I’ll admit it: it sucked being back on the road. We may not have been in Three Rivers for little more than a day, but I found myself already missing civilization. It felt so liberating to be able to walk up and down streets full of ponies and not have to worry about getting caught by slavers or shot in the back. Though Yeoman had ruined that experience for us, leaving Three Rivers behind was like a slap in the face. Out here, there weren’t any rules or laws keeping us safe. The only things we could count on were our guns and each other, and death could come from anywhere, at any time.

Which is why I feel awful about how casually I can look back on those days now. Running from and cheating death had become so commonplace for me by then that I hardly thought any differently about it. Ponies trying to kill me was ‘normal’. But I was trying to find the pieces to this damn code so nopony else had to consider fighting tooth and nail for their life as normal. I wanted to make a better world.

But to be completely honest, making a better world can be boring as all fuck. And what I mean by that is just how long it takes to walk anywhere. These pieces of this code were spread across an entire continent. The Synarchy had hidden installations hundreds of miles apart, and the five of us didn’t have any means of transportation other than our hooves. Surge and I practiced teleporting some more, but we made slow progress on that spell. It just didn’t really stick as well as pyromancy did, and I could only manage four or five teleports a day before I felt burnt out and exhausted. Trying to slide the fabric of reality around underneath your hooves and end up somewhere else without moving is really fucking hard.

By the time night rolled around on the second day since leaving Three Rivers, I had a crippling headache from my exercises with Surge. My headmate could feel it as well; considering the only serious pain I’d felt since she started sharing a room in my skull was usually her doing, this wasn’t exactly a happy surprise for her. Though she’d explained she could manipulate nerve endings in my brain to block out pain (which Ace was too excited to demonstrate by punching me in the gut without even warning us), the bundle of nerves underneath my horn was too sensitive for her to fuck with and block out the migraines. Hence, we both felt like shit as we lay on my side, staring at the fire in the dark of the night.

Nova and Gauge both sat near me, and Nova would occasionally brush her natural wingtip along my side and up and down my back to try and comfort me. Ace sat on the other side of the fire, separated from the rest of us as she usually liked to be, and sometimes shot me a look and a smirk. When I groaned for the millionth time, she chuckled and shook her head. “Maybe you and Sparky should lay off the training for a short bit. Last thing we need is you burning out your horn when we need some actual magic.”

“She won’t learn if she doesn’t practice,” Surge answered. “And the sooner she can learn to reposition herself in a fight, the better.”

“Did they really teach that to every unicorn in the army?” Nova asked.

“And the navy. And the marines. Air force too.” Surge shrugged, sliding the shoulder we leaned on through the grass. “Basic training took two months, followed by specialist training. During the later years of the War for Survival, it was shortened to six weeks. Every unicorn needed to learn how to teleport, cast primitive fireballs and ice spikes, create shields, and perform simple structural mending. Magi would get advanced training to learn better spells. Though earth ponies and pegasi made up the significant bulk of our armed forces, unicorn specialists could fight above our weight class with our spells.”

“Great,” I said. “You’re making me feel like an idiot.”

“I thought you’d already accepted that by now.”

My other friends shared a laugh at my expense. Grumbling, I just focused on watching SCaR slowly fly around the campsite on patrol, the fire glinting off of his metallic body. “The War for Survival…” I began. “That’s that war against the Coalition, right?”

“Correct,” Surge said. “The war was still in progress when the Silence began.”

“There’s some bitter irony in the name,” Gauge mused. “Were all your wars named like that?”

Surge hummed an affirmative. “Their names were chosen to be patriotic. ‘The War of Expansion.’ ‘The War of Honor.’ ‘The War of Vengeance.’ The Synarchy had a different excuse and a different label for every war it fought. It kept the population in support of the government.”

“I just don’t understand how ponies could support a government like that,” Nova said. “The loss of life from all of these wars must’ve been astounding! Wouldn’t internal unrest have toppled the regime after so much bloodshed?”

