Fallout Equestria: Homelands

By Somber

Chapter 6: Ripples in the Pond

Comfort came in many forms: for her, it came in the steady movement of the floor and the sound of waves lapping against the hull. A little thing to be grateful for, but right now she was grateful for every little thing extended to her. She could lie in her bed for hours, listening to the waves and ignoring the rest of the world beyond. The distant sounds of everyone going about their daily lives. The ringing of the bells signaling arrivals and departures. The sounds of chants carried on the wind and through the open hatch to her ears. All she had to do was close her eyes, and she’d be back aboard, feeling the planks beneath her hooves.

It had been three months since she’d been stripped of her rank and the Abalone, and still she could smell the tang of oyster juice soaked into the wood and hear the creak and groan of the planks.

A mare called through the open hatch, “Mahealani! Could you help me with the children a moment?”

Mahealani closed her eyes. All she wanted to do was lie here until the sea was the last thing she heard, but her bondsister called. “Coming,” she replied, then slipped from her canvas hammock to the floor of her cabin. The chamber was little more than four walls, a floor, a ceiling, a hammock, and her dresser. She hadn’t been able to bear bringing any of her belongings off the Abalone. She had no idea if they were still aboard the ship, locked in trunks somewhere, or tossed overboard.

She ascended the ladder and climbed up into a brilliantly beautiful day that seemed deliberately so to spite her sour mood. Golden sunlight poured down upon Northport in a dazzling display, illuminating the hundreds of ships lashed together to form the community. The ship she now resided in, the triple masted flagship of Fleet Tsunami, occupied a prestigious berth near the center of the community, and from here she could see both the docks and kelp farms to her left and the Tempest, the colossal flat-topped vessel that made up the heart of the settlement, on her right.

“Not even getting dressed now?” a plump zebra mare next to the hatch asked, and Mahealani turned to blink at her sitting cross-legged on some crates. Her mane fell in long, tight braided ropes tipped with copper beads, and she wore the sashes and coat of their fleet but neither hat nor boots. Instead, a golden pendant gleamed at her throat. “Really, this is starting to approach the pathetic.”

She glowered at her. “Where are the children, Lani?” Mahealani asked as she looked around for the foals.

“With the servants,” Lani replied brightly. She was two years older than Mahealani, with merry green eyes and an easy smile. “Your sisters and I have agreed that your period of grieving is done and that it’s time for you to get out and busy again.”

“I’m cursed,” she stated simply.

“Even cursed crew need to be busy crew. You’ve moped long enough. The commodore is starting to notice. If our dear husband is aware, you know it’s a problem. And really, all this does you and the Abalone poor credit.”

“Has he picked someone for the Abalone?” Mahealani asked.

“Not a captain, but Pika’s managing it,” she said with a shrug.

“Pika! He can barely swim, let alone captain!” Mahealani said with a disgusted snort.

“True, but he’s a trusted son, and it’s the Abalone. How hard can it be to snatch clams from the seafloor? She needs to make up for the cost of repairs.” Mahealani fought the urge to demolish her bondsister’s fathomless ignorance of clam fishing. And a stallion captaining a ship was asking for trouble. They drank too much and lingered in port far too long. Before she could point out these facts, Lani jabbed a hoof at her. “Get dressed. We’re going out today.”

“I don’t want to go out,” she said as she looked back at her inviting bed.

“Well too bad. Either you come with me, or I’ll tell the servants to let Auntie Mahealani watch the foals,” the mare said with a wave of her hoof.

“I’m cursed, Lani,” she snapped. “Have you forgotten that? How can you think of such a thing?”

Lani just gave her a half lidded little smirk. “Easy. Any mare stuck watching nine foals is cursed. You’d just be doubly cursed. Or ten times cursed.” She jabbed a hoof again. “No more moping. Dress. Come. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this.”

Annoyance won out over despair. She dropped back in and opened the dresser. She had no right to wear a uniform, so she dressed in the sash, coat, and colors of her Fleet. The only difference between her apparel and Lani’s was that she took the time to slip on boots. Mahealani and her bondsister couldn’t have been much more different. Mahealani was all sinew and rough hide, Lani plump round softness. Mahealani had worked from fillyhood to captain a ship and had wed the commodore to have that opportunity. Lani had married into the Fleet with a ship, the Blue Lotus, as a dowry. She doubted Lani could sail more than a mile without capsizing.

Then again, Lani had never asked a cursed pony to intercede on her behalf.

Sailors were, by nature, superstitious, and the Atoli were, to a zebra, sailors. There was no crime in the asking, because few Atoli were mad enough to call on cursed powers. The stigma was punishment enough. Whatever ship she commanded, the crew would be wondering when the curse would strike. What form would it take? Would it remain on the ship, or just follow the captain? Her daughters had convinced the crew that the Abalone was still pure. But her captain… there were some stains even the sea could not wash away.

“What’s the big deal?” Mahealani asked as they walked across the deck. The flagship, the Golden Stripe, had been a trade ship in ages past. Its spirit was old and fat and happy, keeping the woodworms at bay and the ship afloat. The crew busied themselves more with domestic concerns than any activity she’d associate with sailing. Mahealani and Lani both genuflected at the ship’s shrine, where tiny gold coins glittered in the wavy glyph that was her tribe’s symbol over a glyph of an inexorable crashing wave.

“You’ll see,” she said as they reached the gangplank and descended into Northport proper. Four guards moved ahead and behind them, keeping a wary eye out.

After the wars, when the Empire collapsed, megaspells ravaged the seas, and radiation spoiled their bounty all over the world, the ships in the northern seas had pulled together in a desperate bid for survival. Steel and wooden ships alike were lashed together to form some sort of community after ports on land were consumed by megaspells. Despite numerous troubles, Northport survived. Survivors all along the coast were traded with, and the hulls were filled with all varieties of goods. Life was good for the Fleets.

Not so for everyzebra else, and they eyed the ships’ passing with narrow, covetous eyes. Some of the inhabitants were lucky to have a boat of their own. Most didn’t, and they worked on the kelp farms or fish pens. They gutted and salted the catch for a few fillets of their own, trotting about in just their stripes or whatever canvas rags they could find. While the Fleets could spare plenty, no Fleet wanted to put themselves or their fortunes at risk in the name of generosity. So they trotted past stalls perched precariously on the edges of the docks and around leaky scows that threatened to swamp with one good wave. Spiritless vessels, or the homes of cursed and wretched spirits. She didn’t know which was worse.

And they were close to the Tempest. What were things like farther out near the edge, along the docks where the truly destitute lived? As they walked along, Mahealani saw eyes boring into her. How dare she be Fleet? How dare she walk past their hovel in her clean sashes and coat?

Mahealani relaxed a bit as they made their way up to the Tempest proper, where guards stood vigilant against any trouble. Ramps led higher and higher towards the immense ship that was the heart of the city. “The port’s more crowded than I recall.”

“In light of so many deprived, what is one more cursed zebra?” Lani answered, her smile steady but her eyes troubled. “Many were settlements hit by our bondsister.”

“She attacks our own people now? What madness!” she hissed as they approached one of the doors cut halfway up the side of the ship. The Tempest was a Dragon Nest, an immense, flat-topped, double-hulled vessel made to house dozens of dragons for rest and recovery during the war. Most of the dragons were long gone by now, but the ship had grown proud and strong. Somewhere in its guts was a miracle of technology, allegedly stolen from the ponies, that provided power to the entire port. Every Fleet maintained offices here, and the vast spaces that had been occupied by the beasts were converted into luxurious living quarters that would be the envy of most of the world. Other areas served as warehouses for the settlement’s stores, holding enough supplies to feed the occupants for years… or the rabble outside for months.

“She skirts the razor edge of the law. She claims them raiders and scum and says she knows not otherwise till too late. Fleet Kraken and Fleet Maelstrom are on the verge of war,” Lani said with a smile. “Fortunately, it will not be something we need to worry about any longer.” Several zebras suddenly raced by, rushing to the rail of the ramp and pointing to the north. “What in the five seas…” she began, staring out to sea and shading her eyes. “What is that?”

To the north, the water bubbled as if boiling like mad, forming a great heaping froth. “A font!” Mahealani said, her eyes lighting up.

From the heart of the water emerged a glorious sight. A white, pearlescent spire rose higher and higher into the sky. It was attached to a long, sleek ship made of fair wood and brass that, when half its length had emerged into the sky like a breaching whale, came crashing down in a magnificent spray. Water sheeted off its triangular sails as it bobbed and rocked dangerously. “An Estoli ship,” Mahealani said in delight.

Many outsiders didn’t realize that the sea was a phenomenally large region, and while there was only one tribe of the sea, it carried at least four names. The Atoli and Estoli were different as night and day. The Estoli had never known war with the ponies, being on the far side of the continent off to the northeast. Their ships were long, thin, beautiful things that seemed doomed to tip over at a stiff breeze. Atoli ships were ships of commerce and war, heavy, strong, sturdy things that clumped along. Mahealani would never want to serve on a toothpick at sea, but she would be a fool to ignore the beauty of their lines.

“Magnificent, but what is it doing here?” she asked Lani. Fonts were old magic exclusive to her tribe. It took at least a dozen shamans, or more, to make a passage through the Undersea from one ocean to the other. During the war, the Empire had demanded that magic for themselves, never understanding the demands of such transportation.

“They’re not the only ones,” Lani replied, pointing a hoof. “The Atori and Estori are here too,” she said as she gestured to two clumps off to the side.

Atoli and Estoli were civilized traders and explorers. Their… cousins… were not. Their stripes were painted over with colors of blue, green, and red. Feathers, fish heads, claws and fangs, and other strange organic bits were tied into their manes and tails. They pierced their ears, noses, and lips with all manner of strange decorations. Rather than weapons of steel, they wielded wooden paddles tipped with shark teeth or jagged blades of obsidian, or barbed spears made with stingray spines. Oil made their hides shine, the stallions’ straining muscle barely contained with them. The mares moved with a beauty and grace that made her bristle with envy. If the commodore took one as a wife while they were here, her bondsisters would pickle her for a month in the bilge. It was said there was only one way to tell the two tribes apart: look for sharpened teeth. The Atori were cannibals and ate parts of their enemies to gain their strength.

To think, most of the world had needed megaspell annihilation to render them cannibals. The Atori did so out of Tradition. Proudly.

“Something is going on,” Mahealani said with her customary glower.

“Now aren’t you glad you didn’t stay in bed, dear sister?” Lani said warmly.

The four peoples of the tribe of the sea, all in one place… that didn’t just happen. Estoli and Estori individuals might come to Northport, but only occasionally and usually as individuals. At this moment Mahealani was looking upon two dozen members of the southern branches of her tribe. It was hard to imagine what could possibly bring them so far.

“I deserve a lashing for dereliction of duty, sulking in bed,” she muttered to herself.

“Oh, the commodore hasn’t noticed, the dear,” Lani said with a smile as they proceeded through the ship towards the center top. The deck of the Tempest was armored plate strong enough to withstand even heavy Thunderhead bombardment, but still a few holes melted through the alternating layers of steel and ceramic admitted light into the space below. Now the top deck was a carefully tended garden feeding a quarter of the city population. Many of the trees had been survivors saved from their home islands before the ponies had melted them to glass.

“Oy! Mahealani!” shouted a mare ahead, drawing her eyes to a knot of a quartet of zebras all wearing the same dress and medallions as she and Lani. Three of her bondsisters and her husband, the Commodore of Fleet Tsunami.

He had a venerable fifty-five years behind him, his stripes as gray as the beard that flowed all the way down to his chest. Like any good Atoli, his dress, enhanced by his crushed blue velvet coat, was trimmed in tiny gold coins that gleamed and tinkled when he moved. A magnificent admiral’s hat graced his head, and he wore both a sword and pistol befitting his station. “You came!” he said, blinking in surprise, then addressed Lani, “However did you manage it?”

“I threatened her with watching children,” Lani replied.

“That’s all?” he asked with a frown. Immediately, the mares sniffed and chuckled.

“Ah, dear husband, someday you should try to watch all your progeny,” Lani suggested diplomatically. “It may be illuminating.”

He frowned in confusion. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. Your bondsisters weren’t sure you’d be capable of attending,” he said as he gestured towards the midship, where an immense hatch had been opened ages ago and left yawning wide in the center of the garden. “I’m going to need you to testify.”

“Testify? Testify to what?” she asked.

“About what happened to your ship, Mahea,” a stern-faced mare said. Captain Orinoco captained Fleet Tsunami’s trade vessel and was second of the commodore’s wives. She wore her coin-sequined cap proudly atop her head.

“We’re trying Riptide in absentia,” Commodore Tsunami said grimly. “It’s time to hold my errant wife to account for her deeds.”

Mahealani sat down hard. “Testify?” she said weakly.

“Told you you didn’t want to miss this,” Lani said with a chuckle.

