It took a lot of willpower to get out of bed the next morning, but I somehow managed to do so. I felt like my spine had rearranged itself while I was sleeping; my muscles were soft mush, and any attempts I made to sit upright ended in failure. Groaning, I rubbed my eyes and rolled over, landing on my hooves and trying to stretch my limbs out to work the soreness out of them. I even arched my back like a cat, something that I felt like I’d been unable to do ever since I started sleeping on rocks two weeks ago.

My eyes drifted around the room in sluggish little motions, and I blinked a few times to shake away some of the crustiness. After a few confused thoughts rolled through my head, I finally remembered where I was and how I’d gotten there. I also noticed that Nova and Gauge weren’t in the room with me, but their bed was made. I guess they’d gone to get some breakfast.

Staggering forward, I made my way to the window and looked out over the city spread around me. There was already a line forming at the checkpoint, and judging by the angles of the shadows, it was still really early in the morning. That, and the stone of the mountain scattered the sun’s blue light everywhere in an almost blinding display of… blueness. It hurt to look at and messed up my depth perception a bit, since everything looked the same.

I also spotted a circle of ponies standing just behind the checkpoint, armed and decently equipped. I had to squint into the glaring light to make anything out, and at this distance, I could really only see coat colors. But as I scanned through the ponies in the group, my eyes widened. Standing in the middle of that group, giving orders to everypony present, was a pony missing half of their face.

Yeoman.

So he was here. After what he’d done at the dam, when he killed Zip and hanged me, it was so surreal to see him again. That dirty coat, that scarred half-face of his… and I even saw my old family heirloom, my BR11 marksmare rifle, Fortitude, on his back. The thought of him using that gun to do evil shit made me feel like I was going to boil over.

But before I could do anything stupid, like break open the window and try to shoot him with a burst-fire battle rifle from well outside its effective range, he spread his wings and took off with a team of ten, disappearing through the hole in the mountain and into the sunlight. I watched him go, teeth sliding against each other, just trying to process what I saw. Hopefully he was still looking for a code piece around here. Maybe we still had a chance.

At least I could feel safe knowing that Yeoman wasn’t in the mountain to identify us. And while I didn’t trust that RPR mare we met to not bridle and sell us if we ran into her again, I wasn’t worried about the rest of the guards. The illusion on my flank was still holding, and it’d hopefully last a few more days. Manchado had promised as much, at least. In the meanwhile, we needed to learn all we could and get what supplies we needed.

Surprisingly, our tiny little room had a tiny little bathroom inside of what was basically a closet. Did this city have indoor plumbing, too? After taking care of my morning business, I stood in front of the mirror and stared at my reflection. I was surprised by just how gaunt these two weeks of hiking through the mountains had made me look; my cheeks were thin, there were bags under my eyes, and my mane was ratty and tangled around my horn. My lips, once full and pretty, were chapped and split, and I had an assortment of tiny cuts and bruises all over my body. Half of my left ear was missing, a souvenir from the quarry, though hair was finally beginning to grow around the scarred end. I was only twenty winters old, but I looked like I was at least thirty. I’d aged so much since Blackwash was attacked only a bit more than a month ago.

I grabbed one of Nova’s combs and tried to run it through my mane. Standing there in front of the mirror, I found myself longing for the young mare of two months ago, who thought the whole world was limited to a single mountaintop, who hadn’t been branded, beaten, shot, and hanged. The mare who hadn’t watched friends and family die in front of her. The young and pretty mare who didn’t carry the fate of the planet on her shoulders, aging another year with every bullet fired and pony killed. I wanted to go back to being a forgemare, not a wandering gun in the wilderness, chasing pieces of an ancient message that could end the world as I knew it.

But that was never going to happen. I’d been changed, even as much as I wished I could go back to how things were when this was all over. That was already impossible, anyway, with Blackwash now living at the dam instead of in the mountains. Not only that, but I was a sergeant in the Sentinels. I had responsibilities to them too, and unless I quit, I’d probably be responsible for fighting off threats to the valley for years to come.

After splashing my face with some water and cleaning my teeth with a bit of telekinesis, I trotted out of our room and into the inn’s common room. Several ponies sat at tables, engrossed in their own conversations while a ten or eleven winters filly trotted around, bringing them food and drink at their summons. I found Nova and Gauge sitting at a table in the corner, next to the window looking out over the city and coincidentally as far away from the windows into the tunnel, where hoof traffic was beginning to pick up. Grabbing a chair in my magic, I slid it back and sat down in front of them. “Fuck, that was a good sleep.”

