This was yet another gift, this time for my other regular editor, Napalm Goat. He and Snipe have birthdays very close. Makes my life very interesting at that point of the year!

For this I wanted to bring Ahrim back from 'Colour of Life'. As always, I know Goat loves his stories that try something unusual or different. So this time, I wanted to focus in hard on Ahrim's stoic, quiet nature, and push it to the extreme. An interesting challenge when I'm used to very chatty characters.

I hope you all enjoy a little tale of a hunter in the urban jungle of a very well known city to us all in the wastes...

The beast had struck three times now, and the ponies of Manehattan’s central districts were now growing wary to leave their towns.

The first had been almost overlooked, dismissed as a feral ghoul attack. The second had made it clear that something was amiss in the quiet streets between isolated settlements in the urban jungle. The third had been so brazen that it had struck the Bloody Mile itself outside Friendship City. The swarm of guards that had responded to the screams found a terrified stallion quivering under his upturned wagon in the cold slurry of a dying winter. Brahmin slain by great gouges lay amidst piles of scrap. His stuttering voice told only of a dead tree that had come to life and attacked.

Life went on through fear. Monster attacks were sporadic, but common enough that they knew what to do. Teams had spread, lighting fires on the dark roads to cover the approaches from Friendship City, to Cornerstone and all the way to Tenpony. Caravans moved in convoys. Hired guns stood up and made their keep. Talon Mercenaries and Dashites were recruited to scout from the air to sterilise routes of danger. And finally, known hunters were contacted. Some officially. Some not.

And a word and a request for aid from a friend of the third attack’s victim had seen Ahrim join the hunt.

He had gone to Friendship City. He had listened to the council’s reports. Spoken with survivors. He had viewed the scene of the attack. All of it had seen him surrounded by three dozen other individuals from various mercenary groups. They had galloped out, finding the likely trails, chasing and wary of the next vulnerable caravan.

Ahrim had waited by the gate, and then trotted in the entirely opposite direction. That choice had led him far away from the rest of those trying to find it. Past the shorefront of Friendship City, through the hanging skyscrapers and deep into the wild heart of the city.

Cold, scything winds tore through arched and gnarled trees heavy with long dead lights and bands of scorched banners. They bore promises of a festival that had never seen the light of day. Any explorer who went deep enough into the woods could even find collapsed remnants of tents and markets amidst what once was a clearing around a resplendent fountain. Now, simply a brownish vine covered nexus of silent death. Radiation had gathered there, trapped below the canopy from fallout, its untouched treasures of the old world still strewn across the ground. Prams lay on their sides and market stalls with unbroken cans and bottles of farm produce lay coated in moss. Across the water, past the open gap in the trees of a concrete skate park lay a small amphitheatre overlooking a covered bandstand where a whole big band’s worth of instruments were curiously intact where they had fallen.

Ahrim looked down over it all with a quiet patience from the hill above it. Winding paths past shattered benches rose up to a line of statues above Central Park’s highest point, and half way up it was here he had made his lair between two roaring lions half obscured in thick bush. He lay on an insulated pad to keep him off the freezing slush that still pocketed Manehattan from the previous winter, using a detached sight from his rifle to peer from clearing to clearing, bolthole to pathway. Here, within the contained reserve of Manehattan’s rigid edges and crumbling monoliths, he felt a little more at home. While it was long dead, the organic landscape and natural brackets of tree and bush and river was more home to him than much of the city he’d now spent years in.

And that was precisely why he had come here instead. The attacks hadn’t been territorial, and gave rise to a direction of travel. The spacing between them had been fairly steady. The attacks had taken similar amounts of prey. And in all cases, it had fled immediately after. All of which spoke to him a language not known to the city dwellers more used to localised threats. This was a beast that worked according to the rules of the plains. Travel, eat, move.

All of that was why he’d known to come here, to seek familiar ground. If his hunch was right, so too would this elusive beast on its path, and he could end it before its travel found the other settlements on the other side. Or worse, if it set up shop to hole up. If it did, it could strike anywhere.

And so he had taken to the hard routine, living in an area not much more than one and a half times his own slender body’s size for two and a half days now to acclimatise, blend, and observe. Wrapped in warm thermals matted with scent masking mud, and a non-glare set of goggles over his wrapped face, he had even let down his normally proud mane to tie behind his head and below a warm cap. His cold belly wrenched from lack of warm food and his head crawled with the itch of withdrawal. Leaning his head to the side, he took up a cigarette in his lips, rolling it around, but making no effort to take up a lighter.

The wind ripped through the trees again, blowing around the hill, masking his position from being downwind. The howls had gotten tedious, and he had to temper frustration at it taking away his ability to listen for far off sounds. Instead he’d fallen back on sight and utter mundane patience. He had food in his lair, it clearly didn’t.

His patience was finally rewarded by that very bit of knowledge paying off.

On the third day, through a surprise blizzard of snow being blown by the edge of spring’s winds off the rooftops hundreds of meters above, Ahrim saw a tree he’d been watching for hours finally move.

