Fallout Equestria: Homelands

By Somber

Chapter 13: Propagation

The freezing wind snapped across the ice in a never-ending howl screaming through the frozen crevasses. Magical radiation flickered dimly in the depths, and she kept far from the edge as she walked along the trail. Frayed cloth strips tied to the end of spikes and stakes posted every dozen meters snapped in the unending squall as the lone zebra advanced. Here and there, on mountain peaks that pierced like teeth through the endless white ice sheet, rose shattered, ancient structures. Once they’d been home to yaks; yaks who hadn’t meekly stepped aside when the zebras annexed their land to escape megaspells. What brilliant mind had thought to use balefire on the land they were trying to take? Now the yaks were mostly irradiated husks no one dared approach. Were there still yaks on the far side of the pole, or had her people callously wiped them out in the bloody frenzy of ‘victory’?

It didn’t change much, but she’d hate to add ‘casual genocide’ to her people’s list of atrocities.

It was hard to make out her destination amid the stinging windblown ice. At first glance, it was little more than another spur of stone being ground away by the relentless shifting of ageless glacier. Through gaps in the blowing snow, she could make out glimpses of metal. Heavy fur garments traded in port covered her body in a shroud that barely protected her from the storm’s deadly bite, frost covered saddlebags bulging with supplies. It wasn’t until she entered the lee of the stone that she could pull down the whale bone visor protecting her eyes and take in the sight of a crashed Raptor. It lay against the rocky spur, nose and cannons pointing towards the sky, covered in a rime of ice forming long horizontal fingers trailing into the wind.

As she approached a sign, almost illegible under frost built up over year, which showed that someone had one had an iota of wit. The glyph was simple: Nowhere. Under it was a second, simple, almost superfluous glyph: White.

Yet as she approached the base of the crashed ship, curiosities began to appear. Ice twisted into the shape of translucent monsters menaced the perimeter. Pieces of steel placed on wagon hubs outside the wreck were transformed into pinwheels, twisters, and other bizarre structures that forced her to stop and consider them for a moment. Bestial skulls mounted on piles of rock were arranged as if still alive.

There was no guards to Nowhere. A few locals at the entrance stirred at her approach, but didn’t reach for their weapons. She’d paid the appropriate bribes; two boxes of smoked fish for directions and a day without harassment. Then the shaggy Sahanni nodded their heads and let her inside. It was too damned cold for a fight or a shakedown.

The warmth was almost as much of a slap in the face as she stepped into the ice-bound Raptor. No one came to Nowhere for the climate. They came because there was nowhere else to go. The zebras she encountered watched her with a spectator’s interest, curious but not enough to get off their fur cushioned seats atop cargo crates and empty boxes to learn more. One scribbled on scraps of paper with charcoal sticks, or shaped blobs of mud into bizarre shape. Most just seemed content to sit and let her pass by.

Not all of them were sluggards though. Some enterprising engineer had coaxed the reactor back to life, along with half the lights. Another had hammered plates together to make a flat surface to walk on, but everything was odd angles in the steeply sloping structure. Exposed pipes gurgled as they rerouted fluids across breaches, and sometimes across hallways. Maybe they were the source of the dank reek that seemed to lurk in every inhabited passageway?

Weirdness lay everywhere she gazed. Pictures were painted on every wall, in every substance from paint to grease to what she guessed was blood. Some of the images were so detailed she swore for a moment that a living zebra stared defiantly at her from a bit of wall while others were abstract geometric shapes that left her annoyed at having to guess their meaning. Art lay atop art, with quality pieces unmolested while poorer work disappeared beneath layers and layers of graffiti.

A strange, pungent haze lingered in almost every corner, emitted from censers that smoldered a dried herb of some kind. She pressed her cowl closer to her mouth to keep from coughing. From the ceiling overhead, hundreds of trinkets built of trash dangled on strings, creating a cloud of colorful, reflective detritus overhead. In one room, a pony magical weapon had been altered to create a continuous red beam that was refracted and split again and again by shards of mirror, forming an intricate web of light. A part of her was scandalized by the waste of a valuable, functioning weapon, while another was mesmerized by the sight of the shifting patterns created by a few slowly rotating bits of glass.

And, of course, bones. They were everywhere; grinning from little nooks and crannies, posed, the skulls presenting a glyph of the owner’s name. In one macabre arrangement, a unicorn skeleton and pegasus skeleton had been wired together in folding chairs across from a pair of zebras positioned around a small table with a cracked tea set in the middle. A plaque reading ‘Peace talks’ was hanging from the table. That made her smile, and choke up, at the same time.

She passed through what what passed for a market of sorts in the Raptor’s hanger, where goods from the east met goods from the west in the last place anyone wanted to do business. Shelves had been formed, and on them squatted a dozen or so merchants offering the standard fare of guns, barding, ammo, food, drugs, and a few other curious relics like carved bone charms and strange dolls of twisted, yellow grass. A trio of shaggy Sahanni watched her pass as they quaffed steaming cups of something that smelled like boiled manure, smoking the pungent weed from water pipes. A few more directions and she headed further up the ship.

Hiking up the slanted passage, scrambling at times over plates that had bent, admitting stabbing drafts of cold air, she saw the sign up again. ‘Captain’s Mess’. Stepping through the doors, a bouquet of rancid food and unwashed patrons made her recoil a second. The small dining room’s tables had been bent to provide level surfaces, but all else was forced to slump against whatever surface they could. A crust of stale filth crunched under her hooves as she struggled towards the bar, where a sort of innkeeper watched her expectantly. Pony heads, mummified and blackened, were mounted behind him, some with their military caps still atop thin manes. ‘Cleaning staff’, someone had written under them. An arrow pointed to one on the end. ‘His mess’. Above the innkeeper swung a sign that read ‘The Middle’.

This was the zebra she needed to talk to, yet she balked. A dozen zebra bones lay on the table before him, and he was scraping at them with tools set into a leather hoof mitt. He didn’t look up at her approach. “I know everyone in Nowhere,” the innkeeper said, wrapped in so many furs that he resembled a mound of fluff as he etched a flower in the skull’s brow. “But I do not know you. Are we friends?” the shaggy Sahanni asked as the metal pick scratched bone.

She pulled off the fur lined hat and mask, and Mahealani met his eyes with hers. “One meets many kinds of people in Nowhere,” she said, carefully reciting the words she was told to say. She considered the bones. “One of your enemies?”

He snorted. “Certainly not. I’d throw them to the ice.” He frowned. “My niece,” he murmured, blowing the dust off the skull. “She will be half as beautiful in death as she was in life.” From the flowers he was expertly carving around the glyph in the brow, that had to be heartbreakingly beautiful.

She had a strict rote for dealing with Sahanni, but it broke. “It seems strange to me.”

“What would you do with her were she yours?”

“Wrap her in cloth and give her to the sea. When I die, I will join her,” she answered.

“But then who remembers her?”

“I do.”

“Ah, but then who remembers you? Books? Stories? Anyone?” the fur wrapped zebra murmured as he scratched. “You may never have met Aina before her meeting with the windigo, but you will still know her. You will know she was beautiful. That she was loved. That she brought joy into the world.” He then pierced her with a pale blue eye, enlarged by the jeweler’s loupe clenched over it. “What will they say about you, stranger?”

She took a deep breath. “That it is odd for an Atoli to die so far from her home.”

“Indeed, you are far,” he said with a sage nod, looking down and resuming his scratching. “My friends told me of a zebra of the sea in the port of Blackstone. They told me that she asked many questions. That she asked till she got answers. Most insistent was she, despite those that sought to deter her. Then this zebra of the sea leaves her world for mine, and alone she crosses ice and wind to come to Nowhere. Such an odd zebra, Mahealani must be.”

Not a surprise. This was a warship. It had to have a working radio. “You have good ears, Rasva,” Mahealani said evenly, “to hear so far from shore.”

“I have good friends,” Rasva said with a slow nod. “Such a story. If I were Zencori I might do it justice. We may have one somewhere around. I’ll have to listen for rambling.”

Mahealani raised a hoof, and despite the gravity of her mission, smiled. “Please, no. They’ll add a half dozen tragedies and me fighting a radyak herd barehoofed. One tragedy is enough.”

“And what is that?” he asked lightly.

She didn’t want to answer, but Rasva could help or stop her cold. He wouldn’t even have to raise a hoof against her. “I was captain of a ship that carried a pony from their lands to ours. I accepted the aid of the stars to save my ship and my passenger. For that, I was cursed.”

He nodded solemnly. “Many who are cursed end in Nowhere. You are hardly the first.” He leaned back, lifting the skull and turning it this way and that in critical examination. “So why speak to me?”

The moment. “The Admiral sends his regards.” She withdrew a carved river rock from her saddlebags and set it on the table before him. On it were the glyphs ‘Stone’ and ‘Promise’.

He paused and leaned over to a bubbling pot set on some coals and filled a mug, then took a long drink of the stinking brew. “I see,” he murmured thoughtfully. “He sends regards far indeed to reach Nowhere.”

“My mission is important,” she assured him.

Rasva didn’t look at the stone for almost a minute, as she waited patiently. “I knew him as a boy, you know. So serious. He was fleeing your tribe’s squabbles, seeking peace. I hoped he would stay, but ice and snow has nothing on the pull of the sea.” He reached down at tapped the stone. “I knew he would rise far. I’m surprised he remembers a fat fool from Nowhere.”

“He remembers.”

“So. He gave you my promise. It was meant for him. Something pretty on those lonely ships of yours,” he said lightly, pursing his lips a moment as his eyes narrowed on her. “You wish to ask me for something I will not wish to give. That is not friendly.”

“I did not say we were friends,” Mahealani countered as gently as possible. “I am looking for a zebra under your protection.”

“I can guess which,” he said with a deep breath. “I did not think the boy would want a bounty. Such things are supposed to be beneath an Admiral.”

“I’m not here for the bounty. I’m just here to talk,” she assured him. He took a sip and regarded her silently. Had he been Atoli, they could have simply gotten to business, but the Sahaani never did. They were roundabout, loquacious, and could take weeks, months, or years making up their minds. One thing was certain though; if she forced their hoof, they wouldn’t be deciding in her favor. Still, there was one thing she could offer.

