Creeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak-a-BOOOOOM!

Ginger flung herself into a roll, narrowly avoiding the collapsing ironwood. The trees were known to grow larger than castle towers, and the one that had cratered the forest floor behind her was no exception.

With a grumble, the unicorn straightened the thick black welding goggles covering her eyes, chancing a look around the burning forest. Confident in the stability of the other nearby trees, she continued on her way, guided by the sight of a pegasus flying above the flaming treetops.

Ginger cantered along through the devastation, her hooves softly crunching the burnt needles to ash. Stray flames licked her cinnamon coat and turned bright green upon contact, but she paid them no heed. It felt rather pleasant to her, in a tingly sort of way.

She made her way down into a gully, stopping to inspect a burning bush. A nearby ironwood cone violently exploded, causing flecks of dense material to ricochet off her goggles. Any that landed on her merely fizzled before crumbling away on the hot winds. She scowled as she brushed the remains off.

“Any luck, Daring?” she called up towards the smog-filled sky.

“I think I see something! Follow the gulch till you hit a downed tree, then right!” came the distant reply.

Ginger looked down the gulch, where a grove of smaller ironwoods collapsed, creating a barricade of fire and wood.

Easy for you to say.

She inhaled deeply through her nose. Her horn lit up a bright, pale green, matching the faint magical steam wisping out from behind her goggles. She felt her power flicker deep within her chest, before spreading out towards her extremities, as if she’d just drank a hot broth. She took another breath. The warmth abruptly increased, almost scalding her veins. Ginger flexed her will, shepherding the energy within and concentrating it into her horn, where it manifested into a rapidly-growing ball of light.

Exhaling, Ginger lowered her horn and unleashed the spell, and a blazing streak of light issued forth. The emerald fireball slammed into the obstructions, slapped further down the gully as if shunted by a massive, godly hoof.

Ginger grumbled to herself as she trotted through the wreckage. “It's always something, isn’t it? No, we just can’t go anywhere without getting sucked into one little detour or another. Bah...we don’t even know these ponies, and here I am, risking life and limb for them!”

She glared at a nearby tree.

“This is all your fault.”

The tree burst into flame.

“Serves you right!”

Turning away from the obviously-guilty ironwood, she kept on down the gully, hopping over the debris of the obliterated plant life.

It wasn’t like she’d asked to be here. Like most other things in her life, she’d never had much of a choice in the matter. In this case, she could not, in good conscience, leave innocent ponies to face these flames. Burning was a terrible way to go. Anything else, and she might have considered passing by. It’s not my problem. And besides, I have a pack to look after.

It was a queer sort of pride that filled her when she thought of the rag-tag bunch of fools who had decided to follow her for one reason or another. Echo had been first, although that was due to a technicality - they’d been the only ones left after the last Alpha, and she’d inherited the pack through trial by combat. The original members had all been wiped out, all those years ago...

Coconut had been next. The first pony in recorded history to voluntarily join -and be accepted by- a diamond dog pack, at least according to Daring Do. The renowned explorer was technically already a member at the time, seeing as she’d taken Echo for a mate, weird as that was. For a while, it’d just been the four of them. Disarray wanted no part of her fledgling pack., though she considered him an honorary member all the same. He simply came and went as he pleased, giving help only when it was truly needed.

When they’d arrived at Rio de Maniero, ragged and sore from weeks of jungle travel, all that had changed.

Ginger had been shocked to find diamond dogs living in the alleys and junkyards of the tropical city, scavenging for scrap metal and gems to eat. She’d offered all she met an alternative, a life on the road, yes, but with a warm place to sleep, three square meals a day, and the promise of a home in the future. Most had turned her down. All but ten, the most desperate and perhaps foolhardy of the population.

A pony, leading a pack of diamond dogs? At first, they’d been skeptical, even hostile to her and the others. Three times she’d been challenged to the right to lead, and three times she’d left her opponents in the dirt.

When the other junkyard dogs had attacked them on the eve of their departure, she’d truly earned her pack’s respect, turning a devastating ambush into a humiliating defeat with quick thinking and her raw magical power. That day I truly became an Alpha. Unlike my father.

Ginger blasted away another fallen tree with a surge of magic. Had that been the one Daring had told her about? She decided that it was worth a shot. She climbed out of the gully and into the sea of flames that carpeted the needle-strewn ground.

Daring was circling in the sky, some way off and to her left. She’d obviously found something. Pegasi were known for their good eyesight, and Daring was no exception. Could it be the filly’s parents? If so, she hoped that she wasn’t too late.

