The same dream, over and over again, without end. A nightmare that wouldn’t leave me be.

I saw Zip again. The love of my life, the lone spark in the darkness that brought me through the tough times following the destruction of Blackwash. The mare who I poured my heart into, and who loved me back, despite my flaws. The mare whom I’d wanted to spend my life with. The mare who had made me happier than I’d ever been.

The mare who was taken from me. The mare who died in my forelegs as I screamed at her, begged her to be okay. The mare who spent her final moments touching a hoof to her own bloody muzzle, then to mine, eyes filled with regret and sadness, afraid of what awaited her beyond the land of the living. The mare who died too good and too pure for this world, a tiny spark of bravery and hope that needed to be snuffed out for Auris to have its way.

I woke up, screaming her name, sweat and tears pouring down my face, like I’d done so many times since that awful day.

“Ember?! You alright?” Hooves shook me as I panted, my vision blurred somewhere between the dream world and the real world, my hooves dry but sticky with imagined blood. After a few seconds of hyperventilating, I locked eyes with Nova, and I finally realized where I was and what I was doing.

Swallowing hard, I shakily nodded and removed her hooves from my shoulders. “Yeah, Nov, I’m f-fine.” I was basically sucking down air at this point, and I closed my eyes for a few moments to try to calm myself down. “Just a bad dream… a bad dream…”

Nova immediately adopted a concerned look. “Ember… you’ve been having nightmares for two weeks now. Are you sure you don’t want to… want to talk about it? Or something?” She hesitated, then added, “I’m worried for you, Em. This isn’t healthy. I don’t even know if you’re really sleeping, you have nightmares so often.”

She was right. I hadn’t been sleeping. Not really. Every single night I woke up one way or another, panting and sweating from my nightmares. Truth be told, I hadn’t gotten a full eight hours since the attack on the dam. Whenever I tried to sleep, I dreamed of Zip. I was slowly becoming more and more scared that I’d never be able to sleep again. Too many nightmares awaited me whenever I closed my eyes.

I hung my head and rubbed my eyes, the last traces of sleep fleeing from them despite my efforts to trap them. I was fully awake now, which sucked, because that meant I was going to be exhausted while the sun was up. Again. Groaning, I peered out from beneath the rocky overhang of the mountain to where the two moons hung overhead. “How long…?”

“Maybe two hours,” Nova said, shaking her head. She looked me over like I was about to break into a million tiny pieces of glass and chewed on her lip. “The worst of the storm passed. You alright? Wanna go back to bed?”

“No, no,” I said, waving a hoof. “I probably can’t. Not now, at least.” I looked to my right to where Gauge was still passed out in a striped ball by Nova’s side, sprawled across their bedroll. Chuckling, I shook my head. “That fucker can sleep through anything.”

“It’s amazing, really,” Nova said, smirking at him. “I once accidentally kneed him in the face trying to get out of bed. He didn’t even stir. It’s like he’s comatose or something.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, shrugging, “better he get all his sleeping done while he’s not on watch. I don’t want to get dragged off the mountain by a shrike because he fell asleep during his turn.”

Nova shook her head. “You know we can count on him.”

“I know. I just can’t help but tease him, even when he’s not awake to appreciate it.” Smiling faintly to myself, I turned around and reached for my bags. I popped open my cigarette box for a moment and looked at the two measly rolled sticks inside. “I’ll save those for later,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head and tossing the box back in my bags. I turned around to find Nova watching me, but she quickly turned away when we made eye contact. Sighing, I just slid forward to the end of my bedroll and sat next to her, staring out into the starry night.

“It reminds you of home, doesn’t it?” Nova asked, her eyes wide and full of wonder as she looked at the familiar constellations above us. “It’s like the quiet nights after curfew when we’d sneak off to the flat rock. Only… well, quieter.”

“As far as I’m aware, we’re the only two ponies and zebra out here for miles,” I said, my eyes dancing between the stars above us. “Nopony really wanders the mountains between the valley and the heartland, right? They all still think the valley is Crimson territory.”

Nova nodded. “And that’s gonna change soon,” she said. “Those traders we passed going the other way have to have made it to the dam by now. They know that the Crimson are gone.”

“And soon the rest of Auris will know too.” Sighing, I crossed my forelegs on the stony ground and laid my chin on them. “It feels weird being a part of the community, you know?”

