I honestly didn’t expect death to hurt this much.

That was all I had for what felt like an eternity: pain, pain, and more pain. All of my senses had been stripped away save the pain. My body felt like it’d been crumpled together, all my bones broken and snapped and packed into one big useless pile of meat. If I wasn’t already dead, I would have gladly welcomed death again.

But corpses don’t feel pain. So was I still alive?

Something kicked me in the ribs, and I realized it was my diaphragm, greedily sucking in air and coughing out water. Bit by bit, my senses came back to me, first my sense of touch, then hearing, then sight. I cracked open bleary eyes and saw a waterfall roaring above me, sending millions of gallons of water out into open air every minute. The dull roar had faded into the background of the world, hidden behind the shaky beating of my heart thumping in my ears. But that was my heart that was beating, and that was the waterfall I’d gone over to end up down here. I was alive—somehow—and boy did I wish I wasn’t.

“Embaw?” Green hooves moved out of my periphery, and it took all my strength just to tilt my head back a few degrees. Teka stood over me, her tattoos aglow in silvery light, and she put one of her hooves on my forehead. Blissfully cool warmth seemed to flow out of it and into my skull, and soon my pounding headache began to fade. I saw her pick up something black and conical off the ground and press it to my forehead, and soon my horn began to sparkle with mana and energy, casting little orange sparks all around us.

Was that my fucking horn she just reattached to my head?

“T-Teka?” I breathed and slowly fought to sit upright, only for the Feati mare to put her hoof on my chest and force me back down.

“La,” she said, shaking her head. “La, la, Embaw.” She scrunched her muzzle and chewed on her lip as she sought for the right Equiish words. “U’a… you… huwt. Noal huwt. Noal, noal.”

“Yeah, you’re… you’re right about that,” I wheezed as she turned her healing magic towards the rest of my broken body. “I hurt like a motherfucker… ow…”

The more Teka worked with her magic, the more alive I began to feel. The pain slowly subsided as her tattoos healed broken bones and slowly put me back together, though I noticed that the young mare began to slouch more and more the longer she worked on me. The magic was tiring her out, but she still worked relentlessly to make sure I didn’t die.

Eventually, I had enough strength to sit up. Digging my hooves into the soft ground of the riverbank, I propped myself up and looked around. I must have drifted fifty, maybe a hundred yards away from the base of the waterfall, and the ground was all churned up by the water’s edge. That must have been where Teka found me and dragged me inland so she could work her magic. There was also a worrying amount of blood coating the ground, and not only that, but the sun was low in the sky, over the eastern horizon. It was morning now, and when I’d gone over the waterfall, it had been late in the afternoon.

How long had I been out here?

Teka sat down on the ground, panting lightly, and her eyes slightly sunken in their sockets like she’d spent the past week without sleep—I didn’t know how much of that was actually because she’d been missing sleep and how much of it was a result of the magic she’d just poured into healing me. The Shaman’s words came back to me, and I also wondered if the Feati tattoos could drain a pony of their life essence like overcasting could do to me.

“Teka,” I asked her, and she lifted her eyes at her name. I swallowed hard as I tried to force myself to ask the question I’m not sure I wanted to know the answer to. “Did I… Did I actually die?”

The Feati mare frowned and cocked her head to the side. “A to tunkto’set’un,” she said in her language, and I could only sigh. I really wish she knew how to speak Equiish apart from a few random words. Maybe I could ask the Shaman later about how exactly that magic worked, and if it could really bring a pony back from death. Judging by the mess I’d made on the riverbank, I was finding it harder and harder to believe that I had actually survived the fall.

I stood up, my legs trembling slightly as I used them for the first time in who knew how long. All the supplies I’d had with me when I went over the edge were gone. I had nothing, naked and alone out in the wilderness apart from Teka, who looked like she was trying her hardest not to pass out. But I didn’t see the body of a yellow pegasus anywhere nearby. Swallowing hard, I began to slowly trot along the river, keeping my eyes peeled for any signs of a pony scrambling out of the water. If I’d been so badly mangled that I might have actually died and come back, I was hopeful that Yeoman would have had it much worse.

