The rain roared atop the dark train car's roof.

Inside, the empty car near-deafeningly reverberated like a struck drum. Rain trickles had started worming down the inside of the car walls. The carriage’s floor was already becoming slimy and slick, and utterly stank of rotting pondweed.

Yet it was still an empty train car, and thus shelter from the terrible storm hammering down and drowning the world outside. But it was empty. For some reason, none of the desperate ponies of Haven Hay had ripped the sliding door off and fought each other hoof and tooth to cower inside.

The other four train cars had been commandeered, but not this one. Why not? It had been like they couldn't properly notice the forgotten shelter. And then the storm had hit, turning the world dark and hiding the stinking car anyways.

Then the train door was cracked open. Wind and water howled in, the whole thing shuddering and rocking. Pulsating lightning illuminated silhouettes as black cut-outs. And in through the open door were blown four stumbling figures, dragging a fifth and carrying a sixth.

Prey, and the three Border Rangers. Bravo was dragging the barely able to limp Crimson. Inky and Nimbus carried Gloom over their backs. How they had managed to stay together, and follow Prey while near blind, choking, slipping, soaked, constantly deafened, and being blown away was nothing short of a miracle.

There was nothing miraculous about the situation. Nothing at all. There was no goodness left in the whole entire world. There was only the storm, and panic.

"Shut the door! Shut that door!" Screaming to be heard.

"Get them in, get them in!" Fighting to get the small lantern out of his pack.

No, not like-! Gently! Rest him down on his side!" Trying again and again to get the flint to strike.

"Don't touch-Crimson? Focus! That arrow is in your wing, don't move."

"Help... help Gloom first."

*Krash* *Boom!*

"What?!"

"Help, Gloom!"

Nimbus getting in the way, blocking the flickering light, "Move!"

"I can't, I have to hold his head in case he starts-"

"Move!"

"You don't know what you're doing!"

"Get out of the way, or I swear by the Deeper Green-"

*Crash* *Roar!*

Fumbling with a small dagger. The runically enhanced blade cutting the armour's straps like wet paper. The armour plate staying affixed to Gloom's side by the two arrows nailing it there. Quivering muscle becoming a corkboard for giant pins.

"Oh Celestia, by Celestia, guide and protect-"

"Shut up, shut up! Don't you dare stop pressing!"

"He's hurting! What do I do?!"

"I said keep pressing you halfwit!"

*Boom* Rumble. *Shake*

"Don't just stand there Inky, help Crimson!"

"But Sargent Gloom is the most hurt-"

"We're helping him, you help Crimson!"

"What am I supposed to-?"

"Stop the bleeding! Just stop the bleeding!"

Screaming at the useless fools over the never-ending thunder, until his throat was raw. Fighting against dwindling time in the half-light. Blood not stopping its flow, the bandages and supplies pulled from his pack not enough. Red soaking through. Smearing his face as he tugged a thread through the needle with his teeth and bit it off.

"Not working, it's not working!"

"I, I don't know!"

"Prey? Prey, Gloom is he-?"

"Stay still! Stay down. You! I said keep Crimson down!"

"What? Can't hear you!"

"I said! Keep. Crimson. Down!"

Gloom laying still, eyes closed, forehead swollen an ugly purple, and the rest of his face too pale under his fur. The gurgling rattle with each shallow inhale and wet exhale. Fighting to make each second count, to hold on, just trying to stabilise the rapid downward spiral. Not to heal, just to halt.

Buying time. Just buying more seconds to work with, so he could use those seconds to buy more seconds.

"Get ready to pull the arrow out on my mark."

"But the bleeding-!"

"I said on my mark!"

"No! The bleeding is too much!"

"On my mark!"

"And what if it's barbed, huh?! Like a Jack Fish Stingtail?"

"It's not barbed you utter-! Pull it out when I say!"

"Celestia's light guide us, please stop this-"

"Shut up Bravo! Nimbus, you pull that arrow out on-"

*BOOM*

"-mark. Mark. I said mark! Mark damn you!"

Fighting for time. Fighting Gloom's body. Fighting the incompetent trio who he was a breath away from mind killing for their sheer stupidity but for needing their hooves to keep applying pressure.

The stink and slime from the floor clinging to his hooves, trying to wipe them clean on his own soaked wool and steadily running out of clean patches to use. There was no time to disinfect, he had to stabilise Gloom now now now! Infection would come later, but Gloom was dying now!

Gloom was dying.

He was dying. That wasn't right. That was wrong, so very wrong. This whole stupid mission was wrong. A little port town wasn't supposed to be more dangerous than Mayflower, than Garrow and the Lumber Yard. This was too stupid for Gloom to die to!

Stitch, suture, try to clean as best he could with only seconds to spare. One arrow wound. Two arrow wounds. Three arrow wounds, one where the head stayed deep inside. Digging it out with the flat of his knife, terrified that one slip by him, or by Nimbus holding Gloom, or by Gloom himself regaining consciousness-

The swelling on Gloom's head was bad. Prey couldn't do anything about it. There was no treatment available for a possible brain injury. He couldn't risk trying to feel the swollen bruising out, he might tip it over the edge into brain haemorrhaging instead. He didn't know which it was, bruising or haemorrhage, and there was no way to tell. And Gloom was not waking up.

Because he was dying.

Tiredness, bad lightning, a stinking floor which shook and rocked in the wind, deafening thunder. He was trying to save Gloom, and everything was fighting against him.

'Stop it. Stop taking everything!'

The two arrows yet left in Gloom's side, slowed and partly stopped by the armour. Bad. The third arrow, which had driven between two ribs? Worse.

People could survive with only one working lung, Prey had seen it. Snake had seen it. But the blood leaking into the lung, that was precious blood not being pumped around the rest of his body. And with only half as much oxygen getting in...

Prey knew how to maximise Gloom's chances. But they were bad chances.

Prey rushed, and prioritised, and screamed instructions at idiots who could barely understand.

But Crimson also desperately needed his help. Gloom had been hit the worst. Crimson had merely been hit slightly less badly. Again the armour, the priceless new Night Guard armour, had prevented immediate death from the heavy crossbow bolts.

Crimson's left wing was skewered through his armour to his side. Every twitch was a spasm of agony across his pale face. He probably had broken bones of some kind too, Prey had no idea how bad. Internal injuries were all the more frightening than external ones, as it was so hard to tell until it was too late.

Prey was frightened. He was keeping it suppressed, he couldn't afford for his hooves to shake and slip, not now.

A deep, deep slice on Crimson's hind leg which just would not stop bleeding, no matter how much pressure Inky was applying, only slowing. Prey was certain he had seen the white gleam of bone for a moment inside.

Clan Myrrdon was dead. They were dead. They'd shot Gloom and Crimson, they'd shot them and just flown away without even stopping, like they could just jauntily get away with doing that!

They had gotten away with it. Life wasn't fair. Death was even less fair. The good died and the strong lived. Like Luna and the Sun Wolf.

The wind howled so fiercely it felt as if the entire train car was only moments away from tipping over, or blowing away. And fresh, sticky blood kept staining Prey's cloven hooves.

Gloom, Crimson. Dashing back and forth between the two of them. Gloom, then quickly Crimson, back to Gloom, staunch the fresh bleeding, run back to Crimson, then Gloom, then Crimson, then Gloom. The height of selfishness, trying to save them both, fervently refusing to accept only one as possible.

*CRASH.* Thunder rattling his bones. Water pouring in rivulets from leaks down the inside of the walls, and draining out under the door.

Nimbus and his two worthless sacks of flesh finally realising, past their shock and fear, how off this situation was.

"Where's everypony else?!"

"What?!" *Boom*

"I said, where is everypony else?! Why's nopony else in here?"

"There's space! Why're they out there?"

"There's free space, we can bring more in!"

"No!" Prey yelled.

They didn't hear. "Don't stop pressing! You can't leave now!"

Crimson and Gloom, they were in crisis. Nimbus faltered. He looked at the closed door, shaking and rattling.

'-Trail Blazer is still out there-', He finally recalled.

"Don't stop, don't you dare stop! There's nothing you can do now!"

"But what if he's-?!"

*cRRR-AACK* Something huge outside broke or collapsed, audible even through the storm.

Then under Prey's red glistening hooves, Gloom's pulse began to rapidly fade, heartbeat juddering.

'You can't take this from me too!' Prey hurled himself at his backpack, tearing through it. 'Where? Where? Where?'

No time, no time, no time! Where was it? He had to have it.

A wrapped bundle. Rip the string off. The small brown paper packets inside spilling across the dirty floor. Scramble, had to find the right one, the powdered seeds.

Seconds, there were only seconds to act. Snatch up the packet, spin around and lunge back to Gloom's side.

Rip the paper, jam his blood-sticky hoof into the powder, then smear the foul clotted mess off on the back of Gloom's tongue. His whole head was ringing, whatever Nimbus was demanding didn't matter.

The potent, fast acting poison hit Gloom's failing system within moments. His heartbeat jumped. Poison the body, trick it into working for just a little longer. Kill to cure. Sacrifice later for now. This was emergency triage.

And now that he'd started feeding Gloom the poisons, he couldn't stop, or Gloom would definitely die. A downward spiral instead of a straight plummet, but Gloom was still falling either way. Prey grabbed more packets, desperation burning in him, throwing the wrong ones aside, looking for the right poisons to balance out what he was doing to Gloom.

There were no carefully measured doses, there was only instinct guiding Prey's hoof.

Every trick, every stolen technique from Snake, he would try them all. Prey was going to save Gloom. The world couldn't take him, Prey wasn't done with Gloom yet.

"You're only done when I say you're done!"

Gloom and Crimson, the world couldn't have them, they were his. The world didn't get to steal from him anymore.

'Nobody steals from a Stormcrow, yez'?' Garrow cackled in the deafening thunder. The rain pounded the train car, and outside, the storm threatened to break in and kill them all, not just Gloom, at any second.

Gloom was not stabilised.

He was still fading, the stitches, the bandages, and Prey's poisons nonwithstanding. He was just fading slower now.

But Prey had done all he reasonably could. His body ached, his muscles trembled, his throat was raw, and his entire body shook every few seconds from exhaustion. He could do no more. All that was left now were the unreasonable options.

*Bo-oo-om* The train car physically shook. Nails were slowly working their way a little bit further out of the wet, filthy planks every time. Prey's head and ears hurt with each and every thunder clap.