“Propaganda is a dangerous tool,” Surge said. “As one of the Synarchy’s best scientists, some of the layers of the veil were peeled away for me. I got a closer look at how the inside ran, much closer than the average pony. The propaganda departments fed them stories and showed them that we were alone against the entire world, and if they didn’t do their part, everypony would die. Fear and patriotism are a great way to hold a regime together.” Sighing, Surge added, “Of course, when the propaganda is true, then it’s easier to feed to the people.”

Nova blinked. “That can’t all have been true, though. All that stuff about death coming for the Synarchy if they didn’t fight. It couldn’t have been true. Right?”

“It was,” Surge insisted. “By the time I was born, Equestria had been at war with every other nation on the planet at least once. We had no allies left, and the other nations had started to bond together to counter us. The War of Survival was truly that. If the Coalition had won, Equestria would have been destroyed.” I could feel Surge digging up memories from her time on Equus, especially in those final few years before she left for Auris. “I did my part. I had a family I had to protect. I did everything the Synarchy asked of me because I knew if I didn’t, we’d all die.”

“Sounds like it was the Synarchy’s fault for getting ponykind into that mess in the first place,” I said. “Maybe if it had stopped attacking everyone around it…”

“The Synarchy’s place in the world was decided a long time before I was born,” Surge said. “There was no going back. We stood alone.”

“And yet here you are, wanting to bring that bit of nastiness to Auris.” Ace crossed her forelegs and shook her head from the other side of the fire. “We can use this here code thing to build a better world than the one you left, and yet you want to bring it right back to the way things were. Why?”

Surge bristled… but I felt like it was more out of habit than anything. “The Synarchy was the greatest nation on Equus,” she said. “Nobody could stand up to us. It was our technology that made Auris possible. Imagine what we could accomplish if there wasn’t anyone to oppose us!”

“Imagine how much more we could accomplish if we worked together and stopped trying to kill each other or step on other ponies’ necks!” Nova fluffed her wings out and made herself look a little bigger. “Blackwash did amazing things with just scrap and teamwork. We fixed the communications dish that sent the code throughout Auris in the first place. The Sentinels in the north unified the valley and drove out the slavers and rapists! Look at what the ponies in Three Rivers were able to accomplish without slaves or anything like that!”

“The Ivory City wants to destroy all that,” Ace said. “Thatch is holding them back, but it ain’t gonna be for long.” Then her eyes twinkled. “But with that code, though…”

I grunted and sat up, pulling a cigarette from my carton as I did so. Since my horn hurt too much to light it, I floated it over to the fire quickly and held it there until a tongue of flame lit the end, then jammed it between my lips. It rested there and I inhaled a hit, dumping the chemicals into my blood. It already started making my head feel better.

“Hey, Ace,” I started, shifting the cigarette to the corner of my mouth so I could talk. “That Merchant during the trial, Aureus… he didn’t have a really high opinion of Thatch.” I looked her in the eyes, trying to glean anything from her expression. “He called its ruler a despot like Reclaimer. What’s up with that?”

Ace fidgeted and stared at the fire. “Final Hour is… she’s a touchy bitch,” she said. “I don’t like her very much. But she’s done so much with so little. We don’t have none of the big factories or refineries like the City does. But we’re organized and Hour takes in refugees from across the continent. She keeps Thatch and the heartland safe from Reclaimer.”

“So why wouldn’t the Merchants like her?”

“Because she’s convinced that unless everypony does what she says, Reclaimer will win.” She shrugged her beige wings. “She may be right for all I know. It ain’t my place to judge her. But you either follow her and oppose the City, or you’re casting your lot in with Reclaimer.”

“And the Bank, being neutral, doesn’t please her in the slightest,” Surge surmised.

Ace nodded. “She detains any caravans trying to go further east to the City. Claims that they need to pass inspections and she has to check for contraband. Usually that ends up with them confiscating most of the guns, bullets, and other valuables them merchants are carrying.” Shrugging, she pulled over her rifle and started cleaning it for want of something to do. “She’s costing the Bank business. Of course they hate her.”

“I imagine we’ll be meeting her before too long,” Gauge said. “We know Reclaimer has a piece in the Ivory City, so we’ll be passing through Thatch at some point.”

That seemed to brighten Ace a bit. “It’ll be good to be home,” she said. “I may have been raised in Three Rivers, but Thatch has been my home since I left the Ruin Runners. I ain’t around there all that much, but it’s a place I can hang my hat.” Her ears flicked against nothing, and she chuckled a bit. “Well, if I had one, I suppose.”