“So you did wake up,” Gauge said, smirking at me. “Nov and I were taking bets on how long it’d take you.”

“I thought it was gonna take you another hour,” Nova said. Sighing, she nudged a pastry off a plate between them and put it on Gauge’s. “Here, the last one.”

“Wow, Nova,” I said, shaking my head. “I would’ve thought Gauge would be the one to bet on me sleeping until noon, not you. I’m hurt.”

“Sorry!” Nova exclaimed, leaning out of her seat just to hug me. “You were really tired! I thought you’d sleep longer!”

I chuckled and patted her on the head. “It’s okay, Nov. I don’t blame you.” I looked at their plates, and I felt my stomach rumble. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Hotcakes and fresh fruit,” Gauge said. “Plus a few sweetrolls. Not bad at all.”

“I’ll say. It definitely beats trail rations.” I flagged down the filly and pointed to Gauge’s plate. “I’ll have two of whatever he got.”

She nodded and left, letting me catch a glimpse of the pair of brands on her flanks, and I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. As much as it disgusted me, there wasn’t anything I could do about it, and it pissed me off. So I tried to push it out of my mind as best as I could, which was much easier said than done. “Before you two say anything, yeah, I’m fucking hungry. And I want to eat all the good food I can before we have to leave civilization again.”

“I don’t blame you,” Gauge said. He smirked at Nova and added, “I mean, Nov does her best with what you bring her, but you start to get sick of that charcoal taste after a while.”

“Hey! At least I try!” Nova crossed her forelegs and pouted, the crests of her wings pointing inwards as they wrapped around her body like a shield. “It’s not my fault everything I try to cook burns!”

“Well, when you put it that way…” I chuckled and shook my head. “Hey, you’re better than me. Probably, I mean. I was never into the whole cooking thing…”

The filly returned with my food amazingly quickly, and my stomach began to purr as I sat there looking at it. As soon as she left, I tore into the meal in a frenzy, nearly choking a few times as I tried to inhale my food. Only after I’d taken the curb off my hunger did I slow down a bit. “So… I saw Yeoman outside the window today.”

Both Gauge’s and Nova’s ears perked, and their eyes shifted around the inn, as if Yeoman might’ve been sitting here spying on us. “You did?” Gauge asked. “When?”

“Right before I came out here,” I said. “He was down at the checkpoint with a bunch of other pegasi. They flew out of the mountain after standing around for a few minutes, though. I don’t think they’ve found what they’re looking for.”

Nova visibly sighed in relief. “If he’s not here, then that’s good for us.”

“And we better take advantage of it,” Gauge said. “We need to scour the city for any information that could help us. Plus, we need to buy supplies, too. We won’t have much time.”

“Right. Who knows how long Manchado’s gift is going to last,” I said. “So we’ll have to cover more ground than we would together.”

Nova looked between the two of us. “Are you sure? I don’t like the idea of splitting up…”

“We’ll be fine,” I said. “The illusions work and Yeoman isn’t here. Nopony’s looking for us. And I can handle myself. I’ve got my rifle if I really need it.” I popped another bite of hotcake into my mouth and chewed on it for a moment. “You two take care of our supplies for the next leg. Two weeks sound good? Three?” I shrugged. “I’ll flip you a few mags to barter with. You can figure it out. I’m bad at planning ahead.”

Gauge nodded and placed his hoof over Nova’s when she opened her mouth to say something. “We can take care of that. What about you?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I said, taking a sip from a glass of water. “I’m gonna stick my nose anywhere and everywhere I shouldn’t.”

You know, for a while there, I thought things were gonna turn out alright.

After breakfast, I split up with Nova and Gauge, and we made plans to check in with each other at the inn for lunch and dinner. Lunch had come and gone just fine, and the two of them had already gotten the bulk of our supplies squared away while they were out. Nova had dropped a few bullets where she could to try to gather any information on where Yeoman and the RPR were flying to, but so far hadn’t turned up much luck other than that they were going somewhere to the south. But she did learn that they hadn’t changed cardinal directions in their last two trips, so they had to be onto something.

