So...turns out Mexico wasn’t the relatively quiet and relaxing affair that Cuba had been. Big surprise there.

The problems had started barely an hour after the beginning of Vadim’s ‘mission’. A bullet whizzed above the griffon’s head and went to shatter some tiles deeper inside the hospital’s lobby. Next to him, Nguyen curled up tighter, a feline ball of sheer panic. The Abyssinian’s sense of prescience was probably telling him seven different ways he would get killed if he so much as peeked out of cover.

Not much support coming from that front then. Vadim cawed in annoyance.

Out of frustration, he reached up on his assault vest with a claw and grabbed his radio.

“Third Officer Zinoviya to Fleet Command, where are my fucking reinforcements? We’re fucking pinned here! Over.” He screamed into the device.

It had been going well. At the start that is. The mission had been simple: grab a unimog and go loot the nearest regional hospital in downtown Coatzacoalcos so the locals at the refinery would have the gear to improve their clinic.

Nothing new: salvage works to help locals gear up quicker was as simple as it got as far as the assistance the WSU provided went.

Plus Coatzacoalcos wasn’t more than a few minutes away from the refinery. It was right on the other side of the river, so beyond hacking through overgrowth to clear a path for the unimog and figuring what to pick between stuff damaged from disuse, lack of maintenance and the sheer humidity present in the region, it wasn’t a very complicated mission.

Shouldn’t have been was more like it, and Vadim’s team was picked in consequence: Nguyen had come along out of boredom to get out of the galley for a change, and Boris… his fellow griffon was also his medical assistant, so his presence to loot a hospital was self-explanatory.

As for him… his role as Amandine’s Medical Officer (and don’t call him Doctor, he didn’t have a medical degree) meant he wound up with the mission and had picked up his P90 at the armory earlier in the morning.

Too bad things have a habit of going south when you least want it.

Another burst of gunfire streamed past. Barking erupted outside. Vadim waited a second before he popped out of cover and fired back a few shots with his P90. Not that he intended to hit anything, but it ought to stall them, if anything because his weapon’s rate of fire made it sound more threatening than it really was. He then flapped his wings a few times, propelling himself just above the ground to quickly switch cover, bringing him behind the thick desk Boris was using for cover with his GPMG.

“Ammo count?” Vadim squawked, electing to ask the other griffon in Russian.

“Ne khorosho, not good. One and a half belt for the MAG.” Was the reply. “I can hold them back a few minutes more if I’m cautious, but when they realize we’re out of 7.62, it’s not your P90 that’s gonna save us.” The other griffon added dryly.

The ‘simplicity’ of his mission hadn’t properly accounted for the local brand of sicarios-turned-cultists. Nobody really knew how many of those wolf-dog warriors the cultists had on paw. Current estimation ranged somewhere between ‘many’ and ‘too fucking many’.

The thing was… Vadim’s little team wasn’t the only one to be caught outside the wire with their metaphorical pants down. Other teams had been sent out throughout the city to salvage stuff or just carry out general recce work… and every. single. one. was under attack at the moment, hunkered down tightly in the nearest buildings they could find and radioing for reinforcements from the QRF at the refinery.

And when it rains, it pours, and by that he wasn’t referring to the tropical downpour currently battering the city.
The refinery was under heavy assault at the moment, both by jaguar warrior sharpshooters that had started taking pot shots at the defenders, but also by technicals filled to the brim with wolf-dogs. The QRF was stuck inside.

Aleksei’s recce team was pinned down inside the archaeological museum on the other side of town.

It was sheer luck that Nguyen was a prescient-type Abyssinian: the feline had been outside guarding the unimog when his senses alerted him of the impending danger. The cat had immediately fallen back to relative safety of the hospital’s lobby which Vadim and Boris had been looting when the bullets started flying.

They had strutted up the muddy, overgrown street and opened fire on the sailors as soon as they were in sight. A sextet of wolf-dogs, all of them wielding SMG’s of various make.

Odd creatures they were. According to what the Captain had learned from the locals, they had been regular D-Dogs at some point. No longer. Their ties to Xolotl had reshaped them. The common canines D-dogs were supposed to be, had shifted into lupine forms bulging with muscle and sporting long, narrow muzzles that bristled with lengthened fangs in a similar fashion to the wicked elongated claws on their paws. Not much good for digging and burrowing anymore, at least not as good as regular D-dogs, but they were a warrior-class alright. Their yellow eyes shone through the ropey monsoon that buffeted the town, casting their ill-intent upon their targets.