On the edge of the fountain’s clearing, beside the edge of what had once been a straight path lined with flower beds on either side, it creaked and distorted. Its angular body moved with a rigidity that snapped and clicked, like a careless pony stepping on a dry twig every time it shifted. A long, powerful and thin body arched back, as twisted and strong as the trunks themselves as it detached from its hiding place and dropped onto all four legs. Its body was lined with oak and walnut in place of muscles, leading to a wolf’s head highlighted in light pine streaks above its skull. A dull green lit up in two gaps like eyes, neither quite in parallel with the other. Taller than him by a full half again, and three times as long, the canine shape curled down and snaked its body around the trunk. Free of its lethargy, the cracks and snaps fell away into a silence of motion. Curiously, it began to rub itself against the tree, grinding and stripping the bark over its own body.

Smoothly, Ahrim reached his hoof to his side, counting the rifles as he moved for the third of the four in line. He never took his eyes off the wolf-beast as he made the immediate decision for a mid-calibre. Much as he wanted to observe, to learn, to admire this creature from afar, this could be his only chance. The wooden body might resist or at least only wound with a normal round from his carbine, but his most potent ‘dragon killer’ round on the enormous bullpup at the end could very well overpenetrate such an unusual hide. Instead, he took up an ancient griffon-made bolt-action stamped from before the war against zebras even began. Navigating his hooves around the long rifle as softly and smoothly as he would a mare, he drew it over and squeezed it beneath his shoulder.

The beast shifted. Its head suddenly whipped around, and Ahrim fell still. It wasn’t looking at him, but that meant nothing. It was listening. Perhaps scenting; he couldn’t tell from its unusual biology.

Minutes passed, and Ahrim began to feel an itch in his spine that he wasn’t trying to remain hidden any longer. A sensation drew through him, stiffening and turning his muscles heavy with leaden anxiety and thrill. The thrill of the hunt. A dangerous, easily addicting rush matched only in its power by the quiet hole it would leave afterwards. The beast wasn’t looking for him. It was watching him. Just as he was watching it.

There was no designated prey in this park now.

Slowly, Ahrim stood, bringing the long, long barrel up gently ahead of him. He slid from his lair into clear view, two hundred meters from the beast. Draped cloth dragged behind him like a camouflage cloak as he began to trot slowly across the slope of the hill, around his quarry. The wooden beast’s head remained perfectly still, almost facing away - an unclear shot. Each hoof taking slow motions, he quelled his own fears to keep steadily moving, trusting to its own curiosity to give him time. Time to find a better angle. He would not commit to wounding and chasing. A clean shot. A clean kill. That was the goal.

He stepped over the fragments of a park bench and statue, a mare’s head split in two passing below him. He never saw it, eyes trained only on the beast. Its legs sank, lowering. This was it. Heart thudding, he paused and dropped. The enormously long barrel of the griffon hunting weapon was trained. He could see past its shoulder. See the head. See those irregular glints of green eyes. In the post-winter gloom he could swear they had wisps of green smoke. Slowly, over the approaching din, he heard a throaty growling. A deep, mature sound to ward off others.

There was a crash in the distance. A collision of metal and splintering wood. He kept his attention. Hoof moving, he ignored the rising noise. A distraction now would be fatal. His hooves would never load this a second time before it could sprint the distance. Breathing slower, he tried to lower his heart-rate, sights squarely on the side of its head. Spine and brain-stem. Quick. Painless. Culled on its unfortunate wander into a place it never should have been. He could relate. He saw its head whip up at the horrendous grinding approaching, and swore as he re-aimed again. But the new angle brought his eyes to witness something else, something intermittently lit up in red at its neck.

The noise approaching exploded into being as an entire bush crashed down before the metal behemoth. Grinding treads spun and sparked on old cobble, sending them flying like shrapnel. Scathing lamps atop its stepped, mighty hull of corrugated iron burned daylight into the darkness of the forested park, illuminating both Ahrim and the beast alike. He winced, and in the blinding haze he saw the wolf-like creature turn and make to flee.

It only got ten feet before there was a mighty bang of compressed air, and a rattle of scything chain. A ten foot long harpoon of rusted metal whipped through the air, its hooked end shattering wood as it drove through the beast’s thigh. A savage howl squandered into a sharp whine and Ahrim witnessed it fall, its momentum carrying it into the bush it had been aiming for. Thrashing its body, it was dragged back out, the enormous vehicle winding it back with a clanking whirr of gears turning.

“You there! Rifle down! Who’s that?”

The voice made Ahrim wince, projected from loudspeakers either side of the vehicle. He could scarcely see it behind the light, but he could envision the weapons pointed his way. Slowly, he let the barrel dip and hung it loosely on a strap about his neck and shoulder. He heard hooves and saw shadows drop from the edges of the mighty vehicle, the sides five equines high in height. Thudding with electronic generators being shut off, the lights cut and Ahrim finally saw the rushing team hastening over toward him.

They weren’t raiders or any local gang he knew. They were mostly earth ponies in long winter coats of dark brown or matted green over khaki body armour, both coat and plates clearly taken from some army surplus. Bandoleers of ammunition, binoculars, manacles, bear-traps, chains and thickly bladed long knives matched the almost ubiquitous hunting rifles of all shapes and sizes carried among them. They were hunters. Three of them kept training the muzzles on him as they advanced, the remainder pushing toward the struggling beast. Blinking, Ahrim raised his goggles to see the vehicle they’d rode in only. A badly damaged armoured carrier, covered over with corrugated sheets and chickenwire. Its roof had been cut open and a crude cab built atop it mounting the harpoon launcher, while its shredded tracks had lost their road wheels in the middle, the tracks instead shortly banded around the remaining ones, creating four running sections instead of two. It was unmistakably an Equestrian Royal Army APC, a model Ahrim recognised. He briefly smirked and lightly blew air through his nose, a waft of mist emerging from his covered muzzle.

