The door to his office opened for the tenth and hopefully last time today. Not only his patience, but also his resources were about to reach the point of exhaustion. Well, technically it wasn’t his resources but rather those of the diamond dogs, not that it mattered or made much of a difference. He was now their boss, alpha or godfather, depending on who you asked. In any case, they were more or less now his to do with as he pleased.

Thiemo put both hands around the seat of the old wooden chair he was sitting on and began to turn with little hops. Every little hop made a small bang sound when the chair made contact with the floor again. His next purchase would definitely be a comfortable leather chair with rollers, that much was certain. For the moment, however, this chair was the best he had. There were two advantages he had with this chair at the moment; first for him to sit on and the second for him to help him break the ice with his… visitors, so to speak.

Unfortunately for Thiemo, it wasn’t only the dogs that feared him, but also the small foals. Not just the six he saw yesterday either, but also another one who had come home later. There was one thing he had managed to coax from one of the foals, a bright little colt by the name of Twist. None of them had worked for the dogs out of free will. Their parents lived somewhere in the slums of Dragmire and owed the dogs a lot of money, so much so that they had been forced to ‘help’ the diamond dogs with whatever racket they wanted to pull. Now that he was their ‘leader’, he had his own little Mafia to play with.

For now, however, he had the last foal in front of him to deal with. With a last hop, he was directly behind his weathered desk and looked down to the foal with a smile. The only problem was that it wasn’t there. He looked around and found her huddled next to the door. To put it bluntly, she was a mess. Her whole body trembled, her white mane was dirty and devastated and hung over her eyes limpidly. Even through her orange coat he could practically count each rib that poked out from her body.

The other foals had laughed or at least giggled as he struggled with his chair act, but not this time. Tears dripped down in front of her and darkened the dusty wooden floor. Thiemo jumped from his chair and wanted to rush over to her but she only scrambled back even more in the corner as he attempted to approach her. “Hey…”

Thiemo went into a crouch and put his straw hat on the table that was now next to him. “Please, don’t eat me!” she bawled, trying to hide from the world with the help of her mane

“Don’t worry, I won’t eat you. I’ve eaten already,” he said, smiling and holding out his hands. His words didn’t have the effect he hoped for; like a flash, the foal ran under one of the old armchairs in front of the desk. The iron springs were already poking out of them, so sitting on them would most likely be torturous.

He waited a few seconds, unsure how to approach her now. The sobbing that came from under the armchair was heart-breaking. The last thing that he had ever seen so terrified was his old cat, Barney. He was an emaciated, weak stray kitten who had followed him for over ten miles to his home. However, he had been on a bike and he had not noticed the kitten earlier due to the music from his cell phone, but Barney was afraid for his life and was desperate, so he turned to the first being he saw. Now, here was a foal that feared him, especially since he was a human.

In the corner of his eye, Thiemo spotted an apple that had remained uneaten from his breakfast. “Hey, look. Are you hungry?” He held the apple in front of the little gap between the armchair and the floor. “It’s really delicious. I ate four already.” Blue glowing eyes peeped out and followed the apple in his slightly moving hand. Carefully, he took a bite. “See?” he smacked his lips in an exaggerated fashion. “Really delicious.”

With another choked sob, the head of the foal slowly, cautiously came out. “S-So, you didn’t eat the others?” she managed to get out, rubbing her eyes with her hooves and regarding him with extreme wariness. At first Thiemo was dumbfounded, but then he realized how it must have looked like from the outside. One foal after another had stepped into the office but none had left it. He had never told the dogs or the foals what he was planning. However, he could use this accusation to boost his reputation.

“No, of course not. I gave them a share of the booty and sent them on their way.” With a finger, he pointed towards the only window in the room that was behind his desk. It wasn’t big, but still had enough room for every slightly emaciated foal to pass through. It hurt for him to acknowledge that two fillies the size of the one in front of him could fit through it quite easily at the same time. “Here, eat this.” Thiemo broke the apple in half and put one half before her on the floor. It was important, at least with humans who had to survive long without food, to get them slowly used to it again. Her body would not be able to process large quantities. The foal hesitated for a moment and looked between him and the apple as though wondering if she could trust him, as though she wanted to make sure that he didn’t grabbed her and devour her if she made a false move. Then, with a speed that belied her ragged appearance, she reached out and grabbed the half of the apple he had left her, shoving it in her mouth in case he changed his mind and took it back. With big bites, loud smacking and flying pieces, the apple vanished in mere seconds. “So, my name is Thiemo. What’s yours?”

