It was now.

The reaper king crashed through the last flimsy barrier of saplings, sending splinters flying through the night as it swung its massively oversized claw through the trees. A horrible orange light burned from within its metal caged pumpkin head, like a glowing blister.

The stars wheeling in the clearing sky above seemed to shrink as a horrible gurgling roar rose from the split in the reaper king's chest. Why such a thing had been created to roar was beyond Prey.

It had been created solely to break, to destroy, and to kill.

Prey shrank back behind the boulder in the darkness, slimy moss sticking to his already filthy wool. The ravine lay behind him, with its rotted tree trunk strewn length gaping blackly in the night.

He could try to cross the ravine and keep running, but even if he managed it, the reaper king had already proven it could leap the ravine.

Prey was limping and wheezing horribly, he had a hoof pressed to his side, and blood trickled from any number of scratches and cuts.

Beside Prey, Crimson's normally placid eyes were wide, red, and running as he grimly prepared himself for a fight they both knew he would not win, not even with the magic of his chain necklace. Blades could do nothing against this monster either. Nor would there be any flying out of this.

The Border Guards were gone, who knew where. Likely dead. Lilly Blossom might be dead too, her injury had been mortal. They'd been split from Gloom and Scenic earlier somewhere in the cloying mist, separated by the kindersnatch victims.

The reaper king lumbered forwards, the horrible noise still seeping from its chest and foul vapours rising from its head, as it swung itself into the clearing. Two enormous claws dug into the ground, its three stubby back legs trailing, black against the sky.

Their call for help to Canterlot had gone unanswered, no response coming through the message bottle flames. There was no time to consider what that meant.

"Split...up." Crimson managed to cough out, voice mangled as the reaper king crossed the the clearing in four great strides, "Sorry...Prey."

"No...not...y'et." Prey managed to gasp back, eye streaming. 'Crybaby.'

And then when it didn't seem like things could get any worse, an answering roar sounded in the night, a terrible rumbling shriek that made the heart seize as it ricocheted around the darkened trees.

Crimson breathed, "Pony...'eathers."

Prey didn't even notice the use of bad language from the pegasus. "Zoma'...'rika."

The reaper king turned its huge body towards the West, and out of the dark trees shifted a deeper darkness. Massive. A glint of claws and teeth in the moonlight, as tall as a house, but it barely rustled the pine branches as it moved.

The baloth emerged from between the trees, features revealed in the orange light as it prowled into the small clearing. It did not creep, it did not slink. It prowled. It was the king of the forest. It had nothing to prove. It just was.

It walked on four powerful legs. Green speckled leathery hide, brutal upper body and chest ripping with muscle. Claws as long as swords and as thick as posts effortlessly sliced the dirt and scored tree roots as it came to a stop in front of the reaper king, The baloth examined its competition. It could look the reaper king dead in its carved pumpkin eye, and it did not look impressed.

Prey could smell primal power in the air, it was a scent which could not even be described. Everything about the baloth screamed raw power, from its thick jaws and fangs, to the heavy tail lazily waving in the air. It was like a dragon crossed with a cragerdile. Terrifying and brutal. There was something calculating and merciless in its pupilless four eyed gaze.

For the first time the reaper king, or the warlock controlling it, shuffled backwards.

The single movement was not missed by the baloth, but it did not suddenly spring in the explosion of savage power that it so surely was. The baloth seemed to radiate cold, reptilian contempt for the retreat. It was The King. It would attack when it felt like it.

Slowly, contemptuously, the baloth sat back on its haunches, and its massive chest began to inflate. Scaly lips peeled back, glistening ivory teeth the size of tusks parted, and then the baloth let loose its attack screech.

Sound disappeared from the world.

Prey had his hooves pressed into his ears, but it didn't matter. His whole body was vibrating, the air shook, and the roaring shriek kept on going and going and rising and rising.

It had to end, please let it end. Prey's head was swimming. Was he shouting in pain? He couldn't even tell. The bowel loosening shriek of promised death shook the whole forest.

Why wasn't it ending? The roar wasn't stopping. The terrifying sound consumed Prey's whole mind. Primeval, raw, and it shook you down the generations back to when your ancestors cowered in caves and prayed to the fire.

His very eyes felt like they were vibrating in his skull as Prey tried to look up over the rock. The baloth's jaws had unhinged, its face sliding back along the skull, and all that could be seen of its head was a gaping mouth of roaring death.

Finally, it ended.

The jaws re-hinged themselves, the skin sliding back down, and the baloth sat itself forwards to examine the effects of its roar.

The reaper king hadn't moved, just hunkering down and bracing itself. The shriek which would've shattered the resolve of any living creature, here had failed. Because the reaper king was not a creature, it was a thing. A golem. A construct of unnatural magic. It couldn't be intimidated.

The baloth seemed put out, and it smacked its massive jaws. But hesitate? Reconsider? Never. It was the king of the forest. Prey could tell it'd never known a moment of fear in its life. To the baloth, there was only what it could do, and what it could not. It had challenged the reaper king, and the golem had not backed down. This may not have been the baloth's hunting range, but that only mattered to it if it ran into another baloth. The reaper king was a competitor.

And to the baloth, that was unacceptable.

The baloth attacked.

It was horrifying. Five tonnes of muscle, green leather hide and claws should not be able move that fast. How fast? Prey didn't even see the baloth spring. He hadn't seen it bunch its muscles, or twitch its tail, or brace its legs.

It was half way through the air in a blur of open jaws and reaching claws by the time Prey's eyes registered it'd moved.

If the reaper king had been organic, it would've run. However, if it had been organic, it would've also had instincts and might've been able to react to the attack.

The reaper king's tripod legs and long braced arms made it a solid wall. It didn't matter. The baloth bowled it over in a whirlwind of muscle, jaws biting and crunching and tearing and rending.

Metal rivets popped. Steel rods cracked. Wicker splintered and flew as the baloth bore the reaper king to the ground, a pine tree crushed beneath the two titans like a mere sapling.

Prey yanked his head back behind the rock outcrop in fear. He cowered, covering his head as the deafening sounds of battle rose from the clearing. Reverberating growls, rending, splintering trees.

And then the rattling inhalation of the reaper king rose up. Air dragging past Prey's face as the reaper king gathered up all the ambient magic, pressure building in the air. Invisible insects danced across his face.

"We'v' got to mov'e!" Crimson tried to shout at him. Prey only saw his lips move, he couldn't hear a word the pegasus said.

Yes, Crimson was right. They needed to go, needed to get far away from here.

Then the night turned to day, just for a moment. White flashed and Prey went blind.

Then there was a roar and Prey realised he was lying on the dirt.

He was dizzy, disorientated, he couldn't see, couldn't tell where he'd fallen.

What had been the light and the noise? His head was buzzing.

Another air vibrating roar, a hiss of outrage like the worlds largest snake was right next to Prey's ear. Thudding stomping and the *Whump* as something huge was thrown into the ground.

Blindly Prey crawled away, still too dizzy to stand from whatever spell it was the warlock had used. Spots of metallic light danced before his eyes, and Prey hadn't a clue where Crimson was or if he'd had the same idea.

'Get into the forest. Find cover.' That was Prey's only goal. If he stayed here, he would get crushed, if only by accident.

Prey's fumbling hoof touched tree roots, thorns, a tree trunk, and he dragged himself behind it. There he huddled, hooves over his head, curled into a ball and unable to do anything until his vision returned, as around him it sounded like the forest was torn apart.

Dark outlines in the night were the first to return. His eyes hurt even worse than before, and he blinked them rapidly, trying to restore vision. He couldn't afford to be blind right now.

More shapes, flashing orange light spilled long shadows out in long, radiating lines from the clearing. Within the circle, he could see the blur of two titanic figures whaling in on each other.

Green hide bound muscles against iron and wicker.

The baloth was all savagery in motion. Its almost casual swipes were just blurs of massive claws which ripped huge gashes into the reaper king's body and arms.

The reaper king was an unfeeling, undead construct, the peak of the warlock's ingenuity. It held its massive arms up defensively in front of it, turning around and around to keep its guard facing the baloth as the beast circled, never letting up its relentless assault for even a moment.

However, as Prey's swimming vision slowly returned, he realised the baloth hadn't gotten away completely unscathed in the reaper king's blinding assault earlier.

A huge chunk of flesh, gouged in the shape of the reaper king's claws was missing from the baloth's chest. Dark blood rained down from the gaping wound, dark drops as large and glistening red as rubies fell in the orange reaper light.

But the wound hardly slowed the baloth. It struck again, and Prey held the impact in his bones as the creature's huge forelimb met the reaper king's arm. Dark green leather hide shivered under the impact, tonnes of force behind the blow.

The reaper king did not fall, its widespread tripod legs providing too much stability, but its legs were being driven deeply into the earth. At any second the reaper king threatened to fall under the baloth's tireless savagery. Nothing could survive under that relentless assault. And then came the rattling inhale and crawling of insects across Prey's skin.

'Here it comes again!'

It all happened in an instant.

Prey didn't work out what happened until after it had, having covered his eyes in preparation.

There was a blinding flash of light that Prey saw even with his eyes shut, his back turned behind a tree, and his hooves covering his face.

Less than half a second later and Prey was peeking out from behind the tree again. Less than half a second. That was how little time it took.

The baloth had seen the attack coming. It'd remembered the warlock's trick the first time. It may have just been a beast, but it was cunning.

In that moment the reaper king had stopped inhaling and before it could cast the gathered magic, the baloth spun.

Its broad back was presented to the golem as the blinding flash went off, and its thick tail smashed into the reaper king with a devastating blow that could've shattered boulders.

