The rain had finally stopped and the skies were clearing up by the time Micha made it back to the refinery, bright shades of blue sky finally breaking up the dreary gray clouds she had used as camouflage earlier. Spreading her wings wide and letting herself glide in a circle around the refinery and the remains of the battle, she basked in the feeling of the sun warming her feathers as she took in the damage with her sharp eyesight.

Acrid smoke columns rose up from the burnt husks of the technicals the wolf-dogs had used in their assault. Not the Toyota’s you would see in a middle-eastern desert, but american pickup trucks instead. Dodges, Fords, Chevies, most of them reinforced with makeshift applique armor welded haphazardly along with swivels for heavy weapons.

They had all been destroyed by heavy gunfire from Amandine’s combat vehicles. Pit a CV90 against a Silverado if you want, but don’t be surprised when the Bofors gun rips the lighter truck apart like kindling. Each technical the IFV had set its sight on, you could recognize by the shattered cabin and the smoldering debris around the wreck.

Other than those, most had been knocked out by .50cal fire or plain grenades. Now, they littered the stretch of barren land Samuel’s militia maintained in front of the security perimeter. Between them lay the dead bodies of the roughly three dozen wolf-dogs and half that number in jaguar warriors that had tried to breach their defenses. Some lay face-down on the road to Coatzacoalcos, where the main attack force had come from. Others had bled out trying to hide in ditches and behind pieces of cover.

However, their failure to capture the refinery didn’t mean it had come out completely unscathed. Some of the tanks - as in: oil storage units, not combat vehicles- closest to the fence had been hit by stray RPG’s. The fence was bent and broken in places.One section more so than the rest, torn down and charred after the pickup used to ram it was destroyed and caught fire. In other places, the office building used as headquarters had lost quite a few windows to stray bullets, and the walls of the checkpoint building by the gates were covered in impact marks. One of the watchtowers had even collapsed, twisted metal lying halfway sunk in the mud.

Nearby, while the Piranhas had already retreated back to Amandine’s holds (one of which had to be towed back for repairs), the CV90 was still there, idling, ready to resume the fight if anything came up.

At the same time… the assault was over, and the cleanup was already in order. Outside the wire, a farming tractor with a bulldozer blade was pushing the technical wreck out of the way while a small team collected the bodies, most likely to burn or bury them. A medical tent stood next to the office building with Amandine’s ambulance on standby.

And if the ambulance was there, then it meant the casualties suffered among teams deployed in town had been recovered as well… and that Vadim most likely was back on the ship. Nguyen had been shot, so she suspected her mate would be tending to the injured cook right about then. She’d see how he was doing later. For now, she had heard her instructions, and she needed to report toheadquarters.

By the time Micha landed in front of the building, most heavy injuries had already been transferred to Rhine Forest’s clinic, leaving a hedgefog she recognized as Rhine’s nurse (the one Greet frequently slept with, or so the rumors said) to tend to the lesser injuries. Her paws splashed in a puddle of rainwater upon touching down, before she briskly padded over to the headquarters' lobby.

Around her, the much taller bipedal Abyssinians and D-Dogs were running around frantically from one office to another, trying to figure out how they’d go about repairing the damage and evaluating the extent of their losses. The locals were so busy with the stuff they almost failed to notice the shorter bald eagle/wildcat chimera as she twisted past them, bumping into several.

Really drives it home how much shorter you’re as a quadruped in a colony where bipeds are so prevalent. At least in Cuba there were hippogriffs, and in Savannah she, as a griffon, dwarfed ponies.

Here in Mexico? Staring at crotches and having her tail walked on. The offender received a primer in just how many ‘kurwas’ a purebred Pole could slip in the one sentence.

Talons clicking against the floor tiles, she quickly slipped in a meeting room off in the back of the lobby. Your average nondescript office room: fake ceiling tiles with a projector hanging off the ceiling, white walls, cheap furniture, water fountain, and a large oval table to sit around.

And some brown packing tape plugging the bullet holes in the windows… that one was a first.

“Second Officer Przemo, reporting.” She announced upon entering the room.

