I watched the little portside bar burn down. I would have preferred to jump in and help the villagers trying to put out the fire and keep it from spreading to any of the nearby buildings, but that wasn’t really an option when I was still in chains and guarded by idiots who thought it was more important to keep an innocent pony chained up than to do something productive. Life is so frustrating at times.

At least Mayor Okan seemed to be just as frustrated, based on the way he was glowering at the sergeant he had sent after Ephemera. The sergeant looked like he’d had a rough time of it; he was bruised all over, and the left side of his face was badly swollen. The rest of the guards who’d been with him didn’t look any better. None of them met the Mayor’s gaze as he addressed them, and only the sergeant managed the dignity of standing at attention staring off into the distance like a good soldier.

“So let me get this straight,” Okan said, condescension dripping off his words. “Instead of seizing this Ephemera, you got yourselves beaten up, captured, then allowed this pony and her minions burn down the bar and carry you off as hostages so she could escape into the jungle?”

“Yes sir,” the sergeant said with careful neutrality. “There were more of them than we expected.”

“A whole bar’s worth, according to you,” Okan sneered. “Mind telling me how a small army managed to get into my town without anyone noticing, sergeant?”

The sergeant remained stock-still as he answered. “They didn’t advertise who they were all working for before they attacked.”

Okan stepped into the sergeant’s personal space. “That’s why I give you money to get people to spy on visitors, so that we know what’s going on in our town and so stuff like this doesn’t happen.”

“Yes sir.”

It didn’t particularly surprise me that Okan had some sort of little spy network in his town, even if it didn’t seem particularly effective. I’d been to enough small towns like this to know that whoever was in charge liked to treat their community as their own little fiefdom. That meant controlling the guards, information, and the money. And based on what I saw here Okan had a grasp on all three, even if that looked like a tenuous hold on a little port that barely held onto the coast against the wilderness and Dromaed.

Okan’s teeth clenched as he continued. “And now we’ve got a rogue band of misfits roaming the countryside causing who knows what kind of trouble for our farms. And I don’t even want to know what sort of trouble they’ll kick up with the Dromaed once they get that far. Because they will. A lot like that doesn’t stop with a little bit of arson.”

“Yes sir.”

“Any other bad news you’d like to report, sergeant?”

“No sir.”

The Mayor growled from deep in his throat and waved the sergeant off. “Get to putting this fire out already, I’m done looking at your ugly mug. And try not to make it worse. I’ve already got enough work on my hooves sorting out the rest of our ‘guests’ and sending a message to the Dromaed explaining this Ephemera’s gang has nothing to do with us.”

“Yes sir.” The sergeant seemed to believe that discretion was the better part of valor, and returned to his fellow guards barking out orders to get back to efforts to control the fire.

The matter taken care of, Okan turned back to me and Capital. “This is a fine mess that’s been dropped into my lap.”

My nostrils flared as Okan glared at us. I could see him blaming us for what happened, despite how we’d warned him about the dangers. “So do you finally believe me that Ephemera’s an evil nag?”

Okan grunted. “Can’t say she’s left a good impression thus far. But just because she’s proven she’s trouble doesn’t mean you’re all saints.”

“Oh, come on!” I stomped a hoof and made my chains rattle. “We’ve been cooperating with you!”

Okan snorted. “Still doesn’t change the fact that’d I’d probably save myself a lot of grief locking the lot of you in a cell until I can pack you onto the first available ship. At least then you’d be someone else’s problem.”

That was about the exact opposite of what I wanted to happen, and it was all I could do not to jump at him. “And what about Ephemera? We can help you take her down. You need all the help you can get when you go after her.”

“No such thing’s happening as long as I’m mayor.” Okan spat. “That lot’s too dangerous to go chasing after. They already beat up half the town’s guards, and I’m not about to lead the militia into the jungle if I can help it.”

My eyes narrowed. “So you’re really just gonna do nothing? Ephemera’s allowed to just walk away and do whatever she wants?”

A short bark of a laugh escaped from Okan. “Hardly. As far as I’m concerned, that pack of lunatics just walked into a death trap. My plan is to let the tyrant lizards and Dromaed deal with them; if any of the fools manage to stumble their way back here then all they’ll win is a short rope and a long fall from us.”