The reaper king lifted off the ground. Its enormous, giant body left the earth, just for a few hooves of height, but the tonnes of metal construct was actually lifted by the blow.

The golem toppled into a pine tree and snapped the trunk in half. Pale splinters showered the area. The baloth was upon the reaper king before it could move, crashing down on top of its toppled foe.

The baloth's huge clawed hind legs pinned the golem's lower body, its half-a-meter long foreclaws disappeared into the reaper king's chest, and its gigantic jaws unhinged wide.

With a crunch such as a mighty ship breaking apart on a reef might've given, the baloth sheered off the front reaper king's upper chest and pumpkin head, cage, and all.

Prey could only stare. The baloth lifted its massive head, and then spat. Metal, cloth, wood, and unidentifiable bits tumbled free.

From the gaping tear in the reaper king's suddenly open front, steel cables, wicker, springs, a glistening something and intermittently flickering orange light spilled. The flickering foul orange strobed the clearing, getting more and more erratic. The reaper king's body was shuddering and jerking, and the baltoh almost casually tightened its clawed grip in the golem's chest and wrenched. There was a crack, and the reaper king's upper body half deformed and splintered.

The reaper king stopped moving.

The sudden silence was deafening, all Prey could hear was his own ragged breathing.

The baloth lowered its huge head and sniffed the still form of the reaper king, then it snorted in disgust and turned away, tearing its claws free. Twisting, it brought its head around to examine the ragged wound in its barrel chest.

The reaper king came alive. Its long arms whipped around and it enveloped the baloth in a bear hug before it could twist back around.

The baloth's reaction was immediate, and violent. It roared loud enough to make the pines shiver and thrashed like a live quarry eel. Its foreclaws may have suddenly been trapped between its and the reaper king's bodies, but its jaws were free, and it used them.

It bit and crunched into the reaper king's body again, its broad muscled shoulders bulging as it flexed. The reaper king hunched closer and sank its curved metal talons into the baloth's back and anchored themselves there.

Shrieking in deafening outrage, the baloth leapt back, and the reaper king was lifted up with it, but still the golem's headless body stayed firmly attached. And squeezed.

Bones and flesh creaked as long limbs of wicker and steel tightened.

The baloth had decimated the reaper king. It had savagery, speed, power, and instinct. It outmatched the warlock's puppet in every way. It was living, the reaper king was not.

But it was still living, and the reaper king was not.

Slower, shambling, unskilled, outclassed in every way, but despite all that, the reaper king's greatest weakness was also its greatest strength. It wasn't alive. It couldn't be killed.

An undead could be burnt, frozen, speared, shot, beheaded, poisoned, dismembered, and impaled, yet it would not die. But a single arrow could slay the living.

The reaper king was not alive, and thus could not die. The baloth was alive and could.

In the end, that was all that mattered.

The baloth had the strength to tear trees apart on a whim and pulverise granite. But with its forelegs trapped and no way to bring its vast strength to bear, it was slowly being crushed. Just like how a cragerdile's jaws could bite through stone but could be bound shut with a simple noose of rope. The baloth's application of strength was different from that of the reaper king's.

The reaper king's arms and claws tightened and began to split leather flesh and crack bone. The baloth's jaws could rip and tear at what it could get to of the reaper king's upper body, but it couldn't stop the golem's inexorable grip from tightening. The golem did not feel pain, it did not bleed.

Bones began to crack, and blood began to pour. From out of the baloth's snapping jaws, from the splits in its skin, its thrashing throwing both giant monsters about like rag dolls but never getting free of the reaper king's death grip.

And the golem crushed tighter and tighter.

Ribs snapped in the night like the squealing drawn out crack of falling trees. Tighter and tighter.

The reaper king's arms now formed a circle of blood, almost completely sunken into the baloth's body they clenched so tightly. Tighter and tighter.

The baloth's spine finally snapped.

The mountain of muscle, the king of the forest, fell with a shudder that shook the pines.

The reaper king straightened back up to its full height, pulling its arms free of the baloth's flesh with a sucking pop. It loomed up in the night, flickering orange light making shadows writhe as it stood.

Unbeaten, unstoppable, and as terrible as the death it so surely represented. A nightmare of dark magic and witchcraft. Broken, damaged, what did any of that matter? It was unliving. Prey and Crimson may as well not have baited the baloth here for all they'd achieved.

And now that their ploy in summoning the baloth had failed in a mountain of dead muscle at the reaper king's tripod feet, it was now back to hunting them instead.

Hopeless. It was all hopeless.

There was a small shuffling movement from the shadowed base of a tree at the clearings edge. Slowly, Crimson emerged into the clearing and flickering orange light. Prey stared from around the tree trunk. What was Crimson doing?

Crimson came to a stop and his head tilted back to see the towering reaper king above him, its now headless body looking back down at the impudent pegasus. Exhaustion hung in every line of Crimson's body.

The jade necklace briefly sparked green, but it was hopeless against the reaper king. It could've been a piece of dirty string for all the good it would do.

Defiant, and utterly hopeless.

Very deliberately, Crimson raised his wing blades. He didn't turn his head as he called out as loudly as he could in his cracked voice, "Run Pr'y. At least... least one o' us mite' live."

One massive dark, blood soaked arm rose, claws framed black against the moon as it paused at the height of its arc. Crimson braced himself.

But the arm didn't come swinging down, because something else crawled out of the night.

There was no roar, no crash like which had heralded the baloth's might. It crawled out between the trees on dozens of unerring legs. A deep mottled green carapace glimmered wetly like armour in the night.

It was an insect, but one forsaken by any gods, for only a demon could've created the unholy abomination of giant centipede blended with teeth. It was as long as a train carriage and thick around as two Earth ponies. Hooked, red spines gleamed along the creature's segmented length.

Its many legs almost seemed to bite into the ground, a row of teeth, as it undulated its way into the clearing. If it had eyes, they were hidden somewhere under the tick armour plating of its head and multiple massive mandibles. Instead, it had four whip long, feathery antenna which moved interdependently of each other, delicately feeling and tasting the air.

And then you looked closer and realised those feather like edges were actually formed from razor sharp barbs made to encircle and tear.

The insectile monster entered the clearing and then it turned sideways, many undulating legs carrying it clockwise for a half turn around the clearing's circumference. And there it stopped.

What was this thing? Where did it come from?

The reaper king took a lumbering step closer, using its one arm to swing itself forwards while the other stayed raised to come crushing down. As skin writhingly horrifying as the centipede thing was, it did not look a threat to the reaper king. It may have been the same length as the golem laid out, but it had nowhere near the bulk or brawn, and once again, it was living and the reaper king was not.

And then a second insect crawled out of the darkness behind the reaper king on the other side of the clearing and crawled counter clockwise to match the first monster. They encircled the reaper king between them. Silently, their antenna waved hypnotically in the air as they communicated.

The warlock had the reaper king pause, the puny red pegasus who'd challenged them completely forgotten. What were these monsters? How much of a threat were they? Which one should they attack first?

In silent sync, the two giant insects began to circle, each perfectly matching the other as they tracked around the clearing. The only sound they made was the faintest whisper of many jointed legs brushing against each other as they circled.

Around they went, fully circling the clearing as the reaper king turned to try keeping track of them both. Around again, and the distance between the end of each centipede and the head of next began to shrink as the circle tightened inwards. Tighter, closer, faster, around and around.

The warlock stuck first. Its clawed arm came crashing down like a stone launched from a siege engine. But it missed. The targeted insect's segmented body jackknifed around the fist as the blow slammed into the earth, dirt getting flung into the air.

The reaper king did not get a chance for a second blow. The moment it attacked and missed, the two insects moved like skittering lightening.

A cyclone of made of frenzied legs and red armoured spines engulfed the reaper king and swarmed over it like one body, where one insect ended and the other began indistinguishable.

It was like seeing a quarry eel strike the unsuspecting fox as it trotted past. Nothing, and then gaping jaws shooting out of the darkness in a blur.

In as little time as it took for Prey to draw breath down his blistered throat, the reaper king was bound under coils of gleaming insectile armour, spines, flaying antenna, and scores of tightening barbed legs.

It was what the reaper king had done to the baloth. Now it was the golem's turn as the coils tightened. The mandibles came into play, and the insect monsters began to strip the struggling reaper king's body to shreds like giant caterpillars. But they were not chewing leaves, they were biting through wicker and metal. Around and around the jaws raced, biting and chewing and shredding.

The flickering orange light was almost completely distinguished, trapped under the coils of legs. The three monsters became little more than a huge enshrouded shape in the dark, rocking and heaving as the centipede creatures tightened their hold.

The reaper king heaved and shook, but it didn't even slow the insects down. They were insects, and they had a firm hold. Undamaged, perhaps the reaper king could've broken free, but in nature weakness and injury are mercilessly exploited. The reaper king stopped, and then, from beneath the crush of chitin, the rattling inhale of absorbing magic came once more.

Prey never found out what spell the warlock was intending to cast with the inhaled mana. Because it never finished.

The inhalation abruptly cut off. The squirming mass in the night broke apart, but no orange light spilled out as the two monstrous insects unwound. In the middle of their coils, there were only pieces left, black in the star light as the reaper king's frame disintegrated.

It was gone. It was finally destroyed.

The undead cannot be killed. Only destroyed.

The shapes of two insects flowed off each other, just spiny outlines with highlights of red and reflections of deep green in the dark. There the two creatures paused, antenna passing through mandibles one at a time to be cleaned while the rest waved around lazily, sensing the air.

The frozen outline of Crimson, so small against the monsters which had just clashed, took a single step backwards.