The group walked to the hatch, where overflow from a dozen streams poured down into the vast chamber below. The chamber ran from the armored deck down to the sea through a moon pool between the two hulls. Walkways arranged in rings looped around the edges of the chamber, dropping down towards a platform in the center of the pool at the bottom. Once, it had lifted and lowered injured dragons to places they could rest and get care. Now gentle waves lapped over the hooves of fifty or so zebras. Nothing lay beneath it but miles of ocean and dark blue-green water. In the middle, on a throne made of sea dragon bones, sat the Admiral of the Atoli.

She’d never met him personally. A decade younger than her husband, he cut a solemn figure in a crushed blue velvet coat with golden knotwork that covered him completely and an elaborate tricorn hat perched atop his head. All around him were the elders, which the Atoli called ‘commodores’. Her husband’s seat was vacant; with his partiality, he could hardly vote. Typically, their wives and daughters crewed their ships out of ‘love, devotion, and loyalty’. Sons had a nasty habit of getting reckless with ships and doing silly things to impress the mares, and so they were taught the business end so they could marry some mares to handle their ships for them.

The Admiral had no wives. No family. Like captains and commodores, he didn’t have a name. He was simply the Admiral of the Atoli.

All around the base of the lowered platform were dozens and dozens of shamans. There were shamans of fish, of birds, of water and air. Coral shamans with peach and white knobs tied to their manes. Clam and oyster shamans with masks of elegant mother of pearl. Kelp shamans draped in green and red fronds. Beach shamans with sand-encrusted shawls and driftwood dominos. Grim Atori reef shamans wearing the detritus of shipwrecks, and orange-and-red-painted Estori volcano shamans. Some, she couldn’t even guess at what kinds of spirits they served. More shamans than she had ever seen in her life.

“All of this for a trial?” she asked in a breathless squeak.

“Oh, no. The shamans are here on some other business, but who is going to turn them away?” Lani answered brightly. Indeed, it seemed that anyone in Northport with access to the Tempest was here. The walkways overlooking the platform were crowded thick with spectators talking loudly with each other. She could see members of all twelve fleets present, and even a few minor trade houses that lacked sufficient ships to rate an elder.

“A pity your children could not attend. I’ve not seen such a collection. From all four corners of the ocean they’ve come,” Captain Orinoco said as they made their way down the stairs between each row towards the base. Several members of the other fleets gave them hard looks, but, given what they were here to do, they bit their tongues for now.

Then Admiral pulled from his coat a black sphere of a dull, glassy material and brought it down on the arm of the throne. The impact cut through the conversations like a knife through canvas, and every eye focused on the throne. Twice more it fell, and on the third, not a soul spoke.

Admiral rose, turning once as he surveyed the assembled zebras with one intense yellow eye, the other lost in a horrible tangle of scar tissue poorly concealed behind a patch. “This trial is now in session!” he announced, his words carrying effortlessly to the highest corners of the shaft. “Accusations have been made against Captain Riptide. The tribe calls her to answer.” He sat back down on the throne. “Is the captain present to answer these charges?” None answered. “Are there any who would speak on her behalf?”

“I shall!” a stallion called out next to their group, pushing his way to the edge. Murmurs and grumbles spread across the chamber, and the orb fell again to silence them.

“Identify yourself,” Admiral droned.

“Commander Spar,” he replied. “Second in command of the Riptide.”

“She sends her second instead of coming herself,” Captain Orinoco grumbled next to Mahealani. “Such cowardice.”

Admiral waved his hoof, a bridge was extended out to the platform, and the stallion began to trot across. “Spar? That sounds like a pony name,” the Admiral said. “What fleet? What family?”

“The Riptide is our family, Admiral. Any name I had I cast away when I boarded her,” he answered proudly. Mahealani guessed he was in his mid twenties. Handsome and fit, likely some wayward scion of a fleet that hadn’t a place for a third or fourth son. He’d dyed his mane completely black and wore a uniform two centuries out of date.

“Very well,” Admiral said, letting Spar cross onto the platform. “Let the aggrieved come forth. They shall give their testimony. When we’ve heard enough, the Fleets shall vote. Should they tie, the Sea shall break it.” Mahealani shuddered. Technically, that just meant him voting in place of the spirits and the Atoli, but with this many shamans present, that would be messy.

One by one, zebras from the other fleets came over to describe the attacks made by the Riptide on their ships and settlements. Pirates and raider scum without fleet or family were the usual perpetrators of such attacks, and rarely were they as successful as Riptide had been. For nearly an hour, the aggrieved filed onto the platform to give their accounts of her scourges. The audience howled and shouted at the appropriate moments as witnesses were cycled through.

The whole time, Spar stood there with an expression of indifference edging on boredom. He dismissed any retort, waving them by. If he was a spokesperson, he didn’t seem to know it. Instead, he soaked up the ire of the mob with an expression of quiet contempt.

When the last filed off, Admiral called out, “Captain Riptide sails as a part of Fleet Tsunami. Let the Commodore of Fleet Tsunami come forward!” Commodore Tsunami adjusted his coat and hat a moment, then walked firmly across the bridge to stand next to Spar. “Commodore Tsunami. Did you order Captain Riptide to engage in these attacks on your fellow Atoli?”

Her commodore’s answer was immediate and certain. “Absolutely not! Never was it my intent nor in the interests of my fleet for her to target our own tribe. Let her sail and pillage raiders and pirates and ponies at her whim. Let her ravage the yaks and thieve from the griffons if she so desires, but never should she take even a single coin from our own!” he declared with fierce conviction that reminded Mahealani why she’d borne two children with the stallion.

“But you wed her and made her a part of your fleet!” a commodore beside the dragonbone throne, wearing the sash and pendant of Fleet Kraken, bellowed. “Take responsibility for your captain!” he demanded, bashing his hooves into the deck.

“True! I did!” he rumbled, his lips twisting in a frown. “I do not deny it. And if she were here, I’d beat her properly for her countless insults. If I had the means, I’d cast her and her accursed warship to the bottom of the sea, but I do not. I married her to spare us all from her maraudings, Kraken! I sought to turn a pirate into a proper Atoli daughter.” He pointed a hoof at the commodores. “I acted when all the other fleets merely stood by and whined of slack winds and cross currents against the Riptide. When I approached her, I saw a young mare with a ship of war and neither the patience nor wisdom to use it correctly. I wed her to give her family and a place to belong. I tried to bring her into formation time and time again, but she refused my gentle guidance. She has spat on our Traditions and defied every attempt made to replace or chastise her. Do not blame me for failing to break a winter squall of its nature!”

“You wed her to protect your own fortunes, Tsunami!” Maelstrom howled. The Admiral brought the spherical stone down once, Mahealani feeling the impact in her bones.

“Order. This is a trial, not a taproom brawl. Save that for after the verdict,” the Admiral instructed. “Have you any other witnesses to present to this trial, Commodore?” he said grimly. “The water grows restless.”

“Only one more.” He gestured to Mahealani. “Listen now, and you’ll see that Riptide’s viciousness does not extend only to attacking our tribe. She has turned her guns on her own fleet and sought to kill her own bondsister!” That got the interests of the commodores. Minor violence between fleets was to be expected; that was just an effect of trade. Turning on your own fleet, mutiny, was one of the highest offenses a captain could commit.

She looked to the Admiral, who gestured for her to cross the bridge. “Tell your tale, Mahealani,” Tsunami said boldly and with a small smile that failed to reassure her. “Let all know what Riptide tried and failed to do.”

“Oh yes. Tell them everything,” Spar said with a smile. Mahealani stared at him a moment. His surety… his boredom…

This was a trap. Riptide loved traps; she had nearly captured the Abalone in one. Yet… for whom? How? Why? When this trial was over, there wouldn’t be a single Atoli who would trade with her. There was enough shamanistic power assembled right now that they could curse the Riptide and send it straight to the bottom of the sea, if she were found guilty. Yet Spar hadn’t offered a single bit of defense or argument against the testimony given against his captain.

Mahealani stood on the platform in the center of the moon pool and turned around, looking at the assembled zebras all around above her. As a sailor, she’d dealt with countless threats of the sea. Faced raging storms that threatened to sweep her into the deep. As a captain, she’d dealt with slave ships, pirates, and mutinous crew. Right now, she’d happily take all that over speaking to hundreds of onlookers.

“Just speak. The spirits will carry your words to them,” the Admiral said in his low, even voice. Mahealani swallowed hard, realizing it wasn’t just mortal eyes on her now.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, thought of her daughters, and started to speak. “It started when we travelled to the Broken Isles to pay our respects to the ancestors and discovered four young stranded on the island. A Zencori, a Starkatteri, a pony, and a strange half pony, half dragon creature.” And from there she retold everything that had happened, only omitting a few small details like Scotch Tape claiming to go to the moon. She had no idea what the filly had been playing at with that one. Otherwise, she kept her story as complete as she could. The audience listened intently, gasping in horror at the waste dumped on the fishing reef and when she confessed she’d asked a Starkatteri to intercede on her behalf. Finally she finished, telling of reaching the Orinoco in time to prevent Riptide from sinking the Abalone.

“That is… quite a tale,” Admiral said in the window of silence that followed her story.

“Every word of it is true. May the sea swallow me if I lie,” she said, pressing a hoof to her chest.

“Yes. A thrilling tale,” Spar said with that easy smile. “One they should tell for generations.”

“Do you deny or refute her account?” Admiral asked evenly, fixating his eye on the younger stallion. “Poisoning a fishery. Firing on a ship of the tribe without provocation. Mutiny within your own fleet. These are serious accusations.”

“Oh? And what of aiding and abetting the enemy?” he asked as he started to walk around Mahealani. “Assisting a pony and a Starkatteri? I don’t know which is worse, do you?”

“They were children!” she protested immediately.

“Of our enemy!” he retorted with a scornful snort.

“Order!” The admiral slammed the orb down. “Mahealani is not on trial here.”

But Spar persisted. “Why did you not simply leave them on the island for another to assist? Why did you choose to take on the enemies of our people? Because they were our enemies. Does not the Abalone fly with the flag of Princess Luna’s head on a sword?”

“That–” she began.

“Order!” Admiral repeated, raising the black sphere.

“She disparages my captain, Admiral! I cannot be silent at this hypocrisy!” Spar cried out. The commodores listened intently, talking lowly to each other. The Admiral turned to them, and Kraken and Maelstrom nodded. He lowered the sphere a little, and Spar smiled at Mahealani in triumph. “War with the ponies is Tradition,” he stated. “You were carrying known enemies of our people. Captain Riptide requested that you turn them over to her. Was there some obscure Tradition that prevented you from doing so?” He turned to the crowd. “Does Fleet Tsunami aid the enemy of our people?”

Something rose inside her. Something she’d thought drowned and sunk. Anger. Mahealani retorted. “Enemy? They were children, you craven bastard! She nearly sank eighty souls to slay children!”

Spar frowned, as he hadn’t expected her to fight back. “Children of our enemy. Unless a ceasefire was declared in the last two centuries, we are still at war. You were committing treason!” He stomped his hoof. “By Imperial law, Riptide not only had a right to fire on a traitor, but an obligation to do so!”

“This is not the Empire, and I remind you for the last time that Mahealani is not on trial here!” Commodore Tsunami snapped.

“Oh! Perhaps she should be!” Spar said, pointing a hoof straight at her. “Unless our tribe has forsworn our oaths to the Empire, the law is the law! She should be flogged bloody for her association with dark powers alone, not merely removed from office!”

This time, the sphere’s impact knocked everyone not sitting, a shaman, or the Admiral to their knees. “Enough, Commander,” the Admiral warned. “This is an Atoli trial, not an Imperial court.”

Spar smiled and bowed to the cyclopean stallion. “I beg forgiveness. I was under the misconception that the Atoli were a part of the Empire. Even the Atori served the Empi–” The Admiral raised the sphere, but he didn’t slam it down. Instead, Spar sat down hard, grabbing his throat as his eyes bulged in alarm.

“The sea has run out of tolerance, Commander. Now, silence,” he said, and Spar opened his mouth, seawater poured out in a deluge. Admiral lowered the sphere, and Spar doubled over, coughing and retching cold water.

Admiral turned to Commodore Tsunami. “You have heard the testimony of witnesses. How does Fleet Tsunami respond?”

“I can say with certainty that her part on our Fleet is nothing more than a bill of sale, and were she present, I would divorce her at once and give her to the sea for her transgression… and I can think of no better parting than via cannon!” That got a few chuckles, but none from the commodores. “She has not honored her obligation to the Fleet, nor has she respected our Traditions.” He then turned, removed his hat, and bowed to the two zebras sitting beside the dragonbone throne. “I fully understand if Fleet Kraken and Fleet Maelstrom wish to hunt down my errant captain for recompense. I will aid you, should all the fleets agree to that action.”

