I’m standing in my ship, a clipboard floating before me. I glance into the cargo bay and briefly examine the carefully labeled crates inside. Clockworks, from Fillydelphia. With a glimmer of magic, I mark a check on the paper. In a couple weeks I could be in Stalliongrad, trade them out, and get some vodka for Canterlot.

“Are we all ready to go?” I ask.

Silver and Cleaver look up from their cards. “Sure thing, Dissy,” the pilot says. Cleaver takes a swig of vodka and raises it in agreement. Stormslider finishes dealing and gives me a quiet nod.

I smile. “Alright, then. To Stalliongrad. Excited to go home, Cleaver?”

The cook shrugs. “Home is where I lay my head.”

Putting the clipboard into its bin on the wall, I begin to walk towards my room. A course would have to be plotted. My ears twitch at the sound of frantic hoofbeats outside.

The unlocked hatch is pushed open, and a white unicorn mare bursts inside. She turns and slams it shut behind her, chest heaving.

“Who are you?” I ask. “What are you doing?”

She jumps, startled, and scans the room. “Oh, buck.” She grabs me. “Please, let me hide here! Don’t let them find me!”

Silver pushes his way in between us. Her fiery red mane shakes as she steps back. “Hey, slow down, miss. You can’t just come barging in to our ship and ask us to hide you. Who’re you running from?”

She’s shaking. “It’s the mob. Please, I can’t stay here! Just hide me somewhere, at least until they’re gone!”

I hear more hooves outside. A metallic knocking that sounds like it’s coming from the ship next to us. The mare jumps in fear and begins to cry. “Please, please, they’ll kill me!”

The hooves are approaching our ship now. I reach out with my magic and lock the hatch, frowning. The hooves knock from outside.

“Open up, in the name of the Royal Guard!”

Quietly, I step past the mare and look through the peephole. Three massive ponies stand outside. None of them wear the golden armor of the Royal Guard.

I look down as the mare pulls on my hoof, silently pleading. “Please,” she mouths.

My horn glows. With a brown glow, a barely visible trapdoor in the lounge opens. I nod to her. She beams at me, wasting no time as she scampers to the trapdoor and climbs inside. I close the smuggler’s hold, locking it.

The pounding on the hatch is insistent. I look to Silver. He nods. The moment I unlock the hatch, the three ponies burst inside.

“Who are-” They shove past me, ignoring my question, and storm through the ship. Cleaver eyes them calmly over his vodka. Stormslider focuses on the cards. Silver and I stand to the side.

“She’s not here!” One of them calls. The other two grunt agreement. They leave without a word.

With the airship locked and secure once more, I open the trapdoor and peer inside. A lighter floats in the darkness, the tiny flame wrapped in the red glow of magic.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

Orange eyes look up to me, reflecting the light of the fire. “Ember.”

The wind howled in my ears, punctuated by the roar of thunder. I felt my mane and tail flapping wildly. Groaning, I cracked an eye open.

I was tucked in the corner formed by a pair of consoles. Sunlight shone in through the increasingly shattered hull of the engine room. Lightning arced out of the thunder reactor and across the room, occasionally blowing something up on contact. Water poured out of a broken pipe running out of the reactor, practically glowing with electricity.

I felt my body being pushed back into the consoles. Stormslider was on the landing just outside the room, back up against the doorway and wings splayed out. My stomach lurched.

We were moving very fast.

With a methodical thumping, Ember climbed in from outside, magboots holding her to the wall. She clambered down to the floor, brow furrowed in a mixture of fury and concentration. Her tail whipped out behind her as she made her way to a relatively undamaged console, using her boots to keep the wind from ripping her off her hooves.

I blinked blearily. Stormslider was shouting something. Ember yelled something back. I couldn’t tell what they were saying under the thunder, wind, and nausea.

Ember turned back to the console, pulled one hoof out of its boot, and slammed it down on something. A loud hissing pierced the cacophony of noise. With considerable effort, I reached up and climb to my hooves, bracing myself on the consoles.

My eyes widened as I located the source of the hissing.