As far as size went, they were larger than their unmodified brethren. So much so that a male wolf-dog was about as tall as a regular D-dog bitch, and the one wolf-bitch Vadim spotted leading the team attacking them could probably rival a minotaur in size.

A scrawny one though. Let’s not get too far.

On the bright side, they had yet to show their unmodified brethren’s ability to burrow at uncanny speeds. That, on the upside, meant that the frail perimeter he and Boris were maintaining was unlikely to be flanked.

They were six. Five males, led by one larger bitch with red accents in her fur. All wore black assault vests, loincloths, and a haphazard mix of Aztec headdresses and bracelets combined with white war paint coating their fur, mimicking bones. All sported submachine guns in their large paws that they fired in undisciplined bursts at the sailors hiding in the hospital’s lobby. Paired with the obsidian sword-clubs Vadim’s raptor eyes had spotted slung across their wide backs, the griffon was pretty certain they were meant to be close-quarters opponents.

Thankfully, Boris’ MAG had quickly established getting close to the sailors was a big no-no. One of the wolves had gotten a bit too brave early in the assault and discovered exactly what kind of damage a burst of 7.62 NATO could do to a creature by ripping through his stomach.

Right now, the wolf-dog was howling in pain and anguish, dying in a puddle of mud and blood in the middle of the street, clutching his wounds. His teammates had gotten the hint and taken cover behind a nearby delivery truck.

It was sort of a stalemate he would have been happy with, ineffectually trading pot shots until reinforcements that were actually worth a damn in a shootout arrived… except the stalemate could only last as long as they had ammo, and the QRF was stuck inside the wire.

He went for his radio again.

“Fleet Command, fuck’s sake, can I at least get an answer?! Over.” He shouted into his radio.

“We’ll get to you * when * we can get to you!” Alejandro’s voice erupted through the static in a caw. “Refinery’s still under assault and we can’t get the chopper airborne. Sit tight and hold your position, we’re sending help ASAP. Out.”
Well… there was his answer, but it wasn’t like it was any help. Boris looked at him grimly, the other griffon having overheard the message. Images of Micha and Andy flashed to the forefront of his mind, the more instinct-driven parts of Vadim’s griffon mind reeling at the prospect of leaving both his mate and his adoptive child on their own. Subtly, his talons tightened around his P90.

He highly suspected Boris’ reasoning to be the same, except the Russian had eggs to worry about.
Another burst of gunfire flew through the door, breaking his train of thought. On the other side of the lobby, Nguyen whimpered in fright. With a string of curse words in three different languages, Vadim quickly switched to another piece of cover and returned fire.

Outside, their opponents howled and exchanged words between each other. Some kind of Aztec dialect the Ukrainian couldn’t recognize.

They were all under assault. Just what kind of opponent pulls out a move like that?!

Elsewhere, a few dozen kilometers out of town, in the depths of a dank, dark cave network, a pair of yellow eyes gleamed with arcane might. It was at the very core of the cave network, inside a much larger chamber with a muddy ceiling that was held together by scores of roots and vines. Below that, was an underground pyramid, looking as though it had been dug up partially as a subterranean stream wrapped itself around its base. At its summit, a large stone statue of the Dog-God Xolotl, Guide of the Aztec Underworld, presided over the chamber, its head bent down to look into a pool of shimmering waters.

The statue’s immobile eyes gleamed with the same yellow hues as those of the tall lupine figure atop the pyramid. Her headdress swayed as she looked into the pool, watching images from her subordinates’ eyes as they fought both the heathen and the foreign. Every so often, the skeletal pattern of warpaint adorning her body would shine softly, a pulse of magic sent to her lieutenants to guide them, thanks to the warpaint.

The scowl on her muzzle was so fierce it was almost a snarl. High-Priestess Atzi wasn’t in a good mood.

The Gods were angry. Some mortals had started messing with their realms, profaning their sites and misusing the powers in their artifacts. Worse even, something was keeping the Blood God from reaching out to the rest of the pantheon.

Such an affront could not be allowed to stand.

Though she wasn’t certain the oil workers and sailors at the refinery were the ones actually at fault… the parts of her that remained of the former no-name sicario she used to be knew how important the place was. This was just too important a place not to attack and snuff out.

Maybe they might even capture some of the worthy pups and cats inside that refinery and turn them into proper warriors to bolster their forces.

As she thought: way too good a target not to attack it. The fuel was just a nice bonus for their technicals.