Ginger galloped away, sending up puffs of ash with every step.

She soon came to a small clearing in the forest, where the charred remains of a small wagon lay in the center. Ginger moved around it examining the wreckage. Nopony was about, and it looked like the wagon wouldn’t last much longer under the blaze.

She had to strain to let her voice be heard over the roar of the inferno. “Daring! Circle the area! They aren’t here!”

Above, the pegasus executed a quick loop-de-loop to indicate that she’d heard, before zooming off in a seemingly random direction.

Ginger looked back towards the wagon, inspecting the surrounding ground for any hoofprints. There! Two sets, leading off towards a nearby outcrop of rock. If they were smart, they’d try to find some way under it.

She set off, nose almost to the ground, impervious to the heat. The tracks were hard to follow, as most of the forest carpeting had been burned away. They zigged and zagged for some reason, as if their makers had been confused and frightened.

I wouldn’t blame them. A fire is a frightening place for a pony.

Not for her, though. She was a Snap, a family known in many circles for containing some of the most powerful elemental magic-users in Equestria’s history. Her father had claimed that they could trace their line all the way back to Starswirl the Bearded himself.

As long as she could remember, she’d been a friend to the elements. Her mother, a metalworking artist, had had a forge for her studio. Ginger had accidentally fallen into it one day when her mother’s back had been turned. She’d found her daughter giggling and rolling around in the coals, her red-and-orange streaked mane flickering with a life of its own. Adorning her flank had been her new cutie mark, a will-o-wisp of pale emerald fire, the same color as her eyes.

Ginger stomped down on a clump of burning needles. Where had the tracks gone? She’d lost them somewhere. They’d reached the rock...and then...nothing.

“Any luck?” the call came from above.

Ginger tore her gaze from the ground. “No! Lost ‘em!” Where could they have gone? There was no sign of digging around the base of the rock. Had they run off for some other cover? Or had the flames got them? She frowned, and spent a good five minutes rooting around the incinerated soil.

When she rounded the small outcropping of rock, she froze in horror.

The solid rock had been cleaved through in several places, each gash the size a fuller grown timberwolf. What sent an instinctive message to her brain, though, was the fact that the scores were grouped together in threes. Four groups of deep, jagged slashes carved straight through solid rock. There were only a few creatures in Equestria capable of such a thing. It have been an earthworm, those enormous, burrowing giants that lived far below the surface. A diamond dog could dig through just about anything, but they weren’t big enough to leave such impressive scars.

No, there was only one possible thing that could have done this.

“DRAGON!”

Daring heard the call, high above, and immediately began searching frantically through the smoky skies. “Buck, buck, buck! We need to get outta here, Ginger!”

“Go! Get back across the river, warn the others - hurry!”

Hopefully, the Cinderwings had crossed by now. Ginger darted off through the burning forest, her fear giving her the speed to keep pace with the flyer above. The smoke was beginning to get to her, now. While the fire itself posed no threat, the poisonous fumes were beginning to fill the air closer the ground.

With Daring Do pointing the way, she soon emerged out onto the riverbank. Ginger took a deep breath and plunged in without hesitation, releasing a large cloud of steam as her body entered the cool, refreshing waters. Underneath the surface she took a moment to rest, closing her eyes as she was caressed by the gentle flow.

It’s times like these when I honestly don’t know what I’m doing here, she thought to herself. This isn’t what I wanted. Somepony else should be doing this.

All she'd wanted out of life was a steady job during the day, and a bed to curl up next to Cloud Nine at night. But Wethoof was not her home anymore, and Cloud was gone. Who else would do this, though? Who else would even attempt to follow in her hoofsteps? Nopony, that’s who. Nopony likes diamond dogs. And certainly, nopony wants to be Sirius.

That was her goal, at the end of the long road she’d chosen to travel. The Alpha of Alphas. Sirius. To unify the packs under one paw...or hoof, in her case. To make sure that what happened at Wethoof never happened again. To forge a peace between ponies and diamond dogs throughout Equestria. Ginger had buried two parents because of diamond dogs. She wasn’t about to let that happen to anypony else. But to do that, I had to become one.

She had grown up in a pack - her father, the Mayor of Wethoof, had been best friends with the Alpha of the nearby Greenclaw pack, Mosspaw. When each had come into power, they’d forged a pact, and for a time, ponies and diamond dogs had worked together in that stretch of rainforest, prospering from the rich gem supply of the Greenclaw den.