I, on the other hoof, hadn’t come up with fucking anything. I’d spent all day scouting around Hole and tailing RPR patrols, just trying to listen in on their conversations. I’d learned a few tidbits of information, but nothing too helpful: the RPR headquarters (and the seat of government for the city) was housed in a complex of buildings on the fifth ring, near the top of the mountain, and that Yeoman was here with fourteen ponies from the Ivory City, six of whom were among the pegasi that I saw with him this morning. The other eight I gathered were a sort of diplomatic envoy or something from the City, like an embassy or some shit. I didn’t know how long they’d been here, but Reclaimer was definitely trying to build new alliances in the north now that the Crimson were gone.

Between finding guards to tail, I took the time to get myself acquainted with the city. It seemed like most of the big businesses like taverns and merchant houses owned buildings on the floor of the hollow. They also seemed to be the more expensive places, as if their position on the limited space of the floor as opposed to a small carving in the mountain walls was a status symbol or some shit. They also had the ability to grow and expand upwards as needed, something that the carved rooms sorely lacked. I hung around these places for a bit, lighting a cigarette and just listening, trying to pick out any interesting tidbits of conversation.

And the thing I found strange about this was just how normal everything seemed. It felt like I was back in Blackwash or at the Bastion. Ponies went about their lives, talking about family, friends, what they did for fun (apparently exploring old mineshafts and caves underneath the mountain was a favorite). They talked about the food that they ate and new recipes to try. Stallions talked about business, and mares talked about their families. Colts played tag in the streets, tripping up ponies just trying to get somewhere else. There was a sense of calm and happiness in Hole, despite everything I’d heard, and I felt myself relaxing and lowering my guard the longer I was exposed to it.

But even despite that, there was something wrong beneath the surface, and it wasn’t too hard to find if you just looked around. There were slaves everywhere, following their owners like dogs. Many of them were gaunt and bruised, scared and submissive, but there were many who dressed in formal attire and carried themselves with a confident air. It was strange to look at those slaves in particular and realize that their owners apparently cared for their property, and perhaps even more frightening, the slaves were content to serve them. But nopony else in Hole seemed to be making the same observations I was. Slavery here was just a way of life, and it seemed like everypony, from the richest master to the thinnest slave, accepted it.

A bell rang at like three in the afternoon, and I noticed a marked shift in the direction of hoof traffic. Curious, I snuffed out the butt of my cigarette and followed the crowd, trying to get a sense of where we were going. It seemed like we were wandering toward the center of the city, toward the market district. And there was a buzz of interest in the crowd, too. Whatever was going to happen, they wanted to be there to see it.

We entered a big courtyard, a plaza a few hundred feet across. Ponies crammed all around a large wooden structure erected in the middle, fighting for standing room. It looked like a pagoda or something, with eight long beams poking out of the corners of its octagonal shape. Only when I saw the nooses on the ends, and the ponies gathered inside, did I understand just what I was looking at.

Public executions.

I wanted to turn around and leave, but the crowd had me packed in pretty tight, so I could hardly move. I managed to fight for a little room, but by that point, a familiar brown mare had taken the stage. Even if I hadn’t been looking in her direction before, the glint of her aviators was hard to miss.

“Fillies and gentlecolts!” the mare’s voice boomed across the plaza. “The RPR brings you its offering, the fruits of our hard work!”

At the shove of a few guards, several beaten, bloodied, and lame ponies staggered out from under the roof of the pagoda, each in the direction of one of the nooses. The crowd cheered at the sight, and the roaring continued as the guards fitted nooses around the ponies’ necks. On the stage, the RPR captain gestured at them with an outstretched hoof. “Today we bring you four runaways, caught and broken, whose masters were unwilling to pay for repossession. We bring you three bandits who attacked a slave caravan and were taken alive by our soldiers, and one pony whose treason against Hole and the RPR will be repaid with their blood! Judge them, and remember what it means to forsake your duty and betray your home!”

The crowd hissed and jeered at the visibly terrified ponies, some still with blood from fresh wounds dripping off of their muzzles. As one, the guards kicked the ponies off of their stands, sending them falling a foot or so only to hang from the ropes around their necks. The condemned kicked and flailed as they struggled to breathe before one by one they went limp. After only a minute or two, all eight ponies had been reduced to lifeless corpses swinging on ropes, eyes and features bulged out from their strangulation.