I groaned and stretched my legs a bit. With my head feeling like it was going to pop, I figured a chance to walk around and maybe clear it a bit away from the smoke of the fire would be nice. Rolling onto my hooves, I started walking away from the fire and between the trees. “I’m gonna take a walk. Try not to burn the forest down before I get back.”

“What about after?” Gauge asked.

“Yeah, then it’s fine.” I shook my head. “If you hear me screaming, it’s probably because I’m dying.”

And I left the fire with that, slipping between two twisting trees and disappearing into the shadows on the other side. I honestly didn’t know where I planned on going, but it was better than hanging out around the bright fire and choking on smoke while I still had a migraine... even though I was purposefully inhaling smoke with every draw of my cigarette. I took my rifle with me, though. I wasn’t stupid enough to wander around unarmed and with my pyromancies unavailable, and the weight of the killing tool on my back was comforting in its own way.

Auris is a whole ‘nother world at night. At least in the day, you can see what’s trying to kill you, but at night, there are so many strange noises and shadowy things darting around the trees and undergrowth that it feels… alien. Which is weird considering Auris already is an alien world, but during the night it’s doubly so. Weird vining plants clinging to auranoaks glowed blue, green, and yellow, attracting little bugs with ten or twelve legs sprouting off of their bodies. I didn’t know what was poisonous and what wasn’t, considering none of this stuff grew anywhere near Blackwash, so I just did my best to not touch anything.

I found a little creek splashing through the darkness, tiny bits of moonlight dancing on its surface. Given the strange trilling calls of Auris’ nocturnal life, it was something a little familiar and comforting to focus on. Plus, it was peaceful. I could really do some thinking out here, away from the chatter of my friends.

Of course, there was one pony I couldn’t get away from. I could feel Surge trying to get a good look around me, occasionally nudging my eyes in different directions to focus on something else. Sighing, I sat down beside the water and let my rear hooves dangle in the creek. “What was it like coming here for the first time?” I asked aloud. “Leaving everything behind and going somewhere that didn’t officially exist?”

Memories that weren’t mine started to flash in my mind’s eye as Surge dug through them. I saw flashes of steel, aluminum, and titanium as she walked along the hallway of a spaceship. Sitting next to a reinforced window, watching the stars slide by as the corvette picked up speed. Auris suddenly appearing from the bridge, first as a blue dot, then growing into an enormous ball of blue, orange, pink, and white. The feeling of alien air on my face as I stood in an opening airlock. Watching the shrikes wheel around the mountains in the distance, so fascinating and unknown.

“I don’t think I can describe it,” Surge admitted. “You think you’re prepared for it, but you can’t ever be. That first step on the surface of an entirely new world is beyond words. You’ve crossed a divide life was never supposed to cross, and everything you once knew about the biology of your homeworld is different. Everywhere you look, you see something new, something fascinating, something magical.”

Her nostalgia was infectious; I found myself smiling just from imagining that feeling. After all, didn’t I too feel that way when I left Blackwash behind for the first time? Everything was so different and fascinating. I felt like I’d never run out of new things to see and understand. And here I was, still learning new things every day. I could understand exactly what she meant, despite not crossing lightyears like she once did.

“You were proud of what you did?” I prompted her. “I know it was in defense of the Synarchy and everything, but do you ever regret how things turned out?”

“If by that you mean do I regret coming here, getting my soul trapped in a managenerator for nearly two hundred planetary revolutions, and now being forced to live through you, then yes.” Her bitter chuckle felt weird coming from my throat when I wasn’t the one who felt bitter. “I wished to die for years. Or… well, as much as a soul can die. I wanted to move on. Dying wasn’t bad. Being forced to suffer for centuries with no afterlife was worse than Tartarus itself. The burning would have been pleasant compared to the nothingness I experienced, trapped in that reactor and watching my body decay.”

She sighed. “But now I’m happy to be alive, I suppose. Living through you is making the torment I suffered bearable. It’s worth something now. After getting a second lease on life, I’m not keen on dying again.”

