Chapter 2: Misconceptions
“Ah! Dirt, dirt! Get away, dirt! Oh! Make it stop, make it stop!”

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly water, but at least I learned where the village’s sewage ended up. It turned out that the hole I had jumped into really was a tunnel leading to somewhere beyond town, stretching out in two directions from the point I had jumped into it. The path behind me lead back under the village, most likely to whatever point they actually used to dump the waste and trash rather than risking leaving the walls. I had no intention of going back to town, so instead I lead Felix away, down the path into mystery.

I wasn’t really happy that my path to freedom was literally full of crap, but at least I was free. I had finally escaped from the hell my life had become; no longer worried about if Father would appear from every corner and jump on top of me again. Outside the house, I felt amazing, like I could take on anything that came my way, and that even if I couldn’t, together with Felix anything was possible. He had been to class for years while I sat at home, learning Caesar knows what about the Wasteland and, hopefully, how to survive there. It was more toward recent years that he told me about his classes on how to mix potions and fetishes from random materials they found (I don’t know how bloatsprite wings somehow work for that, but they apparently do), and other little details I could never truly understand when he explained them to me. And me, I had already found out that I could kill if it meant our safety. It didn’t seem like that important of a contribution to me at the time, but if the rumors of raiders roaming the Wasteland were true, it may yet come in handy.

To my surprise, Felix remained completely silent as we headed off down the tunnel, never bringing up my promise to explain why we left or asking where we were going. I guessed it was because he was so tired; he’d only been sleeping for a couple hours by the time we left, and I don’t think he had fully woken yet. I would have looked back to check on him, but I couldn’t see his expression in the tunnel. In fact, I couldn’t see much of anything at all. The only reason I knew he was still following me was because the blot of light from the hole we dropped in was blocked behind me, and I could vaguely hear his hooves plopping through the disgusting mix beneath us.

The tunnel had no lighting through it; there was no reason for whoever dug it to have put lights in if the only thing that was supposed to go in there was waste and trash. Still, it had been used on occasion by someone, if the broken boards where we jumped in were any indication. I couldn’t think of any reason a zebra, pony, or anyone else would want to slog through that tunnel just to come up outside the village walls and probably get gunned down by the guards waiting above. I certainly didn’t want to be in there, and I promised myself internally that I would never go back down there. I tried to ignore the stench; not an easy task when it completely surrounded us and stung at my eyes, but it kept my mind off of the feeling under my hooves with each step.

We walked for what may have been an hour, but without a way to measure time I was only guessing, before I came to a stop. The tunnel was still pitch dark with no way to see where another exit might be, and I was starting to think we might have to turn around and go back out the way we came; hopefully without alerting the guards when we clambered over the boards. Oh, and as a hint: stopping in a tunnel where you can’t see anything while someone is walking behind you is a bad idea. Felix smacked face first into my rump, nearly causing me to stumble over into the muck.

“Sorry,” I heard him say sleepily behind me, followed by another yawn.

I nodded that it was okay, but of course he wouldn’t see that in the tunnel. I didn’t think anything of that, and instead started looking around for even the smallest hint of light. Behind us, the glow from where we had come in had completely disappeared, leaving me even more disorientated than I already was. Ahead of us, still nothing, and to either side there was nothing either. I sighed heavily before turning to Felix, maybe.

“Any ideas?” I asked him, hoping he was able to think of something in his tired state.

I heard another yawn, followed by him mumbling something to himself. “I guess we’ll just have to keep going,” he finally told me. “It has to let out somewhere right?”

I nodded and grinned before turning around to continue, and promptly ran my face into the wall of the tunnel. I moaned and cursed the luck, and turned more to the left, swinging my hoof in front of me before deciding it was safe to go forward and hopefully not smear more of whatever was on the wall onto my face. First danger averted, I didn’t hit the wall this time.

We hadn’t gone too much further when the two of us started to hear a soft noise ahead. I couldn’t quite tell what it was, but it wasn’t the sound of hooves slogging through muck. It started very quiet, but got louder as we continued forward. A little further on, I finally recognized the sound; chewing. I almost gagged as one thought began to run through my mind over and over; please tell me nobody is eating in here, please tell me nobody is eating in here. I hoped that I had been wrong about what we heard, that it was actually the sound of dripping water from an exit, or it really was the sound of someone walking through the tunnel and the shape of the walls changed the sound or something. I don’t know if that can happen, but it made sense at the time.