“And you think that’ll be good enough?”

The Mayor shrugged. “It’s been good enough for most of the troublemakers that go running off into the jungle. You can ask the rest of the folks in town how well that worked out for them. Most of the time we never see them again, and that suits me just fine.”

Capital stepped forward, wearing one of his perpetually idealistic smiles. “Now I understand you’re upset about the bar—I know I would be if my favorite watering hole got burned down by some rapscallions—but that hardly seems like a good reason to punish us. We hardly did anything wrong.”

Okan sniffed derisively. “You being here and causing me trouble is plenty wrong in my book.”

“Now now, there is no need to be sour.” Capital wrapped an arm around Okan’s shoulders, and Okan stiffened at the touch. He probably wasn’t used to physical contact from others, especially strangers. “I understand things have been stressful for you and your townsfolk, and it’s simply awful what’s happened to your guards and the bar. Why I was thinking to give your town a bit of a donation.”

Okan’s eyes narrowed. “A donation?”

Capital flashed him a friendly smile. “Indeed. Something to help those poor folks who lost their business and help cover the medical expenses for your guards.”

“And what’s the catch?” Okan demanded. “You bribe us with some money and then we let you go waltzing into the jungle?”

“We can’t make you do anything, my good mayor,” Capital said. “Though we would greatly appreciate it if you let us continue with our expedition. Either way, I don’t see a reason why I couldn't give out a little bit of coin to help some people in need.”

“Besides, we might be able to stop Ephemera from causing even more trouble if you let us go,” I told him. “And the Dromaed could use a warning about who they’re dealing with, and I’ve beaten her plenty of times. You can’t like the idea of her causing all this trouble and then getting to walk away.”

Okan hissed through his teeth and turned his back to us as he growled something under his breath. “Fine, if you’re all crazy enough to head into the jungle then go on ahead. You’d probably just sneak your way out if I tried to stop you anyways.” He whirled around and jabbed a hoof into my chest. “Though I’m washing my hooves of you the second you pass through the gates! Don’t count on me or any of my people to bail you out if you get in over your heads.”

I scowled at him. “Hey, I already said we know what we’re doing.”

Okan snorted. “If that were actually true you wouldn’t have come here to start with. Unless you’re just plain suicidal, which I’m starting to think is the truth of it.”

I flashed him a fierce grin. “Not the first time I’ve heard that one.” I held up my arms to show him my shackles. “Now are you gonna get these off of me already? We’ve got work to do.”

Okan grunted and nodded to one of the guards watching over me. He pulled out a key and started unlocking my chains. “When’re you planning on heading out?”

The chains chafed something awful, and it felt good to rub my legs once they were freed. “Tomorrow at first light. We’ll be ready to go by then.” I would’ve liked to head out immediately, but it was getting late and we still had other preparations to make. By the time we had everyone together and ready to go it’d probably be dark, and I didn’t want to tackle the jungle when we wouldn’t be able to see ourselves stepping on brightly colored poisonous snakes or right into the jaws of some apex predator.

“Works for me,” Okan grunted. “The sooner you’re all out of my hair the better.”

“Hopefully you’re not too eager to get rid of us,” Capital said, still all smiles. “We did talk about sampling another drink or two before being interrupted.”

Okan sighed but nodded. “Fine, I could use a strong drink after the day I’ve had. Let me deal with everything here first and then we’ll retire for the evening.”

I wasn’t quite sure how Capital had won this prickly mayor over, maybe it was just because he was bribing him with booze, but I was willing to work with it if it got us where we wanted to go. “Sounds good. Capital and I need to talk about a couple of things anyways.”

“Suit yourselves.” Okan left us to direct the zebras working to put out the fire.

I let out a huff before speaking to Capital. “Well that was a whole load of trouble with nothing to show for it.”

Capital nodded in agreement as he sighed. “Seems so. And here I was hoping Mayor Okan would be able to deal with Ephemera. It would have made things much simpler for us.”

I shook my legs out to get the blood pumping in them again. “No such luck. Ephemera’s an idiot, but somehow she always seems to find a way to escape the authorities. She’s a big cockroach like that.”