“Yeesh. I still can’t imagine what that was like,” I said. “I’m surprised you’re still sane.”

“I spent nearly a hundred and fifty of those Auran years in a restful torpor,” Surge said. “I didn’t have a thought in that entire span. I only snapped out of it when that signal arrived at my installation after so long. The rest protected my mind from falling apart through that torture. Otherwise I think I would be insane.”

After a few moments, she asked me a question instead. “Is this really what you all think of the Synarchy? That we were evil, vile ponies? Despite everything we helped build, despite accomplishing the impossible task of putting your ancestors on this planet, we deserved to die?”

It was a surprising question to say the least. I hadn’t expected her to ask anything like that. “I…” How did I answer that? “I didn’t know much about the Synarchy growing up, other than it was another name for Equestria and you guys were responsible for putting all of us on this backwater, failed colony of a planet. I used to dream about what my life could’ve been like if I’d been born on Equus instead of a planet where everything tries to kill us and we struggled to provide enough food and water for our town every year. We all blamed you for making us live like we did instead of living in tall, shiny towers with plenty of food and medicine and entertainment.” I shook my head. “We didn’t know what happened to the Synarchy, but many of us were happy that you were probably dead. You put us on this planet and then disappeared. We lived like we did and suffer like we do because of you. There’s no love lost between the ponies of Auris and the ponies of Equus.”

“War makes us do bad things,” Surge said in a quiet voice. “Desperation makes us ignore them. We were losing, Ember. A successful defense on any front was good news. We were digging in where we could and waging a fighting retreat where we couldn’t. We’d nearly broken the Coalition’s back, but we were exhausted, both in marepower and resources. By then, the weight of the rest of the planet was too much for us, and we were looking for something to turn the tide. And judging by this so-called Silence, we never found it.”

“How bad was it?” I asked her. “Did you know what was going to happen near the end?”

“I only knew things because I was entrusted with some classified information. Communications with Equus were strictly forbidden; we could only receive, not send apart from the annual check-in. But I was privileged to have an idea of the situation back home as the mare in charge of an installation relating to EOH Protocol Dusk.” I saw flashes of her sitting in her office, reading confidential reports printed on etch glass. “By the end of the war, just before the Silence, we were in hard retreat through our satellite states. The Coalition was consolidating a navy that outnumbered ours two to one, even though we’d been bombing and harassing their drydocks with everything we had to stop them from putting up new ships. A decisive fight was going to happen sooner or later. This was in late November, and everything went dark at the beginning of the new year. I don’t know what happened after that. Nopony did.”

“Why didn’t you surrender?” I asked. “There wasn’t anything to gain from fighting.”

Surge laughed. “Surrender? Do you think the Coalition would’ve let us surrender after everything we’d done to them? We would’ve fought to the last anyway. The Synarchy and all of Equestria probably burned to the ground on the New Year. There wasn’t anypony left who could help all of us on Auris way out here.

“No, Equestria is dead forever,” she concluded with grim finality. “If the Coalition is still around, I’m surprised they haven’t found Auris yet. If they do, we need to be ready to fight them off. And if they’re dead… well, I guess it doesn’t matter much anymore, does it?”

I thought for a moment. “It’s been... what, a hundred and ninety-five winters since the Silence? What is that in Equus years?”

“Two hundred and seventy-ish,” Surge said. “One revolution of Auris around the Meadowbrook star is roughly 1.4 Equus revolutions around its sun.”

“Yeah, so it’s been a fucking long time. Who’s to say that everything’s still the same?” I shrugged. “If the Coalition’s still around, maybe they’ll want peace. That war’s literally ancient history.”

“Peace is impossible,” Surge growled. “Those monsters burned my home. I’ll never work with them.”

“Even if it means they’d kill us all? For a scientist, you can be really fucking stupid sometimes.”

I sighed. “Listen, Surge. I know that you’re from that time. But we’ve got more important things to focus on here. Whoever puts this code together is going to decide the fate of Auris. If Reclaimer does it, he’ll rebuild your fascist Synarchy in his image, kill all of us, and then spend the next forever enslaving everypony who’s not from the Ivory City. If we can get it, maybe we can build something better. A world where we don’t have to send our kids off to fight when they’re fifteen. A world where the government won’t take your children from you if they decide you’d be better without the distraction.”

