To say that we were all pissed with Surge was an understatement. Instead of picking up Teka’s support in the Grass Trial, we’d alienated her—and likely our only chance at actually getting into the thing. I don’t know how Surge thought that was going to work, but she seemed very confident in her decision. I don’t know if she actually wanted to ruin this for us or was too stupidly ingrained in Synarchy superiority to interact with tribal ponies in a more friendly way, but if I could have strangled her without choking myself out, I absolutely would have.

Gauge and Nova caught up to me at a campfire, but not Sandy. Our translator and now only remaining friend in the Feati tribe had stayed behind to try and smooth things over with Teka and her mother. Of course, I already knew that he blamed me for being so rude, even though I had nothing to do with it, but I didn’t think explaining to him that I had another pony living in my head who sometimes said things would do us any favors. And with Ace still missing, that left just the four of us around the campfire while I smoked my cigarette down to a few flakes of cancerous ash sticking to my lips.

It was only a matter of time before somebody broached the topic, and once Gauge had finally had enough, he looked Surge and I right in our eyes and raised a brow. “So? What in the stars’ light was that?”

“Don’t ask me,” I said, immediately separating myself from this mess. “Somepony else kept me away from the controls to go and insult tribal royalty.”

“I just want to know why,” Nova moaned, her usually perky features downcast. “We could have had a friend helping us!”

“She wasn’t going to help us,” Surge said, shaking my head. “Not until she got a kick in the flank.”

“And how the fuck would you know?” I growled at her. “You’ve been dead for two hundred years, Miss Synarchy. Your people skills aren’t exactly the best.”

“I was a leader of a team with a lot of alpha personalities,” Surge said, and she glared at Nova and Gauge to make sure they wouldn’t interrupt her. “I had to get the Synarchy’s best and brightest minds to work together to save our struggling nation. I had to get ponies with very little in common to come together and do our part, and I had to keep them from turning mutinous when we found ourselves separated from our families while on our only colony world light years away from Equus. I know a thing or two about getting ponies to do what I want, and trying to plead and bargain with Teka wasn’t going to solve anything.”

“And insulting her to her face was?” I retorted.

“Forgive me if that seems a little odd,” Gauge said.

“I know what I’m doing, Stripy,” Surge snapped. “You heard what Sandy told us, and you saw it clear as day when we were talking to her. Her jackass brother is beating her down both with and without his hooves, and trying to tell her everything is going to be better if she helps us isn’t going to help. She needs to make that change on her own, and a slap on the cheek will get her moving again.”

“Sounds reasonable… if it wasn’t stupid.” I sighed and pawed at the ground. “What’s done is done, though, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

My friends nodded in agreement, and Surge seemed happy enough to drop the topic for the time being. We sat in silence for a few minutes, just staring into the fire as the heat helped burn away the morning fog, until eventually I saw Sandy approaching us through the haze. Still ashamed and embarrassed about Surge’s outburst, I averted my gaze and let my friends do the talking for me.

The tattooed stallion sat down somewhere at my left, and I could feel his eyes needling me for a moment before he shifted his attention to Nova and Gauge. “I… well, I tried to apologize to Teka and the Tribe Mother for Ember’s outburst, but I don’t know how much good it did. Teka stormed off on her own, and I could tell Iklimna didn’t want to talk about it.”

“So where does that leave us?” Gauge asked him.

“Friendless and without much time. Once Lentowenye hears about what happened, he’ll find us and demand an explanation. If we can’t get you the support you need to participate in the Grass Trial by then, he’ll never let you do it.”

“You’ll probably be better off looking without me,” I grumbled. “Who knows when I’ll open my big fucking mouth again and say something stupid?”

I could tell Surge resented that indirect accusation, but she at least chose not to say anything. Nova, meanwhile, reluctantly nodded her head and stood up. “We should get a move on, then,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time to make friends before Lentowenye comes for our heads.”

“We’ll meet you back at the longhouse, I guess,” Gauge said, joining his marefriend and moving to Sandy’s side. “Just… try not to get into any more trouble, okay, Em?”