And what did that mean for me if I had died? That was a worrying thought. I didn’t remember anything after that crushing pain that overwhelmed me when I hit the water. Maybe I couldn’t remember anything because brains make memories, not souls? Or maybe I hadn’t died in the first place, only barely clinging onto life? Either way, it left me shivering and frightened, and unless Teka suddenly learned how to speak Equiish, I wasn’t going to get an answer. But I resolved not to burden my friends with those worries; I didn’t need them worrying about me more than they already did.

And I had other things to worry about myself as well, so I tried to push them away and focus on the world around me to get a bit of my sanity back. The birds sang their morning songs overhead as the blue light struck its way between the red leaves, and I just closed my eyes and took it all in. The Spines seemed like they’d returned to their usual self; no gunshots broke the calm stillness of the day, and the only sounds I could hear in any direction were the noises of the wildlife. It was like the madness of before had never happened. Even on an alien world like this, there was a peaceful simplicity to nature. The Feati had been in tune with it for who knows how long, and then the outside world had nearly destroyed them.

It didn’t take me all that long to find what I was looking for. Wedged between a pair of rocks on the opposite side of the river was a yellow body, wings tattered and waterlogged, tail swept off to the side as the current trickled past. I lit my horn and lifted Yeoman’s body out of the water, wincing once or twice at the aches running along my horn from tip to base. At least the damn thing still worked after Teka had reattached it. No wonder I’d had a pounding headache when I first came to, though that could have been from any number of other possibilities, including a rock caving my skull in before Teka fixed it.

Once I moved Yeoman’s body to my side of the river, I let it flop on the ground. The first thing I noticed was the mangled mess of his wings, likely destroyed after hitting the water. Little bones pierced through the skin and half of the feathers were gone; even if he was still alive, they’d be of no use to him for a long time. The next thing I noticed was the awkward bend in his neck. He must have broken it when he hit the water, which was a shame. That kind of a death was too quick for a fucker like him. He should have drowned as his broken and mangled limbs proved too useless to swim. That was the least he deserved.

But he was dead now. He was dead and I’d killed him. Gravity may have struck the final blow, but I was standing, and he wasn’t. And I began to smile to myself, genuinely smile. Hunter and Yeoman were both dead. In one day, I’d taken down two monsters who had been making life miserable for me and my friends for so long. There wasn’t much I could really complain about with that.

And then I spied something sticking out of the water not too far away. Frowning, I picked it up in my magic, only to gasp in shock at what I’d found. It was Fortitude, a little waterlogged and definitely in dire need of a cleaning and oiling, but it was my family’s rifle, alright. After all this time, after all these miles between here and Blackwash, I’d finally reclaimed my lost heirloom.

I cradled it against my chest like I was holding a newborn. I was holding one of the last pieces of Blackwash I had left, apart from Nova and Gauge and my family picture I kept safely tucked away in my bags back at the settlement. The last time I’d fired this weapon, it was to kill the slaver who’d murdered my mom. Perhaps there was some poetic justice I’d missed out on by not ending Yeoman with it too, but that didn’t matter to me. Fortitude was back in my hooves, and though it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the modern rifles I’d used since losing it, I knew this gun inside and out. She was reliable, accurate, and deadly, and I knew I could always count on her. So long as my knack for losing weapons in the chaos of combat didn’t continue, of course.

I didn’t bother to look Yeoman over any more; whatever gear he’d had on him had been lost to the water, and I was content to just let him rot. So after spitting on his corpse one last time, I left it for the birds and trudged my way back to Teka. I found her still sitting by the water’s edge, but at least she’d stopped panting and seemed to be recuperating her strength.

Sitting down across from her, I tried to give her a friendly smile. “Thanks for saving me,” I said, hoping the gratitude in my voice could carry across, if not the meaning of the words themselves. “And thanks for helping me get into the Grass Trial. Lot of fucking good it did me in the end, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Teka cocked her head in confusion, but she at least attempted to return my smile, as exhausted as she was. I held my hoof out for her to shake or bump or whatever, but she just kind of stared at it awkwardly for the longest time. “I’m glad you’re okay, Teka,” I told her, feeling guilty that I’d only just said it now. I’d been so caught up with other shit and worrying about myself that I hadn’t stopped to wonder if this poor mare I’d rescued had survived Yeoman’s attack on her home or not.