I felt kind of bad for driving the knife in that deep, but I knew Surge wouldn’t understand unless I preyed upon things that actually mattered to her. I knew she’d loved her kids and missed them still—I could feel what it was like to be a mother through her and I’d gained an understanding of the pain she felt when the Synarchy took her children away. Wouldn’t a world where mothers didn’t have to give up their children to the state because it thought it knew best be better than returning to the old system?

When she was silent, I flicked the butt of my cigarette into the stream. “It’s something to think about,” I said aloud. “We have a chance to do something different. I sure as fuck don’t like the old system. And I don’t know why you would either.”

I watched the butt float down the stream, spinning a few times in the eddies of the current. Who could’ve imagined two months ago that I’d be where I was today, trying to rewrite history? From a simple forgemare to an estranged Sentinel wrestling with mysteries from the past that could change Auris forever, I’d come a long way. And not just me. My friends as well. We’d come so far and suffered so much since we first heard that signal all that time ago.

Was it for the better? Would we have been better off staying at the dam with the rest of the ponies from Blackwash? It would’ve been easy. I could’ve stayed with the Sentinels and helped rebuild the dam, and we wouldn’t have had to worry about anything other than the remnants of the Crimson trying to strike back at us or raid shit in the valley. I probably could’ve lived my life in peace apart from the occasional gunfight or something to defend our turf. I could’ve had kids and grown old, and maybe it’d take forever for Reclaimer and the Ivory City to find their way to the valley.

But I couldn’t do that. Once I knew the stakes, some stupid idealistic part of me refused to just sit by and not give a shit. I had a chance to save the world, and I was the only one who could. And call me an idiot if you want, but I wanted to play the part of the hero. I wanted to be the one that made a difference. And because of that, here I was.

I was an idiot and I was going to get myself killed. But at least it’d be for the right reasons. At least it gave me a fucking purpose.

A distant scream shook me out of my admittedly angsty thoughts. My ears followed the noise and pointed through the trees and darkness to someplace I couldn’t see. There was a hill in that direction, though where exactly the scream came from, I couldn’t tell. My horn lit up and grabbed my rifle, and I crossed the stream and started moving in the direction of the noise.

At least until Surge froze my legs. “What are you doing?” she asked me. “Are you stupid enough to go in there alone?”

“Yes,” I said, forcing myself to start moving again. “Somepony’s in trouble up there. I need to find out why.”

“You’re not even going to go back and grab Ace for backup?”

It was a tempting thought, but I’m an impulsive bitch and I was already trotting through the woods. “That’ll take too long. A lot can happen in ten minutes.” I checked my rifle and turned the safety off. Who knew what I’d need to shoot to death at a moment’s notice. Anything could come through those woods. “Just help me make sure I don’t get lost, okay?”

Surge resigned herself to that, knowing that she’d have to fight me the whole way back to camp otherwise. “Your idiocy better not get us killed.”

“It won’t so long as we’re quick.”

“Not careful?”

“Careful takes too long.” I scrambled over a fallen log and held my breath. Sure enough, after a few seconds, I heard a mare’s cries echoing through the trees. It gave me a direction to go in, so I hurried along as best as I could. If only it wasn’t the middle of the night; I couldn’t see shit further than twenty feet around me at pretty much all times. All I knew was that she was somewhere uphill, and soon I found myself laboring for breath as I jogged up the slope.

Fuck, I was a lot more tired and spent than I thought I was. Walking all day and teleporting around like an idiot takes a lot out of you. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to use any of my pyromancies. I didn’t have the energy left to cast any.

I saw flickering light reflecting off the trees up ahead. “A fire,” I murmured to myself, slowing my advance and exchanging speed for silence. Whoever was up here, they’d decided to set up camp right on top of this hill. Using the twisting Auris trees to shield my advance, I crept through the shadows until I had eyes on what was happening in front of me. Peering through the undergrowth, I took in the scene.