Gloom was fading, but slow enough that maybe, maybe he'd make it through the night and to the morning. Prey was exhausted, sweating, he'd already worked so hard. And Crimson kept asking how Gloom was doing.

Prey hadn't answered him yet. Nimbus, Inky, and Bravo of course all had, repeatedly telling Crimson that Gloom would pull through, assuring him, promising him.

Crimson ignored their assurances every time, he didn't want their lies! He wanted the truth from Prey's mouth. And Prey wasn't answering him.

"Prey-gha! Gloom, how is Gloom?" Crimson forced out while Prey pushed the needle and thread through again. No answer. It was too loud to hear the question. Or loud enough to pretend not to hear, at least.

"Prey, Gloom. Is Gloom going to survive?" Prey made him lay his head back down, and didn't answer.

"Will he survive, Prey? Will he?" Prey wiped sweat out of his eyes, and avoided Crimson's gaze.

"Prey, please. Tell me. Tell me the answer."

Again and again. Tell me, tell me, tell me. Tell me Prey. Please tell me what I want to hear.

Finally, Prey had to stop. There were no more preventative measures left for him to take. He had to stop and rest.

He collapsed onto his front, heedless of the filthy boards resting under his chin and his trailing ears. His chest heaved as if he'd been running for miles. Crimson lay to his left, and Gloom to his right. Prey blinked his eyes clear, and stared in the flickering light at Gloom's unmoving form.

There was nothing more he could reasonably do. He could only react to any further complications as they came up now. And be ready to do those unreasonable things if needed.

Crimson shuffled closer in the dark car, trying not to aggravate his stitched wounds. His wing was bound tightly to his side in bandages, and the rest of his armour had been removed. His fur was as red as his name again. As dark red as the dried liquid sticking to Prey's hooves and wool.

"Prey, tell me. Tell me. Gloom. Will he survive?"

His words were utterly lost under the roaring thunder and pounding rain. You could barely hear yourself think in here, not helped by the fear stifling the air. But Prey knew what Crimson was asking, he could see well enough to see his mouth moving.

Prey couldn't pretend not to hear any longer. "I don't know."

Crimson read his lips, he could see in the dark. Crimson's face didn't change.

'He was expecting that answer.' Prey tiredly realised.

*CRASH* Boom. Rattle.

Crimson painfully inched his way closer still.

Nimbus and his two subordinates were sitting together in a huddle against the opposite wall, pressed together and surrounding the lone storm lantern.

The three pegasi were only three yards away, but separated by the deafening noise, they might as well have been thirty. Powerlessness in the face of the storm pressed down upon them and paralysed their hooves. Prey would have to shout to gain their attention.

Crimson shuffled even closer still. He was close enough to reach out and touch Prey, but didn't. He just shuffled closer, bringing his head towards Prey's. Only a few inches separated them as they lay on the filthy floor, but it was finally close enough to speak and be heard by each other.

Prey made himself stay still and not roll away. Besides, he was too tired, and how could his weakness and fear compare when Gloom was laying over there, barely breathing at all?

Prey could move. He could move away at any time. Crimson wasn't going to touch him, that was what was important. And that Gloom was fading. The most important.

"What are we going to do?"

What was Prey supposed to say? 'We'll get through this?', 'Somebody will come?', 'The storm will end?'

"I don't know." He answered again.

It seemed that wasn't what Crimson meant, "No, what are we going to do?"

Prey could literally feel Crimson's harsh, ragged exhale on his cheek fur, "Oh." Then, "Whatever we can do."

"What, I mean, what can we do?"

A trickle of dirty water was rapidly worming its way down the gap between two floorboards, towards Prey's muzzle. He didn't have the energy to move.

"I've done all I can do. For now. Unless he gets worse. If he starts failing again, then, then..."

The trickle of dirty water reached Prey's chin, and began soaking into his fur. He barely noticed. There were a dozen more trickles and puddles spreading across the boards, not just flowing down the train car’s slimy walls and out the door and joints. The train car was slowly breaking more and more.

The storm was destroying their shelter. Slowly, as the car was holding together unnaturally well, but it was still breaking. The deafening noise and fury outside felt so distant and unimportant though. Because of Gloom. What was the destruction Clan Myrrdon had inflicted for their insane prophecy compared to that? Or Crimson's wounded wing which might cripple his flight?

"Then... what? What is it you're talking about Prey?" Crimson asked slowly.

"Something. If Gloom starts to fail again, then I'll..."

"Then you'll do what?"

"Then I'll do something." Prey evaded, the cold trickle creeping beneath his chin and into more of his fur and wool.

"No, that's wrong. I said it wrong. I meant, what'll we do?"

Crimson was prepared to do whatever it took. Not just in word, but he would back it up with deeds. Just like a true thestral. Prey couldn't hear all the subtle tones of desperation in Crimson's question. But why would he need to, when he could taste them sitting in the back of his own raw throat?

"I... know some methods. Bad things." Prey's eyes rested on the three Border Rangers, even though they couldn't hear a word, "Things like with Mayflower."

"Ahh," Again the pained exhale blew on Prey's cheek. He smelt blood. "Methods like from Mayflower."

A pause.

"What will you need?" Crimson asked.

And just like that, he sunk to Prey's level beneath the black ice.

Prey had lied, and deflected, and always misdirected them whenever they got anywhere even close to the topic of what he knew, like the bone rot mines, and Crimson and Gloom had never pressed too hard. They'd known they didn't really want the answers that badly. Prey's whole life was based on secrecy. He lied as often as he breathed.

It didn't matter, not now. Prey told the straight, vile truth without even thinking, "A life. A fresh body. And enough blood."

"A life? Whose?" Crimson croaked.

"Not yours, don't even think about it. It doesn't matter. I'll find someone if it comes to that." And then, because he didn't want any ambiguity left, needed to make it crystal clear, clarified; "Murder."

Crimson inhaled, but he didn't speak. Out of the corner of his eye Prey saw him looking at the three Royal Guards.

"They won't tell anybody." Prey said.

"They'll have to die too?" Crimson's voice wobbled like a foal’s.

"No no, I only said, they won't tell anybody. That's all. Don't worry. I said I'd deal with it."

"I.. I'll help. It's not fair. I am part of this. I will do it too."

Prey didn't say, 'You won't remember it either.' Because he didn't know if that was true. Would he erase Crimson's memory? Again? Maybe. He didn't know, and right now it wasn't important.

"Don't worry about it," He said instead, "It may not come to that."

Prey saw Crimson's throat work in a swallow, "My feather, your gift. Could it...?"

Prey jerkily shook his head, regret stiffening his neck, "No. It's attuned to your passive magic now. But even if we could-no. It wouldn't work. Can't, it can't heal. Can't stop bleeding. Its passive effects are too spread out."

Crimson had known that. He'd already known the answer he was going to hear. Still he'd hopelessly reached for another option which wasn't there.

It wasn't fair. Why hadn't he made a gift for Gloom too? One which could stop crossbow bolts. Why hadn't he done that, why hadn't he thought ahead?

If Prey had his runic arrays from his lair, if he hadn't been sent out to the middle of nowhere, if only he'd been back in Canterlot. With his arrays, saving Gloom's life would've been trivial. But Luna, in her infinite lack of wisdom and her infinite selfishness, had sent them away from safety yet again.

*RummMBLE* *Krack*

'-............who... who's there?... kicking on the door?-'

Gloom. Prey jerked upright. His shaking hooves slipped from under him on the slimy, stinking boards. He fell on his side, didn't care, just trying to twist to face Gloom.

But twisting so suddenly like that pulled aching muscles in his back. The old whip scars flared. A streak of fiery cramp twisted his skin with a pair of red hot tongs.

'NOT. NOW!'

But pain doesn't care. It's pain, and it hurts. Prey was so incensed with anger at the dead Stinger he went blind for a second. His back twisted up on him in betrayal.

"G-gha!"

"Prey-?"

*THROoOMm!*

The walls shook. Crimson tried to move or raise the alarm. Prey spat and cursed, and clawed over towards-!

Gloom's half-conscious mind stirred again, '-hurts... can't breathe. Hurts. Need more air. It hurts-'

'Hate you Stinger!'

Prey made it to Gloom's side, "Gloom! You're hurt. Don't try to move!" He shouted in Gloom's limp ear.

Thunder drowned out Crimson trying to ask if Gloom was conscious. Cramp rippled up and down Prey's spine. Hate and desperation. 'Hate you Stinger.'

He shouted again, Gloom had to remain still. "Don't move! Your stitching-just don't move! Can you hear me? Don't move!"

Gloom was on his front, tilted on his right side and propped up with Prey's backpack, keeping him off his wounds and punctured lung. If he suddenly rolled over, he could kill himself before Prey could do anything!

Cramp burning up his back, spreading water soaking the floor. Prey could only half wrench his mind around enough to listen to the faint thoughts coming from Gloom.

'-know him, who-? Hurts. Side, hurts. Hurt- hurt, can't breathe. Can't see. Am I blind? Prey. Prey's here. Stop it hurting-'

"I can't stop it hurting. You've been shot! Do you remember? Clan Myrrdon! The storm has hit. I patched you up. But don't move! You could die if you move!"

'-pain. Move? Should move?-'

"No! I said don't move!"

'-no don't move. Prey? Why does it hurt? Am I dying? It hurts too much. Prey, where, I don't, why can't, where's, pain...?-'

Prey made himself shout again, drawing in a big lungful of air which hurt to force out of his raw throat, "You've got your eyes closed. You're not blind! Understand? Not. Blind! I'm sorry, I, I don't have anything for the pain. Just hold on. Stay with us. Help is coming."

A hoof brushed the wool of Prey's shoulder.

He twisted with a snarl, and his back flared with hot nails.

"Wh-haAT! D-don't touch-You! Sod off and die." Prey spat at Nimbus Feather, his own golden banded forehoof raising to either fend off another touch or kill the pegasus, he didn't know which.

"He can't hear you!" Nimbus shouted above the storm, "You need to calm down! He can't hear you."

Ignorance! Or was it just arrogance? Prey was a hundred miles beyond caring that nobody else understood that only he could hear Gloom's struggling mind.

Through cramp pain, gritted jaw, and murderous black fury, Prey shrilly managed, "L-Leave! Me! Alone!"