“And now I’m afraid we’re in a race again.” Capital ran a hoof through his mane. “I’d feel a lot better if it was just some friendly competition. But all of this...” He waved at the smoldering remains of the bar. “This is too much. The bar, attacking the guards, burning the Buried Treasure ... is finding the City of Giants before we do really worth this much to her?”

“I told you she was an evil nag, didn’t I?” I waved him over to the side to talk in privacy. “She’ll do anything to get what she wants, including hurting others. Hay, I’m pretty sure she likes hurting people.”

Capital frowned. “I just have trouble believing somepony can be like that. It’s just so-so ... evil.”

I shrugged. “You heard her back on the ship. She thinks it’s a dog eat dog world, and that it’s better to do onto others before they can do onto you.”

“I heard her.” Capital crossed his arms. “I guess I just still don’t understand it. I mean, intellectually I get it. We all have to look out for ourselves to some degree. But there’s looking out for your own best interests, and then there’s hurting people—I mean really hurting them—that I can’t understand.”

“Probably because you’re such a nice guy, Capital.” I turned to face him, knowing there was something I needed to say. “And don’t stop being a nice guy. Don’t let people walk all over you or anything dumb like that, but there’s nothing wrong with being nice to people when you can be.”

Capital gave me a big, dopey smile and wrapped a leg around my shoulders. “See? I knew you cared.”

I turned my head away. Ugh, I knew I was getting too sentimental here. “Whatever. Mind if we keep our heads in the game instead of getting all emotional? We’ve got a lot of work to do so we’ll be ready first thing tomorrow.”

Capital nodded. “Of course. What should we tackle next?”

“Did you manage to finish that purchase we were working on before that thief showed up?”

“I did.” Capital waved to his butler. “Proper, mind getting Miss Do her bracers?”

“Of course sir.” Proper ruffled through his saddlebags to present a pair of bracers to me. They were pretty normal: stuff that any skilled blacksmith could have made, except a layer of rubber had been glued to them. That had been trickier to arrange, but a quick examination showed that the rubber was still stuck tight.

I tied them to my forearms to make sure they still fit right—no sense risking some greedy merchant trying to cheat us—but a quick check confirmed everything was alright. “Hm, everything looks good.”

Capital frowned as he watched me move around with the bracers. “You are sure those are going to work?”

“They’re gonna have to,” I said. “They’re the best counter I can think of on such short notice for whatever that Puzzle guy might throw at me. I got a look in his bags; the guy’s packing daggers that I’m sure Ephemera would love to have stuck in me. At least now I’ll have something to block them with.” I did not relish the idea of getting in a knife fight with Puzzle. He’d been tough enough to fight when all he had were his hooves, and if he was as good with his weapons then I really had something to worry about.

“And the rubber layered in them?”

“I’m hoping will block his magic shock gauntlet.” I frowned as I thought back to the fight on the Buried Treasure. “He flash-fried a shark with that thing, and I’d rather not try it for myself.” Not that I was overly eager to block the equivalent of a lightning bolt with something attached to my leg, but I didn’t have many other options. Maybe if we were in an actual city I could buy a talisman or potion to give me electricity resistance, but this crappy little port town only barely qualified as civilization so I’d have to make do.

“Hopefully you won’t have to find out,” Capital said. “I’d rather not get into a fight to start with.”

“Me either, but I know my luck. And it’s better to have and need not than to need and have not.” I shot him a grin. “Besides, it’ll be fun to see the look on Puzzle’s face when he sees his ace in the hole doesn’t work.”

This one hated the jungle. If not for our compasses it would have been utterly impossible to navigate. Even so we still had to slowly weave our way through trees, fallen logs, and other obstructions. Four strong individuals with machetes led our column through the wall of green, but we were still moving at an unbearable crawl unless we lucked out and found an animal trail that led in the direction we were going. The humidity was absolutely stifling and close to unbreathable. No relieving breeze penetrated the trees. With all the talk of the dangers of tyrant lizards and Dromaed, everyone had somehow neglected to mention the more mundane hazards of the jungle. We were constantly beset by biting mosquitoes and other bugs of unusual size, most of which probably carried diseases or poisons. There was a plurality of snakes and other dangerous animals hiding in the underbrush, and more than one of the Ephemera-mare’s minions had already learned the hazards of the jungle the hard way.