The foal, now halfway out of her hiding place, seemed to consider again whether if she could trust him. “Aura,” she finally muttered after a few tense seconds of contemplation, keeping her eye on him. The ensuing silence was broken by the rumble of her stomach. With a smile, Thiemo gave the second half of the apple to her. Like the piece before, it vanished in seconds.

“Sooooo… you’re not evil?”

“Luigi, how often do I have to tell you that we do not want this worthless junk?” Thiemo was sitting comfortably in his chair and leaned back. On his lap was the filly, Aura, whose fur he stroked methodically, to the delight of both of them.

“Yeah Luigi, how often?!” she repeated without even looking up, snuggling into him more.

The diamond dog, who sat in front of the desk on one of the old armchairs that had the biggest iron spring exposed, shifted a bit. “My name is Waldemar,” he grumbled.

“Luigi, Waldo or Waldemar, what’s the difference?” Thiemo gave his new chair a little momentum and spun himself around towards the desk. Aura skilfully jumped off his lap and landed on the table. Both of them looked grimly at the mutt. “What should we do with junk like this?” He lifted the bag made of shed dragon scales into the air. “We can’t even sell this. Every dragon would instantly know it was stolen if a diamond dog tried to sell it.”

“Sorry Alpha”. Thiemo cleared his throat loudly, causing the diamond dog to jump before adding hastily, “I mean Don, sorry Don.”

“Better.” He threw the bag into the dog's paws. “Throw it in the ocean or something. Try to sell the contents at least. Don’t you dare to come back without at least twenty bits.”

Waldemar looked up, startled. “But the contents are only worth five bits at best.”

“Then I would hurry if I were you. I haven’t eaten meat for quite a while now,” he said, smacking his lips and baring his teeth in a wide grin. The diamond dog was in such a rush to escape the room that the heavy armchair tilted backwards, as he managed to jerk the door open in panic and ran out. With a loud crash, the door slammed shut behind him. Thiemo looked at Aura, who silently returned his gaze evenly. They waited a few seconds to be sure that no one would hear them and then they started to laugh uproariously. “Did you see his face? Beautiful!”

“I thought he would pee on the armchair,” the filly laughed while rolling on the desk. Thiemo could not help but marvel at how much she had changed in the last five months. At first he had not even planned to stay a week on Dragmire, but this little creature had woken something in him. There was also the fact that he had managed to build something in his time here to consider. He now commanded around thirty diamond dogs and jackals. He was their alpha or leader of the pack, but he preferred to be called Don.

Of course, the stealing and general underhanded activities of his pack hadn’t remained undetected for long. Only one week with him as leader had passed and he was able to push the dragons so far that they wanted to get rid of him, some of them apparently wanted to do so permanently. Fortunately for him, the dragons were at least as corrupt as any being on this island, which was to say a lot. A charming dragoness who went by the name of Esmeralda owned the part of the island they were living and operating in. The dragons fought over parts of the island on a regular basis but she defeated anyone who had dared to try so far. In contrast to the commonly held beliefs, female dragons were much stronger than the males. In other words, she practically owned every male dragon on her part of the island. However, instead of directly confronting her, as the saying goes, Thiemo made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, so to speak.

In retrospect, it had been a smart move to draw the inhabitants of the slums to his side. He shared stolen food with them, let his dogs repair a hut here and there and so on. If there was one group of creatures who knew everything was in the city, it would have to be the rats. They were the dwellers of and under the streets and on this particular island, they were the inhabitants of the lowest section of the city. The city itself was divided in eight parts, one layer on top the other, spiralling towards the sky. Despite the time Thiemo had spent here, he still hadn’t visited all eight levels of the city.

Because of how he had helped them out, Thiemo knew from these residents where Esmeralda had hidden her hoard; all her gems, gold and most importantly, her eggs. As proof of what he was capable of, he stole one single stone in which she had carved her insignia, a favourite piece of hers. Therefore, he did not have to worry about the authority of the dragons at this time; the local population wouldn’t give away their hideout since his little mafia didn’t steal from them (they only stole from the wealthier creatures who inhabited the higher levels of the city), and even though he knew that she could basically burn the entire slums to the ground, she would not risk damaging her gem in her rage.

