As I stood in front of the doors to the RPR headquarters, my rear hooves bound in chains, my right foreleg tied up in a sling, and a steel bit between my teeth, I had to wonder just how exactly I got here. How in the world could some mare’s life get so fucking turned around that she willingly walked into the jaws of death and slavery in chains?

Behind me, Ace finished tucking the rest of her curtain-like forelock into a hat and grumbled. “This ain’t gonna fucking work,” she spat, glaring at me. “And if you’re gonna get me killed, I’d at least like to die with some dignity.”

She was more than a little upset at her disguise, to say the least. In addition to the hat and some armor we’d picked off of a guard, I’d had Ace cover herself in dirt and grease so she looked like she was a dark brown instead of the beige I’m sure was on her posters, wherever they were. No matter how much I tried, though, I couldn’t convince her to hide her wings just to make her disguise a little bit better. But it worked. I hadn’t known her for more than a few hours and I had a hard time recognizing her. A bunch of tired guards who’d probably seen so many wanted posters they all blended together would likely pass her over without a second thought.

“An RPR guard’s uniform doesn’t count as dignity?” I teased her. As she continued to fuss with her disguise, I leaned over and slapped her shoulder. “Relax, we’ll be fine. We just gotta get in, find Nova and Gauge, and get out. Easy.”

“This shit’ll never work,” she continued to grumble. “This ain’t one of them adventure stories. Shit like this never works in the real world. If you’re so set on hoofing yourself over then I have a mind to just leave you to it and save my own hide.”

“So why don’t you?” I flatly asked her. “You keep bitching about me putting you in danger. There’s nothing stopping you from just leaving. I’ll figure something out without your sorry flank if I have to.”

Ace growled in irritation but merely held her wingtips to her temples and shook her head. “Fuck it, let’s just get this over with. You ready?”

Shrugging, I made sure the key to the hoofcuffs was safely tied into my tail and began to walk forward. “Let’s do this.”

It was pretty awkward and difficult to stumble up the hill in hoofcuffs, and occasionally the rifle Ace had leveled at my back jabbed into my shoulders. I spared a quick glance off to my right and shivered; it was nothing but a several hundred foot drop to the ground below, and the only thing between me and the open air was a rope railing. But I could see basically all of Hole from here, and I understood why it was the RPR’s headquarters.

Then we were in front of the door, which had a pair of guards on either side. They raised their weapons some and squinted at me and Ace before one stepped forward. “What’s your business? I never seen you around here before.”

Ace cracked the butt of the rifle across my back—like, really cracked it. My cry of pain was pretty stars-damned genuine, along with how quickly I fell to my knees and slammed my face into the floor. “You know who this bitch is?” she shouted back at them, and by the way that they took a step back I could tell she’d caught them off guard. “This here’s the cunt who shot Hunter. Rounded her sorry plot up in the Pit and brought her up here. Hunter’s in, right?”

The two guards looked at each other, unsure of what to do. “Yeah, she’s in,” the one who spoke earlier said. “Getting her ribs looked at. Her armor’s tough shit, but it ain’t gonna stop everything.”

“Good, then I’m gonna fucking talk to her.” Ace bit down on my mane and hauled me back to my hooves. “I’m sure she’ll want some payback.”

One of the guards nodded and began opening the big door while the other stepped up closer to us. Squinting, he took a close look at Ace’s coat and sniffed. “You been rolling in shit down there?” he asked her. “Just who the fuck are you, anyway?”

Ace met his stare for a few seconds, but then her ears flicked to the opening door. “The game show host,” she said, smirking, and the stallion just blinked and stared at her with a dumb look on his face. “You just won a free lesson in skydiving!”

And then she threw me back closer to the wall and bucked the stallion in the chest. He staggered backwards, surprised, and tripped over the rope railing behind him. All I saw were his limbs flailing as he fell, disappearing over the edge of the ring, his scream lasting for like five seconds before it abruptly stopped.