“You can pay for our blood and ships she’s taken!” Kraken demanded.

And the specter reared its ugly head. Money. Her husband may have spoken passionately of aiding the tribe, but his marriage had been to protect Fleet Tsunami’s profits first. “She has kept whatever spoils she has claimed for herself.”

The commodores exploded, along with the rest of the room. “You expect us to believe that? Tsunami, you greedy bastard!” shouted Kraken.

“It’s true! Whatever she’s taken, she’s held onto!” he appealed. “She puts it all back into her ship and crew!” Mahealani had seen the books, and that was true, but not the whole story. Having Riptide had been a massive lever for their fleet’s fortune, and until now, her commodore had been happy waiting for the eventual payoff. “She has forsworn her oaths of bondship. She’s as good as divorced me!”

“This whole trial is just you slipping the bill, seas drown you!” Kraken bellowed. Out of the corner of her eye, Mahealani saw a filly break the surface of the water, with only her mane and flat black eyes visible. “Take some damned responsibility for damages at least!” The shamans immediately stiffened in alarm, but their distress was missed by the Admiral, who had raised the sphere again.

Then, before he could bring it down, a voice rang down from above, cutting through the squabble, “Oh, dear Commodore, don’t hold your breath.” All eyes rose up to the sight of brown-clad, dragonfly-winged fliers bearing a platform on which stood Captain Riptide. She stared down at the assembled zebras with a smug smile of superiority. “You all know that Tsunami takes all it can reach,” she said, quoting the fleet motto.

The sphere crashed down twice, till silence resumed. “Thank you for attending your own trial, Captain,” the Admiral stated dryly. “The entrance was unnecessary.”

“Oh, never underestimate a good entrance,” she said with a toss of her mane, then immediately pounced on the Commodore, grabbing him around the neck before he could pull away and forcing a particularly long and loud kiss on the stallion. “Oh the things I’ve heard you say about me, dearest husband,” she gushed, baring her teeth as she stared into his eyes, hooves nearly strangling him. “It kills me. It really does.”

Mahealani lunged in and, with practiced ease, disentangled her husband from her bondsister. “No!” she snapped, moving between the pair. “You dare call yourself his wife!?”

“Oh yes. He’s all upset that I’ve been saving up a bit,” she said as she examined her hoof with a sniff, ignoring the assembly as she continued in almost a bored tone, “If you wanted spoils, here.”

And more fliers began to drop down, each one clutching bags that they dropped around the mare. Gold and silver coins, shells, books, gems, pieces of delicate scrimshaw and ivory. Even sacks of pony bottlecaps and Equestrian bits! They formed a ring of wealth about the mare. It was easily as much as the Orinoco would earn in a solid year of trading. A good year. “Here’s a bit to make you happy. I have more. Much more.”

“I grow weary of the waves of Tsunami,” Admiral growled. “Are you here to mount a defense or bribe your way out of trouble?” The latter was a time honored tradition of the tribe, though Mahealani couldn’t imagine how much it would take for all of Riptide’s crimes. Given how much she’d casually dumped around herself, though, maybe she could. The captain didn’t answer. She simply smiled at the Admiral till he repeated more firmly. “Why are you here?”

She beamed a smile at the implacable Admiral. “Why, is it not obvious? It was demanded that I answer to you, and here I am. I am a dutiful and loyal Atoli,” she said as she stared at that sphere in his hoof, then back into his eyes. “Accorded a trial and the protections of law before execution, of course.” She trotted to where Spar had recovered enough to sit up and helped him to his hooves. “My commander here has served me wonderfully,” she said, and he bowed shakily but deeply to her.

“Dutiful and loyal? You?” Tsunami sputtered, rubbing his throat.

“Always, to those who are deserving of my loyalty,” she answered, smiling so benignly it was hard to imagine her hiding any teeth in that grin. “Those who do not merely wish to use me.” Instantly, the smile was gone, replaced by a forlorn look. “But it seems my commodore no longer wishes my hoof in marriage. Oh woe is me. Whatever shall I do with the deadliest ship on the seas and all this money?” she asked with a pout, casually kicking a small gold ingot in the direction of Kraken, whose hatred was momentarily replaced by stunned incredulity.

Commodore Tsunami’s mouth worked silently as he was snared in the trap. If he rebuked Riptide, she was under no obligation to pay him any more dues, and the other Fleets, seeing the treasure she’d already displayed, would tear him to pieces for their share. After all, it was far harder to try to collect damages from a warship. Worse, any one of the other fleets could take her up on her implied offer, and all the advantage she’d brought to Fleet Tsunami would be turned against them. And every fleet would see it as a cowardly attempt to weasel out of responsibility. Some might even challenge the claim further, asserting that Fleet Tsunami had riches off the books.

If he didn’t rebuke her, then he was complicit in her crimes but would also be able to offer blood money compensation from her spoils. If she had claimed an appreciable share of her booty from pirates and slavers, his fleet might even make a profit after it was all tallied. Admitting the fault and paying compensation would be slightly more respectable to some than trying to forswear her, too. But if Riptide kept up her attacks, eventually Fleet Tsunami would be reefed. It was a question of being eaten by a shark or piranhas.

“I… admit I’m at a loss,” he confessed.

The waterlogged filly climbed up onto the platform directly behind Mahealani. She didn’t shake herself dry, instead sitting there as water sheeted off her emaciated frame. Every shaman within ten feet of her immediately backed away.

“What of her crimes?” Mahealani demanded, getting a surprised look from everyone, including the Admiral, who looked at her as if seeing her standing there for the first time. Riptide pursed her lips as Mahealani continued, “Isn’t that why we’re here? To convict her of crimes against the tribe?”

“Oh, dear bondsister. You should have let Okambo take you. It would have been far kinder,” Riptide purred.

“Mahealani brings up an excellent point,” Admiral said. “Do you plan on refuting or countering any of the evidence against you? Are you here to offer a defense at all?”

Riptide closed her eyes and spread her hooves wide. “Oops?” she said with a mocking tone. “So sorry I crushed your pathetic ships and settlements before I realized who you were? My bad.” She slapped her fetlock with a pout.

The room exploded. “You admit to murdering my family! Sinking my ships!” cried out one of the commodores, rising to his hooves.

“I should gut you where you stand!” Commodore Barracuda said, drawing a sword and advancing on the captain. The waterlogged filly stepped beside Riptide, and there was a flash. The shamans scattered back as the sword was sheared off at the hilt, the blade seeming to simply vanish and the commodore knocked sprawling. The filly simply sat there and chewed.

Then the sensation of drowning filled Mahealani's throat. Every Atoli learned the sensation sooner or later. Some panicked, flailing and clutching their windpipes. Mahealani didn’t take her eyes off Riptide, who actually smiled.

“The sea is tired of this trial,” the Admiral said as he held up the sphere. “State your defense.” He lowered the sphere, and many coughed and gasped in reflex as the sensation passed.

Riptide didn’t even clear her throat. “I’m sorry, your admiraltyshipness,” she said, starting to walk around the platform, her voice carrying magically to every inch of the vast chamber. “As to whether I really did attack your assets, I confess I doubt I could tell if I did. One rusty, wretched, corpse-bedecked wreck looks much like another when I am through. But I must admit that, if I were guilty…” She paused, her haughty eyes scanning the crowd before she proudly declared, “I’d feel no shame for it!” The room erupted in howls, and she grinned as she called out, “No shame at all, for it was no less than they deserved!”

A vein in the corner of the Admiral’s temple worked as he rolled the sphere in his hoof against the dragonbone throne. Mahealani wondered if he contemplated drowning the whole court. He smashed the orb twice and snapped, “The defense shall be allowed to speak!” Then he added to Riptide, “Pray you do not waste our time further.”

The booing subsided to furious mutterings as she smiled, rising up on her hind legs and spreading her forelegs wide. “Yes, deserved! Deserved for being weak!” she called out, her voice rolling over the protests that started, even as the Admiral raised the sphere. “And you all know it!” She then whirled and pointed her hoof at Commodore Kraken and Commodore Maelstrom. “But as severe as you feel my crime is, it is nothing compared to the crimes the rest of you have committed!”

“What are you talking about? What crimes?” Admiral asked coldly.

“They, and all of you, are guilty of the crime of being weak through division,” she said boldly, thrusting her hoof at the mob surrounding her. “Yes, divided! Look at you. Look at all of you! Look at what it’s taken for you to set aside fleets and ships to get at the heart of our weakness and shame.” The shouts died out a little. “Once, we were strong. Once, the entire world shook with our hoofsteps, and the sea was always ours to claim. But what are we now? Anemic little flotillas of wretched little dinghies scrambling to survive and trade. Settlements scraping a living like the barnacles latched to your hulls. We were so much better than this,” she said boldly as she glared defiantly at the crowd, “and we can be again!”

Some continued to howl and beat their hooves against the metal walkways and rails, but far fewer than before. Brows furrowed in thought as she stood proudly. The Admiral rubbed the bridge of his muzzle. “Do you admit your guilt?” he growled.

“What crime codified in Imperial law have I committed? Have I given aid and succor to the enemy? Have I conspired with forbidden forces?” she demanded, then stabbed a hoof at Mahealani with a grin. “She is far more guilty than I. Her testimony confir–” She went silent as he raised the orb, salt water dribbling from her mouth. Unlike Spar, she neither choked nor struggled. She simply extended a hoof to the drenched filly, who’d risen immediately to her hooves, glaring at the Admiral.

“She is not on trial, and this is an Atoli court!” Admiral rumbled. “Is that understood?” She stood there for a moment, then gave a small nod, and he lowered the orb. Rather than coughing and retching, she spat the water out, her eyes drilling into him.

“If this is an Atoli court, it is no less exempt from Imperial law. The Atoli swore an oath to the Empire,” she countered as she turned to the crowd, her voice low, hoarse, and serious. “Have the Atoli forsworn their vows to the Caesar? Have they abandoned their duties and obligations? Are the Atoli oathbreakers? If so, then what makes you admiral? By what right do you command this quarter of the sea?” She faced the shamans. “Are the spirits fine with this change? Do promises mean nothing? Do oaths?”

The shamans looked to each other but did not answer. Even the Admiral seemed stunned by her declaration. Loyalty to a dead primarch made no sense. “The Caesar is dead,” the Admiral muttered.

“Is he?” Riptide asked, her voice as low as his. “Are you certain?” None met her eyes. “Regardless, no new Caesar has been elected, and the law is the law. Alive or dead, he is our Caesar. Our oaths are binding. And we break them at our peril.” For the first time, the Admiral appeared disturbed.

“Once, we battled an enemy that defeated us.” Fresh howls and cries, but somehow her words devoured their indignation as if the sphere had fallen. “Yes, defeated us! Spare me the pretense that a pyrrhic victory is still a victory. We were defeated by the ponies not because of superior strength or knowledge or valor, but because the ponies were united! They overlooked race and came together to oppose us. Where is that strength in the Atoli? Where is that strength in the zebra people?”

Now, even the Admiral appeared thoughtful as she addressed the mob. “Condemn me if you wish, but admit I speak the truth. We are weak. We are wretched. We are not long for this world. Only united can we ever regain our past glories.” She took a deep breath and faced the assembled commodores. Then she smirked and added, “Also, think of what you will lose should you condemn me. Think of what could be yours. Think. And decide.”

The Admiral turned and looked at the assembled stallions. “Your verdict?”

Each had a cup filled with seawater. One rose and poured it on the ground before him. Then another. And another.

The vote wasn’t even close. Kraken and Maelstrom stared at Tsunami as if sharpening their knives. Others, ones who hadn’t suffered as heavy losses, seemed to be taking her speech to heart, nodding thoughtfully.

“Let the spirits note, the Atoli do not vote to condemn Captain Riptide for her actions,” Admiral said gravely. He focused his eyes on Tsunami, who stared at Riptide as if he’d never seen her before. “Do you wish to formally dissolve your union with this captain, forfeiting all claim to her ship and bounty?”

“I… cannot,” he murmured. Immediately, the chamber exploded.

The Admiral spoke as if he couldn’t care less who heard or not. “Then this is an internal matter. Fleets can bring damages against Fleet Tsunami. I’ll drown you all if you don’t resolve these claims yourselves.” He growled and banged the orb twice.

“Love you, hubby bubby,” Riptide said dismissively with a flip of her tail as she walked over to the drenched filly, kneeling and petting her mane. Tsunami was then faced with half a dozen angry commodores as he struggled to prevent them from just scooping up the small fortune she’d dumped on the deck. Two started to approach Riptide with sickly smiles but balked when the drenched filly turned her stare upon them.

“Why are you doing this?” Mahealani demanded as she faced the dark red-and-black-maned mare, not allowing the filly’s dead stare to deter her.

“Why?” she asked, not even turning to face her. “I doubt you can understand.”

“Try me,” she said. “Why cause all this chaos?”

