The Scourge was rebuilt at the cost of only one life, that life belonging to a particularly stupid pony who thought that he might be able to get away with stealing a few of the gems that his friends had donated. He learned his lesson at the tip of a sword and his body was buried along with the dogs who had died. As was tradition in the wastes, nobody really cared.

Nobody paid his body any respect.

Not that they should've, Boss had been the one to catch him stealing and the town still owed all them.

----

A guide to basic metamagical theorems.

I blinked at it for a long time, trying to get my eyes to see through what I was clearly hallucinating. I had spent the past day decoding the cover of the book.

"A guide to metamagical theorems." I sad aloud, and just as I had suspected, it opened for me.

The first few words took me by surprised.

For experienced unicorns only.

I silently made a gesture that would've been flipping the bird if I had finger and hurled the book at the wall. A pleasant looking painting of a meadow that a few of the convicts had been rather insistent on donating fell from the wall and hit the floor, the glass covering shattering across the floor.

For once, I was glad I had hooves.

As a force of habit I tried to channel magic through my pouch to the feather to convert it into the proper spell.

Well, I didn't have magic and the act of trying to use magic while I was out sent a large stab of pain into my head like someone had pushed me into a wood chipper.

It's hard to do justice what it felt like in words really. What would've been as simple as lifting the glass shards into a cup or something was soon a long and arduous task. Hooves are one of those things that really don't work well with brooms. Or dust pans.

Bandages, like the ones wrapped around my side and stomach were also hard to manage with hooves.

Pain was really one of those things hard to deal with regardless of your shape or form. It was kinda the universal fuck you.

Still, despite my anger at apparently wasting my time with the book, I decided to read it a little.

----

Boss looked at the top of the ship and then waved at Catastrophe.

Cata flew over, yawning. It hadn't been too terribly long since they had woken up and they were still checking over the ship for any places that needed a bit more repairing. She landed a few feet from her.

Or, milking Oblivion for all the free improvements they could get. One or the other, either way, Boss wasn't going to be picky.

"Yeah?" The griffon said, looking sleepy. She paused from walking over to stretch out. She frowned. "Gonna need to preen soon." Her feathers looked ruffled.

The dog shrugged. "Have fun with that, I guess." She shook her head. Sometimes, being overly callous to the griffon was all too tempting. "Have you seen the fuel room?"

Canary poked his head up and shook it, walking over. "I haven't. Anything special?" He asked, concerned and slightly amused.

"Hey, what do you make of this?" Boss led her through the ship, ignoring the faint blood stains and the faint reek of copper and salt. She smiled lightly. Things... were going well.

Set in a room that they hadn't been using, the fuel room, across from the boiler room, there was a new depression in the floor. A large bit of hose fed off from the boiler, looking all the bit like...

Canary blinked. "Is that...?"

"A hot tub." Catastrophe finished, her eyes filled with glee.

Canary flinched away at the look but stood his ground. "A hot tub."

Boss nodded. "A hot tub."

"We have a hot tub." The zebra blinked.

"Hot tub."

"Why do we have a hot tub?" Boss finally asked, looking it over. It was big enough to fit all of them and the unexpected nature of it was throwing her off.

"Who cares? We have a fucking hot tub." Catastrophe said, cautiously walking over to it. Some sort of bath salts, three different colors, red, yellow, and blue, were set on a recessed shelf.

By reflex the griffon shot Canary a dirty glare. "I heard that."

He had let the words die on his tongue before he spoke. "I didn't say anything!"

"Shut up."

----

According to the book, magic was merely sculpted energy that affects reality. Quite simply, I guess, magic was applied thought energy magic miasma matrix...

You know what, it's magic, I barely have to explain everything.

Magic, at its core was simply conveying information to the world through energy. It was theorized that magic was linked to specific things, specific words, specific phrases. Specific gems. Specific species.