The waving antenna in the air instantly reacted. Two circular maws of teeth in eyeless heads turned unerringly towards Crimson. Waves of spined legs began to undulate forwards and the razor edged antenna reached out.

"Cr'mson run," Prey now squeaked, throat feeling like it was cracking open and bleeding, "Flee. I'll fin' you'. Run. Mayflow'r. Mayflower!"

At the sound of Prey's voice, one of the two massive insects changed direction, blindly powering towards Prey's position in a rush of many legs.

Crimson jolted, and then tried to dash towards Prey so they could flee together, but he was already too late to slip past. Antenna whipped in a blur through the air like a net, tearing up everything within an eight yard bubble of the thing's head. Crimson could not get past his centipede, nor could he get enough space to back up and take to the air. He had to immediately run or be snared and dragged into those same jaws which'd so effortlessly dispatched the reaper king.

"Mayflower." Prey shrieked one last time, and then turned and stumbled off into the pitch black forest with his own centipede from hell after him.

"Pr'ey!" Came the lingering cry from behind him in the night. But it was too late they'd been split up.

They were each on their own.

Prey tripped over a vine in the dark and fell into the hard embrace of a pine tree's roots. He hurt, and was so tired. The mere act of breathing hurt, and his side was a constant blaze of cold-hot pain. Panting, he pulled himself closer, shuffling back into the knobbly tree roots, resting there for a moment.

He couldn't get back up. His trembling legs refused to lift him again.

This wasn't what Prey'd had planned. He'd hoped the reaper king would fall to the baloth.

It hadn't. What'd come next hadn't been according to his plan either.

Prey closed his eyes and drew a ragged breath, head lolling back against the rough pine bark as he panted. When that first insect monster had crawled out of the forest, and then a second had appeared from nowhere. It'd all gone askew.

It had been an unexpectedly welcome surprise.

A scrapping chitter came from less than five hooves away in the night.

Prey cracked up eyes that felt sandpapered with tiredness. Less than an inch from his face, the ends of the four antenna waved and traced the outline of Prey's body. Only the very tips of the feelers brushed against his fur, feathery light instead of razor sharp and rending.

At the other end of the antenna, the veropede, the one hatched from the very egg Prey had been carrying, stood motionless in the night.

It'd worked. The blood magic and runes Prey had inscribed on the egg had worked!

Prey could reach out and extend his will to the veropede. Its body was bound by runes, its instincts warped by blood magic, and reinforced with his will. He could give it an order, and it would follow it as best its animal mind could.

He could feel the beast's mind with his own. Animistic, unfeeling, and uncaring. It did not know right or wrong, fear or enjoyment. Like almost all animals, it was driven exclusively by hunger, the need to breed, and survival.

If it weren't for the constraints of blood magic and the runes which'd transferred from the egg sac over to the veropede at its birth, it would be devouring him right now.

But all the veropede felt was a vague sense of interest and the savage need to protect Prey as if he were its own life.

It didn't understand words, but it would follow any instructions he gave it that could be interpreted by its instincts. The veropede was female, and as far as it was concerned, Prey was another veropede. Probably a male veropede, because he was so much smaller than her.

Prey felt like giggling madly, if it wouldn't have been agony on his throat.

Prey had never meant to hatch the egg in these circumstances. He'd meant to have a controlled and safe environment, but the warlock had forced his hoof, and so, in desperation, he'd extracted the egg from his side via rune magic and hatched her. And it had worked!

Everything hurt and he was so tired, but it had worked.

And that second veropede that had appeared out of the forest? Prey hadn't predicted that, but he'd felt the same subtle magic coming from off its mind that he felt from his own enslaved veropede.

Lemon Pink had arrived in the forest, and she'd had the same idea as him.

How had she got here? When? Why? How'd she known where he was? Where was she now?

Prey didn't know the answer to any of those questions, and the answers weren't important either. Lemon was here. She'd followed him over the Ridgeback somehow, and she was here, close by somewhere in the forest and waiting to help him. He finally had an ally.

This time Prey did crack and laugh, the heady mix of relief and deliverance making him giddy.

'Still alive, and it worked. Lemon Pink is here to help me, the reaper king's been destroyed, and I know where the warlock is hiding.'

Lemon Pink must be having her veropede chase Crimson through the forest and back to Mayflower at this very moment, just like he'd wanted and shouted out loud for Lemon to hear; "Mayflower!"

Because what came next, Prey needed to do by himself.

But in a minute though....He just needed a moment to rest. Prey weakly sighed and let his head fall back.

The veropede wound its segmented length around Prey's pine tree, making a protective armour plated wall about him before it settled down. A guard dog, but one made from the worst entomphobia in the world mixed with a suit of armour and blended with spines, centipedes, razor wire, and teeth.

It was...beautiful, in a terrible way Prey supposed. Perfect. No conscience, no remorse, no unnecessary parts or emotions. Just an apex predator.

And the funny thing was, it it made him feel safe because the veropede's instincts and will was irrevocably bound to Prey's own by his runes. Same again with Lemon Pink's own veropede, and she in turn was bound to him.

'Who knew that those old blood magic titbits from Snake would result in my very own personal killing machines on a leash?' Prey thought.

But...There had been a cost, as there always was.

The egg, when it phased out of the skin of Prey's side had been no larger than a plum. So how had it resulted in a monster the length of a small train carriage, and probably weighing at least two tonnes?

Part of it was the natural magic of the veropede's egg, and part of it was the runes Prey had placed on it during it's incubation, and a third part was the result of the veropede's natural biology.

On hatching, a veropede would rapidly swell to about a meter in length within the hour, and then in another few, its carapace would harden. That had already happened here.

The runes and the effects of the blood magic woven into the veropede had hijacked this first growth cycle, and further forced it to take the veropede up to almost full maturity. But doing so should've resulted in instant starvation and death, as the veropede's bodily stores utterly failed to provide enough energy, magic or no magic. But everything has a price.

To put it bluntly, food.

A veropede has two ways it can hatch. From a nest, or from an animal. In the first scenario, the veropedes fight to the death and only the winner survives, eating the fallen bodies of its nest mates, thus fuelling the remaining veropede's first growth spurt and molt. In the latter instance, the implanted animal is killed and swiftly devoured from the inside out.

Neither case had happened here.

Prey's original plan was to have Lemon Pink acquire a large number of pigs before taking out the eggs and hatching them, since he sure as hell wasn't going to let them kill and eat him.

But where was Prey going to find a herd of neatly penned pigs in this forest?

He hadn't. But he had found another source of caged in meat. He'd known where to look. And how it made him hurt.

Crushing guilt... What an inadequate term to describe what he'd done.

The townspeople of Alfalfa Dale.

Prey knew where the warlock was going to move them to. He'd discovered it inside that dark magic book from the warlock's lair, the one which Gloom hadn't been able to read. But Prey had never actually said he couldn't read the book, Gloom had just assumed, and within its pages, Prey had discovered what the warlock was making at the stone circle. And also what they needed the kidnapped townsfolk for.

For that reason had the warlock removed the prisoners from those empty capture pits the ISND had discovered, and moved them elsewhere.

Prey'd found it, sneaking through the dark forest towards the desecrated stone circle. A large, if shallow, freshly dug pit, covered with a crude wooden grate, made from felled tree branches and lashed together with spliced vines.

Guarding the pit had been a number of kindersnatch sentries. Their horrible gurgling was actually how Prey had found the pit in the darkness. But the people inside had not been making any sound.

Lying on top of the mound of wet, freshly excavated dirt, Prey had looked down into the darkened pit and seen unmoving bodies. Not a shout, or cry, or a single attempt at escape.

There had been nothing from the captured people, and Prey had known his old guess about the warlock drugging them had been correct.

Here the townsfolk all were, as docile as hens in the coup waiting for the axe. They would go to the death the warlock had planned glassy eyed and without a twitch, unwitting sacrifices.

Pigs to the slaughter indeed.

The pit had been large enough to hold fifty people packed together. Where the rest were, Prey hadn't known, but probably scattered around the stone circle in similarly guarded holding pens. The warlock was not putting all of his eggs in one basket. Prey's hate for the warlock and their practicality swelled and surged, until it was lapping against the back of his throat. Because despite what Prey was about to do in his desperation, it was the warlock who'd made this opportunity possible. And Prey hated them for that almost as much as he hated himself.

But only Prey could ever be held accountable for his choices. No one ever made you make your choices. That was all on you.

Prey had done something like this before, but only to his enemies. His insides hurt, and it had nothing to do with the physical pain as he lay there atop the dirt mound.

Prey wasn't capable of freeing the people in even just this one pit. Even if he'd had some way of counteracting the drugs in their system, he didn't have the time. He was injured, desperate, suffering from the after effects of poison, and those kindersnatches would catch him the moment he tried.

Prey couldn't save them from the warlock.

But he could use them to obtain a way to stop the warlock instead.

Prey buried his face in his hooves. One minute. That was as all that Prey allowed himself. It was important to take that minute, to make absolutely sure there was no other option. It would help him later. A little. If there was a later.

One minute. Then he scooped up the black tide of guilt swirling inside him, locked it away, and did what he had to.

Prey had removed the veropede egg, set off the hatching rune, and tossed it over the kindersnatches heads and through the grate down into the pit. To wake. To grow. To feed.

Then he'd crawled away, leaving the veropede to its grisly hatching.

'I wonder how Lemon Pink hatched her one?'

Prey groaned and sat up slowly, even that small motion a gigantic effort. He hurt, and he knew he couldn't keep going like this. Prey knew although he didn't have any obvious big injuries, but he was covered in small ones and exhuasted. His body was going to give out at some point. And it really did hurt.