The young mare hesitantly touched my hoof, and after a second or two of uncomfortable contact, I finally just rolled my eyes. “Fuck it,” I said, and I leaned in to give her a hug. She stiffened a little bit at the surprise contact, but I eventually felt her return it. I could feel the shakes and tremors running through her body, and I realized that she was scared and frightened but doing her best to try and cover it up and be strong.

Once we separated and I managed to get Teka back up to her hooves, I looked around for any paint markers or anything that would tell me where I needed to go next. “How do we get back to your home, Teka?” I asked her, before sighing and slapping myself in the face when I saw her only frown in confusion. “Right, right. Fuck. Uh… Feati? Feati home?” I asked her, trying to push my meaning through one common word we understood. When that failed to elicit a response, I tried something else. “How about… Walsalhn?” I charaded walking in place and pointed roughly in the direction of the waterfall’s source to try and tell her that I wanted to go back, and this seemed like it finally got through to her. She nodded her head once and walked in front of me, starting down a barely visible trail flattened into the woods of the Spines by countless generations of pony hooves. She looked over her shoulder to make sure I was following her, and when I trotted up behind her, she once more set off, her nimble hooves traversing the undergrowth and bushes with ease.

It took us probably the better part of two hours to just get back to the tree, and that’s because we had to go way out of the way to find a path back up the river and past all the harsh terrain. It didn’t feel like I’d covered this much ground when fighting Yeoman, but I guess a life or death struggle will do that to your perception of distance. I worried about Teka almost the whole way since she hadn’t exactly fully recovered from healing me, but she soldiered on regardless, always managing to keep the pace somewhere between a canter and a trot. I didn’t know how many winters younger than me she was—maybe six or seven—but she took it all in stride and pushed on more than I could ever hope to do myself. If nothing else, Feati ponies were tough as nails, tougher than the petrified giants they lived under.

At last, we made it back to the Walsalhn. Some small smoldering fires still guttered in the surroundings (some of them no doubt lit by my own horn) but the tree itself looked fine. I mean, I doubted anything could actually hurt a monster that big, but it was good to know that Yeoman hadn’t torn it down just because he could or something like that. I was still wary for any of the soldiers he supposedly had left with him that I’d never seen when we fought, but Teka moved through the forest without worry or fear, so I had a feeling they either left a while ago or the Feati had managed to clean the rest of them up.

I wanted to go investigate the tower, or at least the opening to the hidden facility, and get Surge back inside of my skull so she could clue me in on what had gone down, but it wasn’t meant to be. Almost as soon as Teka and I approached the tower, a couple of Lentowenye’s blood brothers appeared from the brush and approached us, sour expressions on their faces. Teka froze and I hesitated as they drew nearer, until one of them began talking to the young mare. I gathered from the tone of his voice that he was giving her a command, and when Teka shakily bobbed her head, he shifted his tattooed focus to me. He didn’t say anything, only bobbing his head back in the direction of the Feati settlement, and the rest of his companions all moved a step closer to us.

The message was clear: follow, or else. And I was really in no mood to start fighting off Feati after I’d tried my hardest to prevent Yeoman from slaughtering them all. I could always swing by and pick up Surge later, assuming that I wasn’t being led back to an execution. After all, I had the distinct feeling that the coming reunion with Lento wasn’t going to be pleasant. Nothing with that stallion had proved to be so far.

As we were escorted back to the settlement, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of déjà vu. When we’d first entered the settlement, it was through armed escort. Now, in what I assumed would be the final time I ever set hoof in this place, I once again found myself guarded by ponies with spears. In some small way, it frustrated me to no end. I’d done everything I could to jump through the hoops Lento placed in front of me, to abide by the traditions of his people to get what I want. And at every turn, I’d had to bash my head against a concrete wall just to make any progress. And for what? None of it mattered in the end. Dozens and dozens of ponies had died in a surprise attack by the Ivory City, and I wasn’t in the settlement to help protect it when the attack started. And now, to top it all off, I had a feeling Lento was going to find some way to place the blame at my hooves. The fucker hated me, and after all this shit I’d had to go through because of him, it was easy to say that the feeling was mutual. I couldn’t help but think that the Feati would be much better off if Teka was the one leading them instead of her brother.