Nova cocked her head to the side. “Uhhh… no?”

“I mean, like…” I bit my tongue and tried to phrase my thoughts. “Two months ago, we thought we were basically alone, right? We heard radio signals sometimes, but for the most part, we didn’t know of anything outside of Blackwash. And now, look at this.” I gestured with my hoof across the shadowy mountains, silent giants in the dark of the night. “We’re walking right into the heartland of Auris. We’re walking into civilization, or whatever passes for it. We’ve gone farther than anypony from Blackwash has ever gone, ever. And as for the rest of Blackwash, well, they’re at the dam now, and they’re working with the Sentinels. We’re a part of Auris, now. This is our world. Not just a shantytown on a mountain. It’s kind of overwhelming, if you ask me.”

“More like exciting!” Nova said, ruffling her wings at her sides. “I’ve always wanted to see the rest of Auris. There’s an entire world out here that we don’t understand! Equestria never even had time to study it all before the Silence! I can learn things that nopony has ever learned before, and see things nopony has ever seen!” She was practically vibrating with energy, and I shook my head as she exclaimed, “Isn’t that amazing?!”

Gauge snorted in his sleep, making us both jump. But when he rolled over and went back to snoring, we chuckled a bit and returned to staring at the constellations.

“Which one is it, again?” I asked, my head pointed straight up, my eyes darting between the stars above us, looking for one that felt vaguely familiar to something deep inside of me.

Nova bit her lip and studied the skies for a minute before pointing about twenty degrees above the horizon. “It’s over there,” she said. “See those three stars in a line? It’s the second one down from that.”

I followed where she was pointing with my eyes and found the star I was looking for. “How far away is that from here?”

“Seventeen light years,” Nova said, lowering her wing. “The light that star’s giving off was created seventeen winters ago. Well…” she shrugged and shook her head. “More like twelve or thirteen winters ago, with Auris’ longer orbital period. Space and time get confusing when you’re trying to use a system developed on one planet with one set of time standards and adapt it to a different planet with its own rotation and revolution periods. Not to mention time dilation because of gravity—”

I held up a hoof to cut her off. “Nova, you lost me at the part about Auris’ special time of the month. Please don’t get into any freaky gravity science bullshit. I have no idea what any of it means.”

Nova laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Em. Maybe one day I’ll teach you.” Then, smirking, she drew away a little bit like she knew what she was going to say next would make me want to hit her. “Unless you want me to teach you how to fly first. We might have more success with that.”

I groaned and buried my face in my hooves. “Damn it, Nov…”

“Just paying you back for catching you!” Nova said, sticking her tongue out at me. Then, after a breath, she sobered up a bit and shook her head. “But anyway, yeah. That’s them alright. So tiny and far away…”

“It’s hard to imagine that’s where we came from,” I said, my eyes fixated on the star, the star that played host to ponykind’s home world, Equus. “So far away, so tiny and insignificant. I can’t believe we came from that tiny speck in the sky. Like… how amazing is that, just to think about?”

“It’s pretty amazing,” Nova said. “The effort it took to do that, the technology…” She rubbed her hooves together. “Just think how incredibly advanced Equestria must’ve been to put ponies all the way out here. Their legacy is all around us, forgotten and broken. Imagine what Auris could do if it had access to Equestria’s knowledge…”

Grunting, I sat up and shook my head. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said, making Nova tilt her head a little bit in a puzzled look. “This code we’re chasing… well, I don’t know what it’s going to do. Yeoman said that it would ‘wake the Azimuth’, but I don’t know what that means. But if it helps ponies on Auris get their hooves on ancient pre-Silence tech…” Sighing, I looked back to the star ponykind came from. “I’m afraid of what might happen if ponies like Reclaimer get their hooves on Equestria’s legacy. I don’t trust them to use it for the benefit of Auris. Honestly, I think the planet was better off during the Silence than in whatever this is now. At least when ponies killed each other it was for petty shit, not something that could change the world…”

I stopped as a big yawn came over me. Maybe it was time I tried to go back to sleep. Just talking with Nova had certainly helped, even if it was about random shit, not about my nightmares. Smiling at her, I leaned in and wrapped my forelegs around her. “Thanks for the chat, Nova. It… it helped.”