Heads turned to look at the newest arrival. Unsurprisingly, the leader of the refinery was there, that Carmelita border collie, busy pacing with her arms behind her back in a corner of the room. Her ‘forepup’ was absent, but she was accompanied by the chief of the militia, Samuel. The feline with the mottled fur was sitting down unlike her, exhausted from all the fighting, and Micha more than shared the sentiment. The Mexican marine’s uniform was covered in mud and small tears, his combat vest rested on the back of a chair behind him along with his rifle.

He was talking to Alejandro in Spanish, both looking at a map of the refinery while the cat kept a bloody rag pressed against his skull. His sharp hazel eyes bore down on Micha the moment she stepped inside the room, and she couldn’t help but shudder.

She’d seen him before and he was a pretty chill guy to hang around… but that look. Piss off a marine (regardless of the country) and kill some of his men? The moment they sorted this all out and he could organize, the wolf-dogs were in for a treat.

“Przemo, I take it your mission went well?” That was Dilip’s voice, she whipped her head around.

The Captain was parsing through documentation on the other end of the table, looking tired, if not physically, then mentally. He stood up with a grunt seeing her look in his direction.

“More than well sir. I did as ordered, so we got a bead on their base.”

“Really? I… to be fair I didn’t think you’d be able to tail them so easily. Were you seen?”

“As unseen as I was during the fighting. They don’t suspect a thing.” She stated, making a cutting motion with a forearm as she sat down on her haunches.

“Excellent work. Think you can locate it on a map?”

She could. Soon after Samuel and Alejandro pulled out a map of the region, she got down to drawing all she had seen. Foxholes, ambush points, hidden vehicles, the cave entrance, all were drawn and positioned near a village some 40km away from the refinery, in a remote area of the countryside south of Minatitlan.

With a note of finality, she put a cross on where she last remembered a squad of wolf-dogs were keeping an eye on the bridge before she set down her pencil.

“Will that be all, sir?” She inquired.

“For now?” The dog paused and scratched a spot of fur between his ears. “Aye. Many people today owe you their life, that was some outstanding job you did. Catch some rest. The Engineers and Lorelei will be keeping an eye out for us while you catch some rest and we… sort this out. Thank you.”

She didn’t reply. She just gave her superior her own casual version of the Polish two-fingered salute before she picked her FAL – the one with the kill notches- back up and left the meeting room.

Dilip’s smile faded once she was gone. Not her fault, Micha was an exceptional Officer and navigator he was more than happy to have on his crew, and her antics with her adoptive child were always heartwarming to witness… but he had one sad mess in his lap to sort out.

They had won, yes, but the colony was in shambles. Samuel’s militia wasn’t in fighting shape from all the injuries suffered in the assault, and even though only a handful of his troops had died, it still meant they just couldn’t outright stage an assault on Los Lobos’base of operations.

Time would have to be set aside. To repair all the damage to infrastructure, defenses and vehicles. To let the wounded recover until enough could be mustered for an assault. Licking their wounds basically.

And so long that there was a whole group of cultists willing to openly attack them like that, they would be forced to limit the amount of work set aside for colonial development, to send out salvage team as though it was a warzone (which it technically was) and… Dilip held his head in his paws and sighed loudly.

Why was a victory just about the biggest setback suffered since they reappeared off the coast of Belgium? Even their (debatable) defeat in Gothenburg hadn’t been that bad! They’d be at it for weeks!

At least there were a few prices of consolation. No dead sailor or destroyed vehicles, only wounds and damage. All two ships were in pristine shape. Earlier messages also said the hacienda the locals used for housing and to grow food was unscathed… Dilip paused and reminded Alejandro the parrot needed to visit the place with Roberto for a proper colonial assessment.

And Los Lobos had certainly suffered a harder blow than they had.

Now to figure why those tourists they had repatriated and had said they were heading North to Mexico City had stopped telling them of their progress. They should have reached their destination by then, so why did the calls stop?

Managing the logistics of bringing things back in order after a battle like that was… taxing. That much Schmitt soon realized after taking the proverbial reins while Dilip and Alejandro were busy. Make sure all pieces of equipment are accounted for, revise all watch schedules, team rosters and whatnot for the foreseeable future, deviate some workforce towards the armory and vehicle bay to repair damaged gear. The dragoness was almost at a point where she’d rather rip her scales off one by one when the damaged Piranha was towed in the repair bay and the extent of the damage to the engine and drivetrain dawned on them.