For a moment, Riptide didn’t respond, eyes narrowed. “I read a book,” she answered primly. “About a pony, of all things, who dared to challenge the assumption that the world cannot change. That it can’t be made better. That it’s not worth improving.” She gave a slow smile. “I admit, till I read that story, I doubted that change, real change, was possible. But the tide is changing, and I intend to ride it to the fore, no matter how misguided the rest of you may be,” she said as she held the waterlogged filly.

“I’m hungry, Mommy,” she said with a whimper.

“Shh… soon enough, my dear,” she said, kissing her ear. The filly gave a little smile, closing her eyes.

“Mommy?” Mahealani said, blinking in surprise. With eight bondsisters, it was difficult to keep track of new foals.

“You didn’t hear. Small surprise,” Riptide said as she pulled away. “It hardly matters. Neither of us were honestly interested in the other. I used Tsunami. Tsunami used me. That’s how life is. It was always my ship he wanted. Me, myself? I never mattered at all.” The water behind her bubbled, and from the depths rose the goldfish-shaped submarine. She turned to the Admiral. “We’re done?”

“The sea shall stay its wrath,” he replied grimly as he tucked the orb into his coat. “For now.”

“Lovely. Let’s do this again soon. Ta.” Sniffing disdainfully, Riptide, the waterlogged filly, and Commander Spar all disappeared into the submarine. With a hiss, it sank from view.

Mahealani stared at the bubbles till they disappeared. Then she became aware of the grim Admiral standing beside her. “She’s a danger,” he said, his voice no longer carrying over the din of the chamber. “The things she speaks of. Our ancestors’ oaths to a dead Caesar. I’d think it madness, but…” He didn’t go on.

Mahealani stared at the sea. At the deep, dark waters before her. All her life, she’d sailed atop them and dove within them. “One thing is certain, Admiral,” she said as she gazed into the briny depths. She had no ship. No crew. Her daughters were away. But still. “I intend to stop my bondsister.”

He gave the tiniest of smiles. “Well, it is an internal matter.”

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Granny?” the colt Arion asked as the old zebra sat at the water’s edge of her little island, the old leafless oak tree looming up behind them.

“Why do you say that, chile?” she asked without turning to look at the boy, her eyes studying the mirror-smooth water before her. “It’s a beautiful day. The sun’s shining. The birds are singing. What more you gon’ ask for?” More bugs buzzing than birds singing, but still.

“Something feels off. Something bad,” the colt said as he walked to the edge of the water. “It feels like… like walking along and stepping on ground that might be quicksand.”

She gave a tired smile, reaching out with a hoof to pull him into a hug. “Chile, I wish I could keep you right now, forever. A year or two, you’ll see nothin’ but trouble and miss the beautiful day.” She gazed out at the placid scene. “Yes, chile. Something be very wrong in our home.”

“But what is it? What do you know, Granny?” he asked, putting his hoof on her shoulder so he could stand and look her in the eye. “Ever since that pony came, you haven’t been the same.”

“It’s what she said, child. The Eye of the World be blind. Explains the great wrongness I feel, but if it be true, then I fear for us all,” she said as she reached out and cupped a hoofful of water. She could see the tiny larvae wiggling. “We see the swamp, chile. We see the trees and the water and the bugs. We hear the birds and feel the heat and water in the air. Do you think the swamp sees us back, chile?”

He blinked. “Well… I don’t know, Granny. I know the animals do. The frogs and snakes and birds and such.”

“Aye, chile, but what of the swamp itself? The trees? The water? The air? Do it see us? Hear us?” She gently let the water trickle back into the lake, seeing the ripples extend out.

“…Maybe?” he said, hedging his answer. “The spirits see us. But I don’t know about the swamp, Granny.”

“Mmm. It do, chile. It sees us and hears us and knows us. What we do and what we say. The swamp doesn’t care that we’re Orah, and we don’t care that it’s a swamp. We live and let live. We respect each other, and if one’s got its bad parts, well, the other’s the same.” She shook her head. “But if the swamp can’t see us, does it know us? Does it understand what we do? What we feel? Why we be how we be?” Another, slower, shake of her head. “I fear, chile. I fear maybe that pony filly spoke true.”

“But why, Granny?” he asked, his face scrunched up in worry.

She looked at him, then smiled and leaned over to kiss his brow. “Don’t you worry none about it, chile. Why don’t you go and see if you can’t catch yourself a croaker? Might be good eatin’.”

Arion knew he was being dismissed and frowned as he walked away, glancing back at her. Hopefully he’d forget or forgive her. There were some burdens she couldn’t bear to lay on such young shoulders. She groaned as she rose to her hooves and walked towards the wood that encircled her home. “Theon,” she called out. The wood rustled, and from the tangle emerged the undead stallion, his body browning from the swamp water. “Care to escort an old mare?” He gave a nod.

Together, they walked side by side, and the swamp moved with them. Trees graciously bent aside, tangled nettles flattened, and barbed bushes pulled back to allow the pair easy passage. The quicksand was not so quick under their hooves, and the lily pads supported the pair a little more as they walked. Gators and other beasts watched their passage, and some crawled, crept, or slithered a bit alongside in escort. The swamp respected her, as she respected the swamp.

Many others had not. The pair reached their destination, and she waved a hoof. An unspoken agreement took place, and the brush pulled back, the fogs and mists parting and the ever-shifting islands of peat drifting aside to reveal the lake with the barges sitting neatly in their grid and surrounded by rusting hulks. A secret treasure to outsiders, just waiting to be claimed.

But not the only secret hidden in their home. As she moved her hoof to the side, the swamp gave up its obfuscation to reveal other dark hulking shapes that had no business being in this place. Some were rusted away. Some were preserved.

Some were downright deadly.

“Orah,” she muttered as she stared at them, lowering her hoof. The trees and brush snapped back into place, the mists rising up from the water to obscure them. She sat and pressed a hoof to her chest. It tired her, but Arion was too young. She needed to hang on a bit longer before she rested in the waters.

Then, something reached her ear: a mare’s scream, so faint and distant that had she not just asked the swamp to reveal its secrets, she probably would have missed it. Not a scream of prey being lost to predator. This was a zebra scream, and not the sort of scream that belonged in the swamp. It wasn’t the wail of the lost, nor a desperate roar for survival. No.

This was a zebra screaming for mercy. Zebras.

Granny looked to Theon, and he immediately knelt, letting the old zebra clamber onto his back. Again the swamp aided their passage, the trees and plants forming a path straight enough to make a Propoli proud. They homed in on the growing screams of mares and stallions. Faster than any zebra could imagine moving in the swamp, they reached the origin of the cries.

Several zebras were gathered around a fire: five zebras from her village and five with Carnilian stripes. Three stallion corpses, Carnilians, all sported head wounds, testifying to the marksmanship of the hunters, while the survivors were bloody and hobbled and in the process of getting rutted by the stallion and mare hunters. The hunters had all of a moment to see the old mare and the hulking zombie, mouths gaping and eyes wide as they fumbled for a response.

They never got the chance.

“Help them,” Granny said, and it was all she needed to. Theon charged forward as the hunters fumbled to disentangle themselves from their victims. From the bushes around them erupted hornets that flew with unerring accuracy at the stallions and mares that violated the Carnilians, their stingers finding the most sensitive bits to strike. Grasses tripped scrambling hooves, and the trails to and from the clearing were suddenly choked with nettles and thorny bushes. In thirty seconds, the five hunters were knocked prone and lay there curled up as the zombie prowled around them.

Granny walked to the closest Carnilian, a young stallion. “I ‘pologize, chile,” she said, seeing the marks on his throat from a mare’s hooves. Possibly the same one that augured out his tailhole.

“We just wanted to get somewhere safe,” he whimpered, shaking.

“‘Course, chile,” she answered. “That all anyone wants. You safe now.” She turned to the hunters. Three stallions and two mares. She’d brought each one into the world. Now she wondered if she would have to take them out of it. “You dare? You dare do this in our home? Our home?”

“They trespassin’ in our swamp!” one mare snapped at Granny. “They should know better!”

“Your swamp!? Idiot chile, what make you think this swamp is yours, or mine, or anyone’s! The swamp be the swamp, and anyone who comes comes and anyone who goes goes!” she said as she glared at them. “Peat and marshlight, next you’ll be talkin’ like Propoli, knockin’ out lines o’ property and claiming ‘this fishin’ hole is mine and damn any who used it before’!”

She helped the victims get on their hooves, asking the nearby willows to ease their pain a little. Few would see the tiny specks of spiritual energy as they travelled to the survivors of the assault. “There there, chile. It be alrigh’.”

“No it not! They be Carnilia! They go be with their own tribe!” one of the Orah attackers snapped.

“We can’t go back! We were starving. Homeless. We’re orah now,” one of the Carnilian mares whimpered.

“If you orah, then with the Orah you stay, chile,” she reassured her. “We always take in those others won’t. We find a place for you.”

“Oh, will we?” shouted a stallion from the treeline. The thorn bushes were pushed aside with a number of curses, and Kyros stepped through. A dozen more followed him, mostly hunters but also a few village ponies. Diane brought up the rear, and while the first eleven formed a semicircle around the five Carnilian refugees, she joined Granny. “That not for you to decide, Granny,” he declared as he eyed the refugees.

“Not be a thing needin’ decidin’!” Granny countered. “It be the way it is! Orah always take in ones needin’ us. We all Orah, no matter what stripes we wear.”

“Oh, you think they be Orah?” Kyros sneered as he stared at the five. “I thinkin’ they somethin’ else.” He leaned in towards the mare. “Spies!” he snarled, then spat in her face.

The revenant charged forward, interposing itself between the mare and the Orah leader. “Spies? What are you talking about, Kyros?” Diane demanded as she moved next to the fallen Carnilia. “Why would Rice River or any Carnilian spy on us?”

“‘Cause we don’t have what they don’t want,” he hissed. “Razorgrass.” He jabbed a hoof at the five. “They not the first comin’ here this moon, beggin’ for help. First five. Then ten. Then twenty. Pretty soon there be ten times more Carnilia fuckponies than Orah and they be drainin’ tha swamp and plowin’ fields and we be told ta go!”

“We didn’t! We wouldn’t!” the defiled stallion begged. “We just want somewhere to be safe!”

“They not the first?” Granny blurted. “What happen to tha first? Kyros, what did you do?”

“This,” he said, with a stomp of his hoof. In one smooth motion, half the hunters drew their rifles. Orah were the best markszebra in the world, and in less time than it took to draw in a breath, they’d fired with superb accuracy. Shots found skulls, chests, and throats.

“Killer! Chile killer!” Granny cried out. Theron charged, but the killer was ready. Three zebras met the undead’s charge. As powerful as the preserved cadaver’s body was, the three beat him back before he could pummel Kyros to paste. More hunters piled on, beating the corpse till the seams sealing its mouth snapped.

In Granny’s sight, a tiny white mote escape the corpse’s lips. It transformed into a tiny, glowing zebra head that seemed to gaze about helplessly before dissipating into a haze of white mist. The corpse shuddered, and fell still.

Diane moved to interpose herself between Granny and Kyros. “You… you murderer!” Diane spat.

Granny pushed her aside to face the mob. She could see the wisps of the slain Carnilians disappearing… but as they passed, something lingered behind. It hung in the air like toxic smoke and sank into the earth like oil. Hate.

Few spirits understood hate any more than a cell in her body could understand a poison. Only that it was bad and wrong. The swamp didn’t hate. The radigator ate because it was hungry, not out of hate. The quicksand bore no malice when it sucked you down, nor the mosquito when it spread fever. They were simply doing what they were. All around her she could see the spirits shriveling up, hardening, twisting, and blackening. They screamed as the zebras had when they’d been violated. That hate had been a foul wind compared to this.

It was all Granny could do to keep from falling on her face as she felt that corruption within. Certainly, the rape had been bad, but nothing so sealed in hate as murder. It would take years of brutality to equal the spiritual toxicity of a deliberate, callous murder. That kind of poison was the worst, but here in the swamp, she’d thought it’d been impossible. They were Orah.

“Chile. Poor, foolish, hateful chile,” Granny murmured, pitying Kyros.

He sniffed. “Go back to your island, Granny. Leave the swamp to me,” he said as they turned and headed out, several glaring back at Granny. They couldn’t see the faint black blight they left on the leaves as they passed.

Diane and Granny moved to the prone form of Theron. The powerful corpse was now just so much rapidly rotting meat. “Oh, Theron. Poor chile. Poor all of us,” the old zebra said as she stroked his dull mane.

“What’s going to happen, Granny?” Diane asked. Granny watched the black contamination seeping out and spreading, withering and sickening the spirits. Without them, this would be just stagnant water and beasts. The soul of the place would be lost, and the Orah with it.

They would truly be orah.

“Nothing good, chile. Nothing good,” she answered.

