It was many hours before I finally came to.

I awoke to find myself shivering on the same rock I’d clutched to when I passed out. The light had shifted, but it hadn’t yet dimmed, so I’d only been out for most of the day. It was probably four in the afternoon by my best estimates of the light, and even though I was in the middle of a river, I couldn’t see the sun through the gap in the canopy above. Heavy clouds had started to move in, and it seemed like the heavens would begin to rain soon, if only to spite my survival.

My survival… I almost didn’t want to look at my leg. I don’t know how many times I’d seriously hurt my legs in my life (I was a stupid filly who got hurt a lot in Blackwash) but this easily took the cake. What had once been flesh and blood was now little more than charred flesh and cracking bone. My desperate burn of my wound had saved my life, but it had likely cost me my leg. I knew that the flesh would never heal from that wound, and if I didn’t have it amputated, infection would set in soon, and then I’d die that way. What kind of a mare would I be with only three legs? How could I hope to fight and serve the Sentinels when I had to pogo around everywhere on three hooves? I tried to pretend that I could still save my leg, but that argument fell apart as soon as I breathed. As soon as I got the tools for it, I’d have to have it amputated, at least from the knee down. There was very little I could save thanks to the warg’s teeth and my magic.

Thankfully, and with no small note of irony… it didn’t hurt. I guess my fire had burned away all my nerve endings in the leg, so I couldn’t actually feel it anymore. It still itched and ached around where the fire had stopped singeing my flesh, but that was it. I might as well have already lost the leg; I certainly couldn’t sense it, and I definitely couldn’t move it. It was just dead weight affixed to my hip, and there was nothing I could do about that until I could get it removed.

This fucking code better have been worth it.

Surge started to come to momentarily after me. “Em… ber?” she moaned, twisting my face into a wince and craning my head back. “We’re… still alive?”

“Alive, yeah,” I told her, looking away from the mess of my leg. “In one piece… no.”

We shivered, a combination of passing out so close to the cold water and of the blood loss through our leg. All our efforts the previous night and this morning to try and recover to make our way back to the settlement had been for nothing. We were even worse off than when we’d woken up the day before, dehydrated and starving. Not only was I dehydrated and starving again, but I felt like my head was swimming as dizzy delirium washed my vision from side to side, my eyeballs feeling like they were floating in my skull.

“We’re gonna die out here, aren’t we?” I asked her.

“I died once,” Surge muttered, and even then she started to try and get us off of the rock. “I’m not going to do it again.”

She took charge, leading my body away from the rock and crawling across the stones to the far bank of the river. I merely let her work, not wanting to get involved and risk sending us tumbling back into the water. If the rapids swept us away again, there was very little chance we’d be able to repeat our miraculous feat. Even still, wave after wave of dull, aching pain shot its way through my thigh as my heart beat and tried to send blood to a limb that didn’t work anymore. I knew I was lucky to be alive after a warg had managed to sink its fangs into my flesh, but the sensation made me start to wish it had finished the job.

But for better or for worse, we were alive now, and if we didn’t do our damnedest to keep it that way, we’d be fucked in short order. Surge was at least determined to survive, even if I was starting to have second thoughts about the whole ‘life on three legs’ thing. She pushed me onwards, and when we finally made it back to the riverbed, it was through her persistence that we began to stagger through the trees. Our gait was hardly quick, nor was it comfortable, since we had to compensate for our useless leg, but it was better than nothing. Bit by bit, we shambled deeper into the forest. Bit by bit, we continued our desperate search for the Feati tribe.

Bit by bit, I started to regain some of the confidence the warg had throttled out of me this morning. If I died, that monster would win, and I was not going to die because of a six-legged wolf. I’d wander around the forest until I couldn’t wander any more, and maybe by the end of it all I’d find the settlement again.

“How long do you think they’ll wait for us?” I asked Surge. “Before they assume we’re dead?”

“Not too much longer, I don’t think,” she replied. “We were a day’s walk away from the settlement when we woke up yesterday. We should have found a way to make it back by now, I think.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not part of the tribe,” I said. “I’m sure there’s some easy way they’d use to find their way back home.”

Surge shrugged my shoulders mid-step. “Growing up in the Spines, Feati foals probably know most of the surrounding area,” she said. “It would be a test to see if they could survive and get home in one piece once they figure out where they are. We don’t have any of that.” She swallowed hard, and I felt her attention turn to the leg we had dragging on the ground behind us. “Ember…”

“We’ll get it chopped off when we get back to the tribe,” I said through gritted teeth. “Otherwise infection will kill us.”

“We may not have to.” When I raised an eyebrow in surprise, she elaborated. “Teka healed a gunshot on you, remember? Her tattoos let her magically repair your flesh. Maybe the Feati can do the same for your leg.”

I didn’t even want to look at the mangled mess dragging through the dirt after me. “I… don’t know,” I said, worry creeping into my voice. “That’s a little more serious than a gunshot.”

“It’s worth a try, at least.”

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that until we get back to them,” I said. Setting my eyes on the tree directly in front of me, I tried to focus on limping to it without swaying or staggering too much. I wondered how long it would be until the delirium set in. Once I lost my marbles from blood loss and exhaustion, it would be up to Surge to get us back home safely—assuming my malfunctioning brain didn’t take her down with me like it did when we passed out on the rocks.