Damn thing would be undergoing repairs for weeks. Hell, Tanya had brought her a list and the estimate was that they’d need to machine no less than sixty bolts of different sizes just to fix the applique armor.

Pity the damn fool who got assigned lathe duty.

And they still needed to keep the ship running and maintained with all that.

Hence, it was only after about thirty-six waking hours of running about making everything was smoothed down and enough Cuban-grade coffee mugs to kill an elephant that the orange dragoness managed to slip away in her cabin to catch some rest. Weirdly enough… she didn’t sleep well. At all.

The sheets were fresh from the wash. Her favorite which she had looted herself from a shop in Copenhagen, with quality pillows. Crucial in her line of work! When you can seldom have more than six hours of continued sleep, you make sure it goes well and years spent at sea had seen to it that she made an art of setting herself up for a good night.

Even when she tried to think about the feeling of all those gems and precious metals she kept stashed in her own storage space on the ship, her very own hoard, she still wound up tossing and turning for most of the night, sore from the tip of her tail to her snout. She didn’t find sleep until just before dawn.

And she woke what felt like an instant later but was actually eleven in the morning, as the alarm on her nightstand below the porthole was angrily blaring. Light was streaming in, showing a bright sunny sky which she looked at blearily, her blue eyes blinking in puzzlement as to where the night was gone.

She yawned and reached up with her claws to scratch the underside of her jaw. Not fully awake just yet despite the alarm. Balling her claw, she reached out to smack the alarm.

Instead of the intended loud amalgam of plastic and electronics, her claws hit the wall and instead accidentally drew three parallel streaks in the fake wood of the wall panels.

“The fuck?” She croaked out, looking down at the appendage in confusion. There was something weird with her voice.

Her focus only remained on her claw for an instant because she then noticed the rest. Her nightly t-shirt, usually loose and comfy, was stretched to its limits, barely reaching her hips now. More than that, her feet and tail tip hung over the edge of her bed. On the edges of her visions, she recognized the pale – almost white- hues of her wings’ leathery skin… and they were considerably larger than the diminutive aerodynamics-defying limbs she remembered.

She needed to see Vadim. Stat.

The docks in Belem looked serviceable… if ugly. There were many of those, hugging the banks of the river the city was built along, along with one little ‘official’ seaport as their charts would have it. To Skinner’s trained eyes, it looked as though every single parcel that had a bit of shoreline in the metropolitan area of Belem had been bought by concurrent enterprises that then proceeded to raise their own terminal out of the muddy waters, creating a haphazard mix of jetties of dubious quality and artificial coves dug into the banks with excavators. Some terminals were (or had been rather) little more than a river bank with a couple stilts for river boats to moor at where they’d use planks as ramps to load cargo, others were more advanced with cranes and boat lifts to repair small tonnage vessels…

In other places, more organized enterprises prior to the Event had managed to lay concrete foundations and achieve a more professional outlook with the odd container stack here and there.

Those were wildly different outlooks on harbor development that had grown out of the shoreline much like tumors, their derelict abandoned structure layered with another depressing sight of sunken boats and barges in places where their owners hadn’t been on board at the right time to come back with a vehicle.

Canal entries also dotted the shoreline, shallow ditches filled with downright foul water that even from afar seemed to be swarming with more insects than they had even seen in the depths of the Dominican jungle.

It was a mess way too jumbled to make sense of at a glance. Some parcels even sported the hallmarks of derelict favelas: places where the original owner fell to bankruptcy and abandoned the premises, which then swelled up with makeshift housing made out of cinder blocks, sheet metal and cheap bricks held together more by willpower than solid cement. Others were different stories where but a few hundred meters away, parcels had been seized and rebuilt from the ground up with high rises and modern housing oftentimes surrounded by tall fences and barbed wire.

Belem might have had violence and crime issues in the past. With hardly anyone left on the planet? Problems like that hardly mattered. If anything, having easy access to guns made it easier to fight off monsters there than it would be in countries like the UK.

Still, with a landscape like that? Skinner wouldn’t get Fugro close to the quays before at least scouting out their goals by sending out a lifeboat, and they had their destinations: the main seaport (which, funnily enough, only occupied a tiny fraction of the shoreline near the CBD and the colonial district), an oil terminal to refuel Fugro’s tanks, and the naval station to get the spare Bofors guns they needed. All would have to be inspected carefully before they approached. Belem’s port was bad.