Suddenly, the noise stopped, and the tunnel fell silent aside from mine and Felix’s hooves mixing up tunnel’s contents. I slowed down, and was glad to not feel my brother’s face hitting my butt again. Replacing the sound of chewing (no! walking!), was a whistle of ragged breathing, just loud enough for me to hear it. I perked my ears to try hearing it better, and it was definitely breathing. It sounded a lot like what Father sounded like after smoking one too many in a night and his throat clogged up with phlegm. A shiver went through my spine at the thought, but at least we weren’t the only ones down there. Maybe we could even ask whoever was breathing how much further we had to go!

I sped back up again, and the increased sound from my hooves pulled a gasp from whoever was in front of us. Okay, eyes are not supposed to glow, but this guy’s did. A pair of creepy green lights loomed in the air ahead of us, only about ten feet from me, when whoever it was turned to look at us. I know I said the tunnel was pitch dark, and I couldn’t see anything except for those lights, but I had the eeriest feeling that whoever was behind those eyes could see me somehow. I froze, and rather than being bumped by Felix, I actually heard his hooves stepping further away from me. I didn’t know why he would do that; the thing we had met might have been our only way out, he or she could point us in the right direction and maybe even lead us to an exit.

“Um…hi,” I said with a grin, waving my hoof just in case glowing-eyes actually could see down there.

What responded was the most un-earthly scream I had ever heard in my life. The call echoed through the tunnel, and then I was backing away with Felix. A story from one of the village elders stepped into the front of my mind, about when they were a young traveler in the Wasteland before settling down. The old zebra was one of me and Felix’s favorite storytellers, always making the tales funny, but still informative at the same time. The one which I was reminded of at that moment was his first run-in with a monster called a ‘ghoul’. Just like we had, the old zebra went trotting up to what looked like a pony to ask if they had anything to trade. The pony had ignored him, continuing to lean over a strange shape beneath it. As it turned out, that shape was a half-eaten zebra, and the ‘pony’ was rotting alive. The old zebra was met with a scream, much like what I had just heard, before being chased by the monster who had suddenly decided his old meal wasn’t fresh enough.

I suddenly didn’t want to go that way anymore. I just wanted to be out of that tunnel and where no more zebra eating monster ponies could eat me while covered in whatever I was standing in at the time. If that meant going all the way back to town, so be it; no flesh eating monsters were in town.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to turn around and start running. The glowing eyes barreled toward me with unnatural speed, something I would never expect from something that was apparently rotting. Before I could even react, a squishy body slammed into my chest and sent me rolling to my back. I don’t know if Felix could even see what was happening, but I still heard him shout at the beast to leave me alone. I heard a lot of sticky splashing as sprays of nastiness showered me and the monster who had finally reached me again. Its eyes turned away from the rotting spray, apparently still a sensitive place for a living-dead monstrosity, and started jabbing at me with its hooves.

I joined in with Felix, flailing my forelegs around in the muck to kick up sprays of filth toward the beast’s face and hoping none of it would get in my eyes or mouth. The only way I had of knowing where to try and aim the sludge were the still glowing orbs hovering above me as a pair of cracked hooves continued to jab at my chest. Eventually the ghoul got sick of our antics, and the eyes spun to mine, diving forward. An unbelievable pain shot from my shoulder as a row of jagged and uneven teeth tore into my skin. I thought my scream would throw my lungs out of my chest as the teeth began to pull at my body, trying to tear a piece of me off.

My rear hooves swung up, colliding with the monster’s chest to throw him off of me. Instead, the teeth remained lodged in my shoulder, and his body stayed in place over me. I quickly learned that rotting pony-bodies were much weaker than I thought as my hooves punched through his ribs and squished around in his cold, gooey chest. The teeth stopped pulling, and the glowing eyes went wide before the ghoul’s legs gave out and his body slumped over me. I really didn’t feel like smashing my hooves through his back, so instead of kicking again, I rolled to the side and let his body fall against the sewer wall. His teeth tore painfully out of my shoulder, allowing a thick flow of blood to begin staining my chest.