“Your niece loved flowers,” she observed, regarding the skull. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. She reached into her pouch and pulled out a small vial full of a light purple powder. It was produced from powdered sea snail shells, common enough for anyone who lived on the sea. They came up with the traps, or could be found in tidal pools. “I think this would make them even more lovely,” she said as she set it on the table before him.

“A bribe?” he frowned at her.

“A gift,” she answered. Of course it was a bribe, but it was rude to be blatant about it. “Your niece deserves no less.”

He pursed his lips, but then drew the vial into his robes. Nothing more need be said. He would act, or wouldn’t. She turned and left him to his thoughts.

The next day, she sat in the real prize of Nowhere: the garden. It had been some sort of storage bay, but converted into a hydroponics setup. Crops grew in hanging trays, where water was dribbled into the soil. Most Sahaani communities couldn’t grow traditional crops in the frozen north, so they supplemented whenever possible. And, in true Sahaani fashion, they’d added a water feature: a brook that trickled down the middle, along a rocky course. Two Sahanni stallions were making something that might have passed for music by drumming rhythmically on the hanging trays while a mare swayed and danced. Others tended the growing trays with baskets perched precariously on their rumps.

The scene was spoiled by a knife to the back of her neck. “Who are you?” a tremulous male voice whispered. “Who sent you?”

“I’m not here for the bounty,” she answered at once, but the press of the knife didn’t lift. “I’m here for a story.”

“Ask a Zencori,” the stallion hissed. “Leave me alone!”

“I need to speak with you, Ak–”

“Don’t use that name!”

She took a deep breath. She had to be the calm one. “What name would you like me to use?”

He hesitated. She could only assume that Rasva had asked him not to kill her. “Nemo.”

A fitting name. “I need to know about Riptide, Nemo,” Mahealani pressed, keeping her voice low. “I need to know the truth about her. Where did she get her ship? Her crew? She went from nobody to the greatest threat on the seas. You’re the only one left who knew her from before.”

“Why do you think I’m here?” he muttered. She chanced a glance back at him. The Atoli was so scarred it was difficult to make out his wavy stripes. One eye had been plucked out, leaving a puckered hole. On the end of one hoof was a strap and a blade. She diverted her eyes forward. “Everyone else is dead, or transformed into monsters.”

“Riptide was nobody, and there are stories, but you were on the Osprey, under Captain Anakoni. You knew her.”

“Knew her?” the stallion growled. “I loved her. That’s the only reason I got away. Why I got a week’s head start.” The knife pressed a little harder. “Now she’d reward whoever brings her my head with a solid gold likeness. I don’t know what you told Rasva, but no one’s collecting my head.”

“I’m not with her!” she protested at once, drawing looks from the dancers, and immediately lowered her voice. “I need to know how she got the Riptide. Where her crew came from. I’ve heard all the stories, from her being a whore in Anakoni’s bed to being Anakoni’s daughter,” Mahealani said evenly. “What’s the true story?”

Nemo folded the rusty blade up so it hid along the inside of his forehoof. “No one wants to hear the truth. The truth doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. Riptide is tearing our tribe apart, yet almost nothing is known about her. Where she got her ship. How she supports it. I need to know who she is and where she came from. You’re the only person that knows.”

“Not the only one. Just the only one that got away,” Nemo muttered. “I was navigator on the Osprey. We kept the zebra Remnant in the pony lands supplied. It was good money, and we could engage in some piracy when opportunity presented itself. One trip, we had something new: a young mare going back to the zebra lands. Her name was Lahela.”

Had the subject not been so serious, Mahealani would have laughed aloud. As it was she couldn’t hide a smile. The whole trip had just been made worthwhile with the inclusion of her name. The fact that said name meant ‘female sheep’ was all the more precious. Still, it wouldn’t do to abuse that knowledge. “Riptide was born in Equestria? Not ‘born from the womb of the sea?”

That got a chuckle. “No, we picked her up in Dawn’s Landing, a strange zebra wanting to leave the fight against the cursed city. She had no knowledge of her own tribe’s traditions and wanted to learn them. Anakoni took her on as crew; I think he planned to bed her, but she was too bold, and could fight. A few stallions tried to force her, but she beat them. Still, she was odd.”

Mahealani furrowed her brows. So neither whore nor captain’s daughter. The story of a ship’s whore rising to captain was a powerful one, especially when so many in her tribe were equally low. Equally powerful were stories that she was born from the womb of the sea with some spiritual mandate. Mystery intrigued. She needed the truth. “How so?”

“She came to learn our traditions, but had no patience for them. She wanted to learn about the Atoli, not be an Atoli. Most believed it was from growing up in the pony lands. You see the kind, from time to time. Still, she knew how to command and inspire. Many wanted to wed her, and she spurned them all, mares and stallions alike.”

“But she loved you,” Mahealani pressed, a tiny bit skeptical.

“She liked me. I was ship’s navigator, and I talked with her rather than flattered her. She talked about the old ways, and strange ways, and new ways. She wanted to know why the Empire fell, and how to save our people when we were so divided. She hated the legions. Called them ‘raider armies’. We’d talk for hours into the night about how the world should be, where the weak aren’t oppressed and the powerful aren’t foolish. Young dreams.” He gave a sigh. “She wanted to save the world.”

She wanted to press him on the ship, but knew at any moment he could change his mind. She’d have to steer Nemo carefully to get to the port she desired; the truth. “So what happened?”

“We were doing a bit of scavenging on the side. There was a naval base near Bastion hit by a megaspell. It was one of those that messed with your mind. Made you see things. Drives most folks crazy. Even affected robots and the like. We needed a part for the Osprey and Captain thought we could nip in, find the parts, and leave. Twenty of us went in. It was… bad. That place is evil.”

“But you survived,” Mahealani pressed. This was new! Most said the sea itself had lifted the Riptide from its depths for her. Just being able to undermine her mystique would help.

“Seven of us. I can remember all the things I saw. What we did to her. I had enough brains left to kill the mad ones and drag her out. It changed her. Broke her. She wept and wanted to die. We took solace in each other. One killed himself in madness. Disemboweled himself. Another stepped off the ship in the middle of the ocean at night. Worse, for her, was that she was with foal after that.”

“Ship is a hard place for a pregnant mare. Why didn’t you take her to port?”

“She refused. Whatever she saw tormented her. When her daughter was born, it was all that kept her alive for a year. I tried to help her. I thought she was getting better.” He paused and let out a sigh. “Then that damned shaman came aboard and nothing was right.”

“Shaman?” Mahealani pressed, leaning towards him. The pickers were laughing to each other as they moved a row closer, while the drummers were taking a break. “What shaman?”

“I didn’t meet her. She kept covered, wearing a mask. She invoked Tradition. You know, passage for young, old, and shamans? She was travelling from Equestria back to the zebra lands and wanted free passage. Captain gave it to her, and she bunked with Riptide for the trip. I don’t know what happened, but the scared, half crazed mare I loved was gone. The shaman left, and Riptide and Niuhi were changed forever.”

This was new. “Go on.”

“She wasn’t consumed by night terrors anymore. No, that’s not right. She had them, but they lost power over her. Soon as the shaman left, she confronted the captain. He was a drunk, she said, and cheating the crew. Both true, but no one had called Anakoni on it before. Captain tried to shout her down and beat her. She had a razor. Slit his throat. His first mate tried to rally the crew, but she’d gotten them on her side. Challenged the mate to a duel. She was twice Riptide’s size. One of our best fighters. Kept beating her, but she wouldn’t stay down. Then the mate took a misstep. Riptide tore her throat out with her teeth. After that, she was Captain.”

Mahealani glanced over as the pickers moved a row closer, afraid they might spook Nemo, but he seemed to be in a daze. He was starting to get swept up in the telling, and she just let him. There were plenty of stories of her rallying the Osprey to her side, from duels to half the crew fighting the other half to sharks leaping from the water to devour the captain whole. Stories were for foals.

“The Osprey wasn’t a warrior ship. We could win a good scrap against fishers, but real pirates would take us out. Riptide had us go back to that base. We went in together; I thought I was ready for the nightmares. This time, though, she marched right to the middle of the place. I was almost mad, but she kept me moving. She went to the general’s quarters and found a safe left open. Inside were papers. She took them as if they were nothing. What I saw…” Nemo shuddered. “She read them and put them back, closed the safe, and locked it. Then she left. She could have left me there. She thought about it. She must have. But she got me out and back to the Osprey.”

She knew easily a dozen bases he could have been referring to in the region. She nodded, but mulled it over in her mind. The western coast, closest to Equestria, had been one of the heaviest fortified. Raids by Raptors had been constant, and several pockets had been occupied by ponies during the war, though most were loath to admit it today. Still, a base with nightmares and madness? It couldn’t be that hard to find.

Nemo rambled on. “She had us set sail south. We went through the Bastion Canal and into the south seas. Strange waters. No charts, but every now and then she’d take Niuhi into the water and a few minutes later, they’d return with a new course. Said the filly could smell our destination. Then one cloudy night we anchored in a cove, and she got in the longboat alone. Said to wait a day. She’d be back for her daughter. Then she rowed off to shore. Some talked about leaving. They might have lived a few more days if we had.”

He took a deep breath. The pickers were in the same row as they, now looking at the pair of outsiders as they drew closer. The drummers were having an argument about something. Apprehension started to nibble at her spine. Two stallions entered, laughing, smoking cigars of the pungent herbs. Nemo looked around, clearly alarmed, and she reached out to nudge his shoulder before he bolted. “What then?”

Nemo paused, then went on. “The next day was foggy, but we heard a motor. Out of the mist came a warship like from the old days of the war. Not a rusty relic either. It was beautiful and horrible at once. She was in charge, and the crew was strange zebras. Not a single Atoli among them. She took Niuhi and then had each of us swear to serve her loyally to the end of her days. When some swore, Niuhi said they smelled like lies. They were dragged away, and the screams…” he shuddered. “She turned them into fliers. When she’d gone through the crew, she blew the Osprey to the sea with a single shot.”