In that same moment, Ace rolled out of the buck and launched herself at the other guard, knocking her to the ground and sending her gun flying. It was kind of hard to see what was happening from where I was lying, but I think Ace held the mare’s legs down with her own and stuffed her wing in her mouth to silence her while she dug a knife out of her disguise. I saw steel flash in the light before it plunged into the guard’s chest, and each time it did, I saw her legs spasm and twitch, but weaker and weaker each time until she stopped moving.

Ace pried her wing out of the dead mare’s mouth and cussed, shaking it out some. “I hate it when they take care of their teeth,” she muttered, gingerly folding it back against her side. Then, dragging the mare along by her tail, she tossed the dead guard off of the side of the ring, too.

“The fuck are you doing?!” I just hissed at her. “The whole point of the plan was to not have to shoot our way through everything!”

“And it was fucking stupid,” Ace shot back, helping me stand and pulling the key out of my tail. “That one guard already had a hunch I wasn’t RPR. Must’ve taken one look at me and the mare standing next to him and realized I was too pretty to be a slaver. I wasn’t gonna sit around and wait for him to call out the alarm.”

Then, sticking her tongue out at me, she flung her hat over the side while I undid my hoofcuffs. “Ah! So much fucking better!” she sighed, shaking her curtain-like mane out so it hung over half of the right side of her face like she liked it. She ripped open the top few buttons on the uniform as well and flexed her shoulders. I had no doubt that if she thought she could spare the time, she would’ve tossed the thing too and washed the grime out of her coat. Then she peered around the half-open door. “I always wanted to shoot this place up. The RPR’s too cocky; I would’ve put at least another four guards behind the big door if I was worried two madmares with guns were gonna storm on in and shoot everypony.”

I lightly tossed the hoofcuffs back at her and plucked my rifle off of her back. “Because two of us versus an army is gonna work so fucking well.”

“Most of them are currently running around the Pit trying to find out who set off the explosions. We won’t have to fight them if we move quickly and quietly.”

“Wait, explosions? As in, more than one?”

“Yup,” Ace said, smirking at me. “Second one should be going off right about...”

A muffled boom shook the mountain, and dirt and tiny pebbles from the ceiling landed on our backs. Down toward the Pit, I saw a huge plume of fire roar out of the mineshaft, casting an eerie orange glow on the inside of the mountain. Distant screams began to echo around the mountain, the stone walls only seeming to make them louder and louder.

I whipped my head toward her in disbelief. “Holy fuck, how? Stars, you’re not a bandit, you’re a fucking terrorist!”

“Are you really going to criticize every damn thing I do to try and make this easier for us?” Ace spat back. “Hole’s a fucking dump. Ain’t nopony live here but slavers, slaves, and thugs. I figure the more of their shit I trash, the more good I’m doing.”

Then she waved a wing at me. “Come on, we’re wasting time,” she said, darting inside. I followed her into the compound, rifle raised and safety off, and let her lead the way. I figured she probably had a better idea of where to go than I did.

She slunk down a hallway, left wing brushing the wall and half-crouching. Everything was quiet, as far as I could tell at least, since there was a lot of noise outside. It seemed like most of the RPR was scouring the Pit and Hole itself or trying to deal with Ace’s bombs. Their base of operations was the last place anypony would think to look for us. So we were able to make it a good ways in without hearing or seeing anypony.

But there was a lot to look at. The RPR was kind of vain, because they had all this artwork on the walls to try and liven up the stone, stone, and more stone that it was made of, carved into the mountain like it was. The ceiling was high and unnecessarily vaulted, and if she could’ve, I imagine Ace would’ve taken flight for a better vantage point. She couldn’t really do that while staying glued to the wall, but I could see her right wing twitching whenever she glanced up.

It was kind of funny, really; unicorns and earth ponies tend to really only look at eye level, but pegasi are always looking up and down

Then we went down a hallway that had a whole bunch of stone busts. I stopped to read the name and inscription on the first one, and I realized that these were all famous slavers and RPR captains. The first one went over a hundred winters back! I couldn’t even imagine just how many slaves had passed through Hole over the decades, and how many more would continue to be bought and sold at that auction house down below.

