With the relays set up, the days passed pretty easily for a while. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice I was away from the lair – every time I wanted to print something and realized it would be a huge production that should probably wait for a while, I was reminded. The girls and I went to the city a lot – they had casual friends among the diamond dogs, sort of like we had Perro and Rover, and favorite hangout spots, and the Alpha made sure to discreetly let us know when we had to be back on display, although it was an unspoken rule that a couple of us would stay behind just in case something came up or he wanted a quickie. And there was a *lot* of sex – not just the Alpha, who came by at least once most days and for the moment at least was focused on me, but the other girls who took it seriously when he told them to teach me how to be better at sex. I was already pretty *practiced*, but they had some tricks I hadn’t heard of.

…I also had a bit of a crush on Pippi. She was just so enthusiastic, it was contagious. Squee usually inserted herself into the mix whenever she noticed us making out, but I didn’t mind reassuring her that I wasn’t stealing her friend. I eventually got my own room and my own bed, but I kept sleeping with the parrots because their feathers made very nice pillows.

But when things were quiet, I could always go find Star and Fire and we could hang out for a while. Star didn’t die – they didn’t get better, either but they didn’t get worse, the sickness instead just persisting at seemingly random intensity from day to day. After a month, they’d learned enough to do some more tests and decided that it was probably a parasitic infestation, which meant they just needed to identify the parasite and then find a poison tailored to kill it, assuming it was something the medical library recognized. None of the poisons were safe, so they couldn’t just take a cocktail like with antibiotics.

“The Old Bitch offered to try curing me,” they mentioned.

“Don’t do it,” I said. “She’ll kill you. She hates us.”

“She hates you,” Star said. “I don’t think she hates me. And I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

“It’s not worth the risk,” I said, grabbing on to their little floating star avatar and squeezing it to my chest. “Please!”

They laughed. “That’s the same thing Fire said. I guess I’m outvoted.”

I glowered at them. “If I have to sacrifice my principles to keep you alive, then fine. We’re a democracy now.”

They stuck out their tongue – they manifested a tongue entirely to stick it out at me. “I’m not that desperate yet, you don’t have to hold me down with systems of government.”

But Star’s sickness aside, I was enjoying myself. I *like* meeting new people and there were a lot of new people to meet. I didn’t entirely neglect my duties, though – I spent at least an hour a day training the warp crystal (yes, this was pathetic, it should have been more like eight hours) and it only took two weeks to come up with an initial design for a heat-resistent, insulated nest/eggset combo. It had to be built in the forge, though, which meant it was on indefinite hold since Star wasn’t feeling well enough to watch the forge and make sure it didn’t burn down our lair, Fire wasn’t qualified, and I wasn’t there.

When Perro brought a spare mini-printer over, I knew I hadn’t asked for it but I figured it was just a thoughtful gesture on Star’s part. We put it in the workroom next to the gem maker, and used it as we assumed it was intended, to make generic bits of crafting supplies for Cinder to craft with, since she refused to let us use it to make new outfits directly.

In retrospect I probably should have asked about it, or at least thanked them.

Star and Fire and I were sitting in a rainbow crystal cave in the Virtual World talking about what game to play next. Since I was getting plenty of sex and Star wasn’t really interested, we’d shifted towards board games and card games. One of Star’s favorites was Hive Escape, but it really needed more than three people to be fun – there was a lot of cooperative strategy but the key was to figure out who was the secret hive mind agent and half the hive mind powers didn’t really make sense unless there were at least two agents, which meant at least five players but preferably six.

“It looks like Nightwing and Cold Snap are on,” I said, checking the directory. “I’ll pop over and ask them.”

“Or you could just send them a message,” Fire said.

“Or I could just go there and ask,” I replied, and teleported to their location. They weren’t set private, so I wasn’t too worried about walking in on something I wasn’t supposed to see. Also, Nightwing didn’t seem interested in the kind of things I expected not to be supposed to see.

“…what are we going to do then? Print up a dinghy and row across the ocean?” Cold Snap asked.

“Madam Purr managed it,” Nightwing said. “I had something else in mind, but I don’t want to risk giving it away. It’s not that I don’t trust you, or I wouldn’t even be…” she trailed off, noticing me standing there.

