town was accessible. And thanks to royal mystics and their rituals, a barrier formed over the whole town during sandstorms to prevent it from getting in.

Konrad mused over the architectural genius of this place as he idly chewed on a hunk of meat from the pile back at Ichor's. He couldn't for the life of him find any meat in the markets. Explanation being that leather was an import, so why bother getting meat when they can just order bloodmeal and bonemeal from the caravans?

So, Konrad found an easy item to sell then, beings he still kept a lot of the leather he'd collected in his time in Dock End. But, as he'd observed before, the horses here were vain, and he didn't like the idea of pandering to their vanity with preserved furs and expensive tailoring supplies. So he was looking for the smithy, only to wander through half the town and not hear the melodious and familiar sound of hammer and anvil. 'Just where is a damn smith in this place? A town this large has to have one.'

{Sığınak seems to be a very tourist friendly town. Probably has the smithy tucked away in a far corner we haven't been to yet.}

'Sığınak?'

{Name of the town. You didn't bother asking for the name, so the locals assumed you knew. I overheard some of the guards talking and they mentioned the town's name as Sığınak.} Said guards were equally vainly decorated, practically treated like part of the town rather than individual people actually. They appeared to be homo-equine versions of the “elite” guards from ACR as well. They patrolled, stood guard at the gates, everything you'd expect. But they also matched the town's appearance, and were easy to overlook in spite of their golden bronze armor. That was likely the intent, as everyone seemed to be wary and note where the guards actually were before going about their business. Made criminal activity difficult if you didn't know if the coast was clear.

'Whatever, yeah, this place seems more like a tourist trap and trading town than anything. They have to have a smithy by the barracks though. It's a must.' Konrad affirmed, looking for, ah-ah! 'There. That lookout tower screams security. The barracks must be there.' Konrad was focused on a single, standout tower that shot up from a view of second and third-story tile rooftops in the southwest corner of the town. The guard presence was also much more concentrated on the rooftops there, meaning their armory and more governmental buildings were over there as well.

{Right in the hornet's nest. How do you want to go about this?}

'The guards clearly know to be on the lookout for us, but they expect an elf-like creature from the gossip I've caught wind of, and that movement of troops sent a messenger back here warning that I might be a “Spawn of Hades” wreathed in a cloak of darkness, beholding a torch of blue flame. I'm honestly flattered, and considering just popping in as our real selves, stir things up.' Konrad replied in bemusement, his confidence oddly high even though those snipers almost had him. Then again, the one that pierced was a lucky shot, and testing some bolts on his chitin armor showed that unless he was at near point-blank range, they wouldn't have pierced his natural armor at all.

{Strong-arm services from a smith in broad daylight, surrounded by trained, deadly, fully armed and armored soldiers? I find the option oddly tantalizing.} Avarice admitted with a mental chuckle. {Alright then, let's give it a go. We need to get used to being seen as our true form anyway. We should only rely on our shape-shifting when we're on the move, or keeping suspicion away from us. Our outfit might be a dead giveaway, but with time we'll master it's abilities enough to make that moot.}

Konrad chattered his mandibles excitedly, before he shoved the last bit of meat in his claw into his maw under his bandana, and bolted across the rooftops like a living bolt of black lightning. Konrad knew the Verdugo was fast, one of the fastest enemies in Resident Evil in fact, but he was enraptured with his new body's speed. He sprinted on all-fours right past guards and civilians alike and they barely noticed until after he'd passed, looking after him in shock. 'I feel like fucking Sonic the Hedgehog!'

Konrad quickly ran at a short building just before the area of the barracks proper, hearing the familiar and comforting sound of hammer and anvil. He jumped, dug his claws and cleated boots into the wall, and climbed straight up it before flipping over the top, just missing the head of a guard, landing behind said guard, and then jumped over the rest of the roof to land literally a few feet in front of a shocked and stunned-still black mare with white messy mid-length hair pausing in her hammering.

“Hello my fair Forge-Mistress. I require the use of your services and hopefully your tools to finish a project of mine.” Konrad casually stated, not winded at all since his new lungs were more efficient than his original pair. 'Fucking, nailed it.'