Aleksei’s team wasn’t doing any better than Vadim’s. Granted, with her cleric magic and Scarface’s combat spells, holding off the wolf-dogs should have been considerably easier… except they weren’t under attack by just the one team.

The cleric wasn’t entirely sure of the numbers, but there must have been two groups attacking them at once and forcing them on the defensive. Roughly a dozen wolf dogs that kept them under siege at an archeological museum… with one or two jaguar warrior sharpshooters. The buggers were sneaky, so getting a bead on them was proving nigh-impossible.

Only real hint she had of their presence was the sizable impact marks left by their high-power rifles in the chest-high wall she was taking cover behind on the roof of the museum.

Which was also something noteworthy in its own right. Were it not for the dozen of cultist-dogs firing at them, she’d be taking a closer look at the architecture.

It was a reproduction of a pre-columbian tiered pyramid raised along Coatzacoalcos’ seafront, three tiers high… though it being a modern structure meant some amount of corner-cutting had taken place. Obviously.

By design, it looked like it had been supposed to be out of a mix of sandstone and brownish bricks, but in multiple places you would see the original materials had been phased out in favor of cheap concrete that was showing cracks and coming apart. The wiring for the light fixtures set along every tier of the little pyramid had been left exposed and dangling instead of inserted into the structure, and lastly the whole look of a museum inside an ancient pyramid was ruined by the A/C units exposed in plain sight on the roof of the access tunnel that dove under the pyramid.

So it wasn’t top-tier architecture, to the point that there was a gaping hole in its roof down into the exposition hall filled to the brim with Olmec relics. These, unlike the pyramid, were genuine. The magic they radiated was obvious, so the cleric had been quick to raise a few wards to avoid setting off enchantments they would rather not.

They had been in the process of loading them up in the recce team’s Defender when the assault started.

Like most teams currently fighting in town, they were pinned.

Aleksei and Scarface were hunkered down on the roof below a green statue of Quetzalcoatl trying to get a bead on the jaguar warrior sharpshooters firing at them from further away in the urban landscape.

And below them, guarding the entrance tunnel to the exposition hall, Radiant and Thanasis had set up their MAG.

Arguably, their positioning, while keeping them backed up against the sea, did work in their favor defensively. The pyramid had very few accesses that they could easily cover, and it was relatively isolated, being on the outer side of the seafront. A hundred meters of road and open land separated them from the cityscape, with the nearest construction being an old abandoned playground on the beach side.

The wolf-dogs tried to use it on the approach… and soon discovered that plywood and plastic play sets are concealment, not cover. One now lay dead near a pirate-themed slide, and his companion had fallen back, reaching halfway across the no man’s land between the pyramid and the alleyway most wolf-dogs were using as staging ground for their attack before Scarface put an end to his life.

So now the recce team was just stuck. While they all could fly, the hole in Radiant’s wing she had just healed told of how bad an idea it would be to take off with this many guns pointed their way, and the Defender wasn’t armored either, so making a run for their vehicle wasn’t the brightest of ideas either.

To make matters worse… getting a good shot at their attackers was proving difficult because they had the advantage of firing at them from an urban environment, whereas Aleksei’s team were stuck inside an isolated building that stuck out like a sore thumb.

Aleksei fiddled with the knobs on the long range radio, her rifle propped up on the parapet beside her. What response she got from fleet command was pretty much in the same vein as Vadim had gotten at the hospital: sit tight, we’ll send help when we can.

Not much good unfortunately. She kicked the radio to the side with her hoof, a frustrated trill escaping her beak.

“No good?” Scarface inquired.

“Nah, QRF is stuck at the refinery. Fan-fucking-tastic.” She shook her head vigorously. “You alright there?”

The Bulgarian gargoyle just stared at her with a blank look. As if on cue, one of the wolf-dogs took a pot shot and a couple bullets impacted the statue above them, coating the two in fine concrete dust.

“Riiight...” She sighed. “Dumb question. You found the sharpshooter… -ers?”

“Two of them.” He confirmed. “And I can tell you they’re not at that construction site to the east. How’s your magic?”

“I still got a couple spells cooked up. That’s… just healing though. Banishment is only intended for monsters, won’t do shit against them, so why the question?”

Scarface held up his finger for a brief second before he grabbed a flashbang from his chest pouch and tossed it over the parapet. It blew up with a loud bang that was quickly followed by a howl of pain. In a burst of movement, he stood up and took two shots at the wolf-dog that had been running up to the pyramid before ducking back down just in time for a sniper bullet to puncture the left wing on his back, sticking out above his shoulder.