The glass that held the thunder reactor was moving, retracting down into the floor. The dark clouds fled eagerly, rushing out through holes in the ship’s hull and falling out of sight. Within seconds, the reactor was nothing more than an empty glass cylinder, dripping water. The thunder and wind had been replaced with a gentle buzz.

I watched as Storm marched up to Ember, pushing her with a hoof. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “We needed that power to escape!”

Ember ignored her accusing tone, running a hoof over the console softly. “You heard it as much as I did. The ship was in pain.”

“Damnit, Ember! When will you learn the difference between a ship and a pony?” Storm trotted to another set of consoles, eyes sweeping over them. “How are we supposed to escape now? We have no power!”

“I did what was right!” Ember shouted. “How would you feel if I made you run until you could run no longer, and then killed you instead?”

Storm paused, frowning. “Ember, it’s just a ship.”

“Just a ship!” Ember’s lighter flicked on with a burst of magic. “It was falling apart! I did what I had to do to save it.”

Silver ran into the room, panting. “Hey, what happened? I got some crazy speed and then the pressure just—” He stopped, gaping at the empty reactor. Cleaver stepped into view behind him and raised a brow.

“What happened to engine?” he asked.

Storm leveled a hoof on Ember. “She vented it! She’s trying to kill us all!”

“I’m trying to save the ship!” Ember snapped. “You were destroying it!”

“I was saving us!” Storm shot back. She gestured at the empty reactor with her hoof. “Now we don’t even have an engine!”

“And what would we have had if I had done nothing?”

“I would’ve fixed it! I know how to fix an overloaded reactor!”

“It was in pain!”

“It is a ship! What is wrong with you?”

“Shut up!” I shouted.

The two mares fell silent, mouths still open. I felt there eyes on me as I climbed unsteadily to my hooves. “For the love of Celestia, stop arguing,” I said. I looked to Silver. “Are we away?”

He shrugged. “Well, we put some good distance between them, but now we’re just gliding. They’ll catch us eventually.”

I cursed. “Where is Exe?” I received four blank looks in response. “The bear! Where is the bear?”

Cleaver spoke up. “He is in lounge.”

I stumbled across the engine room. “I need to speak with him. Try not to kill eachother.” Fuck, my head hurts. My legs weren’t feeling very sturdy either. When was the last time I slept? It felt like I’d been awake for ages.

Cleaver and Silver stepped aside to make a path for me, and I stepped out into the stairwell. The broken flight had been bridged by a piece of the shattered table. I grimaced, looking down into the gap, to the fire that was still going on below.

“Somebody get the fires out,” I ordered. “This ship is practically falling apart.”

Ignoring any response they may have offered, I warily crossed the makeshift bridge and started up the stairs. My coat was sticky with dry blood, and little fragments of hull poked at me with every step. I took a breath. Sweet Celestia, I reek.

Exe was in the lounge, as promised. The bear was lying down quietly in the middle of the room, his head bowed over his axe. He was murmuring to himself, too quiet for me to hear.

“Exe,” I called, approaching him. He showed no sign of hearing. “Exe!”

He cracked an eye open. The blade of his axe shone, unfettered by the blood and filfth that tarnished both of our coats. “Yes, unicorn?”

I collapsed onto the tattered remnants of a pillow, exhausted. “What are you doing?”

“I am making amends with my weapon,” he said. He closed his eye and resumed his murmuring as if the matter had been settled.

“No, Exe, we need to talk.” He ignored me. “Now.”

The bear stopped speaking and let out a deep, exasperated sigh. He opened his eyes and raised his head. “What do you need?”

I frowned. “I still don’t know what you were doing.”

He stared at me silently for a few seconds. I adjusted my position on the pillow uncomfortably. “If you interrupted me merely to ask what I am doing, then I will tell you once I am done.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not that. Well, I am curious but—no, forget it.” I ran a hoof through my mane, remembering too late that it was covered in blood. So much blood. “I need to know how to get to Harvest City. Can you show me?”