“It’s no good,” Vega muttered to Tchernobog as the two of them sat in his office. He stared hard at the spreadsheets on his desk. He liked spreadsheets. So long as there were spreadsheets, there was civilization. Without spreadsheets, there’d be only uncertainty and guessing. “We’re three percent down from last month and two percent from the month before that. Twenty percent over the last six months.”

“We’ve had dry spells before,” Tchernobog said as he moved up behind Vega.

“Sure, but I understood those,” he replied as he gestured to the numbers. “Crackdowns. Interruptions in transportation routes. Megaspell interference. The causes and effects were pretty clear.” He scowled at the sheets through his reading glasses. “We’re suffering losses across the board, but nothing’s changed. No elders calling for us to be rooted out. No sharp losses in any department indicative of someone getting greedier than usual. This is systemic.”

“Local?” Tchernobog murmured. “Give me a target, and I’ll give them trouble.”

Vega shook his head and picked up several correspondences with other Syndicate cells. “Reading between the lines, it’s the same out west and down south. No one wants to admit it, of course. We haven’t. Still…” He tapped the paper. “It’s vexing.”

Tchernobog rose behind him, holding him and giving his ear a kiss. “You’ll figure out the cause. You always do.”

Vega smiled, despite his worry. “I’m more concerned that there is no clear cause. There’s always an economy, even if it’s raiders trading chems for bullets.” He tapped the paper, his eyes distant. “Unless there’re fewer raiders… fewer smugglers… fewer… everything.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “I’d kill for a reliable census. No. At least three reliable censuses. I need to graph something.”

“You Logos and your numbers,” Tchernobog murmured, giving the back of his neck a kiss. “The Carnilians are doing their best to repopulate the world. There’s another festival of life coming up. We should attend.”

He was joking, of course. A gay zebra was only marginally more welcome at Carnilian orgies than a ghoul. Oh, sure, if you could pretend to like mares enough to sire foals, they could ignore little things like actual orientation, and some of the drugs they used to ‘encourage’ reproduction almost could make him feel ‘normal’. Almost, if he pretended desperately enough.

He’d rather be shunned.

“It’s not enough population growth,” Vega said, pointing at numbers for trains leaving the city. The Syndicate always kept a hoof on everything shipped in and out. “Over the last twelve months, the number of Carnilian emigrants has been dropping. It’s slow. It’s steady. It’s worrisome.” Those zebras, many ‘indentured servants,’ filled the populations of the legions, communities, and slave camps of the rest of the Wasteland. “I’d kill for some reliable birth records. All of this is guessing!”

“Birth records. Censuses. Anything else you’d commit murder over?” Tchernobog murmured.

“Hazelnut coffee,” he said. “We’ve been out for a month.” He’d never run out before.

“Hmm,” Tchernobog murmured. “Truly dire. Has Pythia been of any help?”

“She’s kept us from making a few disastrous mistakes. Catching that train derailment was good. Losing a train would have ended us.” He gestured to the spreadsheets. “All of this despite her help.” Not that Vega liked to admit the filly’s sight was helpful. He tried not to act on it, just use it to double check his own procedures and decisions. Taking off his glasses, he leaned back, pressing the back of his head into the Starkatteri’s chest. “We’re going to have to do something.”

Tchernobog leaned down and kissed him deeply, and Vega kissed back, the sensation bringing a smile to the corner of his lip. “Just tell me who to curse,” he said when they broke contact.

“Not that kind of something… maybe,” Vega amended. He had no idea if corrupt spirits could be put to good use, but stranger things had happened. “But we can’t keep business as usual. The pressures are all downward and against us.”

“So we break the rules. That’s what we do,” Tchernobog said. “That’s what we’ve always done.”

Vega murred as he rolled his head and slipped out of the chair to face the hooded stallion. “Need to figure out which rules to break and when to break them,” he said. Like the rules against a Logos bookkeeper taking in a wretched, starving Starkatteri stallion, nursing him back to health, and coming to grips with just how painfully lonely both of them were.

Vega kept his mouth moving downwards, and when he found what he was looking for, Tchernobog breathed, “I like breaking these rules.” Vega couldn’t respond, but he smiled as he did what none of his fellow Logos could understand. How could a stallion, any stallion, take the place of numbers and rules and logical arguments?

Some things were better than rules could ever be.

There was a clearing of a young throat, and Vega opened an eye to spot Pythia watching with a vaguely annoyed look. She held up a piece of paper. “Carnico’s going to offer less weed killer next month. Might want to stock up,” she said as she put it on his desk.

Vega let the obstruction pop free. “Thank you. Anything else?” he asked, and if there was any answer other than ‘no’, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Nope,” she answered as she turned and walked towards the ramp leading out, then whirled just before he could resume. “Just wondering, do you think you could hang a sock on the doorknob, turn on a light, or hang a sign or something? ‘Red light means fellatio in progress. Interrupt at your own peril.’? Something? Maybe?”

Tchernobog pressed down on the back of Vega’s head before he could respond. “Pythia. Out,” he rumbled.

“Alright. Don’t need the sight for this,” she said, trotting out. His mind wanted to stop, take the new information, check it with his own sources, and adjust predictions. Be a good, meticulous Logos…

The stallion he loved helped him set all that aside and focus on simple reciprocation and the transfer of liquid assets.

Patience. Equus abided, suffering in silence. In this void, one could hear her groans if one waited long enough. Sitting in complete darkness, dark eyes remained locked on the pool in the floor of the cave. He sat and waited. Patience. She would move again. Had to. Must.

Patience. Patience. Equus abided. How long had it been? What was time? What was space? Patience. The world would wait a time. Eat the supply of dried berries. Sip from the gourd. Feel the sand. Hear the moans of the world. Wait. Wait… Patience… Patience…

Carnilians had killed sex for Majina. The filly hadn’t really been interested much in the first place, but after six months in Rice River, she knew what it was, had seen it done, and had passed on multiple offers. And nothing killed carnal interest like seeing a starving family of fourteen. It wasn’t just that, though. Everywhere you looked, Carnilians were talking about it, laughing about it, or doing it. Like it never got old.

She could have joined in. Heck, the Carnilians wanted her to pair up with a colt her age and ‘get used to it’. A foal would be ‘a blessing’. Since she’d moved in with Osane’s family, she’d helped with cooking, cleaning, and other chores. Both parents worked, and while Osane was Proditor, her husband was not and was frequently away on the rails working on the train. She’d caught him having sex with four other mares, and Osane just shrugged and said that, so long as she didn’t have to raise the offspring, she didn’t care.

Like it wasn’t a problem.

As she trotted along towards Galen’s office, she wished she was back in the Hoof, in Chapel. Rice River might have been a billion times bigger than the tiny village, but it hadn’t been full of desperate, angry zebras trying to patch every hole and want in their lives with incessant sex! Her thin triangular stripes might have been Zencori, but that just made her stand out more. Osane had tied a pink ribbon on the base of her tail, which was supposed to tell them she wasn’t ‘available’.

It just seemed to make the boys more determined to untie it.

Precious lingered on the front stoop of Galen’s office building, and Majina smiled a little at the sight of the dragonfilly with ten coins. “One… two… three…” she counted with great relish, stacking them up atop each other. “Five and five,” she said as she split it into two equal stacks, nudging them and peering as if to consider their height. “Three threes and…” She paused, frowned as she looked at the stacks. “I need two more coins.”

“Is that how it works?” Majina asked with a smile as she trotted up. “You could also go with one less.”

“Yeah, but that’d be crazy,” Precious replied with a snort of green smoke. She looked at the basket Majina had balanced on her back. “Oooh! Is that lunch? Gimme!” she said, wiggling her claws towards the basket.

“It’s not all for you!” Majina retorted, but she slipped the basket off and passed Precious one of the sturdy glass containers full of rice, a bun, and a steamed fish. The dragonfilly dumped half of it in her mouth, masticating furiously and with glee. Majina pulled out a small tin salt shaker. “Salt?” she offered dryly.

Precious swallowed, took it, shook a great deal on her tongue, then shoved the other rest of her food into her mouth. Precious was the only person Majina knew who could eat a full meal in seconds. The dragonfilly eyed her as she gulped. “You look down.”

“I don’t like being here. I wish we could go,” she said as she looked around the plaza. “I’m sick of all the coal ash and dirty looks.”

“Yeah.” Precious twisted her lips. “Never thought I’d prefer the swamp to this place. At least in the swamp I didn’t have to pay for things. There’s something just wrong in giving a person a beautiful gold coin and then expecting them to give them all away.” She scooped up the coins in her claws, gushing, “Mummy’s never ever gonna give you up!” and smothering them with tiny kisses.

“Ugh.” Majina sniffed. “Don’t say ‘mommy’,” she said sourly. She could count no less than three pregnant mares in sight. “Aren’t you supposed to be working right now?”

“I am working,” she said as she sat up. “I’m keeping the riff raff at bay.” She waved to a knot of a half dozen mares and stallions watching the doorway from a bench across the street. “Yoohoo! Hello riff raff!” she called out, getting more hard glares. “If they come over here, I tell them to stop loitering. And I help walk clients home and stuff. Mostly a bunch of walking and growling and occasionally biting butts. You know. The usual.”

Majina shivered, hugging herself. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Well, duh,” Precious said as she poked Majina in the side. “You’re the cute, nice one. I’m the bitey, scratchy one. Could you imagine if I tried to be nice or you tried to be bitey? It just wouldn’t work.”

“Mmm,” Majina said, dropping her eyes. “I should take the rest of these up,” she said as she nudged the basket.

“Why don’t you let me? I’ll save you a trip?” Precious offered with a grin.

“How do I know you won’t eat them all?” Majina countered sourly.

“Because then Osane and Aleta will yell at me,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “As meek as she was when we met her, Aleta can get mean when I eat the doctor’s food.” She adopted a high voice. “How can you eat the food of the stallion that provides for us all? Don’t you have any shame? Meemeemeemee.” She snorted. “For a mare who hates what he does, she can get annoying when she catches me munching his lunch.”

Majina had no interest in seeing his depressing office any time soon and so passed the lunches to the dragonfilly. “Here.”

“Excellent,” Precious hissed, rubbing her claws together. She caught Majina’s flat stare. “I mean, Doc Galen needs his lunch, yeah?” She hooked her tail around the bag, dropped her coins inside, and started towards the door. Then she paused, looking back at Majina from over her shoulder. “You going to be okay?” she asked with a frown.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, forcing a smile. “Better get that lunch to them before it gets cold.”

“Sure thing. See you later,” she said, and slipped inside, leaving Majina alone. She turned and headed back towards Osane’s apartment, her eyes down on the cracked sidewalk.

Rice River’s appeal had grown toxic over the months. The Carnilians could be nice when they chose to be, and the city had seemed a wonder with so many people. Now she was sick of people. The whole city was a ceaselessly buzzing hive with a voice that shifted from a mutter to a roar but never quite managed to shut up. Sometimes she just wanted to scream at it till it went silent, but of course she never did.

“We are all characters in our own story,” Majina said softly, repeating something Momma had told her time and time again. “But I don’t know what kind of character I am supposed to be.”

A pair of hooves struck her side, sending her rolling across the concrete and into the road. “You’re that moron that talks to herself and doesn’t watch where they’re going!” a mare sneered.

Majina lifted her head to spot a herd of Carnilians, young mares and stallions, some of who she thought she recognized as the ‘riff-raff’ outside the office. She reached into her bag and drew out her blowgun, rolling to her hooves and trying to face the mare, but she bumped into a stallion who gave her another shove. There were just so many! She spun, trying to find the most dangerous target and put some room between her and the others. Did she dare fire a dart with so many around her? What if they thought they were poison? “What do you want?” she asked as she kept turning in a tighter and tighter circle.

“You’re that freak’s friend. The one that works for that abomination,” a stallion said, giving her a shove. She hit another stallion, who hooked a hoof around her neck. “We want to give a message,” he said, drawing back his hoof.

“What’s the message?” she asked, her eyes wide, begging.

She got it, right between the eyes. On the ear. Snout. Jaw. She felt someone grab her rump, pulling off that ribbon, and she screamed in terror.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a new voice rumbled like an impending landslide, interrupting the beating as she hung in the stallion’s grasp. It was a voice you felt as much as heard. She could taste blood from a gap in her teeth as she tried to fall down and curl into a more defendable ball.

“This doesn’t involve you, fatty!” one of the mares shouted. “Get back inside!”

“That so?” the deep voice questioned. “Your beef with the doctor doesn’t involve her. Piss off.”

“You can’t tell us what to do!” one of the stallions challenged, but Majina’s neck was released, and she dropped to her haunches.

“Try me,” the voice rumbled, like grating stone.

“Your days are numbered! You’ll see! All of you!” As one, they wheeled and raced off.