“Aw’right lads, cool ‘er off! He’s not a beast! Just keep ‘em under watch.” A charismatic, confident tone rang out, and a short, modest stallion of an ochre coat strode up and swung his hoof to knock up the barrels pointed at him. The newcomer had a tight bomber jacket, with dull green scrim-netting tied as a scarf at its fur-lined neck. One shoulder bore a section of a manticore’s pelt like a pauldron, while a radgator’s teeth hung from a necklace. He carried a heavy rifle, high calibre and of florid wooden design with gilded decor leading back to the bolt and barrel. It looked comically large for his height, but he carried it with a casual confidence that betrayed genuine skill. His scarred face looked delighted, eager, caught up in the throes of adrenaline as he approached Ahrim. He smiled up at the zebra, and tilted his head toward the thrashing beast. “Timberwolf! Had a good feeling, ‘cor she’s a big one ain’t she? Lookit’ ‘er!”

Ahrim turned his head, seeing five of the hunters spreading out around the lashing ‘timberwolf’. Even as he watched, it tried to spring at one of them, but the moment it tensed up, the harpoon glowed with a red heat, and the hissing of scorching wood filled the air. The great beast would scramble and whine, falling on its side to tug at the metal rod embedded into its bark, but the hook kept it in. Ahrim could see the wires running down the chain from the vehicle to trigger the unusual weapon. Twice more it would try to move, but the pulse of rapid heating would burn its fascinating hide, blackening it, making the proud hunter wail and howl. The hunters moved in, activating similar weapons, spears bound in heated wire, to jab and hound and torture the timberwolf’s aggression into submission on its side.

“Name’s Earth Stopper. Ah, yeah! Been trackin’ her a little while, ain’t we? Sorry to cut in line at the end there mate but hey, reward’s first come first serve, eh?.” Stopper winked at the zebra. Ahrim idly shrugged, face grim. Stopped seemed nonplussed, looking around at the way Ahrim had walked, tracing the zebra’s path from his lair even as the wolf yipped and howled in pain behind him. “You huntin’ her alone there, friend? Got a shot nearly? Pretty damn ballsy if you don’t mind my say-so. Done a lot of huntin’ have you?”

Ahrim didn’t reply, he kept his eyes on Stopper’s team, watching them bind and chain and noose the timberwolf. Some of them were laughing, hopping closer to tease their foe into biting, before the spears would lance in again. He heard savage, mocking laughter as they taunted it, mocking their capture. The mighty vehicle was turning, reversing its troop compartment toward them, converted into a large cage.

Stopper seemed unbothered. “Figure you gotta if you tracked her here and have the minerals to come in alone. Almost got her too. Nice old piece that is you got there. Griffon? Good rifles them. Tell you what, friend-” He clapped Ahrim’s shoulder, making the zebra turn his head impassively back to him. “You seem the quiet, capable sort. Whether you understand a word I’m sayin’ or not, you’re plains born aren’t ya? I can tell, if you figured this track out. What you say you hook up with us, huh? I’ll even throw in a share on that girl there. Quick decision I know, but I can always tell folks who know the good huntin’, an’ that’s the sort I work with.”

Their leader seemed eager, and Ahrim kept quiet, blinking with hard eyes. He was all too aware of the other hunters still holding rifles nearby, looking as wary of him as they were the magical creature they were goading and winching up into their cage. When no answer was forthcoming, Stopped tried again. He patted his own chest.

“Me-”

He made a gathering gesture.

“-want-”

He made to pat Ahrim’s rifle, and there was a sudden raise of barrels from behind him when Ahrim sharply pulled it away. “-you! Whoa whoa, lads! Ease off! It’s all right, it’s all right…” He waved his hunters back. “Ah, guess it’s not to be then. Just know you got a place with us if you ever need it, right? Well, best of luck to ya, mate! C’mon all, mount up! Got a reward waitin’ for us!”

There was a cheer from the others, the vehicle’s door clanking shut. The engine roared, and Stopper leapt onto one of the track-covers, pulling himself to the cab up top. He waved to Ahrim. There was none given in reply. Throbbing with power, the converted APC ground over dirt, pulverising the remnants of fallen statues as it gripped the ground and dragged its heaving weight to a startling speed. In the back, cowed with lancing red-hot tips waiting to dissuade any motion, the timberwolf lay curled around its impaled, blackened thigh.

Ahrim caught its green eyes for just a moment. His eyebrows sunk down, his face tightening.

He waited until the clanking monstrosity had left the entire park, its advance merely an echo amidst the hard ruins beyond the edges of nature to turn back to his lair. Climbing the hill again, he disassembled the hideaway with quick, sharp motions. The canvas was stripped out. The branches were strewn. The foil packets of his days of food were collected into his pack and the scant remaining grass he had laid on was left open to the sky. By the end, nothing would remain to mark his passing.