“Shayle?” Felix asked fearfully. It sounded like the colt was about to cry as he waited for me to respond, no longer kicking muck toward where I had been wrestling with the ghoul.

“I’m okay,” I groaned, bringing a hoof to my shoulder to try slowing the flow of blood. A pair of less jagged teeth gripped at my mane as Felix tried to help me up and pull my legs out of the rotten slop in the monster’s chest . “You wouldn’t happen to have a bandage would you?” I asked painfully once I was on my hooves again, not too worried about the goop on my back legs.

“You got hurt? Are you bleeding?” Felix asked frantically.

“Just a little cut,” I lied, not wanting to worry him. Luckily he couldn’t see the extent of my injury, but neither could I. A biting pain pulsed from my shoulder constantly, but with the muck already covering my chest from the splashing me and Felix did, I had no way of even feeling how much blood was leaving me. I hoped it wasn’t too bad. “Are you alright?” I asked him softly, my ears listening intently for the sound of more ghouls.

“I’m fine,” the colt confirmed, still sounding worried and scared. I didn’t blame him, I was scared out of my mind at that point, and my pounding heart constantly reminded me of that, but at least we would know how to tell when there was a ghoul in front of us. I just hoped there weren’t any more.

I smiled, unseen by him, and turned away from the colt to continue onward. I no longer really wanted to go back to town after the fight, not like I had before. We had beaten one ghoul, and if that scream hadn’t brought more down on us already, I doubted there were more for a long way. Even if there were, after that fight I was for some reason confident in my ability to defend myself and Felix from another. So we started off again, hopefully to find an exit soon, and because I don’t learn I got to taste the wall one more time.

Glorious light! I had never been so happy to see the gloomy light of dawn in my life as I was at the moment I saw the tunnel glowing ahead of us. If we weren’t so tired, both of us would have galloped to the light, but exhaustion kept us restrained. The source of light in our eternity of darkness ended up being a break in the tunnel we had been walking through for apparently much longer than I thought as the light of day filled the hole. The gap was part of a large crater which marred the landscape around us, presumably from some kind of explosion. That must have been how that ghoul and its meal had gotten into the tunnel, but why they travelled so far down before stopping I would never know.

Luckily, that had been the only ghoul to block our path, leaving the rest of our trek through the grime very quiet, and very dull. Not that I had a problem with dull, especially when it meant no more biting or kicking, but it was so surreal to be walking through complete darkness with only the sound of sloshing hooves and my own heartbeat to remind me we were still awake.

When I finally got out of the tunnel, my eyes actually burned slightly from the light and took a few minutes to fully adjust. During that time, I tried to rub the nastiness from my hooves along the ground and rolled through the dirt of the crater to try getting it off of my back as well. Unfortunately, with how long we’d been walking through the sludge after my wrestling match it had dried into my coat and was proving difficult to remove. Felix simply wiped his hooves on the dirt, apparently having been spared the grime that covered most of my body.

The pain in my shoulder had dulled into a throbbing soreness; not painful like it had been for the hour or so after my fight, but it still reminded me it was there. I think it had stopped bleeding after a short bit of time because I never started to feel light-headed or any of the other things Felix once told me about blood loss, and I didn’t see any dripping beneath me as I rose from my dry bath. My mind turned away from the wound and I looked over to Felix, smiling at his questioning expression as he examined the ground around us. I think he was trying to figure out where we were, but I couldn’t see how he expected to know that. We had been walking for hours, for all I knew we were in the middle of some unnamed desert.

His attention was pulled away when he looked over to me, and his face warped into worry. “Shayle! Your shoulder!” he yelled, galloping over to me with wide eyes. I looked down to my wound, and all I saw was a clump of dried on nastiness from the tunnel, nothing to make him worry like that. I didn’t have the best angle, which did a fantastic job of hiding what he saw from me. “Why didn’t you tell me it was that bad?”

Now I was getting worried too. I still couldn’t see anything, but Felix was acting like it was life threatening. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore, how bad could it be? “I don’t see anything,” I told him coolly, trying to calm the colt down.