It should've been a small pain compared to the guilt, but it wasn't. Because pain is pain.

Prey breathed deeply, and then closed his eyes and sent an order to the veropede. It couldn't understand words, but he could make its instincts understand simple concepts. 'Move here. Go there.'

The armoured plates of the veropede encircling Prey uncoiled, and the veropede's many legs carried its head around to Prey's side. He tried not to look too closely at the circular jaws, or the flaying antenna. Instead, he grabbed ahold of one of the jagged spines on its side and laboriously pulled himself upright.

The spine was cold and as hard as metal under his hoof, but far more organic. The rest of its exoskeleton had finished hardening by now, and the outline of the veropede's whole armoured body glistened in the night, waiting to guard Prey to his destination.

Maybe he should give it, her, a name?

No, the veropede wasn't a dog, or a pet, or even tamed. It was a monster. He could never forget that.

'It really is a beautiful creation of nature. And terrible.'

Less than three hours old, and already it was a beast of nightmares, enhanced with blood magic and runes. And space for lots more runes.

Slowly, leaning upon the veropede's slick side for support and being careful not to impale himself, Prey began limping forwards.

Crimson, Gloom, Scenic, Lilly, Shimmer and the Mimic he'd become, Garrow's remnants, Snake's, even the tracer bands and Luna, none of them mattered here and now. It was just Prey. Just him, the forest, and somewhere close by, the warlock.

'I don't care who the biggest bear in the woods is. I'm a whole different animal.'

The forest was brooding tonight. It had witnessed bloody death, and if it had its greedy way, it would witness a lot more before the night was out. Dark pine trees seemed to lean in closer, eager to see what happened next.

The site of the old stone circle, made in centuries past by an ancient cult of druids, had only a single rusty crystal lantern to chase back the shadows. It hung alone high up on a gnarled post, swinging ever so gently.

The lantern light did not fall as far as it should've. It only half illuminated the desecration which'd been wrought on the standing stones by the kindersnatches. The construct the warlock had been having them build was finished.

The wicker and jagged posts had fully been formed into a twisted sort of hollow, splintered ends of dark wood interlocking crudely together but somehow still making a pattern, radiating outwards from the circles center.

In the middle of the standing stones, where the web of sharp branches originated from, there was a hole, like a ragged doorway. Only about a yard wide, but the way all the sharp ends of branches encircled this hole like jagged teeth, the upright opening ended up being only about half of that.

This was what the kindersnatches had been building, a twisted web of sharpened wooden stakes, atop this ancient naturally occurring mana well.

There was nothing inside the jagged wooden mouth. Nothing that could be seen anyway, just a piece of empty cold air. Very cold.

It was just about possible to pick a path through the stakes to reach one side of the hole. But on the other side, a pit had been dug. A pit which was full of unmoving, cooling corpses.

Rams, donkeys, sheep, goats, cows, young, old, the guiltless, the innocent, the pitiable, the forsaken, reduced to lumps in the dark. They lay with their eyes closed, dead flesh carelessly stacked in a final resting place. Aside from the odd scrape, there was not a mark on them. Just frost rimming some of their mouths and eyes.

If someone had undertaken the grief filled task of pulling out each body, they would've counted forty-one of them.

Another forty-one wild flower wreathes to be made and laid. Forty-one more murders. Forty-one sacrifices.

It had not been enough.

"It still wasn't enough." The hunched figure of an Earth pony sighed. A ragged but thick brown woollen cloak was draped about them, and they sagged, leaning heavily upon a gnarled wooden staff.

Behind them, five kindersnatches gurgled, standing stationary, limbs writhing ceaselessly in the dark.

The Earth pony jerkily turned around. His face was not creased with age and wrinkles, but still it looked old, the pale blue eyes heavy. With a frown of concentration, the warlock waved the staff at the kindersnatches, the controlling charms driven into the end of the staff with an iron nail swaying.

The kindersnatches did not understand words, but as one, the wicker parasites turned and lurched off into the trees, in the direction of the pit Prey had hatched the veropede from. Doubtless to collect more victims.

The Earth pony didn't watch them go, his gaze going back to the web of sharpened stakes, and what lay in the middle, "It wasn't enough," He mumbled, "All that pain, all those sacrifices, it should've been enough. The ratios should've been satisfied."

There was deep frustration and weary sorrow in the stallion's voice, along with desperation.

And why wouldn't he be desperate? His reaper king, his greatest creation, was gone. Another one could be made, but the cost in resources, time, and lives would be great.

The warlock suddenly stabbed the end of his staff into the earth in fury, "Bucking baloth and bucking deer with their bucking useless warnings and bucking chicken speech! Buck!"

Unheeded, the dirt beneath where the end of the staff had struck split and blackened. Uncaringly, the warlock pulled the staff free. They didn't look at the pit, they only had eyes for the circular hole of wooden teeth.

"Five more at most. Ten. Surely it can't be more than that. Their life magic isn't as strong, but the mana well should've compensated. The ratio calculation was right, the size too. The ritual? Is the effigy too potent? Celestia, I hope not." The warlock muttered to himself, flipping from anger back to worry in a heartbeat.

He continued to stare at the empty patch of air with something approaching unholy longing, and his hoof clutched at something hung from a loop around his chest in the dark.

"Surely no more than ten more." He muttered again.

Something slipped over the warlock's head, and then it yanked back and the stallion could no longer breathe.

Much like anyone would do when something suddenly strangled them out of nowhere, he panicked.

There was a light weight on his back, the Earth pony tried to flail at it, tried to pull at the smooth band of iron cutting of his air supply, tried to buck and rear.

It didn't work, the weight stayed firmly on his back and the loop only tightened. Air! Burning lungs! Why wouldn't the strap break?!

'-use magic!-', The warlock fumbled at his belt, even as his head was dragged upwards. Breathe, he needed to breathe!

The Earth pony's hoof came up, and from it hung an old severed unicorn's horn on a strap, animal bones and feathers bound to it. In desperation, the warlock waved it and called up the dark magic stored inside of him.

The magic reacted, like a snake it slithered from its hole to his call. He reached for it, but it slipped from his grasp. He couldn't touch the magic, it was just beyond his reach.

The world was fading, his head was swelling up. He needed to breathe! Why wasn't the magic working? Please! His tongue was swelling up in his mouth, his whole head was full of blood.

The detached unicorn's horn fell from numb hooves. The warlock thrashed with his rapidly fading strength. He tried to strike at what was behind him, but for some reason his legs wouldn't reach. Just like the magic, his own body wouldn't obey him. Pins and needles raced through his extremities.

'-air, air, need air, a-air....air...-'

Prey leaned heavily against one of the stakes, and coldly watched the warlock thrash in the dirt, hooves ineffectually pawing at the ribbon loosely looped around their throat.

They gasped and wheezed, hooves unable to interact with the blue piece of silk apparently choking them.

'So, this is the warlock.' Prey thought, observing the Earth pony which'd done so much damage. The remnant of Garrow stirred in excitement, 'Now they die screaming, yez?'

Prey crushed the remnant and pushed it away. Killing could come later. Prey looked behind him, partly to check on the thing the warlock had built, and partly to check on his veropede.

He'd encountered five kindersnatches on the way here. The veropede had ripped them apart with its antenna without even slowing. There were splatters of blood across the giant insects front where the dismembered pieces had been fed into its maw, black in the night.

Prey was aware each kindersnatch he destroyed might trigger some witchcraft alarm. But he was even more aware how on the verge of total collapse he was. He needed to finish this before that happened. Had to see this through. He hurt, he was tired, he knew he should try and meet up with Lemon Pink first. But he wasn't letting the warlock slip away. Prey had his veropede, if he was fast enough, any alarm wouldn't matter.

So he'd gone ahead and had it destroy the kindersnatches anyway. Now the veropede stood guard against any more which might arrive, the armoured length of its body faintly gleaming in the dark. As far as Prey knew, there was nothing the warlock had left that it couldn't handle.

And Prey was dealing with the warlock himself.

With a pained groan, Prey limped forwards to the weakly struggling warlock. He leaned over and gave the loose end of the ribbon a flick, "There, I've loosn'd it so you c'n breathe' now." Prey croaked.

Immediately the warlock sucked in a huge gasp of air, as if he could only now suddenly breathe. He lay in the dirt, covered in leaf mould and panted weakly, the dark purple flush across his face slowly fading back to a more normal hue.

Prey waited for them to finish gasping. "How did you mak' th' scar'crows?" Prey asked once he was ready.

The warlock jerked, and tried to leap to their hooves. It didn't work, and they fell back into the dirt, their limbs unable to support their own body, "Urg!"

"How did you' mak' the scar'crows?" Prey repeated.

"You!" The warlock coughed, "But you're just the bucking lamb, where's the bat and the feathered rat-?"

"You' can't breathe." Prey intoned.

Immediately the warlock's breath cut off and he began thrashing again.

Prey cruelly waited until a count of thirty before relenting, "You can' breathe now."

The warlock heaved in a great shuddering breath, "B-bastard child." They wheezed, saliva dotting their chin.

This time, Prey waited until a full count of sixty before relenting.

"How did you' mak' the scar'crows?" Prey repeated a third time. Prey had to hurry, he knew he might collapse at any moment, but the warlock couldn't be allowed to know that. Never show weakness. It was the same reason why Prey wasn't just invading the warlock's mind and directly ripping the answers out himself. In the weak, decrepit state he was currently in, that would be a huge risk. A person was always strongest inside their own mind.

So Prey was going about this the old fashioned way.