Nova nuzzled my cheek and gently pushed me away when we were done. “I’m always happy to help, Em,” she said. “Just… just say something, okay? No matter what it is, Gauge and I will always try be willing to help. We have to rely on each other out here, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, crawling back into my bedroll and trying to make myself comfortable. “But we’ll make it through fine. We just…” I yawned again and rubbed my eyes. “We just need to stick together. And one way or another, we’ll deal with this stupid code.”

Nova merely nodded in response. “We’ll deal with that in the morning. Just for now, sleep, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you…” I mumbled. It didn’t take long before sleep found me again.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

I winced with every step of my left hind hoof. We’d made decent progress since we packed up camp this morning, and now we were starting to descend out of the mountains. Unfortunately, I’d cut the frog or cracked the hoof or something trying to navigate the rocky pass this morning, and now it hurt to put weight on it. Not terribly, or else we’d have stopped a while back to get it patched up, but enough to be an inconvenience and an annoyance.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fu—Ow! Fuck!”

Gauge put his hoof back on the ground and shook his head. “If I have to listen to any more of that, I might just cut your leg off and be done with it.” Nova giggled at his side, the bags she carried on her back almost dwarfing her tiny frame.

I rubbed the sore spot on the back of my head and scowled at the path in front of us. “Well fuck you too, then…”

I took another step, and it was like I’d stepped on a red hot knife. Yipping in pain, I dropped my bags on the ground and began hopping around on three legs, swearing and cursing and shouting. Nova and Gauge just stared at me while I cursed out everything under the sun until finally the dagger of pain faded into a dull ache.

Nova’s wingtips touched my shoulders and she guided me toward a rock. “Come on, sit down,” she said. “Let’s take a look at your booboo.”

I hobbled over to the rock and flopped down on it. At least I didn’t see any bloody hoof prints in the ground; that was a good thing. While I lifted my hoof for Nova and Gauge to take a look at, I drank a quick splash of water and munched on a stick of jerky I’d made from some rock runner I’d shot the other day. It wasn’t too bad, all things considered. A little bland since we didn’t have any spices to smoke it with, but it worked enough. At least we’d be at Hole soon.

Nova made a face and poked at a sensitive spot with a feather, and I recoiled a bit from the touch. “You should have checked your hoof a while ago instead of toughing it out like a big filly,” she said. “You’ve got a splinter of rock jammed into your hoof. No wonder it hurts.”

“I thought I’d just cut it or something,” I said. “It wasn’t that bad until just now.”

“Not that bad?” Gauge asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Listen, I’ve been shot and almost got hanged at the dam, my idea of painful might be a little messed up right now.”

“Well, it’s not the end of the world,” Nova said, digging through her bags with a wing. “We just have to pry the rock out. Hopefully it won’t hurt too much to remove.” She eventually pulled out a knife and bit down on the handle. “Hold still...”

“Don’t you think amputation’s a little bit of an overreaction, Nov?” Gauge asked her, though the smirk on his face as he looked at me made it clear he was actually teasing me.

“Fuck off, Gauge,” I said. “Or I’ll shove this rock right up your ass.”

“Kinky.”

“Foals...” Nova muttered around the handle of the knife. Gauge stuck his tongue out at me, so I did the same, only Nova chose that moment to dig the knife into my hoof to pop the rock out. I yipped in response and ended up biting my tongue, and Gauge fell to the ground laughing as I unleashed a string of profanities at nopony in particular.

Nova put the knife away and stood up, offering me a helping hoof to get up off the rock. “You’ll be fine, it’ll just be sore for a day or so. Just try not to do too much running, or you could hurt it worse.”

“Not sure I can promise that when ponies start shooting at me,” I muttered, standing up and testing my hoof a bit. Now that the shock had worn off, the pain was more like a prickwing sting whenever I put too much weight on it. Sighing, I shouldered my load and looked down the path in front of us. “Alright, we should get going, then. Thanks, Nov.”

The pegasus grinned and fluttered a foot or two into the air before the weight of the bags on her back brought her back down to earth. “It’s what I do!”

Almost as soon as she touched the ground, I heard the crack of a rifle echo over the mountain pass. I flinched, kind of shocked to hear the noise, and both Gauge and Nova froze as well. After a few seconds, we heard it again, and the return fire of some automatic weapons just out of sight around a corner in the path in front of us.