I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in front of me, and I ended up bumping into Ace’s ass. She glared at me as I staggered backwards, and when I opened my mouth to apologize, she held a hoof to her lips and flicked her ear toward a door ahead of us on the right. I grasped the meaning quickly enough and nodded to her, and we slowly inched around the door. As we passed it, I hesitated and turned my ear to it for a second, trying to make out what exactly Ace had heard.

“You’ll be fine,” I heard a stallion’s voice say. “Just some bruising and a cracked rib, but you’ll heal that off in a few days. Just don’t put any more stress on it.”

“It’s not gonna stop me from doing my job,” a mare grunted back, and I flinched as I recognized Hunter’s voice. I heard big hooves hit the stone floor and begin to stride to the door. “I’m going to get some payback. Those cunts are somewhere in Hole, wreaking havoc by the sound of it, and I’ll find them even if I have to turn the whole place over.”

Ace was a few paces in front of me, so I hurriedly danced on the tips of my hooves over to her and tugged on her tail. When she looked back at me, I frantically slipped back into the space between two of the pedestals holding the busts and tucked my tail under me. The door opened not even two tail lengths away, and as soon as it started, Ace had disappeared between two pedestals as well.

I saw Hunter’s shadow fall across my hiding place as she stomped out of the infirmary, and I held my breath. She rolled her shoulders, looked this way and that, and then set off down the hallway in the direction that we’d come from. The other stallion, who I guess was a doctor or medic of some kind, emerged a few seconds later and went in our direction. I held as still as I possibly could as he walked in front of me, and when he passed by both me and Ace without noticing, I saw Ace slowly stalk out of her hiding spot and follow him down the hall, matching careful hoofsteps with his as she crept forward.

Once again she used her wing as a makeshift gag as she tackled the doctor. When he tried to use magic, she cracked him over the horn with a baton she had concealed in her disguise. He cried out in pain, but his cries were muffled by Ace’s wing. With her free wing, she grabbed one of her wing-grip pistols and held it under the stallion’s jaw, spitting out the baton in the process.

“Where are the new slaves held for processing?” she asked him in a quiet voice while I approached the two of them. “If you try to shout for help or do any funny stuff, I’ll paint the floor with your brains. I recommend playing nice.”

Then she removed her wing from his mouth and used it to pull the hammer back on the pistol to prove her point. I could see the terror in the stallion’s eyes, and it took him a few stuttering tries to tell us what she wanted. “N-N-Not too far from here! J-Just around the corner and, and to the right! Please, please don’t shoot!”

“I ain’t gonna shoot if you tell me what I want,” Ace hissed at him. “And keep your voice quiet! Now, how many guards? Don’t try to tell me there ain’t any, because that’s shit and we both know it.”

“Four!” the stallion hissed, his hooves shaking, pinned at his sides. “Please, I told you everything you wanted, please let me go!”

“I promised you I wasn’t gonna shoot you if you told me what I wanted,” Ace said, smiling faintly. She holstered the pistol again and stood up some. Then, to my horror, she raised her hoof and drove it into the stallion’s neck so hard I swore his eyes almost popped out of his skull. He struggled and made a few gasping and wheezing noises before his eyes rolled back and he went limp.

“Is… is he alright?” I whispered to her. He didn’t look like he was breathing at all.

She shook her head. “Fuck no. He’s dead. Crushed his windpipe. I couldn’t risk him running off and getting Hunter, or waking up after I wasted the time to choke him out and hide his body somewhere.” Then she drew her rifle, expanded it, and took wing. “And I don’t think I have to remind you that time is precious here. The longer we’re inside, the more likely we’re gonna get caught.”

I looked between her and the dead doctor, and after a few tries my face just settled on disgust. I mean, sure, her argument made sense, and I couldn’t really justify letting the doctor loose in case he did squeal to somepony. But I would’ve spent the time to choke him out and hide him somewhere instead of just killing him outright! Even if he was with the RPR, that didn’t mean that we needed to kill him in cold blood.

But Ace was definitely not the gleaming knight in shining armor that Zip and the Sentinels were. She was a toughened, weary, and efficient mare who’d spent so much time fighting to survive that killing ponies probably didn’t even take a second thought. If that was what Auris did to ponies, then I hoped it’d kill me before I ended up like her.