More silence. He climbed to his paws and sheathed his axe in one smooth, practiced motion. “Very well, I will show you.”

We made our way up to the deck. Scratches and holes stained the metal, testifying to the ferocity of the onslaught of Ashfall’s attack. Exe scanned the horizon ponderously. We were hovering almost directly above a curving mountain range, with wide, arid plains on one side and a sparse forest on the other. I thought I saw the Stygian’s valley, further down the range, where the mountains grew apart for a few miles before coming back together.

Exe raised a claw, pointing at a mountain that towered above its peers. “That is the Urmount, the tallest mountain in the Boul. It can be seen from anywhere in the Bare Lands,” he said. His claw moved towards the east, to the empty plains stretching before us. “You will find Harvest City there, across the Bare Lands, under the shadow of the Claw.”

I nodded, orienting myself. My horn glowed briefly as I cast my a spell to determine the headingl. “Okay, thanks.”

He nodded and began to lumber back to the ladder. “Please do not interrupt me again. If you are curious, I will speak with you later.”

I watched him go in silence. Once he was out of sight, I returned my gaze to the Bare Lands, and to where I hoped to find Harvest City. Sighing, I looked down to my bloodstained hooves.

Showertime.

On a tower on top of the Alpha Wolf, three ponies lowered their binoculars.

The first one, an older, grizzled pegasus with a clipped wing, look to the other two. “They got away,” she said.

The second one, a unicorn mare, not as rough as the pegasus but not exactly green, grimaced. “Fuck.”

The third, a young, wide-eyed earth pony looked between his companions. “What happens now?” he asked.

The first opened a saddlebag on the floor and began to rummage through it. “One of us has to tell Ashfall,” he explained. “He’ll want the report to be delivered personally.”

The third frowned, picking up on the grim tone of the others. “Is that bad?”

The second nodded. “Very bad. He doesn’t like receiving bad news.”

The first pulled out a cup. A couple dozen straws poked out of the top. He held it up, and the unicorn floated it between the trio. “Now we draw straws,” she said.

The three lookouts drew their straws in silence. A whimper came from the youngest, who held up a straw three times shorter than the others.

“Uh...”

The unicorn patted him on the back apologetically. “It’ll be okay. You’ll be fine,” she lied. The grizzled pegasus nodded her agreement.

“Uh, okay.” Encouraged, the rookie slowly walked to the ladder and climbed down.

The remaining two ponies exchanged grim glances. “How many of those rookies have we sent to die now?” the older asked.

The other shrugged. “I don’t know.” She deposited her straw back into the hidden compartment back in her uniform, dropping a much shorter one back into the cup.

“Well,” the first one said. “It’s gonna have to be one of us next time.” She slipped her own straw into her feathers. “And we both know I hold the longest straw.”

I didn’t really realize how heavy the blood was until it all came washing off.

My whole body was shaking. Cold water ran through my mane, down my hooves, and puddled beneath me, mixed with the blood of the dead. The red mixture had almost clogged the shower; I was standing an inch deep in the stuff.

Whose blood is this? It was hard to imagine that every drop had come from another living thing. That it would never go back.

That they had all died.

I turned the water off and climbed out of the shower, doing my best to ignore the gaping hole in the wall where a cannonball had flown in. Levitating a towel around my body, I found my mind drifting to Moon Dream. To the little filly snuffed out silently in the shadows of Harmony City. To the families pointlessly executed by the Baron. Deaths that had shaken me, to see how easily rebels and tyrants killed, without even a second thought.

Why didn’t I care, when I cut down that griffon that had flown into the ship?

I rush out of the bushes, heart racing, the wire between my hooves.

I raised a hoof to my eyes, blinking.

He falls to the dust, coughing.

Tears fall as I push the wire into his neck.

I shook my head, eyes squeezed tight as I tried to rid myself of the sight.

His eyes stare into mine.

The life leaves them, and his body goes slack.

“Ugh, fuck.” Finally, the flashback faded. Surely nobody would mourn for that recusant. He had been nothing more than a greedy bandit, too lazy to even guard his own clan properly. Then why can’t I get him out of my head?