The injury didn’t even have time to bleed before Aleksei healed it with a wave of her talons and the pale glow of cleric magic.

“Those jaguar warriors got a bead on me. Can’t get up safely, and I’m running out of juice for my own spells.” He pulled the mag out of his SCAR to check his ammo. “Mind tossing me a mag?”

“Sure… you got a plan? I mean, don’t you have a shield spell?” She asked, grabbing a STANAG mag from her own pouches and throwing it to the gargoyle. She kept her ammo stowed under her wings.

Below them, the floor rattled. At the base of the pyramid, Thanasis was letting out a long burst of fire from his MAG. No howl of pain ensued however, though it did prevent another pair of attackers from rushing them.

Scarface looked down in the palm of his hand. The fingerless combat glove covering the four-fingered appendage was coated in blood from an earlier wound Aleksei had healed with her magic. One of the dark nail-claws at the tip was chipped. Focusing for a brief second, his entire forearm became wreathed in an aura of magic, and already he could feel the tiny drain…

“One shot of telekinetic shield, tops.” He concluded with a growl, dispelling the magic.

Gargoyles were never known for having large magic reserves. Versatility? Sure. But they blew their load fast.

“Enough to take care of them?”

He shook his head. The shield might hold against the first shot and let him counter-snipe a sharpshooter, but there were two of them, plus the other wolf-dogs. Confident as he was in Aleksei’s ability to heal lesser injuries, he wasn’t too inclined to try her healing with a rifle bullet through the chest.

Far above, the skies rumbled. Looks like that monsoon was going to turn into a thunderstorm soon.

“I… might have a plan.”

Scarface’s head whipped around, in time to see his superior’s talons light up with a warm glow. She waved them at him, and the glow transferred to him. He felt… invigorated, refreshed, his fatigue partly washed away.

“‘Bless’ spell. Epona gave me an upgrade recently. That should help your magic.” She explained, throwing a quick look over the parapet just to be sure the wolf-dogs weren’t attacking again.

No. A few were holding positions in an alleyway across the street, but the rest must have fallen back to organize another assault. They needed to get rid of these sharpshooters, and fast. A bullet whizzed above her head, grazing her crest feathers.

Might need to look into getting a helmet, to go with her flak jacket. Then again, most were designed to protect from shrapnel and wouldn’t do shit against bullets.

“Now I want you to try and modify that telekinetic shield of yours. Don’t create it as a bubble or a screen in front of us. Just… imagine a gun shield in front of your scope? That should cover you enough to take your shots… and focus all that power on intensity.”

The gargoyle’s eyes widened in realization, before the expression turned into a predatory grin that highlighted the ugly scar running like a streak across his muzzle. Behind, she could see his tail whip from side to side.

Figuring out how to modify his spell didn’t take more than a minute. Gargoyle magic was intuitive like that. It was a minute change in how he warped the spell matrix, just a matter of waving his arm more to the left and extending his pinky a bit more and… the magic glow around his forearms disappeared. On his SCAR, the air shimmered in front of the scope. Raindrops would halt midair, stopped dead by an invisible barrier. Scarface nodded in satisfaction.

He knelt behind the parapet and counted down mentally. Each second passing was punctuated by the subtle tapping of his trigger finger against the mag well. Three. Tap. Two. Tap. One. Tap. He stood up. Coatzacoalcos’ decrepit and overgrown landscape replaced the sandstone of the parapet beyond his raised rifle. Adrenaline rushed through his bloodstream. Time slowed down to a crawl.

One muzzle flash. The gargoyle’s amber eyes zeroed in on his foe before the bullet even struck the gun shield, perched halfway up a fallen construction crane that was resting at an angle against the side of a tall building.

‘Jaguar warrior’ pretty much described all there was to the sharpshooter. By the same logic that the wolf-dogs were magically-modified Diamond Dogs, they were magically-modified Abyssinians meant to look more like jaguars than regular cats. At about the same size as their ‘vanilla’ counterpart, the one he saw was a bit more lithe, with a narrow waist, long limbs and a triangular chest.

Clutched in the paws of the one he had spotted was a simple yet powerful bolt-action rifle, scope-less. It (Scarface wasn’t sure whether that was a he or a she) wore very little in the way of clothing. All he could see was a bandolier, a pair of bracers, a camo cloak, and some goggles hanging from its neck.

More eerie, and a dead giveaway that magic was involved, was the green glow in its eyes as it aimed its bolt-action at Scarface.