I dropped my bags again and drew my rifle, making sure it was loaded and ready for action. I gave Nova a curt look and pointed past the corner. “Eyes on.”

Nova swallowed hard and shed her bags, launching into the air and flying for the clouds as fast as she could. It was something we’d rehearsed a few times on our little trip. Since the mare couldn’t tell one end of a gun from another, we’d decided she’d be best used as our scout rather than trying to teach her how to fight in a shootout. While she gained altitude, Gauge and I hurried to the ridge, SCaR at our backs, and threw ourselves into the dirt as soon as we crested it. I set my rifle down in the dirt and cut off my magic so the fiery orange glow wouldn’t give us away and Gauge pulled out a set of binoculars.

I could kind of see what was going on down below us, but it was a little far away, so I couldn’t make out much detail. We were looking at a narrow basin between some tall mountains, where a group of figures were gathered in the middle among a bunch of tents. Above them, a trio of pegasi flew fast and low, strafing the group with their guns and twirling out of the way whenever somepony tried aiming at them. The pegasi seemed like they all wore their own ragtag armor, while the ponies in the camp all wore uniforms.

“Bandits,” Gauge hissed, moving the binoculars back and forth. “Three pegasi armed with some pretty heavy weaponry. One of them has a gun almost as big as he is strapped to his side. The camp guards don’t look they’re anywhere near as well armed.”

“Wonder what they’re doing all the way out here,” I wondered aloud. “It’s the middle of nowhere, and they look like they’re here to stay.”

“Well, they’re pinned down regardless. Those pegasi know what they’re doing. The guards can’t get a shot in edgewise without a swooping bandit taking their heads off.”

“Right.” Grunting, I stood up and shook some of the dirt off of my coat. “Fuck this.”

“What are you—?” Gauge started to ask, but I’d already started tearing down the pass toward the camp, staggering and limping on my hurt hoof as I did so. It was a little difficult to hike down the side of the mountain even without a hurt hoof, so I waited until I got behind some rocks to start shooting, not wanting to draw attention to myself before I had some solid cover. My sexy BR12A rifle roared as it spit out three empty cases in a quick burst, the middle tracer bullet helping me to adjust my aim for the next one. Two more bursts were all it took to drop one of the surprised pegasi out of the sky; she cried out in pain as the bullets ripped through her ribs, and I saw her neck snap backwards as she fell and broke it on a rocky spire.

One down, two to go, and a lot of bullets to finish the job.

I had their attention now, and the campers began shooting back with a renewed frenzy when they realized I was trying to help them out. They pushed out from their defenses, widening into a net of guns and bullets that could cover a larger area. The pegasus bandits drew back a bit from the lead being thrown up at them and tried to strafe from a distance, but only the stallion carrying the heavy machine gun could really do anything from that range. He managed to shoot one or two of the camp guards before his chest exploded in a red cloud of gore and he fell to the ground, dead.

Without the thump-thump-thumping of that heavy machine gun, I heard the sound of a pretty large caliber rifle firing from somewhere across the pass at us. Even as I looked for the source, I saw one of the camp guards’ head explode as a fat bullet tore through it, sending his skull flying into a hundred million different gory pieces. It seemed like each crack of that rifle dropped another guard, even as the sole pegasus flying like a madmare over the camp did her best to avoid getting shredded into pieces.

I peered out from behind my cover, scanning the general direction those shots were coming from. All I saw were rocks, rocks and more rocks, until—there! I saw a figure nestled in the crook of some boulders about two kilometers away with a pretty high tech rifle in its hooves. Beige feathers sticking out from either side were all I had to clue me in to what the shooter’s race was; in retrospect, I should’ve figured it out sooner, given than the other three were pegasi as well.

Then a bullet ripped through my mane, and I fell backwards in shock.

I laid on my back for a few seconds, not quite sure I was still alive, until I remembered to start breathing again. Cursing, I sat up and huddled against the rock, careful not to expose myself to any more fire. Yup, that sniper had definitely seen me, and my huge and fluffy mane must’ve thrown off their aim as to where the center of my skull was. That they could even shoot that accurately from that far away was amazing to me. And I didn’t have anything that could shoot back!