I used my magic to position the doctor between two of the pedestals for the time being and hoped that would be enough to hide him until we were done here, then hurried after Ace. After checking her corners, she drifted off to the right, ears swiveling back and forth as she tried to pick out sounds. After passing by a few doors, she stopped in front of one reinforced with iron bars and looked it over. “Seems like a good guess,” she muttered, half to me and half to herself. Glancing at me, she nodded to the door. “You know any silence spells?”

I shook my head. “Pyromancy’s all I got. I never really learned utility spells like that.”

She frowned, and my ears wilted a bit; I was starting to feel bad that I kept disappointing her, even though I really shouldn’t have felt anything when it came to this mare. “Right. Well, burning them to death ain’t gonna keep them quiet. If we go in there and start shooting the place up, we’re gonna bring reinforcements.”

Hmmm… I thought for a moment before an idea struck me. “How many knives you got?” I asked her.

“Two,” she said, pulling at the stolen RPR uniform to show the hilts protruding near her shoulders. “You got a plan?”

“Something like that.” I pulled the knives out of their sheaths and held them in the air between us. “Let’s hope there’s only four.”

Ace nodded and pulled one of the heavy bars out of the door. It swung open on creaky hinges, giving us a good look at what was inside. There were three cells, one of which was a big communal cell, a table, and a desk. Frightened ponies and even a few griffons huddled together in the big cell, signs of their time spent in captivity pretty easily picked out with all the bruises and injuries on their bodies and faces. But my attention immediately shifted to the four RPR ponies in the room, who all turned to me and Ace as soon as they heard the door open.

“Knock knock!” I immediately flung the two knives at the guards closest to me before they could even move. One knife buried itself in a stallion’s neck, and the other one caught a mare in the side of her muzzle. The moment my telekinesis was free, though, I immediately wrenched the guards’ guns away from their owners and cracked the two still standing over their heads with them.

It wasn’t enough to put them down and out, but Ace flew through the door like a missile and caught one of the guards in the chest, slamming him into the bars of the big cell behind him. She spun around before he could recover and used his face as a springboard to smash the other guard to the floor. As they struggled, she managed to get on his back and snap his neck with a quick jerk of her forelegs, then pried the knife out of the stallion I’d killed and throw it into the other’s heart. He spat blood and wheezed as he slowly slid down the bars until he came to a rest on the floor.

Unfortunately, things weren’t as quiet as either of us would’ve wanted, because the mare I only wounded was screaming in agony the whole time as she pawed in vain at the bloody knife handle sticking out of the side of her face, unable to get a grip on it with her hooves. Galloping up to her, I held her head down with a hoof and pried the knife out of her muzzle before cutting her throat open with it, ending her screaming and suffering in one blow.

Ace stood still, panting for a few seconds, before she went and collected her knives. “That could’ve gone better,” she grumbled, looking over my shoulder toward the door. “We need to get this done and over with fast. She probably could’ve woken the dead with all that screaming.”

I opened my mouth to say something back to her, but hooves slammed against the steel bars of the big cell. “Ember!” I whipped my head in that direction as soon as I heard my name, and I saw Nova standing on her hind hooves at the bars, smiling at me. She was a little bruised and dried blood stained her white coat, but she was still in one piece. At her side, Gauge rushed up to the bars to see me, and I galloped over to the two of them and nuzzled them through the bars.

“We’re getting you out,” I said, “and we’re gonna leave this fucking hellhole behind.”

Behind me, Ace rifled through the nearby desk and plucked out a key ring. “Keys!” she said right before tossing them to me, and I caught them in midair and began trying the lock. While I fumbled with the keys to figure out which one opened the cell, Ace’s ears pivoted toward the door and she galloped up to the corner, peering around and keeping a close eye on the hallway.

“Who’s she?” Gauge asked in a low voice while I cussed at a key and moved onto the next one.

“Remember those bandits that attacked Manchado?” I asked him. “She’s the one that got away.”

He blinked in confusion once or twice. “So why are you working with her?”