This was all observed in the fraction of a second it took Scarface to range his scope and fire off two shots. The first hit the feline right in the shoulder, the second flew high, though the damage was done: thrown off-balance, the jaguar warrior tumbled backwards and slipped off the crane.

He saw the feline hit the ground, too injured to land on its paws. It didn’t stand up.

One down. One to go.

Down below, the wolf-dogs were reacting as well, wondering why he was staying out of cover for so long. Scarface remained still, even as SMG fire started converging his way.

“Take the shot… Iskash da...” He mumbled under his breath in Bulgarian.

Another muzzle flash. He immediately snapped onto it. The second jaguar. The gun shield stopped the bullet midair, a mere centimeters away from his scope. The jacketed projectile hovered on the edge of his scope, useless tumbling through the air, stuck in the telekinetic field.

The second jaguar was a bit less conspicuous, with only the head and gleaming green eyes poking out above a rooftop a solid three hundred meters away.

Range the shot.

The jaguar noticed the bullet had no effect. Scarface saw… her, him, *whichever* cycle the bolt of its rifle to line up another shot.

Line up the sights.

It noticed how unfazed the gargoyle was and started panicking.

Scarface rested his finger on the trigger.

The jaguar stood up in a panic, accidentally exposing more of its body to Scarface’s sights. It tried to run for it.

There was a bang. He felt the stock push into his shoulder. That was a tracer round, and a red streak soared towards the foe like an angry meteor. Scarface stoically watched it impact the feline somewhere in the lower back region. Kidney shot maybe. Guts definitely on the exit wound. Not pretty, nor fast, but enough to put someone out of commission.

Then an SMG round impacted the gun shield. And another. He felt the air around the shield start to vibrate, signalling it was about to fail.

He ducked behind the parapet just as the spell collapsed with a ‘bzzt’, his heart racing. Looking at the statue behind him, he saw the impact marks practically drawing his silhouette.

He blinked. Okay, maybe that shield technique was better than he’d anticipated.

He felt a tap on his shoulder, twisting his head to see a frazzled Aleksei looking at him worriedly. She waved her talons with the glow of magic, and a stinging in his ear he hadn’t noticed from sheer adrenaline vanished.

Yes. Turns out as the gun shield was failing, one bullet had managed to drill a hole through his rather large ear. Uh…

“Scar’?” His superior inquired.

“Got ‘em… got ‘em both...” He panted, clutching his SCAR tightly.

Now to deal with the wolf-dogs.

“All units, Fleet Command here. Gonna have to wait some more for the QRF but fire support is now available. Please switch to VHF channel 37 and communicate target coordinates to Hussar for marksgriff support. Alejandro… out.”

Rodrigo let out a frustrated neigh and threw his old map aside in a fit of anger. The damaged piece of paper was immediately picked up by a gust of mountain wind and carried off into the air, useless.

The closer he got to what he assumed to be his objective, the more the constraints piled on and made his journey harder. He was near a thousand meters up now, and the Pyrenees had become increasingly more difficult to navigate. Blame the maulwurfs that infested the mountain range for that. Their constant digging and burrowing had caused multiple landslides that blocked off critical passes, damaged the mountain shelters he needed to catch some rest, and contributed to make his ascent into some twisted, hellish obstacle course where the stallion frequently had to veer off the main road and venture in the temperate forests that sprouted along the mountainside.

By his own reckoning, he had killed about twelve of the mole monsters by then, and already his ammo was running low.

Which frankly said more about the state of his old and battered CETME rifle than it did about ammo conservation. There wasn’t a single skirmish where he didn’t have to whip out his makeshift knives with his telekinesis.

His knives were showing wear as well. His gun was caked in grime and mud. The seams that held his retrofitted K9 armor were starting to unravel. And this was the fifth darn rock to jam itself under his hoof this afternoon! Rodrigo glared at the mountaintops, far above him, the distant peaks looking down at the unicorn, almost tauntingly so as he trotted up the mountainside.

At long last though, he was near.

Behind him was yet another copse of woods he had been forced to hack his way through thanks to the maulwurfs collapsing a key road… but ahead was Roncevaux pass.

Good. His saddlebags were starting to feel a bit too light for comfort.

On either side of him he could see the mountains converge into a plateau covered in dry yellowish grass and shrubs, an odd sight at an altitude where forestry was still prevalent, but it made for clearer sight lines than he’d been experiencing that day. As he trotted up the slight incline of the plateau towards the center of the pass, he looked back, now seeing the forested mountains full of empty villages, collapsed roads and the rotting maulwurf corpses left in his wake.

Took him long enough. He grunted and marched on.