And it got a lot worse than just the dilapidated tentacular mess of a shoreline their intel said it was before the Event. A fact Fugro’s Captain had noticed when Mia called him up to the bridge, and that was becoming increasingly clearer the more the lifeboat he was on approached the quays.

Overgrowth was an issue most places had to deal with. It was, at this point, commonly accepted that magic sped up plant growth. By how much could vary a lot, sometimes because species like centaurs and Earth Ponies further increased the growth rate, but in most scenarios mostly due to the magic in the air.

In Narvik it was pretty benign, much like Cuba where magic seemed to have a limited effect on plants.

In Northern Ireland, way back when they stopped to repair their ships and used divine intervention to sort out the Troubles, ivy would climb facades at surprising speeds and the farm yields in the gardens around Belfast’s City Hall had been pretty impressive. Emerald island, quite literally.

They even knew of Brittany where there was an enchanted forest where it was cranked up to eleven.

Belem… the Amazon at large… they put even Broceliande to shame in terms of sheer overgrowth.

Buildings, short or tall, were covered in vines and leaves from top to bottom, thick growths that were using the concrete and steel structure as support to spread their bough ever higher, roots piercing the asphalt of the streets, wrapping around anything close-by for support be it parked cars, lamp posts or the pillars of a parking lot.

Those were the small ones. Between the ferns and shrubs that had now infested the streets, thick trunks seemingly burst out of the ground, rising, twisting around obstacles and towering above the buildings around them. It was still less than a year since magic came back… yet some of those trees, one of which Skinner could see had penetrated through a three-story building… and rose three more above the rooftops to spread its canopy and cast shade on the cityscape below.

A multitude of them grew like that, nearly obscuring the buildings around them in places with their branches. Six stories high, eight, ten, one they saw with a trunk so thick you could carve a highway tunnel through in the CBD had grown so quickly it rivaled the glass-and-steel skyscrapers it shared the skyline with, maybe thirty stories tall, using the buildings around it to spread its branches for extra support, vines hanging off of them and serving to shelter flocks of colorful birds that ate its cannonball-shaped fruits.

“I’ll be damned, and here I thought Roseau was one sorry mess...” Skinner heard Floyd comment from the back of the lifeboat where the thin kestrel griffon was steering, yanking the helm quickly to skim the orange semirigid past a group of river dolphins.

For an endangered species, they sure were swimming close to the city. Then again, Belem was far from the hub of river traffic it used to be. In fact many animals seemed to now occupy the overgrown buildings: macaws a plenty, marmosets climbing along vines and power lines alike, and probably far more in the form of escaped zoo animals, wild pigs, predators and whatnot.

Who said you couldn’t make urban warfare worse by combining it with a jungle?

“It’s messy alright, but intel says there are returnees in there, and the naval station has some guns we need.” Skinner reminded. “Let’s not be as naive as we were in Dominica and keep an eye out. I don’t feel like getting a repeat of being kidnapped by tribals.”

“Or eaten by monsters!” Floyd chirped cheerfully, earning himself a mildly annoyed glare from his superior. He chuckled.

“That too.” Skinner frowned before he sat back down and surveyed the team that would accompany him.

It was pretty much the same that had accompanied him in Dominica. He figured if they could pull off an escape through the jungle over mountainous terrain, then they couldn’t possibly be that bad. Lilian was there, the pink Irish dragon with fins and frills still stubbornly stuck to using only a Glock pistol.

The Chief Cook was there too, this time with a better loadout. The eclectus parrot had done away with unnecessary pieces of kit that would just weigh him down, and the same went for the accessories adorning his G36. He was necessary after all: they were in Brazil, and Marcos was Portuguese.

The last two on the team?

Floyd and Praveen. Praveen, Skinner knew he could reasonably trust the gray female Abyssinian’s prescience faculties, and she could pull through when backed into a corner.

As for Floyd… Skinner bit back a sigh. He wasn’t too fond of the griffon’s cheek, but the welder was there for more than just steering the lifeboat. He was ex-army, and Skinner felt one of those M249 they initially got from the Florida Keys would be a nice addition to the team.