"Gloom can't hear you. Leave him to rest, there's nothing more to be done!"

Always, always the pony had to push and couldn't listen.

"Leave. Us. Alone! Or else."

Finally, finally the stallion backed off, "Fine then!" He shouted at Prey.

'-it's just grief talking-', Nimbus seethed internally, stomping back across the slippery puddles to Inky and Bravo.

Prey didn't waste one breath more looking after or thinking on the departing pegasus. Gloom, he was all that mattered. And Crimson, who in the intervening seconds had dragged himself closer with feverish energy.

"What-"

*Crash*

"-he awake?"

"Yes, but barely! He mustn't move. Don't let him move!" Prey shouted back, eyes fixed on Gloom for the first sign that he might be about to start rolling.

As sudden as the cramp attack had come, the cramp began fading away. It was nothing compared to the pain that Gloom must be in right now. That Crimson must be in, every move jarring his wing.

'-where am I? Hurt, it keeps hurting. Stop, please. Can't get enough air-'

"We're inside a train carriage! The storm's hit outside. Just hold on. You've got a leaking lung. Do you understand?"

'-lung, hurt. Blood, can't breathe? Want to breathe-'

"Don't panic, just keep slowly breathing like you are. You'll survive! Do you hear me? You're going to survive this. Don't panic, and don't give up."

"I can't hear him," Crimson's voice was rife with alarm, "Is he speaking? Why can't I hear him Prey?"

The rain hammered away, the puddles on the slimy floor ever growing as Prey rapidly shook his head. "No, listen, Gloom's not-He's not speaking. Don't- just listen to me, only I can hear him."

"What? I don't-"

"Inside! Inside his head! Inside my head."

'-noise, so loud. The storm, Prey just said, the storm. Where's, where's the storm?-'

"The storm's outside! We're in shelter. For now." Then he twisted to shout beside Crimson's ear:

"He's drifting in and out. He's not fully conscious!"

"But he can hear us?"

"Yes. Sorta'!"

That was all the confirmation Crimson needed. He shoved forwards to be beside Gloom's head, "Gloom, sir. It's me, Crimson! Can you hear me? Prey, can he hear me?"

'-Prey, Crimson. Crimson's here too. My Night Guards. My squad. Storm, pain, need air-'

"Yes! Keep talking, keep distracting him." Prey ducked in closer, straining his eyes to check Gloom's wounds yet again, searching for any change. The frantic burning need to do something to help.

"I'm sorry sir. I'm sorry! They were aiming for me. Clan Myrrdon, they were after me."

'-...Myrrdon. Who're they? Clan... Clan like Cilldara. Myrrdon, they shot me!-'

"He knows it was Myrrdon. He doesn't blame you." Prey related over the thunder and rain. Then to Gloom; "You're going to live! Me and Crimson are going to make sure. Whatever it takes!"

'-voice... Voice, who is? Prey. I remember, it's Prey. Hurts. Can heal me? Then why haven't they healed me?-'

"We will heal you. We just need to-" Prey sucked in a sharp breath as he again saw the bandaged wound in Gloom's side. Cold pins and needles ran up and down his so recently abused spine.

The thick bandage and padding was soaked through. Fat red drops were dripping off even as Prey stared. Something had gone wrong. A shift, a clot internally breaking open, it didn't matter the reason, only the outcome.

"Zoma'Grika. Crimson, Crimson we need to act now! Unless we start the ritual now, it's going to be too late to begin!"

'-too late? What's... hurts. Why haven't you made it stop hurting Prey? It hurts-'

Crimson started, and then finally realised the terrible truth of what Prey was saying. His lips moved in the dim light, and Prey read the words that didn't come out, "Now? It's happening now? We have to sacrifice someone now?"

'-...Crimson, anypony. Prey? Can't breathe. So heavy. Please help me. Please, I can't...-'

"We have to start the ritual now." Prey confirmed. He was already thinking, planning ahead. They needed a body. His eyes flicked to Nimbus and his two cronies. One of them would do. There were bodies outside, but leaving the train car would mean getting swept away in the storm, and how would he physically even get someone back inside?

"Nimbus, Inky, or Bravo!" Prey shouted over the thunder, looking Crimson right in the eye, "One of them. I need one of them!"

Crimson's face was horrified. Horrified at Prey, at himself, at what he was about to do. He heaved once, just once, and swallowed. His ears were plastered back, "You... are telling me to pick?"

*Bang* Something in the wind outside smashed into the side of train car. Prey saw the wall judder inwards.

"One of them! I, I will knock them unconscious. I have a way! But I'm not strong enough to move them. You need to hold, you need to drag one of them over for me!" Prey shouted.

Only three yards away, the pegasi trio were completely deaf to what was being said, their attention fixed on the shuddering walls and water streaming in under the bending roof.

"Then-", Crimson convulsed, "-Then Inky. She, Luna help me, but she's the lightest."

*BooOM!*

'-what talking about...? Inky, she's, she's.... going to? Prey, are you going to murder her?!-'

The thought was stronger, a brief surge of clarity in Gloom's jumbled thoughts. One directed right at Prey. Gloom was talking directly to Prey. His closed eyelids twitching, his laboured chest shuddering as for just a moment, he regained painful consciousness, although not the strength to move.

"Don't move Gloom! Please, don't move. Stay still. Don't worry, we're going to fix you."

'-no! No Prey, no don't murder her! Don't, please, it hurts, but just don't-', Gloom knew, somehow he knew exactly what Prey was going to do.

"I know it hurts. I'm sorry, but I, but we're going to fix you!" Prey started pulling away from Gloom, reaching up to untie his ribbon.

"nn...NnghNO. No." The single word gurgled out of Gloom's mouth. The word came with red spittle dribbling over his lips, "Nnno."

"Shh shh. Don't move. Don't worry Gloom, I'm going to fix you!" Prey's mouth twisted up into a bitter rictus, and he spat out the same words Luna had comforted that useless dying pink mare with, "This will be naught but a bad dream."

Prey turned, looking to his target. Inky was huddled in between Bravo and Nimbus. Prey's eyes fixed on a point on her neck, under her helmet strap. The best place to cut if you wanted them to bleed out. Blood magic, and black magic, Prey was planning to use a combination of the two.

'-no, no, no! Don't do it Prey! I have a right to choose, don't! This is my life. Don't murder anypony-'

Prey flinched at the thoughts he heard behind him. If it had only been words, then he wouldn't have had to hear them over the deafening storm. But he was a mind leech, so he heard all of Gloom's frantic thoughts.

'-my life, my choice. Prey, Prey? I choose no. I'd, I won't, don't-'

Prey hunched his shoulders, not wanting to listen.

'-my choice, Prey, my choice. My path, I… talent, my path is, is...-'

"Prey? Prey?" Crimson was calling out to him over the storms' din. Hooves feeling like lead, Prey slowly turned himself around. "Prey, what, what's Gloom saying?"

Prey was shocked when the answer came out of him, because it was the truth instead of the lie he'd meant to say, "He doesn't want us to do this. He's saying, 'my life, my choice'."

A deafening thunder clap shook the train car, almost driving Prey to his hooves. His ears and lungs vibrated with the force. And still he could unwillingly hear Gloom's hazy mind.

'-please don't Prey, Crimson. It's my path to walk... path, my path. What path? Pain, path... there's a path...-'

The thestral's thoughts were slipping away again, spiralling back down into pain and blood loss.

Why should Prey have to listen to what Gloom wanted? Prey should do what he wanted, and damn the consequences. That was the vile beauty of being a mind leech. Afterwards, nobody would ever know what he'd done. They'd all believe that Inky somehow died in the storm.

'Screw you Gloom. Utterly Zoma'Grika you. Your life, your choice? No. I'm not giving you the choice.'

Like Breaker, and now like Gloom. Look what Prey had done for his deceived and tricked brother. He hadn't been thanked, and he would never be thanked. Who cared? Life wasn't fair. It took and took and took, and never gave back. Well, now Prey was taking something back for himself.

The world takes, and life isn't fair.

Silence. Not outside, but sudden silence in Prey's head.

Prey stopped. He turned, just his head.

Prey inhaled, "Nonooono No No you don't NoNo I said No!"

He was there at Gloom's side without conscious movement. Gloom's chest had stopped moving. He wasn't breathing anymore.

The world takes, and life isn't fair.

"Help. Help! Nimbus Feather, Crimson! Help! He's stopped breathing."

Crimson was there, bandages stained red from his own wounds, face ashen grey with pain, but still there in an instant. Nimbus surged upright onto his own hooves.

Thudding, thudding in Prey's head, in his chest. Heartbeat, had to keep Gloom's heart beating!

Prey couldn't hear the words Nimbus shouted, "What do I do?"

"CPR CPR! Start CPR!" Prey shouted, he knew he shouted. He didn't hear it. Gloom's scarred chest wasn't going up and down like it was supposed to!

Prey didn't have the strength to perform CPR. He was a runt. He was too small, too weak.

"Start it! Breathe for him! Then chest compressions."

"His wounds-!"

"Lost blood-"

Crimson was there. He rolled Gloom onto his back, heedless of the damage he did, his hooves sought out the right place on Gloom's ribs. Wounded wing jarring with every movement, Crimson began pushing down, hard and fast, one, two three, four! He pushed Gloom's bloody mouth open, fangs getting in the way, and blew air into Gloom's lungs. Lung. And one collapsed, flooded lung.

Prey couldn't hear himself, but he somehow still heard the rattling gurgle beneath the thunder. It was the most horrible sound in the world.

This wasn't right, this wasn't happening. Gloom wasn't breathing. How dare he stop breathing?

Prey's whole body was filled with burning ice water. He couldn't breathe, only able to gasp in time with Gloom's forced breaths of air. One, two, three, four! Blow. One, two, three, four! Blow.

Weak. Runt. Useless! As useless as Nimbus! As useless as Bravo and Inky! As useless as the cowards who couldn't face breathing into Gloom's bloody mouth! They were hovering, mentally repulsed and trying to psych themselves up.

Crimson was already flagging, pain and injury making his hooves tremble.

Prey screamed at Nimbus, at the useless meat puppets, "Help! Don't just stand there, help us! Push, take over from Crimson! Push, Crimson can breathe if you're too chicken, you just push! Don't just stand there, help!"

One, two, three, four! Blow.

Thunder, rain, *Boom* Crackle. Puddles, filth, blood, pain, fear, slime, stink.