I nodded, even though I doubted it would be that easy; trouble always seemed to find me, one way or another. “See you guys there, then.”

My friends reluctantly set off without me, leaving me alone at the fire. Not only was I by myself, but I felt crushed and isolated. It wasn’t my fault, but I had to deal with it because it was my body, even if they were Surge’s words. But I guess I should have seen this coming. The ponies of the Synarchy never bowed to any rule save that of their own High Queen, so why had I hoped Surge would be respectful of the Feati’s?

“Why can’t this shit be easier?” I muttered aloud, supposedly to myself, but I knew I at least had Surge to listen to me. “Why is doing the right thing so hard?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Surge said, shaking my head. “I was born and raised thinking I was doing the right thing. But after two hundred years being stuck in my own personal Tartarus…”

We sighed together, our shared eyes falling on the fire. “How did things get like this?” I asked her. “How did Equestria go from a mythical land of harmony to a bunch of ponies trying to put the pieces back together on a completely different world?”

“We started putting our country above ourselves,” Surge said. “We blindly followed a High Queen who had turned her back on friendship and harmony long before I was born. We ponies replaced it with duty and blind faith instead. It was that wrong sense of loyalty to the wrong pony that put the Synarchy against the Coalition—the entire world—and doomed it.” She pulled my eyes toward the royal longhouse in the background, and I felt my lips pull into a frown. “Even out here, that misplaced loyalty threatens pony lives.”

I at least understood what she meant, and it kind of made more sense now. “I wouldn’t say Teka’s loyal to her brother, though. She’s more afraid of him than anything.”

“Fear buys loyalty so long as the afraid don’t realize they’re stronger than they think,” she said. “Teka is afraid. She’s afraid of her brother and her place in the tribe. She needs somepony to show her she doesn’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“That why you told her off?” I asked. “Cut right to the personal bits?”

“I guarantee you that none of these Feati savages would dare question her behavior and her brother’s treatment of her,” Surge said. “They’re loyal to their chief, no matter what he does. But we aren’t. We aren’t afraid of him, and we only respect his authority as guests, not members of his tribe.” By that point, I could feel my lips forming a small smile. “We’re the only ones who would dare stand up for her and question her brother. If that doesn’t buy her support, I don’t know what will.”

It was a funny feeling; minutes ago, I was pissed at Surge for saying what she said and doing what she did. Now, it started to make sense, in a way. “You know, I feel like I’m underestimating you,” I said to her. Chuckling, I added, “In fact, I think I’m even starting to like you.”

“Do you want me to say something racist?” she suggested, and it took me a second to register the joke.

Snorting, I stood up and collected my things. “You wouldn’t be the same if you stopped,” I said to her. Suddenly feeling a bit more energetic, I hopped in place a few times and looked up and down the haphazard streets of the settlement. “Tobacco came from native ponies a long time ago back on Equus, right? I bet we can find some more here; I’m running pretty low.”

“Now that’s stereotyping.”

“What can I say? Maybe you’re rubbing off on me.” Humming to myself, I struck off in a random direction, one of my last cigarettes spinning in my magic in case I needed to use it to charade my way to the pony with all the tobacco. “Come on, let’s go get into some trouble. I bet Nova would just love that.”

Nova would be proud to hear that we did not get into trouble, despite how much I assumed we accidentally would. Surge and I spent some time trying to use my single cigarette to find a pony with tobacco with a little success; we at least got some points and directions in a language we didn’t understand. Our wandering took us all over the Feati settlement, but somehow we didn’t cross paths with Sandy and my friends… or Ace, for that matter. Our party’s mischievous outlaw was still nowhere to be found, and I certainly hadn’t heard any commotion in the settlement that would indicate she’d been caught and they were about to skin her alive or something to that effect. As far as I knew, she was still out there in the Spines, undetected, and I was still probably more likely to get into trouble than she was. She knew how to take care of herself out there. I could only pretend I did.