When I made it to the tree, I paused for a second to rest, and then I set my sights on the next tree in front of me. Hopefully by just going from tree to tree in short bursts, I could make steady progress without getting lost and turning in circles. The last thing we needed was to double back on ourselves and waste any more time. It was slow and agonizing work, and I kept my head on a swivel to spot any predators sneaking up on me, but apart from the background noise of the wildlife and birds flitting from branch to branch above me, I didn’t encounter anything. The closest I got was when some bird shit hit me on the shoulder from somewhere high above, so I grabbed a cluster of fallen leaves and wiped it out of my coat, cursing at the bird the entire time.

Just as I began to lose hope that we’d ever make any progress in finding our way back to the settlement, Surge stopped me in my tracks. “Wait,” she said, flicking my eyes up the length of a tree. “Do you see that?”

I squinted and managed to focus my bleary eyes on what she had pointed out, but as soon as I could, I gasped in surprise. Smeared onto the bark of the tree far above my head was a blue stain of paint, with two smaller splotches of yellow and orange to the right of it. I immediately surveyed the rest of the trees in the area and spotted another petrified titan with paint staining its surface. Memories of my march to the Feati settlement came back to me, and I realized that we’d accidentally stumbled into some of their waypoint markers. Using these, we could find our way back.

“We’re fucking saved!” I exclaimed, hobbling up to the tree and putting my hoof on its base. “We’re not gonna die out here after all! We’re gonna live!”

“If we can follow the signs all the way back to the settlement,” Surge cautioned me. “And if we’re going to do that, we can’t afford to waste any time. The longer we take to get back home, the less likely we’ll even make it there.”

Pushing off of the tree, I set my sights on the next smear of paint and began to trundle towards it. “Yeah, I know. We’ll make it, though. We didn’t come this far just to die, right?”

“I hope not. Like I said, I don’t want to die a second time.” She set my features into a determined frown. “Let’s just focus on making it from one tree to the next. Talk will tire us out.”

I nodded and set my hooves—or three of them, at least—in a line. If we could just follow the paint in short spurts, we could make it back easily. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how exactly the Feati measured the distance between the marks and how much of the spectrum we’d have to go through before we got back to the settlement. All I knew was that red was the end, so I made sure that we moved towards the marks that had warmer colors on them. With every tree we passed, a little bit of blue disappeared, with yellow taking its place. All the while I kept on the lookout for more wargs or other wildlife that wanted to end me, but the forest seemed curiously bare. Orange leaves swayed above maroon grass, but the forest was still, quiet, dead. There was hardly any noise save for the whooshing of the wind through the leaves and the crunch of my hooves on the ground. Though I heard songbirds singing in the distance, their songs were very faint and far away.

“Something’s not right about this,” I said, frowning up at the trees. Yellow had entirely superseded the blue on the trees, and even that was beginning to fade to orange. We were much closer to safety now, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Not when something was up and I had no idea what it could be.

“Wildlife always grows quiet when predators are about,” Surge said, and she turned my attention back toward the ground. My eyes swept through trees and undergrowth, but we couldn’t see anything. “We need to be careful.”

“I hope it’s not another one of those invisible giant centipede things,” I said in a low voice. “We definitely will not survive an encounter with it.”

“It would have a hard time burrowing in a forest with this many roots and obstructions,” Surge said. “So we should be safe from those creatures. But we don’t know what else might be living here…”

It was then that my eyes settled on something we’d missed the first time. A red-brown shape lied underneath some ferns and growth maybe fifty yards ahead of me. Frowning, I trudged over to it, using my magic to pull away the plants so I could get a better look at what it was.

A warg’s face glared back at me, tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth. I screamed and jumped back, but the monster didn’t react. In fact, it didn’t move at all. Swallowing hard, I approached it again, and then I saw the blood that had pooled around its body, staining the dirt beneath it and spattering the leaves of the shrubs concealing it. It was stone dead, but when I put my hoof on its chest, it was still warm. It had died recently, maybe within the past few hours; it definitely hadn’t been dead overnight, otherwise the cool night air would have taken care of its body heat easily. I tried to roll it over with my magic to see what had killed it, but it was too heavy and my horn was too weak. Still, I couldn’t see any cuts or slashes to its face or neck, which is what I would have expected had another animal killed it. The wounds that had snuffed out its life were somewhere on its left side, sandwiched between the cooling meat of the monster and the spongy ground where it rested.

“I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” I said, stepping away from the body.

“Perhaps the Feati killed it,” Surge suggested. “They would likely have to fend off wargs all the time while roaming the forest.”

“But why wouldn’t they take it back to their homes for the meat and fur?”

Surge shrugged. “Perhaps they simply couldn’t if they were out here to do something else. Or maybe they’ll have other ponies from the settlement drag it back.”

“I’m not going to count on that,” I said, and I started walking onwards. “I don’t get that lucky.”

But now I felt like I was balancing on a razor’s edge. Something had killed a warg out here, and though Surge thought it was more Feati, I wasn’t so sure. Regardless of what it was, it was more dangerous than the thing that had nearly killed me this morning, so I wasn’t going to take it lightly. And even as we left the corpse of the monster behind, the sounds of the wildlife still hadn’t returned. Surge and I were alone in the middle of the Spines, and I was growing more tired by the minute as I struggled onwards. When I got back to the settlement, the first thing I would do was chow down on a couple bowls of that really delicious stew they made, followed shortly after by a long nap. It was the least I deserved, right?