"M-my creations?" The warlock coughed, "I made them, built them from nothing. They're mine, my creations! The last one was almost perfect, if those two bucking Tartarus bugs hadn't appeared. I pray to Celestia that all you bucking Border Guards get eaten by those two horrors-"

"You th'nk I'm a Bord'r Guard?" Prey hissed.

"Buck you, you little bitch, that's what I think. Buck you, and buck whoever else is hiding behind me-"

Prey snarled. It wasn't a scary sound by any means, but when the veropede reared up into the night above Prey, that was scary.

The warlock's face went white, "S-sweet Celestia!"

"Do I lo'k like a Bord'r Guard to you'?" Prey demanded again, throat cracking.

"You, you, those bugs where-?" '-buck buck buck!-'

Now there was the fear, the uncontrollable quivering in the limbs Prey had been expecting to see.

It had taken the shaking stallion this long to catch on and realise what Prey was. It was understandable. Prey looked like just a lamb. The warlock's focus had always been on Gloom as the leader, and Crimson with his magical necklace.

But there was no one else here, only Prey. It was Prey who'd summoned the veropedes, monsters capable of destroying his reaper king where even the baloth had failed. The warlock cringed back in the dirt.

'Where you belong.'

"No that's not- You're just a filly. Where are the others? Where's the bat pony?!" The warlock tried to scramble away, but their legs weren't working for them.

"Sorry. I'z only me m'afraid." Prey smiled sickly, "Now tell me, how'd you' make the scar'crows?"

"I, I made them with the use of a magic tool. I learnt how from my book, it's all listed in there. The books back at my workshop." The warlock hastily answered, shying back as the veropede's barbed antenna started to probe closer and closer to his face.

"A dark mag'c tool? Interest'ng. An' the dead for parts. Tell me more."

The warlock was staring, "You, you're not...?"

'-not horrified by my work? By what I've done? They should be afraid, they should fear me-'

Prey tilted his head, eyes half closed with blistered tear tracks tracing down his cheeks, "Afra'd? Afraid? Once. But now?"

The veropede loomed behind him, an armoured shadow in the night; "Now I'm not afra'd. Iz' you who's afra'd."

And the warlock was afraid.

"I, yes, I made them, a dark magic artifact. The book, it told me how to make a Gnarled Effigy, and it showed me how to use it to make puppets, I was just following the instructions-"

Prey held up a hoof and the warlock almost bit their tongue shutting up.

'Gnarled Effigy. That's a type of dark magic tool, the name rings a bell.' Prey thought, his hazy mind taking a while to dredge up the memory. He tried not show it on the outside, but his whole body felt like it was on the verge of collapse.

Not that the warlock probably couldn't tell just by looking at him, but fear and the ribbon were keeping him docile. 'I should probably find out his name.' Prey thought belatedly.

But back to the Gnarled Effigy, now Prey remembered. He'd seen references to such a thing before, but not how to make one. It was a type of dark magic catalyst, somehow used to create meat puppets. Like the scarecrows. Except those had not been meat puppets. They'd been more than simple meat puppets, but the warlock had taken the horrifying art in a different direction and improved on it somehow.

Prey opened his tired eyes to look at the warlock again, 'Cruel, petty, evil, but competent. What a vile combination.'

"How'd you' make the Eff'gy? No, never m'nd, you'll tell me lat'r," Prey paused to cough and swallow, "Wha's your name?"

The warlock lifted his chin, "Hard Baked. I did what I had to, the village ponies of this land only reaped what they sowed-"

"Stop breath'ing" Prey interrupted.

Hard Baked choked, and began thrashing in the dirt again, uselessly pulling at the blue ribbon around their neck.

"I don' care abou' your life story. I don' care why you did it. I don' care abou' all the people you killed. I don' care abou' your justificat'ons or reasons, I already know them. An' your reasons 're pathetic. Only answ'r my questions, an' I'll let you live. Understand? Oh, you' can breathe now."

Hard Baked gasped hugely, "I, I got it." He panted. There was blood on his lips. Seems he'd bitten his tongue.

Throughout all of this, Prey had been keeping an eye on the patch of air in the mouth or doorway of the wooden web. It was just a blank bit of air, yet it made the back of his mind crawl like something was trying to get out. To run away or get closer, Prey didn't know. He licked his cracked lips, "First quest'on. What's this all for'?"

"It's, I made it because that's what the book listed. I needed it if I was going to make the Effigy stronger, like the book said. It needed...souls, it said souls, but I don't know what it really uses, that's just superstition. There's no such thing as a soul, just life force magic-"

"Keep to th' point or you' can stop breath'ng."

"It's a bridge, or, or something. It wasn't clear, b-but that's not important. It concentrates all the life magic into one point, and then when it's at the critical mass you pass the Gnarled Effigy through the opening and it'll absorb it all and become more powerful," Hard Bake babbled, "Powerful enough to make multiple greater puppet ponies."

Powerful enough to make multiple reaper kings is what Hard Baked meant.

"An' for that you' were...just sacrificin' peopl's souls to an unknown?"

"There's no such thing as souls-I mean!" The stallion shrieked when one of the veropede's antenna quested towards him, "Sacrifices have to be made. It's the only way."

Disgusting. Vile. 'Whenever anyone ever says that, they always really mean 'sacrifices made by others'.'

Prey stared at the dark patch of empty air, and realised why he was so unnerved. Because it was very close to approaching something he'd almost seen, once before. Down in a cave of twisted earth, where once he'd mistakenly strayed.

"You just...kept feed'ng them in one aft'r another?" Prey whispered.

"Sacrifices have to be made, it's the only way to enhance the Effigy enough to get it able to do what I need." Hard Baked repeated.

'-I had to make more wreathes, but their parents deserved it-'

Prey switched to staring at the prone Earth pony. A voice was screaming in the back of his head to kill Hard Baked, both for what he'd done and for what he'd been trying to do.

'This, this...' Prey didn't even have a word to describe the warlock and his stupidity.

"You' don't hav' a clue what you' made do you'? What you' almos' made." Prey gritted out. He shook his head, "No, of course you' don't. You' wer' just' feed'ng them in one aft'r another like candies."

Prey raised a shaking forehoof and pressed it to his chest. He wanted so badly to rub his eyes, but he knew the raw agony touching his face would bring.

Hard Baked had tried to kill him, he'd tried to kill them all, and not just with the kindersnatches and scarecrows. He'd been trying to kill them all and he hadn't even realised it.

This, this, this piece of filthy meat, he'd tortured so many, and the poisoning he'd inflicted upon the ISND was only the least in his list of crimes.

And what got Prey, what really got him, was that nearly everything Hard Baked had done, aside from what lay in the desecrated stone circle in front of him, Prey had done too.

Every torment the warlock had inflicted here in this forest, Prey had done to someone else in the past. Prey hate hate hated Hard Baked. Everything he hated about himself Prey saw reflected in Hard Baked and he hated it.

'How dare he? How dare he murder all those ponies and think he's justified? How dare he think he's better than me?!'

It was like a broken, salt addicted tramp, reeking of filth was condescendingly looking down on him and lecturing him for stepping in a puddle. Like they were grinning at him with cracked teeth and listing all of his failings, pointing out in excruciating detail every single way they were better than him, while being too lazy to even hide the blood stained knife behind their back.

It was a mirror, and Prey hated mirrors.

The arrogance, the sheer unprecedented and undeserved arrogance of Hard Baked! He was the same as Snake!

"You' Zoma'grika'er, you kl'ack da' gresh'na zimda' a glomdie' ezmu'trocity-"

"Prey."

Prey spun around, but so unbalanced was he that he fell over.

A figure emerged from out of the shadows in a long black cloak. There was only one person, or pony, in this forest that it could be. Who else would be searching for Prey? Who else would be able to approach Prey's veropede without being ripped to pieces?

"Lemon P'nk." Prey wheezed, and his head swam for a moment.

The deep hood went back and the heart shaped face of Lemon Pink was revealed, her sharp horn glimmering with a touch of silver.

There were so many questions Prey needed to ask her, but he was still reeling from his own fury at Hard Baked. "Wha' took you' so long?" He coughed. It was such an inadequate question.

Lemon Pink dropped her head, "I am sorry Prey. Securing passage across the Ridgeback was harder than anticipated. I tried my best, but even money would not get me across any faster. There are no teleportation beacons over this side even if I were to approach a mage tower to request-"

"Enough," Prey coughed again, still lying on the dirt where he'd fallen, "Too lat'e now. Jus'...just..."

Prey was so tired. He was having extreme difficulty even thinking. This, everything hurt, he wanted to sleep, he was just so...so...so.........

Weakly, Prey raised his hoof to Lemon Pink. She understood.

She stepped swiftly over, paying no mind to the veropede's curious antenna that danced around her head as she did so. Where was her own veropede? Must still be somewhere in the forest, probably secretly guarding Crimson. Prey hoped the pegasus had done as he'd said and gone back to the ruins of Mayflower.

Lemon Pink knelt beside Prey, glancing pitilessly at the wide eyed Hard Baked, "Should I dispose of him first, Prey?"

Lemon did not offer to help Prey up. If that was what Prey'd wanted, he would've said so. Even if it was Lemon Pink, Prey couldn't stand the touch of another unless there was no other choice.

"No," Prey wobbly shook his head. By Tartarus, it was all swimming, "He's contain'd."

Lemon Pink sent one last look at Hard Boiled, violet eyes nothing but cold glimmers of indifference, and then reached out and let Prey touch her hoof.

Prey's mental defenses were non-existent. Even if he hadn't been inviting Lemon Pink in, he couldn't have kept her out. But he wasn't trying to, he was showing Lemon Pink what had transpired and what he needed her to do. He didn't give her the packet of memories, again he couldn't have even if he'd wanted to. She didn't need those memories to become hers, to feel what he'd felt, but he showed her flashes of what had happened so she'd understand.