In all fairness, Roncevaux Pass wasn’t the narrow gap between two rocks high up in the mountains stories would have you imagine. Actually, it was a fairly large plateau with a crest at the top where the mountains converged in a smooth gap ideal for pastures, the exact thing he was passing through at the moment. The tall, dry grass bending in the mountain wind made for a sharp contrast against the verdant forestry behind him and the gray cliffs found all over the place in these mountains.

Which was the more sensible look compared to what legends portrayed. Really, if it was an ideal place to get armies across the border, why expect something hard to traverse?

Rodrigo took a short pause to relieve his aching hooves and take in the scenery. There was a two lane road that snaked its way up the plateau after coming out of the woods – which he knew just led to the same landslide he had been forced to find his way around- before it went towards the crest at the top of the plateau. Beyond that, he knew the terrain dipped back down into a narrow valley that would lead you to France.

The road was old, its asphalt cracked in many places with weeds poking through.

And at the top of the crest… that tingling deep in Rodrigo’s mind flared up. The green flicker from his dreams that had driven him out of Madrid. Yes. That must be what had pushed him to journey so far on his own. There was a small set of ruined buildings, formerly a road stop for hikers, bikers and caravaners alike to fill up on water and take a short rest at the top of the pass. The public toilets were a ruin of fallen shingles and broken windows. The little chapel with a parking next to it was nothing but charcoal. The electric line that had collapsed on its roof might be part of the reason behind that.

But the key feature was older than that. Rodrigo calmly trotted past the ruins and up a tall dirt mound that had been raised at some point. A memorial with a stellae on top, both to honor the legendary battle and another napoleonic-era skirmish that had taken place on the same grounds.

The unicorn’s horn tingled. There was some magic in the air. Powerful magic. It wasn’t tied to the stellae erected on top of the mound… it was something different. Far more ancient.

On a gut feeling, Rodrigo mustered his own power in his horn and activated it. There was a ‘z-zap!’, a flash of light, and the world turned green.

Truth be told, the news of a colony living in Comper castle was of utmost significance. Multiple colonies in the forest called for mapping out borders, diplomacy and trade agreements that would give reason for an actual economy to exist… but with the presence of an Equestrian airship containing two mares that were actually pretty darn important, dealing with Trixie and Starlight took precedence over diplomacy.

It was thus with an apologetic tone that Rockhoof and his guards promised Paladin Catherine that they would come back at a later date to manage that side of things. The Paladin seemed to take it in stride, and Miles even told them how to contact them by radio if they so desired… though Comper didn’t have (or want) that kind of tech in their colony.

That done, they moved over to where Canterlot Courier was, landed in a field next to the castle.

As Starlight quickly explained when they boarded it through the side ramp, the airship was a former passenger transport and parcel carrier that used to ply the Canterlot-Cloudsdale route before it was volunteered for the relief effort sent on Earth.

The Captain, an old pegasus by the name of Moral Compass, was still busy resupplying from Comper castle’s intendant when they arrived, and would be for an hour more at list. It mattered little, and Trixie and Starlight took it upon themselves to show Rockhoof and Starwirl (along with their guards) around the craft.

It was… actually fairly conventional as far as airships went when you looked past the decorations. One canvas balloon provided lift with the gondola hanging below it, itself looking very much like a boat. Its stern extended out in a prong that contained the engine room below which hung two propeller nacelles, both subtly hidden by the purple canvas of the wing-like maneuvering fins on either side of the gondola.

Typical of Equestrian-made airships, come to think of it. Other species usually went for more conventional control methods.

Canterlot Courier’s appearance was eerily reminiscent of the city it was named after – sans the marble-. The planks and girders that made up its skin and frame were all painted a bright white, while purple seemed to be the go-to color for any piece of canvas or fabric present on board. As a finishing touch, brass decorations lanced out here and there with the typical flair associated with the Equestrian capital.

Although… the airship and crew had been away from Equus for a while at this point, and it showed. Off-color patches here and there showed where the crew of primarily pegasi had been forced to resort to local materials to fix the vessel, and Rockhoof was pretty sure a solid quarter of the brass decorations were missing. The port maneuvering fin also looked to be only two thirds of the size of its starboard counterpart.

Before Trixie and Starlight led them below deck, they also got a brief look at the crew itself. No more than a dozen ponies. Most were pegasi, with the odd two unicorns in the bunch, both part of the Solar Guard (formerly known as the Royal Guard, but Celestia’s guard regiment had received a name change after the abdication, when Princess Twilight’s Mana Guard took up the mantle of Royal Guard).

