One year ago...

A heavy pall of ash blanketed the red foothills and the red mountain range and the unnaturally red pine trees. Leafless and scorched from crown to root, the trees looked more like rusted steel than charred bark, their branches stretching long and bony before tapering into a hundred skinny spindles.

During his first visit to the Badlands, back when he was still a cadet, this vast expanse of red-black desolation had failed to move Naught in the slightest. It neither shocked nor sadden him. On the contrary, it had seemed all too familiar to the younger Bat. All too bland and mundane. If anything, it reminded him of home.

The world of his youth, that nameless, endless sweep of tundra beyond the Frozen North, was colder and crueler and more barren than anything he had since encountered here in Equestria. It was a place where the worst things happened to the best creatures. Often. So often that, after awhile, even the most despicable travesties failed to resonate.

Standing atop a foothill, Naught scooped up a smattering of ash and stared at it in disbelief. What had once failed to pluck his heartstrings now severed them altogether. Was this really Equestria? He had seen it all before: the charred landscape, the dead soil, the trees like hollowed out ghosts of their former selves. And yet here it was again, brand new, its decrepitude more vivid than ever. It was almost enough to make him miss the old numbness.

He blew the ash from his hoof and watched it swirl in the breathless air before dispersing and returning to the earth. Yes, Naught supposed this place and his new home were one and the same. No matter how much he wished it were so, Equestria was no utopia. Just like his old home, and every other nation he had visited, it was rife with the manifold evils of sapience.

He glared up at one such evil now. Embedded in the mountainside was a pre-emancipation era mansion, its ivory pillars and huge, rounded entrance fashioned in the style of Canterlot Castle. Completing the regal motif was a gold spire that needled up from the domed rooftop. The architect had likely meant for it to resemble the spire that crowned Celestia's home. To Naught, however, it looked more like the common spike of a pickelhelm.

Somehow, all the redness and ash and desolation had failed to touch the mansion. Magic, Naught suspected. The powerful kind.

Long before the settler ponies began building such mansions, the Badlands, with its caverns and mines and bounty of subterranean beauty, had belonged to a tribe of diamond dogs. They lived simply; surviving on Celestia-knew-what out here in the desert, and occasionally bartering with traveling dragon merchants. They traded their gems for food, water and dragon scales (stripped from the hides of slaves and prisoners), which they used to fashion tools.

In the early days, the settler ponies were friendly with their canine neighbors. The ponies taught the dogs about farming, and the dogs, in turn, showed the ponies their caverns and mines. This was their first mistake. Before long, the wealthiest and greediest among the ponies discovered the true value of the subterranean treasures. This led first to thievery, and then to fighting, and eventually to capturing and outright enslavement.

The diamond dogs became prisoners on their own land. The settlers forced them to toil day and night in the mines, robbing the dogs of their freedom and the earth of its wealth. Those who refused to work were beaten or starved until they complied. Those who fled were recaptured, tortured and punished with doubly large workloads. And those who fled twice, if ever recaptured, were executed. Publicly. Creatively.

But these indignities had only been the beginning. Soon the breeding began. And then the bizarre shift from "slave" to "pet." And then, later, the casual humiliations of collars and leashes and dog shows and performing tricks for scraps of food.

And then, later still, fire. From above.

Upon learning of her subjects' behavior, Celestia had been furious. Younger then, so much younger, and inexperienced and overzealous and dogmatic and furious. According to the history scrolls, this collection of mountain ranges hadn't always been called the Badlands. Nor had it always been so barren, so ashen, so very, very red.

Still glaring up at the mansion, Naught trembled with a menagerie of emotions he failed to fully comprehend. There was the chest-tightening anger, of course, like a dragon squeezing his heart in a clawed fist. That one he identified easily enough. But the others were more nebulous - fear, shame, mortification, sorrow - all of them guttering in the back of his mind like dying candlelights.

More than any of them, however, even the anger, he felt an all-encompassing sense of isolation. It assured him that he belonged nowhere. Not back in the icy north, nor in Equestria, nor here on this otherworldly landscape of beautiful, terrible rolling redness.

And yet here he was. Right here. Alone with the weight of his people's history, thinking fondly - and bitterly - of his lost paws.