Which led to the first objective of their stay in Belem. Just get to the seaport, look around and secure a spot so Fugro could pull in alongside safely.

Probably just a matter of closing this gate and that to keep out critters. Then they’d get around to looking for returnees. Carefully this time.

The quays were tall, a looming wall of cracked concrete with rusty ladders and damaged rubber fenders spaced out at regular intervals much like the simple cranes that were rusting away next to them. Vines and roots hung from them, with even the odd sapling having taken a liking to the artificial ‘cliffs’ and poking out at an angle from the tall structure. Beneath that, halfway sunk in the murky waters of the river, were cargo barges. Most had broken out of their mooring, spilling anything from gravel in bulk to miscellaneous containers and pallets in the water. The scattered pieces of timber and detritus banged against the semirigid as Floyd steered them closer.

Not too far away from that, a tugboat had capsized when rust finally gnawed through its hull, its design too obsolete to have been in active use prior to the Event. Most likely, the port authority had left it there unmanned, awaiting a tow to the nearest scrapyard.

Skinner didn’t dwell on those obstacles. There was still enough room along the quays for Fugro when they secured the perimeter, and at the very worst they’d have a clogged filter on the coolant system. They kept going, tying up the lifeboat at the bottom of a rusty ladder, and then he began climbing, Praveen following shortly after.

The rest of the team didn’t bother with the rusty ladder. All three casually flew up to the quay, which would have made Skinner jealous, but he could throw electric arcs around and turn into fog, so that was saying something.

“Okay Quinn, Skinner here, we’ve made it ashore. Give us a bit of time and we’ll have a mooring spot secured. Over.”

“Understood Captain. We’ll keep an eye out if we see something too. Out.”

Skinner shoved his radio back in its pouch. Around him, his four subordinates had already taken positions and were awaiting orders.

Ahead? Rusting warehouses covered in layers of vines, leaves, and the sounds of jungle reaching his ears. Something rustled in the undergrowth, a capybara that ran away at the sight of the foreign creatures.

Ahead? Fun-fun times for sure.

“Spread out and keep your heads on a swivel. We’ll go along the quays, find the edge of the fence and start from there. Move!” The hedgefog barked his orders loudly, chambering a round in his G36.

In Trecesson, what followed after the arrival of the stranded Equestrians and their airship was… not much actually. Sure there was the novelty that always came with new arrivals to the village and the Canterlot Courier drew the attention of a few that came to Captain Moral Compass and asked if they could visit the airship, but overall things were pretty quiet.

Most of that was owed to the fact everything was held up by the research that needed to be finished.

Logistics problems? Wait for Starswirl to figure out how to make spells stick. Sure there was an airship landed right there in the field, but the technology to make lift gases and the propulsion to make their own airship was beyond the little workshop the village had. Though they did use Canterlot Courier for a few trips back and forth between there and Trecesson, as well as salvaging a few houses in Paimpont for construction materials. A little help, but not the long-term solution they needed.

Miles’ need to turn into a stallion? See section: making spells stick.

And they had Morgane’s help, mind! It didn’t entirely hinge on Starswirl. The recluse fay in her cave would frequently send back scrolls containing her own conclusions whenever a guard was dispatched to bring her food and supplies.

Getting the Equestrians back to their dimension? Same thing, held up by research, both in aligning the teleportation spell correctly, and in powering the ritual.

On the other side of things, Rockhoof had proved diligent in handling the situation with Comper castle and Lady Vivian’s followers. The stallion would much rather his future in Broceliande be as quiet and bereft of politics as possible, so soon after Trixie and Starlight’s arrival, he went back to the other castle with a map so they’d draw borders and establish ties. He wasn’t particularly fond of the fervor with which Paladin Catherine referred to the Lady of the Lake, but at the same time it seemed unlikely it would ever result in a fight.

Cernunnos after all, would never allow such a thing to occur within Broceliande.

It wasn’t even that hard a deal to seal. He held a brief thing with the other inhabitants of Trecesson about what they wanted before he set off with Miles and a few guards, and by nightfall he was back with a rolled-up map and some notes about the arrangement. Paimpont, the ruined village with the abbey in the very center of the forest, was on the very edge of that border. Anything to the south along an imaginary line that extended from one edge of the forest to the other, was to fall under Trecesson’s purview. Anything north, under Comper’s. As for Paimpont itself, it being right on the border, the salvage and construction of any building or infrastructure there would have to be agreed upon by both parties before being carried out.