Most were… frazzled to put it mildly. Looking worse for wear after spending far more time away from home than they were supposed to. They were unkempt, and the two guards’ armors were missing pieces, most replaced with kevlar plates taken from human body armor.

“You noticed didn’t you?” Starlight winced.

“’Be hard not to.” Rock rumbled. “How come it’s that bad?”

“The Courier isn’t meant for endurance. Well...” The mare rubbed a hoof through her mane. “...not initially it wasn’t. We did a bit of a retrofit before we left for Earth, but that doesn’t change much from its original role. So...”

“You started to run out of supplies once you overstayed your welcome.”

“Fighting monsters hasn’t helped either...” She sighed. “But you’re correct. We were only ever meant to keep going for so long, so we’ve had to buff up our gear with what we found along the way. Let’s get inside, I know where we can talk comfortably.”

The airship’s interior was centered around a spiral staircase that plunged deep within the bowels of the vessel, connecting all three decks together inside a narrow ‘atrium’. Skylights placed in the main deck above paired with subtly-hidden mana lamps to provide adequate lighting… though given the way they flickered most were overdue a replacement.

On each deck, a single passageway ran along the middle of the vessel, acting much like a spine with apparent beams, girders, and serving to pass conduits through the vessel, most hidden behind the ceiling panels. On either side were rooms. Former cabins turned storerooms, the galley and mess, actual cabins, even a pair of cabins where the bulkhead had been knocked down to create a makeshift workshop.

At the back of the group, Miles caught herself on a bump in the carpet. Somepony had hastily nailed a plank there to plug a hole in the hull, a charred mark implying there was a unicorn that needed to work on his aim… or worse.

“Here… the observation deck ought to do for now.” Starlight spoke up, showing them inside what might be the largest room on board.

Probably a dining room for passengers before the Courier was converted and sent to Earth. It formed a semicircle along the bow, just below the cockpit, with a huge observation window, a fancy brass chandelier with mana lights hanging from the ceiling, and an equally intricate carpet that could however use a bit of cleaning from all the hoof marks it was covered in.

Starlight and Trixie took a short pause to look at the fields of Comper and Broceliande further off in the distance before they went down the short dais at the entrance and towards the main attraction in the room. All the previous chairs and tables had been pushed aside, some even dismantled for materials and joining the numerous supply crates lining the walls away from the observation window… and all the extra room was for one large circular table those in the know might have recognized as heavily-inspired by the Friendship Map.

Except instead of a 3D map of Equus, a paper map of Europe was pinned onto it, with little flags here and there around the British Isles, abandoned notes and even one lone laptop plugged into a solar charger. The sticker on it letting it be known the Great and Powerful Trixie had taken a liking to human appliances.

“Captain Moral Compass is still busy at the castle, but I think we can have a chat already?” Starlight said as she pulled the chair closest to the laptop with her telekinesis. “Like...” She looked pointedly towards Starswirl’s ghostly form. “… what is up with you? No offense intended, but you’ve looked better. Yet Lady Vivian heavily implied you’re the pony we’re actually after.”

The ethereal unicorn remained silent for a few seconds before he finally spoke up, taking the opportunity to grab a seat across from Starlight. Rockhoof and Miles came to sit on either side of him, with Trixie electing to sit on Starlight’s right hoof side. The rest of the guards from Trecesson just picked places at random, looking only vaguely interested even with Starswirl’s spell translating everything to French for them.

“I may be able to assist indeed. Emphasis on ‘may’.” He rubbed a hoof through his mane.

“But Canterlot Hig-” Trixie cried out only to be stopped mid-sentence when the wizard raised a hoof.

“You must understand Miss Lulamoon, that while I * did * create a relatively stable means of accessing another dimension with the mirror… that was a rendition of Equus as though it was solely populated by humans. Earth, while also a mirrored dimension to that of Equus, is also much more distant and of a very different nature. I take it you may have noticed how different the humans that used to live here looked compared to those of...” He trailed off.

“Canterlot High? Of course Trixie has, though she hadn’t understood the dull skin colors around here to be...” She sighed. “Relevant. So you’re saying you can’t make us a mirror to go back?”

“I cannot, but you’re thinking too far forward. You see, there lies a detail in mirrored dimensions, however distant they may be as Earth and your version of Equus are. Cultures echo themselves, names have odd matches, common languages are spoken… and sometimes even ponies and creatures find their match in different dimensions, such as you may have witnessed in Canterlot High. Therein lies how I may be able to assist. Canterlot High, being such a close mirror to Equus, had a lot of matches of that sort. Here on Earth they’re much rarer.”