There were three tents pitched around a fire, and supplies had been strung on ropes looped over trees to keep them off the ground. I counted eight grizzled mares and stallions circled around the fire, watching some spectacle unfold. There, another mare with an eyepatch made from a cloth headwrap laughed at and taunted a figure huddling on the ground. And while those first nine ponies looked like your average slaver or bandit scum, the pony on the ground looked like something I’d never seen before.

She was an earth pony and still pretty young, a teenager most likely, but what struck me most were the tattoos covering her body. Swirling tribal patterns ran up and down her forelegs and across her face in mesmerizing designs. They were incredibly intricate and detailed; I couldn’t imagine how long it’d taken for her to get them all done. But instead of worrying about that for now, I decided to concern myself with the fact that she was curled up in a screaming, terrified ball while the mare standing over her whipped and beat her with some kind of prod.

She must be a native, Surge thought at me. Fascinating…

Yeah and she’s getting the shit beaten out of her. I adjusted my rifle and poked it through the undergrowth, taking aim as best I could. I’m not gonna let these fuckers get away with that.

As soon as I had a clear shot on the mare beating the filly, I took it. My rifle cracked through the darkness of the night and the mare’s head exploded into blood chunks a moment later. The other slavers flinched at the surprise shot, giving me time to line up another headshot on a stallion. By the time I took him down, however, they were scrambling for their guns and screaming orders to each other, their heads spinning wildly as they looked for my position.

Think they know where I’m at? I thought at Surge as I used my hooves to manually aim my rifle through the brush. I didn’t need my orange magic giving my position away. I sighted down another with her back turned to me and put one in her neck. She clutched at the wound spewing blood and spasmed as she fell to the ground, dying a few seconds later.

Then bullets began wildly flying through my cover, and I ended up falling flat on my back as I reeled from the return fire. I spent maybe a second to check that I was still in one piece before I rolled back onto my hooves and grabbed my rifle again. I needed to change positions.

And of course, Surge took the opportunity to chastise me. I think they do, yes, she thought at me.

Shut up.

I pressed myself against another tree a bit further to the left and caught my breath. All the while, I heard the bandits shouting orders to each other.

“The asshole’s shooting from the northeast side!”

“Fuck! Keep an eye out for movement! There might be more!”

“Come on out, you little bastard! We’re gonna find you and chop you up into little tiny pieces!”

I took a breath to ready myself and steady my aim, and then I spun to my left around the tree. Two ponies happened to be looking my way, and both rushed to aim their weapons as soon as they saw me. I didn’t give them the chance, toggling my rifle to automatic fire mode and dousing them with bullets. One of them dove to the side, rolling across the ground as she slid behind a tree for cover. The other didn’t, falling to the dirt like a sack of meat.

“There!” one of them shouted, and I immediately galloped to the next bit of cover as bullets began flying around me. I tripped and fell, but that ended up saving me from a pegasus who ducked out of the treetops to try and strafe me. They disappeared back into the air a moment later, but I knew they’d be back. I had to move. Shit, this could’ve been going much better.

I came to a stop against a different tree and checked the number printed out on my scope. Nineteen bullets—more than enough. “One against five,” I muttered, watching the skies and trying to keep my ears trained for the sounds of movement around me. “Could be going better.”

The tree bark next to my head exploded as a heavy round went flying through it, sending splinters flying and cutting my cheek. I immediately fell flat to the ground as three more followed it, chewing right through the center of the tree and eviscerating where I’d been standing moments ago. Bullets struck the ground around me, and I fired blinding up into the canopy where I thought I saw muzzle flashes. That fucking pegasus wasn’t even coming down to fight me face to face!

“She’s pinned!” One of them screamed. “Move!”

“You’re dead, whore!”

Rolling back onto my hooves, I quickly sighted another pony bursting out of cover and put two in the chest and one in the head before she could fire. Four left. A second one started shooting down on me from the right, and I scrambled behind a rock, yelping when I felt something bite me in the flank. I ended up coming to a rough stop and crawled behind the rocks before I could get shot again. But I could still move my leg, which meant I was still mobile. It just hurt like all fuck.

I prematurely dumped the mag since it only had like two shots left in it and loaded a fresh one. Popping around cover, I spotted two figures converging on me from the front. My rifle fire scattered them, but again I had to roll to the side when that pegasus tried to strafe me from above. I fired a few shots at them as they disappeared, but to no effect. And where was the fourth?