I touched the nearly-healed bruises around the top of my neck and shuddered. I understood what they went through far more than I should’ve had any reason to.

As the crowd began to calm down, the mare with the aviators started to speak again. “The auction house is now open for business. We have stock from Notched Whip, seventeen specimens, six mares and three foals; Flaxen Reed, fourteen specimens, two mares and six foals; Moonlit Chains, twenty-nine specimens, eleven mares and five foals. We also have final stock from Carrion, twenty specimens, ten mares. We have severed business ties with the Crimson due to unsatisfactory and unfulfilled trade agreements, so this will be the last chance to purchase stock from the valley.”

She hadn’t told them the truth: that the Crimson were no more, and the Sentinels were in charge of the valley now. For some reason, that stuck out to me as odd.

I spotted a procession of chained ponies march up to the wooden structure accompanied by a ton of guards, and promptly turned away. The crowd was beginning to disperse, save for those wealthy enough to buy and trade ponies like tools, and I wanted to leave now. I felt sick to my stomach after watching the execution, and I didn’t want to have to watch ponies being bought and sold like livestock. Now I could feel the rot underneath the surface of Hole finally showing its face. Beneath the happiness and normality I’d seen just a few minutes ago, there was something horribly wrong with this city, where public executions were a big event everypony wanted to see, and enslaving your fellow equine was just a way of life.

A shiver ran down my spine, and I swore I could feel eyes burning into the back of my skull as I retreated. I could perfectly imagine my reflection in each lens of a pair of shiny silver aviators. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out if that was true.

I soon found the Pit, as ponies called it. It was kind of strange to think about there being a pit inside of a mountain that was almost filled to the brim with ponies, but there it was, an open cavern in the back out of the mountain, only accessible through a few mineshafts that went down into the bedrock. As far as I could tell, the cavern was natural, and the ponies of Hole themselves had broken into it when looking to expand or something. If Equestria had done it, I’m sure they would’ve just kept boring through the mountain to get to here.

But I could see why the Pit had a reputation for nastiness. Unlike the clean and happy (well, mostly) surface of Hole, it was dirty and shifty down here. Squat buildings rose from floor to ceiling, and piles of rubble blocked off abandoned tunnels and mineshafts. The only light came from cracked lanterns hanging on doorposts, creating an eerie mirage of flickering shadows to accompany the distorted echoes of laughter and conversation in the tunnels. The ponies here seemed tired, and many simply sat in small groups next to buildings or in alleyways. Even the very ground was slick with moisture, and the air was suffocatingly humid. There was also a faint smell of something in the air. If I had to describe it, it’d probably be… an overwhelming sense of despair.

But it seemed to be popular with RPR guards off-shift. I figured that out when a trio of them stumbled out of a tavern, obviously drunk out of their minds, and collapsed in the street. I gave them a wide berth, not wanting to get any projectile vomit or some shit on my coat, and not wanting to be the first pretty mare these drunkards saw. But there were other guards in some of the nearby bars, so I decided to use another smoke break as an excuse to eavesdrop by one of the windows.

I don’t really know what I jumped into, but apparently it was something good. A stallion’s voice, worn ragged from years of shouting and yelling, drowned out that of his friends. At least he was easy to listen to from the other side of the window.

“…you know, right? Why the fuck do they get to set the terms? We’re the ones helping his sorry ass find this fucking shit. We’ve got teams digging everywhere! And they want to walk away with the spoils?”

“They’re hardly walking away with fuck all, dickhead,” a mare’s raspy voice countered. “From what I heard, they promised everything we can get our hooves on inside the place. All they want are the computers or some shit. Fuck ‘em, they can have it. If it’s another military base, we’ll be drowning in brass!”

I was about to put the cigarette in my lips again after blowing a cloud of smoke, but I stopped when I heard that. They had to be talking about Yeoman and the search for the next code piece. Maybe they’d say something more specific. I stuck the cigarette back in my mouth and slid a little closer to the window frame, pressing my good ear against it to catch every word.

“Now that’s the kind of shit I like to hear,” a different stallion’s voice said. “You know anypony on the teams they’re sending out? Got an idea where they’re searching?”

“Eggshell said that they were searching for an installation underneath a waterfall or something like that. But there’s a fucking million waterfalls in the gorges to the south.”