“Clearly you swore to serve her,” Mahealani said.

“In bed and as her navigator, but I was useless as tits on a shark. That ship had all its charts on machines. It plotted its own damned course. Most of us were just slaves, and if you didn’t like it, you got a choice: flier, or Niuhi. For the first few years all we did was go around the seas. She’d send out fliers, and blast anyone if she was bored. But something was amiss. Wherever she’d gotten the ship, and whatever she was doing with it, her heart wasn’t in it. Of course, then your idiot fleets tried to marry her to get her to stop. She was told to accept it.”

Mahealani leaned towards him. “Told to? By whom?” This was what she needed to know! Fools might think the Riptide was magic, but she knew any ship, especially a warship, needed constant support. You couldn’t just sail around endlessly without dealing with corrosion, rot, food, and medical problems. Someone had to be supporting her, and if it wasn’t the Admiral, it had to be someone, anyone, else.

“I don’t know. Just that she was told to. So she did. I think she was having second thoughts about what we were doing,” he said, then hissed through his teeth. “Then that damned shaman came back!”

“You’re sure it was the same one?”

“I can’t say for sure, but being around them… they felt the same. Like squids crawling around in my veins. Riptide sent me out, but I listened through a vent in the next room. Shaman knew she was having doubts about making the world a better place. That things would ever be different. That the cursed city would be no more, and that her nightmares would end. The shaman gave her a book about some damned pony in the pony lands. The Lightbringer.” He let out a sigh. “Sure enough, a month later, the cursed city went up in a beam of light, and Riptide was convinced. I don’t know what that book said, but after reading that, she was sure that peace was possible.”

“She has nightmares?” Mahealani frowned. This was new to her, though she had heard her husband mention ‘restless nights’. She’d just assumed he was making innuendo. She’d also need to find this book. See how it could be so inspiring.

The planters were barely moving down the row anymore, just talking in low voices to each other. The two stallions seemed to be examining her. She wished she could take him somewhere more private, but now that he was opening up, she didn’t dare stop him. She tried to ward the pair of planters away with a glare, but they just stared back with disinterest.

“Every night. Me too, after that base,” he reached out to a nearby tray and touched one of the strange, seven leafed plants it contained. “This is the only thing that gets me through the night. After that, she started hunting the seas and the shores of Equestria for some pony. Anyone who wanted off was turned into a flier. I challenged her.” He reached up and touched his missing eye. “It didn’t end well.”

“I can imagine,” Mahealani replied. She also knew who the pony was.

“She was going to turn me as well, but I think she had a moment of mercy and threw me off the ship instead. I swam for two nights south till I reached an island. She must have found out I survived somehow, so I went as far from the sea as I could and not starve.”

“Why?”

“She can’t leave the sea. Even setting foot on land causes her agony. Leaving the Riptide’s hard enough for her. So long as I stay away from the sea, all she can do is put a bounty on my head. These Sahanni don’t care that much for money. They have their herbs and art, so I can draw a breath safely.” He rose to his hooves. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think that’s enough questions. I’ll talk more, later.”

“But wait. Who were those zebras who crewed her ship? Who was this shaman? Who’s giving her orders? Why are they after the pony?” she asked, but froze. Being on the sea, you developed a sense of wrongness that told you when the ship was leaking more than usual, an engine threatening to burn out, or a sail ready to split. That sense was now screaming at her to be alert, and she scanned the garden for the source. The planters? Did they have a weapon in their basket? Or the musicians? Or the dancers?

Nemo must have been away from the sea too long. He’s eyes were focused on the ground, picking his way along the plates to avoid tripping. Mahealani swiveled her eyes from one to the next, a warning on the tip of her tongue. Then she heard it. The soft ‘pfft’, barely audible over the noise of the musicians. Nemo’s legs folded out from under him, and he tumbled down under the planters. She rushed after him, knocking the hanging trays swinging in her haste to catch him.

When she caught him halfway to the bottom, it was clear that he was dead. A small, coin sized hole had been punched right through his left temple, and blood trickled out his nose and ear. The zebras in the room were watching in bafflement, or chuckling in the case of the two pickers. None of them had taken the shot. Her eyes scanned the room. A bounty hunter would have been chopping Nemo’s head off by now. This was something different.

Then she spotted the slightest distortion coming down the rows, like a specter. She almost missed it with the wildly swinging planters, but it was only two rows away, and getting closer. A shimmercloak; the infamous stealthy garments were precious and rare.

Nemo had talked. Nemo was dead. Now she was the only one who knew what little she’d been told. She looked down at his body, and saw a little key on a chain around Nemo’s neck. Not thinking, she grabbed it in her mouth and yanked hard, snapping the chain and running for the exit. From behind her came a rapid fire set of ‘pfffts’, barely heard over the impacts of the bullets on the planters. One of the stallions yelled in alarm as he was hit by one of the bullets. The assassin could only move so fast under the cover of the cloak.

She had to flee. From the room. From Nowhere. She couldn’t run the risk of an invisible killer setting up an ambush. While she wanted to see Nemo’s quarters and find what the key unlocked, she couldn’t risk it. If she were a killer, she’d head right to Rasva and shoot her when she talked to the town leader. She couldn’t take that chance. The sooner she got aboard a ship, the safer she’d be. Pausing only to gather her supplies, she disappeared out into the cold night, following the tattered cloths snapping in the freezing wind.

He’d never thought of himself as claustrophobic, but then again he’d never been on his back on a little rolling cart in a mile long pipe running beneath a river. Water sloshed around the wheels as he pushed against the aged plastic electrical conduit overhead, mud splattering his back and mane. It seemed like forever to make the journey, and all it would take would be a little deeper water, or a stuck wheel, and he’d be trapped down here in the tube deep beneath the river.

Then his head popped clear into a concrete sub-basement filled with electrical transformers, and dour looking zebras with automatic weapons pointing down at his face. “It’s me! Galen!” he said, waving his hooves up at them. “Don’t shoot!”

“It’s him,” Vega said, stepping out between the transformers. “Get him out of there.” The zebras helped Galen to his hooves, pulling the cart out and the plastic sled that was tied to it. “How are you?” Vega asked, his brow furrowed in worry.

“Not eager to slip back through that pipe,” Galen said, trying to clean the gunk off his small, round wire frame glasses. “How are things over here?”

“Carnico’s all but shut down. They’ve got equipment but no one to work it. Even offering double chits, no one’s eager to sign up. Especially when word got out one of their own had poisoned their own workers. The Whites and Irons aren’t going anywhere, and people are getting unhappy. What about on the west side?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Galen warned. “The Bloods have the whole west side locked down. They’re offering food for cooperation. I don’t know how they got their hooves on all that corn, but they’re keeping everyone fed for now. They don’t have enough weapons to arm everyone, but so far there’s not much resistance. The Bloods brought in some Gold Legion mercenaries to set up mortars. They might not be as powerful as the Iron Legion’s artillery, but they’ve got a lot of them.”

“So why haven’t they attacked yet?” Vega asked. As they talked, some of his stallions loaded the sled with packages and parcels for the return trip.

“No clue. I don’t understand either. They’ve got a few thousand fighters all along the west bank of the river. The Riptide’s nowhere to be seen. And so far the Bloods aren’t breaking discipline. No desertions or executions. Everyone just seems to be content to wait.”

Vega paced a moment. “This is very unusual for the Blood Legion,” he finally stated. “Working with Golds is out of character for them as well. They’ve always been self-reliant to a fault,” Vega mused, rubbing his chin. “The Whites have lines going five miles upriver, and lookouts going all the way to the coast. I can’t imagine what they’re planning.”

“There’s a censure here,” Tchernobog’s voice informed from the shadows of the sub-basement. “The spirits are angry, but they have no focus for their wrath. Whoever attacks first will surely draw it.”

“So for now we have to wait?” Galen asked. “I’m not sure how long that’ll last. It’s been almost a month. Someone is going to have to act sooner or later.”

“Haimon can not stall forever. His leadership will demand he attack,” Vega rumbled.

“I’d agree, but it’s not like the Iron Legion can keep those guns parked forever either,” Galen said. “Sooner or later they’re either going to use them, or pull them out to somewhere they’re needed. No matter how many fortifications the Whites make, I don’t see them holding out against ten times their number in Blood Legion.”

“I don’t like this,” Vega frowned, sitting and tapping his hoof thoughtfully against his temple. “Blood Legion being patient. Disciplined. The one reassurance is the Iron and White Legions are staying in character. No matter how this plays out, Carnico and the Exchange should survive.”

“Don’t be so certain of that,” Tchernobog rumbled. “Things move deep in the shadows here. A ruined Bacchanalia. The spirits more disquieted than I’d ever seen before. Forces are at work against us, and I fear it will not leave any of us untouched.” He let out a long sigh. “What I would sacrifice for a consult with that impudent child.”

“Pythia? Have you heard anything about her and her friends?” Galen asked.

“Not a peep. They were supposed to show up in Irontown a week ago,” Vega muttered gravely. “In all likelihood, they’re dead.”

“I doubt that. The spirits and that pony… no. I do not believe she will die easily. She may quit, but she has the stars’ own protection. I am thankful that I am not tasked with her destruction,” Tchernobog muttered from the darkness.

From the mouth of the concrete tube came a faint whistle. “I need to get back,” Galen said, looking at the hole. He lay back on the cart, checking to make sure the sled would fit through the hole. “Anything you’d like me to do?”

“Well, you could kill Haimon for us. That would be nice. I’d appreciate a more predictable Blood Legion in charge over there,” Vega said dryly.

“I don’t kill people,” Galen replied.

“Your tribe disagrees,” Tchernobog rumbled from the darkness of the room.

Galen had no response to that, and no time to formulate one. He lay on his back on the cart and started pulling and kicking along the tube. “Your tribe disagrees,” he muttered to himself. “At least my tribe isn’t creepy evil bastards.” He muttered as he tugged his way through the tube. “Kill Haimon for us,” he grumbled. “I’m a doctor. I took an oath. Not that that matters to the Exchange! No, they just want everything back to normal so crime can be profitable again.” Even if Vega was on the right side, that didn’t made him a good person. Galen had learned that the hard way.