Surge drew mana through my horn and manifested a blue shield around me moments before bullets would’ve ripped me to pieces. I spun around to find the fourth pony behind me, obviously surprised that my horn was maintaining two spells of different aura colors. He paid dearly for it; the moment Surge lowered her shield, I shot him to pieces, sending him crumpling to the ground as I blew holes in his body.

“She’s just one damn whore!” The pegasus somewhere above me shouted. “Why can’t you fuckers kill one stupid wh—!”

I heard the distinctive sound of beam weapons cut him off, and moments later, he fell out of the sky, skin charred and blistered from laser wounds. Suddenly Ace was at my side, SP-9s trailing smoke as she held them with her wingtips. “There you are,” she said, holstering her pistols and drawing her rifle. “I figured this was your fault.”

“Shut up,” I said. “There’s two of them left, that way.”

“Good.” Ace put the scope to her eye, sighting down the direction I pointed. “I’m insulted you didn’t invite me to the fun.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” I rolled to my hooves and found I could stand without too much pain from my bullet wound. “I’ll draw their fire. Crack some domes like you’re supposed to.”

She waved her wing at me, so I waited for a break in their fire before darting to the next tree. It was sort of a hobbling run, but I managed to avoid being shot again as I moved. A rifle and a submachine gun chattered at me, but then Ace’s powerful rifle cracked and I heard a strangled scream from across the way. As soon as I stopped at my tree, I checked in the direction of the fire and saw the last bandit turn tail and start to run. Without thinking, I put three into him as he fled, sending his body tumbling down the hill. And then, finally, everything was quiet once more.

After a moment to run through my kills and tally them up, I stepped out of cover, satisfied there wasn’t anypony else left to shoot at us. I found my nearly-spent magazine lying on the ground and brought it back to my bags for reloading later, then limped over to Ace. “Nova and Gauge are still back at the camp?”

Ace nodded. “Had them put that little robot of theirs on high alert while I figured out where in the blazes you’d run off to. Glad I showed up when I did.” Her eyes drifted to my wound, which was still dripping blood. “And you got yourself shot, you dumb bitch. You ain’t trying to get yourself shot every day, right?”

“I’ll be fine,” I grumbled, flexing my leg. I’d have to get the bullet out later, but for the moment it was just embedded in firm muscle instead of possibly biting into bone. For once, having a nice ass actually helped out in combat.

Yes, that was entirely relevant.

It still hurt like shit, though, so I wasn’t going to let the bullet sit in my flank forever. “There was a filly up here they were beating,” I said, nodding back towards the campgrounds. “Maybe twelve or thirteen winters. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.”

“Right,” Ace said, holstering her weapons and trotting up to me. “Surge, how stupid was Ember’s plan?”

“About what you would expect,” Surge said. “There were nine of them and one of her. She managed to kill three from the cover of some brush before being spotted. Then she spent most of the time running from cover to cover while the remaining six shot at her.”

“Which I killed three of before Ace showed up,” I grumbled.

“I had to help her with a shield.”

“Shut up, Sparky. But thanks.”

“Somepony has to look out for the two of us.”

I saw Ace covering her muzzle with her wing. “What?” I asked and stopped trudging up the hill.

“Listening to you two bicker is some mighty entertaining shit,” Ace said. “You sound like a nutjob, Ember.”

I groaned and continued stomping back to the campsite. “Be lucky your head isn’t big enough for two.”

“She’s right,” Surge said. “Her brain is very vacant.”

“I swear on the stars I’m going to fucking blow my own brains out so I don’t have to deal with this shit anymore!” I put a little too much weight on my injured leg and sucked in air through my teeth. “…Ouch.”

“We’ll get you patched up in a bit,” Surge said, and now that we didn’t have to focus on fighting, she made my leg go numb. “This should help for the time being.”

I actually smiled and found a little more spring for my step. “Okay, maybe this fucked up situation isn’t terrible if you can just make me numb whenever I get shot.”

“Wish I had that,” Ace said. “I been shot many a time. It’s never fun.”