But maybe they’d give up if they knew it was a lost cause. The one pegasus who’d lingered over the campsite banked her wings and rocketed toward the south, trying to outrun the bullets the camp guards fired at her from below. While they couldn’t really connect the shot on her, I had some higher elevation which put that pegasus on eye level with me, and she was flying in a straight line. For an admittedly good marksmare like myself, I only needed two bursts to hit my target. In a cry of pain that echoed over the pass, the pegasus fell to the ground as my bullets ripped her wing off, and she couldn’t save herself from slamming into the earth at full speed. I saw her legs twitching through the scope of my rifle as I aimed a finishing blow, but one of the campers ran up with a shotgun and mulched her guts. I winced at the blood and gore, but turned my attention back to the sniper. They were more important than their dead companions.

And they must’ve realized that their little raid was a lost cause. The pegasus nestled in the mountains quickly broke down their rifle and shortened it down into a compact box before spreading their wings and taking to the sky. The beige shooter lingered only a few moments before flying to the south, easily outrunning a few stray shots fired in their general direction with no real chance of connecting.

With the danger over, I lowered my rifle and reset the safety before slinging it across my shoulders. Hoofsteps and the puttering of little thrusters came up behind me, and Gauge was at my side in a few moments. I smiled and shook some dirt out of the ends of my mane and waved at the camp guards below us. “Feels nice to do something good for a change, eh?”

“Don’t look at me, you’re the one who actually did the shooting,” Gauge said. I followed his eyes to one of the dead bandits on the ground, which a few of the guards began to strip of valuables. “Were they Crimson?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “They don’t have any of that stupid war paint on their faces. Besides, I’d be surprised if there were really any Crimson bandits this far from the dam. They mostly kept their shit to the valley from what I heard. They wouldn’t be terrorizing the middle of nowhere when there are settlements to torch.”

Wings fluttered next to us as Nova descended from the clouds. “I didn’t see anypony else,” she said, her eyes drifting over the aftermath below us. “The one mare with the big gun got away to the southeast. Looks like she was heading back to Hole.”

“And I thought raiding was a stallion’s profession,” Gauge joked. “Why couldn’t Blackwash have been attacked by a bunch of cute mares instead of stallions wearing makeup?”

I ducked as Nova swung her wing over my head to clip Gauge in the side of the face. “I might have gone willingly then,” I added. Standing up tall, I glanced at Nova. “I’m more impressed that you could tell she was a mare from that far away.”

Nova shrugged. “I’m a pegasus, remember? I’ve got great eyesight. Plus, I know what a mare looks like.”

“What, were you staring at her ass?”

“No!”

Gauge shook his head. “Are you telling me my marefriend is bi, too?” he asked nopony in particular.

“Gauge!”

“I could believe it,” I said, smirking at the two of them. “Nov and I used to practice kissing behind the forge when we were teens.”

“E-Ember!” Her face was a blisteringly bright red, and I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for her as she slowly died of embarrassment. I won’t say whether I was just teasing her or not, though. I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

I reached over and gave her a quick hug, but I couldn’t help kissing her cheek while I was at it just because I could. She roughly shoved me away with a wing, and I fell against Gauge, laughing my head off. Gauge held me up, shaking his head, until we heard a whistle from far below us. I looked down the slope to see a pair of ponies waving up at us, inviting us over. After a quick nod with Gauge and Nova, I started descending the slope, trying my best to not aggravate my hurt hoof on the rocks.

The two ponies who’d come out to welcome us down were an earth pony stallion and a unicorn mare with the most striking patterning on her coat I’d ever seen. While the earth pony was an uninteresting but pretty muscular brown stallion, the unicorn was shapely and surprisingly tall and limber, with white markings on her forehead, ears, hooves, and splotched randomly across her coat. Her horn was streaked with white, contrasting with the milky brown color of the rest of her coat. She was beautiful, and I felt a twang on my heartstrings. But with Zip’s death so fresh in my heart, they hurt more than anything.

“So,” the stallion said, stepping forward once we were finally on the same level, “to who do we owe our lives?”

I tried to play it off with a wave of my hoof. “Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing. I’m Ember,” I said, placing a hoof on my chest, “and the two back there are Gauge and Nova.” The two of them waved when I said their names, and SCaR began to hover around and scan the area.

“Who’s the little guy?” the mare said. “He’s remarkably intact for a Synarchy drone.”

SCaR flew up to her and scanned her like a curious bird or something before flying back to Gauge. “We call him SCaR,” Gauge said, trotting up next to me. “And what can we call you?”