“Eggshell’s a fucking dickwing. You know that.”

“So? Even retards get things right every so often.”

I frowned and thought for a bit. How the shit were we going to find this thing if it was supposedly under one of a million waterfalls in some place to the south? And that was assuming they were even right in the first place. Still, it was something to work with, I suppose, and their conversation broke up as somepony brought them more to drink. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get anything more out of that.

Tossing my cigarette away, I sighed and rolled my shoulders. It was getting close to dinnertime, but at least I had something to share with Nova and Gauge now. Hooray for not being totally useless! Feeling a little bit better about myself, I began to move down the stairs, trying to part a crowd of ponies and get back to the mineshaft that led out of the Pit.

And then I bumped into a wall. A solid brick wall of muscle and brown hair, topped with a white mane and the silver glint of aviators.

I staggered backwards and froze as I found that mare staring down at me. She seemed surprised, too, but that quickly evaporated into a predatory smile. “Well, look at that. Wasn’t expecting to meet you down here. You having fun in the Pit?”

I tried to swallow my fear, but I only choked on it. In the ensuing silence, the earth pony shook her head and put a big hoof on my shoulder. That thing could crack my skull in one solid hit. “I hope you weren’t just leaving. Happy Hour’s just starting, don’t you know? And last we talked, I’d promised you a few friendly drinks.” I felt her hoof clamping down on my shoulder like a vise, and I had to bite my cheek to not cry out at the sudden pain. “I at least owe you a little taste of Hole’s hospitality.”

“I have dinner plans,” I said, carefully sliding out from under her hoof and trying to skirt around her. “I really should get going—!”

I ran into an outstretched steel pole. Or maybe that was just her foreleg. “I’m sure they can wait,” she said, and a not-so-gentle shove sent me stumbling toward the door of the bar. “Better yet, maybe I can have one of my ponies find them, and we can all have some drinks together.”

“They’ll be fine,” I hissed, reluctantly opening the door to the bar and trudging inside. I felt trapped, and the more I looked around, the more I began to panic. There were more RPR ponies in here than there were other patrons, and about half of the windows were barred to prevent break-ins. And when the mare led us to the bar, she sat down on my right, between me and the door. I really doubted that I could run past her without getting laid the fuck out with a solid cross right under the horn.

The bartender, a horribly balding middle-aged stallion, looked up from his rack of chipped and cracked glasses to see us sitting down at the bar. He flashed us a smile that was half the teeth it should have been and pulled out two glasses. “Hunter! Good to see you, as usual.” He placed the glasses in front of us, and his eyes drifted to me. “Who’s the friend?”

“A business partner,” the mare, Hunter, said in a way that did not bode well for my prospects of a shackle-free future. “Pour her a glass of the usual shit.”

Even before she finished saying the words, the bartender already had our glasses filled with a frothy liquid which I could only assume was beer. Considering what the rest of the Pit looked like, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was made from cave fungus scraped off of the walls. Hunter took her glass between both hooves, lifted it to her lips, drained half of it in a gulp, and slammed it onto the bar so hard that a glass chip came flying off of what remained of the base. I saw the bartender wince, but he maintained the smile on his face all the same. After licking her lips, Hunter turned to me and poked my glass. “You wouldn’t want to offend Hops over there, would you? He makes this shit himself.”

Swallowing hard, I took the glass in my magic and raised it to my lips, taking a little sip. I immediately had to suppress a gag; it was bitter as all hell, even worse than the moonshine that made me swear off drinking years ago. It tasted like an ashtray, sweaty tail hair, and the crust scraped off of a pony’s frog, with something pretending to be a wheaty taste underneath but was almost certainly a poison of some kind. Maybe bearing grease? There were a lot of machines lying around the Pit, abandoned where they broke down and stripped for parts.

And then Hunter slapped me on the back nearly hard enough to break my spine. I doubled over, choking and coughing, while she just grinned at me like some kind of predator. “Not bad at all, right?” she said, hitting me on the back again and bumping my nose into the bar. It was slick with moisture, and I doubted that all of it was merely water. Grunting, I managed to sit up and glare at her, but all I could see was two nervous mares staring back at me from circles of silver.

“It’s wonderful,” I grumbled, rubbing my nose. “You guys just have all the greatest shit here, don’t you?”