Still, our wandering took us around the settlement and back up the hill, where we found ourselves in front of a simple shack decorated in animal trophies and totems. Compared to the towering longhouse behind us, this thing looked like a shed to keep the garden tools in or something like that. But I could tell somepony lived in it, because not only was there smoke coming out of the hole in the roof, but I could hear cheery chanting and humming coming from inside. What exactly the pony who directed us here expected us to find, I don’t know, but I had my doubts about it, to be sure.

“Nothing shady about this at all,” I muttered aloud. “We’re just getting sent up to the little shack on the hill to get murdered by a cannibal, that’s all.”

“I am not dying for your drug addiction,” Surge said. “Perhaps now is a good time to quit while you’re ahead.”

“Fuck no. Wandering around Auris is gonna kill me sooner or later, so I might as well enjoy the vices I can take. Besides, it’s not like I’m practicing… I don’t know, blood magic or something.”

“Even in the Synarchy and its desire to win no matter the cost, blood magic was punishable by death.”

“See?” I smirked in triumph. “Tobacco’s not nearly as bad! Besides, I’ll die from a tolan or something before lung cancer gets me.”

Surge sighed. “I wonder if there’s another unicorn who will let me live in their head so I don’t go down with you…”

“I’m the only one who will put up with you, Sparky.” Rolling my shoulders and cracking my neck, I started toward the dark red ferns hanging off the frame as a sort of makeshift door. “Come on, let’s see if there’s any tobacco here. I’m going to go into severe withdrawal if I smoke my last cigarette.”

“You already are,” Surge said, and my magic pulled a lit cigarette from between my lips.

“Oh yeah.” Shrugging, I shouldered my way inside. “All the more reason to get a move on, then.”

When we entered the room, the stench of burning plants smacked me across the nose. I didn’t know what exactly was burning in the fire in the middle of the room, but it released a lot of smoke and made the air stifling and hazy. There was just enough room to walk around the fire, and a figure pranced about on the other side of the crackling flames. The smoke made it difficult to see it in detail, but it looked vaguely equine, with a wheezy stallion’s voice coming out of its throat. He didn’t seem to notice me enter—at least, not until he came further around the fire and stopped almost face to face with me.

We both froze and looked each other over in that moment. He was unlike anything I’d seen so far in the settlement, in so far as that he took everything about the Feati and took it to the extreme. I didn’t know what color his coat was supposed to be, because almost every single inch of his body had been decorated with silvery tattoos that flickered between several different colors. They masked his wrinkles, but not entirely; I could tell that he was maybe fifty or sixty winters old just by how the skin on his face seemed to droop and sag, like the peel of a bagfruit after it’s been left in the sun too long. He was a unicorn, but his horn was gnarled, crooked, and split down the middle from point to base. Both Surge and I winced at that; a split horn is about as painful as anything can get for a unicorn. But even something as striking as that was hard to see beneath the ornate headdress he wore. Leaves from ferns, trees, and flowering plants had been harvested and woven together into an elaborate crown of sorts that he wore atop his thinning mane. One of his eyes was clouded; the other was bright and shining, filled with a spark of liveliness that betrayed his age, but not his voice.

“Outlander, hmm?” he creaked, surprising us by not speaking in Feati. “You’re the ones I heard about yesterday, yes? Yes! Ha!” He cackled and stepped forward, while I took a nervous step back. Noticing my unease, the stallion laughed to himself and backed off, holding a chipped and weathered hoof over his chest. “Ah, ah, I mean you no harm! Do not worry about me! I think I’m forty winters too far gone for a beautiful and… curvy mare like yourself.”

To be honest, hearing that come out of his mouth left me with my jaw hanging open. I mean, how do you respond to an old stallion telling you you’re curvy? Laughing to himself again, the stallion turned around, grabbed a bowl of dried leaves off a shelf with his teeth, and dumped them into the fire. Vibrant, purple sparks flew out of the fire, and the shocking color snapped me out of my stupor. “You… what?”

“What, was I not clear? You are an attractive young mare. Blessed by the spirits of our foster planet, indeed!” He dropped the bowl back on the shelf and pranced to the other side of the fire. “If I was your age, I would perhaps try my luck, haha!”