“You can call me Manchado,” the mare said, and then she smiled and nodded to the stallion. “This is my husband, Sawdust.”

Sawdust nodded in the direction of the camp. “Why don’t we go back and share a drink or something? It’s the least we can do. If it weren’t for you, those pegasi would have picked us apart for sure.”

Well, I wasn’t going to turn down hospitality and the chance to maybe trade a bit. “Sure, we’d love to,” I said, looking over my shoulders and catching nods from Gauge and Nova. “Lead the way.”

They happily obliged, and soon the five of us were walking among the tents of the camp. Things had calmed down a bit, but a decidedly heavy and smothering mood hung over the camp. Unsurprising, considering that the bandits had managed to kill quite a few of the campers before we drove them off. We had to wait for a pair of stallions to pass us by at one point, the corpse of one of their friends suspended between their hooves.

Thankfully, Manchado led us to a big tent in the center of the camp so we’d be out of the way of that. It was actually surprisingly roomy, all things considered, and it looked more permanent than it let on. A large bed made out of cloth and a pair of bedrolls sat in the corner, the sheets piled at its foot and two pony-shaped indents lying side by side in its surface. A few sparse decorations hung from one of the ropes running the perimeter of the roof, mostly hoof-carved wooden knickknacks and the like. A folded picture of Manchado and her husband sat in a makeshift frame on a table in the corner, the two of them holding hooves and kissing against the backdrop of the setting sun. This was more than a tent. This was a home.

While Sawdust went digging through some bags for a drink, I turned to his wife, who sat down at the opposite end of a crude table. “Who were those pegasi?”

“Oh, the pawns of desperate scum, that’s all,” Manchado said with a surprising amount of venom in her voice. “We’ve been trying to survey these mountains for weeks now, and it feels like every few days there’s some trouble. Shipments of supplies have been destroyed or simply stolen, sometimes our sentries go missing in the night, it’s—” She sighed and shook her head, her eyes following some crude glass tumblers Sawdust set on the table alongside a bottle of what I could only assume was hard liquor. “Nopony’s openly attacked us until now.”

“But why?” Gauge asked, humbly taking a filled glass when Sawdust passed it to him. “What are you even doing out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Prospecting,” Sawdust said in a scratchy grumble. He and his wife exchanged a quick glance, and Manchado nodded in agreement while he continued. “Rumor has it there’s some good metal in these mountains. We’re trying to find the motherlode and haul it back to Hole. We’ll make some good money while we’re at it, and Auris gets some raw material to work with to further civilization.”

“So long as those bandits to the north don’t stumble across us,” Manchado said, shuddering. “Those pegasi are nothing compared to them. I heard they conquered an entire valley!”

“You three came from that direction,” Sawdust said, concern in his eyes. “Is it true?”

The three of us looked at each other, and we couldn’t stop proud smiles from breaking out across our muzzles. “Actually, funny you should mention that,” I said, smirking and leaning back in my chair. “As of two weeks ago, the Crimson are no more.”

Manchado and Sawdust exchanged surprised looks. “You’re serious?” Sawdust asked, leaning on the table. “We’ve seen their soldiers in Hole before. Are they really gone?”

“Yup. The Sentinels killed their leader and took them out. They own the dam now.” I picked up the glass of booze Sawdust put in front of me, sniffed it, suppressed a disgusted face, and took a tiny sip of the awful liquid for politeness’ sake. “We were there when it happened. All three of us. After everything they did to us, it’s amazing that they’re finally gone.”

“Amazing…” Manchado breathed. “So then… the valley… it’s free?”

“Free and open for business!” Nova chirped, grinning at her and Sawdust. “Spread the news to everypony! The valley’s open to trade, and it’s the dawn of a new day!”

Sawdust shook his head in disbelief. “If what you’re saying is true… then that’s really something.”

“It’s true,” I said, calmly nodding at them. “All of it. If you ever head north, tell the ponies at the dam that Ember sent you. They’d be more than happy to take you in for a while.”

“While that’s well and good and all, I don’t think we’re going to be budging from these mountains for a while yet.” Manchado’s glass began to glow white, and she slammed down half her drink like she was taking a shot. Wiping her lips and shaking her head a few times, her eyes turned to mine. “And what are you three doing down here? If the valley’s safe now, why leave it? Unless…” her eyes drifted to my flank, even though the table kept it out of sight. “Those marks on your flanks… you’re runaways?”