This one had believed itself ready for the jungle. This one was hardly a stranger to tropical heat, having experienced the island jungles of its home. But the Dromaed’s jungle was a magnitude worse than anything else it had ever experienced up to that point, and this one was starting to feel increasingly out of its depth. That was not a pleasant feeling. This one liked to feel in control, but the Ephemera-mare’s despotic neglectful leadership and the oppressive jungle surrounding it steadily eroded any feeling this one had of being the master of its destiny.

This one’s confidence was not helped by its frustrating lack of knowledge. Any inquiries to determine where exactly we were going or how long it would take were met by a disdainful sneer and rebuke from the Ephemera-mare. She had already told this one that we were to meet with her patron, and she wasn’t willing to tell this one more than that. Trying to gather information from her minions wasn’t any more helpful. None of them seemed to know where we were going either and universally clammed up when this one asked about the Ephemera-mare’s patron.

At first this one thought this was merely because they knew to keep their mouths shut or simply truly didn’t know anything, but as the universal nature of their reactions to this one's inquiries became clear, this one grew suspicious. Any attempts at bribery, favor trading, or giving a sympathetic ear to their plights were all stonewalled by silence. There was always a disgruntled employee who thought their boss was a son-of-a-bitch, someone experiencing a moment of weakness, or an individual who’d happily tell you anything for some extra coin, and this one had gotten very good at spotting those people and pumping them for information. The complete lack of success here was extremely unusual.

This one found out why the minions were so tight-lipped when it examined them for magic: they were under a geas. This one wasn’t enough of an expert on magic to determine the exact nature of the geas, but it could tell that it was complicated and had a powerful compulsion to it. One aspect must have been to remain silent about their master, though if there was more added to that this one could only guess. The fact there was a geas told this one a few things. The first was that the Ephemera-mare’s patron had access magic that allowed him put geases on people, no small feat considering the number of individuals under their spell. Second was that he was very determined to keep the silence of his employees. That was prudent when he was obviously up to illegal activities; more than one criminal empire had crumbled thanks to a loose tongue.

Unfortunately, that was about the extent of what this one could find out. That the Ephemera-mare’s patron had hired individuals from such a wide area told this one he had reach, not to mention wealth to organize an expedition this size. Even cheap muscle added up when you hired dozens of bodies, especially when you had to account for costs of equipment, food, and other necessities. Also he was interested in the artifacts in the City of Giants. A pity that that didn’t exactly narrow things down. This one could name half a dozen individuals rich enough to arrange this expedition off the top of its head who had the black market ties to sell stolen historical artifacts.

The fact he was going to meet us out in the middle of this gods-forsaken wilderness was unusual, if the Ephemera-mare was telling the truth anyways. Most of the sufficiently rich were more than happy to let hired help take on the truly dangerous tasks needed to maintain their monetary empires, especially when doing those jobs would take them away from their power bases. He must have thought this was so important that it absolutely required his personal attention, though this one could only guess why.

And so for that first week of our trek through the jungle, this one’s thoughts were its principle companion. This one still tried to pry what information it could from those around it; not like there was much else to do given the situation it found itself in. Thus this one headed over to the Ephemera-mare after we had stopped for a break. This one hadn’t been able to get much out of her thus far, but sooner or later this one was bound to dig up something useful, hopefully.

Even the Ephemera-mare had been forced to allow her minions regular breaks due to the backbreaking and sweaty work required to penetrate the jungle. She had taken to sitting on a fallen tree while her guards stood over her. This one sat on the ground opposite of her and gave her a friendly smile. “I trust you’re doing well today?”

The Ephemera-mare snorted as she pulled out a cigarette from her pack. “Hardly. It’s hot, it’s muggy, we’re in the middle of damned nowhere, and we’ve only been making a couples miles of progress every day.” She let out an irritated huff. “I’m getting tired of how long this is taking.”

This one agreed, but complaining rarely did much good. “Is our rate of progress going to be a problem? I can’t imagine your boss will wait forever for us.”

“Let me worry about that,” the Ephemera-mare declared, lighting her cigarette.