One, two, three, four. Then blow. Repeat.

Rattling, storm shaking. The poison scars under Gloom's eyes, why weren't his eyes opening again? Why weren't his tufted ears perking?

One, two, three, four! Blow. One, two, three, four! Blow.

Prey wanted to see the yellow of those familiar slitted eyes, wanted Gloom to suddenly cough and start convulsing in a bloody fit, because that would at least mean he was alive.

One, two, three, four, and blow. Nimbus grunted, already sweating. Bravo took over, shoving in to take the other stallion's place. They couldn't afford to miss even one beat.

One beat. Prey wanted just one beat of the heart under that puckered chest scar.

One, two, three, four!

Prey's head was swimming. His eyes were swimming. 'Cry-baby.' Didn't matter. Gloom mattered!

A flooded lung mattered. A lung getting hammered over and over again as the ribs were cracked from the force and crushed down onto it.

The three crossbow bolt wounds mattered, the wounds that were being torn back open again.

Blood loss mattered, it was blood which couldn't be replaced, and now it was too late for Prey to enact the planned dark ritual.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One. Two. Three. Four.

It. Was. Not. Working.

The realisation settled over Prey like a blanket of frozen ash, the cold soaking right through into his bones. This wasn't going to work.

Ash filling his throat, stifling his tongue. Grey settling over his eyes, stealing away his sight. Flakes pilling up in silent drifts around his legs, cementing his hooves in place.

It was the moment that the world reached out with unfeeling claws and took everything once again.

Prey moved. He fumblingly reached out one hoof. Crimson and the others were crowded around Gloom's head, pounding on his chest, shouting, breathing, taking up space. Prey couldn't be up there, there wasn't room. He was standing down by Gloom's hind hooves, feeling so very cold and so very small.

Prey reached out with a shaking hoof and touched Gloom's much larger one, and then reached out further beyond the physical.

Brutally smash the proverbial egg with a hammer. Carefully crack open and cook the egg. Or last of all, eat the raw egg whole, jagged shell and all.

A trite metaphor for absorbing a mind. A mere nod towards the indescribable pain the process entailed. No more than a shrug and cheeky grin about the sundering agony that no one else could ever understand. Absorbing a mind was...

First had been Snake by accident. Then a nameless Border Guard, successfully purged. Most recently, Garrow. And latest of all, what little he could snatch back from the abyss Gloom's mind fell into.

Just bits from a dying mind, one already falling to pieces and those same pieces fading into nothing before he could touch them.

Prey didn't take in Gloom's whole mind. He couldn't. He couldn't survive that, couldn't survive holding half a mind, or even a tenth. There wasn't space, there wasn't time, it hurt so much and Prey would die. But even if he had tried, or tried and died in the attempt, he couldn't have held Gloom's entire mind. Because by then there was so little left of it to grab.

In the end, out of an entire lifetime, all Prey managed to retain was roughly the last two months of memory of the person who was Gloom. Had been Gloom. Was still Gloom. Might still be Gloom.

The bitterness of failure. The terrible certainty that you were deceiving yourself. That what he had wasn't really Gloom, just a grey copy. Desperately Prey clung to it anyways.

The warlock Hard Baked hadn't believed in souls, but Prey did. He didn't know where they hid, or what they were made from, but he knew souls existed.

And what is a person, but their memories and experiences? That was what Prey clung to with blind denial of any other possibility. Because if it was true, then maybe, maybe-!

Were the scraps of salvaged memory really Gloom? Could they really contain something so fleeting as a soul? Through the blinding pain of his warping mindscape, it was Prey's last ragged hope. Every decision and new memory coached in and guided by the knowledge of all before, an echo of an echo…

First Sargent Dusky Gloom was declared deceased as of the 6th of the month, at twelve o'clock. That was the closest estimate they could reach. With the storm, it wasn't like anypony had been keeping accurate time.

It was a full further hour after the declared time that Crimson, the last out of the exhausted adults, had finally ceased attempting CPR and collapsed.

The exact moment wasn't, what with the desperation, noise, and failing light, but Prey had fallen unconscious at some point during that frantic hour too. It was put down to the exhaustion of having run over four miles previously all the way from the Weather Tower, along with the general fatigue and grief caused by the storm and Gloom's death. Prey had seemingly just curled up in a corner of the train car stinking of rotten pondweed, and shut down.

It was even mostly the truth.

Who was declaring and deciding this truth though?

It was Captain Nighthawk, and the reinforcements he brought the next day. They arrived to the devastation of what had once been Haven Hay.

Too little, too late again. The useless bucking Captain was too late to do anything useful. Again.

It should have been Nighthawk wrapped up in that repurposed bloodstained travel cloak, not Gloom. This was all Nighthawk's fault, his and Luna's. Prey hated Luna so very, very, much through the grey haze of fog in his head.

The Captain's arrival only came the next day however. Before then, the terrible storm tore the land apart for a full nineteen hours before finally settling into a heavy, but normal, non-life-threatening rain. Nineteen hours spent huddling in the train car until the lightning and lethal winds finally finished.

Half of their train car had collapsed by then. Literally, it slowly collapsed in on them inside, as they had to move further and further back as the roof bowed in and boards were ripped off one by one in turn.

They were soaked, they were filthy, they were frozen. Stumbling outside into the rain, barely able to painfully move unresponsive limbs, you could turn around and look at what was left of the outside of the car. Every inch of paint had been stripped, like with giant sheets of sandpaper, and the boards were deeply studded with sand, splinters, and even rocks. What that would have done to exposed flesh if caught out in the open...

Well, nobody had to rely on just their imagination. Because Gloom's death was just one of many.

Later, this would be deemed the worst massacre in Equestrian history for six hundred years. Because this had been murder, not a natural disaster. Clan Myrrdon had assembled the storm, and let it loose.

The Haven's Lament Massacre.

'What about the villagers? What about all that happened in the Deeper Green? What about those massacres?'

But those weren't counted. They hadn't been inside Equestria proper, only out on the border. The stunned horror of Equestria over actual pony deaths just wasn't the same.

A small pile of dark bodies floating in a dip filled with filthy water. The rain continuing to beat down on the sodden, unmoving ponies. One of them slumped forwards right on the edge, as if just sitting in the hole, but their lowered face was submerged under the muddy water. Like he'd just lost the strength to keep his head up any longer. Chunks of sodden mane and fur and skin were missing, ripped out in the extreme winds by debris. With rain plinking off his helmet, a pale-faced Night Guard was futilely trying to preserve any respect for the dead he could, as he tried to get the stiff bodies out of the muddy water.

One. That was just one of the many pathetic examples.

The port town of Haven Hay itself was ruined. There was nowhere left habitable. Rubble, shattered rooves, and collapsed timber were strewn over every street. The massive harbour walls had broken in half. The lighthouse was reduced down to mere foundations. The dry docks were simply gone, as were the boats and the half-sunken ship, whether swept far out to sea or dragged down into the depths of the Boiling Bay, nobody knew.

A mother who'd died huddled over her already-dead offspring. The sodden, mangy foal's body looked like a drowned rat. Death is not pretty, it's not clean, and there is no respect. A thick splinter of wood had been driven right through the mare, in through one side of her barrel and protruding gruesomely out the other. There were a score of smaller splinters and bits nailed into her back. One hung out of her ripped-open cheek, the string of flesh swaying in the falling rain.

The survivors wailed and cried, threw themselves on the Night Guards and begged for help, or drew back in fresh dread at the new thestrals. They were all far beyond their limit, exhausted, not thinking straight, and all they saw in that moment were the fanged vamponies from the tales. And worst of all were the townsfolk who did not move, and just lay still and stared brokenly.

Prey didn't care about the survivors, or about their grief and losses. Why would he care about theirs, when he had his own? It was right that Haven Hay was no more, it was right that the people had died. Gloom was gone. It was only fair that the people he'd been trying to protect died too.

Injuries. There were so many injuries. While most ponies who'd survived were not mortally injured, it was only because of the process of elimination. In the awful savagery of the storm, those who had been caught by debris, or alone to bear the full brunt of the wind, or had been hit by the lightning, after nineteen hours did not survive to be 'injured'. They were dead by now. But there were still injuries aplenty spread across nearly every single survivor.

Shock, and near hypothermia were only the most common behind sand embedded through half-flayed skin and burst ear drums, the latter caused by the point-blank proximity of the thunder claps.

Prey stared blearily, hardly feeling the shivers of cold racking his body, or the hunger gnawing his belly.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. The Night Guard reinforcements kept saying the damned word. Nighthawk was sorry, Screech was sorry, Vivid Edge was sorry. They should be sorry, because they hadn't been here when it mattered. That tightness in their wings, the hitch in their every word as they gave orders to try to help the survivors? Good. Let them know even just a tiny fraction of what this felt like. What failure felt like.

They hadn't been here, they hadn't helped. Again and again and again. The Night Guard had failed him and Crimson again. Their every worthless 'sorry' only further incensed Prey.

Two-thousand six-hundred and fourteen. That was the number of dead townsfolk. And that was only the last time Prey had overheard the grim number being quietly reported to Nighthawk. By now, the figure was no doubt already higher. New bodies kept being found, one here, one there, or someone finally succumbing to the cold and injuries suffered. Out of a town whose population had been only a bit under ten-thousand, it was a lot. And the number was only going up.

Like when another body was found so covered in mud, that at first, it had been missed. Until someone stepped in the mud and it shifted wrongly. Or the broken corpse of a foal not even old enough to have earned a cutie mark, so mangled that their gender couldn't be told at first, their body folded back on itself over a snapped spine. And just like that, the count had to be adjusted upwards yet again.

The Night Guards and the additional help they'd brought from the Palace staff were trying to cope. They erected hasty tents, started fires with fuel they'd brought, tried to get as many ponies under cover and warmed up as possible.

Prey sat wrapped in a scratchy, oversized blanket. Someone had hastily given him a cup of hot soup, before moving on to help the next poor desperate.

Crimson had been taken to the medical line, to get his wounds properly seen to and disinfected. Prey stared out from under the makeshift tent-tarp, watching without truly seeing the heavy but nonlethal rainfall. He could even hear the sea's waves again, now not deafened by thunder. Despite that and the rain, the shouting, even the crying, it was too quiet. Nothing could be loud anymore when compared to the howling fury of the storm.