“Alright, uh… look, I’m just gonna… go away,” I said, already backing for the door. I didn’t really want anything to do with this weird and creepy stallion. I figured at that point that I’d be better off trying to find tobacco growing in the wild instead of going through him for it. Surge seemed to agree; I could feel the relief inside my skull.

But the strange stallion was at my side again; worse, he wrapped his foreleg across my shoulders and pulled me close in a surprisingly strong grip. “I kid! Ha! You have nothing to worry from me.” He let go of my shoulders, and I immediately reestablished a little bit of personal space between us. “You will forgive me if I act a bit… silly, yes? Not very often outsiders come to the sacred lands. Almost never they come talk to me. Almost never get to use your gravel-tongue.”

“Gravel-tongue?” Surge asked, cocking my eyebrow.

“Yes, yes! Gravel-tongue! Your words not musical like the Feati. Your words sound like you chew on gravel first, yes? Ha!” The old stallion snickered and plucked a few sticks of some kind of incense off the wall… and then flung them all into the fire. I almost gagged on the pungent smell, but he didn’t. I wondered if maybe his sense of smell was so far gone he hardly noticed unless he burned a lot.

I had to cough my way to my next words. “Who… are you exactly? Achk!” I made a fan out of my magic and tried to wave the smoke away, but that was only mildly successful.

“Ah, who am I? So you are here by accident!” The pony grinned and grabbed a spear off the walls that I hadn’t noticed before and shook it, letting the animal skulls tied to it clatter and rattle in response. “I have no name, for I gave it up when I became Shaman.”

“You’re the Feati shaman?” I asked, looking around the hut. I mean, I didn’t want to think about it too stereotypically, but on second glance, this looked exactly like a shaman’s hut. Who else would be running around a wooden hut with a roaring fire inside of it, throwing weird things into the blaze seemingly without rhyme or reason?

“Last I checked I was! Ha!” Spinning the spear around in his hooves, he slammed the head into the fire, seemingly cleaving the flames in two. The flames hissed and roared in response—and that’s not a metaphor or anything. The fire actually twisted into the shape of some kind of demonic reptile, coals burning in its eyes, a tongue of flame spewing forth from its tongue of flame. Drawing out the spear, the shaman planted the head in the ground and put a clay jar in front of the fire. “Tawti aoukka, saksi aoukka, Feati aoukka! A U’a wiwiw’set wola, ka U’a sasno’sot Wal bele sonal!”

I had no idea what he said, but the effect was profound. The lizard-thing squealed and hissed, and the flames seemed drawn to the pot. It fought and flailed, but it was all in vain, and the fire was sucked out of the pit and into the jar. The creature cried and moaned, but the shaman put the lid on the pot, and all was quiet.

The shaman tapped it twice with the butt of the spear then, smiling, tossed the spear against the wall. “Fiery, that one was, hmm? Ha!”

“What…” I swallowed hard, and I wasn’t sure if the sweat on my brow was from the heat or just fear over what terrifying thing I’d seen. “What the fuck was that?”

“The spirit of dragon fire!” The shaman proudly picked up the jug and set it aside with several other similar jugs by the wall. “Captured and turned to paint! How else do you cast fire?”

“Uhhh… with magic?” I blinked. “And… what’s a dragon?”

Surge seemed incredulous. You don’t know what a dragon is?

There aren’t dragons here! I thought back at her. At least… I don’t think so.

“A dragon is a beast that used to live on dirt mother a long time ago,” the shaman said. “They were flying lizards that breathed fire, and they were enormous. As big as the Spines themselves!”

“Really?” I blinked and tried to imagine something that large. A tolan would have looked tiny compared to it! Was there actually something on Equus that was scarier than the wildlife on Auris?

They didn’t usually get that big, Surge said. …Usually.

“Ha! How would I know? Dragons never live on this rock! Old Ones never brought them here!” Chuckling to himself, the shaman threw a heavy blanket on the coals in the pit, smothering what was left of the fire. After jumping up and down on the mat a few times and peeling it back with his teeth, he let out a satisfied hum when there weren’t any more tongues of flame remaining. Then, sitting on the dirt, he smiled up at me. “Well? What bring you here? Or you are lost?”