Finally, Ahrim hoisted and tied each rifle to his side, leaving his carbine around his neck to hold against his chest. He stood up and disengaged the magazine, unchambering the one stored round with quick, fluid, grimly efficient motions. Storing it, he drew out another marked with a piece of blue tape, and reloaded with armour piercing rounds.

As cold as Manehattan’s inner districts were, the outer suburbs felt deathly chill by comparison. Wind bit to the bone in howling gales surging in from the long, bare plains and down the mountains toward Shattered Hoof. Deprived of skyscrapers as shelter, most who dwelled here had retreated into the centre of the city. Only now were some starting to creep back out into the low, curving streets of once affluent commuters to reinhabit the two storey homes that once promised peaceful comfort to families.

Ahrim could see which ones had been left abandoned for the winter. Traps lay open and visible in the soil gardens, warnings that less obvious ones may lurk for those trying to take advantage. Contraptions and water collectors hung between some roofs repaired using the parts of others around them. Many bore racks to hang meat from, or covered signs that no doubt promised trade stops prior to the city. Early birds for caravans, he figured. One in fifty had a fire within it. He stayed well clear of them, not leaving the road.

He didn’t know the area, but the great treads had left deep, obvious tracks. Even without the wet slush that plopped and slapped on every hoof-step, the vehicle tore up the road and the earthen recreational fields it had driven clean over. He passed the rusted ruin of a foal’s playground and a small buckball pitch, the turned earth running alongside them in an arc out behind the houses. Manehattan didn’t really have a ‘limit’ or a clear border. The city had sprawled, grew and amalgamated with surrounding towns, giving it an impossible to define edge. But for what one did exist in the inconsistent outer limits, he knew he was near it, and that the vehicle was headed just that way.

And so he followed, taking a persistent, easy pace that despite the ten hours of walking hadn’t left him breathless. He’d seen such vehicles before. In this post-war world, it wouldn’t run forever on its tank. He simply had to be patient.

And his patience was paying off.

Up ahead, he could see spotlights flickering into the muddy sky. Faint beams that traversed and scoured the clouds as though searching for the supposed civilization the ponies believed lay up there. Some minutes later, and a local shopping district crossed, and he could hear faint music booming into the air. By a collapsed gazebo at the centre of a cul-de-sac behind the shops and over a garden wall, Ahrim finally stopped and sat. Laying his four rifles down, their heavy weights on his sides a relief to ease off, he finally - gratefully - lit up and took a deep draw of the rich, earthy flavour. Before he exhaled, a soft scratching caught his ear.

Directly across from him, within one of the splintered homes, he saw movement.

It had been low, shifting around under a toppled roof. Tense seconds ran on, before a panel popped away from the side and he witnessed a vicious, barbed animal crawl out. It looked skinned, or rather mutated, perhaps one of their old domestic breeds or local pests. It pulled with it a pony’s partially eaten skull. Layers of spines ran down its back, and its long snouted nose turned to him, sniffing. It growled, rushing forward ten feet.

Ahrim didn’t move an inch, and moments later it simply stopped, rasping and growling, raising its spines high. They quivered, and he was sure he could see liquid drip from the thicker ones. It was in the open, close and small. Easy to kill, deadly to let attack him. He kept his muscles loose, lying back quietly.

After ten full seconds, the varmint sniffed and turned, darting away again, grabbing its prize before disappearing around the house. Slowly, Ahrim raised his hoof off of the weapon, and blew out the smoke from his mouth.

Fifteen minutes and a cold meal later, he raised up again, grunting to get the weight of his packs back on, before proceeding once again toward the lights and sounds of merriment and energy.

The hunters had made their home. And their home was more than just a building.

The Strawhill Golf Club dominated the northern edge of Manehattan, a protected area of land six hundred acres in size. One of the ‘largest clubs in Equestria’, so boasted the lavish sign of a font Ahrim had to struggle to make out, with three separate eighteen hole routes, a mansion size clubhouse and a twenty foot perimeter wall surrounding the entire place. Woodland dotted it in a hundred places, and the dead grass was contrasted by bright sand still lying in clumped holes or by dank, green water that festered with algae in the various artificial ponds.

Its wagon-park just outside the gates was the source of the beams and music. Rings of wagons, vehicles and tents played host to a shanty-town of exultation and steamy heat. Standing atop the broken pedestal of a statue on the road toward the club, Ahrim sat and scoped it out. Hot meat on barbeque was being held over an enormous bonfire at its centre, with caps changing hooves rapidly on each cycle of cooking. Racks of gun-merchants strapped their wares down, mostly rifles and shotguns, and loudly called out to the wandering hunters of their qualities. Dogs barked and excitedly dashed in their cages. Stallions and mares clad in colourful, indecent garb sauntered, flirted and sashayed their way in the crowds near a cluster of small caravans, inviting and promising before drawing their marks by hoof back to privacy. Raucous laughter from a pop-up bar followed some of their friends being taken in. Fires burned in barrels around, and at the very east side, Ahrim saw the enormous shape of the APC by the edges of the grandiose clubhouse. Most of it was rubble, long torn down by weapons fire and explosives of a previous owner’s decades forgotten conflict in the wasteland, but one wing was still in use.