One of the reasons he did all this was to have a (relatively) safe environment for Aura. Sure, living in moderate luxury was a nice side effect, but he actually had other plans. For a long while now he had wanted to be somewhere in the vicinity of Equestria. He had managed to get his hands on some books about magic that had found their way down here, but they contained nothing that would help him to achieve his goal. However, they were at least well written enough to be used as reading practice for him and Aura, so he tried to teach her at least a bit, though his efforts were restricted mainly due by the fact that he himself sometimes still had problems with the written language of Albion.

Suddenly, a knock on the door interrupted the happy atmosphere in the room and Biggs burst in. He was one of the mutts that had surrendered immediately when Thiemo first came into this building. “Don, we have a pony!” Thiemo blinked surprised and pulled his finger away from Aura’s belly. “Please excuse me, Don,” the dog added and fell on his knees, “I didn’t know you were about to eat.”

“Eating? Err… oh yeah, sure.” He looked at Aura and the deadpan look she was shooting at him. “I mean no. I was just checking how fat and juicy she got,” he said, patting Aura’s belly, the filly having to stifle her giggles. “I think I still will have to wait a bit. When she’s a bit older there will be more to eat after all, am I right?” Biggs gulped but Thiemo didn’t give him a chance to respond. “So, what about this pony you mentioned?”

“It’s a unicorn and it just came through the front entrance of our hideout. Blue coat and really annoying. Thinks she is Alpha, Don.” Thiemo thought for a moment, but he didn’t know anyone who would fit the description.

He reached for his staff and put his hat on his head. “Take me to her.” Thiemo hurried around the table and grabbed the knob of the door from the outside. “And you… stay put,” he directed at Aura. More of his dogs waited in the hall and looked around, seemingly unsure of what to do. Two of them he didn’t know by name were going to be patched up by another. Apparently they had tried to block the path of the uninvited unicorn who had entered the building. Thiemo nodded towards them to lift the morale a bit, to show them that he was still in charge here. He wouldn’t let one unicorn destroy everything he had worked for. Biggs led him further down the hallway where the intruder was surrounded by Jessy and Wedge. Wedge was a bear of a dog and Jessy one of the few bitches under his command. The two kept their distance from the blue unicorn, so if it attacked one, the other could grab it. After all, now and then it was good to show some old dogs a few new tricks. “So, what do we have here?”

Both dogs stepped away a bit further so Thiemo could see the unicorn in the entrance. She had a light blue coat and a silver curly mane. She was wearing a cloak on her back and a wizard’s hat on her head. Both pieces of clothing were a dark blue and littered with stars. “At last, the great and powerful Trixie has found you!” she exclaimed and pointed at him.

Thiemo looked behind his back, just to be sure she meant him. “Do we know each other?”

Anger was now clearly written on her face. “Trixie had challenged you to a duel, but you just vanished, you coward!” she growled.

Now he remembered. This was the unicorn over which he had stumbled upon entering the city. Oh how the time just seemed to fly by. “Ah, yes. Now I remember. We were supposed to meet up in a tavern, right? Sorry, I just forgot about you.” Well, that made her even angrier, judging by how red her face was getting, though he wondered, not for the first time, how it could show through thick fur such as a pony’s coat. It seemed as though being forgotten wasn’t sitting well with her. “How long did you wait? An hour? Two?” She mumbled something. “What?”

This time Trixie inhaled before she spoke. “The whole day.” Thiemo noticed that she didn’t mumble, she just was gnashing her teeth all the time.

“That’s smart.” Somehow, she made feel him a little guilty. “How about this? I give you an apple and a bottle of cider and we call it even? Alright?”

She just continued with the gnashing of her teeth while Jessy leaned over to him. “Don, you want to just let her go after how she hurt Whisky and Rufus over there?” She had a point. If the rumor got out that you could attack his pack without consequences, it wouldn’t take long until the dragons were at his door again.

“Nothing is alright!” Trixie shrieked, succeeding in getting the attention back to her. “You left Trixie on the street and ruined her entire show! After that I had to search for you for months!”

Thiemo’s head jerked when he heard that. “Wait, you needed several months to find me? The only human on the entire island?” he said incredulously. Maybe she wasn’t as smart as he thought. After all, she had just marched in a bandit camp.

“That’s beside the point!” Well, at least she noticed how stupid she was.

“Hey, watch out how you’re talking to Don,” Wedge jumped in to say. “It's been a while since he had pony for lunch.” This time Trixie blinked in surprise. Thiemo on the other hand just bared his teeth.