Prey checked the cup of soup for poison. A Night Guard tried to check him over. Prey told them to go away. After the fifth time telling them to, they finally did.

He sat there. It didn't feel like everything was falling apart, because it had all broken a long, long time ago. He'd simply fooled himself that the pieces had been put back together. This was just the realisation he'd been living in the afterwards all along.

Prey eventually also realised he was sitting here alone.

Why was he sitting here, and not beside Crimson? Crimson needed to be properly helped, but somehow in the grey fog of exhaustion, both of them had let other people separate and direct them without even noticing.

Prey tipped his head back and chugged the hot soup down in one go. He burnt his mouth and throat. He dropped the empty cup on the ground, and shrugged off the blanket. He slipped away towards the makeshift emergency medical tents to find Crimson.

The train station buildings, which so many ponies had packed themselves into, was so far the largest single killer, or at least the biggest number of desperate ponies killed in one go.

It had half caved in, crushing the ponies packed like crates inside. Looking at the ruined building from the outside, one had to wonder how more weren't killed in the collapse. Everything was ruined.

The remains of the train station was the highest point of Haven Hay. Standing up there you only had to turn and look, and even through the rain you'd see only remnants left of what had literally been an inhabited and living town just one day ago. It didn't seem possible, didn't make sense, it was too large, but the storm had destroyed, crushed, blown away, or simply flattened it all. It was just so... desolate, to look down upon now.

The world was wrong. Everything was broken. Prey found Crimson crying.

He'd been moved to the wounded train car, one of the carriages the Night Guards and reinforcements had arrived on. The worst of the injured who could yet be moved were being loaded on one by one, as they were assessed and given what hasty treatment they could manage. The train was going to be sent back to Canterlot just as soon as the worst hurt could be prioritised to and loaded tightly. Prey and Crimson had already been told they were going to be among that number.

There wasn't anywhere for the train engine to turn around, not anymore. It was simply going to have to reverse and push the carriages back along the tracks for hours until it finally got to a station where it could correct its orientation, and only then accelerate back up to full speed.

With great effort, Prey had forced his legs to carry him up the laid-out ramp and into the carriage.

What had been cramped seating with lots of space for packs and bags on the Night Guard’s trip here, was now in the process of being turned into as much of an emergency field hospital as possible. There were already horribly groaning, crying, wailing, whimpering, or frighteningly quiet ponies laid out wherever space could be found, with whatever could be grabbed and used as an excuse for bedding.

The air was already rank with the stink of fear, sweat, vomit, piss, and blood. Not rotting pondweed, but everything else Prey had already experienced over the last twenty hours.

That was where Prey found Crimson, looking so much smaller slumped against the wall and without his armour on. He had his whole head hidden in the crook of his one good wing.

And he was crying.

And that was so very wrong. Prey was the crybaby, not Crimson. Crimson had not cried, not even once through all the disasters Prey had known his friend. Not even from pain.

It was humiliating, to be surrounded by people crying out of agony, and that someone might mistake Crimson's tears as being for same reason.

It burned Prey for a reason he couldn't even begin to put into words. He was used to the screaming of the wounded. Or he could shut it out and hide from it at least.

But Crimson was crying. And there was nothing he could do about it. Crimson’s mental walls cracked, leaking things. Prey blotted it out, he didn't want to know what lay beyond. Not now.

His eyes started stinging, and then Prey was crying too.

Sniffling and biting his lip, Prey limped hesitantly over, and then just abandoned caution and slumped onto the floor beside Crimson.

With a sharp, blubbery inhale Crimson's head jerked out of his unkempt feathers. That too was so very wrong, because Crimson's wings were never unpreened.

Looking past the natural red of his fur, the poison burn scars were as red and inflamed as Crimson's eyes were. His face and ears told the story of despair, yet the burning set deep in his yellow eyes gave voice to the sheer hate he could not express.

On the floorboards between his front hooves, there was a small nugget of metal. It had a fleck of blood on it. Prey realised it was Gloom's clan earring stud.

Prey averted his swimming eyes to the floor in shame.

"T-they just... took him. They tried to murder me, murdered Gloom, murdered my father. Like it meant nothing! Pretending they didn't have a choice…" Crimson finally choked out.

It rang true as a carillon bell. That someone just decided to take what they had.

'The strong take, and the weak suffer.'

In Prey's own chest, the smouldering coals of fury began to build and burn away the blanket of grey ash. He'd been too stunned, but now the feeling was truly coming.

"The strong always take. Take take take. It's always take. Never give. The greedy landlords, Snake, Fire Strike, them, the Guard, all of them. They're so damned proud of their ability to take." Prey spat. He slashed a hoof through the air wildly.

"They think, they just think, because they're strong, because they can pick up a sword and stab, that they can just take! That they can rule the world with magic. All they care about is their ability to take."

He hiccupped, "What's strong about that? It's so easy to kill someone, so damned easy. Poke a hole in the bag of meat, and they die. They don't know how hard it is to save a life instead. Won't even try. They don't c-care, they just..."

"Just take." Crimson finished his words with a hiss of loathing so strong it curdled on the tongue.

Prey slumped even lower, drooping ears dragging on the boards, "I, I take. I took. I did it too. The diamond dogs, they didn't deserve-The changelings! I don't feel guilty, they wouldn't leave me alone! They had it coming, I don't feel guilty, I, I, I... I'm guilty. I hate them, I hate me. I hate this, this Prey."

Crimson didn't know what he was talking about. It didn't matter what he was confessing in his rambling. It didn't matter, it was just the two of them left now. The two prisoners taken by Luna. What was going to happen to them now?

"I hate them. They took Gloom, m-my father, everything. I want, I want to-take-from-them." Crimson held it together until the last few words. But there his voice cracked and the ugly sobs started wracking his chest like a cough he couldn't hold in.

Crimson broke down and reached out in desperation with both his one unbound wing and his forehooves towards Prey.

A plea for comfort as the world he'd rebuilt came crashing down again around the still so young stallion.

And like the ungrateful selfish bastard that he was, Prey shied back from the desperate plea for a hug.

"Please?" Crimson choked out.

Prey was the lowest of the low. Lower than the mud and filth. He couldn't even look at Crimson, "I can't. I'm so, so sorry. But I can't."

Even now, even now after everything, he couldn't give away even this one piece of himself to comfort Crimson? 'I hate Prey.'

"Please? F-for me? Just... just this once please?"

"There's only two things..." Prey managed to mumble, throat dry with shame, "...Only the two things I won't do for you, Crimson."

Crimson drew back in on himself in betrayal, re-covered his head, and cried.

"A-ask me for anything. Anything else. J-just, you just have to ask." Prey tried. His joint plea and excuse fell on deaf ears. 'I hate Luna. I hate the world.’

‘I hate Prey.'

Why the bucking, Zoma'Grika, hungry, Wolfing-Wood-hells couldn't he say yes, just this once?

Crimson sobbed under his folded wing. Prey cried off to the side, separated by a space that was no one’s fault but his own, filled with self-loathing and shame. He couldn't tell Crimson of his one last, desperate and threadbare hope over the piece of Gloom's mind he'd salvaged. Because he couldn't bear to crush Crimson when it failed. It might honestly break Crimson, just like he'd broken when Luna had shown him his heart’s greatest desire and then denied it to him in the same breath.

Hope is such a cruel, cruel thing, and Prey hated it more in that moment than even Clan Myrrdon, because his hope was just a tiny sliver of a chance, and it was going to hurt him all the worse when he failed to make it materialize, despite already knowing the infinitesimal chance of success.

The wounded wailed, begged and also cried around them in the train car. Night Guards rushed more ponies aboard on makeshift stretchers.

Three bedraggled ponies shuffled up the plank, heads and wings hanging. The surviving Border Rangers shamefully picked their way through the wounded, cringing at every wail and cry until they managed to squash in opposite Prey and Crimson.

Inky, Bravo, and Nimbus. This was so similar to the reversal of attitudes which had come with Scenic and Lilly after surviving the horror of Mayflower. Almost exactly the same. A re-enactment.

'The world is mocking me.'

"I am sorry for your loss." Nimbus said in a dull voice.

Prey hated him, that the stallion could shake free of his own grief over Trail Blazer long enough to speak those words to them. How noble, how compassionate.

'How disgusting.'

And now they'd seen him crying like a crybaby, him and Crimson too.

'How dare they.'

Nimbus just kept searching for words, dull eyes straight ahead and ears down, "This is a hard time for many ponies. We've all lost somepony close, close to us. Haven Hay... but the sun will rise again. Celestia's light will guide us-"

"Go away." Prey told him, sniffing loudly.

Nimbus was here to try to comfort them. He was trying to make an honest effort. He didn't know that Prey was at that moment figuring out a plan to kill him for his multiple failures and arrogant mistakes over the course of this whole disaster of a mission.

Inky and Bravo barely twitched at Prey's words, sunken eyes unseeing. Nimbus though tried again rather than retreating inwards to wallow in his own misery, "I, we were there too. I'm sorry this happened to you, to us, nopony deserved-"

"I said go away. All of you. Now." Prey said. Crimson made no move to disagree with him. No move at all, really. Did he even realise the Border Rangers were standing here?

Nimbus blinked numbly, face slack with tiredness, "Huh?"

'-I just want to help us all. We all went through that together-'

"There's no we, no us. We're never going to see each other again after we get back. So just go away." Prey spat, eyes stinging and swimming.

Nimbus blinked again, and frowned. "No." He stated simply.

Prey's whole face twisted. With incredible effort, he smoothed his features back out and took control of himself, while in reality it was the last thing he felt like doing. He wanted to lash out.

Instead, he began to twirl the end of his blue ribbon. The ribbon span in floppy, lazy circles in the air, the sheen of silk catching the light in odd ways.

"Go away. Please." Prey said almost pleasantly.

They went. Nimbus and the other two were here to commiserate and try to share the burden. Prey sent them away, and they went without a word.

If Prey ever saw any of the three remaining Border Rangers again, he would in all likelihood enact his plan to engineer their deaths.

With nothing else to focus on, grief takes over. Time ceases to pass, it just goes round and around. You want to stop hurting, but you can't stop thinking the same things over and over. It was the circle in the ash all over again.

‘I want to stop. I hate it. It hurts. But I can't stop. And round and round you go in an ever-thickening circle of your own bloody hoofprints.’