Being the only doctor of a tribe who saw a nigh holy imperative in breeding while Razorgrass consumed their arable land hadn’t been an easy decision. As a colt, he’d watched as expectant mothers were drained by their fifth, sixth, or seventh children in as many years. Sickly foals just as malnourished as their mothers. It hadn’t been until his own mother had given birth to a little brother with a stump for a head and missing half a hind leg… even in this tunnel he could hear her scream and see her clutching the tiny, deformed body as she begged the spirits for an answer.

Of course, the answer was the same as always: she must have been a bad mother to give birth to a deformed child. What other explanation could there be? He’d left his tribe to find it, and found it in the Mendi. For a tribe devoted to peace and healing, they’d been patronizing and condescending. Oh, a Carnilian wants to learn how to be a real doctor? How adorable. Next an Orah will want to not live in a muddy hole or a Roamani not stomp their neighbor into the mud!

Errukine had been the only one to listen. The only one to hear out his reasons, and give him the books he needed, and convince her fellows to answer his questions. Most Carnilians considered him trained by the Mendi, but in truth, he’d trained himself. He’d memorized anatomy diagrams, learned the basics of pharmacy, and worked out which old mare’s tales were helpful and which weren’t. There were drugs and herbs a mare could take to restrict fertility. Safe ways to remove an unborn zebra before they were larger than an imperio coin. He came home, full of hopes and dreams.

He’d nearly been killed by them.

The first mare he’d helped had told Desideria that she’d miscarried. Desideria asked the spirits, discovered his patient was lying, extracted a confession, and gathered a mob. They’d been all but ready to maim him for life. Oh, they wouldn’t kill him. That broke Tradition, but he’d be unable to help anyone with his eyes gouged out. Vega had found him, crippled and starving. He’d gotten Galen new eyes, with the expectation that Galen would be the Exchange’s doctor. Still, Galen needed to give his tribe the help they needed.

That meant taking the red.

It was a simple enough potion. Any shaman could prepare it. He hadn’t anticipated how painless it was; legend said it was supposed to hurt like your hide being flayed away or chewed off. The change was mostly cosmetic, and irreversible when properly done. Yet the red stripes seemed to imbue him with an aura of protection. Everyone could see he rejected the tribe’s ideals, so he couldn’t be condemned for it. Everyone was supposed to shun the Proditor. With Vega’s funding, he opened up a shop and simply waited.

Five hours later, he had his first patient, a zebra who was pregnant at sixty. The visit had taken half an hour. She left with a bag of herbs and returned to her children and grandchildren. That’d been five years ago. Since then, he’d seen signs it was helping. More food for children born. Fewer hungry family members sold to the legions for a few coins. Sure, his own tribe wanted him gone from this world, but he liked to imagine he had a little respect as well. Even if no one admitted it aloud.

Reflection made the passage through the electrical conduit somewhat faster. Dragging a sled loaded high with medical supplies made the return trip that much harder, and by the end of it he was puffing and sweaty. He finally hooked his hooves over the lip of the tunnel and pulled himself out.

“You need to hurry,” Gāng rumbled, the enormous, rotund zebra hooking the end of the cart and pulling it and the sled out with one heave. Aleta stood nearby, the scarred mare holding a bucket of water between her hooves. “You need to wash and get in your office.”

“Why? What’s going on?” he asked with a frown. “It’s the middle of the night!” Aleta tossed the bucket over him and then began to vigorously scrub the mud and sweat from his body.

“I know,” Gāng rumbled as the massive Achu lifted the medical parcels with ease. “Haimon is looking for you. His goons are upstairs. Osane is stalling.”

Galen stared a moment, then joined Aleta in trying to hide all the evidence that he’d spent the last hour sliding through a pipe under the river. If Haimon knew about the smuggling though the power access, he’d not only end Galen’s life, but force Vega to destroy the tunnel. That’d plunge all the west side into darkness.

They slipped through a hole bashed in the wall and into the basement of Galen’s building. The cargo elevator had died a century ago, but the service stairs were still intact. They raced up the five stories to the top, and carefully slid a bookcase aside to admit them. “Shit,” Galen panted, hearing raised voices from the office as Osane, his nurse, was saying something about being with a patient. “Unless they think I’ve been running a marathon with you–” he panted, pushing the bookcase back.

Aleta didn’t answer. What she did do was rather abrupt and shocking. Her head ducked down under his haunches and rather firmly took hold of his root with her mouth. The action firmly paralyzed the part of his brain that he needed to deal with Blood Legion demanding his presence. Still, he could count the amount of attention that part of his body got from a mare in the last five years on one, singular hoof so the effect was somewhat magnified beyond what he was expecting.

“A-Aleta,” he stammered out as he quickened rapidly. “Wha–”

She let him free and turned, climbing on the bed, thrusting her rump back and raising her tail. “Mount me,” she demanded in a low voice.

“Habawaha?” was all he could reply.

“Get over here and rut me now! Hard and fast as you can!” she hissed.

The night had taken a turn for the surreal. Really, this was the sort of behavior he associated with poorly written stories by young, undersexed hacks. But given that he was stiff, she was presenting, that against all sanity she smelled quite willing and receptive, and in two minutes the Blood Legion might chop his head off, he could think of nothing else but to follow her imperative, as insane as it seemed to be. He might not be experienced with the act of copulation as most Carnilia stallions, but he had enough instinct to get inside and make it work.

“Harder!” she hissed aloud. He tried harder. “Faster!” she yelled. Wasn’t this fast enough? After the tunnel and the stairs and now this he was so sweaty that it was turning into a daze. Soon words were lost to the groan of reproductive desire.

Then the door smashed open and four Blood Legionnaires stormed into the room. Immediately they spotted the pair, and their scowls turned into smirks. “Seeing a patient, eh? You’re lucky we were ordered to be nice. I thought he took ‘em out, not put them in!” the leader of the quartet said just as Galen’s body decided to finish. “Pull out and clean up fast, Doctor. Haimon needs you.”

Between the tunnel, the stairs, and Aleta, a patient was the last thing he needed. She was just as sweaty and spent as he was, but they shared a look. Here was the explanation for his sweat and exhaustion and Osane’s stalling. After all, who could would be surprised by a Carnilian having sex? “What’s the emergency?” he panted, grabbing his home kit, pulling on his doctor’s coat, and staggering out the exit. As he passed Osane, his nurse nearly betrayed the whole thing with her gape and… she was actually blushing? “Osane, get your kit.”

“R…right away, Doctor,” she said, grabbing her own saddlebags. As they all departed, he gave one last look down the hall at the sweaty, breathless Aleta standing in the doorway, wearing a small smile on her scarred visage.

Fortunately, Osane had hidden her shock by the time they reached the street. The cool night air caused him to shiver. The four legionnaires laughed and joked about which was more pathetic: a Proditor only able to get laid by a scar farmer, or a scar farmer only attracting a Proditor mate? At the moment, he just wanted a shower and bed. “Is Haimon injured?” he asked, more in an effort to stave off their crude speculation than interest in the major’s medical condition.

“Ha! We wouldn’t have lounged around while you pumped a load into your scared doxy,” the leader snorted. “He’s got a patient for you to save.”

“Can’t say which one it is for sure! Third? Fourth?” a comrade laughed.

Galen frowned and sped up towards the hotel where Haimon was holed up. Inside, he could hear a mare screaming upstairs, crying for help. He left his escorts, adrenaline driving away his fatigue as he raced up the stairs two at a time. Outside a pair of double doors was every healer and doctor even a hint of skill guarded by legionnaires. They kept their voices low, and didn’t acknowledge him as he pushed past them to the doors.

Inside, a wave of cloying metallic stench hit him. The conference room had been transformed into an abattoir. The conference table was pushed against the wall, and in the middle of the room a zebra dangled by one hoof from a light fixture. Great, bloody strips of hide had been cut from his body, and he bled freely into a tub beneath him. Next to him, his body still, was another stallion, his limbs swollen and blackened by tourniquets tied about his bound limbs. A noose had been pulled tight about his throat, and if he wasn’t dead, he soon would be. A third stallion lay on the conference table on his back, groaning, a massive laceration on his stomach exposing loops of bowel pulled from the cavity. Maximillian, the weedy stallion, was held firmly by two legionnaires, his body bound and beaten.

Against the wall sat a sobbing Desideria and three more of her sons. Her makeup dripped down her face, broken beads scattered about her hooves as she wept. Still, the sight of him made her pause, and reflexive disgust crossed her face. Old habits, Galen figured.

Sitting calmly in a seat against the opposite wall from Desideria was Haimon. The Roamani gave him a small smile as he sat without his armor, leaning forward slightly. “Good evening, Doctor. I hope you are well?” he asked in a quiet voice. “I’m afraid there’s a few medical emergencies for you to handle.”

Galen stared at the flayed stallion, the gutted stallion, and the bound stallion, and then glanced behind him at the other doctors. He blinked a moment, thinking as Osane entered behind him. Then he looked at Haimon. “I don’t understand.”

Haimon just looked at Desideria. “Well?”

Desideria trembled as she looked at Galen, then Haimon. Hot tears ran down her cheeks. “He did it,” she choked.

“Desideria!” Maximillian cried out in anguish. “No! He’ll kill you too!”

“He did? But all night you’ve said you’re both innocent,” Haimon purred.

“After all the ‘how dare you’ and ‘you can’t do this’ and ‘waaa, don’t hurt my babies,’” quipped one legionnaire with a laugh. Haimon, however, gave the stallion a flat stare, lips curled in the faintest expression of disapproval. The legionnaire swallowed and immediately shut up.

“Desideria,” Maximillian begged. “Please.”

“I have to save our children,” she sobbed. “He’s been sending information to the Irons. There’s an old combat radio he uses. It’s hidden in the wall in the back closet,” she wept and then looked at Galen. “Please help my babies! Someone! Please!” But the healers in the hall didn’t shift a hoof, standing deaf to the mare’s cries.