A creek cut across our path, and I stumbled down to the water to get a drink and keep myself hydrated. Though I was weak from starving for two days, and the blood loss had certainly taken a lot of my energy away, I knew I was suffering the most from dehydration. You lose that much blood and you need fluids, especially when you’re hiking your way through the forest. But when I took a few gulps of water from the creek, I frowned and stared down at it. Was it just me, or did the water taste a little… coppery?

And then I saw why. Just a little ways upstream, three bodies were face down in the water, their coats speckled with blood and their corpses slowly draining into the creek. I grimaced and stuck my tongue out on instinct, but then my face froze when I saw the tribal tattoos decorating their bodies. I immediately lumbered over as fast as I could, even though I knew I was too late for these ponies. They had been dead for a little while now, and I had the feeling that the culprit was the same one who had killed the warg.

But I could examine these bodies.

I grabbed the smallest of the bunch, a mare who couldn’t have been more than fourteen winters old, and dragged her out of the water with my magic. The water had kept her blood from staining her coat, which made it a little hard to find her cause of death under her waterlogged deep blue hair, but after feeling around with my hooves, I found the wounds on her chest—six of them in total, and all neatly grouped together. Surge and I just stared at them when we realized what they were.

Bullet holes.

I swallowed hard and took a step back, my gaze falling on the other two ponies. I didn’t even need to go over and inspect them to see if they also had died from gunshots; I already knew that they had. And I knew that the dead warg we’d passed had also died from gunshots, but its hide had been too thick for the bullets to exit the other side.

“Slavers?” Surge asked. “The Feati have a problem with them.”

“They wouldn’t have killed them,” I said, shaking my head. “At least, not the young mare. She would have been worth her weight in C’s.” I ran my eyes over the gunshots again. “Something automatic did this to her. Two bursts of three. That’s why they’re grouped so cleanly. And burst-fire weapons are usually military grade… right?”

Surge nodded. “All the army’s rifles when I was around were either single-fire or burst-fire. You wouldn’t find something like this in a colonist’s house. These guns would’ve been kept in an armory.”

“Or made,” I quietly said as a grim realization suddenly dawned on me. Gritting my teeth, I turned away from the dead and splashed my way across the creek, struggling very hard to move quickly with my lame leg. “We need to get back to the settlement as fast as we can!”

“Why?” Surge asked, and she forced me to slow down to avoid injuring my leg any further. “If whoever did this is still around here, we have to be careful!”

“It’s not a ‘whoever’ that did this,” I said, forcing myself to speed up and blunder forwards again. “It’s Yeoman.”

Surge froze in thought, the resistance she’d applied to my muscles slipping away. “You really think so?”

“I know for a fucking fact,” I growled. “He was looking for this place too, and I knew he couldn’t have been far behind us. We only got here first because we had Teka to follow. And if he’s this close to the settlement—!”

Gunshots in this distance cut me off. They were faint and the leaves of the trees distorted the sound, but I could recognize them regardless. The rapid fire staccato of burst-fire and automatic weapons began to crack through the air, paired by muffled screams. That told me everything I needed to know. They had reached the settlement, and they would carve a bloody swath through it until they found what they wanted.

And not only would they slaughter every innocent who crossed their path, but my friends were there, too. They knew Yeoman, and Yeoman knew them. If he got his opportunity he’d kill them all. They were in danger, and I had to help. But I could only move so fast on a lame leg.

The closer I came, the louder the screams and gunshots grew. A haze hung in the air, and I could smell burning wood. Casualties began to appear along the path, Feati ponies either dead or dying, the fallen moaning for help or crying as they left slick trails of crimson behind them. I couldn’t stop to help them, though; there were too many for me to help each one. My best course of action was to cut Yeoman off and stop his rampage as quickly as I could, otherwise nothing would be left of the Feati. And if I could stop him here… if I could kill him here… not only would I have finally avenged Zip, but I would put a stop to Reclaimer’s plans to get all the pieces of the code. After coming up just short at the Bluewater Gorge, this was my chance to finally come out on top.

That chance almost ended before it began. The forest opened up in front of me into the clearing around the Feati settlement. A flickering orange haze filled the area, but my eyes fell on two ponies standing in front of me. They weren’t Feati, that much I could tell at a glance. They wore armor and they carried rifles, and the moment they saw me stagger my way into the open, they pointed their rifles at me.

My horn simultaneously lit up in blue and orange glows as Surge and I cast spells at the same time. I reached out with my telekinesis to disarm the unicorn raising his weapon at me, and blue fire flew out of my horn at the pegasus standing next to him, swallowing her up in flames as she shrieked and screamed. Casting two spells at once made me dizzy and falter, and my grip on the unicorn’s weapon failed as I stumbled to the ground. Before he could shoot me, however, a pair of small caliber automatics cracked to life behind him, and his neck erupted into spurts of blood as he fell. As my swirling vision finally centered itself again, my eyes focused on SCaR hovering over the unicorn’s corpse, his barrels smoking faintly.

“Boy am I glad to see you!” I exclaimed, dragging myself back to my hooves. SCaR whistled and flew over, and I could hear him making some kind of concerned chattering when its camera fell on my maimed leg. Still, I didn’t waste any time snatching up the rifle the unicorn had dropped when SCaR surprised him, sparing only a quick glance at the feebly twitching, burning body of the mare Surge had lit on fire as the flames consumed her. “Where’s everypony else?”