Those thoughts soon subsided to disgust and shock as we approached the settlement. Bodies were strewn all about the town’s stout wooden walls, and mothers cried over the fallen bodies of their sons and daughters, husbands and fathers. There was blood everywhere, from crimson pools seeped into the ground, to dried drops speckling the foliage. Though the Feati had cleaned up considerably in the day following the attack, the settlement was still raw and broken. I didn’t know how many ponies had lived here before the attack; I could only count the bodies. I just prayed that there were enough still left alive to keep this last bastion of peace and innocence to the sufferings of the outside world in one piece.

And watching all that suffering… It was very easy to believe that I’d somehow been responsible for it.

Eyes watched me as I was escorted through the settlement doors. In every pair, I saw something different. There was relief in some, disgust in others. Joy and hatred. Sorrow and apathy. Everypony had their own thoughts about the outsider with the fiery mane, the one who had led death to their tribe, the one who had stood tall and fought her hardest to protect them against those very same ponies. What was I to them? A curse? A blessing?

It didn’t fucking matter, I knew. The only opinions that mattered were those of Lento, the Shaman, and Iklimna, and of those three, Lento had the final say.

The interior of the Feati settlement looked like something out of my nightmares. Which was fitting, because it looked almost exactly like Blackwash did months ago. Buildings had been burnt out and collapsed in on themselves, bullet holes riddled every exposed surface, and smoke billowed from the dying embers of fires nestled in the heart of the rubble. The bodies had been cleaned up at least, save for the invaders; they were left to rot where they lay, at least for the time being. Ponies cried in muted wails as they huddled together, the survivors of broken families. Many were loosely bandaged with leaves and grasses, and some still had dried blood caked into their coats. There weren’t many wounded, likely thanks to their penchant for healing magic, but not all wounds could be healed so easily.

Thankfully, we didn’t have to go all the way up to the longhouse, scarred as it was from the fighting. The ponies escorting me broke away and vanished into the settlement after motioning in pretty clear terms that Teka and I were to stay there and wait for them to return, leaving us to stand alone in an open space. Ponies turned their eyes towards us and murmuring began to spread through the crowd, but when somepony approached us, it wasn’t Lento or any of his lackeys. It was Nova, barreling out of the crowd on white and metal wings, knocking me flat on my back as she literally tackled me in a hug.

“Ember!” she cried, and I could practically feel her as much as I could hear her squealing in delight and relief. “Oh, stars, Ember, we thought you were dead! Gauge told us what happened and that you went off to fight Yeoman by yourself but then you didn’t come back and—!”

“Hey, take it easy, Nov,” I interrupted, trying to gently shush her by giving her a firm hug back. “I decided to take a river cruise in the middle of it,” I joked, grinning at my best friend’s bright face. “Teka found me and brought me back when I dicked around too long.”

Two more sets of hooves joined us, and I craned my neck from the ground and grinned at Gauge and Ace. “I heard you guys missed me,” I said, finally sitting upright and making Nova do the same.

“I coulda sworn you were gonna turn up dead,” Ace drawled, though her usual outlaw smirk was betrayed by the shining happiness in her eyes at seeing me not fucking dead.

“I could’ve sworn the same thing,” I told her. She wasn’t wearing any of her usual gear, and she looked odd without it, honestly. “Gauge told me you got hurt really bad,” I said, lowering my voice.

“Hurt, but I ain’t dead yet,” she proudly proclaimed. Her wingtips drooped a bit as she added, “It were real close, though. Not gonna lie. Almost started losing my guts through my bellybutton. But that shaman, though…”

“He’s something else,” I agreed. “That’s why my leg is in one piece. He’s a miracle worker.”

“Good thing, too.” The outlaw winked. “You look better with four of ‘em.”