“Well, honestly, I was just here for tobacco,” I said, passing him the smoldering butt of my cigarette to show him what I meant. “Somepony pointed me up here. I, uh, hope it’s not too much to hope that you have any.”

The shaman took the cigarette and sniffed it, even sticking the butt in his mouth for a moment. Spitting it out, he nodded and pulled a wicker basket off a shelf by his side. “Smoke leaves you want, eh? Well, I have! Ha!”

“You do? Awesome!” I’m not gonna lie, that was probably the widest I smiled in at least a few days. Knowing I wouldn’t have to wander through the middle of the wilderness without something to smoke was the best news I’d heard in a while. “How much can you spare? And what do I owe you?”

The shaman shook his head and held the basket out to me. “Take what you want, only if you answer question.”

“What question do you want to ask?” I asked him, giddily pulling dried leaves out of the basket. Sure, I’d have to roll the stuff myself, but it’d be worth it just to have cigarettes again.

“What bring you here?”

I momentarily stopped and blinked. “Uh… I thought I just answered that?”

“No, no.” The shaman shook his head. “What bring you to Feati, outsider? Not smoke leaves, I hope. Ha!”

“Oh.” I took the opportunity of tucking leaves into my wooden box to think over my response. “Well, uh… truth be told… I want to see your big tree.”

The shaman slowly raised an eyebrow. “The Walsahn, hmm?” He crossed his legs, and I’m not really sure how he did that without dislocating his hips—it did not look comfortable. “Why would an outsider want to see the holy tree?”

“It’s… important,” Surge said, stepping in for me. “What we find there will shape the future of Auris. If we aren’t able to get inside, bad things could happen.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Very interesting!” The shaman rolled his neck from side to side. “And how do you suppose to do this? Lentowenye will not let you inside. He will not let any outsiders inside. Might have come long way for nothing, ha!”

“The Grass Trial,” I said, frowning at him. “We plan on doing it.”

That seemed to get the shaman’s attention. His silly, carefree attitude hardened, and he slowly focused his sharp attention on me. “The Grass Trial,” he said, echoing me. “How does an outsider learn of the Grass Trial?”

“From asking around,” I said, shrugging. I didn’t want to say Sandy’s name, at least not yet. If this shit went bad, I didn’t really want to implicate him in it. But then again, how many other ponies around here knew both Equiish and Feati?

The shaman thought for a moment. “I wish you best of luck with that, then,” he said. “Finding influential supporters… not easy.”

“That’s what my friends are trying to do.” I sighed and looked over the supplies in my wooden box. Good enough, I suppose; the thing was almost filled to the brim with dried tobacco. “I’ve already had my share of adventure today fucking that up.”

“Ah.” The shaman nodded and closed his eyes. “You seem capable, though. I think you will run in the Trial.”

I blinked in surprise. “Wait… really? I mean, Lentowenye fucking hates me, and we—I insulted Tekawenye to her face earlier!”

One eye cracked open. “You insulted Tekawenye?”

I huffed and tried to glare inwardly at the Synarchist sitting inside my brain. “Yeah.”

“Hmmm. Mmmm.” The shaman closed his eye again and smiled faintly. “That will be… interesting.”

“What?” I blinked. “What’ll be interesting?” When he didn’t respond, I growled and stood up in frustration. “You are being beyond not helpful, dude.”

“Was I supposed to be?”

I decided I’d had enough. Sighing, I gathered my stuff and turned around. “Great. Whatever. At least I got what I came here for. Thank you for the… uh, smoke leaves and stuff.” Glaring at the ferns hanging in front of the door, I pushed them aside with my magic and marched on out of there. “So much for being a helpful shaman…”

I squinted as I stepped outside into the light, if only for a moment. Once the shaman had squashed the flames inside his hut, it had gotten really dark in there, or at least dark enough that the dim light hanging over the Feati settlement as it shed the last of its foggy blanket seemed bright to my eyes. I rubbed at my eyes with my magic, pressing down on my shut eyelids to try and squeeze away a little bit of drowsiness still clinging to them, and so didn’t even see the meaty wall I walked straight into.