Haimon rose to his hooves, reached behind his chair, and withdrew a battered old radio. “This radio?”

Desideria looked at the device, then at Haimon’s casual smile. “You knew?”

“I knew,” he echoed gently.

“Then… why?” she asked, staring at her dying children and captive husband.

“Because you need to understand there is a world of difference between me finding his radio and you refusing to tell me yourself,” he said, tossing the radio to a legionnaire, who caught it deftly. Then he approached the bound Maximillian. He twisted his head and drew a curious, forward curving knife made of a glassy, black material.

“Please!” Maximillian pleaded as Haimon approached, held tight by the legionnaires. One forced his head back, baring his throat. “Please! I only wanted peace!” he shrieked.

Haimon shifted his head from left to right, and the razor sharp edge passed through his throat like water. The forward curved tip cut cleanly through both carotid arteries, blood splashing down his chest as his eyes suddenly turned saggy. He collapsed like a deflating balloon, and finally slumped into a bloody heap. Haimon gave the blade a few flings to clean the blood from it, then returned it to his sheath. “Have it,” Haimon said to Maximillian’s corpse. Then he turned and gave that gentle smile to the rest of the room. “Is there a doctor in the house?”

Not a one of them moved. They kept their eyes turned away from the scene, as if pretending that if they didn’t see it, it wasn’t happening. Desideria’s stare met Galen’s, the mare trembling as she stretched out a hoof to him. “Please… please…” she repeated in a thin whisper.

“One traitor appealing to another,” Haimon murmured. “I can certainly empathize.”

Galen closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Triage. The bound stallion, he guessed he was Claude, was beyond saving. He didn’t even check for vitals. Instead, he moved quickly over to the hanging stallion, Marcus, and pressed his side. He was rewarded with a groan of pain. The third, Othello, was conscious enough to look at the proceedings. “We need to get him down at once,” he shouted, then looked at Osane, who stared in horror at the blood spattered Haimon. “Osane!”

She jerked, her eyes going from him to Haimon and then back to him. She gave a shaky little nod, and he knelt down to give her a boost. She cut through the rope with a scalpel, and Galen caught him before he tumbled head first into a basin of his own blood. Marcus was too weak to do anything but groan.

“All-blood,” Galen instructed, reaching into his own saddlebags for an IV. So many veins were collapsed or lacerated, so he went for the neck. Not ideal, but without at least a liter of All-blood, there wasn’t much chance of survival. Healing potions at this point would result in an exsanguinated corpse. Osane passed him a bag of the vital blood substitute. Developed during the war, it could be almost universally applied. It was also damned expensive, but he didn’t worry about that now. “Tissue weave,” he ordered, and she handed him a tiny baggy with a roll of what appeared to be wet gauze. It was a similar product prepared by Carnico. He didn’t have enough for all the wounds, so he unrolled it and applied it to the largest gashes of missing skin. The spongy material stuck tight. “Healing solution B, one liter.”

A large purple bag of healing potion was hung and fed into the same line as the All-blood. Contrary to popular belief, not all healing potions were alike. Some magically restored the body to a point before injury, useful in the short term, but useless for older wounds. Others stimulated the body’s natural healing ability, but couldn’t push a body past its natural limits. A broken leg would heal crooked. Galen watched as the missing bits of skin knitted with the tissue weave, which helped the skin scaffold close. He’d have some wicked scars, but should survive this. He immediately moved to Othello. Restuffing bowel was a mess, and pointless if he caused an obstruction. Once that was done, layers of tissue needed to be sutured to keep them all in place. Only then could he use a potion. Even with it, Othello was going to need days of antibiotics to prevent inevitable infection from spreading.

Slow applause as he concluded drew his attention back to Haimon, who’d returned to his chair to watch. “Well done. Marvelous work,” he said as he clapped his forehooves together. Then he rocked forward and approached, glancing back at the other cowed healers by the door. “I’d begun to fear all the doctors here were gutless, but you…” he trailed off, then tapped Galen’s chest with a hoof. “You interest me. I think you’ll be my personal physician, what do you say?”

Galen stared at him for a long moment, then answered softly. “No.”

“No?” Haimon asked, his calm smile frozen on his face. “Are you sure of that? No?”

“No. I have patients to tend to. You want a personal physician, there’s plenty around,” he said with a wave at the assembled healers. Then he started to pack up his bags. He expected a threat. Expected to be killed. Expected Osane to be killed, and prayed she’d forgive him if she was, but he hadn’t given up his practice when his eyes had been gouged out. He wouldn’t to play doctor for a monster.

Instead, Haimon replied, “You remind me a lot of myself, doctor. I hope that, should I ever need your services in the future, I can expect such prompt and exquisite care.” He lifted the empty sack of All-Blood. “My my. Where did you get this?” he asked with soft voice and steady smile. Galen didn’t trust himself to answer, and Haimon simply smiled and let it fall. He started for the door. “Thank the doctor, Desideria,” he said on his way out. The healers hastily dispersed as soon as he departed.

Galen checked both patients. “They should recover, but need to take it easy for a few days,” Galen rambled as he fetched some antibiotics for Othello, asking a legionnaire for a sheet for the body of Maximillian on the floor. He didn’t expect one, but it was the right thing to do. Desideria just sobbed, clutching her unharmed children to her. Who knew if she’d lost others tonight? Still, the Blood Legion didn’t seem to be preventing him from leaving so he mumbled, “You don’t need to say anything,” as he headed towards the door.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Desideria said, barely audible. He paused and looked back at her, meeting her eye. “I may hate what you do, but thank you.”

He just gave her a nod and left with Osane. They were on the street, crossing the plaza, when she murmured, “That was very brave, and very stupid of you, sir.”

“Huh?” He blinked.

“Desideria’s been a pain in Haimon’s backside since they got here.”.

He snorted. “Well, that’s nothing new. She’s been a pain in my backside for years.”

“You don’t get it. Why didn’t all those other healers help? They could have. Easily,” Osane said as they trotted inside his building.

“Well…” He balked. Any other time they should have been helping. They should have been jumping to help.

“Because they didn’t want Haimon to kill them, that’s why!” she answered for him. “Haimon called every healer in town and other than you, none were willing to help her. You did. Haimon was showing Desideria that no one was going to help her. That he’s in charge of the west side now. And he didn’t lay a hoof on her to do it. He’ll destroy anyone close to her. Her children. Her husband. You just showed you’re willing to help her and–”

He paused and turned, facing her with a smile. “Osane, it doesn’t matter.”

“But–” she started.

“Osane. I became a Proditor because it was the only way to help my tribe. They may hate what I do, but they need it, even if they can’t admit it, and I think that’s what they hate the most. My own tribe broke my legs and plucked out my eyes to stop me. I didn’t stop. Haimon won’t stop me either.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “But I understand if you want to quit. You have a family to think of. I’ll even keep paying you as long as I can.”

Tears sprang up in her eyes. “I… damn it…” she sniffed and gave him a teary smile. “Why do you have to be so damned good, Galen?”

“Take a few weeks off. Call it a vacation. Take care of your children,” he said, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “And if anything happens to me, you can make a living selling what comes through the tunnel. Vega won’t care if it’s you or me, so long as he gets his cut.”

She gave a snotty sniff and nodded, then leaned in and kissed him on the cheek before handing over her kit, turning, and walking away. In spite of the smile he wore, his heart sagged. Why had being a doctor suddenly become so complicated? This night alone was far too convoluted for him.

He opened the door to his office, and was surprised by the sight of Aleta standing on the opposite side. He started to stammer an explanation. “I heard what she said,” she stated at once. He opened his mouth, but she interrupted, “And I heard what you said to her.” He smiled and started to tell her he was fine with her returning home too, when she announced. “I’m staying.”

His mouth worked silently a moment as he tried to process this. “You don’t have to,” he muttered. “Also… sorry about the… thing… with your thing… and my thing… doing… things.”

To his shock, she actually smiled! “Well, it would be nice to do that without four legionnaires beating down the door,” she said, strolling into the back.

He watched her go, staring at her scarred backside for several– “Wait? What?” he said, then swiftly followed. The night wasn’t over yet, after all!

The swamp groaned and shifted under hooves, the floating islands bobbing and twisting in a blustery wind from the north. The moon cut like a knife through the dark clouds, ripples of ivory light casting dark shadows beneath the foliage. The wildlife had taken shelter, the frogs silent and birds hunkered down protectively in the harbor of their nests. This was no night for hunting, but these nights there were far worst beasts out there than mere animals.

Diane remained as still as possible, her eyes scanning the reeds and mangroves that thrashed in the stiff, cold wind. When the moonlight broke through, she shaded her eyes to preserve her sight. With the wild shifts in the breeze, it was impossible to pick out anything distinct from the bayou. Everything mixed together into a tangle that she couldn’t pick through. Tonight, the smartest thing she could do would be to go home.

Yet she lingered.

There was a wrongness in their swamps. Since Kyros had killed those poor refugees, refugees no different than she had been when Mother brought them here from Rice River, everyone could feel it. As the weeks stretched into months, no one ventured far from the village, and never at night. Without a word, an informal curfew had been adopted. Get safe in bed and bar the door, because something was out there in the night.

“Hell of a night to be hunting,” rumbled a stallion, making her jump. She whirled and stared at the stony face of Orion as he gazed out at the swamp around them. “Shouldn’t you be safe at home?”

Diana pursed her lips together. It was the noise of the wind that had hidden his approach, that was all. “There’s something wrong out here, Orion. Something stalking the swamps. It killed Aeneas last night and Sable the night before last. Tore them to pieces.” Orion didn’t respond. “Folks are saying the Rougarou is back. Another one.”

“Funny no one is saying that maybe Kyros didn’t kill the first one,” Orion muttered. “You’re asking for trouble if you’re hunting it alone.”

“You’d hunt it alone,” she said as her hooves tightened on her rifle.

“Not by choice.”

“Well, I’m not going to sit in the village and trust Kyros’s hunters to do it. Heck, they barely leave the village themselves. I want to stop it. Maybe even take over as lead hunter,” she said, trying to convince herself that she could do such a thing. Mythical monsters weren’t so easily dispatched, however.