Starlight crossed her forehooves and leaned over the table. There was a slight frown of curiosity on her muzzle, unlike the confusion that had appeared on Trixie’s features.

“How so?”

“I so happen to be one of the few ponies to have a likeness on Earth in the form of Merlin the Enchanter, legendary wizard and soul match to Starswirl the Bearded. Through arcane hijinks best left untold, both, while still apprentices, came to have their souls fused together, making them all but one person, spread across two bodies.” He shifted to his human form. “You’re actually talking to Merlin right now. Dead and ghostly, but still present in the material realm thanks to my skills in magic. As for Starswirl… * I * am presently exploring the archives of Pantera’s library, in Abyssinia.”

“Ah...” Starlight blinked, a smile creeping up on her muzzle. “So you have a link to Equestria.”

“And I shall send a missive to Canterlot to alert them of your situation as soon as the library closes.” He reassured the two mares.

“Why not earlier?” Trixie quirked her head.

Starswirl snorted.

“I am a proper scholar, young mare. Any erudite worth his salt * always * stays at the library until closure. Later if such can be achieved.”

Rockhoof rolled his eyes. Across from him, both Trixie and Starlight blinked in tandem. Good gosh, he really was the same element as Twilight.

Ignoring their reaction, the ghost had launched himself in a tirade about how the dimensional rift was in a phase of increase, that he would need the attunement sphere from the device they were supposed to use to get back to Equestria, all of the mana crystals and charged gems they had in store, several weeks to research and redesign a new system from the ground up and get into contact with the right creatures on Equus, and a dozen alicorns’ worth of mana output.

“Trixie’s keen hearing appears to show signs of age, a dozen WHAT?!!”

“I did say the dimensional rift was increasing. Exponentially too, so it’s going to take a lot more to take you to Equus than it took to get you here. Don’t worry though, I already have a couple ideas. Rockhoof, do you think we can offer board and lodging while I research how to help these mares?”

The bulky Earth Pony by his side furrowed his ginger brows, accidentally tilting the circlet he wore around his head.

“Aye… ‘should be enough rooms in the castle for a couple of them. The rest I figure we can spread around the village. Miles? Lass, you mind grabbing a radio and going up on deck to call the castle and tell ‘em? Be nice to give Meadow the heads up, init?”

“Of course.” The pegasus stood up, eager to keep away from the wizardish rant Merlin would inevitably start up once the logistics were swept aside. “Anything else?”

“You’ve been up in the air above the forest. Just wait for uh… Captain Moral Compass was it? Make sure he points the ship the right way.”

With a mock salute, the purple pegasus buzzed out of the room.

And then it happened. The barrage of obscure arcane terminology, hypotheses, random ideas on how to go about the project and references to publications that might yield some insight into the issue. Starlight had no idea what Bright Endeavor’s thirteenth theorem of dimensional displacement was, but it sounded important so she nudged Trixie and the mare booted up her laptop, scrambling to take notes.

Starswirl really was like a rougher Twilight at times, and while Starlight was somewhat accustomed to her friend’s style… the ghost wizard had nothing of the academic polish the Princess had when she carried out research.

On his own side of the table, Rockhoof just yawned and crossed his forehooves on the table to lay down his head. This was going to take a while, so he’d best catch a nap while he was there.

At least when they got back, he might be able to resume the ‘massage’ session he’d been indulging in with Meadowbrook.

Author's Notes:

Okay... either I'm more tired_lazy than I thought, or this chapter really was a bitch to edit. Took me twice the usual time and it's not even a big one.

It comes and goes I guess.

Beyond that... well, it's a more action-packed chapter than what I usually write so of course there's less worldbuilding in it. There is a first look at variants of two species tho', so there' that?

Firefights between intelligent beings are different than against monsters, and when writing those scenes I tried to keep to a certain logic:
→ Most characters in the WSU are just... sailors with guns really. It's the vets that are the actual competent fighters, the rest are just good at holding a position and taking pot shots, laying down suppresive fire. They lack the experience to know what kind of shit they can get away with in a gunfight.
→ Assaults favor the defense unless overwhelming odds are brought into action in as short order as possible. Otherwise, it's feasible for just a few guys to hold off an entire advance. 'member that story of a few french border guards holding off an entire italian army?
→ People like to live and have some sense of self-preservation, even cultists. What worth would they be if they started frothing at the mouth and charging a functioning GPMG?