"Unicorns are the superior species for magic as Celestia has granted them the right to bear the best foci from their heads. In my very esteemed opinion, Unicorns are simply superior." I read it aloud for a second, thinking it over. The text was in English, which once again implied many different things.

Oh and I was speaking English. That too.

Unicorn supremacy propaganda or not, reading about magic was not quite as good as using magic.

----

Of course, jumping back from Boss's blades and parrying them just barely with my knife, without magic I was sorta kinda really useless. Which is why I was working on agility.

Something buried itself in my side and I fell over to dodge another sword, the edge covered in leather.

"Dead." Catastrophe laughed, walking over to my side and pulling out a dart from it. I glared at her and waiting for Canary.

"Ivan, I'll run out of fruit at this rate. Learn how to dodge." His eyes flashed and the pear in his hands shriveled a bit. "First aid." He sighed.

The hole in my side filled in and stopped bleeding. I stood right back up in time to block Boss's sword with my own wooden blade, practicing the technique and my reaction time.

I didn't jump away from her other sword and took it to the side of the face, a stinging welt sure to follow.

"Dead." Boss said simply.

I glared at her and then kicked out with my right hoof, hitting her prosthetic in just the right way to make it spazz out and drop the blade. "In my dying thrashing throes I kick out my hoof and disarm you."

A dart buries itself in Boss's back.

"Dead." I finished.

I smiled at the griffon and looked at the other Zebra. "So, Can-can." I started.

"Neon Pegasus."

"I TOLD YOU TO FORGET ABOUT THAT." I half shouted, half groaned.

"Don't call me Can-Can."

"Fine."

"Canary. How much magic do you have left?" I asked politely.

"More than you." He was being a bit of a dick today.

"Right."

Boss reached behind herself and pulled out the dart, letting it hit the ground. The griffon landed on the ship.

----

"You are in a dark hall way. Behind you, a horde of dogs that you would have to be ridiculously stupid to try and attack are haunting you. In front of you lies the unknown. What do you do?" I asked, looking over the group.

Canary replied first. "I would, after a bit of careful consideration, levitate whatever I could find through the unknown."

"Dead. The dogs catch up to you."

The griffon answered next. "Fly back behind me and outside of the hallway to freedom."

"Correct, but you die from a lucky arrow."

"I would collapse the tunnel and signal for help from the rest of you."

"Dead, the tunnel kills you."

The griffon nodded. "So why the fuck do you keep giving us this impossible scenarios?"

I shrugged. "You'll figure it out eventually."

---

I dove out of the way of a spray of darts, Catastrophe throwing them at me without even really trying. "Come on Ivan, I could've killed you five times over by now."

I stared at her and took in her appearance, watching her muscles twinge, hearing her voice.

I was out of my mind, clearly. But I didn't care. I needed to be free.

"And?" I asked calmly, not letting the nervousness show in my voice.

A dart dove into my leg and I let out a yelp of pain. "Exactly. Start dodging better."

I hadn't really improved all that much so far, but I had impressed Boss a little.

I reached down and pulled it out with my teeth. "Yes, Cata." I felt like she was my teacher or something. My really kinda hot teacher.

"Maybe if you stopped staring at me you'd actually dodge a few!" She accused.

"Not my fault you are easy on the eyes." I replied with a smile.

"Shut up and get back to dodging." I did as she asked, my striped hide getting out of the way of the worst of the darts. The ones that missed clanked against metal or stuck in the wood around me.

---

The night sky started to cast its deep shade of lavender over the day, the insatiable land below us greedily holding on to what little bit of the sun still hung in the air. They warred with each other, it seemed, for a long time until the sun gave way, yielding before the moon which slowly rose to the sky.

I was the only one on the deck of the ship besides the pilot.

The sky, for a few brief moments, was almost close enough for me to touch.

I had kept up with the new ritual of eating a bit of jerky and whatever fruit Catastrophe presented me, as it seemed like a good idea to find a way to improve my diet.