And so the circle went, until...

Prey blinked, slowly refocusing sore eyes on the train car around them. The sounds of pain and suffering all were suddenly being processed by his ears again.

Crimson had called his name. Prey painfully reoriented his stiff body. His throat felt dry enough to crack.

He swallowed painfully, shamefully, "Yes?"

Crimson wasn't crying any longer. He was just lying slumped there, legs and wing limp, tail splayed back unmoving. Gloom's clan earring was still sitting on the floor between his front hooves. Mental walls tentatively up. With evident great effort, Crimson jerkily turned his head on his own stiff neck.

He looked at Prey. Prey looked back.

"I want something. You said, you said I just have to ask."

"Yes. Just ask. There's only two things I won't, I can't do. So ask it of me." Prey croaked.

Slowly Crimson leaned forwards. It took longer than it should have before Prey realised he didn't want to be overheard. He leaned in too.

Crimson's near whisper was almost wistful, "Can you please kill my clan for me?"

Kill my clan. What had been his clan. A clan which should have been Crimson's family. But which betrayed him and his father instead. Myrrdon, Crimson's once and only clan. And he still called them ‘my clan’. My clan. My responsibility. My fault.

"They never were." Prey told him.

"Never were...?"

"Never were your clan. Never your fault. Because they're nothing."

"It doesn't matter. It's too late now."

"They're nothing." Prey's breath hissed between his teeth.

"I'm the only true Myrrdon left. They defile the name. Traitors. They have to die."

"Crimson-"

"Prey, I want them dead. Those traitors can't live, I refuse. You said, you said I only had to ask. I'm asking. I'll do anything, just please help me kill my clan."

"Crimson, they're nothing."

"You said I just had to ask. I'm asking Prey, so please!" Crimson near begged, ashamed and furious.

"Crimson, you're not listening. They're nothing, because there is nothing left."

A smile that had none of the components of what a smile required. An ugly twisted thing, as out of place as an open wound or a tear in fabric stitched itself across Prey's face.

"I've already done it for you Crimson. For me, for us! They're all so dead. They just don't know it yet."

Slot the tiny cogs together. See how all the delicate pieces fit. It's only now as the mainspring is about to finish unwinding, that the clock hands begin to finally stutter.

A train car which had stunk of rotting pondweed. A train car which for some reason none of the desperate ponies of Haven Hay had turned to for shelter. One which was completely empty when Prey had led them to it for shelter from the storm. A second mind-broken thestral puppet, sent to fulfil a different set of instructions. A puppet who'd jerkily flown on ahead, to the same stinking, slimy train car, and given a message to Lemon Pink waiting inside.

A backup plan. Lemon Pink ordered to follow along behind them to Haven Hay just in case. An ignored train car which had sat undisturbed and forgotten on the tracks, waiting.

Then, all at once, an emergency- a disaster. The storm, Clan Myrrdon's presence and plan revealed, and the hostages imprisoned on the Wailing Crag.

No time, splitting up, and Prey giving an order in the heat of the moment. Another backup plan. Insurance. A just-in-case.

So Lemon Pink had unloaded the forgotten train car's cargo, and stealthily slipped away towards the Weather Tower, taking the long route winding around the hills and out of sight.

She'd arrived too late to trap and kill all the thestrals in the tower, as they'd already used it to fulfil their goals and left and seemingly out of just spite, locked the door behind them. And the massive storm was about to hit. But that was okay. Lemon Pink had shelter that would survive even this storm. A mobile, self-moving shelter. A mass of it, with the weight necessary to avoid being blown away like the houses of Haven Hay, the strength to stay pieced together, and the ability to dig in deep enough into dirt and stone to anchor itself over her.

And so she'd rode out the storm, shielded by a meters-thick locked-together mesh of struts, poles, and limbs. There, Lemon had weathered the eighteen interminable hours of howling darkness and rain. She had water, she had food, and she just had to wait.

The storm had finished. The shelter had opened up and Lemon had emerged out to see the Cliffs of Dove waiting for her. So she'd also waited. And then finally received the signal from Prey.

A strip of metal. Lemon had been waiting, when without warning, the rune in the middle of it soundlessly and without heat melted it in half. It was no message-in-a-bottle or letter. It was the crudest of messaging systems. Yes, or no. And the question has to be known to both parties beforehoof. Yes or no. Initiate the backup plan, or save it. Do it, or don't do it.

Do it.

She had enough knowledge to piece together where it should be aimed. The shelter had shifted, reformed, pieces of the larger whole decoupling and moving and locking back into place. A massive grip on the ground, and a long, long arm. It bent back. And back. And back further until it touched the ground. Like a straining bent bow, the length of two full grown pines laid end to end. Or a catapult. A trebuchet was closest in imagery.

It hummed and groaned with the tension of the strain it put itself under. Then it fired itself into the air and across the Cliffs of Dove, at a velocity that would kill any living being, across an anti-magic divide that would kill any living pony by messing with the journey across.

Over the sea, over the cliffs, and onto the Isle of Dove.

Underhoof, the virgin soil of the Isle of Dove was the rich, dark colour of fertile earth. The salt from the sea didn't reach up here, protected by the sheltering blanket of mist.

This land was beautiful, untouched, and almost perfectly prepared for them. The prophecy had been correct in every regard.

Clan Myrrdon was truly blessed. Already, despite having been prepared for the worst, they'd found traces of tin deposits by complete accident! The rocks had just been waiting there, sitting on the surface half-submerged in beds of moss and mist-dampened fronds. What other raw gifts of abundance were there just waiting to be found?

It was humbling. No thestral of Clan Myrrdon would take this land for granted. Already they were hard at work building lasting shelters, while others began mapping every inch of the land in the mists. There was so much to do, so much to find, so many secrets about this paradise to uncover.

A paradise, because that is what they would make it. Clan Myrrdon had a responsibility to make this land their paradise. This land was theirs, now and forever, bought with blood, sweat, and tears. Their foals’ grandfoals would grow up here. There was so much work to do, but it was with the excitement of discovery that everypony set to it with high hearts.

There was no going back, but why would they even want to? This was their paradise now, their home. And they would build it by their own willing hooves, and not the dictations of a tyrant-goddess.

Their fate was finally back in their own hooves, and beyond the mad alicorn Nightmare Moon's reach forever. Their histories had never let fade from memory the lives Nightmare Moon had discarded of even her own faithful when she finally revealed her true intentions.

Their new safety and freedom had not come without cost, however. Both to their clan, and to the sun ponies who'd lived in the town of Haven Hay. Even after all their precautions and use of the borrowed Weather Tower, the storm had still slipped beyond their control. Clan Elder Pathon had solemnly declared that their sacrifice must not be forgotten, and how a remembrance stone would be erected. Both for the townsponies, and the two thestrals who'd been lost without a trace somehow to the storm. Wasn’t it wonderful though, that almost all the clan had made it?

This land was just so perfect. All their ancestors’ struggles had not been in vain.

Why, even the constant mist shielding the isle from any outside view also helped shield against the sun's intensity, meaning they were finally free to venture forth in the middle of the day without any pain to their more sensitive eyes. Well, as long as they didn't fly higher than the mists, of course.

And that was the greatest blessing of all aside from the land itself. Flight! They'd been prepared to sacrifice their flight if it meant safety. Yet for their faith, in the end it was not a sacrifice required of them at all. Within the strange barriers surrounding the isle, flight was still possible!

For the sake of the generations of Clan Myrrdon to come, they would be forgiven for the crimes they'd been forced to commit to gain this blessed land.

They'd had no choice in the matter. It had been foretold, had it not? And so, the argument had been raised that if a future event was set, and you knew it was set, your actions were therefore unavoidable.

It was a comfort to know that they'd been right in their choice, and to have it confirmed by the bounty of the isle leaping out into your face at every opportunity, almost as if all you needed to do was look, and in answer a rose would bloom wherever your eyes fell.

A middle-aged and weathered thestral stallion and his grown son, completing their assigned task. That of methodically sweeping the woodland and cataloguing all edible and/or poisonous plants they came across in their assigned direction. Clan Myrrdon had enough dried supplies to last two years while the sacks of crop seeds they'd brought grew, but if they could live off the naturally occurring food sources, then all the better.

Until the whole of their new home was completely safely mapped and explored, everypony was to move in pairs. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Yet so far, nothing larger than fat hares had been seen, the bright-eyed animals watching the thestrals with interest and no fear. You could walk right up to them while they were nibbling grass, and they wouldn't run. They'd never seen ponies before.

With a deft hoof, the younger stallion was rifling through a patch of wild roots and herbs growing in the hollow of a lichen-covered boulder.

The tiny, naturally occurring garden was as pretty and perfectly contained as any hoof-arranged herb patch, taken from any fancy pony city. The son had always had a keen talent for foraging, and that wasn't even his special talent.

His father was breathing deeply of the fresh air. The world was always so clean and new after a storm. New air, to go with a new land and new future.

Years of flight meant the older stallion noticed even the slight shift of a disturbed air current as it travelled over the skin of his folded wings. He turned to see what manner of bird it was that had disturbed the eddies of mist.

The thing of wicker and iron and glistening black chitin came bounding out of the mist.

It was so fast.

Legs flung away from itself to grab the ground and launch its body forwards. Teeth, metal and broken. The stink carried before it in a rolling wave of rotting mould.

He was so taken by surprise that for that instant, he didn't even realise he'd snapped up his heavy wingblade to split the things' skull until his blade was already buried in its head-AndItDidn'tStop.

The son spun around, but the monster didn't stop charging even while dragging the half of a torn-off head from his father-!

The fusion of wicker shambler, strengthened with amalgamated changeling muscles and tendons and plates, and all bound together by a rubbery mess of wickerwatch tendrils, swarmed-trampled-lunged over the son in a second.

Implanted fangs, jagged broken chitin, iron hooks and spikes. Not just in the head, but lopsidedly shoved in everywhere.

There followed just three-and-a-half seconds of blood, mortal horror, agonising pain, and heart-stopping violence.

The scarecrow finished ripping apart the corpse, so fresh that the shredded muscles of the heart were still contracting, and then it was bounding off deeper into the mist.

It was undead. It would not slow, sleep, or stop until it was destroyed. If it were destroyed. It was just a thing, it didn't feel or hate.

Yet for all that, it was still a creation born out of hate, and fashioned after an embodiment of hunger.