This one pushed down its irritation at her unhelpful answer. “And how much further do we have to go?”

The Ephemera-mare cocked an eyebrow. “Why are you so worried about that? Do you have someplace to be?”

“I just like to know what to expect,” this one explained. “We can hardly spend forever in the jungle before we run out of supplies.”

She waved this one’s worries off. “We’ll be fine. Just stand to the side until I find something worthwhile for you to do. Now be quiet; I already have to deal with everyone else’s senseless prattle all day long, and I want a few minutes of peace and quiet.”

As though to spite her, just then one of the bigger and meaner goons approached her. “Lady Ephemera, I looked into ... the problem. It’s worse than we thought.”

The Ephemera-mare took a long draft of her cig before replying, with the smoke briefly hanging in the air around her. “How much worse?”

The goon’s eyes darted about as he looked like he badly wanted to be somewhere else. “I looked everyone over and several of us have been bitten. All the same way too.”

She took another puff. “I see.”

This one raised an eyebrow. “Bitten? What do you mean?”

In truth, this one knew exactly what this matter was about. This one wasn’t content allowing its thymoplasm to run out during a long trip, so it had taken to preying on the Ephemera-mare’s goons to feed. Such work had to be done very carefully unless this one wanted to get discovered. This one couldn’t imagine the Ephemera-mare would be understanding of its nature, much less the goons this one had been feeding on, so it had deliberately ambushed and fed on lone individuals who left the camp during the middle of the night. Thanks to the dark nighttime jungle and this one’s training, the task had been relatively simple and thus far no one had raised the alarm while this one was out feeding. Though there was the matter that this one’s activities could hardly go unnoticed indefinitely, especially when it had refrained from killing anyone. This one had considered disposing of its victims, but in the end decided against it. A bunch of bodies piling up would undoubtedly have quickly caused a great stir in the expedition, but with everyone surviving their encounters with this one the reaction had been slower in coming.

The Ephemera-mare waved this one off. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. Leave us.”

This one considered debating with the Ephemera-mare to say that it could help with whatever problem there was, but thought better of it. While it would have been nice to know whatever she was up to, it wouldn’t do for this one to appear too eager to help, potentially raising suspicion against itself. In the end, this one could ask everyone else what the Ephemera-mare was up to with a reasonable expectation of success. Besides, it wasn’t like the Ephemera-mare was prone to listening to this one anyways. Best to save its influence for when it really mattered, especially when this one’s employer seemed most comfortable with blind obedience.

So this one stood up and dusted itself off. “Alright then. If you need my help you know where I’ll be.”

The Ephemera-mare didn’t comment as this one walked away, instead concentrating on smoking her cigarette in silence. All the more foolish on her part. She could have put this one in an awkward situation where it would’ve been forced to advise on how to capture itself. If she wanted to only plan using her own skills then let her reap the consequences. This one would merely have to be more careful with its feedings in the future. It might pay to restrain itself for a couple of days in order to lull everyone into a false sense of security.

With the attempt to get more information out of the Ephemera-mare more or less a bust, this one decided to try and chat it up with the other hired help. While they weren’t willing to talk about who was in charge of all of this, this one might be able to pull something out of the aether by asking about other things like where all of them came from and their previous work. All information is relevant if you know how to put the pieces together.

But this one didn’t get very far before a startled cry caught this one’s attention. It followed the sound to find something it didn’t like the sight of: the Alya-mare was struggling as one of the Ephemera-mare’s goons as he tried to take her saddle-bags away from her. Surrounding them were a hooffull of other individuals watching on with unpleasant grins as the zebra merchant tried to fight off her assailant.

“Come on, let's see what you’ve got,” the goon said as he tried to take the bag from her. “I want to see if there’s anything worth having a look at.”

“I said let go!” The Alya-mare twisted the bag around, bringing the goon closer to her as her elbow snapped up to smash him in the muzzle. The goon cried out in pain and released her. The Alya-mare moved to get away, but one of the other goons lounging nearby extended a leg to trip her. The Alya-mare lost her footing and fell on her face, to the hoots and hollers of the crowd.

“You gonna take that?!”

“Show her what’s for!”

“Now it’s getting good!”