“Don’t humor me,” Hunter growled. “I wouldn’t live in this fuckhole if I didn’t love my job. It’s dirty and filled with spineless shits. Only upside to that is that I’m paid to kick their teeth in.”

I pushed the mug away from me and folded my forelegs on the table. “What a noble job. You make necklaces out of their teeth? Saw off any horns, clip wings, that sort of shit? You look like the kind of mare who has a severed head collection in her basement.”

Hunter laughed, too loudly to be natural. “No, but now that you mention it…”

I sighed while she chuckled. “What do you want?” I asked her through bared teeth. I already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.

“I’m just going to ask you one question,” Hunter said, the menacing smile falling off her muzzle only to be replaced by a businesslike frown. “Who gave you that illusion on your flank?”

I flinched, and I knew for a fact that she saw it; she was watching me like a shrike, after all. “Don’t lie to me,” she said, touching a big knife strapped to her chest. “I won’t make it quick if you do.”

My heart began to pound as I stared at the nearly ten-inch long sheath fastened to her armor. I wasn’t confident that I could disarm her fast enough if she tried to use it on me. I also didn’t know just how much she knew. What gave away Manchado’s illusion? I glanced at it, and it was still there, covering my flank. How could she have known? Did those urchins that robbed us yesterday feel up my or Nova’s flank and tip her off?

Her hoof moved to the fastener on the sheath and undid the button. She pulled it out by half an inch, revealing glistening, spotless, oiled steel. This mare knew how to take care of her weapons. Weapons that were becoming more and more likely to be used on me. I glanced out of the corner of my eye to see the bartender with his back turned to us, trying very hard to ignore what was happening at his bar.

“Warped Glass,” I said, thinking of the first unicorn that came to mind that wasn’t Manchado. And unlike Manchado, a veteran Sentinel wasn’t likely to get murdered in his sleep by an RPR hit squad. “He said that the illusions would be foolproof. Nopony would know.”

“Illusions can’t hide fear,” Hunter said, and I could see exactly what she meant in my frightened reflections in her aviators. “I don’t even need to see your flank to know you’re branded. I’ve been doing this for years. The only reason I let you go in the grasses outside of Hole is because I knew you were coming here. Why would I bother wasting time and effort dragging you back to Hole when you’d come here on your own? You’ve already done all the hard work for me.”

My ears flattened against my head and I looked down at my shaking hooves. My mind was racing. How the fuck was I going to get out of this? I had my rifle, but Hunter would stab me before I even managed to draw it. I could try to swipe her knife and take her out with it, but if I wasn’t fast, the other RPR ponies would pry me off of her before I could escape. And who knows how many of them had their own weapons, though I hoped they wouldn’t risk shooting their boss…

“So… what happens next?” I whispered in a slow voice, trying to stall for time. My eyes scanned the bar and the rack of glasses behind it. Maybe I could cause a distraction? Smash a glass or several over her head? Though the last time I tried to club an earth pony in the skull with something it didn’t work well for me at all...

“That’s simple,” Hunter said. “I’m going to arrest you as runaway property, have that illusion removed, and then sell you at the auction house to the highest bidder. You’re going to spend the rest of your life sucking on a stallion’s dick and giving him lap dances and doing all the disgusting kinky shit he wants you to do because he owns you. If you’re lucky, you’ll bear his foals when you’re no longer the prettiest thing he can afford, and he’ll keep you around to raise his children. If you’re not, he’ll probably try to sell you again, and if nopony buys you, then he’ll maim you and throw you out into the streets as unwanted property. Then somepony stabs you over a few spare cartridges and you die face down in a ditch, and we use your body for fertilizer.” She leaned back a bit. “That’s what’s going to happen.”

“And my friends?” I asked, still staring at my hooves. “What about them?”

Hunter thought things over for a moment and then leaned in close to me. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said in a low voice, almost next to my ear. “You come with me willingly and don’t make too much of a fuss, and I’ll just kick them out of Hole instead of selling them too. Beating your face in is going to hurt your auction price, and I’d rather avoid the hassle. How does that sound?”

I stopped as I tried to process what she was offering me. It seemed too good of a deal—for my friends, at least. I was still fucked, and if I accepted I’d be literally fucked almost nonstop in like a month. And there was a chance Hunter would go back on her word; she didn’t have any reason to stay true to it. Maybe Gauge and Nova would be able to escape on their own when they realized I wasn’t ever going to be coming to dinner. There was always the chance I could escape too, later. I wasn’t ever going to stop trying, no matter how many times I was raped.