Gauge sat down by Nova’s side and draped a foreleg across her back. “You must be the luckiest pony who ever lived,” he finally said with a shake of his head.

“I’ll agree on that, I guess, but it’s not all good luck,” I told him. “But eventually you have to have a little good luck to balance out the bad, right?”

“I suppose so.” Then his eyes narrowed, and he seemed almost afraid to ask his next question. “Yeoman… is he…?”

“Dead,” I said with a firm finality. “I took him over a waterfall with me. I made it. He didn’t.” It felt like my head was filling with air; I was getting dizzy just thinking about it. “It’s over, guys,” I managed to croak. “He’s… he’s dead. Blackwash… our friends and family…”

Nova put her hooves to her muzzle, and I saw tears begin to well up in her eyes. They weren’t sad, but they weren’t happy, either. I think they were just… relieved. The pony who had ruined our lives had gotten what he deserved. Now, we could finally put our demons to rest… or at least most of them.

“We still have to do something about Reclaimer,” Gauge said. “He was the one who ordered the attack in the first place. He’s the one behind all this shit.”

“We’ll get to him in time,” I said. “Once I get Surge back from the tree, we can make our way to the Ivory City and pay him a visit.” My gaze swiveled to Ace, who’d set a dour frown on her face. “What? Something wrong?”

“You wanna go toward the City?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Ain’t nopony I ever known who actually wants to go there.”

“If that’s where Reclaimer is, then that’s where we have to go,” I insisted. When her expression didn’t change, I shrugged my shoulders. “Look, Ace, I know you don’t really want to go there and shit, but if you know the way—”

“I’ll go,” she said, sharply interrupting me. “But I ain’t gonna be happy about it.” She cursed under her breath and stood up, tail lashing back and forth. “Fuck… can’t even celebrate being alive for two minutes before you go right back into the grinder,” she muttered to herself as she turned around and began to walk away.

I blinked in confusion. “Hey, where are you going?”

“To find somewhere to drink in peace,” she called back over her shoulder. “If we’re going to the City, then I wanna savor my booze as long as I can before my head ends up on a pike.”

I tried to go after her, but Gauge caught me with a hoof on my shoulder. “Don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “Let her be. She was worrying herself ragged about you last night. She thought you were dead.”

“We all did,” Nova said with a nod.

“Give her a few minutes to cool down, and maybe we can all talk about it later,” Gauge said. “After all, you did just practically say you want to go and get yourself killed moments after coming back to us.”

“I just… We’re not done with it yet,” I said. “Yeoman was just a lackey, but Reclaimer…”

“We’ll worry about it later,” the zebra insisted. Then he looked to the side and pointed with his ears. “And besides, it looks like Lentowenye wants to have a few words with us.”

I shifted my attention to the heart of the settlement, where I saw the chieftain approaching us. He moved with an escort of a few blood brothers, maybe the only ones he had left, and it was obvious he’d been hurt in the fighting. The way he carried himself had all the signs of a hurt pony, even if I couldn’t see anything that was wrong with him at a glance. I had no doubt that he’d probably been shot at least once but had gotten some healing along the way, though I had to wonder how good the Feati’s magic could heal internal injuries. Limbs and flesh seemed easy enough, but guts and organs…

When he stopped in front of us, I saw Teka wilt back behind me. That didn’t save her from her brother’s harsh words, however. “U’a S’a lifte’sat?” he asked her, his voice steeped with venom.

Teka bobbed her head. “S’a A U’a hilf’sat noal immapohna’hn’un e tol’sat Tm’a’hn almaha, A—!”

“Yut’un!” Lento bared his teeth, and I saw a shudder run through Teka’s frame. Once he’d pinned his sister to the ground with a glare, he turned his attention to me. “Did you know they would come?” he asked me, the hair on the back of his neck practically standing on end.

“If you would have let us into your stupid fucking tree in the first place then they would have chased us, not you!” I shouted back at him.

His silvery tattoos shifted to red for a few seconds before returning to their usual shimmer. “So you did lead them here,” he stated, coldly.