“You don’t see it?” he asked worriedly, staring at my shoulder like it was growing an eye.

“There’s no blood,” I reminded him, still looking down to the wound in an attempt to find what he claimed to see.

“No, because the sewage stopped it,” he told me obviously, and looked up to me like I was stupid.

“That’s not a good thing?”

“No!” he shouted. Apparently I didn’t know very much about medicine or healing, because I thought no blood was good. That is good, right? “Caesar knows what was in that sewer, and now it’s in your blood!” He sounded like I was about to keel over right there, but I didn’t feel bad at all, aside from the throbbing in my shoulder. He must have seen my confusion, because he quickly elaborated. “It will get infected with bacteria.” He rolled his eyes when I stared at him dumbly. “Little bugs that make you sick.”

Okay, that I understood. Also, that got me worried. I knew I wasn’t supposed to play in dirty places, but I didn’t know it was because little bugs would give me an infection. I just thought it was because it made me smell bad. Thanks for the education Father. “Well how do you make them stop?” I asked frantically, searching my shoulder even more for the infection Felix claimed to see.

“We need medicine,” he said quickly, turning in every direction. “Which way will there be a doctor?”

Yes, because I knew that. “Um…pick a way and start walking?” I suggested, more focused on my shoulder than looking around for a doctor in the middle of nowhere.

Luckily, Felix took me perhaps too literally and galloped in a random direction. I didn’t know if he’d seen something to make him choose that way, which was the opposite side of the crater from the pipe we’d just left, but I didn’t question it. I quickly followed behind him, mentally picturing thousands of little ‘bacteria’ running through my shoulder and somehow making me sick. Not exactly a pretty picture, but it made the walk more entertaining.

Nothing much happened while we walked, because we really were in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t see anything around us except the occasional skeleton of a tree and a skeleton here and there, but other than that, nothing. My idea of being in a desert was eerily similar to what we had ended up in, and I grew more and more worried that we would never find a doctor to stop the infection in my shoulder. Felix kept us at a good pace, seeming to be more worried about my shoulder than I was. It was probably because he actually knew what might happen if I didn’t get it treated while I didn’t, but his urgency was starting to rub off on me. I stayed close behind him, and suddenly I realized that something didn’t feel right.

Actually, two things didn’t feel right. The first and most apparent was that my body felt different. Not ‘bad’ different, but like something was missing. It might have been that I was missing a part of my shoulder, but it didn’t seem like that was it to me. The second, less obvious wrong feeling was that strange feeling you get when someone is watching you. You know the one, that little sixth sense at the back of your neck when somebody watches you for a really long time and you don’t know why it works. The hairs on the back of my neck were prickled like a cactus, another of those plants the elders told me about, and no matter how many times I swatted at my neck to kill a bug there was never a satisfying crunch.

After swatting my neck a fifth time, I finally received a sound to confirm the feeling. Unfortunately it was more of a crack, and it was accompanied by the zing of a bullet flying past my head. Felix flopped to the ground instantly, his hooves jumping up to cover his head as he tried to become as small as possible. I did the same, dropping to my belly and reaching back to grab the gun from my…

Remember that feeling that something was missing? As it turns out that feeling was my bag. The thing with all of my money, food, ammo, and my gun; the thing I instantly wished I had remembered to pick up back in the tunnel after my wrestling match with a ghoul. I don’t know how I managed to go so long without it, but it probably had to do with the mix of sleep-deprivation and the pitch darkness of the tunnel making it impossible to see. I know that doesn’t explain why I didn’t feel the difference, and honestly I couldn’t think of a real reason myself at that moment, but bullets were not good for thinking.

Another shot rang out and a fountain of dirt kicked up beside Felix, barely missing his side as he shook against the ground and mumbled just loud enough for me to hear him, but not understand him. The sight of him cowering, unable to defend himself or even knowing what to do, kicked something on in my brain. I leapt to my hooves, and quickly looked around. About fifty feet away, standing behind a large rock was a zebra-shaped shadow, and beside it was a floating gun. Wait, floating gun?