And there was a little added note that both settlements would ensure a pathway be maintained from their own castle to the abbey in Paimpont for the sake of trade opportunities.

As for the artifacts Starswirl had guessed were abandoned inside the abbey… Catherine from Comper had promised she’d send one of her Knights and Rockhoof one of his Lieutenants to explore the site and then split the loot between both settlements.

Simple. Succinct. And it shouldn’t hinder them in the future. With the border drawn as such, the Golden Tree was still securely within their territory so there was no fear they’d not be able to keep an eye on Concord and the Elements, and they also got a few nifty sites like a quarry and the overgrown remains of the military academy Miles and Emeric had come from.

All in all? A pretty good deal. There was even a clause set aside for Morgane’s territory, it being represented as a thick red border on the map around the Vale of No Return.

“Rock even said they were planning to build a mint over in Comper, so we really could get some trade going with them. It’s a bit far off, he said they have as hard a time as we have collecting construction materials.” Meadowbrook added as a last note whilst she stirred her cauldron, a wooden beaked mask covering her muzzle.

Three quarters of a turn counterclockwise, swirl the ladle in a ‘s’ (you only swirl in a ‘g’ between the winter solstice and the spring equinox after all) and add the powdered birch bark. The thick liquid shifted to an amber color and stopped bubbling.

Good. The concoction was stable. She lifted up her mask with a satisfied smile and turned off the electric stove she’d been using. Give it a few hours to cool down like that, and the endurance potion would be ready for bottling. Rockhoof’s guard would surely find use for it patrolling the forest.

Taking a pause to hang her mask on one of the racks hanging off the basement’s vaulted brick ceiling, she sauntered (more like waddled, but she wasn’t ready to admit her pregnancy was affecting her gait just yet) over to Martin, finding the young fawn busy in his own little section of the potion lab with a mortar and pestle.

She had him work on ingredient preparation and study plant properties. He still was too young to trust with anything more complicated than rhubarb syrup… that said syrup was always useful. Some of Meadow’s concoctions could hardly be considered palatable.

“Trixie’s surprised to hear Rockhoof is that...” The blue unicorn sitting on her haunches by the door trailed off, looking for words.

“Clever?”

“Trixie’s sorry Miss Meadow! She meant...” The mare quickly raised her forehooves.

“Oh shush, think nothing of it.” Meadow waved it off. “I know the kind of thoughts my husband attracts. The non-naughty one I mean.” She added the second sentence with a wink.

The blush on Trixie was obvious. Unaware of the conversation, Martin continued his work, dutifully mincing, slicing, crushing anything his adoptive mother had told him to that day. And once he was done… he could leave the cold lab in the basement and go play in the forest!

“I know many ponies think Rockhoof isn’t that bright just because he’s a big stallion – in more ways than one- with big muscles and a habit of getting boisterous when he tells his stories. Honestly I think the latter is rather charming, kids love it. And he’s certainly an outdoors pony... but he has his bookish side you know? The castle’s library, it’s probably his favorite place here. He’s always had a thing for history, and the Castellan that preceded us here has a genuinely impressive history on human history.” Meadow explained.

“Wait, you mean?”

“I find him there often before we go to bed. He picks a book from the medieval collection, grabs himself a bottle of chouchen since Lionel started making some, and then you really have to tear him out of it.” He always looked so comfy in there, his large back hunched over the human books, handling them with the tip of his hooves like they were the most delicate things in the world.

And he’d tell her about it later in bed, all starry-eyed and eager to learn about the history of Brittany and how as a peninsula they retained a cultural identity very distinct from wider France. She couldn’t help but imagine him telling the same stories to their foals when she gave birth in spring.

She stopped her daydreaming before she got to how they might look like when they grew up. Darn pregnancy was getting to her, she still needed to tidy up the lab and make sure Martin hadn’t messed up his work. She knew how the fawn was eager to get back in the forest…

“Martin dear, careful with the chopping knife, it’s sharp. Don’t go too fast.”