SCaR whistled and chattered and flew off ahead of me. I definitely didn’t know how to interpret his language like Gauge did, but it was pretty obvious he wanted me to follow him. So follow him I did, at least as quick as I could manage, and I set my hooves in motion toward the settlement.

Which was nothing short of a hellscape. The gates to the settlement had been blown to pieces by some kind of explosive charge, and the thick tree trunks that had provided a sturdy defense against the creatures of the Spines were now little more than splinters and fuel for the growing fires. Bullet holes pockmarked the settlement walls, and the bodies of Feati warriors lay slumped over against the walls or crumpled on the ground. I only spotted one other body from Yeoman’s group, a stallion with a spear run through his neck. But the Ivory City had outfitted their soldiers too well to be challenged by the primitives with their simple weapons and tattoo magic, and even if Yeoman only had a few dozen ponies with him, he could easily kill his way through the entire village.

Shooting echoed from all around the settlement, along with the screams of the terrified natives trying to flee from the carnage. Ponies streamed past me, simply trying to escape the settlement and the fires raging within, and I had to quickly get to the side so that the panicked stampede wouldn’t flatten me into the ground. The shooting seemed to be coming from everywhere, but I couldn’t search everywhere at once.

Up to the longhouse, Surge thought at me, the only way she could be certain I’d hear her over the roar of terror pounding on my ears. That’s where our friends were, and that’s likely where they left your rifle and ammunition. We’ll need it to punch through to Yeoman.

And that’s likely where he’s headed anyway, I thought back at her. Sure enough, SCaR also started moving in that direction, flying well above the rush of ponies below him. He pivoted back to make sure I was following, and when I started limping after him, he resumed his flight through the settlement, leading me onwards. As I moved away from the gate, the fleeing masses of civilians thinned out, and I began to enter the thick of the fight.

All around me, Feati warriors clashed with Ivory City soldiers in a one-sided slaughter. Though they fought bravely, and they somehow stood their ground amidst the hail of bullets and magic chewing through their ranks, it made little difference to the disciplined ponies they squared off against. Shoulder-mounted automatics ripped those in the open to pieces while unicorn marksmares fired with magic-held rifles from a safer range. And though the fire and ice the Feati mustered was a terrifying force in its own right, it simply wasn’t a match for the professional corps of ponies they had to square off against.

But I was here, and now I could help turn the tide. I wasn’t familiar with the rifle I’d scavenged off of the unicorn SCaR had killed, but it had a barrel, it had sights, and it had a trigger. That was all I needed to work it. I sighted down the first unicorn’s head from behind and pulled the trigger, and a burst of three bullets blew his skull to pieces and sent his helmet flying off his head. I immediately switched targets to the next pony and dropped her with another burst, and only then did the squad of Ivory City soldiers realize that they were under attack from behind.

When they responded, it was with such a decisive swiftness I wasn’t used to that I was almost stunned. The two ponies in front of me split in opposite directions to scramble to cover, and as soon as they were out of my line of sight they quickly brought their guns to bear on the Feati warriors that had attempted to seize the advantage I’d given them and cut them down in the streets. They shouted to each other, probably through radio devices to be heard over the noise, and suddenly I had ponies shooting at me from my flank. I backpedaled and managed to press myself flat against a hut before the flanking fire could rip me to pieces, and even as I did so, a shockwave of telekinesis sent the sacks of foodstuffs between me and the first two ponies flying, removing the one thing obscuring me from their line of sight.

I forced myself to my hooves and lunged for the next piece of cover as bullets came flying in around me. Somehow I barely managed to avoid being hit, clumsy as I was with my dead weight leg dragging through the turf behind me. An explosive of some kind tore apart the roof and the walls of the hut I’d moved to, however, and again I found myself cowering behind cover as bullets bit into the earth all around me. Fuck, these ponies were relentless! Why couldn’t I fight stupid Crimson raiders or slavers who could only shoot about as well as they could fuck?!

Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. SCaR triumphantly whirred in from the side, gunning down the ponies that had started to flank me before they could react. I immediately poked out of cover as I heard the cries of alarm from the other two ponies who had been pinning me down and put a burst into one’s neck as he tried to swivel his guns to SCaR. The last one, an earth pony mare, swore and ducked down behind cover, and before I could press my advantage on her, a red flare shot up from her position, spiraling into the air above the settlement before igniting the leaves of the trees far above us.

Shadowy figures moved through the smoke and ash filling the clearing, and I swore over and over as I realized she’d just summoned backup. Pegasi appeared from above, their shoulder mounted guns blazing as they flew at me in a line, each strafing me as they passed. I scrambled for new cover, raising a shield to protect me with Surge’s help, and it ultimately ate a few dozen bullets as I found yet another hut to hide behind. “Fuck!” I shouted again as I checked the ammunition in my rifle. Unlike my BR14M, which had to be somewhere up in the middle of the settlement, this rifle didn’t have an ammunition counter in the optics, and for all the impressive stopping power it had, it was very barebones. Perhaps it was a rifle I was unfamiliar with, or maybe even something the Ivory City produced itself, but I didn’t know how to find any of the information I’d come to rely on while trying to survive in the wilderness.