But when the gems had begun to run dry, Mosspaw had been desperate to maintain the peace. To that end, his Greenclaws had dug deeper and deeper, until they’d punctured the bottom of the world itself.

Tartarus, Ginger recalled dismally. They unleashed the corruption of the underworld.

The Greenclaws had been driven to madness, and the resulting conflict found her mother in their clutches. Her father had gone in to save her, Ginger following close behind. But the black pit infected her father as well, and the battle that followed drove the diamond dogs to extinction in the Great Southern Rainforest. Only her father, an honorary pack member, and her, his daughter, had survived to carry on the pack.

Neither wanted anything to do with diamond dogs ever again. Eight years passed. A tentative time of peace for Wethoof emerged under her father’s strong, but just, leadership.

Eight years is a long time, though. The corruption seeping from Tartarus had slowly poisoned the local hydra population until they’d turned feral, forcing the ponies of Wethoof to barricade themselves behind a mighty wall.

And then he showed up. She opened her eyes, bleeding bright magical essence out through her goggles. Ginger’s horn ignited, turning a stretch of the river a luminescent green. She directed the water under her hooves, pushing her up towards the surface until she broke it, now standing atop a surging mound of liquid. It coiled beneath her like a spring, and fired her at the opposite shore, where she landed lightly before running a quick wash of flames about her coat to dry herself off.

Ginger released the water and watched it plop back into the river. The fire still raging on the far bank was reflected by its dark waters. Her ear twitched as he heard the sound of soft pawsteps approaching her. She turned. It was Shadow, a male with shifty eyes and a patched vest that had long ago lost its original fabric. He carried an axe in his belt, made of stone and wood but still deadly in the right paws.

“Cindercorn,” he greeted with their name for her, extending his middle finger in salute, something that Echo had insisted on teaching them. “Featherpony just flew by. We have a problem, me think. How went search?”

“It went,” she replied tartly. “Where is the camp? We need to move, and fast. There’s a dragon about. I’ve a hunch it started this fire.”

Shadow pointed back into the woods, his face now grim. “Thattaway. I go get other watchers, now, yes?”

“Do so. Tell them to head back at once.” Ginger set off through the forest, leaving Shadow to do as he would. It was remarkably different than the firestorm on the opposite shorebank. It was quiet and peaceful, punctuated by the sounds of the nocturnal life that had come out since the sun set. A soft light shone through the ironwoods after some distance.

She emerged into the clearing, tired and sore. The wagons were arranged in a rough circle, a small campfire going in the middle. Half of the Cinderwings were lounging about. Old Yeller noticed her first, looking up from the game of bones he was playing with Luther and Chance before smacking them each upside the head and motioning towards her.

She finally stopped to rest, sore and tired. Must have gotten lazy dodging those falling trees. Only the big one missed. “Where are the others?” she asked nopony in particular.

“Lassie, Rin-tin-tin, Shadow, and Echo go out to watch firewoods for you,” Chance piped up. “Balto and Boxer go out into pinewoods, I am thinking, to-”

“-hunt. Greetings, Cindercorn.”

The new voice rumbled over the camp like two stones grinding together. Two more shapes lumbered out of the gloom. Boxer, with her massive shoulders and scrunched up face - she was easily the strongest one of her pack, although quite dim. Balto, however, was a different story. Tall and lean, with the shaggy fur and wolfish face of the northern diamond dog breeds. His resemblance towards Echo was startling, although the Beta was notably scarred, and Balto’s fur was steel grey, shot through with black. An X-shaped harness strapped across his chest and back held the massive lance he liked to fight and hunt with. Ginger noted that the tip was red. She politely inclined her head in greeting. Boxer slung the carcass of a deer over her shoulder, where it thumped into the ground. Balto never once took his eyes off her, pupils still slitted from the hunt. Ginger lowered her goggles around her neck and met the gaze evenly.

The other Cinderwings soon returned, loping out of the shadows like wraiths. By then, the deer was butchered and quartered. Ginger tried not to pay it much attention. They had long ago come to an agreement about eating meat. It was a necessary staple of the diamond dog diet, along with the gems they were so good at digging out from under the dirt. While the ponies themselves couldn’t stomach the meat, they had to at least tolerate that the diamond dogs were omnivores. Ginger understood that. As long as it didn’t talk back, it was fair game.