“Does it really matter? We’re getting your asses out of here, aren’t we?” My ears flattened against my head and I shook it slowly. “I had a run-in with that RPR mare, Hunter, in the Pit. Ace saved my life, but I was out of commission for a while.That’s why I never came back, and why they went after you guys shortly afterwards. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Can you fucking hurry it up in there?” Ace shouted back at me. “I think they know we’re here!” As soon as she said that, I heard more shouting outside, and then bullets peppered the doorframe as Ace ducked back inside. Cursing, she snatched one of her wing grip pistols and began firing blindly around the doorframe.

I finally managed the lock and pulled the door open wide. Gauge and Nova immediately came rushing out to hug me, and soon the rest of the slaves inside the cell were trying to get out too. “Anypony here know how to use guns?” I shouted at them, holding up the four compact PAW-5 bullpups the RPR guards dropped. “We could really use some more firepower.”

A few ponies (and one griffon) stepped forward, and I tossed the weapons to them. “Scavenge mags from the guards; we’re gonna have to shoot our way out.” Then I turned back to Gauge and Nova while everypony got organized and I touched one of the bruises on Nova’s muzzle. “Stars, those fuckers…”

She shook her head and pushed me back a little bit. “I’m fine, Ember. The Crimson were worse. Much worse.” Then, sighing, she added, “And can we talk about this later? We’ve got a lot of angry ponies out there trying to kill us.”

At the door, Ace ducked back behind cover and waved to me. “Ember! I could use your help here! Clear this hallway and we can get out of here!”

I shouldered my way past a bunch of the slaves and made it to her side. “What are we looking at?” I shouted into her ear just to be heard over all the gunfire.

“A whole lotta fuckers out there with big guns!” she shouted back at me. Just then, a big metal ball ricocheted off of the door and landed in front of us, and I immediately picked it up in my magic and flung it back down the hall. Not a second too soon; the grenade exploded almost as soon as I tossed it. When our ears stopped ringing, Ace frowned and fired a few more shots around the corner with her pistol. “And they’ve got fucking grenades, too. My fucking favorite.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said to her, quickly forming a plan. “Think you can keep their heads down?”

Ace shrugged and held out her wings like she didn’t really know. “Fuck it, I’ll see what I can do. Better than cowering in this tiny little room just waiting for a grenade to get lucky.” Gritting her teeth, she nodded to me and grabbed both her pistols before darting halfway into the open and firing lead downrange.

I didn’t waste a second. As soon as she started shooting, I began concentrating mana on my horn. I could feel the scalding heat building around my forehead until I finally stepped around the corner. “Get back!” I screamed at her, and that was all the warning I could give her before I let the spell loose.

I am really good with fire.

It was like a raging inferno in there, and the stone walls of the hallway glowed as my fireball roared past them. The mana drained from my body so fast I thought for a second my heart had stopped, and I wasn’t entirely sure that it hadn’t at least skipped a few beats as my vision wavered and my knees wobbled. But when I opened my eyes again, Ace had my shoulder, and a lot of extra crispy corpses were lying on the floor in front of me.

I tried to shake some of the dizziness out of my head and stand on my own. Sometimes I wondered why Warped Glass had really felt the need to give me that whole speech on burnout. I didn’t think I had to worry about killing myself through magical burnout when I felt like I was already dead after burning as much mana as I did on one spell. But at least I had a few moments to recover before we pushed onwards, what with all the ponies that had been shooting at us burnt beyond all recognition.

At least they died fast, right?

Ace sort of poked my cheek with her nose (I’d call it a nuzzle but it wasn’t quite there) and only took her wing off of my back once I proved I could stand on my own. Then she smirked at me and patted me on the back. “So, you do know fire. Well I’ll be.”

“It’s about the only damn thing I actually do know,” I said once I’d finally caught my breath. “And it takes a lot out of me. I almost blacked out from that one and that was just one spell.”

“A big ass spell, mind you,” Ace said. Then, looking at the slaves huddling in the doorway, she waved her wing at them. “Well, what’re you all standing around for like scared sheep? Don’t you want your freedom?”