“That’s not what I fucking said!” I protested. “They were after the same thing we were looking for, and if we’d gotten to it first, they would have gone after us, not you! But you wouldn’t let us just get what we needed and go, so we couldn’t do that!”

“Outsiders have brought us nothing but pain!” Lento shouted back at me. “You attack my people, enslave them, and burn our homes! You kill us by the score with your weapons of death and your black magic! Why would I ever trust you to visit our sacred tree?”

“Because not all of us are fucking evil! I stood up for your people! Me and my friends, we fought those other outsiders off! I killed their leaders!” I snarled at him as I added, “I killed more of them than any of your blood brothers did. Without us, you all would have died!”

“Without you, the invaders may have never come, and my people wouldn’t be grieving for their friends and family.”

“You can’t honestly fucking believe that!” I felt somepony tug on my shoulder to get me to stop, but I pushed them away. “If you do, you’re so hopelessly naïve that it’s a fucking wonder anypony ever thought you’d be good chieftain material!”

Again, Lento’s tattoos flickered red, and the Feati around us grew tenser as they watched their leader’s temper flare up. “Your three days of hospitality in my tribe are over. Take your things and go.”

“Not without going into the Walsalhn.”

Lento sneered at me. “You will never be welcomed into the tree for as long as you live.”

“I survived your stupid fucking Grass Trial,” I retorted. “By your tribe’s rules, I’m allowed to visit it. Unless you want to go back on that and break those too.”

Lentowenye gnashed his teeth together in frustration, and I swore for a moment he was going to tell me to fuck off anyway. But instead, he stomped the ground, a tiny fire bursting out around his hoof. “Fine,” he spat. “So be it. It’s already been desecrated by outsiders once. What more could you possibly do to it?” But then he lunged into my face, pressing his nose against mine. “But if you hurt it in any way, defile it further… I don’t care how many of my people I have to send to kill you, I will do it.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I flatly told him. “As soon as I’m done with the tree, I’m gone.”

“Good.” Lento took a step back, though his shoulders remained tense. “Then I think it’s better for all of us if you got moving.”

We leered at each other for a few seconds, but ultimately I was the one who yielded first with a snort. “Fine.”

Lento watched me with hard eyes as I turned back to my friends and immediately walked between them. “Let’s grab our shit and go,” I told them. “I’m sick of this place.”

“But what about Teka?” Nova asked, and the question was just enough to make me stop and look back at the young mare as her brother cuffed her over her ear and began to lead her away from the rest of us.

I could only give her a sigh. “There’s nothing we can do for her,” I finally told her. “She’s the only pony who can help herself.”

Of course, I didn’t know how exactly she could do that, but I just hoped things would work out for the poor mare one way or another.

Nova’s wings drooped. “I wish I could’ve said bye to her,” she pouted. Gauge gave her a pat on the back and a hug, and I at least sympathetically nodded along.

“She deserves to lead these ponies,” I said. “Not her brother.”

But even I knew that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

We found Ace back at the longhouse where all our shit was, back propped against the wall, a half-empty bottle of whiskey between her feathers. She was looking at something she held in the fanned feathers of her other wing, but when she noticed us approach her, she deftly tucked it away. “What do you want?” she asked us, her usual drawl just the slightest bit slurred from her drinking.

“We’re moving out,” I said, grabbing my things and putting my bags around my body. I’d lost one of my smaller bags and a few magazines chasing Yeoman, but at least the rest of my gear was still here. “Lento doesn’t want us here any longer than we have to be.”

“Great,” Ace muttered under her breath. She put the bottle of whiskey to her lips and took three big gulps before she grimaced and corked it back up. “Can’t even have a few minutes to drink alone ‘fore we gotta throw our asses right back into it.”

“After all the shit we’ve been through, I just want to get out of here,” I said. “This is not a vacation I’m going to look back fondly at.”

“I wish we could go back to Three Rivers,” Nova said with a sigh. “At least the ponies there were nice and didn’t want to kill us.”

“And they had restaurants,” Gauge said, licking his lips.

I felt my stomach rumble in agreement. How long had it been since I last ate? I pushed those thoughts out of my mind regardless. “We’re going to make one last stop at the tree to get Surge and then we’re out of here,” I told Ace. “Then… I guess off to the Ivory City?”