“Hi!” I said. “Sorry to interrupt, but I wondered if you two wanted to play Hive Escape? We need more players for it to be fun.”

“We’re kind of in the middle of something,” Cold Snap snaped.

“No we’re not,” Nightwing said. “Nothing important, anyway.”

“It’s a really fun game,” I said. “I mean, most people I know that tried it like it. It’s cooperative but some people are traitors…”

Cold Snap leapt at me, pinning me to the ground with her dragon claws. “How much did you hear?”

“Uh… I wasn’t really paying attention,” I said, letting her hold me down. “I was just waiting for a pause so I could ask about the game.”

She glowered at me. “Get out of here.”

I looked over at Nightwing, who was still a harpy, and had one feathery wing-arm covering her face. “How about you? Interested?”

“Maybe some other time,” she said. “It does sound like fun, but I don’t think I’m in the mood for being social.”

“Fiiine,” I said, “Sorry to bother you then.” I teleported back to Star and Fire. “No luck,” I said. “and Cold Snap was acting really weird.”

“You interrupted their date,” Fire said. “Just send a message next time – they probably don’t even know about the privacy settings.”

“Well, if we can’t play Hive Escape…” I trailed off, as my faceplate alerted me to someone approaching in the real world. I’d set an alarm because the other girls weren’t very good with kobold etiquette and would just talk to my unconscious body if I let them. “Just a sec, visitor.”

I woke up to see Cold Snap standing in the doorway of the room where I slept with the parrots, holding a giant spear in her mouth.

“Careful!” I said, moving to the side so it wouldn’t be pointed at me. “That looks sharp.”

She stood there frozen, eyes tracking me.

I smiled at her. “Is that a present for Nightwing? I don’t think she’s allowed to have weapons.”

She backed out of the room, the curtain falling back into place, obscuring her. I held on to my connection to the warp crystal, though, just in case she changed her mind and rushed back in to kill me after all. I played back the log of what I’d overheard and payed attention this time.

Oh. They were planning to escape. In a dinghy.

I was a bit torn. On the one hand, if they managed to get away it could be really bad for me, personally, and the collective in general. Luna would find out I was still alive and maybe come back to round us all up and put us in cages.

On the other hand, it would be pretty hypocritical to help hold them here against their will. I hadn’t agreed to be their jailor and if I had been asked, I would have said ‘no’. And when I put it that way, the right course of action was obvious.

I went back to the Virtual World and explained what was going on to Star and Fire. “…so we might want to start making plans to evacuate, if Luna decides to raid this place.”

“I’ve been planning to evacuate since we moved in,” Fire said. “Thanks for the heads up, though.”

“I’ll try to talk them out of it,” I said. “I don’t think Cold Snap really wants to leave, but she still thinks of herself as an Equestrian, you know? It’s one of those ‘how could I live with myself if I didn’t try’ things.” I winced. “Also the plan seems really stupid. They’re going to get lost and die of thirst or else get murdered by pirates.”

“If we do run, I’ll have to stay behind,” Star said. “Luna probably isn’t going to kill me, and trying to travel in my condition probably will.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “I guess I’ll try to talk them out of it *really hard*.”

I mean, I had an 18 charisma. How hard could it be?

It wasn’t hard to track them down. I knew where they lived, and they were both in Nightwing’s room, shoving things into saddle bags. They froze as I walked in. Well, Cold Snap froze. Nightwing froze for about two seconds, then started packing again.

“Hi, guys,” I said. “What’s the rush?”

“As if you don’t know,” Cold Snap said.

“If you think I’m going to tell the diamond dogs that you’re escaping, it’s too late to start running,” I said. “Even if I haven’t done it yet I could do it in less than a second, and they’d block all the exits and catch you. Unless you think you can fight your way out?”

“We’re not just staying here to die,” Nightwing said.

“Why would you die?” I asked. “I mean, you haven’t even done anything yet except plan to escape, and everyone already knows you want to escape. All they’d do is watch you for a while and… probably take away the mini-printer which would be kind of annoying.”

Nightwing finished packing, and shifted her saddlebags onto her back. “Okay, you have a point. Still, waiting isn’t going to make it better.”