There was a lot of murmuring and nodding heads, and finally the four slaves that I’d armed came out of the group and moved to the front, checking down the hallway with all the busts before hurriedly moving along. A few more slaves grabbed some of the guns off of the guards I’d fried and joined them. I gave those guns a wary glance; if the fireball I’d used was hot enough to make the stone walls glow, then it probably warped those guns a fair bit. I’m not sure how much use we’d get out of them, but if they helped, then they helped.

Nova and Gauge trotted up to us, and I saw that Gauge had found SCaR somewhere along with the supplies the RPR had stolen from them. Nova must’ve seen that I was a little unsteady on my hooves, because she trotted to my other side and rested a hoof on my shoulder. “Oh my gosh, Ember, are you alright? You don’t look so good…”

“Burnout,” Ace said before I could say anything. “Unicorns that really push their magic get it. She’ll be fine; she didn’t use anywhere near enough mana to kill herself.” Her ears flicked to the left at the sounds of gunfire further down the hall, and she gestured with her head in that direction. “Come on, we need to get going. It’s only a matter of time before Hunter figures out what’s going on and rallies all the guards in Hole to come stomp us out.”

I nodded and checked my rifle. “Stay behind me,” I said to Gauge and Nova, “and keep your heads down. I’ll keep you safe, alright?”

Nova bit her lip and nodded, and Gauge just dipped his head once in understanding. I smirked back at them and winked. They knew the drill, and I knew they wouldn’t get themselves in harm’s way if they could help it.

By the time I made it to the front of the RPR headquarters, Ace and the slaves had gotten into a pretty intense firefight with a group of soldiers trying to retake the building. We had a good defensive position, but we needed to get out. Unfortunately, this was the only way out of the building, at least as far as I’d seen. I didn’t consider the windows overlooking a hundred or so foot drop to be a real option, honestly.

And the RPR was dug in pretty hard at the entrance. Bullets flew back and forth, and occasionally a pony would catch some with their face and fall to the ground, skull blown to pieces. It was a fucked situation, and I started hearing voices shouting from within the building.

Ace spun around the corner to fire but ended up flaring her wings and stumbling back behind cover as bullets ricocheted off the ground around her hooves. Grunting, she fell against the wall and checked herself for injuries. “Well this is fucking great, ain’t it?” she asked me, peering around the corner. “They’ve got like ten of them out there but we can’t even push forward enough to sweep them.”

“Is Hunter out there?” I asked her, shouting to be heard over the noise of the gunfire.

“Not yet, she’s probably rallying the rest of Hole,” Ace said. A bullet ripped through the end of her mane, and she flinched back. “Fucking shit! Alright, that’s it, I’m fucking taking care of the situation myself!”

Growling, she stood up, flexed her wings, and propelled herself straight for the window on the other side of the hallway. I could nearly see the air distorting around her as the bullets flew by in the split second before she tucked her wings in at her side to fit through the window. I saw her tail flick briefly past the corner of the next window, and then I heard her pistols at work.

The bullets flying down the hallway momentarily lessened, and I seized the opportunity to push forward. “Now!” I screamed, running out into the middle of the slaves, “Push now or we’re going right back into those fucking cages!”

Lowering my rifle, I spearheaded the charge out of the headquarters, picking up an army behind me. As soon as I reached the doorway, a few bullets went past me, but I quickly took aim with my battle rifle and put a few bursts downrange. I saw a whole bunch of ponies looking either up at me or off to the side, where Ace was strafing them as best as she could and just trying to break up their fire. But it was the distraction we needed, and I picked off a few of the RPR soldiers before they could either hit Ace or redirect their attention to all of us, standing in the open and pushing out from the headquarters.

With their defensive position broken, the RPR tried to retreat and regroup, but I don’t think I could’ve stopped our momentum even if we wanted to. What started as a push out of the headquarters turned into a charge down the side of the ring, and it felt like I blinked once and suddenly I was in the thick of a brutal brawl. The slaves quickly overwhelmed the hoofful of surviving RPR ponies, beating them into bloody messes or throwing them off the side of the ring to their deaths below. I caught one RPR pony running a bayonet through a slave on my left, so I spun around and shattered his jaw with the butt of my rifle before hurling the howling pony away with my telekinesis.