******

It was sunset when his allies finally joined him at the foothills. They were thirty-five minutes late. So, for them, right on time.

As Naught watched them draw nearer, he took a quick mental inventory of his gear.

Lightweight quarrel-proof vest with detachable neck and throat latch guards. Check.

Leather vambraces. Check.

Tactical combat saddle, complete with EoH flashbangs, one dragon-scale dagger, one pistol crossbow with velcro fetlock attachment, and two fully loaded mini-quivers. Check(s).

Retractable claws housed in each of his sabatons, four in all. Che -

Wait a minute. Naught repeatedly tapped his forehoof against the ground. No metallic clanging, just the normal clop, clop, clop of his bare hoof against the stone.

Shit. That was right: he had let his former drill sergeant borrow the sabatons during their last mission together, which meant he was probably never going to see them again. Annoying, but at least he still had the dagger for close work.

Despite being Bats, his allies approached on hoof. Leisurely. Very leisurely. And, as always, they were prattling on about nothing.

"Look. So let's say I'm rutting this changeling, right. And he's a dude, this hypothetical changeling, but when we get it crackin' he turns into a mare. Is that gay, my zig?"

"Depends. Does he turn into a mare while you're rutting him? I mean, does he change right in the middle of the action?"

"C'mon, cutie. The fuck I look like?"

"Well... if he's already a mare before you start, I guess it ain't gay."

"Riiight!"

"Unless..."

"Ah shit. Here we go."

"Unless you rut him in the ass. I mean her. If you rut her in the ass. Then it's probably gay."

"Wait... What?"

"Also, if you know she's actually a dude the whole time, it's probably gay. I mean, if you finish and afterwards she just up and turns into a guy, then that's different. Because you didn't know. You thought you were with a mare."

"What?!"

"I mean, like, if you see him turn into a mare - if you're in the room when he changes or some shit - then you are knowingly rutting a guy."

"And that's gay?"

"Yeah. That's pretty gay."

A pause for thought. Then: "Fuuuuuck!"

The mind-numbing idiocy of his friends' conversation made Naught forget about his people's history. He loved them for that. They continued chatting as they trotted up to the rendezvous point, their gaits as nonchalant as their conversation.

"Hold up a second. Since when does anything gay bother you anyway?" said one of them, a sleepy-eyed Bat, who, after his transformation, had changed his name to Crow. "You sleep with stallions all the time. What's the problem?"

"The problem," said the other, "is that me hooking up with this changeling -"

"Hypothetically."

"C'mon, Cutie. You killin' me.

"Really? I'm killing you? Really?"

"Okay, okay. Me hypothetically hooking up with this changeling is supposed to be, you know, a change."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"You are one complicated Bat."

The sexually frustrated Bat was Trifle, a former Manehattanite whose name suited his diminutive stature but not his expansive mind. Around his neck he wore a silver chain adorned with scrolls instead of jewels: a gift from the High Clover who oversaw the non-magical departments of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. As far as Naught new, the little bastard never went anywhere without those scrolls.

"Yo, Naught. You gotta help me and Captain Cutie here settle a debate," said Trifle. "So let's say I'm rutting this changeling, right. And he's a dude, this hypothetical changeling, but when we get it crackin' -"

"It's gay, Trifle. It's obviously gay," Naught said dismissively. Then, immediately changing the subject: "The hay took you two so long? And what are you wearing? I suggested standard issue tactical gear for a reason. Standard. Issue."

"What? I'm wearing black," said Crow, his sleepy eyes shifting from Trifle to Naught. They were so narrow they appeared to be perpetually closed.

"Me too," said Trifle. "C'mon, cutie. Why you acting all scary and shit? Ain't nopony gonna see us coming."

Trifle flashed a grin that resembled a sprung bear trap, displaying teeth he had filed into sharp, unnatural triangles. Besides the chain of scrolls, he wore a phoenix feather hoodie with dyed plumage: a blend of grey, black and off-white in place of the firebird's usual colors. A shoulder-mounted crossbow sat to the left of his grinning face, its trigger-wire trailing from the firing pin to the corner of his mouth.