“It depends how long you wait,” I said. “No one can stay vigilant forever. Also, and I’m going to be up front about this, your plan is stupid. You can’t print a seagoing vessel on a mini-printer.”

“That isn’t our plan,” Nightwing said.

“Oh?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Also it would be really bad for us if you left right now,” I added, “The kids are too young to move easily and Star is sick and might die.”

Cold Snap looked confused. “What?”

“If you leave, we have to leave too,” I said. “We can’t wait here for Luna to find us. She was *really mad* the last time we saw her and that was before…” I trailed off. “Um…”

“Before you blew up our ship and killed all my friends,” Nightwing said.

“Eep.”

“You kobolds have no concept of operational security,” she said. “I figured it out by looking at Fire’s personal logs and watching the recording of him setting the trap.”

“Er, it’s not that we have no security,” I said, cringing, “it’s that we didn’t bring a computer security guy with us. Or a doctor. Or… lots of other specialties.”

Nightwing rolled her eyes. “So you decided it was a good idea to hand out headsets to everyone who didn’t even ask, that let them steal all your technology?”

“It’s not my technology,” I said. “It’s all freely available, public domain stuff. I mean, except for the avatars I guess since I made those. The public library avatars are kind of meh.”

“There’s a plan for a bomb to destroy a city,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“Yeah, there’s, like, six different ways to do that,” I said. “I don’t even know why we have those patterns, but they’re ancient tech. Haven’t been secret for hundreds of years.”

“What do you mean Star is sick and might die!” Cold Snap shouted, interrupting us.

I was confused for a few seconds. Why would she even care? “Oh!” I said. “Not your friend Bright Star. My friend Star, the kobold. They got hurt fighting the garbage monsters and still haven’t recovered. And… okay, I was exaggerating. They wouldn’t die because we wouldn’t take them with us. We’d have to leave them behind while we escaped, and I’d probably never see them again.” I paused. “So I guess it’s not that much different than you and Bright Star, since it doesn’t look like you were planning on taking her.”

Cold Snap shrank into a little ball.

I turned back to look at Nightwing. She looked back at me. I frowned. “I kind of want to have you join our collective. You really went all out learning our technology. I don’t even know how to look at other peoples’ logs. I didn’t know you *could*.”

Nightwing narrowed her eyes. “And I want you to suffer for destroying the Dominance. You also insulted Princess Luna on multiple occasions, engaged in acts of piracy on the open seas, and helped murder a group of Diamond Dogs after invading their home. Each of those would be punishable by death in many nations.”

“One more reason to hate the concept of nations, I guess,” I said, folding my arms. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. My conscience is clear.”

“Is it?” said a voice from behind me. Cinder’s voice. Apparently we hadn’t been talking quietly enough to keep everyone else from coming to listen in. “I think I’d like to hear the explanation for that.”

“Pirates? You worked with pirates?” Pippi said, looking horrified.

“We were captured by pirates!” I said quickly, trying to think of how to word this without lying because Nightwing had probably watched all my logs too and would call me out on it. “I convinced them to let us join their crew instead of killing us. We ‘engaged in acts of piracy’ by fighting what we assumed were other pirate ships, because according to Pareto, no one else was stupid enough to try to sail surface ships anymore. I know that’s not true now, but… I don’t think it was your ship. This happened years later.

“And fighting the Diamond Dogs was self-defense. They attacked us first, when we were just exploring the surface. I think all of you are familiar with that.”

“They fought to capture you,” Nightwing said. “You slaughtered them to the last puppy.”

“What puppies?” I asked. “I killed one of them. One. After he shot down my girlfriend right next to me, while she was armed with a stupid net gun and glue bombs. They were the ones fighting to kill.” Come to think of it, though, he had been a little short for a diamond dog. Had I really killed a puppy?

“And the Dominance?” Bright Star asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Luna wanted to capture us so we could be her neutered pets, so we ran away and set a bunch of traps to blow up the lair and anything in it we couldn’t take with us. I don’t know how that would destroy an airship.”

“Gold plated, gem-encrusted darts in the dart traps,” Nightwing said. “With hidden bombs inside, triggered to go off once they were on the ship.”