Ace landed at my side, the side of her muzzle streaked with gunpowder from shooting one of the pistols with her mouth. Blood dribbled down her shoulder from a deep trench carved through it, and it was obvious she was favoring the opposite side, though it didn’t seem like it hurt her mobility all that much. “Good push! We need to keep going!” She instinctively ducked as gunfire broke out behind us, and we both turned around to see a contingent of RPR storming out of the headquarters after us. We both raised our weapons and fired back at them, trying to keep them suppressed while the rest of the slaves ran further away. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much cover out here for us to hide behind; the fifth ring was open almost all the way around, except for the stairway on the far side that went down to the fourth ring. The only things up here were the RPR headquarters and one or two buildings that I couldn’t see an entrance to, along with a rope bridge that cut the ring in half.

Then ponies started shooting at us from below, and I could see an entire army making their way up to the upper levels. A few pegasi flew directly at us, but Ace and I shot them down before they could get a good shot on us. “We need a plan!” I screamed at Ace, firing a few more shots at the headquarters before my rifle spat out its empty magazine. I quickly slotted a new one in and tried to shield myself with a rough rock face that provided at least a little cover for me to reload and get my bearings. I could see Gauge, Nova, and SCaR in the middle of the slaves; at least they were alright. But that was going to change soon if we didn’t get out of here.

Then RPR ponies started coming up the stairwell from the fourth ring. I cursed as we got caught in the crossfire, and ponies started falling—how many were just ducking for cover and how many were cut down, I couldn’t tell. But we were pinned down, and we were either all going to get killed or have to surrender.

“It’s no use!” I shouted at Ace as she tried to gain some altitude and suppress the RPR coming out of the stairwell. “We can’t win this!”

“We ain’t gonna have to!” Ace screamed back. “The bridge! Get everypony on the bridge!”

I had no idea what her plan was, but I didn’t like it; the bridge had even less cover than the sides of the ring, and ponies below us could just shoot through the floorboards and kill us. At least we had the stone floor protecting us on the fifth ring. But if we stayed here, there wasn’t any winning. Might as well gamble on some crazy plan.

“The bridge!” I screamed at the slaves, trying to relay Ace’s plan. “Get on the fucking bridge!” I limped toward the bridge, moving as fast as I could despite my sling, trying to spur them to action. When I looked over my corner, I had a few of the slaves plus Nova and Gauge following me. The rest were too confused or panicky to realize what was happening, and I watched them fall one after another to the onslaught.

Ace landed next to me and my friends. “You!” she shouted, grabbing Nova by the shoulders and dragging her closer. She pressed a knife against Nova’s chest and pointed to the ropes holding the bridge to the top of the mountain. “Cut the middle ropes! All of them!”

“What the fuck are you doing?!” I shouted at Ace. “We’re all gonna fall!”

“That’s the fucking plan!” Ace shouted. “Hold onto the planks! Hang on for your life!” Then she flew off and began slicing through ropes with a knife of her own. Nova swallowed hard, opened her mouth to say something, but instead frantically flapped her wings and took off after Ace.

I looked at Gauge, and I could see the mixture of fear and confusion in his eyes that had to be reflected in my own. “Fuck it, if we’re gonna die, at least it won’t be boring!”

Then I hit the deck, wrapped my good hoof around a plank in front of me, and prayed.

Every rope that Nova and Ace cut made the bridge sag a little more. I started feeling like I was leaning forward, and when I opened my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the ground below through two planks. But at least the RPR had stopped shooting at those of us lying down on the bridge; I think they thought we were surrendering, so their attention was entirely focused on Ace and Nova. I could hear some of them stepping onto the bridge behind us, shouting orders, trying to get us to move.

Then I heard Ace scream “Hang on!” and I suddenly felt weightless.