A bullet whipped the tip off of my left ear, and a sting of pain followed close behind. I lowered my head, hissing at the pain, and charged forward. Whatever kind of gun the floating thing was, it only held one shot at a time; not very effective for a lone attacker to try taking down two zebras at once. Still, the shooter had plenty of time to reload as I tried to close the distance between us, and another gunshot filled the air. A bite of pain rippled from my flank as the shot burrowed into me, nearly causing me to stumble over myself into the dirt. I pushed through it as best I could, and continued my charge. I wasn’t nearly as fast as I had been at the start, but I was still fast enough to reach the shooter before they could throw another round my way.

As it turns out, the gun was floating in a sparkling grey cloud, and looked almost as rusty as my revolver did. Beside it was a zebra with a horn…no, zebras don’t have horns, only ponies had horns like that. I gritted my teeth as I plowed into the shooter head first, sending both of us rolling through the dirt and the gun clattering to the ground. The brown pony grunted heavily as we fell, and his eyes shot open in surprise. I quickly began jabbing at him with my hooves while keeping him pinned under me, happy with how easy that had been.

And then a flash of white filled my vision as a loud snap filled the air. I felt myself fall to the dirt, and a loud pounding filled my head. When my vision started to come back, I was lying beside the gunpony and my head was throbbing worse than my shoulder could hope to. Beside the pony I’d tackled was a dirty-green coated earth pony holding a cracked wooden board between her teeth; I don’t think it was cracked before being used to club me.

“Damn, did ya’ forget how ta shoot Strike?” the mare asked her companion after spitting out the board.

The horned-pony stood up slowly, rubbing his head while he replied. “Shuddup Charmer.”

“Would you like a second chance?” she asked viciously. “Or can I deal with her myself?” Charmer: definitely a fitting name. But at least they were talking instead of finishing me off while I tried to figure out which way was up.

At that moment a book flew from behind the rock, striking Charmer in the side of her head and sending the mare to her haunches. From the way her head wobbled, I imagined she was feeling exactly like I did after being clubbed. The stallion, Strike, turned quickly and the rifle followed, once again surrounded by the glittery cloud. His horn glowed with the same effect, and I just then figured out that he was using magic to lift the gun. That was also the point when I figured out Felix had thrown one of his books (SEQR: Our Legacy), and was now on the receiving end of that rifle.

My hooves appeared beneath me quicker than I thought possible, and I dove toward Strike with a scream, once again slamming into him head first. The report of a rifle shot pounded my ears as I hit him, and my mind instantly jumped to the worst. I snapped my sore and throbbing head to where the pony had been aiming, expecting to see my brother shot and bleeding across the dirt. Instead, I saw him digging another heavy book from his bag and frowning at the hole which had been punched through it.

A groan of pain softly came from behind me, and I spun to see Charmer standing on wobbly legs. Her eyes came to rest on my own, and the mare leapt toward her discarded board, a look of pure rage in her eyes. I didn’t have a piece of wood to grab, but luckily a certain stallion had dropped a perfectly rusty rifle a few inches away. My teeth chomped down on the grip, and I lifted it to face Charmer. She froze for a second, staring at the barrel with wide eyes, before lunging forward, bringing the board back for a swing. My tongue played around on the bit searching for the trigger, and finally hit it.

Stupid single shot rifles.

The hammer clicked onto the back of an already expended round, and I wanted to scream. The chunk of wood smacked the rifle from my mouth, and quickly swung back to connect with my shoulder; naturally the one that was already injured. I let out a scream, and resorted to jumping on top of the mare through the pain that was covering almost my entire body. The two of us rolled around for a ways, each trying to get on top of the other and gain the upper hoof, the long grey braid of her mane batting at my face with each movement of her head. From the corner of my eye I saw Felix trying to talk with Strike...and the stallion actually listening.

I groaned and returned to my struggle with Charmer. Trying to hit the mare effectively around the leather vest that covered much of her body was difficult, and most of my attempts ended in a soft thud against the armor. The fight only lasted another minute before a gunshot echoed through the air, and the two of us stopped to see who was down. To my surprise, and probably hers as well, the two males were standing a few feet away with the rifle pointed into the air.

“Get off her Charmer, they ain’t spies” Strike ordered calmly.