He showed her Alfalfa Dale on their arrival, what the ISND had found in Mayflower. The forest, the old road, the deer holt, the kindersnatches and scarecrow, how Nighthawk and the promised reinforcements hadn't come. The ravine, the cave, bone rot mines, Crimson, Lilly, the reaper king, Shimmer and the Mimic, and culminating in the baloth in the clearing tonight.

It was so much, and so little, and Prey just wanted to sleep.

'So how did you get here?' Prey mentally asked at the end of it.

'A splinter pack of Diamond Dog smugglers and opportunistic slavers I employed/enslaved.' Lemon Pink flashed the memory. Prey had never met a Diamond Dog in real life. He didn't know how Lemon Pink had tracked down a pack of the reclusive people. Diamond Dogs were...simple. Not exactly stupid, but simple.

Prey saw a pack of fifteen of them in Lemon's memory, different sizes, breeds and colours. He saw that the pack had slowly been growing desperate over the months after being driven out of their warren by the Royal Guard from near some pony village. Their pack had splintered, and this group had tried to turn to smuggling. It had not worked out well, hence their desperation.

When Lemon Pink had approached them with an offer of a large payment for speedy and secret transportation across the mountains, they'd accepted. Lemon Pink had also secretly mind controlled the pack's new alpha, an older but still spry mastiff, thus guaranteeing their help and support.

'So that's what happened to those Diamond Dogs evicted from near the Everfree, or part of them.' Prey thought. Not that it mattered.

Prey also saw the fate of the splinter pack and their enslaved leader.

Lemon Pink had needed to feed her veropede something on its hatching.

More murder. More sacrifice. What had the Diamond Dogs done to deserve death? They'd genuinely been going to honour their agreement with Lemon Pink too. And she'd poisoned them all and then hatched the veropede when they were too weak to move.

Prey and Lemon Pink, master and servant, they were both really no better than Hard Baked. If Prey had been free, he would've simply stayed out of the warlock's way if possible, and kept out of his business. But he wasn't free, Luna held his chain.

Lemon Pink was just a tool, Prey knew that. Everything she did was on his own back. An arrow doesn't kill, the person who fired it does.

'I am sorry I took so long,' Lemon Pink apologised, not phased about having murdered fifteen people just for convenience sake, 'Their tunnels through the mountains were old and unmapped. Nine times we had to stop and clear cave-ins, or go above ground and walk through the snow to find the next tunnel. Nor were there any trains coming for another week at the earliest. I heard nothing about the Night Guard getting another one to run early either.'

This was unlike Lemon Pink, she was explaining everything like she wanted him to understand why she'd taken so long. She'd already shown him the clips of memory, did she think he was so out of it that he couldn't understand what was going on around him?

Or was she just desperate in her own emotionally stunted way for him to know she'd tried her best? This wasn't what Prey expected from Lemon Pink at all. It was wrong. She was a tool. She didn't need to explain, he already knew she wouldn't have done anything but her best.

'And she judged killing fifteen people was the most efficient way to do it. And no one will ever know or care about the Diamond Dogs because they weren't ponies.' Prey thought to himself, hiding it from Lemon Pink.

He made himself focus and sent his next thoughts to her; 'It's fine Lemon. It's fine. You did your best. I know. Better late than never, and you made it here in time to help me now. Whatever you did to get here as swiftly as possible was necessary.'

The words were hollow, but Prey presented them as truth within his outer mindscape, and Lemon Pink believed them.

Fifteen people, but Prey was no better. Nature is cruel, and there's always a price.

'I'm just like Snake,' Prey thought in the disgusted bitterness of his heart, 'I'm exactly what Prey always was always meant to be. A murderer. Another wooden mask, just like the Resistance wanted.'

Prey hardened his heart, lest the cracked thing break and let out all the black slime it was overflowing with. It could come later, or never. He could rest when all of this was over.

'The warlock, go deal with him. You know what to do.'

'Yes, Prey.'

And with that finality, Lemon Pink disengaged, and their two ashen grey outer mindscapes drew apart.

Prey blinked fuzzily and opened his eyes. He realised he'd missed Lemon Pink getting up, she was already striding towards Hard Baked. Thirty seconds was all that'd past out here in the real world. The dark forest still waited, the veropede still kept guard, the wooden web of stakes still stood, the pit full of murdered people still lay full, and the warlock was still sprawled powerless in the dirt.

Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.

"Leave me alone you spike headed horse!" Hard Baked spat, but his defiance was filled with fear, "Thieves, all you spike heads know how to do is steal. Go back to the Sun Wolf and lick the mud off her hooves."

Prey coughed in shock, but couldn't speak. His throat had finally closed up. Lemon Pink stopped. "How do you know that name? The Sun Wolf?" She demanded.

Hard Baked stared up at her with eyes filled with hate and fear. He clamped his lips shut. Prey felt sick and filthy as he realised once again how much alike he was to the warlock. He hated it so much.

Lemon shrugged her cloaked shoulders, "Fine, stay quiet. It matters not. I will know it all before I am done."

Lemon Pink's horn began to glow with red light. Hard Baked cringed and made one more valiant effort to stand and throw off Prey's ribbon, but it was in vain. Terrified thoughts of oncoming horrendous torture flashed through the stallion's mind, memories of people he himself had cut open and infected with kindersnatch seeds.

He squeezed his eyes shut and curled up defensively, "Buck you both, you horses. Do your worst!" He screamed shrilly.

But what Hard Baked was expecting never came. Lemon Pink did not start flaying the warlock alive, no matter what he'd done to deserve it. She instead cast her spell and entered his mind.

Prey watched through grainy eyes as every tendon in Hard Baked's body went rigid. Lemon Pink also fell into complete stillness where she stood, black cloak turning her motionless form into a mannequin. Neither moved, nor would move for some time. Lemon Pink had a mind to thoroughly crack open and read, and that took time. Prey wanted to know what Hard Baked knew, and what else had been in that dark magic tome. Lemon Pink would learn all of it for him.

Prey did not torture. Never just for the sake of pain.

Prey was terrified of pain, and while causing it was infinitely preferable to suffering it, pain was something he did not want to be around. Either experiencing, or witnessing. It made him sick.

Too often he'd had to saw off a limb under Snake's eye. To often had he cowered at the mere threat of it from Torment and Stinger. How often had he woken up to the whip scars feeling like they were splitting open his back afresh?

Prey was terrified of pain.

Prey did not torture for the sake of torture. He had murdered people with traps and poison in some of the most painful manners he could imagine, but the pain had never been his goal. Their deaths had always been his aim and what he'd been satisfied with.

If he killed someone with pain, it was always for a reason. A bad, inconsequential reason, but a reason nonetheless. When a Border Guard lay screaming in agony because he'd poisoned their water, it wasn't because he wanted them to die in pain.

Maybe he hadn't had another poison to hoof. Perhaps they'd grown wise and learned how to identify his other poisons. Or it was because he'd wanted to scare the other Border Guards.

Because the only thing worse than dying, is dying in agony. And anyone could be next.

He'd been trying to send a message. Prey'd done it to make the survivors afraid. To make them run away. To make them stop hunting him. To survive.

Fear was a powerful tool, Prey knew that first hoof, and so was pain.

Prey was scared of pain. He was scared of dying. He was scared of dying in pain. In the past, sometimes he'd worked himself up into a black state of such fear of being tortured to death in the Resistance, he'd worried and cried himself into unconsciousness at night. Because back then it had been an inevitability, not just a possibility. Torment, Snake, Stinger, one of them would get him in the end.

"I don't want to die in pain." Gossamer had sobbed.

However that's precisely what Hard Baked had done to the people he'd captured, and what he would've had in store for Prey too.

But Prey never tortured for the sake of torture. Never had, and never would. Prey hadn't even tortured Fire Strike at the end. But this warlock, this mirror of himself, had tortured. Hard Baked was everything Prey hated in himself, both what he was, and what Prey knew he could become. And it burned Prey that even now, Hard Baked was still better than him. And worse, but also still better. But yet worse. Two sides of the same rust cankered coin.

Good, bad, worse, it all just blended into one giant mess and both of them were so far below the mark of anything that was good or wholesome. Like Crimson.

Prey sometimes felt like he was trapped and drowning under a pane of black ice, helplessly beating against the frozen barrier, while above him in the light, others unknowingly walked over the ice, unable to see beneath.

In a shocking moment of clarity, Prey saw himself interchanged with Hard Baked a year, a month, a day from now. The difference between the two of them was so small. All it would take was a tiny switch, barely any effort, and there would be no difference at all.

The singular, lone, and only reason Prey was not Hard Baked was because Luna was inhibiting him. If it weren't for her hated tracer bands, Prey would have nothing holding him back.

'I just want to be free.'

That was all Prey wanted. To be forgotten and left to go wherever he wanted.

If that happened though, would he really quietly fade away? Or would he do what Hard Baked had done and try restarting his own private war against anyone and everyone?

But it was a pointless question. He wasn't free. He was a slave in Luna's Night Guard. He could run, but he'd never escape.

Prey's head drooped onto his hooves. His eyes burned and he wanted to rest so badly.

But he wasn't free. He had to go back to Luna. And now Crimson and Gloom knew about Bone Rot mines and they'd want answers and he didn't have any he could give them and he couldn't run away and he was going to get thrown in prison and interrogated and the SunWolfwasgoingtogetinvolvedandHeDidn'tWantToDie-

Prey woke up. He realised he'd blacked out for a moment. Lemon Pink was crouching down in front of him, dark cloak trailing in the dirt.