Seeking a better vantage point, Ahrim clambered down and wandered the edge of the forest surrounding the club, using the natural isolation of the rich to peer down upon the squatters using it. Over half an hour he cautiously moved away and back, trekking through the cold, windswept forest and lingering snow to find the angle on the clubhouse he needed. Several times he would pause, wait, and move. Eventually, he settled on a rocky ridge that could look down into the clubhouse’s garden itself.

What he saw there made his body heat up all on its own without the need for the swathes of layered thermal barding.

His blood boiled.

“Hey there, mister exotic over here! We’re doing a first timer price, y’know? Eighty caps down from a hundred and twenty! That’s first timer to us, of course. You look like you know your way around a mare.”

The drawling advertisement made Ahrim look at least, if only to look forward again in disinterest. She was scrawny, likely undernourished, and her pupils were far too wide. Pitiful. The affronted huff of annoyance behind him quickly passed to an identical shout to another stallion passing by. It was crowded in the camp, far more than it felt like from the ridgeline.

The disgusted will to simply open fire from up there had been almost, almost overwhelming; to put a twenty millimeter round through the skull of whoever he detested the most. But they had vehicles. They were hunters. This place was isolated. Suicide for satisfaction helped no-one.

And so now he walked through the smell of scorching meat, stained-in ale, thick sweat and crusted animal fat from the tanners and what passed for a taxidermist in the wastes. Stalls and tents and overhanging a-frames crowded his every side. The hunters took notice. Anyone would of a zebra, but he walked like them, stared like them. They gave him little notice in the end. Even if they were nothing alike. Shouldering through the open bars, using his carbine’s stock to knock a strong drunkard away from his own lithe body, he made his way to the clubhouse.

The remaining wing might once have been white, but now it was a muddled grey, angular and industrial age. Its side entrance (now it's only remaining and thus ‘main’ entrance) was guarded behind a table where hunters lined up to be led one by one into the garden. Minutes would pass, sometimes a full quarter, before they would re-emerge and the next would be led inside.

Most of them looked delighted when they came back out, bearing an eager, impatient urge upon their face. They would run over to their teams, cheer, and start to load up. Every so often they would pass through the enormous gates into the golf course proper, high-hoofing another team coming back out in turn.

Those running the tables recognised Ahrim immediately.

“Decided to come give us a go after all, huh?” spoke the first, one of those who had held him at gunpoint while they had made their capture. “Boss figured you’d be here. Said he knew a real hunter when he saw one. Tell you, he didn’t stop yappin’ about you the whole time we came back.”

Ahrim stared quietly at him. He didn’t shrug, instead just patted his carbine. The hunter looked at his confused friend and twisted his mouth.

“Right, yeah, forgot. No Ponish. Oh, zebras. Uh… right, okay! See him? Him?” He pointed to the one beside him. “Follow him in. Get it? Follow? That’s a good stallion.”

Gesturing broadly with his hooves, the second hunter waved and turned toward the clubhouse. Ahrim was walked through a state room, or what once was one. Now it was a trophy room. A burning fireplace dominated the wall, and above it were prizes lining every crevice they could. Pinned bloatflies, brahmin horns, a manticore head, coiled tentacles from some abomination and even a full stuffed dire wolf atop a thickly legged table. Dozens of them, interspersed with rifles of all calibres, often noted with their kills.

On the mezzanine out back, just above the stairwell down to the gardens, Earth Stopper waited. Finishing a steaming soup in a mug, the earth pony looked over his shoulder at the approach and beamed broadly. “Well, well! If it ain’t my good friend the zebra, come to find the good huntin’! How do ya do?”

He stood up, grabbing Ahrim’s hoof to shake it violently. He was dressed down to a formal shirt and tightly fitted velvet trousers, scarcely enough for the temperature, but he didn’t seem aware of it.

“Shoulda’ told me, could have given you a lift there, mate. Walkin’ all this way, you’d have had to have second thoughts the moment we left. Ancient history, anyway. You’re here! Come on, let’s go for a walk.” Stopper clapped a hoof around Ahrim’s back, leading him toward the stairwell. “I know what you’re here for. You’ve got the look of the hunt in your eyes. Tell you what, since it was such a close run thing?”

He turned at the bottom of the stairs. Ahrim could see everything. See the reason he was here all around him now. But he instead looked at the pony. Stopper tossed him a token. “We’ll give you one free, what’dya say, mate? Just take your pick.”

He swung Ahrim boisterously toward the garden.

Hidden from the camp of well over a hundred hunters by the gateway of the golf course’s wall, the clubhouse’s grounds had been transformed. Once stepped with colonnades, flower beds and greenhouses, it was now lined with cages, tents and electrified wire surrounding a corridor to the private doorway into the golf course itself. The smell of crackling ozone met the rancid stench of dried blood and fresh dung to assault his nostrils. All around him were creatures. Magical, mutated, natural. A dozen lethal creatures. Manticores, radgators, chimeras, and more. All captive, all waiting in cages for their gate to open. By the far end he could even see a familiar beast. The timberwolf lay curled and dangerous in its pen, eyes fixed on Stopper and himself. Handlers with sparkling rods waited and, at a shout from above them on an upper level, began to jab and shock a radgator. The huge, leathery beast coiled and hissed, but was driven through its open cage, contained safely within the electrified route toward the gate. Snapping at the sticks, it wandered out and into the enclosed acres of the golf course.