“Je sais m’man.” He replied in French, raising a cloven hoof to show the knife perfectly balanced on it. In front of him, a set of mushrooms lay, perfectly minced into tiny blocks.

Both Trixie and Meadow blinked. Kid was a natural for sure. The blade twirled and he pushed the mushrooms in a jar with the flat of the blade before sealing it with a bit of cork.

“Good job. You’re learning fast.”

And she’d have to bump her teachings up a notch if he kept up at that speed. Maybe she should start teaching him how important stellar and seasonal cycles were in ingredient collection and potion making? If Starswirl started up with astronomy that might work.

Still… for a fawn that had showed up at the gates half-starved and wearing a rag of a Spider-man T-shirt, he was… actually no. Not too surprising. He was the bearer of the Element of Sorcery after all. Meadowbrook instructed him on where to put the ingredients he had prepped for her in the various alcoves and drawers of the medicine cabinets that lined the walls of the former dungeon/wine cellar before she let him off with a wave. Martin happily sauntered away from the lab, the clip-clop of his cloven hooves echoing around the vaulted ceiling as he made his way back out the dungeons and up the stairs, most likely off to play in the forest.

“He’s a bright kid.” Trixie commented.

“I know right? It’s like… anything Starswirl and I throw at him, he swallows up like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I was worried we would overburden him with all our teachings but he just takes it in stride.”

“Like a Twilight?”

Meadow frowned.

“No… not quite at least.” She tapped a hoof against her muzzle. “Or maybe he’s not that age yet and got too much energy in him for that. He’ll spend his time inside reading up for sure, but that’s only because Rockhoof and I tell him to be back by nightfall otherwise he always seems to prefer being out in the forest. Not with other fawns and colts, mind. He wanders around with the animals.”

“Don’t you worry he might grow up to be a bit socially awkward if he keeps that up?”

“We keep him schooled in the mornings. He’s above the rest, but it’s best to have him stick with kids his age for a bit at least. The afternoons he spends with me and Starswirl, and when he’s done, he can go play in the forest like he wants.”

“Isn’t it dangerous though?”

Meadowbrook laughed out loud at that.

“To you and me? Of course it is. But not for him. The White Stag makes sure no critter ever dares touch Cernunnos’ little protege. He’s fine, and he’s a deer. They never get lost in a forest. They can see stuff ponies like us miss at a glance.”

Trixie quieted down a bit after that, taking the opportunity to look around the potions lab while Meadow settled her affairs there for the day. The pregnant mare knew she couldn’t spend entire days down below for the sake of her foals, and she was steadily growing too wide to keep working more than a few hours at a time. Even then, the bump on her belly tented the edges of her usual pleated dress ever so slightly.

The cold that permeated the dungeons with the end of summer, the humidity, even the fumes… Emeric, ever the tinkering Lieutenant, had seen to add heaters and extractor fans to combat the conditions in the former wine cellar, but she still suspected she might have to relinquish her potion making by the time the first frost rolled in, though she’d have to make an exception for the winter solstice. It wasn’t the kind of event you sweep under the rug.

So she was making up for the span of time where she’d be out of the workforce: various vials and jars filled with potions and unguents of all kinds already occupied the medicine cabins she’d had installed in the lab, ready to fulfil the needs of Trecesson’s inhabitants. Healing salves. Fortifying powders to mix in one’s canteen. Even some herbal infusions to soothe a mare’s attitude during heat and prevent unwanted foals and fillies.

Plus the obvious blend of potions to facilitate childbirth. One large glowing wine bottle filled with the potion, ready to be used when her and Rock’s foals finally decided to greet the world with their presence. She rubbed her growing belly with pride.

“Trixie’s been wondering… How does it feel?”

Meadowbrook grinned. Some mares felt terrible and nauseous during their first pregnancy. She? She had the knowledge and potions to make it the most wholesome and fulfilling time a mare could experience.

Roncevaux Pass was emptying itself ever so slowly. The sepulcral howls and pops of slain shades had decreased in pitch as the battlefield ran out of troops the more of the frankish rear guard was slain. At this point, most of the militia spearmen on the flanks had fallen, hacked apart by the relentless assault of the more numerous Basques. No corpse lay where they fell, only the swirling magic and echoes of the high pitched battle that had taken place, left behind as the fight drew closer to the center of the pass and towards the line of wagons.