I laughed. “Oh, wow! Yeah, that sounds like a fair trap. You can’t blame us for people setting off our traps! They knew they weren’t invited.”

Nightwing glared at me and made it very clear that she could blame us for that. But Bright Star looked a little less betrayed.

“Which leaves… insulting Luna?” Cinder said.

“Yeah, have you ever met her?” I replied, grimacing. The parrots and Madam Purr laughed a little, and Cinder gave a small smile. The ponies still looked angry, but I was pretty sure insulting Luna wasn’t actually a capital crime, or she would have just killed me herself.

Cinder grabbed me by the tail, and dragged me back away from Cold Snap and Nightwing, standing between us and herding them to the back of the room. “Alright. It sounds like Nightwing has a reasonable grudge,” she said. “There’s a difference between setting a trap to keep people out of your lair and setting a trap to blow up their friends.”

I frowned. “All of them were there to kidnap us, though. It’s not like they were innocent.”

“We were there to *rescue you*,” Nightwing said.

“Then maybe the hail of darts should have convinced you that we didn’t want any!” I replied, a bit angrily. I think I was really angry at Fire, though – it *was* kind of cheaty to trick them into blowing up their own airship.

“We rescue people who don’t want rescuing a lot,” she said. “People are stupid and paranoid.”

“If you were dragons, I’d just let you fight,” Cinder said.

“Yes, let us fight,” Nightwing said, baring some very non-pony-like fangs. They were… actually kind of adorable. I imagined them sinking into my flesh… nope, still adorable.

Cinder shooed her back against the wall. “But you’re not dragons and you’d end up killing each other, and how would we explain that to the Alpha?”

“If they were Abyssinians, they would prepare a series of riddles, and whoever could not answer the other’s would be cast into the abyss,” said Madam Purr.

“Really?” Pippi asked. “You have riddle contests to the death?”

Madam Purr was silent, then said softly, “No, not really. We’d take them before a judge and jury, like most civilized places.”

“What do Diamond Dogs do?” I asked.

“Pretty much the same as dragons,” Cinder said. “Only they usually end up killing each other.”

“What about kobolds?” asked Nightwing. “Please enlighten us with your superior method of settling disputes.”

“We do everything by consensus,” I said. “For something where one kobold thinks another did something wrong, we get a kobold that both sides trust to mediate. Sometimes, they agree, and suggest a punishment, and if the kobold being punished respects them enough they’ll allow themselves to be punished.”

“Not a lot of capital punishment, then,” Squee said.

I shook my head. “We’re more civilized than that. The closest we get is a trap gauntlet.”

Nightwing looked interested, so I explained. “One kobold sets a bunch of traps – good ones, lethal ones. The kobold we trust verifies that they’re fair. Then the punishment is to run through the labyrinth. A lot of kobolds will agree to that – we really like traps.”

“So is that a solution you’d accept?” Cinder asked. “A trap gauntlet?”

I waggled a hand in the air. “It’s kind of a weak punishment for genocide,” I said.

“You killed a lot of ponies on the Dominance, but it wasn’t *genocide*,” Bright Star said.

“Huh?” I looked confused. “No no no, Nightwing was the one trying to commit genocide. She wants to help Luna round us all up, put us in cages, and forcibly sterilize us, or do you think when I said ‘neutered pets’ that I was being figurative?”

“You must have misunderstood,” Bright Star said, as many of the others looked suitably horrified. “Luna may be a bit out of touch with modern times, but she’d never do… that.”

“Let me find the log,” I said. It took about thirty seconds, it was a ways back.

Luna’s recorded voice rang from my faceplate: “Come with me to Equestria and let us help you control your population. With education and careful management we can find a place for you here, without needing to swarm like locusts across the land. None of you need be harmed! We would stick to voluntary measures as much as possible. If your numbers outpaced our ability to support you –”

“Huh,” I said. “I guess I interrupted her before she spelled it out, but I think it’s pretty obvious where she was going with that.”

“Yeah, that was… pretty bad,” the unicorn agreed. “I don’t think Celestia would have let her go through with it.”

“Who?” I asked.