“Son of a fuck—!” I growled at the surprise obstacle, expecting some tribespony to be standing in front of me that wasn’t smart enough to move away from the door while waiting to go inside. Instead, I saw the green face of Lentowenye staring back at me, flanked by four of his blood brothers, two at each side.

He did not seem happy. Not at all.

Swallowing my rage (or was it Surge swallowing it for me?), I took a step back and awkwardly bowed my head. “Oh, uh… hey, your chiefliness. I didn’t see you there.”

Instead of words, Lentowenye spoke with his hoof. It was one of those ‘blink and you miss it’ kind of hits; I didn’t even see him take his hoof off the ground, I just saw his shoulder tense, and the next thing I knew, I was doubled over and clutching my cheek while he calmly put his hoof back on the dirt. “You outsiders are all so alike,” he growled at me while I struggled to stand. Even Surge seemed to be reeling a bit from the blow; she must not have seen it coming fast enough to get the fuck out of my nerve endings before she felt the pain too. “You all want something from us, and you don’t care what you have to do to get it.”

Hissing, I managed to stand up straight, though I still cradled the welt I felt forming on my cheek. “What… the fuck… are you on about? I haven’t done anything wrong, you prick!”

Lento sneered at me and lunged forward, making me flinch back even though he didn’t do anything. That little jock-y display of dominance accomplished, he turned to his soldiers and nodded. “Bwonm’set S’a imma,” he said to them, and he started to walk toward the royal longhouse in the center of the hill.

I didn’t know what he told his buddies until they grabbed hold of me and dragged me after him, indifferent to how much I struggled.

I guess Nova was right to worry about me after all…

I was all but certain that the Feati were going to drop me off in whatever they used for a jail or a dungeon or whatnot—assuming they even did stuff like that. I figured it was equally as likely that I’d end up tied upside down to a tree by my hind legs, my horn broken off and dripping blood, dangling like a worm on a hook for any hungry animals that wanted to come along and take a bite. So it was a huge relief when they instead dragged me over to the longhouse after Lento and threw me onto the floor, where the blood dripping from the gash in my cheek and from a spot where I’d bit my lip stained the wood.

It was not a huge relief when I saw another figure squirming under a net a few feet away. Another beige figure.

“Ace?” I sat upright despite the throbbing in my jaw and slid closer to her. The mare looked pretty awful; leaves and twigs stuck to her coat, her feathers were a mess, she had scrapes across her legs and face, and she was so hopelessly tangled in the net she could hardly move. I was about to touch the net and try to get it off from her when I noticed the glistening of sap coating the ropes. Judging by how the net clung to Ace’s body, even through her mouth where it held her lips open and kept her tongue stuck against it, I knew that the sap was probably as sticky as glue. I felt sorry for the outlaw; the ropes holding her mouth open and glued to her tongue probably had to be an awful experience. I managed to muster the strength to growl at Lento and turned my attention toward him. “What did you do to her?!”

“She was getting nosy,” Lento said, matching my glare with one of his own. “She was caught snooping around the holy tree. Usually the punishment for outsiders is death by bloodworms, but I wanted to hear what you had to say about it first.”

Ace’s eyes widened and she thrashed a bit more at hearing that sentence. Whatever a bloodworm was, I had a feeling it was horrific, just like the rest of the animal life on Auris. I mean, for it to scare an outlaw who was used to danger and death…

I shrugged as Lento’s eyes bored into me. “Can you really blame a mare for wanting to fly around? Besides, it’s not like you said we couldn’t go near the tree. Just that it was… off limits?”

It was a bullshit excuse, I know, but it was about the best I could come up with. It’s not like I could really hope to fight off all these guys if they decided to just kill Ace and I on the spot. Sure, I had my rifle, but those blood brothers had spears a lot closer to my neck than my rifle was to my face. Surge was already trying to figure out if my horn was good enough to get us all out of there if we really needed, but I could tell she wasn’t liking the odds. We’d have to leave Ace behind, and I was not going to do anything like that.