“Kyros isn’t hunting it. Don’t know what he thinks he’s doing, but it ain’t hunting. He goes out deep into the swamp, far out from the village alone,” Orion said evenly. “Sounds suspicious, don’t it?”

She nodded once. “I don’t suppose you might point me in the direction he went tonight, would you?” It galled that she had to ask that much. Kyros might be a blowhard and murderer, but he was also good at not leaving a trail.

He nodded, pointing off through the reeds. If Kyros was hunting the Rougarou, then it was important they kill it. If he wasn’t, she wanted to know what he was doing all by himself in the middle of the night. She started along the floating islands, knowing instinctively where one connected to another, when the ground was going to give way, and what not to trust her weight on. She’d gone nearly a mile, quick and silent as a shadow, before she dared glance back.

There was Orion, as if she hadn’t moved a foot. “Going somewhere?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“Just huntin’.”

“Looks like you’re huntin’ my backside,” she said, trying to sound stern. Didn’t he know how important this was?

Instead, he gave a little smile. “Just so happens that what I’m huntin’s the same direction as what you’re huntin’. Not my fault your backsides’s in my frontside,” Orion replied.

She flushed, but didn’t argue. A while ago she would have been flattered, but since that pony had come through, everything had gotten tense in the swamp. Whatever Kyros was up to… that was important. Not whatever Orion was staring at right now…

The deeper parts of the swamp became less river and more lake, and the pair skirted along the edge on old hunting paths she wasn’t familiar with. Orah had used and reused these trails for centuries, keeping away from anyone that wanted to trouble them. Along one lake was a massive derrick rising like a mountain into the blustery night air. It listed slightly to one side, the metal groaning with eons of fatigue as it slowly sank into the swamp. In another pool stood a pony flying machine, turrets poking up out of the muck as if still trying to wage a battle that ended centuries ago.

“I’ve never been this far,” she admitted as the wind blew brackish water into her face.

“We’re almost to Oldroot,” Orion said. “Nice little village. Good, quality hooch.” He gave a nod. “Wouldn’t be bad to stop in for a spell. Folks might have seen Kyros poking about.”

It was more than she had, so she kept on the paths which seemed to lead towards a hummock in the shadow of the huge derrick. It looked as if one stiff push might knock the whole thing over. “I don’t see any village. How far is it?”

“Should be right ahead,” Orion muttered. “We’re on their lands now. Storms or not, some zebra should have stopped you by now.”

“Me? But not you?”

“No offense, but you kinda stand out, Diane.”

Not being born Orah, she’d always be ‘that Carnalian.’ She frowned at the hummock. “Well, I don’t see any lights. How big a village is it?”

“Twenty souls,” he answered. “Give or take.”

They stepped onto the hummock, the solid footing supporting her as they moved up under the dark oaks rooting in the hill. The wind continued to moan in the branches, and she shivered. From the cold. Not fear. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t! She glanced back at Orion, and was gratified by the wary expression on his face.

Then she walked face first into the wall of a hut. Her butt hit the ground and she grabbed her muzzle, suppressing a groan of pain. She dared look back at him, and his half smile, and jabbed a hoof at him, silently swearing vengeance if he dared laugh. He didn’t, though. Despite the sound of their impact, there wasn’t anyone rushing out in alarm. No noise besides the howling of the wind through open doors and windows.

Oldroot was dead.

No, not dead, she realized as they searched from hut to hut along the crown of the knoll. Empty. Twenty souls, Orion had said, and they had yet to find a single body. Aside from some turned over furniture, there was no sign of struggle. They’d simply disappeared from the swamp. Twenty people wasn’t a lot, but it was more than you could just casually walk out into the woods.

“Where is everyone?” Diane breathed.

Orion didn’t answer. He had his eyes closed, the wind plucking at his mane. When he opened them, he just stared off at nothing in particular. It infuriated her the way Orah could do that. They might look dumb as a rock, but they’d be picking up every last little detail around them. They just largely didn’t give two shits about what they saw. When they did…

Orion pointed down the hillside towards the lake with the derrick looming like a rusty sword ready to slice the hill in two. She spotted the broken twigs pointing down towards the water. The bent grass. Yet when they reached the water, there was nothing to be seen. Just the rippling white caps as they washed into the shore before them. She looked across at the derrick but his gaze was now on the water. “Where–” she started to say, when the muscled zebra unslung his rifle and his saddlebags and passed them to her. “What–”

He leapt into the foamy water, took a deep breath, and disappeared beneath the waves.

What the hay was he thinking? She stared down into the water, feeling as useless as fur on a gator.

That was when she heard the twig snap. Instantly she drew back away from the shore and into the high grass. Her eyes scanned the woods around her. If she hadn’t been al– if Oldroot hadn’t been empty, she might have called out. Instead, she remained as still as she could, scanning for the source. If it turned out to be just a deer or beaver…

It wasn’t.

Kyros walked out of the gloom no less than two meters from her. He walked quickly, quietly, his footfalls barely making a rustle as he went right past her hiding place. He paused where Orion had disappeared into the water, scowled, and reached into his saddlebags. Withdrawing something small and round, he pressed a button on the top, then dropped it where Orion had disappeared. Then he continued on his way, as if in a hurry to reach his destination before morning.

When she was sure he was gone, she rushed to the water’s edge and searched for what he’d dropped.

BEEP! BEEP! BE–

She threw herself back an instant before the mine exploded, spraying her with rotten vegetation, but with only a few small holes in her hide. She scrambled to move as quickly as possible to where she’d dropped Orion’s weapons in the long grass. Where had Kyros gotten a mine?! She pushed herself as deep into the weeds as she could as Kyros came racing back, not with a rifle in his hooves but with an odd, compact gun gripped firmly in his jaws. His eyes scanned the darkness sharply, and behind him, she saw Orion’s head breach the waves. A moment later he whirled and the gun suddenly emitted a silent tongue of flame. The water was immediately chewed up into a foamy lather by a storm of bullets. She barely had time to throw herself flat before he turned his head and unleashed another silent barrage that ripped through the foliage right above her head. As abruptly as it started, the storm ended, the barrel of the gun steaming as he reloaded.

Then a bullfrog leapt out of the reeds and gave a confused croak. Kyros stared down at it a moment, then the barrel of the gun flickered, the frog exploding into bloody chunks. Chuckling to himself, he returned on his journey, disappearing out of sight.

She didn’t move till Orion breached the waters once more, something dark across his back. Carefully he clambered up onto the shore and dropped the large, dark shape down next to him.

It took her a moment to realize it was a dead zebra. The sight of it almost drove off the fact that Kyros had nearly killed her. “What the hell was Kyros doing? Where’d he get mines? Where’d he get that gun?”

“You find all sorts of things hidden in the swamp,” Orion said with a shrug. “Idjit needs to learn how to aim.” He pointed at the dead zebra. “Look.”

She didn’t want to, but did. The body was half decayed, the eyes and hide nibbled away, but still with muscle and viscera remaining. That put this at about three days to a week. The forelegs and hind legs had been bound together with chain, looped to a rock. “Is this how the Oldrooters treat their dead?”

“Not that I reckon,” he replied. Then he tilted the head back. The whole thing flopped back, the head nearly cut clean off. Even with the nibbling, she could see how straight the edge was. “One cut and dead. And not just killed. Dumped. Hidden.” He looked at the lake. “I found more just like him not ten meters offshore.”

Diane shivered. “What’s going on, Orion? What’s happening? Kyros shooting at shadows? Orahs with their throats slit, dumped in a lake? It makes no sense.”

“We need to search Oldroot. Maybe there’s an answer there,” he suggested. They’d already picked through three or four homes, but now they being methodical, moving from one to the next. She imagined something moving silently, picking them off and taking nothing. There were easily a dozen rifles for the taking, some of them valuable. Ammunition. Food. Clean water. A few imperios. Jugs of alcohol. That really worried her. What kind of monster killed everyone and didn’t even take the booze?

Orion was moving to the furthest hut, when she paused. If anyone was here, they weren’t going to be in a hut. Her eyes rose up to where she spotted a tiny platform in the moonlight in the fork of an oak tree. Slinging her rifle, she started up, bracing herself against the lower branches. Climbing trees made about as much sense as swimming in a bog, but Orah did both all the time. She figured it was a lookout stand of some kind, or maybe something as simple as a foal’s tree fort.

She pulled her head over the edge, and spotted the tiny shape curled up in the middle.

“Hey,” she whispered, and then stretched out a hoof. “Hey. Are you dead?”

A head lifted, took one look at her, and started to shriek at the top of her tiny lungs. Diane was so startled, she nearly fell right out of the tree. Her hind legs kicked air as her forelegs scrambled to pull herself on to the platform. Her efforts weren’t helped as small hooves began to kick her face with great vigor as the filly shouted, “Git! Git! Git! Git!”

“Stop! Kicking! We’re not– Ow! We’re not! Stop it!” Diane shouted in reply, their shouts echoing out across the lake.

“Git! Git! Gitgitgit!” the child screamed, battering her face. Diane managed to hook one of the filly’s legs, then dropped. It was about five meters to the roof of a hut, and the roof collapsed beneath her. She lay there, panting, clutching an equally stunned filly. That lasted for all of five seconds, as she started to thrash. “Letmgo! Letmgo! Letmgo!”

Orion appeared in the doorway, watching the scene with a small smile as she wrestled with the child, trying to explain they weren’t here to hurt her before she ran off into the swamp. What if she came across one of those deadly mines, or Kyros, or worse? “Hey!” Orion said firmly, and the filly froze. “Quit it.” She stared up at him for all of two seconds, her pink eyes round. Like a tiny striped missile, she launched herself at him, trying to dart between his legs and out the door. He sat and grasped her with his hooves and immediately realized his error. “Ow! Eh! Stop! Argh! Don’t kick! Hey! Ahhh! No biting! No biting! No biting!” he shouted in alarm as she sank her teeth into his hide repeatedly.

Every now and then Diane toyed with dreams of being a mother. Those dreams were kicked to pieces by the furious flailings of the filly. It took both of them to immobilize her. And she turned her head to stare into her eyes. “We are not going to hurt you,” Diane stressed.