“She’s the one who’s actually in charge,” Bright Star said. “Luna is a newer princess, sort of like Cadance and Twilight.”

“Luna is nothing like them!” Nightwing protested. “She’s Celestia’s equal. They’ve always ruled together!”

“Except for the thousand years that Luna spent imprisoned on the moon,” Bright Star said, deadpan.

“Oh right, the ‘army of evil’ thing,” I said. “I forgot about that.”

“So, the trap gauntlet,” Cinder prompted.

“She already did it,” I said. “I mean, if we’re going with collective punishment, and apparently Fire decided that we are,” I grumbled that bit, “then the Dominance collectively went through the traps.”

Cinder nodded. “Which means it’s your turn.”

“I don’t know,” I said. It seemed wrong, but it was hard to put a finger on why. Was I just scared?

“I think it’s an excellent idea,” Nightwing said, grinning.

“But would it solve anything?” I asked. “If I went through your traps, you’d consider that payment for all our supposed crimes?” Ah, right, that was why. I was never afraid of *her*. “You wouldn’t let the Princess put us on trial?”

Her grin vanished.

“I don’t think you have the authority for that, do you,” I said, narrowing my eye-spots.

“The Alpha has the authority we require,” Madam Purr purred. “We must report this matter to him, along with all of the kobolds’ secret crimes.”

“No!” Nightwing said.

“You can’t!” I said at the same time.

“Don’t worry, you’ll feel much better once all of this is out in the open!” Pippi said, with a reassuring smile. I was not reassured.

So we found ourselves in front of a thousand diamond dogs, the Alpha presiding, while Nightwing and I presented our cases before him. Nightwing and I stood on platforms around the edge of the arena, the diamond dogs witnessing the trial from the stands behind us, while the Alpha and several other important Diamond Dogs held court from a box raised above us, just below the cavern’s roof.

Fire and Star were on my platform with me, for support in case things went sideways, and because they were involved in the charges. Star looked miserable, but they were well enough to stay conscious and lucid, at least. And also to send me messages telling me not to panic, although they could have done that from anywhere.

“It’s still not too late to run for it,” Fire said, while we listened to Nightwing putting everything that we’d done in the worst possible light. “Give the word and I’ll set off my diversion.”

“But then we’d have to run again and leave everything behind again and start over *again*,” I whined. “And it’ll just keep happening, over and over.”

“Then we’ll start over, over and over,” Star sent back. “It’s what we do.”

Nightwing finished her story, and was just starting in on some philosophical diatribe about why I sucked when the Alpha cut her off with a wave of his paw. He turned his gaze on me, and fixed me in place with his stare.

“You wrong me,” the Alpha growled, menace in his voice and in his gaze. I flattened my ears… and his expression softened. “But that wrong I forgive. Soldiers fight soldiers, and the leader is dead and her pack shattered. That is vengeance enough for me. Not every soldier needs to die.”

For a second, I was almost relieved.

“I cannot forgive!” cried the Old Bitch, standing next to him. “I demand vengeance for the death of my pup! He was no soldier!”

“He fought like a soldier,” I said. “His death was already vengeance. Do we really want to just… bounce revenge back and forth like that?”

The Alpha nodded. “The cycle of vengeance burns until it dies. You can forgive the one who wrongs you, but you do not. The chance for forgiveness lies with the Old Bitch now.”

“I melt the flesh from her bones!” the Old Bitch snarled.

“You try,” the Alpha said, shaking his head.

“I claim vengeance as well!” Nightwing said.

“You are not of our pack,” the Alpha said.

She motioned at me. “Neither are they!”

The Alpha glowered at her. “They live with us, perform the work we ask, share their wealth and knowledge freely. You could do this but you refuse, again and again you refuse. You are Equestrian and serve only the Princesses.”

Also, we weren’t the ones asking for revenge, but details.

Nightwing stepped back, then recovered her composure and stared back at the Alpha with determination. “Give me my vengeance and I will forswear the Princesses, and serve only you.” She looked like she was going to be sick, as she added, “In all ways.”

The Alpha drummed his claws against the edge of his throne. “Very well. If Wave survives the Old Bitch, you take your turn.”

“Not Wave,” Nightwing said. “I claim vengeance against Fire.”