“Hope you weren’t after that one, mate.” Stopper grinned.

Ahrim ignored him, eyes staring around as though searching for his own choice.

There was more to it. The cages were one thing, but beyond the pedestals of the far garden he could see some lying as though asleep on trolleys. Strapped down. Tranquilised. A cockatrice was being wheeled into a grim tent staffed by grimmer ponies in red tattered aprons. Ahrim could smell the events within. And he could see the results here. The horror that had taken his eyes moments to adjust to through his scope and see.

The bins of parts and cut tendons were obvious enough by the tents. The radgator waddling through the doorway had a wire bound about the top of its mouth, restricting its mouth’s width. He saw a manticore that had been grotesquely declawed, its wing-stems cut to leave it ground-bound. A bloatsprite with its mouth sewn shut to stop it spitting. All of them bore a blinking red dot on their necks or similar parts. He felt his heart tremble, and the blows of Stopper’s claps on his back made him stumble forward.

“I know, I know, not exactly what us real hunters are used to. But I got a whole brace of pretenders out there wanting to feel like they are. You wouldn’t believe what they pay to be able to say they brought down a cockatrice. And now? The bidding race for the timberwolf we brought back again is all on. Damn thing managed to burrow under the wall last time. Killed the stallion who wanted her ‘real’ too.”

Ahrim fought the urge to turn and put a burst into the stallion. He raised his shaking hoof, and jabbed it right at the timberwolf with a hard, meaningful look to this host. Earth Stopper let a slow grin spread. “Know what, mate? I had a funny feelin’... Even told ‘em to keep ‘er healthy in case you came along. So, want to book a slot? Finish what you started? I did offer one to ya. So if she’s your choice, tough luck on the others. And on my wallet. But hey, you and I… we’re the real hunters. We understand this, and I understand what you need here. So say the word?”

He extended his hooves, smiling and nodding at the timberwolf.

Ahrim took a long, long look over the garden from up close. At every enclosure. He traced the low walls and the electric fence to the door. The door toward hunting. The things unseen before.

He slowly nodded.

He had been told it would be twelve hours until they were free in the enclosure for the hunt to begin, and to return by then.

Chaos broke loose within the second.

The first shot tore off the locking mechanism for a manticore, a whip-crack of gunfire that echoed from outside the hunting lodge. The fragments falling to the ground, the enormous beast turned and stared at the door swinging open. In its deep, feral intelligence it recognised new land, but it had seen the others led out. Was this it’s time? The captors ran amok in panic, grabbing firearms and shouting to one another.

Two, then three more shots followed. A cockatrice. A radgator. The timberwolf. Gates sprung open, magical creatures began to wander and stalk, fearful of the shocking fence. From atop the veranda Earth Stopper marched out and began to bellow orders.

“Get those beasts back inside!” He screamed at his followers. “Get the land crawler running! Trace those damn shots! They’re all on the side facing the west, get over there!”

Handlers rammed shocking poles through the cages, even as four more were shot open, but with room to move, many of the creatures burst out into the middle of the enclosure, hissing and swiping at one another on instinct, but the shouting and jabbing had angered them. A tide of muscle and flesh ran against the fencing. Behind it, hunters stared back confidently. They’d built this themselves, the charge would-

The next shot was different. The others had been a high pitched crack of a mid-calibre rifle. The following was a deep throated boom that echoed four full times off the hills. A twenty millimeter dragon-killer round slammed deep into one of the shacks to a target that no-one that hadn’t been inside the grounds could have known was there. It perforated the wall and buried itself deep into the spark-generator within. Blue arcs of magical-energy sheared off it, erupting into the wood and setting the hut ablaze. Moments before the tide of beasts hit the fence, its charge went dead.

Roars and howls filled the garden when ten tons of animals collided and burst it over. Hunters screamed, three of them trapped below it as it fell and were stampeded into a red ruin. The timberwolf leapt and broke the neck of one unicorn with a vicious grab and twist of its jaws. The manticores, declawed, still used their sheer strength and bulk to crush and swat. Other beasts were panicking and lashing out in their cages, breaking free in their hysteria. Continued shots freed those too uncertain, and then began to target the hunters on the upper floor. One dropped with a sharp yelp, a round embedded in his torso. The others dropped back and hid. Within moments, creatures swarmed over the veranda, and Stopper’s personal group was forced to flee as they rampaged throughout the clubhouse. Within a minute, that panic extended to the whole camp as enormous beasts poured forth and tore into the crowds, scattering to the forests through tents and wagons in their path. Pandemonium broke loose, peppered by the sounds of gunshots and bestial roars.

Some made it, some didn’t. Dire wolves fled into the woods. One manticore was brought down by a whole crew of hunters combining fire. The other smashed through them and disappeared into the night. Earth Stopper tracked a cockatrice with his plains rifle, an enormous round ready and intended for much bigger prey. Sitting on the hood of the APC, he fired, and the deep-throated report of the round thumped his own chest. The cockatrice on the rooftops of the shacks exploded into feathers and red mist. He instinctively knew that there was no saving this, no coming back. His reputation would be in tatters, and initiating recapturing wouldn’t even be viable until the frenzy had worn off.

Right now, making sure he and his team survived was the most important thing. And he had a good hunch who he had to really take it out on before they caused more trouble.