Smaller than Hard Baked's first attempt. It lacked size, and the strength that such weight and size lent to its strikes. The first scarecrow back in Mayflower had taken Crimson empowered with a magical artefact to finally bring down.

This one was smaller. It was weaker. It was going to tear apart even a squad of armoured and prepared thestrals because it just was not going to stop. And it was not alone.

Through the mist, over the rocks, scores of the scarecrows scrambled, climbed, and clawed, disassembling from a greater whole.

Can you hear it coming? Can you feel it on the wind? This island was a paradise. It was now all...

...Burning away into ash.

Taken by surprise. Scouts caught on the edge of their new land, spreading out and exploring. And the first ones to die. Deserved, undeserved, they were simply the ones most exposed.

Hydie Wisp was flying through the mist, slowly gliding a dozen hooves between each beat of her wings. To any who knew her, they would never have considered she wouldn't be flying. Because Hydie had been born with only nubs instead of rear legs. But she had wings, and you didn't need legs to fly. She'd never been held back by her seeming disability, and tackled every challenge life presented with determined optimism.

And she had willingly chosen to come to the Isle of Dove, knowing full well the risk of losing her flight completely. But for Clan Myrrdon, she had accepted the risk with a brave smile. And in the end, her willingness to sacrifice hadn't become necessary.

This Isle of Dove was beautiful, in the way all ancient woodland was beautiful.

Hydie effortlessly dipped her wing and banked in a long, lazy loop back around to get another look at an odd gulley trickling with rainwater. Were there-? Yes, those were freshwater crabs in there. At some point in the far distant past, they must've climbed up from the sea and adapted. Now, they had no need to ever leave their little world.

Just like Clan Myrrdon now, too. This isle was their new little world. It belonged entirely to them.

With another flap, Hydie lifted herself back up from the gulley and flew on.

"What was it?" Came the floating words of her wingmare. Velvet, firm friend from foalhood, and flying a dozen yards away. Velvet's form was slightly blurry in the mist, but still easily within sight, so that their sweep could cover more ground.

"Freshwater crabs, if you'd believe it." Hydie's voice carried back across the mist.

She was steadily flying. She'd been born to flight, more than that Weather-Tower-obsessed family ever had been. Quite literally.

She was over twenty hooves up in the air.

A scarecrow with a dozen bunched legs launched itself up from the ground as if the intervening distance was nothing.

The drawing of breath to scream-Before the breath could even finish the scarecrow was already in her face. So unbelievably fast. The dozen clawed legs all scrabbling to sink into whatever flesh it could grab in an instant, and then in the next, scrabbling to rip everything it held away from everything else.

A mare who'd grown up from a foal never bowing in the face of adversity. Dead in that instant.

Velvet Night heard the horrible sound of a body ripped to pieces mid-air. It was loud. Bones being snapped and cracked all at once was so very, very loud. Velvet jerked mid-wingbeat and turned to look, not having seen the moment her friend died, only hearing the loud noise unlike any she'd ever heard before.

*clackclackClackClakClatterClak!*

She yelled, then screamed hoarsely. A shadow above her-

*ClackClackClatter-CLACK!"

Her wings folded on instinct, dropping her in the nick of time below the swooping, clattering shape. A thing of six membranous stretched wings, scores more of giant insect ones, wicker spikes, and nothing else. Just an abomination of wings riveted to a frame of clattering bones and-

Fly away. Fly away!

She dove, needing the burst of speed gravity provided more than she needed height to just get away from her twin bringers of death. She just needed enough airspace to desperately beat her wings with all her strength.

The clattering beast had no main body. No front or back, no top or bottom to force its orientation. It flipped backwards on itself, you couldn't fly upside down but the monster could.

*ClatterClackCLACK-Snap!*

Velvet sobbed. The mess of wings and spikes dropped on top of her. Then she screamed for the second and last time. A feverish, almost desperate tearing of everything the flying scarecrow could reach.

Bloody chunks of body, gristle, and hair pattered onto the ground below.

*ClackClaclaclackClatterclack!*

Legs unfolded from that mass like threads coming loose from a patchwork quilt. It sped onwards into the mist. The grey vapour churned, as many erratically flying shapes disturbed the air.

These outermost scouts of the proud clan of Myrrdon were caught without backup as the scarecrows rushed unerringly inland, inexorably drawn towards the concentration of life.

The scouts died first, as scouts always did in war. After that, the clashes of violence came faster.

Like blood in the depths. Here come the angler sharks.

The bulk of Clan Myrrdon were still all together, getting established and planning their next step. They were finally here, but they'd been here for less than twenty-four hours, and it had taken so much effort and risk to get this far. But now they were here, and this new land of plenty was theirs. They were eager to begin, but you had to be methodical and practical. The young, the old, the heavily pregnant, and the few injured and/or sick needed to be seen to first.

There was no rush now, besides their own eagerness. They were here. This protected isle was theirs forevermore. And there is something to be said for taking a moment to count your blessings.

A noise in the mist, still far off. A clattering, repetitive sound. A pair of thestrals uncomplainingly digging temporary latrines paused in shovelling. They raised their heads, tufted ears swivelling to try to catch what the elusive sound was.

"A branch... banging on a rock in the wind?" One suggested.

"No, it's getting louder-Wait, do you see t-?"

The front wave of scarecrows ripped aside the tattered mist as they came charging out.

A score of them on many hooves, spines, and clawed legs. A score more falling, flapping, and churning through the air above.

There was a moment where the world hung still in frozen shock, almost spitefully letting details be clearly seen by those about to be killed. Like turning around on the shore when you felt the touch of a shadow, and saw the cresting wave about to break over you. Wicker, broken chitin plates, raw muscles, and sinew-webbed bones.

There had been a mountainside full of dead changelings, and a sewer full of grown wickerwatch for Prey to harvest. And harvest the rotten spoils of victory he had.

Harvest king, come to play~

One of the digging pair turned and ran. The other was too slow, too stunned. He raised the shovel he'd been using in a pathetic defence.

"To arms! To arms-!"

The shovel head bent, the shaft snapped. The giant pair of jaws that had snatched him up, just jaws, no skin, tongue or cheeks, just oversized metal and wicker and bone jaws, barely slowed as they crunched shut.

It chewed, and didn't even slow in its loping, off-kilter run. It didn't eat, it had no way to swallow, no stomach, but it chewed, and chewed, and chewed as it ran down the second fleeing thestral.

"Myrrdon to arms-!AhHaaraAgkK!"

Screaming, alarm, the beating of many leathery wings in fright, both those rushing forwards with weapons that never left their sides, and also those rushing away.

The ISND had barely overcome the warlock's prototype scarecrow. They'd subsequently lost to the Reaper King. The Reaper King had finally fallen to Prey's veropedes. Prey had lost his veropedes to the amassed magical might of the unicorn thieves. Prey had been futilely searching for a replacement for his mage killer for a long time. In the end, he'd decided to make his own.

It loomed like the onrushing bow of a ship out of the mist, larger than all the rest. A hulking, armoured crab-like scarecrow, a massive juggernaut. Sectioned and layered chitin all over. It accelerated, going faster. A formation of thestrals raised spears, locking together to block its path. The crab-juggernaut just kept accelerating, earth and sod flying.

At the last instant, the formation disintegrated, the thestrals diving aside in every direction. They parted like water and closed up to stab and slash the segment joints in the juggernauts' legs in the hairsbreadth of time it took to thunder past them.

Spears and blades caught in wicker and muscle, getting snatched from wingclaws and hooves. It kept charging straight towards the heart of the new camp!

"Stop it!"
"Bring it down!"
"Don't let it hit!"

Then they recalled the danger. They spun back around to face the rest of the oncoming monstrosities. They had to stop the smaller monsters too, or the camp would be overrun just as surely as if the giant one hit.

The smaller scarecrows were already in midair, ready to pounce as they turned back.

A large thestral dived out of the misty sky, a full-sized lance braced against his armoured chest. His target was the massive juggernaut.

He hit right where the crab-thing’s head would have been, the armour-piercing lance point punching through the wicker and bone and plates of insect shell... and did nothing. Too late, too slow, Myrrdon learned the lesson; an undead has no need of a head.

The stallion gasped in exertion, then abandoned his hopelessly embedded lance. He dropped down onto the monster's body, heedless of the spines and vile stink, desperately pulling out a hoof axe to attack it with instead.

Without even slowing, one massive leg lifted off the ground while the others kept running, jerkily rotated one-hundred and eighty degrees, and then-

*ScccCC-ThWack*

The motion was too fast for the legs' size. It should not have been able to move so fast. The leg had snapped down like no more than a whippy twig, not something the width of a tree.

The crushed remains of the valiant thestral did not slide off, because they were too deeply impaled on the juggernauts' spines. And then the giant scarecrow hit the camp proper.

A mother who'd rushed to a makeshift tent where her baby lay the moment the screaming started felt a shadow. She turned in the tent flap.

The crab monstrosity was not a crab, not truly. It had only looked most similar to a crab with its scuttling run and glistening dull plates. Now it arrived at full speed. Its legs all hit the ground together in sync, and for a terrible moment took the huge creation airborne, still barrelling forwards. Mid-air it... changed.

It was actually most similar to a griffin’s forepaw, their taloned hands, but with far too many talons. And now the giant disembodied taloned hand just... opened up and started grabbing. More talons unsealing from the ‘core’.

Earth, boulders, poles, crates, tents, and the screaming thestrals were swept into the monster’s spiked 'palm' in a cage of 'fingers', and then those taloned 'fingers' crushed shut into a fist.

Rocks being shattered, screaming, deafening noise.

The mass of twisted fingers flung back open, crushed remnants sent flying with the violent motion, the ton of mashed everything dropping.

A frozen moment as the magnitude of the destruction in an instant was ineffectually processed.

Horror, absurdity, then even worse horror as it clicked the absurdity was going to kill every one of them in such a horrific manner too!

The hand-thing lunged outwards again, its’ many jointed tree-length, free moving talons reaching out again.

They screamed, they ran, they flew. A giant fistful of everything in a ten-meter radius was swept up regardless, and crushed.

The talon-walker-crab-scarecrow was huge, it was powerful, it was terror inducing, it was the most eye-catching. It was the biggest, the most seemingly unstoppable, and also the easiest to flee from.

It was the smaller, even faster scarecrows that truly began the merciless killing.