I heard a commotion behind us, and I looked over my shoulder to see more blood brothers leading my friends into the main room. They didn’t seem like they’d been roughed up too much—I guess I was special in Lento’s eyes or something—but they definitely weren’t there by choice. I saw concern light up Nova’s face when she saw Ace and me lying on the ground, and she broke ranks with the rest of the group to flutter to my side.

“Ember!” she shouted, hugging me with her forelegs and her wings. “Oh, you’re alright! And Ace—!” Her eyes widened and I could tell she wanted to help her fellow pegasus, but I held her back before she could get entangled in the net, too. “What did they do to her?” she asked me. “What are we doing here?”

“I guess it was too much to ask for you two to stay out of trouble?” Gauge asked as Lento’s guards led him and Sandy towards us. Soon, we were all seated on the floor in front of the tribe’s chief, and shit was not looking good for us.

Lento sat down on a stool and glared at us all. “I knew letting you stay was a mistake,” he growled, his lips pulled back to reveal gritted teeth. “Outsiders have brought us more pain and misery than anything else. Now your kind would gut the holy tree for the relics inside?”

“That’s not what we want!” I protested, finding the strength to stand up (or, well, sit up) to Lento. “All we wanted was to go inside your stupid fucking tree. If we could do that, we’d leave! But since that’s such a big deal, can you really blame us for looking around on our own?”

“Yes, I can.” The Feati chief fixed me with a dagger-like glare. “You have no business here. You are not Feati. This is not your home, and I do not like outsiders. We do not like outsiders.” He leaned back on the stool and crossed his forelegs. “As far as I am concerned, you are nothing but a threat, and I take the safety of my people above everything else. I will drown you in the tar bogs if I think it will protect my tribe. So why shouldn’t I?”

“Because we brought your sister back,” Nova exclaimed. “We saved your family! Why would we do that if we wanted to hurt you ponies?!”

“My tribe would be better off without my sister,” Lento hissed at us, making Nova pale in shock and recoil at the blatant admission. I guess he felt he could speak freely since his blood brothers probably didn’t speak Equiish. “She is weak, she is foolish, and she endangers us all by bringing outsiders back to the sacred lands!”

Surge flicked my eyes to a pair of figures emerging from one of the rooms behind Lento, and she promptly took control of my voice. “Is that why you beat her?” Surge asked through me, even raising one of my eyebrows. “As a punishment? Or because it makes you feel better?”

Lento’s face twisted into a scowl. “That is none of your concern,” he said in a low and angry voice. “I can do much worse to you if you tempt me.”

“Oh yeah?” Surge looked over my shoulder at Sandy, who until now had been quiet at the back of the group. “Tell them,” she said, nodding my head. “Tell them all we want to participate in the Grass Trial.” When Sandy blinked, Surge frowned at him. “Do it!”

While Sandy fumbled over the Feati so everypony else could understand, Lentowenye blinked in surprise. “You… you want to participate in the Grass Trial? Is this some kind of joke? Did Sandy tell you this?”

“We would have found out one way or another,” I said. “There are a few ponies around here who speak our language. You’re not the only one.”

Lento’s blood brothers looked to him, and the stallion hesitated. I didn’t know what he was going to do next. Shoot down that option before we even had a chance? Just kill us on the spot? Instead, he snorted in irate, sarcastic amusement, and he perked his ears toward us. “I could just deny you the Trial, but that would not stop anything. So I’ll humor you. Who will support you for it?” He held his hooves out to the sides. “You know nopony who matters. And I will ensure that nopony will support you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Surge said, and she looked past Lento to where Teka and her mother stood at the far end of the room. “Teka!” she shouted, making the younger mare flinch at her name. Surge beckoned with my hoof, and Teka swallowed hard and started to walk closer, her mother not far behind.

Lento actually laughed at us. “You believe she will support you? My sister? Against me?” He snorted and shook his head. “She knows her place. Isn’t that right, dear sister?” He hopped off his stool and stood in front of her, forcing the young mare to stop dead in her tracks. “Isn’t that right?”