I saw the pegasi begin to wheel about in the sky, and even as I turned my attention toward them, I heard something strike the ground next to me. I whipped my head to the left and spotted the grenade rolling across the sand, the little light on its crown flashing. Surge reacted faster than I did, and blue telekinesis plucked the grenade off the ground and whipped it into the air. Why didn’t you—? I began to think back at her, until I saw where she’d thrown the grenade: right into the trio of rounding pegasi about to dive at me again. The grenade blew up between the first and the second pegasi, filling the air with lethal shrapnel, and they immediately began to fall out of the sky, blood trailing behind them.

But there was still one pegasus who hadn’t been struck, and though he watched his two comrades fall in front of him, that didn’t stop him from launching into another strafing run on me. Before he could start, and before I could bring my rifle to bear, a single crack! split the noise of the settlement, and a single well-placed shot ripped the pegasus’ head from his spine. I felt a smile breaking out on my muzzle as the lifeless body fell to the ground. There was only one mare with a rifle like that and accuracy like that, and I immediately felt better knowing she was around.

I popped out of my cover right as the last remaining Ivory City soldier ducked down behind hers. “I need backup!” she screamed into her radio, and I could hear the fear and panic in her voice. “Give me more troops! The north entrance, by the north entrance, help me! It’s her!”

Another crack of a rifle, and I saw something rip through the mare’s cover and bury itself in the ground between me and her. She slumped to the side of her cover, convulsing as blood drained from a hole in her neck, so I at least did the merciful thing and finished her off with a shot to the head before emerging from my own cover. I kept my rifle raised and cautiously looked around, expecting more troops to arrive at her cry for alarm, and so I nearly put a burst into Ace in surprise when she fluttered down from the trees next to me.

Thankfully I didn’t actually squeeze the trigger when I recognized her, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have hit her, since she already deftly nudged the barrel away from her as she landed. She pushed me back into cover, putting my back against a hut. “Ember! You’re back! You just got the damnedest timing, ain’t ya?”

“The party couldn’t start without me,” I said, managing a smile back at her. But I knew it was filled with pain, because Ace’s own smile fell to concern. Her eyes looked me over, stopping when they settled on my leg to the accompaniment of a horrified gasp.

“What the fuck happened to your leg?!” she exclaimed, pointing at it with a trembling wing.

“A warg tried to rip it off,” I told her as calmly as I could. “I had to stop the bleeding somehow when I got away.”

“Holy shit, Ember, you’re gonna have to have that taken off! And a warg? What kind of hell did these bastards put you through?”

“It’s a long story and we don’t have the time.” I glanced out from behind cover. “These are Ivory City soldiers, right?”

Ace nodded. “They showed up just a little while back. I been looking for Yeoman, but I ain’t seen none of him. Been up in the trees thinning them out and looking to put a bullet in the bastard’s head if I spy him.”

“Are Nova and Gauge safe?”

She nodded and pointed up to the longhouse. “They’re still in there, with Lento and his blood brothers. Safest place to be right now, I reckon.”

“Or the most dangerous. I bet that’s where Yeoman’s headed.” Ace pursed her lips, and I put my hoof on her shoulder. “I need to get up there. I’ve got SCaR here to help me on the ground, but I could really use your eyes in the sky.”

Ace nodded. “I’ll take my perch again,” she said. “I’ll be watching you. You get pinned down, just sit tight and I’ll flush them out.”

“Keep yourself safe,” I told her. “Don’t take any risks for me.”

“My whole life is one risky move after another.” She spread her wings and stepped back, but hesitated at the last second. “…Speaking of which, before I go…”

I opened my mouth to respond, and that was when she rushed me. A half-step lunge, wings around my back pulling me close, smashing my lips against hers. My eyes widened in surprise, but Ace didn’t hold back, her tongue invading my mouth and pulling against the space in my gums where I’d lost a tooth in Hole. She held the kiss for five seconds before she broke off with a wink. “Figured I’d do that just in case,” she said. “Don’t want to miss the chance later.”

I blinked in stunned silence as Ace backed away, a proud smirk on her face. “Try not to let that distract you. You got places to be, remember?”

And then she was off, wings blurring as she spiraled into the shroud of the forest canopy. It took me a few more moments for my brain to catch up with my surroundings—I was too lost in the taste of her tongue and the feeling of her breath on my muzzle. It wasn’t until Surge started snickering inside my skull that I finally paid attention again. It was about time, I’ll say.

I… shut up, I thought back at her. I could feel my cheeks beginning to burn red. We need to get to the longhouse. Let’s just ignore that for now.

Sure. I will say, though, I’ve never kissed a mare before. What an… interesting experience.

I raised my rifle and tried to put that comment out of my mind. I had a job to do, after all, and I couldn’t afford to get distracted. The longer I waited here, the more of Yeoman’s troops that would close in on me. I needed to get a move on toward the longhouse.

SCaR led the way, taking me through the streets in a sidewinding fashion towards the huge structure perched on the hill. As I followed him between huts and around obstacles, I realized he wasn’t taking me the most direct way to the structure, he was taking the one with the best cover. I smiled a bit at that; the drone was trying to keep me out of harm’s way as best as he could and wasn’t leading me into the main body of Yeoman’s troops.

Tactical drones shouldn’t show this much intelligence, Surge noted as SCaR led me past two buildings that were beginning to catch fire. The drone paused to make sure I navigated the obstacles okay, then moved on ahead.

Being dead for two hundred years and suddenly brought back to life can be a life-changing experience, I thought back at her. I’m sure you have experience with that.