“Git! Git! Git! Idjits! Turd huffin’ toad humpers! Hurt? Yer gonna git me killered!” she hissed back.

“We can’t leave her here. Whatever killed these people might come back for her,” Diane informed a rueful Orion, as the shouts and bites continued.

“And we need to know what might kill a whole village of Orah,” he agreed. “But we can’t–” His eyes suddenly bulged and his words were transformed into a hiss of pain as the filly’s hooves connected to something tender. “Get a sack!”

“You can’t put a child in a sack!” she protested, horrified.

“I’m about to punt her in the lake! Get a sack!” he repeated. It took her a moment to find a burlap sack sound enough for the job, dump out perfectly good cattail roots on the ground, and stuff the child inside. Quicker than the feisty filly could dart out, Diane pulled the string tight. The side bulged out and a steady stream of profanity emerged from the contents.

“We’ll need to get her somewhere till she calms down and tells us what happened,” Diane said as she massaged her aching back. Falling through a roof wasn’t something she’d planned on doing today.

“We could just dunk her in the lake,” Orion suggested as he rubbed between his hind legs with a grimace. He slowed, his eyes returning to that slack, unfocused stare. “We have to go. Now. Quick and quiet.” Even more ominous, the filly had suddenly gone quiet too.

The wind betrayed it, but just barely. Long grass, swaying in the gusts, impacted against something that wasn’t there. Orion rose to his hind legs, forelegs bracing his rifle as he raised, aimed, and fired in a second. The round sparked against something that let out a growl not from any mortal throat, and then it was moving closer, barely a shimmer against the night. “Run! Run!” he bellowed as his hooves deftly worked the action, ejecting spent casings that gleamed in the moonlight. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem fussed by the large caliber rounds.

What else could she do? She grabbed the sack in her teeth, turned, and ran. Behind her, another shot rang out. Then another. Then silence.

She didn’t stop. Didn’t trust herself to stop. What kind of beast killed people, then hid them in a lake? Or was invisible? Or bulletproof? Not even a Rougarou was all that! Her chest burned and she almost slipped into the bog twice as she made her way back to the village. No. Not the village. Kyros was there, and he had a part in all this. She’d run straight to Granny’s island. Whatever that thing was, it wouldn’t tangle with Granny. It couldn’t. Please… no.

First Theon, now Orion. The swamp that had sheltered her since she was a filly wasn’t safe anymore. Her village was larger than Oldroot, but whatever had killed the Orah there could kill the Orah in Willowbend. Granny would have answers. She had to.

Diane huffed as she reached the island with the old oak, dropping the sack. Perhaps a good sign, the filly within immediately started swearing and kicking at the fabric. “Cod humpin’ frogswallop garling boar ruttin’ sack slingin’…” Arion, her colt apprentice, immediately came out to investigate the commotion. A few moments later, Granny appeared,

“Landsakes, what’s that ruckus?” the haggard, old mare croaked as she tugged a shawl about her shoulders

Diane struggled to breathe as the zebra helped her next to the fire. In between gaps she tried to share the tale of coming across Kyros, the bodies, Oldroot, the filly, and Orion being attacked, but somehow it all came out in a jumbled mess compounded by her racing heart.

Arion, meanwhile, examined the burlap sack which had gone ominously silent as they talked. He gave the knot a tug, and the bag fell open. Her head popped out mere centimeters from the amber eyed colt, who blinked back. Diane took a breath to give warning, but before she could, the filly firmly struck him in the snout with a hoof, knocking him back. “Git!” she snapped, then jumped over him. Diane was about to lunge for her, but she scrambled away. Not out into the woods, but nimbly onto a rain barrel and up to the roof. In seconds, she’d somehow climbed all the way up into the branches of the giant oak tree, finding a fork fifteen meters overhead, and settling in.

“Ow…” Arion protested, rubbing his cherry red snout. “What was that for?” he asked, staring up at the filly who was pointedly ignoring everything they were saying.

“She’s the only survivor of Oldroot we know about,” Diane answered. “I don’t know if that’s her name or not. Orion and I hoped that she knows what killed them all.”

“Well, she didn’t have to bonk my nose!” Arion whined. Then there was a sharp ‘tak’ as an acorn hit him squarely on the head. “Granny!” he wailed, covering his noggin with his forehooves.

“You got problems with a filly, you work it out,” she wheezed, sitting hard beside the fire.

Diane frowned. “Are you okay Granny?”

“Just gettin’ old. It’s hell gettin’ old,” she muttered, rubbing her chest. “You just catch your breath, chile. I’ll ask my friends if they’ve seen what came of Orion.” She shook her head. “Our corner of the world’s come a mite more interestin’ than I like.”

Diane just looked out the way she’d come. Invisible monsters. A village of Orah slaughtered. The orneriest filly in the swamps that’d sooner give a beating than even her name. Orion gone. Theron gone. Kyros up to no good. All she could do was hope that somehow Granny could do something before it was too late.

The caravan wagon came to a halt, a good ways too early for them to have reached their destination. Lumi pulled himself carefully off the bed and, shuffling his hooves, moved towards the rear of the wagon. The hatch was cracked open to admit a cool breeze that carried on it the familiar smell of razorgrass and and something rather less common. Water. From the noise, there was quite a great deal of it nearby; rushing and gurgling and slushing along. Muddy water. Not clean like Lumihautile. From somewhere far away came a steady booming, distant enough that he could feel the slightest brush of pressure.

“What do they think they’re doing?” his uncle said nearby. “Do they think they own the whole road?”

“Uncle?” Lumi called out.

“Stay in the wagon!” his uncle shouted back.

“I don’t like it either, Kivet. Boss is talking to him now, but this is General Sanguinus with a whole frigging army. I’m keeping an eye out on a place to hide,” a mare said. The voice was familiar, but his uncle never introduced new people, save for the rare patient.

“Hide, where? There’s nothing but Razorgrass. We need to cross the river if we’re going to meet up in Sandedge. What does Sanguinus think he’s doing?” his uncle repeated.

Lumi strained his ears. There. Under the gurgle of water. Stallions. Lots of them. Distant enough that he couldn’t make out individual names. The wind carried on it the faintest tang of sweat and blood.

“Maybe he wants to throw a few thousand of his people away against Irontown?” the mare suggested.

“That’s dumb. I didn’t think Sanguinus was that dumb,” Uncle Kivet muttered. “He’s got soldiers sieging Rice River too.”

“That can’t be good for the Irons,” she muttered. “How’d you know that?”

“That pony patient we had. Her friends mentioned it. They’d taken half the city. West half.”

“Worthless half. Everyone knows Carnico’s the only thing worthwhile there,” the mare snickered.

“Maybe, but the Bloods are up to something. This rate, they’ll tie up the ferry for days. We’ll miss the rendezvous in Sandedge for sure,” Kivet grumbled.

Lumi pulled his head back into the wagon and moved towards the gentle tinkling that was Lumihautile. “Did you hear?” he asked it.

The spirit answered in a single chiming note that meant, ‘I hear the adulterated song of my cousins flowing on their journey towards the salty womb that birthed us all.’ Snow spirits were succinct like that, and never chatty. Fortunately, understanding its words was simple enough.

“There’s another legion here. Blood Legion. Can you help me spy on them?” he asked. Uncle wouldn’t tell him, one way or another.

Lumihautile mused a moment. ‘It’s hot here and I’d like it to cool down,’ the spirit commented. Nevermind the trailer was one of the coolest in the caravan.

“I’ll turn up the refrigerator,” he promised. It might mean a thump when he drained the battery, but he needed Lumihautile’s help.

‘I accept,’ the spirit answered.

He closed his eyes out of reflex more than anything else. Snow was water. Water was in everything all around them. With Lumihautile’s help, he could stretch out his senses through the water in the air. It wasn’t sight so much as a feeling. His forelegs lifted and he started to wave them like a dowsing rod. There. In the direction the wagon was pointing. A dozen equine shapes. A trio of griffons. A minotaur. He could feel the sweat rolling off hundreds of bodies, and sense the voids solid objects left in the water in the air. He pushed forwards, further out.

Another equine. Two. Six. A dozen. Twenty. Then he couldn’t guess as he felt thousands arranged before him. All spikey. All armed. It was exactly as Kivet had announced… an army.

The he touched a thing. It was, at first glance, pony in shape… but a moment later he paused and returned his attention to it. Cloaked. A zebra. A mare? It felt… different from the others. They were all voids in the air that the water couldn’t fill. This… this was like a statue of frozen poison. A wrongness that didn’t belong here.

Lumi knew he couldn’t do anything, but he might warn Uncle, who might warn the Boss and withdraw the legion away from it. He kept touching it, but its edges were elusive. They melted and refroze around his hooves. Wiggled like worms under his probes.

Then, two limbs locked tight around his hooves, binding them in place. His useless, sightless eyes widened in shock as they tightened, to the point where he couldn’t jerk his hooves away.

“Foolish,” said a voice that belonged to no mortal throat, resonating through the water and back to his ears. His stomach twisted, sickness growing inside. “No. Foalish. Didn’t anyone teach you not to pry, child?” the monster asked, the force on his outstretched legs twisting them up as if trying to snap them right off.

Then, it approached.

“Uncle,” he whimpered. Then he screamed, “Uncle!” Tears dripped as Lumihautile twirled in alarm. ‘Poison!’ it repeated, over and over again.

The hatch was thrown open. “What?” his uncle snapped, then dropped an octave. “What’s going on, Lumi? What’s wrong?”

“It’s got me!” he cried. “I can’t let go. It’s got me and it’s coming for me!”

Then he heard the hiss of leather on cloth and braced himself for what was about to come next. What always came when anything shamanistic went out of hoof. The belt cracked hard against his hide, and he sobbed as he struggled against both agonies. Eventually something would break and the horrible connection would end. Only it didn’t. He felt the welts and yet the pain did nothing. He was now in the grip of something else.

His uncle dropped the belt and struck him, shook him, but all to no avail. All the while, it grew closer and closer. His stomach twisted and he vomited. His eyes throbbed as if about to burst. What was it? What could it be?