Teka drew back like she was about to cower and flee before her brother, but she hesitated. In that hesitation, Surge made sure that we made eye contact with her. All the Synarchist mare did was slightly nod my head once, and then she leaned back on my haunches expectantly.

“This isn’t going to work,” Gauge muttered under his breath. Even Ace had given up her struggling, perhaps realizing the futility of the situation. I was starting to have my doubts, too. I doubted that this was how Surge had figured her master plan to get Teka on our side would work.

But to my surprise, Teka didn’t back away or yield. Instead, she raised her head to Lento’s and met his glare with one of her own. Nostrils flaring and tattoos flickering red, she shouldered past him and soon stood by my side. “A beleten’set Embaw pohnaa’ae,” she finally proclaimed in her own language, and the only thing I could pick out of it was her awful pronunciation of my name. “A S’a namno timm’sot kallengen.”

“What did she say?” I heard Nova whisper to Sandy behind me.

“She supports Ember,” Sandy replied, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Surge, of course, was sitting all smug inside my head, but even still, what did it matter? Teka was one pony, and we needed two to support us. And if Lento had his way, he’d intimidate the rest of the tribe into backing down.

And I could tell just from looking at him that that exact thought was going through his head. Sure, he looked pissed that Teka would stand up to him like that, but that was about it. “U’a wunkwi mak’set koaw A,” he growled to her, sending some kind of threat in their language. “U’a Le’un pohna bwomtuT’a’hn beleten’set, e A mak’sot U’a T’a nowow.”

Teka flinched, but she held her ground. “Embaw,” she said, nodding to me. She held out a hoof to help me stand, and then it was the two of us facing down Lento. “Embaw… Embaw help A,” she said, trying her hardest to say words in Equiish. “A… I help Embaw.”

Lento sneered at her. “Cute,” he said. “But that doesn’t get you anywhere.” He marched forward until he was way within the bounds of my personal space. “You’d be better off withdrawing that intention,” he said. “For yours and my sister’s sake.”

“How about you make me?” I growled back at him.

“I don’t have to make you,” he retorted. “You will not get anypony else to support you. As soon as I spread the word, it’s over.”

My eyes flicked to the side, where I saw Iklimna slowly making her way to Lento. “Oh yeah?” I asked him, grinning when I saw the look on her face. “And what if mommy tells you to play nice?”

Lento blinked and turned around. “Mema, wuh U’a tu’set?” he asked her, quickly closing the gap to her side and giving the aging mare a little support to lean on. “U’a ite’hn. Immapohna’hn’un allae noal.”

“Outland pony? Unsafe?” Iklimna gently shook her head and patted her son’s shoulder. “I think no. I meet earlier. They nice.” Her eyes fell on me and she lightly smiled.

“Now’s not the time for this,” Lento impatiently growled, trying to shepherd his mother away. But the willful mare refused to be escorted away by her son, and instead she forcefully shook her head and walked past him. Stopping in front of me, she turned around.

“I support Ember,” she proclaimed in a steady voice. “She bring Tekawenye back. She bring family home.” She put a foreleg around Teka and nuzzled her daughter. “I support her.”

I grinned from ear to ear. “Thank you, Iklimna,” I said, moving in close to the older mare and, after a second’s pause, giving her a friendly nuzzle. “You don’t know what this means.”

“You don’t know what bring Teka home mean,” she said in return. “Husband dead. Children all have left.” She sadly shook her head. “Do not like to see fight.”

Unfortunately for her, I don’t think siding with Teka over her brother was going to solve the issue anytime soon. Lento stood with his mouth agape, nostrils flaring as he tried to process his family siding with us. Ultimately, however, his face screwed up in suppressed rage. “Fine,” he spat, and he removed his feathery headdress and threw it on the ground in front of us. “Have your trial. I will make sure it kills you.”

With that ominous threat, he turned around and stormed away, his blood brothers following swiftly after him, leaving us alone with our new allies—and me with a lot of dread beginning to surface as I wondered just what the fuck I’d gotten us into.