Ace shook her head. “We ain’t gonna make it to the Ivory City in one hop,” she said. “Might as well stop somewhere friendlier first.”

“You know a place?” Gauge asked her.

The outlaw nodded. “Yeah, and it’s about as far from the City as you can get. I mean ideologically speaking. Mileage-wise, it’s pretty close.”

“Well, if they’re the opposite of the Ivory City, then I’m all down for stopping there first,” I said. Really, the thought of having someplace friendly to visit after all the shit I’d just endured was really appealing. “Where is it?”

“My home,” Ace said, and she stood up on wobbly hooves so she could get her things together. “A little place called Thatch. They’re the ones doing their best to keep them bastards in the City contained.”

“That’s good to hear,” Nova said. “I’m glad that we’re not the only ponies trying to stop Reclaimer.”

“They’ve been trying longer than anypony else out there… for all the good it’s done ‘em.” She shrugged and slung her compacted rifle across her back, then lifted her bags onto her midsection with her wings. “Still, better to rest a little bit somewhere nice than run off to our deaths for no reason.”

We gathered everything we owned within a few minutes and were ready to move out. As we made our way out of the longhouse and down the hill, I looked back over my shoulder at my friends. “Hey, Gauge and Nov, can you guys go get some food from here before we leave?” I asked them. “I don’t want to be in this shithole any longer than I have to, and if Lento sees me again, I bet he’s gonna stop me from going to the tree.”

“You gonna just go right to the tree, then?” Gauge asked me.

I nodded. “Might as well. The sooner we get that taken care of, the sooner we can get the fuck out of here.” Then I turned my attention to Ace, who seemed more focused on making sure she could walk without falling over than she was on our conversation. “Ace, you can come with me. They don’t like you only a little less than they don’t like me after you went looking for their tree the other day.”

“Yeah, sure.” Ace blinked several times and briefly made eye contact with me. “Iffin’ you say it…”

“Are you sure you don’t want us to look after her?” Nova asked me.

“I’ll be fine,” I told them, waving a hoof. “Besides, uh… well…”

Thankfully, Gauge understood and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, might as well get that cleared up,” he said. Then he winked at me as he added, “You’ll have a better chance when she’s drunk anyway.”

“Oh, you shut up.” I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Just get some fucking food, I’m starving.”

Gauge snickered and Nova looked between the two of us in confusion before I led Ace away. As we walked out of the settlement, almost ignored by the mourning community, I tried to think about what I was going to say. I mean, I hadn’t exactly had a whole lot of time to think about this moment. There had been too much of ponies trying to kill me to really devote any thought to it. But now that I had my time alone with Ace, I couldn’t figure out how to put my thoughts into words. I couldn’t even make sense of my thoughts to begin with. It didn’t help that Ace was slowly getting worse and worse as the alcohol she’d had finally started to get to her.

When we were halfway between the settlement and the tree, I stopped and turned around. Ace blinked in surprise, and her brow slowly dropped. “What?” she asked me. “Why’d we stop?”

“I…” Fuck, how was I even gonna broach this topic? It just felt wrong, like if I said what was on my mind, I was hurting or betraying somepony. And for the first time since I felt this shit coming to a head, I had to choose. In front of me was a drunken outlaw, a mare who’d been beat around her whole life until she decided she’d beat life around to get even, a mare who would kill ponies simply because she didn’t agree with them or who they supported. She was lawless, dangerous, crude, but underneath that, she had a good heart. It was lost and confused and drowned in sorrow, but it was there regardless. And after traveling with her for a while, I’d seen enough of it to know that who she was now was not who she wanted to be.

And then in my mind were memories of an angel. A mare who’d given everything to try and make the world better. A mare who had risen above her humble beginnings just to be another humble part in a more important ideal. She hadn’t flinched from her duty, and she truly believed that everything she’d done had been to leave Auris a better place than how she had entered it. And she had loved me. A perfect angel. That was the only way to describe her.

But she was dead now. And I wasn’t.