“Idiots,” muttered the stallion… the biggest stallion she’d ever seen. His stout frame could have easily held an extra zebra or two. He occupied both doors of some sort of shop or business, front window and sign so coated with coal filth that she couldn’t identify its purpose. His mane was trimmed down to a taut ruff along his neck and his tail was wrapped in tape. It was his stripes, though, that gave her pause. Wide triangular stripes, like wedges spilling down off his back. She’d seen one other person with stripes like that: Blackjack’s pony friend, Rampage. He stared down at her with dark, slatelike eyes. “Well?” he rumbled.

Well what? “Thank you,” she said, falling back on manners. He just frowned at her. “I’m okay,” she said, wanting just to get back to Osane’s and never leave again. He just frowned down at her, eyes dark in their pudgy sockets. “What?” she suddenly snapped. “I thanked you and I’m fine. What else do you…” She sniffed as she stared at the stranger. “…do you…” She felt tears run down her aching face, then bowed her head, weeping shamefully.

“Get inside.” He backed into the shop behind him. “They’re still watching. Don’t reward them with your tears.” Majina didn’t even think as she stepped into the grimy shop.

Inside, the buzz of the city was washed away, overtaken by the sound of water trickling on stones. It took Majina a few moments to realize this was a gym as she stared at the weights and exercise equipment. The center of the gym was occupied by an immense ring. In the far corner, near doors to what she assumed was an office, was a water feature: a waterfall trickling over rocks into a small pool. It was lined with candle stubs, three of which were lit to illuminate two glyphs painted on the wall. ‘Strength’ was one. ‘Serenity’ the other.

“Wait there,” he said, and, since he hadn’t specified where, she sat down before the little waterfall. She couldn’t stop the tears that had been rising for untold weeks in this wretched place. There was a banging and clattering in the office as she sat there, pondering the two glyphs. As a Zencori, she couldn’t help but ponder their significance. Left to right, they meant strength leading to or producing serenity, and right to left, serenity from strength. She didn’t see how that could be, though.

He emerged with a dusty vial and set it down next to her. “Here. Best take it soon and mend that tooth.”

She nodded. Helped by another stranger. Again. What would happen when the helpful strangers ran out?

She’d be dead, or worse… just like the rest of her family.

The obese stallion didn’t linger over her. He walked to some sort of exercise machine nearby that was all cables and bars, sat down with a thump, and started threading cable through pulleys. Majina just stared at the bottle. “Sorry,” she sniffed as she lifted it, holding it between her hooves.

He just grunted a little. She sighed, pulled the stopper, and slugged it down. Instantly, she felt her teeth shifting as the knocked out tooth was replaced. She set the empty bottle down. “You’re Achu,” she said.

Another grunt.

“I met another Achu in the ponylands,” she said, watching the falling water. “Well, she wasn’t exactly an Achu. She was some pony thing, but she fought like an Achu.” No response. “That’s what your tribe did, right? Fight?” Another grunt, probably from the cable he pulled between his teeth.

She rose to her hooves. “I’m sorry for taking up your time,” she said as she started towards the door.

“Hook that weight,” he said.

“What?” she asked, then saw he pointed at a black, rectangular block of metal just out of his reach. He had the taut cable wrapped around one hoof.

“Push that here and hook it,” he said as held up the slack length of cable.

Majina balked, then moved to the weight. She knelt down and tried to pinch it between her hooves, but she couldn’t lift it. She pressed her forehooves to the blunt weight and pushed, but she couldn’t budge it. “I can’t,” she said in defeat.

“Ah. So that’s who you are,” he rumbled. She gaped at him as he elaborated, “The weakling. The one that everyone comes to save. The helpless. Vulnerable. The one taken hostage. The load.” Majina shriveled up a little. “You’re Zencori. Each of you are supposed to be characters, right? You’re the damsel.”

The thought made her throat close up. “I don’t want to be.”

“Then hook that weight to this cable,” he said as he held the end of the cable towards her.

She stared at it, then at him, then at the implacable block. It didn’t care anything for her tears. Didn’t care about her loss or misery. It would just lie there.

The only way it was going to move would be if she moved it.

She lay down on her belly, bracing her back legs against it and holding the base of another piece of equipment with her forelegs. She didn’t have to move it far. A meter, at the most. So she set herself and heaved, her legs shaking a moment.

Then the weight slid under her hooves. She gasped, staring over her shoulder, then braced and pushed again. Then again. Soon she ran out of equipment to push against and so was forced to grind her hooves into the old carpet to keep from sliding. One more push! Her legs strained and trembled… and then it moved. She carefully attached the weight to the cable, and he let out the slack. The weights and cables on the machine slipped back into place, pulling the weight up to dangle a few inches above the ground.

He gave her a nod and then started to work the pedals and bars, checking the cables and weights. She just marveled at the block that now dangled before her eyes.

“I don’t want to be the damsel,” she repeated, regarding the heavyset stallion. He grunted as he rose to his hooves. “Can you teach me how to fight and be strong?”

“No,” he answered. “I like my life as it is,” he grumbled.

“I can pay!”

“You’re just like the Carnilians,” he huffed. “Either you are strong, or you aren’t. No amount of work will make a weak zebra strong. I can only make a strong zebra strong.”

“But…” Her brain popped a fuse there. “What is all this for, then?” He had to be the worst gym owner ever!

“Fitness. Muscle mass.” He gave a little shrug. “None of it’s ever made a weak zebra stronger than they are. But it pays the bills.”

Not many, she guessed, given how empty the place was. She rose to her feet, staring at him in frustration. “I don’t want to be the damsel,” she stated loudly.

He didn’t even answer her.

She turned and ran for the door, when suddenly it was kicked open with a bang. Instantly, Carnilians began to flood in, and Majina backpedaled rapidly. The huge Achu stallion rose with a bored expression as Majina hid behind him. A dozen Carnilian stallions filled the room. “Gāng!” bellowed a mare from the back of the crowd. “Show yourself, you brute!” His flat glare at the crowd from the foot of the training machine said plenty.

The harsh voice belonged to a hefty mare with a fleshy build. A painted wooden mask covered her face, sheaves of rice stalks crowning the top like a wild mane. “Shaman Desideria,” he rumbled back. “Gym membership is ten chits a month.”

“I am not here to use your filthy establishment,” she said, jabbing a hoof at him. “What is this I hear of you threatening Carnilian children? My child?” She gestured at the closest stallion, who Majina recognized as the one that had pounded her face in.

He took a wide stance. “I don’t threaten,” he replied.

The fleshy mare swelled in outrage. “Are you calling my child a liar?”

“No. Just mistaken,” he rumbled.

“Mistaken?” she hissed, her teeth bared in the mouth hole of the mask.

“He mistook this filly for someone dangerous enough he needed eleven friends to help batter her face in,” he rumbled. “He mistook numbers for courage. Mistook it for strength, too.” Gāng’s slate eyes bored into the stallion. “Weak is weak.”

The shaman pulled out a rice paper fan and snapped it open, fanning herself furiously. Just then, a small zebra stallion with a funny little mustache rushed in. It was waxed into little curls. “Shaman Desideria! How wonderful to see you again! Wonderful! Always wonderful! Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Elder Maximillian,” the two said, nearly simultaneously, in identical enough tones that Majina couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Yes, we’re all wonderful here. Very wonderful. In fact, it is such a wonderful day that it seems a shame to spend it inside here, eh, boys?” The scrawny stallion waggled his brows. “I think Rosa’s bakery mares might be getting off soon. Wouldn’t it be nice if they get off after getting off? Ehh? Ehh?” He nudged the stallions flanking him in the ribs as he grinned.

Shaman Desideria’s lips curled through the mouth hole of the mask. “You are contemptible, Maximillian. This brute threatens our own time and time again, and you tolerate his presence.”

Maximillian’s eyes goggled in bafflement. “Threaten? Gāng? Threaten?” Maximillian wiped his sweaty brow. “You certainly must be mistaken, dear Desideria! Gāng would never threaten another, isn’t that right, Gāng?”

“I don’t threaten,” he rumbled.

“Is that so?” Desideria said archly, snapping the fan closed. “Well, this isn’t a threat either. Your days are numbered.”

Majina stepped out from behind the huge stallion and glowered at the mare. “Really? Really. You think that causing more violence and strife for Rice River is going to help things?” Gāng regarded Majina with his dark gaze as she faced down the mob.

“You dare address me?” Desideria asked, seeming to inflate with indignation.

“Any other idiots threatening an Achu with violence here?” Majina replied sharply, her annoyance pushing her words further than she intended. “I get that there are problems here, but repeating the violence of the past isn’t going to make things better! It’s only going to make everyone dead!”

Her words prompted a few of Desideria’s entourage to frown thoughtfully. The shaman, however, sniffed and declared, “You and all outsiders are a blight on our tribe and our community, and you will be removed by one means or another.” She stared into Majina’s eyes. “I will remember you.”

Majina swallowed at her voice and the malice carried with it like the hiss of serpents in the grass, and ducked back behind Gāng. The filly had said far more in her righteous indignation than she’d intended. Gāng didn’t reply. He simply shifted his weight, and suddenly Majina imagined a great heap of stone about to come crashing down on the Carnilians. Several of them backed away, exchanging nervous looks.

“Oh, she doesn’t mean that. She’s just voicing frustrations! But she’s leaving now, right, Desideria? Plenty of shamany things to be doing!” Maximillian gave a strained laugh. “Babies to birth. Seeds to sanctify. I’m sure your schedule is busy busy busy!”

The mare spat on the floor before her. “Come,” she said, whirling on a hoof and striding out. In two rows, the stallions followed her out, leaving Maximillian behind. The scrawny stallion peeked out the door after her and deflated.

“Thanks for not killing her, Gāng,” Maximillian said.

“She’s weak.” He sniffed. “There’s no honor, glory, or wisdom in such a victory.”

That clearly wasn’t the answer the scrawny stallion had wanted to hear. “She’s giving half the elder council colic, and she’s not the worst one.” He pulled the mane off the top of his head and wiped the sweat from his brow with the toupee. It was then that he noticed Majina. “Oh! Hello there! You’re…” He pointed a hoof at her a moment, then faltered. “I’m sorry. I’m not placing the lineage.”

“My name’s Majina. We just arrived a few months ago,” she said as she stepped out.

“Oh. I see. Welcome, then.” He put his wig back atop his head, trying to position it and brush it back up into a mohawk. “We don’t have many Zencori here. Pleasure to meet you, Merjina.” He looked at Gāng. “New student?”

Majina had opened her mouth to answer when the stallion rumbled, “Yes.” He regarded her. “She does not wish to be weak. There are enough weak zebras in the world.” He stared down at her. “We shall see her mettle.”

Maximillian pursed his lips a moment. “Well, excellent, I suppose. Please keep her out of trouble, and stay out of trouble yourself. Please?” he asked, his eyes going from Majina to Gāng and back again. “Between fools like Desideria thinking all our problems would be solved by expelling non-Carnilians, Carnico producing less weed killer, the Syndicate bribing elders like crazy, the legions poking around our border, Galen refusing to move shop across the river, the Propoli ambassadors poking their snouts everywhere, and everything else going on, last thing I need is to be stopping fights with our neighborhood Achu,” he said in a breathless huff, gasping as he looked from one to the other. “So please… I beg you both… stay out of trouble.”

“It would be easier if trouble stayed away from us,” Gāng said, low and heavy, and the hapless stallion appeared to be on the verge of tears. The rotund zebra snorted. “But I will not seek it out.” Majina only nodded.

Maximillian relaxed a moment, rubbing his stomach. “Wonderful. Wonderful. Everything is wonderful. Gāng. Majajina.” He bowed his head and then turned, heading out the door, muttering loudly, “One fire down. Fifty to go. Now to talk to Eutimio and see if he…”

Majina watched the enormous stallion as he got a rag and cleaned up the wad of spit on his floor. “Who was that?” Majina asked.

“Elder Maximillian Friskystripe, sire to a hundred and forty-nine foals and saddled with the unfortunate task of trying to keep Rice River from washing away.”

“A hundred and forty-nine. When does he find the time?” Majina murmured.

He tossed the rag into a bucket. “A frayed rope has little strength, yet has the power to bind. Maximillian ties many things together. He keeps zebras like Elder Desideria in line.”

“She really would throw us out?”

He stared at the doors a moment, scowling. “If she had her way, we would be expelled, Carnico seized, and the eastern shore burned to the ground,” he rumbled. “Glass may seem strong, but it is dangerously brittle. If she were in charge, Rice River would be taken over by a legion entirely, or razed to the ground in the fighting for the city.”

She really didn’t want to think about that. “So…” She walked up next to him. “I’m… your student, huh?”

He snorted once, looking down at her from the corner of his eye. “You are weak. If you wish to not be weak, you can be my student.” He snorted again. “Bring me a rice ball, tomorrow. That is the price of your education.”