"Prey? Prey?" Lemon was patiently repeating.

Prey shifted and tried to croak something, but his throat was still a closed off ball of hot pain and refused his efforts.

Lemon seemed to understand though, because she switched to yes or no questions, "Are you conscious and cognitive?"

Prey nodded twice.

"I have finished taking all of Hard Baked's relevant memories. Shall I save them for a later date?"

Another nod. Prey weakly leaned past Lemon Pink to see the warlock. He was lying unmoving in the dirt, unconscious. Now that he'd stopped moving, it was possible to tell that the Earth pony stallion was thin and bony under his raggedy cloak and gear. It was a bit hard to tell in the night and weak light from the single lantern, but he also looked very pale.

Lemon Pink magically pulled out a flask from under her cloak, unscrewed it, "Water," She said simply, "Do you want to drink, Prey?"

Prey nodded and sat up with much effort. He swayed, hooves trembling, but he managed to take the flask and sip, only spilling half of it when he began coughing horribly.

Prey's red eyes were streaming by the time the coughing fit subsided, and his throat felt like he'd just been poisoned afresh. Prey forced himself to take smaller sips until he finished the whole flask.

"The Gnarled Effigy?" Prey whispered hoarsely when he could speak again.

"It was the bundle of bones and charms at the end of the warlock's staff." Lemon Pink answered, levitating said staff off the ground from beside her for Prey to examine.

Prey wasn't in the best condition to do so, but he still blearily took a look at it. He didn't recognise the wood used, but some of those bones looked distinctly like someone's teeth, and the bindings smelled like they'd been dipped in blood.

So, this was the Gnarled Effigy. This was what the dark magic tome had held instructs to create, and out of greed Hard Baked had murdered so many people to obtain.

It didn't look the part. The jumble of bits nailed to the staff looked like something a Giant Sky Owl might cough up. Prey could barely even sense anything dark coming from off it. It felt...brittle and spent, like all its power had been used up in the creation of the reaper king.

Prey was just about to tell Lemon Pink to bring it when movement past her caught his attention.

'No,' Prey mentally ordered, suddenly breaking out a whip of steel, 'Stay back.'

The veropede, which had been approaching the unconscious Hard Baked, immediately lost interest in the potential meal and shifted back into its resting position, antenna forever lazily waving and tasting the air.

Prey shakily let his mind unbend. Doing that had been far harder than it should've been. He looked back at the Gnarled Effigy, which was still levitating. Prey hesitated.

It was just a tool, not any more evil than a knife was.

'Leav' it." Prey rasped.

Without even a shrug, Lemon Pink tossed the Effigy aside. It landed at the base of one of the re-purposed standing stones with a gentle clunk in the dark, coming to rest a yard out of Hard Baked's reach.

'And now to deal with the warlock himself.'

Hard Baked was dead. His body may have still been breathing, and Lemon Pink may not have shattered his mind, but his fate was sealed.

Prey had the warlock captured, rendered harmless and docile. Gloom and Crimson might've wanted the warlock dead, but captured? That would also work. Neither of them could ever bring themselves to kill a prisoner, Prey knew without a doubt. No, they'd drag Hard Baked back and throw him before Luna. Even now, Prey could do the same, erase all the warlock's memories of this meeting, implant false ones, and bring him back.

But this was reality, not an idealist's dream, and there had never been any chance of Prey sparing Hard Baked's life.

Prey never forgave, and he certainly never forgot.

Prey shifted one hoof and flicked it at Hard Baked, like the warlock was a thing. "Deal w'th it."

"Yes, Prey."

Lemon Pink's horn glowed, and a knife slid out from a hidden sheath sown into the neck of her cloak. Without getting up, Lemon Pink sent the knife zipping through the air. It came to a stop above Hard Baked's throat. It paused for a moment, tilting this way and that as Lemon angled it for a better stab down into the jugular.

"Wait."

Lemon blinked, "Yes Prey?"

"Make it mor' fitting," Prey's head turned to the center of the web of stakes, "Let 'im be the last sacrifice."

"Yes, Prey."

The knife zipped back through the air and slotted away into its hidden sheath, and then the belt around Hard Baked's middle glowed silver as he was dragged up. His limp body unerringly began to float towards the jagged wicker hole.

The empty patch of space received its last victim like it had the forty-one others before. Another victim, another death. The process took less than three seconds.

There was no flash light or roar as another life was snuffed from the world. Just a moment of deafness, a sense of in drawn breath. The shadows cast over the stakes of wood flickered for a moment. Then the colouring of the wood returned to normal, the empty doorway of air became just that, empty, and Hard Baked floated dead in the air. He, it, hung as limply as when Lemon Pink had first lifted Hard Baked, but there was just something different about the body in death than there had been in life.

Prey had always thought it was the way the muscles slackened in death.

Below the warlock's body in the dark pit, the dead townspeople waited for their murderer to join them in stillness. The ribbon unslithered from around Hard Baked's neck, and Lemon Pink let the body drop into the mass grave.

The ribbon fluttered out through the air like a snake as Lemon Pink's magic floated it back down to Prey. He held out his leg, and it flopped over his hoof.

Prey blinked down at the blue length of silk, almost as black as the night sky in the dark. There wasn't a smudge marring the silk. 'They laughed at me, a runt, and now they're all dead.'

Prey blinked again, then bent his head and tried to re-tie the ribbon with legs covered in cuts and scratches. Every inch of him felt like it was covered in cuts and scratches, really. His hooves shook, and he had to stop and try tying it again. Then again. And again. Prey hissed in bubbling frustration and tried a fifth time, but he just couldn't do it! The ribbon wouldn't go on.

He just wanted to leave the stone circle with all its dead behind, take his veropede, and get out of here.

"Shall I-?"

"No." Prey hissed.

But he still couldn't do it. He couldn't make his stupid hooves co-ordinate properly!

The ribbon slipped from his hooves. Prey stared uncomprehendingly as it fluttered to the pine needles. Slowly, painfully, Prey picked it back up. He almost couldn't manage even that.

'Oh, yes, right. Almost died, lost a fair amount of blood to the veropede egg, and I'm also tired beyond belief.'

He was on the edge of full collapse. His body just couldn't keep going. Mushrooms or no mushrooms, there is a physical limit. 'I'd quite forgotten what it feels like reaching the ragged edge.'

Trying to tie a fiddly bow in this state? Next to impossible.

Walking back through the dark forest? Utterly impossible.

But getting back with help? Much easier.

Prey steeled his mind and sent a command to the veropede, 'Come.'

The armoured head of the giant insect came closer in the night, and its four antenna extended down towards Prey. Delicately for something of its size and hideous appearance, the veropede's barbed appendages loosely wrapped under Prey and gently lifted him into the air. The touch of a terrifying monster under his control did not make Prey freak out, it was preferable to even Lemon Pink's touch, who was someone he knew would never harm him. Because it's only people who want to hurt you with a touch. A monster does not torture. Only people torture.

Prey was settled between the red spines behind the veropede's head. The dark armoured carapace was cool and smooth as the antenna slid out from under him and let him slump. If it weren't for the spines around him, he would've slid off, not even feeling like he had the strength to hold on.

Everything was slowly becoming more blurry and unfocused, along with hurting more.

Prey found Lemon Pink at his eye level as he lay. She stood beside the verodede, waiting for his orders. She'd rushed across the Ridgeback, press ganged a pack of Diamond Dogs, and risked her life to be here. Just as his note had ordered her to. Prey had to actually focus to be able to think what to say.

"Find a way back to Cant'rlot, but take all the time you need an' rest first. Bring both veropedes back w'th you'. There's still som' k'ndersnatches out there, so stay safe. An' fetch the Mimic too." He hesitated, then quietly added, "An' thanks L'mon."

As said, the darkest hour is before the dawn. The night may be black, the danger perilous, and the threat all too real. But the sun will always rise.

However, will the uncaring sunlight reveal a triumph, or a tragedy?

Crimson stood on the edge of Mayflower, the overgrown ghost village to his back, and the black forest before him.

He stared into the pines trees, tear tracks blistered and face swollen, but still staring unblinkingly.

Posture rigid, he look as if he were preparing himself to launch into the dark forest at a moment's notice. Or perhaps just fall over. Crimson was filthy, Gloom's borrowed armour dented and stained, feathers a mess and wings drooping, but he did not allow these exhausting weaknesses to break his vigil.

Just the faintest touch of the coming kiss of dawn showed on the horizon behind the rigid pegasus, bringing barely enough light to frame the jagged outlines of the Ridgeback. Crimson did not glance back at the long promised dawn for even a moment.

The pegasus had barely escaped from the enormous insectile monster, galloping through the hungry trees on exhausted legs as the creature pursued him. He didn't know when exactly he'd lost it, just that he'd almost been out of the forest by then.

From there, he'd limped his way along the border of pine trees until he came to the silent ruins of Mayflower. That's what Prey had managed to brokenly shout just before the two of them had been split up. "Mayflower!"

It was just Crimson left.

No Gloom. No Scenic. No Prey.

Lilly might have succumbed to the meld wood and died by now too for all Crimson knew.

But it was obvious that Crimson couldn't leave and return to Alfalfa Dale to check on her condition. He couldn't leave. Not yet. Not until he knew for certain no one else was coming out from the forest.

Every so often, a shiver passed up the pegasus's legs, but Crimson didn't move to relieve his body, or even to sit down. Call it stubbornness, hope, or desperation.

Prey knew what the word was. Defeat.

"Cr'mson."

Crimson jerked, stumbling as turned on uncoordinated legs that looked like they were threatening to fold at any moment.