“Bring it on,” Fire replied, mouth flat and jaggy.

The Diamond Dogs had an armory, with all kinds of period-appropriate weapons. I took a crossbow, a cutlass, and a spear, along with some light armor. I also had the warp crystal tucked under my chestplate – this wasn’t the sort of fight where I was willing to hold back.

The Old Bitch smirked as she watched me arm myself. “Weapons do not save you,” she said. “My aspect is growth and rot.”

“Sounds tasty,” I said, cracking my faceplate and licking my tongue over the edge. I wasn’t actually sure that I’d be able to get the warp crystal to eat her magic like it had eaten Luna’s, or it if would do anything useful if I tried, but I wasn’t about to taunt her by telling her the techniques I was actually planning to use.

“So are we doing this?” Fire asked, loading himself down with weapons of his own.

I nodded. “Even if we both lose, we’ll have Star and Perro and Rover to look after the kids. And if a single opponent is enough to make us drop everything and run, we really are going to be running forever.”

I sent, because I wasn’t going to say it aloud, “And I’m pretty sure your diversion is going to kill a lot of innocent people. I’m still not happy about the Dominance.”

“If they follow a leader who’s going to order our deaths, they’re not innocent,” Fire sent back. “But fine, we can play this straight. Try not to die.”

The Old Bitch and I were up first, so we headed out onto the sands, stained with the blood of countless duels before ours. The fight wasn’t technically to the death, but I was sure she was going to try to kill me, and sparing her wouldn’t win me any mercy. So yeah. To the death.

She struck first, opening her crystal eye and sending a wave of sickly green light towards me. In the mindscape, I imagined a ripple running across the ground, leaving the parched dirt cracked and broken behind it. I imagined the dragon leaping to the ground before me, and breathing fire that melted the ground into glass, deflecting the attack to the sides. In the real world, it looked like an invisible bubble warding off her energy.

I tried to shoot her with the crossbow, but the bolts rotted to dust before they got halfway. Reinforcing their inertia didn’t help much. So for my third shot, I launched myself, using the super-jump trick. The protected aura moved with me, but as my spear touched the Old Bitch’s robe it crumbled to dust. The sudden lack of impact made me stumble and I rolled to a stop at her feet.

“DIE!” she screamed, thrusting her hand in my direction, and redoubling her effort to disintegrate me with her magic.

“You first!” I shouted back, and punched her as hard as I could, guiding the warp crystal through one of the maneuvers I’d been practicing: loading down my fist with all the inertia the warp crystal could manage as soon as it was in motion, reducing hers as it hit, and then after she was launched into the air, I shifted her inertia the other way to make her hit the wall hard.

The wall cracked a bit. The Old Bitch cracked a lot. Most of her fell to the ground in a heap, while the rest stuck to the wall, leaving a dog-shaped splotch with blood splattering out to the sides.

I barely noticed, because my hand was on fire. I screamed in agony as the fingers turned black and crumbled to dust, the rot spreading slowly towards my wrist. I tried to get the dragon to stop it somehow, but the pain was too much and I couldn’t hold on to the mindscape.

The Diamond Dogs cheered as the blackness crept up my lower arm.

I lay down in the sand, and drew my cutlass. The first hack dug into my flesh, but fell far short of removing the limb. I had to do it again, and again – it probably would have gone faster if I could have hit the same spot twice… if I could have held on to the mindscape enough to activate a simple inertial shift on the cutlass in motion it would have been trivial! But I couldn’t manage either, and the rot had reached my elbow by the time I gave up, my arm mangled but still firmly attached.

There was one more thing I could try. My cybernetic leg was usually set to match my other leg’s strength, so that I could walk. I removed that limitation. Curling it up across my body, I dug my footclaws into the mangled ruin of my upper arm, and grabbed hold of the bone underneath… and then kicked at full, augmented force.

I blacked out for a few seconds, and when I could see again, my arm was gone, ripped out of its socket and lying a few feet away. But to my horror, the rot was spreading up my leg, now.

Well, that was fine. My leg was easy to remove.

It was easy to remove with two arms, when I wasn’t working through a haze of pain and on the verge of passing out from blood loss.