She backed away from him. “I… I will. Thank you,” she said, smiling for the first time in weeks. She checked to make sure no zebras lay in wait and rushed back towards Osane house. “Eeee,” she cried out in glee. “I have a mentor who’ll train me and make me stronger and not be the damsel in distress anymore!” she said, then blinked a moment later, glancing behind her in worry. “I hope he doesn’t die.”

Silence. Stillness. Blackness. Quiescence. Soft breaths in the dark. Waiting. Waiting patiently. She’d moved before. She would again. Unless… no. Don’t think of that. She was touched. Cursed. She had to move. Wait. Silence. Stillness. Patience…

The Whiskey Express pockety pocketed its way along with Precious behind the wheel, clutching it with a wide grin as the steam tractor propelled them down the road. Galen used one hoof to pin a battered hat atop his head while the other gripped the side of the wagon, as if that would somehow keep the vehicle on track. “I normally don’t make house calls!” he shouted to Aleta as the mare leaned out, looking down the road. She gave him one of those inscrutable looks and didn’t answer. “It’ll be okay,” he tried to console her.

Of course, he had no idea if it would, but it was the sort of thing you were supposed to say to reassure others. Ahead, smoke and steam billowed up towards the heavens from dark lumps scattered in the grass. He could only hope that a farmhouse wasn’t included among the sources. The wagon slowed as shapes became clearer, and he felt a bit of relief at the sight of the building still standing.

Then two dark shadows whisked overhead, and a pair of griffons in black combat armor paced the vehicle, one drawing a claw across their throat and pointing down. Precious gaped back at the pair in the trailer. “I think they want you to stop! We’re here already anyway!” Galen shouted at the dragonfilly. She scowled and pulled levers, the Whiskey Express letting out a plume of steam followed by a screech as the brake was pulled. The vehicle skipped and shuddered as it slowed down right in front of the dirty patch on the side of the road holding the farmhouse.

Across the road lay a massacre. At least a half dozen wrecks smoldered and hissed as they burned in the trampled and torn grass. Zebras in black armor stood around while technicians ran buckets of water from the farmhouse well to the vehicles that could be saved. Steam tanks, like iron houses, gouted smoke and steam. Other zebras tended to wounded in the bare field around the home. One banner depicted four proud zebra glyphs vertically: iron, defenders, protectors, pride. The Iron Legion.

The other side’s standards lay in the dirt or next to heaps of bodies: five glyphs in a diamond arrangement: blood, born from honor, paying loyalty, through sacrifice, in might. The Blood Legion. Someone had splashed black paint across them in repudiation.

“Crap. I haven’t seen anything like this since that big thing in the Hoof,” Precious said, staring at the dozens of injured and slain. Mostly griffons, but Galen spotted a minotaur, sphinx, and centaur in the mix.

“Really? This is a normal weekend for the legions,” he said as the griffons landed. “Hello! Galen. Resident of Rice River. We’re here to see to her family. They live right there,” he said, pointing at the farmhouse.

“We’re going to need to commandeer this vehicle and your services for the duration of the war,” one of the two griffons snapped. “Any objections?”

“Hell yes, I object!” Precious snapped, and the pair pointed their guns at the dragonfilly.

“Precious. Let me handle this,” Galen said as he climbed out of the wagon, nearly tripped, and almost fell on his face. “May my friend see to her family? She’s not going anywhere,” he said, gesturing to Aleta.

The pair glanced at each other and gave a nod of assent. Aleta immediately raced for the farmhouse. “Now. I’d be honored to lend my assistance to the glorious Iron Legion, but perhaps I could discuss the finer details with your legate or commander. Whoever is in charge?” The pair shared another look and nodded again.

“Fine, this way,” one of them said, and they led Galen and Precious towards a pair of large trailers pulled by a heavy tractor. From inside the second came screams, and from the wounded lined up in the shade of it, that was their surgical wagon. He made sure Precious had a good grip on his bag.

“What the hell is all this?” Precious asked, staring in bafflement. “Are these raiders?” One of the two griffons gave her a dirty look. The ‘Iron Legion’ members marked their faces with a brand made from a hot I-beam pressed twice against the zebras’ foreheads or the griffons’ haunches, forming a cross. In the fields next to the battle site, where the grass hadn’t been temporarily flattened under treads, teams of zebras were shoving naked, bleeding zebras into the standing grass and slashing their faces with clumps of the stalks. At the rate they were going, the prisoners wouldn’t have any hide left.

“Raiders?” Galen laughed mirthlessly. “Oh no. No. A half dozen killers? No. These are Legion. Two… three thousand people fighting valiantly for the future of the Empire, am I right?” he said brightly, mollifying the griffon a bit. Off to a side, a dozen or so were busy raping a few other prisoners, all of whom had their faces marked with red paint. Some griffons were chopping up the dead zebras next to a cookfire. No… not raiders at all.

The first wagon was sweltering. Two tiny windows admitted air and light, and a young zebra colt with Carnilian stripes fanned a large, sweaty mare with broad, horizontal Roamani stripes. The uniform she wore was patched and decorated with improvised brass epaulettes and medallions. A number of maps decorated the walls. “Colonel. Appropriated this personnel and his steam wagon, ma’am. Requested to speak to you directly.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said as she mopped her brow and the colt continued to fan. As Galen and Precious walked in, she gave them both a weary glower. “Colonel Adolpha. Make it quick.” Adolpha wasn’t a pretty mare, her hide punctuated by scars along her neck and face, but at least she wasn’t smiling.

“Thank you, Colonel. I am Galen, resident of Rice River,” he said, pulling out a well-preserved piece of paper identifying him with the image of a stallion from ten years ago, before he’d taken the red. “As per the Iron Legion’s agreement with Rice River’s elder council, I and my companions are exempt from conscription without confirmation from the council.” Which they’d happily allow, if it didn’t take days to get anything from the elders. Of course, that agreement was weaker than rice paper. He pulled out a second paper. “I also have a letter of introduction from Vega, of the Exchange, who is owner of our vehicle. If you require its use, I fully understand, but he will require compensation at a later date.”

Oh, he was so glad he memorized all this ages ago.

Colonel Adolpha gave both a look over and stared at the pair flatly. “Okay. You’re clearly not an everyday weed farmer we can simply conscript. So what’s your business here, Galen?”

“My friend’s family lives in the scar farm. I hope they weren’t harmed,” he stated lightly.

“The Blood Legion was taking liberties inside when we caught them at low steam,” she said with a wave of her hoof. “I’d conscript them, but I have no use for emaciated bullet fodder, and they’d be a distraction in camp.” Her hard gray eyes matched the baking metal around her. “What can you do for me, Galen?”

“I have a bit of medical training. With your permission, I can assist your doctor. Then I’d like to see to my friend’s family.” She stared at him for one second, then nodded.

Despite appearances, the legions weren’t raiders. In many ways, they were both better than and worse than those killers. Raiders you could understand and predict. Legions might be genial and generous one week and the next wrathful killers who would rip you apart because they’d lost a battle or two. Sometimes they responded to flattery. Sometimes to bribes. Sometimes threats. But however you dealt with them, you had to be careful… not because they might kill you. But because their hundreds of friends would. With tanks.

Galen slipped into the medical theatre. The stallion working on the injured was simply removing shrapnel as quickly as possible and trying to get a healing potion in them before they bled out. He just gave Galen a look and resumed. The tools were sitting in a basin of raw alcohol. Galen supposed that counted as ‘sterile’ here.

Precious watched from the door, her face uneasy. “You’re going to help these guys?”

“Of course,” he answered. He’d have to be careful with his help, of course. Too good and he’d never leave. Too poor and they’d kill him like the Bloods. Aleta and Precious didn’t have notes protecting either of them, so he had to be careful.

“Do you want–” she started to ask, lifting his bag, and he immediately shook his head.

“These tools will be sufficient,” he said, gesturing to the basin. A Mendi had taught him all kinds of tricks on how to stop a patient from being in pain while you operated. Demonstrated ways of putting flesh back together so that when you drank a healing potion, it was far more effective. Magic healing was potent and precious, but it wasn’t infallible. A broken leg could ‘heal’ permanently maimed. A piece of shrapnel could slice open organs months or years after the potion sealed it in. Without the proper medical knowledge, even the most potent healing potion could be hit or miss. That was why doctors were needed.

This was closer to butchery than surgery. No anesthesia beyond a few gulps of whiskey. His mentor would be ashamed of him, and horrified by this, but no one wanted a doctor who saved your life with agonizing surgery. Thankfully two passed out as he removed jagged flecks of metal, sniffing for bowel and bile that could hint at the shrapnel’s location. Those two lives he absolutely saved. They’d go and kill again… and… he let out a long sigh. Maybe they wouldn’t. That was the doctor’s refrain, wasn’t it? ‘Maybe’?

He hoped so. One had been barely out of colthood. The other was a colt.

“That’s it,” the other medic said, administering a potion to his patient and having him taken out to recover. The interior of the trailer reeked with blood congealing against the floor and walls; there were even a few splatters on the ceiling. “Conscript?” he asked.

“Volunteer. I’m a Syndicate doctor,” he said firmly. Legions got supplies through the Syndicate. It was a far more effective prophylactic against conscription than an agreement with the impotent elders of Rice River.

“Heh. You work fast. Didn’t let the screaming distract you. Lucky they passed out,” he said. “You should volunteer more. We need good doctors. We need everything.”

“You seem to be doing fine,” Galen answered as he leaned out to look at the farmhouse. “You clobbered these Blood bastards good.” Had he been his mentor, he’d go and see to their injured enemies too.

“Seem to? This was our first big win in six months. Normally we’re the ones clobbered,” the medic said. “Rice River needs to send us more conscripts. We’re fighting for your freedom and prosperity. The Bloods will run your city into the ground. We’re the future of the zebra people.”

Galen didn’t have to heart to tell him that he’d heard the same, almost word for word, from four different legions over the years. They all fought for things like freedom, prosperity, and a better future. They were always the ‘good’ legion. And they butchered and raped all the same.

Say what you will about them, raiders were at least never hypocrites.

“Sorry. Like I said, Syndicate. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t,” he said as he looked out the door to where the injured recovered. “I hope they pull through. Last time, I left a horseshoe inside one of my patients. I was so embarrassed!” he said, rubbing the back of his head with a chuckle. The doctor didn’t look convinced, so Galen slipped out of the trailer before he could press his pitch. If the colonel changed her mind, this would get complicated.

“What a mess,” he heard Precious mutter, staring at the carnage as he passed. They were trying to get the tanks extinguished and repaired. Had Scotch Tape been here, they’d never have let her go. Soldiers may have been easily replaceable and doctors precious, but a good engineer? Priceless.

Trotting to the house, it was clear the Bloods had used it for target practice. The entire front was shredded and pockmarked with holes. Tanks didn’t use explosive shells often; they stuffed a barrel with whatever scrap they could and fired it all off with a blast of steam. Thankfully, someone in the house’s history had doubled the thickness of the wall facing the road and lot with plywood and pieces of concrete. Still, he could still see holes he could look through.

Around back he could hear talking, so he circled around to see the trampled vegetable garden. One side, or both, had stomped all over it. Deliberately? Accidentally? Did it matter? Fruit was split open, plants crushed, stalks snapped, and rows torn up. Malice? Hunger? That didn’t matter either.

Aleta sat with the scarred, proud patriarch of the family and his three wives. They instantly gave him the look: how dare he be Proditor? That expression on their faces, as if a pile of excrement had somehow magically animated in the form of a zebra of their tribe… as always, he ignored it. They had a pot of healing brew going; healing potions were the first thing every zebra learned to cook up. Purple roots and flowers lay next to it, and an empty bucket smeared with the purple goo of a first batch. Those who could were trying to straighten and repair the damage to the garden. It seemed futile, but then, he had grown comfortable with futility.

There were a number of traditional Carnilian greetings he could make: May your garden be ever bountiful. May your herd always grow. Life is good and endures. Instead, he made a bow and gave a Mendi greeting to the patriarch. “I am here to help.”

He had only one eye and no ears, and the ends of his muzzle and limbs were scarred lumps. Still, he stared at Galen. Here was a zebra he could lash out at, and Galen fully expected it.

“You have brought my daughter to us. You have soothed the anger of the Iron Legion. You have helped immensely. Thank you,” he said with an unnecessary, unexpected graciousness. Some of his wives clearly didn’t agree. Two were visibly pregnant, one far along, and both eyed him as if they expected him to attack and tear their unborn from their bodies. “If you can help further, we will be grateful.”

The majority of the injuries were simple enough, but Galen helped clean and bandage wounds as best he could. Clearly these zebras had taken so much healing potion for dealing with the razorgrass that they needed his help. For rape trauma he could only offer some irrigation and a kind smile and the empty assurance that they’d be okay. The elder mare furthest along in her pregnancy wouldn’t even let Galen examine her.