Deep in thought, I tossed the towel aside and wandered to my room. My crew had made a little altar to me against one wall, and I hadn’t had the time to take it down yet. I tried not to look. It was strange, walking next to my own funeral.

There might be a dozen more out there, because of me.

I flopped down on the little mattress I was forced to call a bed and covered my eyes with my hooves. My whole body ached. What am I even doing out here?

What had I done since I arrived in the Outer World? Almost fallen to my death, barely learned how to defend myself, almost gotten eaten, almost gotten stabbed, met a bloodthirsty bear, helped a trio of sibling burglars kill a bunch of guards just doing their jobs, and almost gotten killed, again. Yay.

Rolling over, I eyed the little altar adorned with my name. Why even take it down? I’ll probably be dead in a week.

No, stop thinking like that. You can make it home. Just keep yourself together.

Ugh, I hate this place! My vision started to blur.

Keep it together! As long as you keep it together you can make it home!

I climbed out of bed, started to leave the room, and almost walked right into a grinning Silver Feather.

“Dissy, hey! We never got to catch up, what with all the—” He paused, his excited expression faltering as he looked into my eyes. “Diss, you alright?”

Blinking, I raised a hoof to wipe away the wet signs of my near-breakdown. “Yeah, I’m fine, Silver.” I mustered up an uncertain little smile. “What’s up?”

The pegasus frowned, putting his good wing over my shoulder. “Hey, what’s up? You don’t look good.”

I shook my head. “It’s nothing, really. Just... this place.” I tried to step past him, but he moved to block my way.

“Dissero, c’mon. What happened out there? You can tell me, you know that.”

“No, I can’t, Silver. I’m sorry.” I shut my eyes tight, burying the memory of that recusant deep, deep down before opening them again. “I have to keep looking ahead, or I’m afraid what’s behind will chew me up and spit me out a shell of what I once was.”

He frowned, his face uncharacteristically serious. “Diss, you can’t just keep it all inside.”

I pushed past him. “I’ll tell you everything, once we get back home. Until then, let’s just focus on getting through this.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded. “I’ll hold you to that.”

I was feeling tense.

The Omega flew with the speed and grace of a pair of tied-together bricks. Holes, dings, and scratches were everywhere. Ember ignored most of them, choosing to focus her time on the balloon and other important systems. At the very least, her near-maternal drive to keep the ship running had pushed any anger she had at how it got into such critical condition out of her mind.

The engine wasn’t in good condition. With the reactor essentially nonexistent, Stormslider was forced to fly out, grab thunderclouds from whatever storms we happened to pass, and try to stuff it into the system.

“The weather out here is weird,” she told me when I went to check on her. “The clouds won’t listen to me, and they keep losing their charge and turning into normal clouds.”

At that instant, the pitiful ball of thunderclouds floating in the reactor split into pieces with an audible pop. The pieces drifted around idly, gradually returning to the soft white color of an empty cloud.

“Ugh, great.” Flying in the reactor through a hole in the glass, she shooed the clouds outside. “Now I have to get new ones... again.”

I shrugged. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Just keep us up a couple more days. Exe says we should be at Harvest soon.”

“Wait, Dissero.”

I paused halfway out the door, took a couple steps back, and tilted my head quizzically. “Yeah?”

She had turned to face me, hovering in the middle of the room. “Why are we going to this Harvest place, anyways?”

Because I’m laying all of our lives on a seer that may not even be real. “I think I know how to get us back home,” I lied.

Storm nodded, flying back to the rear of the engine room to resume her work. I looked after her briefly, sighed, and started up the stairwell. Please, Celestia, let that seer be what I need.

As I climbed the steps, I tried to decide what to do next. For the past five days I’d been skulking up and down the ship in a desperate search for tasks to occupy my mind. I helped Ember with the repairs, helped Nix and Cleaver clean up wreckage from the chase, and sat in the cockpit checking and re-checking Silver’s course until he sent me away in disgust. Anything to keep my eyes ahead.