{Showoff. Loved it.}

The mare stayed stock still, the surrounding soldiers, guards, snipers, and few civilians doing the same, until she blinked and took a deep breath. “W-what do you require?” She asked with a quivering and surprisingly timid voice, setting the raw billet she'd just started hammering out to the side. Konrad noticed she was just as shapely as most horses tended to be, and was exceptionally tall for a mare too, being between seven and eight feet. Her breasts were a bit surprisingly large though. About F-cups from observation. Probably from her chest muscles developed from working the forge, she probably wasn't actually that big either since she was wearing a properly thick and protective blacksmith's smock.

“Several things. I'll get to the specifics when you've calmed a bit. But I need to shape these-.” Konrad reached into his coat casually, ignoring her flinch as he pulled out all ten of the unfinished bronze shells and set them on a clear spot of her workstation. “To fit in this.” Konrad then brought out his shotgun, setting it down next to the shells as most of the guards then calmed down and simply kept an eye out as one of them left to deliver news of his presence.

The mare looked very interested rather than nervous or scared now as she held up the brass and the gun curiously. Konrad wasn't worried since he'd removed his last three live shells from the gun. That cheap bastard dropped him here with only the five shells in the gun. He was lucky he'd only wasted two back in Dock End and not needed the other three yet. “Interesting...but why? What does it do?” Upon quick inspection of the weapon, and noticing the construction, her eyes shined in realization as she held the misshapen bronze shell casing to the receiver, and then promptly put the shell down before aiming down the sight at a random angle, surprising Konrad with how she'd properly held it and aimed just from inspecting it. “This is an unusual crossbow...how does it launch it's projectiles?”

“Um...with-.”

“Blasting powder, in a shell, launching a metal slug?” She instantly grasped as she looked at the shells again. “Astounding! It's a cannon on a small scale, only with portable and ready-to-fire balls! You must teach me!” Her sudden flip from timid mare, to interested weapons enthusiast, to excited craftsmare really shocked him, especially when she grabbed his shoulders over the anvil and beamed as she looked him in the eyes with her shimmering golden orbs of glee.

{Well, we're fucked. We can't say no to a pretty face.}

'Gog she's cute...damn it...fine.' “Very well, but it comes with a price.” His statement brought her out of her moment of excitement, and she backed off before straightening herself out. “If you're going to be learning the art of gunsmithing, you need to learn that it is far more dangerous than just shaping metal, or working wood. It's about ballistics, knowledge of chemical reactions, understanding the effects of said chemicals on the metals, and using incredibly small and fragile pieces. It's as much engineering as it is smithing. It's as much about effectiveness as it is about artistry. I can teach you the basics, I can teach you how to make my kind of guns, but nothing more. Knowing all this, are you still willing to apprentice under me in learning how to make guns?”

“Yes!” She said seriously and with eagerness.

“Very well. I will teach you, but in exchange I must have access to your forge both for teaching you, and for making my own projects. Is this acceptable?” Konrad asked, and she nodded, her eyes beginning to shimmer red as his eyes shined. “Then we are in contract.” Konrad held out a claw, and she grasped it without hesitation, their eyes flashed red until it faded. “Let's get started!” 'I get to work with a cute mare on guns! I get to pass on what I know! This is so cool!'

“Yes, let's. My name is Demir, one of the only smiths in town. Might I know my new teacher's name?” She asked with a smile, and Konrad didn't hesitate.

“Name's Avarice. Let's get to work.”

Author's Notes:

Bronze, especially if it's thin enough, is very easy to cold forge compared to other metals. It doesn't hold a firm shape like brass does, and while it is inherently a poor choice for shotshells, it would still service just as well as a paper or plastic shell, if not better.

However, to get the size perfect, the shells have to be the exact right size to fit the receiver and barrel. The easiest way to ensure this when Reloading a shot shell is to use a blank barrel to check for fit. Paper shells are the easiest to make, needing only the metal base cuff and primer to be checked, and then adding the paper, powder, shot wad, and capping it off with a thin, easily breakable resin or traditionally waterglass, but can also simply be folded.

Also, note how even after planning not to, Avarice caves from a pretty face? Cute girls are one of his greatest weaknesses.