“Galen,” Aleta said as he stitched up a nick on a filly’s ear, thankful to the spirits she’d escaped the Bloods. “My mother’s bleeding.” Galen looked to the gravid mare. Light blood, inner thighs under the tail. “She’s drunk healing potion twice.”

He rose and approached the mare, who turned to her husband and cried out, “No! Please, don’t let him touch me! He’ll take my baby!” It would be comical, had her voice not rung with terror.

“Mother! Let him help you! Please!” Aleta demanded.

“Beloved, he is a doctor,” the scarred stallion said.

“He is Proditor! He ends life! Cuts it off before it can even draw a breath!” she said, hiding behind her husband. “Don’t let him look at me! He’ll kill our child. I can feel it.”

Galen met the panicked mare’s stricken eyes. “Mother,” he told her in tones as soft and certain as he could. “I will save your child. I swear it.”

“But–” the elder mare whispered, her eyes full of terrible fear and desperate hope. “You are red.”

“I will save your child,” he repeated. If he failed… well, there were more uses for alcohol than sterilization. She trembled and closed her eyes, bowing her head in submission. “Precious! My bag,” he said as he moved behind her. The bag had a combination lock on the clasp, and the heavy hide had been scratched by claws or knives, but it took more than that to breach dragonhide. Opening it revealed a treasure of medical equipment in soft velvet bags.

“Is that silver?” Precious asked, her nose twitching as she beheld the multitude of clamps, forceps, needles, and hooks.

“Silver plated stainless steel,” he said quietly as he took a bottle and irrigated out the blood and semen, then went to work. A set of magnifiers slipped over his eyes, and a speculum let him find the injury: a tear adjacent to the cervix. Not immediately life threatening, but dangerous. She could tear completely, lose the foal, and bleed out herself. That didn’t even address the possibility of infection. Now all his skills came into play, giving her a carefully measured injection of anesthetic before proceeding. Aleta and her husband kept her upright and still as a queasy Precious assisted.

“The tear is right up against the uterus,” he murmured, compartmentalizing the rape trauma for future outrage. “The wisest thing would be to abort the baby and save the mother.” His mentor wouldn’t have hesitated a moment. A living mother could have more foals later. One life in exchange for many others.

“You promised,” Aleta said, staring at him, her eyes hurt and angry.

He’d promised. Still… he closed his eyes. For a Mendi, this was simple… but he was a Carnilian, traitor or not.

He slipped a piece of equipment over his muzzle, strapping it into place. “Had to give all the options. I’ll see what I can do. Find three cans of D catgut, but don’t open them till I tell you,” he told Precious as he got to work.

Limit pain and suffering. Make right what is wronged. Set the bone straight. Clean lines and clean sewing. He could imagine his mentor’s calm voice as she worked him through patient after patient, showing him all the ways to make tissue hold. His muzzle extender, similar to the bridle of a battle saddle, held and released the tools as he worked inside the body cavity. Still, he breathed out the side of his mouth as he worked the catgut suture into place, then redoubled it to make sure it lasted till the foal would be due. Infection made everything dangerous, but this was the Wasteland, and the default was always absolute.

When he’d finished, he’d sewn the tissue and muscle together with the womb intact. The pair took the mother to go lie down while he washed his instruments in alcohol before placing them all in a red cotton bag. He’d have to sterilize them properly later. He gave directions to the patriarch, and the scarred stallion nodded, as if committing every word to memory. He left some painkillers and antibiotics and standard instructions and warnings… Hopefully she’d heed him and take them all rather than hoard them for later.

Then he turned and saw the colonel staring at him. She stood with four other branded, scarred soldiers. This is it, he thought as he snapped the bag closed. They were going to take him away, and he’d be patching up soldiers till he died, or burned out. “Doctor Galen,” she said evenly. “We’re going to move out. Bloods are organizing a counter attack, and we’d rather hit them before they’ve pulled in reinforcements.”

“I understand,” he said evenly.

Then she pulled an envelope from her saddlebags. “Please see this gets back to Vega.” She tossed it to him, and he caught it between his hooves. She turned to the two griffons that had intercepted them earlier. “Gruesome. G–” she broke off with a smile, coughing. “Skylord. Please escort them back to the city and return.” The former snapped a salute. The latter gave a much less enthusiastic salute and rolled his eyes once the colonel’s back was turned.

Galen set the envelope in his bag. If that was the price for his freedom, he’d certainly pay it.

“You should come with us. You should all come, before the Blood Legion comes back,” Aleta begged her father.

“This is our land. Our home. We tend it as long as we are able,” he said, and embraced her. “Thank you for returning.”

“I fear my curse brought this upon you all,” Aleta murmured.

“These days, I fear we are all cursed,” he said, kissing her brow. “Live, and see tomorrow.”

After that, they were back in the wagon and puttering back towards Rice River. “Thank you,” Aleta said quietly.

“I just did what any Mendi healer would,” he said with a wan smile. Then the scarred mare rose and shifted to sit on his side of the wagon. She rested her head on his shoulder, and he stared at her as if she might bite him or sprout a second head.

“No. You did so much more,” she answered, and then she pressed her mouth to his. His mind tried some kind of rationalization to explain this craziness, but it arrived at nothing. Then she gave him a simpler answer, one no mare had given him since he’d left to study under his mentor and returned with stripes of red. Ten years? More?

Ah… Life!

Move… Move. Move! What was she waiting for, an invitation? Was she locked up somewhere? Dead? If she were dead… no. She was too cursed to die casually. Eyes bulged in the darkness at the still pool, as if willing her into motion.

Then there was the faintest resonation under the rump. Distant, but powerful, like a freight train in the deeps. A pebble detached from the roof, striking the surface and releasing rings of blue, green, and red light in a chaotic spread. Eyes spread wide, staring at the colors.

“What–”

The Applelosian trail was a big stretch of winding nothing stretching from the south up to New Appleloosa. Buzzard Beak led the brahmin and guards through the gap, keeping a wary eye opened. The griffon might have lost one eye to raiders, but the other was sharp and ready for trouble. One unicorn guard kept eyes on the sides and rear, and an earth pony stallion managed the brahmin. Damn thing had twice the brains and a quarter the wits of a pony.

Far overhead, a vulture flew in lazy rings. Even after two centuries, the vultures were still around. At least this one didn’t seem like some kind of horrific mutant. Just your lone scavenger. The griffon’s old wings yearned to fly again, but it’d been years since they were strong enough to carry him aloft.

Mercy was an ex-raider… or maybe not so ex. Somepony had gone over her hide with a straight razor, writing the words ‘whore’, ‘slut’, and ‘bitch’ in her piss yellow hide. Brick was dumb as and was the color of something that’d come out of your ass after a particularly heavy bout of drinking, barely smart enough to keep the brahmin on track, let alone himself.

“So… are you thinking what I’m thinking, Lucy?” the brahmin drawled.

“Probably not, Bob,” the other head said boredly.

“I’m thinkin’ the Lightbringer’s not a real pony. Think of how she survived Canterlot. She’s got to be a robot, for sure,” Bob said excitedly.

“Probably not, Bob,” Lucy muttered.

Brahmin… always talking to themselves.

Then the old griffon stopped. Dead trees loomed around them, leafless, broken branches reaching for the sky. The only life here was raiders and the occasional radhog. That’s why he liked this trail. He’d passed along it again and again and knew every stump and rock.

That flower sprouting in the middle of the trail definitely didn’t belong.

It wasn’t just the occasional weed or grass clump you’d get here and there. This was a brilliant purple and blue bursting blossom that filled the air with a sweetness not smelled for centuries. “Look,” Brick said excitedly as he pointed out to the side where a delicate bell of green and white sprouted before their eyes. “Pretty!” he laughed, stomping his hooves.

“Boss,” Mercy snapped, drawing her beam pistol and pointing it at the foliage sprouting all around them. “What do I shoot?” she asked as her aim swept from one thing to the next, trying to identify targets.

“Oh, wowwie!” Bob said as Lucy murmured, “Oh my!”

Green vines were crawling up the trees and along the branches, and then the dead branches themselves quivered and started to bud. Grass sprouted like a carpet beside the trail, then on the trail in a thick and sweet rug.

Then a knot on a tree before him swelled and opened, uncovering something blue and… fluffy. Buzzard Beak gaped at it as it quivered, and a beady black eye peeked out at him. Then the blue jay shook itself free, fluttered its wings, found a perch, and started to sing. It wasn’t the only one. Dozens… then hundreds of animals seemed to just be appearing all around. They seemed just as baffled as him.

I’ve gone mad. It’s as simple as that, the old griffon thought.

But this madness was far from done. Mercy cried out, making a noise he never imagined the bony, sour, scarred ex-raider could: joy. As Buzzard stared, the mare’s scars seemed to be disappearing as miles and miles of wear and tear were falling away. Buzzard stared at Brick, and the dullard’s ugly, dull features seemed to polish before his eyes. He became stronger and fitter and looked at Mercy with a bright and compassionate eye.

Buzzard stared at his withered and cracked claws and watched as they filled out with new strength. He worked his digits but didn’t feel the slightest pop of arthritis. He spread his wings and launched himself into the air… no aching muscles… no burning joints. It was a miracle. Pure and simple!

And as proof, the brahmin let out a cry of alarm, but not pain. It was as if two enormous hands were pulling the animal apart like a wishbone, but rather than resulting in the gory mess that one would expect, the brahmin was regenerating its missing pieces. The growths and malformations were smoothed away, and a bull and cow stood in Equestria for the first time in centuries.

“Lucy?” asked the bull, staring at her, his eyes wide and shining. She just nodded. “You’re beautiful,” he rumbled, and then the two started to kiss. And they weren’t alone… Mercy had shed her barding and was now cuddling with Brick excitedly. Buzzard felt a longing in his loins for a female, looking around as if expecting one to magically appear before him to start a family with. Something felt wet behind his eyepatch, and he blinked and pulled it off, staring at the world with two perfect eyes.

Those eyes beheld the trees growing and swelling, looming larger and larger. The boulders and rocks seemed to inflate as well, each one competing to grow the most elaborate and wondrous crystalline formations. The birds filled the air with achingly wonderful song. It had to be that thing! That Gardens of Equestria thing the ponies had gone on about! That was the only explanation!

Then… silence. Everything stopped, like the world held its breath. Buzzard stared at a tiny white flower growing on a vine before him. That precious, beautiful flower was his whole world.

And before his eyes it shriveled, blackened, and tumbled to the earth.

As it fell, that phenomenal growth reversed. The trees groaned as the leaves withered and tumbled down, the trunks splitting open. The birds flew furiously away, their wings beating for an escape, but they died in midflight, their bodies falling like hailstones amid the shower of dying leaves. “Bob!” cried out the cow as all around them animals spasmed and convulsed. Some unseen force seemed to latch into their bodies, ripping them inside out, spoiling and rotting their viscera before his eyes. Those same invisible hands ripped into his shoulders and claws, and he watched in horror as they blackened like burnt sticks.

The leaves didn’t just lie there. They crumpled and powdered almost instantly, exploding to flaky dust before his eyes. Bob and Lucy embraced each other, trembling as the crystalline formations exploded like glass grenades around them. Mercy and Brick lay entwined on the ground. Buzzard wished desperately for someone to hold. His wings gave an instinctive flap, and the bones snapped like the twigs around him. A rain of wood fell all about them, the limbs and branches snapping and breaking like javelins against the ground. He clenched his eyes, hugging himself as if he were a chick in the grip of a hurricane, peeking out when the horror of the unknown became too much to bear.

A peek, and the trees tumbled to the ground around him.

A peek, and Bob and Lucy lay still on the ground.

A peek, and the massive tree trunks were snapping like bombs, tumbling down in a cloud of dust.

A peek, and Mercy and Brick lay splattered like wax beneath an enormous trunk.

A peek, and Mercy’s gun lay at his feet, broken, faded, and blackened, as if left out for centuries.

A peek, and bovine bones painted red with gore embraced forever.

No more peeks. When the noise ended, Buzzard sat paralyzed in the midst of a field of fallen wood. Every breath burned in his chest, breathing the only action he could perform. He looked up at the vulture circling above, his sharp eyes now filmy and clouded. With every fiber of his being, he extended a shaking stump of a limb towards the scavenger. “H… h…” he wheezed.

Then the earth collapsed. For a mile in every direction, the ground dropped into a pit as if it would fall forever, taking with it all signs of the miraculous forest and the caravan that bore witness.

With a roar, the walls of the sinkhole foundered and slid in, and the vulture, disturbed by the boom and the great scratchy cloud of dust, wheeled away to the north for fresher corpses. The dust settled, and in time, the route would be abandoned. But the bowl would remain, a sterile, muddy depression in the world.

Forever.

–was that?” the watcher asked as the lights faded away, ripples rolling back and forth. Darkness resumed.

Enough waiting. A year had been long enough!

Time to find that damned pony and get her moving again.