Reaching the top of the stairs, I decided to go up to the deck and look around. Despite all it’s flaws, the Outer World did have a certain beauty to it, only amplified by the mystery of its unknown expanse. Perhaps I might find something to lose myself in within the landscape passing below.

When I arrived on the deck, Exe was already there. The bear was sitting at the aft of the deck, stoically gazing out at the Urmount passing in the distance. I quietly stepped up to his side.

The Bare Lands stretched out around, beneath, and before us. Wide rolling plains of tall, brown grass dominated the land, interspersed with patches of trees here and there. Lush green surrounded a small lake, the plant life waving gently in the wind. Further away, I saw a pack of raptors chasing after a flock of ostriches. One of the birds fell in its haste to escape, and within seconds the raptors were upon it. In the distance, the Boul rose, the mountains encircling the grasslands like a natural stone wall.

I looked over to Exe. Eyes closed, he took in a long, deep breath of the air.

“So,” I began, “Are you from here?”

His eyes shot open, showing a brief flicker of annoyance that was quickly replaced with his usual calm visage. “I was.”

I returned my gaze to the grasslands. “But not anymore?”

He shook his head, the movement so small that I barely noticed it. “No, unicorn. It is not for me to have a home any longer.”

Hrm. I dropped the subject. The sun beat down upon us, its heat reflecting off the metal of the deck. A few minutes passed in silence, as each of us, for our own reasons, lost ourselves in the sight before us. A new topic came to my mind.

“What were you doing with your axe, earlier?” I asked.

“Making amends,” he stated.

My tail flicked with annoyance. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

He cocked his head, thoughtfully. “Tell me,” he said. “If I was to pick you up, carrying you into battle, and use you to smash another being until it could no longer draw breath, how would you feel?”

I balked, mouth open. What? It took me a few seconds to get my thoughts out. “What?”

The bear went on, unperturbed by my confusion. “Would you feel that, at the very least, I owed you an apology?”

“Uh...” I paused, uncertain. “I... suppose?”

Suddenly, he had his axe out of its sheath, cradled in his paws like a foal. “This axe has seen me through many trials, unicorn, just as I have it.” He ran a claw over one of the many notches in its blade. “I often find that I must give thanks for its service.”

This bear is crazy. I took a few moments to put together a coherent statement. “What?”

He sighed, gently sliding the blade’s hilt back into his sheath. “I have answered your question,” he said. “That is what I was doing.”

Another thought rose up from my mind. “Exe, why were you traveling to New alone?” So far, every other bear I’d seen had always been with at least two others, and had kept their distance from strangers. Except for Exe. If it wasn’t for me, he would probably still be on his own.

A paw rose from the deck, touching the black hood hanging from his neck as if to ensure it was still there. “It is not my place to be of a tribe,” he said. “I am One Amongst the Fallen.”

I recalled that he had introduced himself as that before, when we first meant. I still didn’t know what significance it held. “What does that mean?”

His ears twitched with annoyance. For a minute he sat silently, looking straight ahead, and I started to worry that I might have gone too far. His eyes squinted.

“Do you see that, unicorn?”

Curious, I followed his gaze. My heart sunk.

In the distance, the barely visible form of Ashfall’s ship was approaching.

“Shit,” I said. I started pacing across the deck nervously. “If they get within firing range, the way we are now, there’s no way we’ll survive.”

Exe nodded solemnly. “We should reach Harvest soon,” he said. “If we get there before they catch us, we will be safe.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked. “I don’t want to take any chances here.” I chose to ignore the fact that we were taking a chance merely by going to Harvest. I had no other choice.

His small eyes looked down on me knowingly. “The Simple Council does not condone piracy,” he explained. “It’s bad for business.”

A day later, Exe and I stood on the deck as both the city and our pursuers grew closer. Silver Feather, Cleaver, and Nix were all in the cockpit, weapons ready. Stormslider and Ember were still hard at work around the ship.

I shivered. As the Omega strained to gain the altitude needed to cross over the Boul and out of the Bare Lands, the air grew chill. Here, the mountains of the Boul were tall and steep, their snow-capped peaks devoid of any green. I peeked down the deck hatch, into the cockpit.