Spies? What was a spy, and why did they think me and Felix were spies?

“Then what are they?” Charmer asked, delivering a quick jab to my ribs before I could get up.

“They’re runaways,” the stallion offered, placing the rifle across his back.

“Felix…what’s going on here?” I asked my brother with a faint slur, ignoring the two ponies as I rose and stepped away from Charmer. I actually wanted to return her cheap shot, but that could wait.

“These two are from a town not far from here,” Felix told me calmly. “Strike thought we were scouts or spies from the Remnant, so he shot at us.”

I grumbled in response, not fully believing that, especially not if a pony said it. “And why does that matter?” I asked.

“We’ve had issues with ‘em in the past,” Charmer offered, sounding about as trusting of us as I was of them. “Can’t be too careful.”

It seemed I wasn’t the only one to feel that way about our situation. “So if you don’t plan on shooting us, we’ll be going,” I told the ponies bluntly and almost fell over with a sudden wash of light-headedness.

“Shayle, no!” Felix countered, looking at me with worry. “Strike offered to take us into town.”

“What, why?” me and Charmer asked in unison.

“Because you two’re out here without supplies, and you look torn up,” the horned-pony told me with a soothing drawl, his light-red eyes staring at me with a brief look at my shoulder. “We can get you to a doctor and feed you.”

Felix smiled as if he’d thought of all of this on his own, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one who asked about it all in the first place while I was trying to beat the tar out of the green mare. The two ponies looked indifferent about it all, just looking over the two of us like this happened to them every day.

They were right, I did really need a doctor if what Felix had told me was true, and a little food wouldn’t hurt considering all of ours was covered in nastiness back in the sewer. I didn’t really trust Strike and Charmer, not after they’d just tried to kill me and Felix, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to follow them to some town which was presumably full of ponies. Ponies who apparently assumed every zebra they saw was a spy.

Ponies never change.

Oh yeah, and that too.

Felix’s face had almost turned into a pleading look, no doubt out of more worry for the bugs infesting my shoulder; and probably that freshly bleeding hole in my flank and missing eartip courtesy of Strike; than for the food. I sighed and turned to the horned pony, my nerves burning with uncertainty and pain. “How far to town?”

While we walked to town, it became clear to me that we’d travelled much further from Zeza than I originally thought. I could see no sign of home, not even a well-travelled path that merchants such as Father would have used to get to my old home with their goods. I didn’t doubt the ponies we now travelled with had heard of our village, they must have if they knew of the Remnant in the area, but I don’t think they had even bothered to travel there, or know where it might be. They had no reason to, the Remnant wasn’t exactly friendly toward them being ponies and all, so trying to trade or interact with our village would just become a death sentence for them.

Felix walked along side Strike ahead of me, telling the horned-pony about our run in with the ghoul earlier and how I’d been wounded as best he could. There were a few things off in the story, but I couldn’t blame him, there was no way for either of us to see in there, and I didn’t really know what was going on during the fight myself. While they were chatting, me and Charmer walked behind them and engaged in girl talk. When I say girl talk, I mean we walked silently and occasionally glared at one another to make sure the other didn’t try anything while trying to hide how sore each of us was. I think I was hurting a little more than her though, but I also got shot and bitten.

I personally had no plans of attacking her or Strike, even if I did still owe her a jab from earlier, but I couldn’t decide if this deal to go to town was legitimate or if we were about to walk into a raider trap or something. Strike seemed decent enough when he wasn’t shooting at me, but Charmer still seemed like she wanted to pummel me and Felix into the dirt, something I supposed a raider would love more than anything. But it never happened, and soon a small cluster of shacks came into view.

They didn’t look like much, but it seemed to be an actual town. The outsides of the buildings looked like they’d seen better days with the countless holes punched into the metal siding and rust forming across most of the walls. The roofing looked at least stable, for the time anyways, and for most of the buildings consisted of old wooden planks topped by scrapped cardboard. Two ponies in leather vests stood along the road leading into the town, if you could call it that, each with a rifle slung over their shoulder and a look of determination across their faces. They could have been twins with how similar they looked; a drunk might even think they had downed one too many and was seeing double.