This one scowled as it considered what to do. This situation was going to escalate quickly out of hoof; the Alya-mare might even be hurt or killed, something this one didn’t want to see. For one, this one had negotiated a deal with the her. That came with a certain level of professionalism, which this most certainly was not. The Ephemera-mare shouldn’t tolerate this type of thing in her camp, but this one was sure that going to her to try and stop this would just result in cold indifference. That left this one alone to act. Though that would come at considerable risk; it was difficult to say how many of the goons would react poorly to this one’s interference in their fun, and this one couldn’t hope to beat the dozens of them present in the camp, even if the jungle had taken its toll on them as well.

But if this one didn’t act, no one else would. And truthfully, this one was growing sick of feeling hopeless and like the whole world was against it. It wanted to do something, and here was something it could at least feel good about doing. Perhaps not the smartest thing this one could have done from a survivalist perspective, but life was about compromises.

So this one stepped towards the campfire that everyone was centered around. “Excuse me, but I don’t think that’s a particularly professional way to act towards someone in our little expedition.”

The goon looked up from shoving Alya’s face in the dirt to glare at this one. “Nobody asked you, pal.”

This one glanced at the pot of beans cooking in the fire as it spoke with cool detachment. “No, which is why I’m inserting myself into this. Leave her alone. There’s plenty of other ways for you to have your fun. Cards is always a good choice.”

The goon snorted and then nodded to some of his buddies. A half dozen stood up, all of them grinning at this one. “And what’re you gonna do if we say no?”

This one sighed and scratched the side of its head. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”

This one then snatched up the pot from the campfire to splash the boiling beans into the head goon’s face. He squealed in pain as he tried to wipe the burning morass from his face, stumbling back from this one and off the Alya-mare. Without missing a beat, this one swung the pot to smack against the head of the next nearest goon, sending him to the ground. This one judged the pot unlikely to survive another use, tossing it away into the face of a goon that charged it. It struck him right in the muzzle, momentarily stunning him.

While this one had seized the initiative, it was still badly outnumbered, and now others were starting to close in on this one, even if it was with more than a hint of hesitation. One of them took a swing at this one’s head, but it parried the strike and stepped inside his guard. Then this one quickly grasped him and shoved him into the campfire. He howled and crawled off the fire as fast as he could, rolling on the ground to try and put out where his coat had begun smoldering.

Two other goons moved in on this one’s flanks. Given it couldn’t back up anywhere without running into more groups of goons, this one was forced to stand its ground. They each threw punches at the same moment, and this one dodged to the side of one while blocking the attacks of the other. This one snapped a hoof into the blocked goon's face to stun him, then it turned on his compatriot who was pressing his own attack. This one turned aside a pair of punches before catching his arm with this one’s right arm, thus uppercutting his elbow. There was a pop as the elbow disconnected, and this one let the screaming goon jerk away. This one barely got its defenses back in place in time to hold off a renewed attack by the other goon. But when he overextended himself to press his advantage, this one knocked one of his strikes to the side and elbowed him in the throat in the same motion. His eyes bulged as he instinctively grasped his windpipe. The opening let this one chop him on the shoulder, forcing his whole leg to spasm and a follow-up blow to the side of his temple sent him to the dirt.

This one immediately went back into a defensive stance and quickly assessed its surroundings. The goons this one had picked a fight with didn’t seem particularly eager to continue, all either disabled or hurt enough that the fight had been taken out of them. Sadly that didn’t seem to extend to the rest of their compatriots. Other groups of goons glowered at this one, clearly unhappy with how their fellows had been manhandled and their fun disrupted. All told there were a couple dozen of them, not good odds in the least. Bad enough odds in fact that this one was considering using one of its remaining fire gems and drawing a dagger or two. This one hardly intended on dying this day, and it placed a much higher value on its life than theirs. The Ephemera-mare might react poorly to this one using such methods, but one had to survive the short term before the long term became an issue.

This one was considering its other options, like talking the goons down before this got really ugly, when help came from an unexpected quarter. A vial flew past this one and broke as it impacted the ground right in front of the gathering goons. A noxious green smoke exploded out and encompassed them. This one instinctively covered its muzzle and took several steps back; whatever the gas was it was potent enough to make this one’s eyes water even well away from where it billowed out.