Ace continued to stare at me, oblivious to the turmoil tearing me apart inside. But finally, I found the words I was looking for. “Why did you kiss me?”

The outlaw raised an eyebrow, and I could see her attention sharpen through the alcohol at the question. Some part of me felt relieved when I saw I wasn’t the only one wrestling with their feelings. “I… dunno,” she finally said, and it wasn’t quite the answer I was expecting or hoping for. “I just… seize the moment… you know?”

“So that’s all it was?” I asked her. “Just because?”

She looked away and muttered something under her breath. “I like you, you know,” she suddenly blurted. I saw her throat bob as she swallowed, and she turned her head to the left to put that curtain of a mane between the two of us. “I just… it ain’t something I can… I can easily explain.”

I looked on at her in silence, my cheeks feeling rosy while cold sweat ran down my neck. She turned her whole body around and away from me, her hooves clumsily moving one after the other. “I been… I-I been so alone,” she finally said, but the words came out almost like a whisper—a squeak. Her wings trembled, the feathers shaking as she tried to keep them still. “Ever since Z died I…”

I didn’t know what I’d expected to hear from her, but a sniffle wasn’t it. I took two steps forward, my hooves quietly crunching the grass. “Ace…” I cooed softly, suddenly feeling terrible about bringing up bad memories for her. “I… I’m sorry…”

Ace turned to me, and tears glistened down the sides of her muzzle. “It’s… it ain’t worth it, Ember,” she finally said. “I loved Z so much, and when she died, I swore I’d never find another girl like her. I didn’t… d-didn’t want to betray her. Hurt her memory. But it… it just makes you miserable. I want to love again, Ember, I really do.” She sniffled and wiped her nose with her wing. “But how do you do that without feeling guilty?”

Thoughts of Zip flew through my mind. I’d loved her, and I still did. But did that mean she would want me to suffer in memory of her? Ace was the prime example of that. The poor mare hadn’t let herself become close with anypony because she didn’t want to betray her own lost love, and now I could see how much damage that had done to her. Would this have been what Z wanted?

Would Zip want me to end up like this?

I put my hoof on Ace’s shoulder and slowly turned her body towards me. I tried to think of something to say, but when I saw the hurt and worry in her eyes, I realized there wasn’t anything I could say. Words wouldn’t console her; who knew how many years she’d had to practice feeding herself words to hide that pain? So instead of that, I hugged her as tightly as I could. She hiccupped once, and then I felt her return the hug with her forelegs and wings. We fell to our rumps, sitting and hugging it out in the middle of the forest, and I slowly started to feel my worries melt away.

I had mourned for Zip. I had loved her, really, in the short period of time we’d gotten to know each other. But now I knew she didn’t expect me to mourn for her forever. She was an angel, after all. And an angel like her wouldn’t want me to be miserable for her. She would want to see me happy again. Not only that, but she would love to see me make somepony else happy by loving them. Zip had loved the world and the good ponies in it. Now I felt for the first time that I could really make a pony happy in her memory.

I took my hooves off of Ace’s back and put them on her cheeks. She blinked at me, eyes puffy and red, confused and worried about what I might do next. My horn lit up and I pulled back that curtain over her right eye, once more letting the world shine down on it, and tucked it back behind her ear.

Then I leaned in and kissed her.

There wasn’t much to that first kiss. Our lips locked as I pushed them together, but nothing more. I sucked on her lower lip for a second as we separated, and then we were staring at each other, breath halting, the world forgotten save for each other’s face. Ace’s mouth still hung open, her lips still parted, her body still motionless. I couldn’t help myself; I giggled once at that dumbstruck look on her face, and my breath touching her nose broke the spell.

She closed her eyes and pressed her muzzle against mine, her lips against mine, her tongue against mine. I let my lashes drop and did the same. My hooves wrapped around her shoulders and held her tight, and she embraced me with her wings while her own hooves rubbed over my chest. There we were, two warm bodies held together in the emptiness of the forest, finding solace in each other. We were both hurt, we were both grieving, and we had both been trying to heal on our own. But heartache isn’t the kind of wound you fix by yourself. Only another pony can do that.

The whiskey on her lips tasted like heaven.