Strike nodded a greeting to each of the guards as we passed, and I wasn’t surprised to receive a look of disdain from one of them. I had a feeling they expected us to be prisoners, especially since I was still stained with blood, waste, and had a wonderful hole in my flank which still hadn’t been bandaged. At least the bleeding had stopped, that was a recurring theme with me apparently, but it still burned with every step I took.

In the town very few ponies could be seen outside their huts. A few stood around a burning barrel that seemed unnecessary with the warmth of the day, but I may have felt warm from the extra insulation in my coat and the constant pain in my leg and shoulder. Even those who were gathered at the flame didn’t seem to pay me or Felix much mind, a bit of a shock after the reaction from the guard only moments before, but not necessarily unwelcome. The rest of the town seemed to still be asleep, and I guessed it must have been earlier in the day than I thought if some ponies were still sleeping.

The first place Strike led us was a small shack with a large pink butterfly painted on the door, something I couldn’t recognize as a symbol for food or a doctor, so I assumed we had been taken to meet with the town’s leader before being allowed care. That assumption was proven wrong quickly as the door opened to a room filled with bandages, potions, and more vials than I could have imagined. I didn’t even bother trying to find out what was in the glass ampules that lined the shelves around us; the answer would likely only confuse me.

Another horned-pony sat on a torn and patched pillow on the far side of the room, reading through some book that was marked with three pink butterflies identical to the one on the door. “What’s up?” she asked once the four of us had all gotten inside, her voice squeaking slightly on the second word.

“Got a patient for ya’ doc,” Strike replied calmly, waving a hoof to me.

‘Doc’ lifted her head from the pages and looked over me with her pale yellow eyes for a moment before standing. She was either very young, or very short, or maybe both. The mare’s horn barely reached my chin when she stepped up to me to take a closer look at my shoulder and grumble something to herself. Her white coat was stained a reddish-brown in several places, especially her chest and forelegs, which matched her muddy colored mane a bit too well.

I heard her grumble under her breath again, and a sharp pain bit back into my shoulder. I looked down to see the supposed doctor prodding my wound with her hoof, her head cocked in observation as she poked me over and over. “What are you doing?” I asked sharply, trying not to yell out in pain.

The poking stopped, and Doc looked up to me. “Trying to see how deep it is,” she stated proudly. I couldn’t even think of what to say, nopony should be that confident about their reason for poking a wound. “What did you do?”

“I got bitten by a ghoul,” I told her plainly, really hoping she wouldn’t poke me again.

“And rubbing poop in the bite seemed smart?” she asked sarcastically and tried not to laugh. Yeah, she was just really young, only a filly would laugh at the word ‘poop’.

“Are you sure this is a doctor?” I asked the two ponies who stood off to the side.

Strike replied with a nod, and Charmer just glared. So I guess this was the doctor…a really immature and unskilled doctor maybe?

“Hey! I’ve been doing this since I could crawl!” the little Doc barked, her voice once again cracking. And just to prove her point, the little monster jammed her horn into my shoulder.

I could hold back screams from a little hoof poking me, but that felt worse than the ghoul’s teeth digging into me. I wanted to smack the beast across the room, but that would have been hard from my belly now that I could for some reason not move my legs anymore. I rolled my eyes up to the giggling mare, and gave her the same look I gave Strike before jumping on him earlier.

“You finally learned that anesthetic spell?” I heard Charmer ask with a similar drawl to Strike, almost sounding entertained.

“No, I just hit a nerve with my old shock spell.” I could almost hear the grin form on that little monster’s face. “She won’t be able to move until I’m done, go get the little one some food.”

She was calling Felix little? She couldn’t have been older than 10! Still, it wasn’t like I could argue, or protest, or even try to go get food with them, I was stuck on the ground at the mercy of the horned-pony that was apparently a doctor. Though I guess it was a little reassuring that her flank was decorated with an unrolled bandage.

Footnote: Level Up! Unarmed (25)

Author’s Note: Another huge thanks to Kkat for making this world so amazing, and to Somber and all of the other amazing side-fic writers who expanded it and made it even greater! I’d also love to thank the PH:RP group again for getting me to write this, and my pre-readers for making sure I don’t jack it up before release. All of you are amazing!