He pointed to the west, and leapt back into the cab.

Ahrim saw the metal beast coming.

He heard it first, the grinding tracks and its mighty engine starting up almost drowned out the chaos in the grounds below. He’d spent the last minute taking potshots at hunters who were organising, keeping them panicked and confused to break apart their attempts to contain it. Creatures were scattering in all directions now. He’d even heard one gallop past him.

But now he knew his time was up. Stopper was coming right for him, as he’d figured he might.

Shifting on his belly, he crawled over to his largest rifle again. Dragon-killer or not, he doubted even it could penetrate the skin of the armoured vehicle, and the cab atop it had been lined with armoured plates as well. It bounced and crushed trunks and bushes, scarcely a few hundred meters away, massive beams searching the edge of the woods for him. He was good, Ahrim had to admit, figuring that he’d been closer to aim at such small locks even during the panic? Stopper knew his craft, and the searchlights were right on the money about the distance he was likely at, and was driving the vehicle right there.

Armour plate or not, that wasn’t his target. Ahrim pulled the trigger, and the deafening clap of the massive round barked out, lighting up the ground about him. One of the huge searchlights shattered, its bulb exploding in a flash of orange. The vehicle swung, veering back and forth evasively, one remaining light streaking over Ahrim once. He hoped the scant cover was enough.

The responding pings of rounds snapping off the low rocks around him, and the resultant cracks of gunfire a quarter second after made it clear that it wasn’t.

He didn’t bother to pick up his rifles. Launching to his hooves, Ahrim galloped back and away, carbine swinging around his neck. He ran uphill, veering and zigzagging as powerful rounds scattered around him. He could hear the massive vehicle catching up and hear the whoops of those firing from its cab. The ground rumbled and its sound assaulted his senses, he felt his heart clench at the thought of those treads running him over any second while sprinting for the treeline. Only when he passed between two thick trunks did he feel a sharp relief. Launching into a ditch, he rolled to the side and watched above him. Dirt shook and pebbles tumbled into the deep hole he had dug and covered with bracken at its approach. He held his carbine ready. Waiting.

The sounds ceased ahead of the trees, and the engine began to idle. The spotlight cast back and forth above him, and after a moment he heard it traversing to the side, moving further along. Voices shouted to dismount. Ahrim fought the urge to loudly swear.

Crawling along the ditch, under roots and rotten wood, he tried to stay quiet enough to reach the thickness of the prickly hedges. He felt cold, having taken off his thick padding to move faster, and the thorns tugged at his coat. Pushing in, he risked a look as he clambered out of the hole. Four torches were being swung around, and he could see a hunter ripping the bracken off his anti-vehicle ditch.

“Clever little bastard, ain’t he?” one spoke.

“Not clever enough.” He heard Stopper’s voice, terse and furious. It was impossible to tell which one was him.

The temptation to fire was high, but he could hear other noises from the vehicle. For all he knew they had an automatic weapon ready with its crew, and if that opened up it wouldn’t matter if he got all four. He slunk away, trying to remember all the little tricks his home people had taught him. All the little hints he’d observed from Night Sky. Slow, careful, brushing his hooves across the ground rather than planting right down to avoid breaking the dry wood all over the forest floor, he backed up and put more trees between him and them. He had one more trick after all, one that might help even the odds just a little, if he could reach it.

Moving between the scything beams of torches and the massive lamp on the APC, Ahrim fought his nerves to stay ahead of them. They moved faster, but he had a head start. The urge to rush was overwhelming, but he forced himself to stay slow, stay low.

Earth Stopper swung his rifle around, the hunters either side of him keeping their torches aimed where he looked. They knew the formation for hunting active, intelligent prey. This wasn’t his first time with another equine out there. He wanted to scream at him, burning fury rising inside him at the damage this zebra had caused and the affront to his own genuine offer, but he knew better than to give in to the frustration of a hunt.

Stalking between his team, he looked and listened with a zealous will. He could hear sounds every so often. Not enough to locate, but enough to direct, and he kept his team moving in. There was nothing but open ground for a kilometer around the outer edge of the ring of woods; if that damned striped bastard tried to flee, he’d be chased down on open ground. No, he had him now, and he let a smile cross his face. Kill or capture to set on the run in his enclosure? Either worked. Surely some ponies might pay well to hunt one of the kind who had burned their world to-

He heard a sudden bang from ahead of him, and a deep impacting thud of wood to his right, and then a wretched squeal of agony, one that hollered out again and again. Spinning, he ignited his own torch to see Hoodlum, one of his veterans, shrilly crying out and holding his hindleg, leaning on a tree. Blood poured from the thigh, streaming down from the wound. Granola Twist rushed over to help him, but Stopper saw with horror that he’d been wrong. He wasn’t leaning to the tree. A railway spike had pinned him to the tree.

He spun, tracing the angle of the spike and playing the torchlight across the dark woods. Left, right, until he saw motion. Raising his rifle, he fired after it, and moments later so too did his team. There was a second muffled bang of pressure out there, and Stopper felt the spike whip past his body to embed in the same tree above Hoodlum’s head. He snarled, the zebra had an air-pressure weapon to hide his muzzle flashes.

“Get Hood to the crawler! Rest of you, with me!”