I managed it, though, and crawled away from the rotting limbs, hoping that the curse wouldn’t be able to crawl its way along the bloodstains.

Then I passed out and bled to death.

Do kobolds normally dream when they’re dead? I hadn’t the previous time, but maybe this time they kept me alive but unconscious longer to deal with my wounds.

At any rate, I dreamed. They were not good dreams. Crawling decay disintegrating everything was a recurring theme – parts of me, other people nearby, the mines, the city… the world, eventually? I was crawling on my remaining hand and knee through a writhing mass of black decay when Luna appeared in a flash of light and banished everything, replacing it with a gentle snowfall.

Her eyes fixed on me and she glared at me silently for a while.

“Am I dead?” I asked, because the snow looked a little like clouds and that made me think of heaven. I am not a lucid dreamer.

“Clearly not,” she replied. “Where are you?”

My faceplate had rotted away, but in my dream I forgot my face was unexpressive, and I smiled a big, toothy grin at her. “I think I’m in heaven.”

She gave a pained sigh, and vanished in a flash of light. I dreamed of resting, limbless (somehow it seemed logical for my other arm and leg to vanish so that I could be a snake or something) in a field of snow, for a really long time, and then I woke up, which is the only reason I can remember this.

I don’t know if it was really Luna. We didn’t hear anything from her right away.

I hope by now you aren’t surprised to hear that I woke up alive. I was a little surprised to have two arms – cybernetic limbs were the easiest kind of cybernetics to install, but it still wasn’t trivial when you were starting from a new amputee. It was stranger (and a little jarring) to see all four limbs brown and furry, but apparently Pippi had told them about how hard it was to accessorize with obvious cybernetics, so they’d disguised them.

They being both Star *and* Fire. I hadn’t been able to see Fire’s fight, but he’d won his duel as well. Nightwing was dead.

“She was good,” he said, “I was better.” He paused a bit, then added. “And luckier. A lot luckier. I almost thought she was throwing the fight on purpose, but if she was she was a really good actor.”

I had no choice but to take his word for it. I never did figure out how Nightwing looked at other peoples’ logs.

We did manage to piece together her plan, though, by looking through what she was packing once I was well enough to go back to the menagerie. She’d designed a transmission tower small enough to carry but powerful enough to send a burst message to the moon, once. She’d been planning to call for help. I don’t think it would have worked since we’d already asked the Nyx to stay quiet about us, but if she’d only said that she herself needed rescuing, maybe? The Nyx were pretty stupid sometimes.

Or maybe the Equestrians had radio, and she was planning to signal them? If you fly high enough the horizon is pretty far away.

I also got a slightly better description of the battle itself from Pippi, but she wasn’t a fighter and didn’t really know what she was describing. The coup de grace where Fire chopped off Nightwing’s head was pretty definitive, though.

She also described how the Old Bitch’s apprentice, who inherited her magic eye, had been given the opportunity to pursue vengeance against me on behalf of the Old Bitch herself, and had declined. No one else had stepped forward either – she’d been respected, and feared, but few had really liked her.

“I let the apprentice try her healing magic on me,” Star mentioned, during our virtual hangout time. “It didn’t cure things instantly, but I’ve been feeling better. She comes by to use her magic to weaken the parasites once a day.”

“And you trust her?” I asked.

“She didn’t kill you when she had the chance,” Star said. “I don’t think you could have fought her off unconscious. Besides, it’s Perro. I trust Perro.”

“Wait,” I said. “Perro’s a girl?”

Cold Snap didn’t try to escape again, but she was afraid of me for a while. Eventually I got tired of her flinching every time I glanced her way.

“You do realize that I never had anything against you, right?” I asked. “And if you thought I was going to get revenge on you, why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?”

She looked confused.

“I was lying unconscious in the arena and the Alpha asked if anyone else wanted to kill me,” I said. “I don’t think I could have fought back.”

“I don’t think I could have killed you in front of all those people,” she replied, looking embarrassed.

Bright Star hugged her in the weird way that ponies had to, slinging a forehoof over her neck and nuzzling. “I don’t think you could have killed her at all,” she said softly. “You’re not that kind of pony.”