“Can’t we climb any faster?” I asked.

Silver shot me a dirty look. “No, Dissy, for the fifth time. Don’t you realize the condition this ship is in? It’s hard enough to stop us from falling out of the sky!”

Nix cringed at that. She was huddled against the wall, eyes wide with fear. It occurred to me that, considering how close we were to dying, I should probably feel some kind of fear too. But despite myself, I was finding it hard to muster anything but exasperation, anger, and annoyance. The Outer World is changing me already.

I looked to Exe. “You’re sure we’ll be safe?”

The bear kept his eyes trained on the mountains before us. “As long as The Simple Council is still in power, we will be safe.”

“As long as?” I glanced behind us, at the now much closer warship giving chase. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“The governments in these cities are somewhat... unstable,” he explained. “The Simple Council has been in power for six decades. Its predecessors all fell to coups within two.”

I blinked. “When was the last time you were in Harvest, Exe?”

He continued looking ahead, ignoring me.

“Exe!”

The bear let out a sigh. “Seven years.”

“Damnit!”

Silver looked up alarmingly. “What?” he demanded. “Are they in firing range?”

I shook my head, waving a hoof to signal for him to get back to his piloting. “No, don’t worry about it. We’re still good.”

After a brief hesitation, he returned to his controls.

I looked back again. Ashfall’s ship was starting to angle away from us. No doubt when it got closer it would present us with a full broadside.

The pitifully small engine left to us strained to carry the ship over the mountains. Silver was flying us dangerously close to the mountainside in an effort to speed things up. Almost there... For a moment I felt as if I could step right off the deck, into the snow. I shivered again as a gust of wind blew snow over my coat.

A cannonball plopped into the snow to my left. My eyes widened. Silver cursed. Nix whimpered. Cleaver sipped booze.

Finally, we were above the mountaintops, and I got my first look at the city.

Harvest City was massive, nestled between the small line of mountains which arced out of the Boul known as the Claw and the narrow lake Exe had called the Relief. The city was larger than any I’d ever seen, in Equestria or not, with at least a hundred skydocks scattered across its body. A flock of airships was spread above its surface, coming and going, carrying trade from around the Outer World.

Surrounding the city was an equally massive stone wall, the height of a small mountain. I counted sixteen straight segments of wall, encircling the entire city with their girth.

And on each corner of the wall, where the segments met, sat a truly massive gun, each one larger than an airship in itself.

I was pulled out of my awed reverie by the arrival of more cannonballs on the deck. A series of dull thuds sounded out as Ashfall’s ship pounded the Omega with the strength of a full broadside.

“Fuck!” I threw myself to the deck. Lumps of iron tore through and bounced off the hull all around me. My ears rang with the sharp ping! of metal striking metal. Red-hot shards stung my coat as they burst through the air. I shut my eyes tight, curling up into a little ball, and prayed to Celestia and Luna alike to keep me alive.

After what seemed an eternity, the onslaught faded. I raised my head blearily. There were holes all over the deck. I peeked into the cockpit.

“Are we still good?” I asked.

“No!” Silver yelled back. “We are not good!”

My eyes widened as I felt a sickly falling sensation. The wind rushed through my mane as we picked up speed. “Fuck!” I looked to Exe. “Get inside! We’re falling!”

I tumbled into the cockpit, Exe close behind me. Nix was still in her corner, screaming. Silver was yanking at a chain furiously with his teeth, all four hooves set on the floor, his good wing out in an attempt to keep him grounded. Cleaver was nowhere to be seen.

“What do we do?” I shouted.

“Brace yourselves!”

Outside the cockpit, the ground approached with terrifying speed.

And then, with an ear-splitting metallic screech, we crashed.

Author's Notes:

Ember's origin scene!
The engine breaks!
The mysterious bear speaks mysterious words!
The ship breaks!

I wonder if Dissy ever gets tired of ending and beginning all these chapters with getting beaten up.