Ahrim felt a panic rising inside, his hooves shaking as he tried to load a third spike and cycle the tank to repressurise again. Rounds at body level were tearing through the bush, and he could see three of them coming his way. Realising there wasn’t enough time, he dropped the railway rifle and bounded away again sideways. Shots followed, and he felt a brief beam of light catch him. Dropping immediately, rounds speared above, and he rolled down the slope beside him to get away from any estimated dropping of their aim. Sure enough, tufts of dirt flew up from where he’d have gone prone.

These hunters were good.

Swinging up, he hoped the fall hadn’t clogged his carbine, and opened up with a frantic burst of fire. Shouts of alarm went out, and he saw the torches turn off immediately. Moments after he fired, a heavy burst of fire from the APC stalking the edge of the woods in parallel with them ripped through trees and splintered trunks all around him. Ahrim crawled belly down under the fusilade, tracer fire whipping and burning overhead. Out of its cone of fire, he raised and let off the next third of his magazine in short bursts toward the massive lamp of the vehicle, being rewarded with the detonation of the final bulb, and a scream of pain from somewhere atop it. Any time to think good of the lucky shot was cut short by heavy rounds zipping around him, and three dark figures rushing. Switching to semi-auto, he slammed his body against a tree and snapped off three rounds at one of them, forcing them down into cover, before putting two more toward the closest. They dropped prone. He hoped he’d hit, but it was impossible to tell. The tree he was behind exploded in a mist of sap and bark, and he felt it growing thinner with every beast killing round slapping into it.

At a guess, he had maybe four rounds left. He had spare magazines, but time to reload now? Briefly, he felt a longing for his classical model pistol back home, were it not mid-repair.

Four rounds.

Taking a sharp breath, he waited longer than he ought to at the tree, hoping they’d take the bait.

“He’s pinned!” He heard Stopper shout. “You, you, move up on his left! I’ll watch the right.”

Ahrim smiled. Sometimes staying quiet and letting them make assumptions about your language skills had its benefits.

He swung out, catching the two hunters just as they emerged from their dark cover. They gasped, but he had them. Two pairs of double shots lit up the canopy, and he saw them drop. One of them still moaning in pain. It was the break he needed. Dropping, Ahrim grabbed his pack, dragging out a magazine and ejecting the other onto the floor. He’d find it in the morning if he had to, right now he-

“Drop it! You bastard!”

Ahrim froze. He hadn’t even heard Stopper start to advance, but the confidence and proximity in the voice made it clear that the hunting master had tricks of his own to move in quietly. Slowly, he spread his hooves, turning to see the shadowy figure of the hunter sat out from behind a tree, that monster of a rifle pointing directly at him.

“At a guess, good dozen of my team are dead because of you,” spat Stopper, “and all they were doin’ was lookin’ for the same as you! What is it? Loot the house now? Wanted to hunt real people? You savage prick! You can damn well understand me, I saw that trick! Say something!”

Ahrim remained silent, heart thudding, eyes fixed on that rifle. His ear twitched. The hairs on his neck bristled as he sensed the same feeling of being watched.

“I’ve half a mind to let you end your time runnin’ for this! Runnin’ for your life in my enclosure, eh? Highest bidder, mate? How’d you do with a round through your leg and-”

He paused, and his smile vanished. There was silence between them, but there wasn't silence in the forest.

Stopper spun to the side, his rifle discharging in a bright flash of orange. The flash lit up the diving timberwolf for a fraction of a second as it pounced from the undergrowth. Wooden teeth savaged in, and the hunter shrieked at them closing around his neck. Ahrim saw the dark shape of blood erupting, and the scream turned to a gurgling moan. The pony’s body was thrashed, thrown, swung against trees and clawed under those massive paws like a chewtoy. He heard skin rip and flesh tear.

Grabbing his carbine, Ahrim reloaded sharply. Behind him he heard Stopper’s voice end, and the snapping and bending of arcane wood crackled all through the trees. She didn’t growl or make a noise. Dragging the magazine in and racking the bolt, Ahrim spun again.

When he came back up, muzzle pointed, the wolf had already finished her killing. Dripping with Stopper’s blood, she hunched her back, staring back at Ahrim. He knew his muzzle was shaking from adrenaline, pointed at those uneven eyes. One burst, that was all he’d get.

Again, he stood pointing at her, the timberwolf gripping the ground and ready to move like a spring wound too tight. He slipped fully automatic on, a rare choice, and readied to pull and hold. It was the most he could do.

The timberwolf stepped forward. Each motion was slow, deliberate. Her head stayed low to the ground, that huge back arched back. She stared him down eye to eye. Slowly, the great wooden beast backed away and turned, stalking off into the woods with a cautious gait. Every few steps she stopped, looking back, and Ahrim lowered his carbine down steadily each time. He watched the incredible creature as she vanished into the darkness, moving away from him, away from this unfamiliar place, away from Manehattan entirely.

He waited in silence for some time. The moans of the wounded had passed into silence. Far down the slope, he could hear the aftermath of the breakout from shocked crowds.

Slowly, he slung his carbine and trotted forward. The ground felt wet around Earth Stopper’s body, but he leaned in to slide something out, and lifted the weight of the ornate hunting rifle he’d carried.

Slinging the rifle onto his back, he turned away to collect his own.