A new tattoo adorned his neck. It read "VI," the Romane numeral for six. Seeing it, Naught shook his head with wry amusement. As they said in Manehattan: you can take a zebra out of the hood (and his stripes, apparently), but you can't take the hood out of a zebra.

Crow turned his sleepy eyes up toward the mansion. An appreciative whistle flitted off his lips. "Nice digs."

"Riiight!" Trifle agreed hastily.

"Sure," said Naught. "If you're into Dog Houses."

"Yo! Do you simple ass cuties even know what you're looking at, though?" said Trifle. "That there is Bullington Longhall, the single coldest piece of Neoclassical Taurine architecture to come out of the pre-emancipation era. Period. You see that spire up on the top? It ain't just gold. It's a mixture of gold, yellow diamonds and the finest eastern hydra scales money can buy - all gathered on the Taurinus Isles and shaped by minotaurian hands. By hands, my zigs! Fingers and thumbs and shit! You can't get that kind of workmanship with hooves or mouths or even unicorn magic."

"It just looks like one of the spikes on Celestia's castle," Naught said dryly.

"Spires, fool! They're called spires!" Trifle corrected. "And of course it looks like one of Tia's. Where you think she got hers from?"

"It's not that great," said Naught.

"I don't know," said Crow. "Looks pretty impressive to me."

Trifles eyes lit up like sparklers. "Riiight! Yo, if you ever wanna learn more about it, do yourself a favor and check out Two Horns, Four Walls: A Brief History of Taurine Architecture in the Isles, Equestria and Beyond. There's five whole chapters dedicated to just Canterlot Castle."

"Celestia. I hope the history is briefer than that title," said Crow.

"I just finished volume seven this morning."

"So nothing too heavy then." Crow leaned closer to Naught and gave him a knowing nudge. They chuckled conspiratorily among themselves.

Trifle hardly noticed them. He had already unlatched and unfurled one of his necklace-scrolls - an abridged text on Taurine architecture - and was using a quill to scribble notes on Bullington Longhall in the margins.

Watching the little stallion go, Crow absentmindedly unfurled a wing and draped it across Naught's back. He used it to pull his friend closer. Unlike Naught or Trifle, Crow had been a pony before his transformation: a pegasus who once served in the Solar Guard.

Also unlike the others, something had gone wrong during his transformation ritual. His coat had darkened, his teeth had morphed into fangs, and his eyes had yellowed and narrowed (a bit too much): all the telltale features of a Bat. But his wings had failed to change. For reasons the Lunar High Priestess had yet to discover, Crow never lost his feathers.

"You okay?" he said, the feathers plush against Naught's hide.

"Yeah," said Naught. "It's just... a bit more than I'd thought it would be."

"You can sit this one out, if you want. Me and the little guy can handle it. Right Trifle?"

Without looking up from his scroll, Trifle let out a soft squeaking noise. With more volume it might have grated the ears like a bat's screech. Instead, however, it carried the warmth and tenderness of a cat's purr.

"Thanks," said Naught. "But I got this."

"Cool." Trifle still didn't look up, but he was writing slower now. "We waiting for sundown?"

"Of course," said Naught. Then, to Crow: "What's the plan, boss?"

"Yeah, Captain Cutie," said Trifle. "Let's here you quarterback this thing."

Crow blinked with tortoise-like slowness. He inhaled deeply and pushed out an agitated sigh. Then he stepped a good distance away from Naught - a professional distance - his wing reluctantly folding against his back as he did so.

He articulated the plan with a directness that contradicted his languid demeanor. Earlier he had spoken and behaved like a common grunt, or worse, a cadet still in training. But he was different now. He stood with his back straight and his chest out, his shoulders square and his chin raised. Authority resonated in his voice as he finished the explanation.

"And then we burn the motherfucker to the ground. I don't know how it survived Celestia's sunfire spell, but it won't survive ours," he concluded. His eyes widened just enough for an onlooker to notice, and a kind of cool ferocity encroached on the usual sleepiness. "That is, if Trifle here doesn't mind losing his precious Dog House."

Trifle finally looked up from his notes. "Sure, we can burn it down. One condition, though."

"Shoot," said Crow.

A flash of the bear-trap grin, wider and toothier than ever. "I get to light the first match."