Gunshots clattered close by, and SCaR squawked in alarm as two bullets sparked off of his metal casing. The drone zipped for cover, and I whirled around the corner to spray three bursts in the direction the shots came from. Two sailed wide, but the third carved apart an armored mare’s face, crumpling her body to the ground as her two companions cursed and darted away from her. A unicorn carrying a machine gun of some sort sprayed bullets in my direction as he ran, and I had to drop back behind cover as they chewed into the wood around me. They looked like they were small caliber, but that didn’t matter much. Oh, I would have loved to be wearing some Sentinel armor right now!

The other pony’s weapon chugged out three shots in a deep and throaty sound, and three holes as large as my hoof appeared near the corner of the structure I’d been hiding behind. I didn’t know what kind of gun he had, but it seemed like it fired slugs with a lot of punch behind them.

BRS-08, Surge thought at me. Automatic shotgun with an 8 shot magazine. It has an enchanted firing pin that can shoot steel slugs through a foot of concrete from a hundred yards away.

Two more holes ripped through the structure near me, and I ducked my head as wooden splinters rained down on us. Fuck me, I growled, gritting my teeth. Why does Yeoman get the best toys?

If he’s from the Ivory City, he can probably find anything he wants there.

Thankfully, a crack from a rifle high above me rang out over the settlement, and I heard the two ponies curse again and fall back. Ace was in position—good to know. Before they could focus me down again, however, I stood up and hobbled as fast as I could from my current cover to a building on the other side of the street, where SCaR hid from the two soldiers and their weapons. I didn’t blame him; either could rip him to pieces with an accurate shot, and I didn’t know how much ammunition he had left in those guns mounted to his frame. Once I got to cover, however, I had to duck again as another two slugs punctured holes clean through this hut. I was just thankful they didn’t like, I don’t know, explode or something after they made it through!

Biting my lip, I managed to stand up on my hind legs (though I had to use my forehooves to balance against the wall given one of my legs didn’t work at all) and jammed the barrel of my scavenged rifle through a hole in the hut. Placing my eyes to the other, I caught a glimpse of movement on the other side and fired several bursts. One bullet pinged off the earth pony’s helmet, and then my rifle ejected its spent clip into the ground. I instinctively reached for a magazine at my flank, but realized I didn’t have any extras. Why didn’t I take some spares when I stole the gun in the first place?!

Do we have enough juice to teleport? I asked Surge.

We can only perform a few more spells right now, Surge warned me. We’re running on empty. The only thing keeping us up is your adrenaline.

Fuck. Growling, I looked the now-useless rifle over in my hooves. It was made out of several angled pieces and good quality metal, but that wouldn’t help me. Unless…

My magic settled over some of the screws and pins holding it together and pulled them out. It was a good thing I knew my way around guns; it didn’t take me more than five seconds to strip it to pieces. I twirled the barrel in my telekinetic grip, feeling its weight. It was made of heavy stuff, an attempt to balance the weapon and counter its recoil when it fired. And it would do nicely.

Ember, what are you doing? Surge asked me. I could feel the worry in her voice. I would be worried too if I was stuck in the body of a madmare who thought stupid bullshit could count as good ideas.

I peeked around the corner first just to keep track of the unicorn with the machine gun, and I let out a sigh of relief when I realized he was lying in a pool of blood not too far from where I’d last seen him, a clean hole shot through his eye. I saw the earth pony take aim at me with the shotgun mounted to his shoulder and scrambled backwards as he put another slug through the wall… and then nothing. That was eight slugs from him. Time to make my move.

Whirling around the corner as fast as I could on three legs, I flung a cloud of rifle parts at the earth pony while he was reloading. The stallion raised a leg to shield himself as they pelted his body, and in doing so, didn’t realize that I hadn’t let go of the rifle’s barrel. I whipped my head from one side to the other, imparting a little momentum on the barrel and striking him across the nose with it. He sputtered and recoiled, crying out in pain, but I wasn’t finished. The moment he opened his mouth to shout, I stood over him and jammed the barrel into it, gritting my teeth as I fought and struggled with him to jam it down his throat.

I don’t know if that would have actually killed him or if he still would have been okay since there was a hole in the barrel. What I do know, however, was that it gave Ace plenty of time to line up the shot. Her rifle cracked, and I got to see up close and personal what that monster of a weapon she carried on her back could really do to a pony. The stallion’s helmet split in two from the force of the bullet, and I saw bloodstained lead flash for the briefest of moments as it came straight out of the bottom of his jaw. It’d gone clean through his head and I don’t think it slowed down much at all. It was probably buried at least ten feet into the ground now.

SCaR triumphantly chirped, and I stumbled over to the bodies of the soldiers I’d killed. I swiftly decided against taking the shotgun, since having only eight slugs didn’t seem like a good idea, and I passed on the largely unremarkable rifle. But then my eyes settled on the machine gun. Hefting it into the air, I felt the weight, felt the power behind this monster. Three box magazines hung from its underside, all mounted to a rail that could slide forward and backwards to allow the next box to be loaded as soon as one was empty. I didn’t really know how many rounds were in each box, but the first one was basically empty, so I disengaged the scraps of the belt still fed into the gun and slid it over to the middle box. The rail latched in place and the feeding mechanism from the gun automatically bumped down and pulled the first bullet of the belt into the chamber. A little readout on the dot sight mounted to the top printed the number ‘200’, along with an icon of three bullets that I assumed meant it was automatic.