I kept my gaze to the sky, a feeling of intense longing flooding through me like a storm.

"Catastrophe, what does it feel like to fly?" I hiked up the few steps to lean against the controls of the ship, delighting in watching the stars come out.

"Haven't we had this conversation before?"

"Humor me."

She smiled lightly and her eyes seemed wistful.

"Flying is like swimming through the air."

I listened with an intensity I didn't even know I had.

"Flying is knowing that when things get rough, you'll always have somewhere to go."

"Flying is safety." I finished.

"You could say that."

"Hmph. Been a while since I had any screen time." There was an awkward pause. "Ivan. You've got me doing it! There isn't a fourth wall to break and-" There was a sinister laugh. "I support your plan."

There were stars looking down at me from above and I felt safe while I was next to the griffon who looked rather attractive and fitting with the black backdrop seeming to mirror her coating and I felt safe on the deck of the ship and I tried to ignore the pain and the screaming and something touched me.

I fell on my side and she stood over me with sadness in her eyes and then she shook her head and carried me to my room and nothing really made sense because why would she be sad?

She must've been sad because she knew what I was going to do except that didn't make sense because I hadn't told anyone what I wanted to do not even when there wasn't anyone around because someone was always listening and my thoughts were running from me and I tried to gather them and they slipped like water.

----

Another day, another set of angry red welts from a practice sword. Another couple of darts in my side and a few more snide remarks on my state of living.

"Hey, Ivan. Go try out the hot tub. It feels great." Catastrophe said slyly, looking around the ship.

I blinked and ignored her weird behavior. "We have a hot tub?"

"Yes. We have a hot tub."

And indeed we did. Complete with bath salts and all sorts of things I really did not expect to find on my ship.

I sank into the hot pool of water and let out a sigh of relief as the warm water trickled over my body.

I let the steam take me away from where I was, drifting off to sleep slowly.

I dreamed of flying through fields, my hooves knowing where to take me.

I dreamed of safety.

I dreamed of the sky, of a voice I knew all too well behind me and wings guiding me forward.

I dreamed of another place at another time.

----

The days flew by in a whirl of studying, training, bathing and doing who knows what else. All in all, probably some of the better days of my life were right there with my friends.

For once, I doubted my choice.

I kept it decided all the while.

----

On the thirtieth day, a few weeks of dodging and trying to parry a superior attacker, my magic came back to me in a rush. The whispers were back again.

And I wrote a letter.

And then we were over our destination, Las Pegasus. It's myriads of colorful lights and sounds and casinos said it was a happy place, and surprisingly I felt safer.

----

"Ivan?" Boss asked, knocking on his door. She looked around, a bad feeling in the air. It was the sort of bad feeling that made her paws ache.

"Ivan." She drew her sword and slashed through the hinges of the door, letting it fall open.

"The ladder is down." She mumbled, looking over the room. "And Ivan is gone."

A single letter fluttered down from the ceiling. Boss picked it up before it fell. The room felt quite a bit like a morgue.

Dear friends,

I regret to inform you that I cannot stay in your company. You must understand that I do this for you, and not for myself, though it is my selfish desires that has nearly doomed all of you so many times.

You must understand this, for I have no intention of coming back to this ship under my own will.

It is best that you move on without me, perhaps find a way to use what few things we have acquired to start your own lives.

Canary, I'll miss your bits of rationality. I'll miss your ability to talk me back up when I've fallen.

Boss, I'll miss your silent promise of protection, I'll miss your presence.

Catastrophe, I'll miss you. I cannot describe in words just how much I miss you already as I write this note.

This is a goodbye, and one I do not like making. I must protect those that I cherish, and I must protect them by not letting the claws of fate take them from me. I will make the decision on my own.

I intend to do away with myself far away from any of you so that you may live long lives without the hands of fate intervening.

~Ivan

Boss let the letter fall from her grasp. She felt solemn.

"Catastrophe. Canary. No time for fun, Ivan's gone over the edge."