We finally made it back to the campsite, still and quiet save for the crackling fire—and the struggling young mare. Her body was covered in welts and bruises, but those slavers had bound her legs together so she couldn’t move. Holstering my rifle, I limped over to her and quickly undid her bindings. “It’s alright, you’re gonna be fine,” I said, trying to soothe her. “They’re all dead now. You’re safe.”

Ace stood by my side while the mare clumsily climbed to her hooves. “She one of them Feati mares?” she asked. “I ain’t never seen one before.”

“She’s fascinating,” Surge said, making me lean forward for a better look. It wasn’t hard to imagine her as a scientist observing a new specimen in her lab for the first time. “Her intricate tattoos suggest ritualistic or ceremonial purposes, so there’s obviously some kind of organized society with their own religious beliefs and traditions. Well toned muscles from years of living in the wild, mostly developed through adolescence. She’s probably about seventeen or eighteen years old, biologically. Thirteen Auris winters old, if that helps. If she’s truly from Dr. Hozho’s experiments, then I wonder what her language sounds like.”

“That’s right, these ponies don’t speak like we do, don’t they?” Ace hunched down in front of the mare, who’d drawn back a bit and defensively held a hoof over her chest. Tapping a hoof against her breast, she smiled at the young mare. “Ace,” she said, extending the single syllable word in her half-country drawl. Then she pointed at me. “Ember.” Lastly, she shifted her hoof toward the mare and waited.

After a moment, the mare swallowed. “Tekawenye Kakehote.”

Both Ace and I kind of just stared at her as we tried to process her name. “Tek-ah-wen-ye Kak-eh-hoot-e?” I attempted. Holy fuck was that a name. And by the stars I’m pretty sure I butchered it horribly judging by the look the mare gave me. “Can we just call you Teka for short?”

“I like that one a lot better,” Ace said. “It’s a lot shorter.”

The mare’s eyes shifted to me, and she saw the open wound on my flank. Even though I didn’t know how to communicate with her, and even though she seemed wary of us, she scooted to my side and brushed Ace away to look at my wound. Shrugging, I opened my bags and started pulling out bandages and gauze for patching up the wound. “Yeah, I got shot rescuing you. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Teka frowned at the wound and put her hooves over it, my trickling blood staining her spring green coat red. I couldn’t feel anything because of Surge, but then I noticed the tattoos on her forelegs beginning to glow. Suddenly, the silvery tattoos covering her coat glowed white, and the flesh on my flank started to twist and knit itself back together. There was even a tiny thunk as my repairing tissue expelled the bullet lodged inside. After a few seconds, it was like you couldn’t even tell I’d been shot apart from the blood matted into my coat and a tiny white scar around the wound.

This strange Feati mare took her hooves off my flank and panted lightly, and her tattoos went back from white to silver. Ace and I just exchanged surprised looks with each other. “She can do that?” I asked.

“Tattoo and ritual magic were once the two most powerful and common forms of higher spellcrafting long before the mages came and unraveled its secrets,” Surge said. “That these tribal ponies have rediscovered this art is nothing short of amazing!” I could almost feel her prancing around in my skull like a giddy schoolfilly. “We need to meet more of them. Maybe she can do something else with those tattoos!”

Teka smiled faintly at me. “Agaleplo unta’sat bele,” she said in a language I couldn’t even begin to make sense of. “Hatot bele U’a waksoa A.”

“Well, that’s gonna take some time to figure out, ain’t it,” Ace said, scratching the back of her head with a wing crest.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess we’ll just have to point and play charades until we can teach her some Equiish.”

“Wo stum kolwil twoh’un?” Teka asked, clutching at her belly. “A stomm hatot’un.”

“That one’s easy enough to figure out,” Surge said. “She’s hungry.”

“We’ll take her back to our camp, then,” I said, standing up. I couldn’t believe she just fixed my leg like that! “Let’s go strip this place of anything good and then get back to Gauge and Nova. I don’t want to keep them waiting alone any longer than I have already.” Then, turning to Teka, I motioned for her to stay put. “Don’t go anywhere. We’ll take you back soon.”

“I’m gonna get a fucking headache…” Ace grumbled. “The last thing I needed was to fashion myself as a foalsitter…”