It wouldn’t have the control or stopping power of the rifles I liked to use, but I was salivating nonetheless. I was going to light Yeoman’s ass up with this, and I probably wouldn’t stop shooting the body until I ran out of bullets.

Try to keep it for shooting only, Surge cautioned me. I think it’s a little too much for your vagina to handle.

My vagina’s tougher than you think, I retorted. My eyes settled on SCaR, and I nodded when it beeped at me. “Lead the way, little dude.”

SCaR led me up a street parallel to the main road, and I’d occasionally catch glimpses of Yeoman’s soldiers between the huts. Most of them were moving back down toward the gates, likely looking for me and trying to stop me before I got close to the longhouse. But I was already past them, and everywhere I looked, I started seeing the Feati rally. Now that the initial surprise of the attack had worn off, the Feati warriors began to attack isolated groups of soldiers in overwhelming numbers with relentless onslaughts of tattoo magic backing them up. Fire and ice were their primary weapons, with the fire zoning off enemies and ice preventing them from mounting an effective defense as the warriors closed in with spears and slings. Still, it didn’t completely turn the tide; modern guns ripped the warriors to pieces, and Feati casualties were mounting dramatically.

I wanted to stop and help, but Surge pressed me onwards. We can’t afford to waste any time, she said. If Yeoman finds what he’s looking for, it’s all over.

I reluctantly nodded and continued onwards, following SCaR. I didn’t want to think about how many dead Yeoman would leave behind in the wake of the attack. I already knew it’d be an unfathomable massacre.

And then I was at the top of the hill. Here, the fight raged on in the clearing before the longhouse, with Lentowenye’s blood brothers fighting a brutal and desperate melee with the soldiers of the Ivory City. In such close quarters, they had the advantage, their powerful and muscular bodies forcing back the soldiers and rendering their firepower useless. But these soldiers, disciplined as they were, had split into two lines to control the flow of combat, with a marksmare firing line dropping Feati soldiers with precise shots into the brawl. A group had even separated and made it toward the door of the structure, repulsing counterattacks to dislodge their position.

I pulled the bolt back on the machine gun and squeezed the trigger, and the weapon immediately began to buck around in my grip. I had to hold onto it more tightly with my magic to keep it on target, but the sensation sent tingles running through my legs. It chattered with a fierce and sharp bite, and when I kept a tighter grip on it, its accuracy was excellent as well. It reminded me of the machine guns in Sentinel armor, but minus the eerie shriek those six guns made when they fired off in unison. But oh could it fling lead downrange. The marksmares I opened up on began to drop before they even realized what was happening, and though the bullets weren’t strong enough to pierce through the armor around their vitals, there were simply so many rounds that most found their mark one way or another.

As I turned the weapon toward the scattering survivors of the firing line, a thunderous explosion hammered through my skull, followed by a shockwave and a rain of debris and shrapnel that sent me stumbling for balance on my three legs. When I looked back toward the longhouse, I saw a huge hole torn through the front of the structure, the massive wooden doors ripped to splinters by whatever explosive charge the soldiers had placed on it. The shockwave had also knocked many of the blood brothers off their hooves, and they scrambled back to their hooves even as rifle fire cut them down where they stood. Hefting my machine gun again, I tried to suppress the soldiers and allow the Feati time to recover, but it was too little, too late. Even as I began to clear the soldiers with the crack of Ace’s sniper accompanying the chatter of my gun, the rest of the soldiers around the longhouse overwhelmed the few Feati left to protect it and stormed inside.

“Fuck!” I screamed in frustration, hobbling after them as fast as I could. I could already hear the gunfire echoing from inside, and every shot left me worrying that a bullet had found a friend. Bullets flew past me and Surge propped up a shield to keep us safe from the worst of it, but they slowed my progress nonetheless. I unloaded on them with my machine gun, my suppressing fire keeping their heads down long enough for Ace to find their skulls with well-placed shots. And then, just as the machine gun alerted me that it had emptied the loaded box and automatically swapped to the next one, I stumbled inside the longhouse.

SCaR flew in after me, immediately spraying bullets at the backs of the Ivory City soldiers trying to move into the structure, and downing one. Some of the soldiers closest to the door turned to fire on me, but my machine gun chewed right through them in a hail of lead. One managed to duck behind cover, but a blue flare on my horn sent a fireball flying towards him, and I soon heard screaming as the flames lapped around the pillar of wood and engulfed the pony hiding on the other side.

My heart leapt into my throat when I saw my friends at the far end of the room, cowering in the corner. Gauge and Nova huddled side by side, their coats stained with ash from the fires beginning to rage through the structure, their hooves pressed together. Two soldiers aimed rifles at them, and even though I screamed and tried to bring my gun to bear, it was too late. The two rifles chattered as they fired their bursts, and it felt like I was watching the casings fall in slow motion.

But they didn’t die.

I froze in shock as Nova’s metallic wing shot forth on reflex, the metal feathers fanning out to shelter her and Gauge. Sparks scattered through the air as the bullets shattered against the metal, the lead hardly leaving a scratch against the super strength alloy that formed the body of the prosthetic. Even Nova seemed surprised, but she didn’t let that paralyze her. Whether she realized that she needed to press now or her body merely acted on instinct alone, she lunged at the pony closest to her, razor wing extended the whole way. Though the pony did his best to ward her off, the sharp edges of Nova’s prosthetic feathers sliced right through his armor like it wasn’t even there. The two of them fell to the ground as Nova’s clumsy attack left her off balance, and before the other soldier could aid his companion, I cut him down with a well-aimed burst from my machine gun.