Those few Franks left alive still? Archers that had run out of ammunition long ago and were holding off the Basques at the gaps between the wagons with whatever weapons they had picked up, and the core elite, or what remained of it. In the short span of time Rodrigo had taken to catch his breath, more of them had fallen, leaving but a thin line of fierce warriors along with the Paladin and his retinue of bodyguards and nobles.

If Rodrigo wanted to get that sword, he’d have to be quick, because now only the fiercest warriors remained, and the Basques wanted to get to the enemy leader. Already a group of tall mountaineers, men large enough to strangle a bear and carrying huge hammers and woodcutter’s axes were vectoring towards them. The tallest, he saw rip off an arrow that had embedded itself in his leather jerkin to shove it in the eye socket of the nearest Frank.

No time to waste then. With a groan, Rodrigo stood up on his hooves, still not having regained movement in his injured hind leg. His horn sparked a bit, but his stolen shortswords lifted up nevertheless. He’d have to be quick.

Casually dispatching one archer that had taken note of the tiny equine slipping behind the frontline with a swipe of one sword, he sneaked around and behind them. More of the elite died, and as he crawled under a wagon to finally reach the Paladin, he got a proper look at the last stand.

Most of the Basques had the Franks surrounded now, keeping a healthy distance between them and their foes, a raging tide of angered shades that yet… waited. Roiling, hissing and spitting, but advancing no further. Ahead of their army, the Chiefs were gathering for the last assault, huge, rough men that had little trouble turning their tools into weapons of war.

On the other side, the Paladin’s shoulders heaved. Exhausted, out of breath, but there was the glint of defiance in his ghostly translucent eyes. The beast of a man stood slightly hunched, cloak billowing in the mountain wind, ragged. His scale armor was chipped, missing a few pieces that had fallen over the course of the battle. His shield was gone, broken by one blow too many, as was his helmet, revealing his features for the world to see in their ethereal glory. Square-jawed, handsome, his nose had been broken and his face slashed, tracing one long streak from cheek to brow that, instead of seeping blood, released wisps of greenish magic. Yet, despite the grim situation, the wounds, his stance and gaze was severe, resolute. One hand held his sword in a guard stance in front of him. The other, an oliphant horn, which he was slowly raising to his lips.

Rodrigo couldn’t help but stare at the sword, its power radiating off the iridescent blade with the glowing yellow runes carefully drawn along its edges. The blade was tapered, with two pairs of serrated teeth at its base before a thick, plain brass crossguard with a horseshoe stamped on it. Red leather warped around a hilt held tightly in the paladin’s hand before the weapon ended with a ring for its pommel, wrapped around a single piece of transparent crystal that reflected the eerie light cast by the green magic flicking this way and that around the plateau.

It wasn’t big by human standards. Just a one-handed sword meant to be used either from horseback or in combination with a shield. From Rodrigo’s perspective of a smaller equine that barely reached a human’s hips? It might as well have been a zweihander. Planted in the ground, it would still have been about as tall as the quadruped, horn included.

It was, also, material, unlike all the ghosts and shades presently fighting.

Then the oliphant horn reached the paladin’s ghostly lips and a long, sepulchral blast rang out around the whole plateau. This was the very end of the battle and, with a warcry, the remaining Franks sallied to make their last stand. While his subordinates charged, the paladin stayed, regal, surveying the crowd of Basque chiefs, daring them to challenge him.

He turned around, facing Rodrigo, sword raised challengingly. The words flew to the forefront of the Spaniard’s mind.

Sir Roland of Roncevaux, First of Charlemagne’s Twelve Paladins, Prefect of the March of Brittany, was challenging him to a duel.

Author's Notes:

You know, looking at the legends about Sir Roland, they usually say he did something to prevent his sword from getting into enemy hands as the battle turned against the Franks. Some have it that he threw it away so far it somehow lodged itself into a cliff on the other side of the Pyrenees. Some have it that he repeatedly bashed the sword against one rock after another until it broke...

The latter doesn't sound too clever given the sword is rumored to have been forged by the legendary smith Weyland.

Also... if you're into that kind of music, D'Artagnan made a song about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_XSdQmGp0
Neat band if you ask me.