Prey had wanted security. He had wanted to guarantee his own safety. He'd only brought his small scarecrow army along, overseen by Lemon Pink, as a reserve plan.

For revenge, for terrible, terrible revenge and the foreseen request of a friend, he threw his army away. Wasted them on a one-way trip to the Isle of Dove. All of it, sacrificed just like that. All to destroy Clan Myrrdon.

Because they had taken Gloom. Because being sensible didn't matter anymore. Because only making them pay did.

'If I burn, it all burns.' If there's nothing left but ash, then everything is fair in nothing.

Taking to the air, wings beating for all they were worth, racing for the safety of the sky. No, the ground. Land. Fly to the ground. Go down.

Why weren't they flying away? Why were they drifting back down into the upturned waiting jaws?!

Ringing in the head, in the mind. Muffled noises. It was someone familiar calling out, someone you knew. Almost coming from within. Like how you never actually heard what your own voice sounded like.

Distracting, hard to think, and getting harder...

Down. Fly down. Go back down. The ground was safe. Up was bad. Down was up. Up was down. So stop flying.

An aged stallion faltered, grey-furred face screwed up in concentration. His wingbeats slowed. His friend turned back, higher up already, and screamed at him to snap out of it.

He didn't. He turned back around, and willingly flew down to the twisted blood-spattered things waiting below.

His friend screamed until his voice gave out, but he couldn't go back. He could only watch, tears streaming down his muzzle. He should have been paying more attention to his own life.

*clackclackClakClackClackCLA-!*

Death on the ground, death in the sky, death in the mind, death in the eye. Panic is the mind killer. And so is mind magic.

A trio of scarecrows finished running down one thestral, and immediately turned on tireless limbs to race after the next. This thestral was in the air, above the mist, dodging an erratically flying scarecrow. The flying wicker abomination was fast, but so was the thestral when fuelled by adrenaline.

Each diving pass the thestral dodged with a roll of their wings, an exertion of pure willpower. They had the whole sky to manoeuvre in, nowhere to get cornered, but they also had nowhere to hide. Like in the open sea, there's nowhere to go. The shark will catch up eventually. In the end, you will have to turn around and fight.

Corkscrew. *ClackClakcClak!* Dodge, roll, strain!

But they forget, they always do, that there isn't only one shark in the sea. While swimming so desperately away from one, there may be another languidly finning its way to meet you head-on.

People never look up. The thestral should have remembered to look down. Below, the twisted wicker scarecrows opened their bodies-teeth-traps wide. Inside, the grafted, mismatched, bleached spirals of unicorn horns sat embedded in a web of wicker and glistening metal.

Prey had always so desperately desired magic for his own. Dark magic had long ago discovered how to use sawn-off unicorn horns as primitive magical foci to touch the wondrous world unicorns were born with the keys to. But only crudely. Prey had desired more, desired better conduits. He had wanted true unicorn magic, the magical feats only they were capable of with their structured spell matrices!

His experiments and efforts had all fallen short of any true spellcasting.

Even so, his failed attempts were still good for something. Waste not want not, right? After all, you never knew where your next meal was going to come from.

The Hunt. Someone's always got to be the prey for someone else to eat.

And in this case of wicker, raw muscle, metal teeth, and black carapace, it was as ugly as death. A crude, wonky area-of-effect spell formed as the scarecrows combined what limited magic the stolen horns could channel.

Another wave of numbing mental static hit out of nowhere. Land. Safety. Down. Fall. Fall down. Fly down. Backwards. Fall backwards.

The thestral missed a wingbeat, struggling mid-air in the mist. Long enough for the invisible field of basic, barely-structured magic to clumsily reach him.

The simplest form of energy in the whole world is heat. Ambient magic is also present near everywhere. To convert this unrefined magic into the form of heat is easy. Fire is just fuel, heat, and air.

In the open sky, there is air everywhere. Magic can provide the heat so easily. And you'd be surprised how quickly the fuel of fur can be ignited. It caught just the same way wool did.

The flagging, mentally reeling thestral did not burst into flames, it was nothing as sudden or dramatic as that. No shooting tongues of flame, no explosion. They just, smouldered. All at once, and across every inch of their body which the magic touched.

Smoke, all their fur heated and crisped to black stubble at once, wing membrame curling up and flaking away in cinders. And the skin, the flesh, the living person under their fur...

White agony, burning, burning, burning everywhere. Blindness. Blackness. Falling.

Death.

The scarecrows closed back up, snapped together, reformed, whatever adjective applied to such constructs. Then tirelessly and methodically raced after the next bright pulse of life.

There was nowhere to hide, only distance could dim the invisible beacon drawing the scarecrows on. But the Isle of Dove was finite. The strange, anti-magic barriers could be a cage as easily as protective walls, and Clan Myrrdon had willingly locked themselves away here in their new paradise. Their last ever clan hold.

Every life large and complex enough on the island at this point was just a dwindling candle waiting to be snuffed out.

Take take take, it's always reach out and take! Selfish. Everyone's always so selfish. It's always 'them', never 'us', because I'm 'me' and I'm part of the 'us'. We're the good guys. Our story is the good one, because it's about us.

A person never thinks of themselves as the bad guy. They always have a good reason, a motivation, a justification.

So does the villain. But who's the villain? Two wrongs don't make a right. So who was right, and who was wrong? Or who was more in the wrong?

Who cared? There was no right or good here. Just selfishness. Clan Myrrdon were selfish. They took what they wanted.

Prey was selfish too. He would also take what he wanted.

Despair, nowhere to run, nowhere to fly, nowhere to hide.

Clock hands slowing, missing ticks, losing time, grinding down towards a final halt.

Stay on the ground, or attempt to hide.

Elder Nexus Fate of clan Myrrdon heard the fatal clacking coming from outside. His heart pounded in his head, reverberating inside this soggy moss-filled crevice under the boulder. He was afraid. Please Goddess, he couldn't-just not to those things, with the splinters and teeth, please just not like that!

A long, barbed, wicker limb thing shoved into the crevice. The hooks and claws scrabbling on the stone.

Deaf to the screaming, it dragged out the hooked life from inside, like the meat out of an oyster.

Take to the mist-filled sky, your home element. Outmanoeuvre the flying horrors that were faster in a straight line. Try to form flight groups, find clouds, use numbers to fight back.

The breath sawed in her throat. She was almost gagging with fear with every intake, but she was a warrior of Myrrdon. Bravery had never been the lack of fear, and a warrior was brave. She repeated the mantra over and over. A warrior was brave! There were young bloods up here half her age fighting for their lives!

But the crossbow in her hooves still wouldn't stop shaking. It kept throwing off her aim, she couldn't draw a bead! She shrieked in abject desperation at herself.

The brave ones died one by one. They tried to fight in flight formations, covering each other at all times. Their efforts didn't even slow the remorseless process of picking off one thestral after another.

Stunned and tricked into suicide by constant and insidious mind attacks. Cooked one by one mid-air from the ground without warning.

In those first seconds of contact, back on the ground... so many dead. Within just a minute, more.

By five minutes, less, as those still alive flew or ran away. But they still died. One by one, by one, by one.

Thirty minutes, the half of the clan left, all those still alive, were all clustered in the air, as high as they could get. Above the mist, above the remnant storm, the unfeeling sun beat down mercilessly.

An hour, then two hours later, they were still up there. And they were still losing ponies. The rate was just a trickle, but like a hole in the bottom of the hourglass, the sand leaking out would never go back in.

Flying past their limits as their wings tired, fighting as their weapons did nothing, crying as someone they knew was picked off next, and screaming when it was their turn.

The scarecrows never stopped, never paused. Just the remorseless, relentless, never-ceasing assault of things which did not tire, feel, hate, live, or even hunger. The millstone does not care. It just grinds wheat into dust as the farmer's hoof turns the wheel.

Dust to sand, sand in the hourglass, a crack in the glass, time draining away, the stuttering clock hands nearly still.

Five hours.

Clan Myrrdon, of a thousand years of survival. Clan Myrrdon, with a rich and deeply-layered history. Clan Myrrdon, dwindling to nothing over five measly hours because of the hate of one runt lamb.

Bone splinters. Gristle. A charred corpse. Congealed blood. Shreds of splattered muscle. The foul reek of punctured bowels and guts splashed across the forever dew-beaded ferns.

The scarecrows did not take them all, not in the end. The end, their end, the last despairing thestrals chose for themselves. An end.

A last act of spite, or was it just a desire not to die to those teeth and claws? They flew as high up as their failing wings would carry them, and then folded them for the last time. They squeezed their eyes shut, clung on to one another, and gave in to the inevitability of gravity.

No one was there to witness it. None would ever remember the last flight of Clan Myrrdon.

"Not fair not fair! Not! Fair! It's never fair! All this death and over what? A made-up lie some senile elder slapped the sticker of prophecy on centuries ago! And because of some stupid comet Luna wanted to trick everyone with, they all believed it! It's not fair..."

With the last beacon of sentient life on the Isle of Dove extinguished, the scarecrows just stopped.

Statues. Not a single twitch, just the faint creaking every so often as wicker and strung tendons slowly lost their tension. There was no need for them to move anymore. A hammer does not move once placed down. It will lay there and rust forevermore.

Mist would settle, lichen and moss may even grow on them as they slowly decayed and faded, but the terrible scarecrows would never move again.

There was no reclaiming them now. The mysterious barriers thrown up by the Cliffs of Dove ensured the trip had been one way.

What a waste. What a monumental waste of time, of magic, of life. All of these tools, sacrificed and thrown away in a moment of hate, in service to the desperate and unfulfilling need for revenge.

Prey had done it, and would do it again. Crimson had asked, like Prey had known he would. He'd pre-emptively fulfilled Crimson's wish. It was empty.

It was so empty above the silent and still scarecrows on the Isle of Dove.

Forgive, forget? Never. Impossible. Not for this theft of Gloom, nor for what had been stolen before. Prey couldn’t forget. Prey wouldn't forget.

'The darkest hour is before the dawn, and even this too, must end.'

(NOTE on the concept Art: This is just a base modle of a wicker shambler, not built up or 'modified' at all. More or less one of the simplest ones Prey would still have wondering around in Canterlot's sewers. Also, I didn't really paint the teeth, I edited and messed around with a cut-out from a different picture).

Editor: Panem et Circenses, thank you.