She felt the familiar presence of her Beta sit on the log behind her. Perched atop him like an oversized parrot was Daring Do, the attractive pegasus comfortably resting across his shoulders. “They know. What are we going to do?” Daring asked anxiously.

“We’re dealing with a dragon. It’s probably the reason the woods across the river went up. On top of that, it might have taken the filly’s parents.” Ginger shrugged. “If it’s got them, then they’d be far away by now. We need to clear out, in case it comes back.”

Daring paused a moment, before looking at Echo. “Really? Wow. Didn’t see that coming.” She looked back at Ginger. “He says that they aren’t ponies, they’re zebras. The filly I picked up was covered in soot and ash.”

“Zebras...?” At first, Ginger thought she must have misheard. “What are zebras doing all the way out here?”

“We aren’t sure, but we’ll find out in the morning when Zanza wakes up.”

“Zanza?”

“The filly.”

Funny name. She reasoned that Echo must have told her. The two were close, she knew that. And with the telepathy spell she’d botched, closer still. What one knew, the other was bound to know as well.

Ginger took a moment to think. Finally, she stomped a hoof down at looked out at her assembled pack. “We’re leaving. We’ve spent too long in the ironwoods anyway. Break down camp and get ready to move out - we’ll follow the river until we’re sure we’re out of the dragon’s territory. The last thing I want is to have to run into one.”

Balto scoffed. “Cindercorn afraid of flying worm? I say we wait until fire out, then we fight it in its den, and take hoard for ourselves.”

“That ‘flying worm’ is the size of an Canterlot gunship, Balto.” Ginger narrowed her eyes at him. “And in case you haven’t looked across the river lately, it carries a hell of a lot more firepower. We’re moving out. And that’s the end of it.”

And uncomfortable silence followed. “Actually, we might have an issue with that. Fluffy here made a promise to the filly to find her parents.” Daring awkwardly patted Echo on the head. The diamond dog, for his part, looked quite sheepish, trying to disappear inside his hood.

Ginger gawked at them. Her right eye twitched violently. “You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking. This is just another one of Disarray’s lame pranks, isn’t it?” If there was anything she’d come to respect and simultaneously hate about her Beta, is was the fact that he would go head to head with a minotaur if his precious honor was called into question. If he’d given his word, then Ginger would have to bind and gag him to keep him from keeping it.

“Hey!” The draconnequus stuck his head out of the side of the Shagwagon. “Slapstick comedy is a respectable source of humor!”

“Nopony asked you!” Ginger roared, slinging a bolt of fire at him. With an undignified squeak, he ducked back inside. Ginger rounded on her Beta. She was mad, now. “And you! How could you keep doing this! Every single time we run into somepony with the smallest problem, you end up more or less enslaving yourself to them! And by extension, us! We aren’t a charity, Echo. We have our own freaking problems, and we don’t need any more!” She pressed herself face to face, boring into his eyes. He looked away.

“Generosity is not a weakness, Ginger,” Daring said quietly from atop his shoulder.

“No, but it is a waste of time!” Ginger spat back. “And right now, time is not something we have to throw away!” She pointed a hoof towards the sky, glaring at her pack. “There’s a bucking dragon somewhere out there. Those things can destroy entire towns! They’ve done it before, they don’t give a pile of dung for any but their own kind. If the filly’s parents were taken, then no doubt they’ve been made thralls for its hoard by now!”

“That should make ye even more willin’ ta save ‘em.”

Ginger whirled around to see Coconut stepping out from behind some of the dogs. “A filly shouldn’t have ta grow up without a family,” he said softly. “Ye should know that more than anypony else. Yer own mum was taken by slavers.”

“And trying to save her ended up shattering a decade of peace,” Ginger bitterly ground out through clenched teeth.

Daring shook her head. “We don’t have a treaty with a dragon. Like you said, they care only for their own kind.” She paused. “Ginger, Echo and I are going to try. He made a promise, and I’m not about to let him grab all the glory himself.”

A vein pulsed in Ginger’s neck. “You’re not going to make it out of there without help. Do you even know where to look for it?”

“Echo can smell it out. We’ll wait until the fire burns out, but after that, we’re going to try.”

She knew they would, too. No matter what she said, their minds were made up. Once they were set on something, it was easier to crack open a mountain than dissuade them. “Give me a moment to think about this,” she told them.

Ginger glanced across the campfire at Old Yeller, who was peering at her intently through his faded, cataracted eyes. The ancient mutt was her guide through the vexing and oftentimes unnecessarily violent diamond dog culture. She waved him over and led him away from camp.