“Are you all stupid? Do you all really believe the stories about the humans? He couldn’t even cut your fur with teeth like that, let alone get his jaws wide enough apart to swallow some of you whole!” At this point, things got nasty. All the present diamond dogs looked at Thiemo as if they were waiting to proof the unicorn different. “He isn’t even stronger than you. How did he defeat the old pack leader in the first place?

Now Thiemo knew what Biggs meant with annoying. “Hey Trixie! You better shut up now,” he hissed at her. What he had not expected was an attack. Trixie threw him across the room faster than he could react, especially over the short distance.

“See? The great and powerful Trixie defeated you pack leader. So, is Trixie your pack leader now or what?” Thiemo rose slowly from the floor and freed his body from the wood chips that had come from the broken shelf into which he had flown. Without hesitation, he grabbed the talisman around his neck and Trixie made, for the second time in her life, an acquaintance with a ball of ice. It flew directly through between the dogs, smashed Trixie in the face and carried her straight out of the building.

It then struck Thiemo that he maybe should have done this in the first place. More dogs had come from upstairs and they now saw their chance to become pack leader themselves. Leading the group was Puck, his predecessor. “Retreat or I will show you how fearsome a human can be,” he warned. Thiemo stood straighter, trying to make himself look larger and more intimidating while holding a new gem in his hand, but none of the dogs made any move to withdraw. “Guys, come on! Isn’t pack more successful than ever?” he pleaded, backing away slightly.

“We work. We steal. We have to do what Don says. Everything was better before human. Ponies did the work. We could just lie around.” Puck’s words were followed by a general murmur of assent. “I say we make everything better again.” This time there was scattered applause from around the room. “If a small pony can beat Don, so can we. A pack is only as strong as his weakest member!” While Puck made ​​his speech, Thiemo had used the distraction and slowly snuck back into his office. “Let’s catch the human and then… Hey? Where did he go?”

With that, Thiemo closed the door behind him and pushed the bolt shut. He then added a small layer of ice over it in order to buy some time. At best it would stop them for only a few minutes. “Aura, time to go,” he called urgently.

The foal had apparently been asleep but was startled awake with the sound of his voice. “What happened?”

“You remember that I said that the dogs were never allowed to know that I’m nice?” She nodded. “That happened!”

Meanwhile, Thiemo grabbed his backpack which always sat in the corner and threw it over himself. "Do they also know your name isn’t Baloo?"

“No, but that is not important right now.” He quickly picked up the filly and ran to the window behind the desk. With one quick movement, he swung it open and he let Aura fall outside, throwing his backpack after her before he tried to do so himself.

He was just half through the window when he got stuck, his ass wriggling desperately to get through. “Now, now, now. Look what we have here.” Thiemo gulped and looked up. He knew that voice, so he wasn’t really surprised to see Esmeralda. “If it isn’t the big Baloo himself. Why in such a hurry?”

“Well, there are around twenty dogs behind that door who want to skin me alive and now an ugly dragoness who would love to crush my head like a ruby.” Esmeralda grinned. She was around two meters tall, with red scales and big green eyes that shimmered in the darkness. Just like her teeth.

“Oh no, I don’t want to spoil my appetite,” she waved off his words dismissively. “However, it's been some time since I last grilled something for fun.” Thiemo’s eyes widened as the dragoness inhaled. He knew exactly what would follow and shielded his face with his hands. A small flame flew over his head, but only for half a second before Esmeralda cried out in pain. Surprised, Thiemo freed himself from the charred remains of what was once a house wall with small window; doing so had become much easier since the clay had become brittle due to the heat.

Unfortunately, a well-known but unpleasant smell hit his nose and out of reflex he threw his hat to the ground, not that there was much left of it. His gaze shifted then to Esmeralda, who was trying to grab something between her legs and tail. “What the hell?” He looked for Aura and finally found her sitting next to him, grinning.

“I put a big stick there where the sun never shines.” Thiemo shivered slightly as he imagined that visually. He had taught her, if she was ever in danger, to always strike between the legs of her attacker. Apparently she had learned that lesson with great success and had taken it to heart.

At that moment, the door to his office burst open and several diamond dogs stormed in, roaring at them. “Maybe we should be going.” He picked up Aura and placed her on his shoulder before he started running toward the harbor.

Author's Notes:

With that, chapter 1 is complete. We know our main cast and we know how they met. Time to get the plot into motion.
Next act we will arrive in Canterlot, and oh boy, that will get nasty. If one of you think that everything will go smoothly, you're just wrong. Also, the AU tag will strike again, hard.

And as always, thanks to JBL for proofreading.