But if they put that mindfuckery spell on me, though…

“And what if I tell you to fuck off?” I said, managing to lift my head enough to glare directly at Hunter. “I’m a Sentinel, you know. I’ve fought my fair share of slaving shits like you.”

Hunter raised an eyebrow. “Sentinel, huh? Well, that certainly changes things a bit.”

I blinked at her. “It… wait, it does?” As stupid as it was, I felt a glimmer of hope that just maybe they respected the authority of the Sentinels enough to not fuck with me.

“Oh, definitely.”

I saw her muscles tense, and I immediately acted. She went for her knife, but I shoved her muzzle away with my telekinesis. Off-balance, Hunter nearly fell off of her bar stool, and I spun around to kick her in the chest before she could recover. She clambered to the floor but rolled onto her hooves in a split second, instinctually lashing out with her hind hooves as I tried to run past her and out the door. The blow caught me in the side, and sent me flying across the bar into a table full of RPR ponies at the other end. Groaning, I managed to pull myself back to my hooves, but one of the guards struck me in the back of the head with a glass, breaking it against my skull and digging shards of glass into my skin. I stumbled forward and nearly lost my balance, but Hunter was there to catch me by wrapping her legs around my neck and slamming me into the ground.

My horn hit the floor, dazing me just as I tried to unholster my rifle and try shooting my way out. But while my head swam, Hunter rolled me onto my back and drew her knife. She tried to plunge it into my throat, but I managed to cross my forelegs under her chin and keep the knife at bay. Unfortunately for me, she was an earth pony, and I was a unicorn; my limbs shook as I tried to hold back a fucking mountain from crushing me. Coiling my hind legs, I managed to kick her in the cunt, and she wheezed and backed off a bit, wincing in pain, but it wasn’t enough. Whether it was her earth pony toughness or I’d just gotten a bad hit off, she didn’t recoil enough for me to slip away. Instead, she just lunged at me again, and when I tried to protect my throat like before, she instead drove the knife deep into my right shoulder.

It felt like my mind reset at that moment. A few seconds of thoughtless pain gripped me as I realized I couldn’t move my right leg. When the red haze finally cleared, I could see Hunter standing over me, and the moment I tried to move, she twisted the knife, ripping flesh and muscle inside of my shoulder. That was when the pain decided to hit me again, and I screamed in agony.

Hunter let go of the knife but left it embedded in my shoulder. She’d stabbed it in so deep I was afraid that it’d pinned me to the floor. I could only hope against hope she hadn’t just permanently maimed me. “If you’re a Sentinel, then maybe I should just kill you here,” Hunter said. “Chaining wild dogs is never a good idea. The moment they break loose, they’ll rip you to pieces. And I doubt any stallions so weak and disgusting that they have to buy mares instead of wooing them will want a Sentinel sucking on their dick.”

I was in too much pain to respond to her. My mind was too preoccupied with ‘fucking shit there’s a big metal thing jammed into my shoulder holy fuck’ to really do anything. Hunter frowned at me, then bit down on the knife and tore it out of my shoulder in a bloody, painful motion. For some reason, the knife leaving my body hurt almost more than it did entering, and on top of that, my coat was soaked with blood in a few seconds.

Hunter reached down and grabbed me by the mane, hauling me off of the floor. Then, holding me up with her hooves, she brought me almost nose to nose with her. “Let’s do this outside,” she hissed. “I wouldn’t want to make a mess on Hops’ floor.”

I spat into her face—but her aviators stopped it from getting into her eyes. She just flinched, but didn’t let go of me. I stared at her for a moment before grimacing. “That… worked better in my head.”

She responded by putting my face through the bar. Figuratively, thank the stars. I’m pretty sure she actually could’ve had she tried.

By this point, the bar had gone completely quiet as everypony watched Hunter obliterate me. Nopony dared to move or even say anything as Hunter threw me onto the ground again. Nopony looked away as she pummeled me into the floor with savage blows of her hooves I couldn’t protect myself against. I tried to shield my face and my horn with my forelegs, but one wouldn’t even move, and she decided to beat my gut instead. In fact, I’m pretty sure she would’ve taken her time to break every bone in my body if a visibly drunk mare hadn’t stumbled into her as she tried to stagger out the door.