“Cindercorn is at fork in road, yes?” he observed.

“Stuck between a brick wall and a hard place, more like,” Ginger said. “I can’t just walk away from this and keep my standing intact.”

“Ah, you are learning. This is good. You know why you risk authority?”

Ginger paused, tapping her hoof at the ground. “...Because my Beta openly defied me. If I don’t answer his challenge, I am a coward. I will lose respect. If he truly has support behind him, this could splinter the pack.” She narrowed her eyes. “That was a wily, dirty move. He knows we need each other to make this work.” And I should have seen it coming. He is cunning, more so than all the rest combined.

Old Yeller nodded, leaning heavily on his crooked driftwood spear. “You could simply force him to submit through a trial. It is Alpha’s right to enforce. Alpha’s word is law.”

“No. He’d abandon us the first chance he got and simply do it himself.” Ginger shook her head. “No. I need him to run this pack with me, Yeller, as much as I hate to admit it. He is the only one of you who won’t attempt to become Alpha himself. Only a Beta may challenge an Alpha. He cements my leadership.” She began to pace. “But if I give my support in this, I place the entire pack in danger, and everything we’ve been working for could be wiped out in an instant. Could you live with that, Yeller? A chance for a better tomorrow, and you throw it away?”

Old Yeller took a moment to think. “I am old and proud. Pride is all I have left. If this were threatened, then I would do all I could to keep it mine.”

“I didn’t hear a definite answer.”

“There is none. Not all problems have clear solutions.”

Ginger scowled. “Then I am backed into a corner, and I risk it all no matter what I do. What would you have me do, now that everything is teetering on a knife edge?”

Old Yeller merely thumped his spearbutt against the ground. The diamond spearhead glittered in the shadows of the evening. He then turned and padded back to the campfire where the others were still gathered in a loose, silent circle.

Ginger Snap looked out into the forest. Through the gaps between the massive trunks, she could see the river in the distance, still reflecting the flames of the raging forest fire. If we fail, we lose everything. But it we succeed...if we truly manage to raid the hoard of a dragon...

She imagined the possibilities. Such a feat was worthy of retelling during many a stormy night. It could go down in history. It could give her pack the status it needed to meet with the larger, more famous groups. It could grant her audience with the Diamond Lords, the greatest Alphas of the land. It would put her one step closer to her ultimate goal of forging a nation, under her.

The cosmic dice were at hoof, waiting to be tossed. Could she risk her dreams for the lives of a couple of lost zebras?

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t, she grimly realized. If the pack splintered, she would be ruined and left aside in the dust. She could not allow her pack to be left in the paws of one of them. They would not be able to keep the peace. Only a pony leading them could keep a diamond dog nation from fragmenting. They'd fight themselves into the dust otherwise.

She made her choice.

The unicorn spun on the spot and stormed back to the campfire. “Boxer, Shadow, Balto, and Chance. Start digging a den big enough for the wagons to fit in. We’ll hide them underground while we’re out.”

“Out?” Chance asked.

Ginger nodded, grimacing. “Out. Everypony here better get some rest while you have the chance. Once that forest fire burns itself down, we’re going after the filly’s parents.“

She watched as their eyes sparkled in the light of the campfire. Each pair had something different in them, but she knew they were behind her in this. She had made the right decision, she had kept their loyalty. Now they just had to make it out in one piece.

“We’re going to raid a dragon hoard.”

Achievement Earned: "Through the Fire and the Flames."

Character Unlocked! Ginger Snap, Alpha of the Cinderwings

-Perk Unlocked: Ignition: (+ max fire resistance) Ever since you were little, your natural affinity with the elements has been evident, fire in particular. You are unharmed by the even the most withering of flames. Time to go hot-tubbin' in some lava.

-Perk Unlocked: Avatar, the Last Unicorn: (+7 magic, -3 intellect) The blood of the Snaps runs through your veins, one of the most magically-gifted families in Equestria. Your manipulation of earth, air, water, and fire are unparalleled, but your skills in other fields of magic are sadly lacking and highly unpredictable.

-Perk Unlocked: The Rainforest School of Hard Knocks: (+2 agility, +2 strength, + 2 speed) Growing up in the rainforest shantytown of Wethoof has taught you a thing or two about how to take care of yourself. You've been surviving the dangers of the jungle since you could walk. I, for one, feel sorry for anyone who runs into you in a dark alley. Poor sods.