I didn’t bring up the way she’d snuck into my room with a spear while I was in the virtual world. Maybe Bright Star was right, and she wouldn’t have gone through with it.

Cold Star hugged her friend, and sighed. “You *are* that kind of pony, Wave,” she said. “You’ve killed, more than once, and I don’t care whether it was justified or not, I can’t feel comfortable knowing you could do the same thing to me.”

I pouted. “I’ve literally never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me right at that instant.”

“It’s an emotional thing,” Bright Star said. “She can’t just stop feeling her emotions because it’s unfair. I sort of feel the same way, although it’s kind of a turn on since I know you aren’t going to actually do it.”

Bright Star had been a little on edge ever since the arena. It made her a lot worse at sex, somehow, but I still hardly ever won when we played together.

“Ponies,” Cinder said, rolling her eyes. “Hey, Wave, do you want to fertilize my eggs?”

I grinned at her. “You know I’m always up for that.”

She flicked me on the faceplate. “I’m being serious. The migration’s coming up, so I’m fertile for the next month or so.”

“Oh,” I said. “You sure you don’t want to go off and find a real dragon?”

“Dragons are jerks,” she said. “I don’t want to raise a clutch of jerks. You put on a good show in the arena – ripping your own arm off like that? Our kids wouldn’t be dweebs, and you’re only about 50% of a jerk, so they might even be tolerable to be around.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I think.”

“The Alpha gets the first shot,” she continued, “but I don’t know if dragons are fertile with diamond dogs. I know we are with kobolds.”

“I get it,” I said. “I’m a barely tolerable backup plan.”

She grinned. “Smart, too.”

“My services are at your disposal,” I told her. “I was kind of disappointed Ash’s clutch only had two eggs.”

If that sounds awfully casual, well, we’d already grown a lot closer. She’d started joining me and Star and Fire for game night, and I’d taught her how to use the avatar builder and how to design new patterns for the mini-printer, although she still preferred to make things by hand.

About a week later, as the four of us watched the space station we’d been trying to save disintegrate as the fires and structural damage spiraled out of control, she sent me a private message. “Tonight.”

“When?” I sent back, only to be immediately dragged out of the virtual world by a loud growl two inches from my faceplate. Cinder was there in my bed, pinning me down.

I cracked my faceplate and kissed her, our long tongues entwining and wrestling for dominance… and used the distraction to disable the governors on my cybernetics, so that I could roll her off of me and onto the floor, pinning her down in turn.

…she let me do it, don’t get me wrong. Dragons are stronger than cybernetics. But she seemed to appreciate the gesture, pretending to struggle (and I’m sure that was pretending, since she didn’t even break free from my flesh-and-blood arm) as I bit down on her neck and roughly thrust inside her.

Dragons are surprisingly soft on the inside… a little too hot, though. I compensated by doing quick thrusts, holding myself at her entrance to cool down between… until I couldn’t hold back anymore, and shoved inside her and held it there while I came, screaming in pleasure and pain.

At least my poor penis got to rest for a while while I finished her off with my tongue.

The next night, she insisted on being on top.

The night after, the parrots joined in and we had a very messy foursome.

By the end of the month, I was pretty sure someone was pregnant with something. Cinder certainly was – and while I hoped that her eggs were mine, well… as I’ve said before I had *plenty* of biological children and didn’t need to stress over it. I was sure dragon puppies would be adorable too.

After that…

I guess you could say we lived happily ever after, at least for a while. The Alpha never let us put up a big transmission tower to reconnect with the moon, but we had each other, and the other girls from the menagerie, and an increasing number of friendly diamond dogs of all ages and professions, and we were safe enough and happy enough and we could finally stop worrying about when the next hammer would fall.

Things kept happening, don’t get me wrong. But for the most part they didn’t happen to me, so I’m not really sure that the rest is my story to tell.

Who wants to go next?

Author's Notes:

And that's pretty much all I have written so far. As I'm sure you've noticed because some of you commented on it, there's plenty of loose ends, but this seemed like a good stopping point.

Next up is a time skip and then another narrator. I'll post more when I have another 'book' done, probably as a sequel. I already started writing it but it's not going very fast, so it'll be a while.