“What? Oh! No!” I said, emphatically shaking my head. “We aren’t runaways. We’re liberated, I guess you’d say. And now we have business with the rest of Auris that we have to take care of. Besides,” I said, sitting back and pointing to the meaty spaces between my ribs, “if we were runaways, do you think we’d be this well-equipped and… well, this well-fed?”

“I guess not…” Manchado said, tapping her chin. “But then why are you going straight into the heartland? Slavery’s legal here, you know.”

“Depending on where you go,” Sawdust said from Manchado’s side. “Hole, for example…”

I looked at Gauge, and he gave a tiny little shake of his head. Nodding to him, I looked back at our two hosts. “Can’t really say, sorry. It’s Sentinel business, though.”

“Sentinel business or not, if you go to Hole you’re going to get nabbed by the RPR,” Manchado said, frowning.

“What’s the RPR?” Nova asked. “We’re not exactly from around these parts, remember.”

“The Runaway Property Repossession.” Manchado’s face turned sour and she slowly shook her head. “If you have a slave that’s escaped, you go to them. The RPR is scarily good at tracking down runaways.”

“And they’re not afraid to do a little freelance work on the side,” Sawdust added. “They’re always looking for ponies with brands, whether they’re paid to do so or not. They auction off unclaimed runaways at the slave houses every month. You do not want them to get their hooves on you.”

The three of us exchanged another round of concerned looks. “Well, the thing is, we have to go to Hole,” I said. “We’re looking for… somepony, and that’s the first place we need to start looking.”

“Then you’re as good as dead,” Manchado bluntly stated. “The RPR will have you in chains by the end of your first night there.”

I bit my lip and tapped my hooves against my mostly full glass. “Is there any way you can help us?” I asked her. “Any way at all?”

“We could give you some old travel cloaks,” Sawdust said. “Sad as it may be, there are a few ponies in the camp who won’t be needing theirs anymore. They’ll at least cover your brands.”

“And that won’t do anything if their cover slips,” Manchado said to her husband. “All it takes is one urchin looking for a few bullets to catch a peek and the RPR will be on them before they know it.”

“I’m not branded, though,” Gauge said. “We actually had this conversation yesterday. Would it be possible for me to pass myself off as their owner?”

“Not without them having an owner’s brand on their right flank,” Manchado said. “Which I’m sure they’d rather avoid if they could help it.”

Nova winced and rubbed her left flank. “Yeah, I didn’t really like that part…”

“But what about something temporary?” I asked. “Like, maybe we can paint his swirly zebra shit over our marks? Or something?”

Sawdust scoffed. “Paint won’t cut it. I guarantee the RPR has seen that before. And on top of that, he’s a zebra.” The stallion shook his head. “You don’t see any zebras owning slaves around here. There are so few of you as there are. No, you’d need something better, like an illusion.”

I glanced up through my long bangs at my horn. “I’m only a pyromancer. I don’t know any illusions.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Manchado said. “I used to be an actress in a theatre troupe at Hole before I met Sawdust. I know my way around a few simple illusions.”

“You’re too kind,” I said, smiling at her. “We’re more than happy to pay whatever you want—”

“Hey, you saved our lives, remember? You don’t owe us a damn thing.” Standing up, she gestured for the rest of us to do the same. “Instead of giving the two of you illusory brands that match your friend’s mark, I can hide your own brands for a few days. After that, well, then you better be long gone from Hole if you don’t want the RPR to nab you.”

I looked to Gauge and Nova for support, and they both nodded in agreement. Sighing, I let some of the tension building up in my shoulders relax. “Thank you so much. I don’t know what we would’ve done without you.”

“Gotten yourselves killed, probably,” Manchado said, gently moving to my side so she could examine my mark more closely. “At least this’ll give you a chance.”

“And if there’s anything else you need, we’ll be happy to trade you for it,” Sawdust said, his eyes drifting over my battle rifle and the ammo pouches affixed to my bags. “Looks like you’ve got the bullets for it.”

“I think I’ll take you up on that offer,” I said, grinning slightly as I remembered my almost-empty cigarette box in my bags. “I could really go for a celebratory smoke right about now.”