It was far worse for the goons caught in the noxious cloud. They coughed violently, tears and snot pouring down their faces, and more than one ended up retching. Not all of them had been caught by the initial cloud, but another two vials joined the first, and soon all the goons had been enveloped by the smoke. The crowd very quickly worked to disperse in every direction as they desperately tried to escape the cloud that assaulted their senses, any fight left in them now completely gone.

The Alya-mare stepped next to this one, another vial in her hoof ready in case any goon decided they wanted another one. “You like that, you bastards?! You wanted what was in my bags?! Well there you are! Try that again and you won’t be getting off easy with just crying like a bunch of foals and puking your guts out!”

In a moment of wisdom, none of the goons replied, instead making good in their escape as the cloud slowly dispersed.

This one raised an eyebrow as it watched the merchant glower at their retreating backs. “Well, this wasn’t how I expected things to turn out.”

The Alya-mare sniffed and returned her potion to a bandolier at her waist. “How did you plan on that ending? You fighting all of them and somehow coming out on top against twenty-to-one odds?”

This one shrugged and motioned for us to move where the impromptu camp was less crowded. “I had a trick or two up my sleeve if it came to that.” This one flashed her a grin. “Not that I mind the save.”

“Likewise.” The Alya-mare huffed and ran a hoof through the braids in her mane. “Things could have gotten really ugly if you hadn’t shown up when you did. Those bastards have been bothering me since we stopped in the port, and they just weren’t taking no for an answer.”

“So I noticed. I’m guessing Ephemera didn’t do anything to rein them in?” This one looked over its shoulder to make sure no goons were following us, but it seemed they were done for the day.

She shook her head. “No, when I asked her to tell her dogs to back off she told me I was an adult and to deal with it myself.”

“I was afraid that was the case. Then it seems we have a problem on our hooves.”

“You’re telling me.” The Alya-mare sat down on a fallen log and rubbed the side of her brow. “I wanted to work with some people willing to bend the rules a bit so that I could get those seeds. Not ... this. What Ephemera did to the Buried Treasure...”

“Was completely out of line,” this one finished. “I have to admit, this is starting to spin out of control.” Being troubled wasn’t a hard sentiment for this one to relate with, and could be useful for interacting with the Alya-mare. The Ephemera-mare’s goons might be in lockstep with her, but that was clearly not the case with the Alya-mare. That could be used to this one’s advantage. Allies were almost always useful, especially in circumstances such as these.

This one leaned up against a nearby tree, one of the great towering things that made up the vast jungle around us. “All things considering, I’m thinking it might be smart if we start looking out for ourselves. Just saying, I don’t think our travel companions are looking for mutually beneficial business propositions.”

The Alya-mare studied me for a time before replying. “That sounds right. Are you proposing an alliance of some sort?”

“Why not?” This one flashed her a wry grin. “The way I see it, we’d both be better off watching each other’s backs. And if this whole expedition goes belly up I’d still have your seed project to fall back on to make a tidy little profit. Especially when I don’t think Ephemera would be in a place to collect on that contract anyways.”

“And you would so casually betray your employer like that?” the merchant asked with more than a hint of suspicion.

“It’s hardly a betrayal if she breaks contract first, or acts in such a way that it’d be stupid for me to keep going with this,” this one pointed out. “Given how cheap Ephemera is, I’m more than a little worried she’s going to hold out on me when payday comes around, if it ever does. And she’s got a lot of hired muscle that can give her a pretty strong no if she decides to be cheap on labor expenses. Can you blame me for looking into more productive options for the future?”

“You make a point.” The Alya-mare’s ears twitched. “I have to admit, I’d feel a lot safer having you around than the rest of these idiots.”

“So we have an agreement? We watch each other’s backs, and try and make a profit out of this mess?” This one extended a hoof to her.

She pursed her lips, considering this one’s hoof for a long moment before finally taking it. “We have an accord.”

We shook hooves and an alliance was born.

Author's Notes:

Thanks to my editors Chengar Qordath and Comma-Kazie for all their help, and to my pre-readers Brony Writer, wolfstorm56, Trinary, 621Chopsuey, Rodinga, PoisonClaw, and Swiftest for their hard work editing.