It was a good thing I was holding onto the bridge with all my might; she’d cut all of the ropes except for the two holding the bridge to the far end of the ring, so it began to fall and pivot, slowly at first, but picking up speed. The ponies who’d stepped onto the bridge after us screamed as they plummeted and the bridge fell away from them, leaving them with nothing to hang onto. I’m pretty sure I was screaming, and one of the surviving slaves in front of me lost his grip and went flying, nearly knocking me off of the bridge as he flailed. But then the bridge hit its low point, and it began to swing upwards again.

I was pretty surprised when I felt a gentle breeze and saw moonlight on my coat during the upswing.

Suddenly, the whole bridge went slack, and I heard the ropes tearing and planks breaking apart. I flew off of the bridge, screaming, before hitting the ground and tumbling across the dirt and stone. I must’ve only fallen like fifteen or twenty feet, because I was able to stand and move my limbs again after a few seconds to recover. My everything hurt like all fuck, but I could move, and I could fight. And somehow, we were outside of Hole.

I spotted Gauge lying and groaning just a little bit away, so I hobbled over to him and helped him stand. “Come on, Gauge, you’re alright, right?” I asked him. I could taste blood pouring into my mouth, and the left side of my face really hurt. I felt around with my tongue and realized I was missing a tooth; who knew where that went, but that wasn’t all that important right now. With a little bit of effort, I finally got Gauge to his hooves, and we began to hobble away.

Nova and Ace fluttered down next to us, and Ace quickly gunned down a lone RPR pony running toward us from the checkpoint between Hole and the slums. “Fuck, that worked. I didn’t think it would actually work.”

I blinked in astonishment. “So why the fuck did you try it?!”

“Quit your bitching! You’re fine now, ain’t ya?” she snapped back. Around us, the few slaves who survived the escape took off through the checkpoint, quickly dispersing through the town. I didn’t see any more RPR; they must’ve all been back in Hole, and it’d take them a little while to catch up if they were on the rings. Still, we had to watch out for pegasi following us, so we didn’t waste any more time talking as we hurried away from Hole.

When we were on the outskirts of the city, we finally stopped to catch our breath and assess our wounds. Nova immediately flew over to Gauge, and the two of them hugged and kissed while I just took out a wad of gauze from my saddlebags and stuffed it into my mouth. Ace sat down near a boulder and wiped her brow; I could see all the sweat on her body glistening in the moonlight, along with the blood still running down her forelegs. I tossed her the roll of gauze, and she nodded to me before tearing a strip off and bandaging the bullet wound on her shoulder.

“We need to keep moving,” I said, speaking a little funny because of the gauze in my mouth. “It’s only a matter of time before the RPR starts doing what they do best. And I’ll fucking kill myself if Hunter finds us again rather than let that bitch take me back to Hole.” Sighing, I turned to Ace. “Got any tips?”

But Ace wasn’t paying attention to me. Instead she had her eyes on SCaR, a thoughtful look on her face. I sighed and flicked a pebble at her, which got her attention. Clearing her throat, she nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got something.” Standing up, she checked her pistols and expanded her rifle, holding it in her hooves while she fluttered up a foot or two. “I’m gonna try to harass any hunting parties they send out after you. Go due south for two days. There’s an old steel foundry that ain’t too far from Hole that we’ll meet up at. It’s a big complex that’s seen better days; you can’t possibly miss it.”

“And from there?” I prompted her.

She just shrugged. “We’ll figure it out then. Though if my hunch is right, I think I know a way you lot can pay me back.” She fiddled with her rifle a little bit more and looked right at me. “The foundry in two days. If you ain’t there I can’t promise I’ll stick around. Got it?”

I nodded. “Got it.”

“Good. Best of luck to you.”

“And good hunting to you,” I said. She smirked at me, winked once, and flew back off in the direction of Hole.

Grunting, I stood up and turned to my friends. “Well, we got this far. Let’s not waste any more time. Let’s put some distance between us and this hellhole and never think about this ever again.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Gauge said. Nova just trotted up to me, nuzzled my cheek, and wrapped me in a big, feathery wing hug for a few seconds. Smiling, I nuzzled her back, and then the three of us set off at a hobbling pace toward the south.

We had survived Hole, and that was a hell of a lot more than I’d thought we’d be able to say when all was said and through.