Hunter stopped her onslaught for a moment, letting me get some breath and try to figure out which parts of my body were still attached to me. “Watch yourself, cunt!” Hunter exclaimed, raising a bloody hoof and striking the drunk mare. The mare staggered and fell to the ground right next to me, collapsing in a pile of limbs and feathers and gear. She’d taken Hunter’s fury for the moment, and I knew what was going to happen next.

But then the haze of drunkenness vanished from the mare’s face as Hunter reared up to smash her skull into pieces, and she winked at me.

I… I can’t even describe what happened next. Hunter stomped toward the ground with the force of a fucking meteor. But the mare’s head wasn’t even there by the time her hoof hit the floor. In a flurry of wings, the definitely-not-drunk mare was on her hooves and shoving Hunter backwards. The big earth pony slammed into the bar, and the pegasus used her wings to whip a pistol out of one of her bags and press it against Hunter’s chest. I heard three reports from the gun as she fired into the big mare’s armor, and Hunter collapsed, clutching her chest. A twirl of the pistol holstered it across her chest, and the pegasus hauled me off of the floor.

My head swam at the sudden shift in gravity, which certainly wasn’t helped by all the blood I was losing. “W-What?” was all I could wheeze before I felt myself being moved to the door.

“Don’t ask questions, just move your fucking flank!” the mare yelled back at me, and kicked me right in the ass. I fell out of the doorway and rolled down the stairs, ending with my face on dirt and rock at the bottom. Groaning, I tried to push my way back to my hooves, but immediately lost my balance and rolled over.

But it gave me a view of the absolute carnage this mare was wreaking on the bar and the RPR ponies inside. Her pistols hammered rounds through the doorway she flew backwards out of, and I could hear cries of pain and death inside. Spreading her wings, she rolled around and picked me up off of the ground in one swoop, though I could feel her straining to move the two of us. “What are you made of, fucking lead or something?!” she squawked at me, grunting as she tried to get us higher off the ground.

My hooves skimmed over the dirt, but my brain was slowly catching up to me. I looked over my shoulder to see a ton of ponies pouring out of the buildings behind us, definitely very pissed off. “Who are you?! Why are you helping me?!”

“Ace, and fuck the RPR,” she said. Bullets began to whizz past us, and Ace darted down an alleyway where the cavern widened. “Fuck, they’re pissed. If Hunter didn’t have enough reason to want my ass dead, then phewee, she definitely got it now.”

She set me down behind a corner, then darted back the way that she came. She pried a compact box off her back, which suddenly expanded into a pretty fucking hi-tech sniper rifle at the push of a button. Bracing it on some garbage, she turned it to the side so the scope wouldn’t be in her way and waited. The faint glow of a holographic display added a little white light to the beige color of her face as she focused.

A group of five RPR ponies darted into the alleyway, only to be greeted by Ace’s sniper rifle. The rifle roared as she fired five bullets in quick succession, dropping our pursuers with five shots to their chests. She didn’t waste any time before compacting her rifle, tossing it onto her back, and darting over to me. “Come on, we have to move, now!”

There was a black haze creeping into the corners of my vision, and I was starting to feel really cold. But that didn’t stop me from putting two and two together. “Wait… you’re… y-you’re that pony that attacked those miners! With those other three pegasi!”

“Yeah, and I’m also the dumb bitch saving your fucking stupid ass.” She basically flung me through an open window, hopped in after me, then picked me up again and ran up a flight of stairs. “So don’t complain!”

We burst onto the roof of this building, almost right against the ceiling of the cavern. I could hear the shouting in the streets, but it was getting harder to make things out in detail. Ace’s face was just a beige blob topped with black and surrounding two blue spots.

But I did notice that she’d taken us right to the edge of the rooftop. “Hold on, don’t let go,” Ace told me, and I grunted as she suddenly hauled me onto her back. “Maybe you won’t fucking die before we get there.”

I could hear ponies stomping up the stairs behind us, so I wrapped my forelegs around Ace’s neck and just tried to keep my eyes open. My hooves were like rocks strapped to the end of my legs, and I couldn’t feel them in the slightest.

But when Ace leapt off the building, picking up speed as she fell, my eyes rolled back into my skull, and I blacked out.