There, at the corner of one of the houses, a lamb stood, or rather leaned against the building, just a small shape in the night. But even damaged by poison, Crimson's eyes could see in the dark.

"Prey?" Crimson croaked.

Prey tried to offer a smile, but he was so tired and he couldn't even get his face to move.

"Iz' me." He confirmed. He swayed, the building proving not to be enough even when taking all of his weight.

"Th'nk I'll jus' sit down now." Prey said, and then collapsed.

"Pr'ey. T'ank Luna, thank Luna, t'ank Luna." Crimson exclaimed, stumbling over as Prey struggled to sit up, before giving up entirely and just lying on his side, breathing deeply. He rolled a blue eye swollen red towards Crimson as the pegasus reached him.

"You' look as b'd as I feel." Prey croaked drily, voice barely above a whisper.

"Don' move." Crimson said, trying to check Prey over.

"No probl'm."

"Where're you' hu'rt?" Crimson lent down for a closer look and almost fell on top of Prey.

"Same as you. Ev'rywhere."

A choked sound escaped Crimson's throat, "Thoug't you wer' dead. Thought I was alone. Thank Luna."

"You' ok'y?" Prey asked, still lying on his side.

"Are you'?" Crimson responded.

Prey's gaze slid away and broke eye contact, "...No."

"No." Crimson answered Prey's own question just as simply. The pegasus swayed worryingly.

"Thoug't...thought I failed aga'n. Thought it really happen'd this time. That you' were all...all..." Crimson shook his head, "Here, let me'." He reached for Prey.

Prey shrank away from his hoof like it was a live snake, eyes widening.

Crimson jerked his hoof back, "I...sorry, didn't mean...." He trailed off, "...Sorry."

Crimson swayed again, and then very abruptly sat down next to Prey. He stared out into the trees.

For a long time, neither spoke, each just silently enduring.

" 'm sorry too." Prey eventually croaked.

There was a few seconds before Crimson even heard him. He blinked, turning his head slowly to Prey in confusion, "For w'at?"

Prey looked at Crimson's dirt smeared face, mane matted, but worst were the burnt and blistered tracks under his eyes. Half of that was Prey's fault. He should've pushed harder to not trust Shimmer, he should've found a way to force them to listen to him. He should've tried. But now he just didn't have the words to explain that.

" 'm sorry."

"I should've... should've..." Crimson vaguely waved a limp hoof, "You' know... Should've listen'd to you'. My team. But I thought I waz' strong. This-"

Crimson let out a hacking cough, and tapped the jade necklace around his neck, "-Thought I was strong. W'at it...w'at it show'd me, made me too scared to rely on you' guys. I was wrong. I'm s'rry."

"Wha' did it show you'?" Prey asked.

Crimson lowered his head, "My father an' all of you. An'...an'... an' you all died. It was so real, like I was there, an' I believed it. That was the price it want'd from me, what it took fr'm me. Bought an' paid for."

"I didn' know you' cared that much." Prey eventually rasped.

Crimson jerked, "Of cours' I care. How could you' not know that?"

"I... b'cause, b'cause, I never know what you're think'ng."

"I do care, I do. If'n I didn't, I would've... I would...." Crimson trailed off, and his mental walls shuddered horribly. Prey waited, desperate to hear the reason, but Crimson didn't finish. Prey's mind began to drift, floating on a haze of tiredness and pain.

Almost without realising it, Prey started speaking again, "I was so close to makin' a horr'ble mistake. Hav' been for a long time, an' I didn' even realise it until I was looking in the mirror. Horrible."

"I've...already made my mistake."

Crimson tiredly shuffled one wing around to spread out before him. From the angle of his head, Prey could tell he was looking at the wingblade on it. Only because of Prey's exceptional hearing did he hear Crimson whisper; "Too little, too late."

"It's always too late," Prey coughed, "For peopl' like us, iz' always too late."

"Ain't that the truth of it," Crimson muttered, "Thought I was special. Thought I could sav' m'father. Just made it worse. It should've been me, I should've fought in th' gauntlet. Why'd you have'ta go an' take my place?"

Prey barely registered that Crimson had said 'gauntlet', not 'duel' like he'd originally assumed. Crimson's words triggered his own memories. Old mistakes, past pains and scars. His greatest failure.

"Failed them all too. Mother. Fleece. Ev'n little useless Gossamer."

"Gloom, Lilly, Sc'nic, I should've stuck closer wiv' them." Crimson croaked.

"I keep mess'ng up. I don' know why I lie all the time. The warlock got to me. An' now Lemon's hidin' someth'ng from me an' I don't now what." Prey slurred, hardly listening to what Crimson was mumbling about.

"Myrrdon clan's plann'ng something, I jus' know it. There's no way they just...just leave like that. I'm always gonna' be looking over m' shoulder."

"Got Garrow and Snake, they won' leave me alone. Won' stay dead. Why? I just want..."

"I'm fail'ng Pr'nc'ss Luna too. She told me to put aside m' revenge. But I didn'. I didn' do what she said. An' I hate them so much."

"...I jus' want to be left alone. Jus' wanna' be free. Iz' that too much to ask?"

There was a minute of quiet as each of them trailed off into their own inner turmoil. The faint light in the sky slowly grew over the mountains, the first tentative touch of soft pale orange, but the shadow of Mayflower still sat squatting over them.

"Need t' get back. Need t' check Lilly. See if she, if she, if..." Crimson's throat worked, "Can't stay here."

"I can't move." Prey bitterly admitted.

"I'll hel'p you." Crimson uncertainly said. Would he even make it back himself, let alone carrying Prey?

"Don' touch me."

"I won't." Crimson wearily promised. Then; "...Why not Prey? Why you nev'r let anyone... 'S not healthy. Mentally. We're a herd spec'ies. Everyone wants to be shown they're loved."

'He said 'anyone', not 'anypony'.' Prey blearily thought. "Like you's one to talk." He muttered in reply.

"Ev'n, even I give a pat on the back or a hug. Least, think I do?" Crimson's ears quirked as he appeared to be trying to remember, "Yes, 'm sure I do."

Prey didn't answer that. His eyes were so heavy, but he couldn't go to sleep, not yet. He still had something he had to say to Crimson. He gathered up his courage and spoke.

"You' know I'll snap one day...right?"

Before Crimson could respond to that, Prey quickly drew in a breath that was agony on his throat and spoke on; "I don' wanna' hurt you. I don't wanna' die. Neither of us. I owe you. An' I don't want to hurt you."

Prey was babbling, making no sense. He stopped and tried again, but when he spoke he somehow found himself moved onto a different subject.

"It...hurts. To live. Hurts. How do you' deal with the hurt?"

Prey wasn't asking for help. He didn't want or need pity. No, he was just asking a fellow exile for their coping mechanisms. Prey didn't expect the answer to help him, he'd survived well enough on his own for sixty-one years, but he still wanted to know Crimson's answer. He knew he was asking something deeply personal and offensive of Crimson, but Crimson would understand. He too knew what it was like to be trapped under the black ice and feel like you could never break free.

Crimson's shoulders hunched, "I don't. I run away. I, I lie to m'self. I lie an' lie an' lie!"

Crimson's hoof struck the ground, but Prey was too tired to even flinch, "I lie. I'm a hypocrite an' a liar. I hate liars. An' I'm a liar."

"Ah." Prey murmured, like that answered it all. And it did.

Crimson did not deal with the hurt. Prey had been foolish to ask. He'd forgotten that he was, in fact, older than Crimson. He was mentally a child, but yet also more than just a child. He'd had longer to deal with this than Crimson had. He'd had fifty-seven years in Dreverton with nothing to do but think. The wine of regret had aged, but it was still wine. Just as bitter though. Age just made it another kind of bitter.

Crimson was still choking on his own wine cup which'd been forced onto him. He hadn't yet mastered the art of swallowing the vinegar and telling himself he was used to it. That it no longer burned. That it was just water.

"How... How d'you deal with it Prey?" Crimson tentatively ventured, voice wretched.

Prey didn't have the answer Crimson wanted any more than the pegasus had an answer for him. Still, he gave it his best shot; "The first ti'me I thought I'd die. But 'm okay. I've gotten pretty good at tell'ng myself 'm okay."

"Ah." And that said it all, didn't it?

" 'm sorry."

" 'm sorry too. For both of us."

The light of morning slowly dawned over the Ridgeback, but Prey didn't see it. He couldn't muster the strength to open his eyelids anymore. Lemon Pink was still out there in the forest somewhere, but he didn't have anything left to give. He couldn't muster up even one iota of energy to open even one swollen eye.

He was so tired that he no longer even hurt. He could barely feel it. Not the blood, the cuts, the bruising, the cracked bones or his damaged insides or even the poisoning.

But he shouldn't sleep, should he?

But it would be so nice and he was so tired.

Very distantly, nothing more than a whisper on the edge of the blackness, he heard Crimson speaking to him. "Sleep Prey. I'll keep watch.

Prey sank into sleep. Down past the deep blue, the dark indigo, past the deeper violet, and vanished into the back of total unconsciousness.

So that's the end of Arc 3 finally. Hope everyone enjoyed it, next time, Arc 4. It was rather grimdarky and such, but I hope it was fun anyways.

Climatic? Not climatic enough? Too much foreshadowing right from the get go?

As always, Editor: Sweetolebob18

And as always, if you do spot any mistakes, please let me know. Thank you all. 😄

As for the picture, I was just trying out something new. A different style, for those of you who are in to art. But if you want to see a much better picture done by someone else in the same sorta' style of Prey: Art Here. It's much better, definitely worth a look. 😊 Kindly shared to me by GreatSpaceBeaver