The hatch creaked open, and that horrible voice chuckled deeply, like sewage gurgling out of a half frozen pipe. “Well, well, well. What have we here?”

Kivet snapped. “We’re not taking patients. Piss off.”

“It’s here. It’s here,” Lumi whimpered. “Make it stop, Uncle. Please. Make it go away.”

Kivet growled. “Are you doing this to my nephew?” he demanded.

“Oh, yes,” the grotesque words spilled out. “To be fair, he felt me out. I hardly expected to find another shaman here. Just bad luck for both of you.”

Kivet didn’t answer. He heard the sound of metal against leather, smelled gun oil, heard the drawing of the hammer. Then the clatter of the gun hitting the floor. The noxious wrongness increased, like worms on Lumi’s hide. “Let’s see. I think we can start with the liver,” the voice blurbled, and his uncle emitted a cry of alarm and pain. “Oh yes. Lots to work with there. Hard drinker are we? Next the spleen. Looks like you got shot there a while ago. Kid-neys!” the voice announced merrily, and his uncle cried out in agony. Someone knocked on the hatch.

“Kill yourself,” snarled the voice, deep and malicious. A moment later there was the sound of a knife entering a chest, before sliding down.

“Lumi… Lumi…” his uncle whispered.

“Oh, Lumi is it? Well, my business is ultimately with him. For the grand finale…” the voice declared, “Heart!” His uncle let out a strangled cry, flopped several times against the floor, then went silent.

“No… Uncle… please… no,” Lumi sobbed as he tugged his hooves against the unyielding force.

“Oh, save your tears. He was dead in two, three years at the most. I just saved him some time,” the voice chuckled. He felt the wind of something waving before his face. “To think, a blind shaman. I was so careful with my wards, but that was a loophole I never anticipated. I’ll have to be more cautious in the future.” There was a sour music, accompanied by thoughts of sharp alcohol smells. “Oh no. No slipping away. Waste not, want not.”

“Please. Lumihautile!” he cried out in pain.

‘I can not see what is hurting you!’ Lumihautile shouted in alarm, like snow on the verge of an avalanche.

“Boss! Uncle!” he wailed in futility, sure his life was about to be snuffed out. “Scotch!”

The pressure on his hooves stilled, the monster becoming silent. “Scotch? Scotch Tape?” The voice took on a musing quality. “She was here. She was here! Yes, I can still feel her. Where is she? What did you do to her? How do you know her?”

“I… she was my uncle’s patient, days ago! I helped her fever. Please!” he begged.

“You helped her?” the voice murmured. Then the pressure increased till he was sure his legs were going to be ripped off. “You helped her! You helped that filthy fate touched, star touched, miserable Equestrian?! How dare you!” The voice roared like a storm. “You must be punished!”

All he could do was scream. Then, from the censer, Lumihautile let out a cry of ‘No!’ and the temperature in the room plunged. ‘No no no no no!’ the spirit repeated, burning out its essence as it did what snow spirits did best, be cold. It might not see this creature, and that was terrifying enough on its own, but it could try and freeze everything in the wagon.

It worked. The force on his limbs weakened, then broke as a layer of hoarfrost covered his body. He ran forward, collided with something in an ice shrouded cloak, and staggered past it and out the door. The monster, for only a monster could make such sounds, let out a roar of frustration, and there came the sound of massive jaws closing.

Lumihautile disappeared.

It was like something vital inside him was cut away, and he nearly fell. There was shouting. Yelling. Screams. Gunshots. The thing behind him wouldn’t be delayed long. Whatever it was, he had to flee. Put enough distance between them that he could try and figure out something… anything… to do. A moment later he was in the razorgrass. It hooked and cut into every patch of exposed skin, but all he could do was hope that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be in a hurry to follow. He wept, but the dozens of thin scratches and lacerations were nothing compared to the loss of his uncle and Lumihautile. In less than two minutes, he’d lost what was left of his family, and dearest friend.

Suddenly he was out of the grass, tumbling through the air. He landed with a smack into the churning, dirty water that was all too happy to carry him downstream. Even blind, he could focus on treading water. From behind came a howl of inarticulate, monstrous rage… but it was fading.

Summoning the little bit of power he had left, he asked the water around him to freeze. He didn’t know this spirit. Didn’t know its name or what to offer. He could only beg, and hope for the spirits to be generous.

It was.

A cold firmness formed under his body, lifting him from the surging flow. The ice curved up, and he felt it form a little coracle around him. His body aching from a dozens of cuts, he collapsed against the ice, and let the river take him wherever it would.

The Nereid floated like a splinter on the sea between gaps in a coral atoll on the far side of the world. Long oars arched out from the middle, propelling it delicately across the reefs. Ponies and zebras may have never fought in these distant waters, but the poison of their conflict still lingered in the blue-green waters. The corals, which were once vibrant oranges and pinks, were streaked with brown algae and pocked with dead, bleached sections. Still the Nereid picked along the shoals and its crew plucked from the sea crabs, oysters, and the occasional fish.

“Bad fish,” one of the Estoli muttered, throwing back a slimy, sickly thing. “Just bad fish, Captain,” the stallions commented. “We should go north.”

“There’s bad fish north too,” the captain replied as she kept her weight on the tiller. The shallow draft skimmed over the submerged rocks, but she didn’t want to risk an impact.

“Then we should go south,” his comrade said as he pulled from the reef a starfish the size of her head. It was black, slimy, and utterly inedible.

“There’s Estori south. And also, bad fish too,” she answered. “You think the Estori don’t get bad fish?”

“Maybe, but there’s Estori mares too,” the stallion chuckled. She just snorted. Still, they had a point. Maybe if they did go south a ways they could find better? Not that she wanted to run a risk of running into Estori longboats. They took a dim view on their tribal cousins poaching off their lagoons.

“Hoy! Captain!” shouted a stallion at the front of the long ship. “Something to starboard.”

She looked to the right. “Something? What?” A rock? She could see a few, but none to starboard.

“No, Captain! Something shiny!”

She narrowed her eyes, shielding them from the sun. There were many things in the ocean, but few could ever be described as ‘shiny’, at least not anymore. She whistled, as the oars slowly propelled the ship towards the middle of the atoll.

Suddenly a brilliant shape leapt from the water, glittering and glistening in the sun. She’d sailed on the sea for twenty years, but had only heard of them in myth: a dolphin. It splashed down, whirled, and leapt again. All fishing was forgotten as the crew rose and watched the display in wonderment.

But it was only beginning. As they watched, the sea began to glow, first green, then white. A song, like a chorus of millions, rose from beneath the ship. A second dolphin breached the water. A third. And as the light grew, the brown sludge coating the coral seemed to bleed away. The bleached patches darkened into brilliant reds, blues, and yellows. Fish like those she’d only dreamed of swirled in frenzied exultation beneath them. Where had they come from? Had they sprung from the sea itself in some glorious miracle?

The glow spread to the Nereid as well, and where it touched, her wooden hull smoothed and shone as if given a fresh coat of varnish. Frayed roped became whole. Old gaff hooks took on a brilliant sheen. The rocks around them seemed to straighten and thrust proudly from the water. On the rocky islands, trees sprouted before their eyes. Everyone seemed young again. Everything beautiful. It brought tears to her eyes.

And to her astonishment, she saw a luminous mare standing next to her. Her ghostly legs seemed to melt into the surface of the boat, her eyes familiar as the captain’s own mother. Was this, somehow, in some way, the spirit of the Nereid itself? She was no shaman. They rarely set hoof on a boat, beseeching the spirits from port.

Then the spirit turned her eyes to the captain, and said in a whisper, “Flee.”

“What?” she asked with a frown.

But the spirit didn’t repeat itself. It just gazed at her in alarm as it faded from view, along with the illumination.

And the dream began to crumble.

The trees about them thrashed wildly as if gripped by a great sea quake, branches splintering from the force. The coral beds split and split again, as if some great invisible giant rent their beds with a colossal axe. Before her eyes, the fish swelled, burst, and sunk out of sight. A dolphin gave one last desperate leap, as if trying to flee the sea entirely. As it fell back, its skin split and its body fell to pieces, peppering the water.

Before her eyes, the wooden hull groaned, buckled, and popped. Woodrot spread like fire, the oars snapping under their own weight as stallions shouted in alarm. Yes even those shouts dwindled as the stallions staggered and wilted before her eyes. She felt it too. A heaviness, pulling her ever downward as it sapped her strength second by second. She tried to give a command, but her voice failed her. A few sailors collapsed and went still, while others struggled to row the Nereid free of the atoll with broken oars and failing hooves.

Then the ship gave a scream as it split in two, the stem and stern rising as the central mast plunged down between the halves. Stallions who yet lived cried out as they were pulled into the water. The stones around them crumbled, as if some great hoof was pressing the sea itself down. Her forehooves entangled with the worm chewed tiller, and she dangled there as mast and bow disintegrated, the wood sinking against all sense and sanity.

She stared up at the sky, wondering how everything had gone so terribly wrong, when the sea itself seemed to rise above them. No. It was sinking with them, taking with it that beautiful song and dream. With that, the sea closed in like an immense maw, and the atoll, the reefs, the islands, the fish, and the ship disappeared. The sea roiled for several minutes before it calmed.

A plank of wood, marked with the glyph Nereid, bobbed on the gray waves for a moment, then sank into the dark depths of the sea.

Author's Notes:

Next chapter is back to Scotch as they run into the Zencori. I'll be at EFNW on the 12th and on a few panels, so I hope to see people there. It should be fun. Dunno about Bronycon. It's awesome, but really expensive.

Anyway, thank you so very much for reading so far, and I hope the story stays interesting. I want to thank Kkat for creating Fallout Equestia, and thank Bronode, Heartshine, and Icy Shake for all their hard work. Thanks to everyone on my patreon who've supported my writing thus far. Thanks to Tetrakern for helping me get a website for my writing together. And thank you to everyone that leaves comments. I read each and every one, and while I might not reply to all of them, I definitely cherish all of them.

Hope to see you at Everfree Northwest!