“Nova!” I shouted as I shambled into the longhouse. The mare looked up in surprise, her white coat stained with blood, and her prosthetic wing a glistening fan of blood and metal. I threw myself at her, forelegs wrapping around her shoulders in a hug, and she jerked in response. “You’re alive! Oh thank fuck, I thought I’d be too late!”

“Ember?” Nova asked, still seemingly in a daze. She blinked and looked at me. “You’re… back?”

“What happened to your leg?” Gauge asked, hurrying over to us. He looked me up and down and his muzzle twisted in shock. “Stars, Ember, what did they do to you?”

“Tried to kill me,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

I could feel Nova shaking in my hug, so I gave her a squeeze before turning her over to Gauge. “Breathe, Nov,” I said, knowing exactly what she was freaking out about. Not only had she been staring death down the barrel of a gun moments before, but she’d also just taken a life—her first and what I hoped would be her last, even though I knew that was wishful thinking at best. But the little consolation was all I could spare her. I turned to Gauge and set my jaw. “Have you seen Yeoman? Lento? Teka?”

Gauge only shook his head. “Lento and Teka went out to fight. I haven’t seen Yeoman either. They must all be going for the tree.”

“But how would they know where the tree is?” Surge asked. “They certainly didn’t have as much time to get familiar with the area as we have.”

“They took Sandy,” Nova said in a shaky voice. She blinked once, twice, and then turned wide eyes to me. “They found him, dragged him away. He could speak Equiish. They’d force him to take them to the tree.”

“Shit.” I grimaced and bared my teeth. “You don’t know where it is?” I asked them, but they both shook their heads.

“Ace knows,” Surge said. “Assuming she actually managed to find the tree before she was caught yesterday…”

I nodded. “I need to meet up with her,” I said. Then, lifting a rifle from the ground, I passed it to Gauge. “You two stay safe here, okay? I don’t think there were very many soldiers left around the center of the settlement. The rest are probably with Yeoman himself.”

To my surprise, both Gauge and Nova stood up. “No, Em,” Gauge said, shouldering the offered rifle and moving to my side. “We’re not going to sit by while you go and risk your life on your own again. We’re coming with you.”

I blinked. “What? No! It’s too dangerous for you two!”

“And not for you?” Nova asked, her shock slowly bleeding away. A look at her metal wing seemed to steel her, and her features hardened with determination. “Ember, you’ve done so much on your own. Why do you have to do everything on your own?”

“Because… b-because…” I growled and turned away. “Damn it, I don’t want anything bad to happen to you guys, okay? Just stay here!”

“And we don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” Gauge insisted. He put a hoof on my shoulder and lightly shook me. “We’re a team, Ember. You don’t have to look out for us all the time. You don’t have to carry us around like dead weight. You’re always putting us on your back and trying to fight three times as hard so we don’t have to. But you’re not going to make it to Yeoman alone.”

“Yeah, Em,” Nova said. She leaned in and hugged me, nuzzling my dirty and sweaty cheek. “This time, we’re going to carry you. No matter what it takes.”

I started to sniffle, and I fought my hardest to keep my tears down. “You… you guys…”

It was Surge who stepped in when words failed me. “Personally, I’m glad you two are coming along,” she said. “We need all the help we can get, and maybe having two sane ponies around to temper Ember’s impulsiveness will save our lives.”

We chuckled, a brief moment of levity in the midst of the carnage and chaos. But when it ended, the slight grin on my face didn’t go away. “You guys are the best friends I could ask for,” I told them, and we lightly embraced one more time.

“It’s good to have friends when we’re marching into Tartarus,” Surge added.

“Especially when we’re taking on the Ivory City’s finest…”

“These ponies are from the Ivory City?” Gauge asked, his eyes flitting to the bodies by our hooves.

“I’d bet my life on it,” I said. “They’re better than mercs and bandits. They’re trained and organized. I’d rather fight a dozen Crimson than just a couple of them any day.”

Then, turning toward our things, which had been piled up against the wall, I tossed aside the stolen machine gun and reclaimed my rifle and a few extra magazines for it. The added accuracy would help me a lot since I doubted I’d get close enough to really make good use of the machine gun with my bum leg. “At the very least, you guys should stay behind me, okay? I know how to handle myself in a fight, and you two don’t. So just hang back a bit and make sure nopony shoots me in the ass.”

“I’ll do my best,” Gauge said, and he quickly pulled a pair of small ammo belts out of his bags and loaded them into SCaR’s guns. “Thankfully I’ve got SCaR to do the shooting for me.”

“I’ll try to get behind them,” Nova said, looking at her lethal cybernetic wing. “I think I’ll be more useful there than hiding in the back.”

I saw Gauge and Nova exchange looks, and if Gauge wasn’t going to object to his marefriend leaving our side in an attempt to be helpful, I wasn’t going to either. “Just be careful,” I said, pulling a cigarette out of my bags and settling it between my lips. “Don’t take any risks and we’ll get through this in one piece.”

This was it. As we geared up and prepared to chase down Yeoman, I couldn’t help but think one thing:

That half-faced bastard was fucked.