My head throbbed. My horn ached. My ears rang. Gradually, I figured out which way was up.

I was lying amongst the four wheels sticking out the wall of the cockpit, each one jutting out at an unusual angle. The ship must’ve tipped over in the crash. The omnipresent hum of the engines began to wind down. Blearily, I raised my head.

“Is everyone okay?” I called.

Silver raised a hoof and waved it around. He was splayed out against the cracked cockpit glass, eyes screwed up with pain, his bad wing hanging limply. “I’m... alive,” he said.

I stumbled to my hooves. Nix wasn’t moving, her body halfway in the secret compartment that contained the armory. A little jolt of panic stabbed through my heart. I practically fell on her, putting my ear up to her chest. Her heart was beating. She was alive.

Exe climbed into the cockpit, covered in scratches. “We must get outside,” he growled.

“The hatch is at the bottom of the stairwell,” I moaned. “I don’t think any of us feel up to that journey.”

The bear ignored me, carefully picking his way across the cockpit. With a sudden burst of speed, he smashed through the cockpit glass, landing heavily in the dirt on the other side.

I crawled over to Silver, placing a hoof on his chest. “You gonna be alright?” I asked.

He nodded weakly. “Yeah. For now, yeah.”

Satisfied, I followed Exe out into the dirt, making sure not to cut myself on the shattered glass. He was looking up. I followed his gaze.

Ashfall’s ship was hovering above us.

“Exe, what now?” I asked. “We can’t get away from them.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Now we hope that the Simple Council is still in power.”

I looked to the walls of Harvest City, rising high above the green plain we’d crash landed on. I couldn’t tell for sure from so far away, but it looked like something was moving on them.

“What will they do if they are?”

He glanced up to the walls. For a moment, I almost thought he was smiling. “They will fire the Deck Guns.”

Booooooommmmm.

Light and noise erupted from atop the walls. A giant cannonball, at least ten feet across, soared through the air. My ears twitched at the high whistling sound of its flight.

With pinpoint accuracy, the cannonball slammed into Ashfall’s ship. It ripped through the hull like a rock thrown at paper, punching clean through to the other side. It smacked into the mountains behind its target with a dull thud, lodging itself into the stone.

My eyes widened as Ashfall’s ship lurched to one side, almost capsizing from the force of the impact. It recovered, starting to turn back to the mountains.

Booooooommmmm.

Another cannonball, just as large as the first, arced through the sky. I blinked into the sun as it flew overhead, cutting a shallow gouge through the top of its target, before landing next to its kin on the mountainside.

I raised a hoof weakly. “Yeah!” I weakly shouted, still too disoriented to truly raise my voice. Ashfall’s ship, smoking and leaning to one side, passed back over the Boul, into the Bare Lands, and out of sight.

My legs went weak, and I stumbled, propping myself up on Exe’s sturdy form. “We’re safe,” I breathed. Relief washed over me. “We got away.”

Exe nodded, still looking to where the ship had vanished over the mountains. “For now, at least.”

I looked up to him, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘for now’?”

“Harvest City is a city of trade first and foremost, unicorn,” he explained. “Though they may punish any piracy within sight of their cannons, that does not mean that they engage in charity.” He turned, eyeing the walls of the huge city grimly. “The Simple Council has saved our lives, and they will expect that we pay for them.”

Knock, knock, knock.

“Hello? Open the door, please. Council business.”

I jumped, startled by the voice outside my room. Running my hooves through my mane tiredly, I grabbed my last remaining sword and fastened its sheath around me with some simple magic. Briefly glancing at my scratched and bloodstained barding, which was in a roughly assembled heap in a corner, I debated whether or not to strap it on. Nah. The sword will do. Harvest doesn’t seem quite as bad as New.

The knocking returned, slightly more insistent. “Council business!”

Stifling the urge to grumble something rude, I reached out with my magic and opened the door. A small gargoyle stood on the opposite side, tapping a hoof impatiently. “Yes?”

The goyle cleared her throat. “You are Dissero, the Equestrian, captain and owner of the Omega, airship of Equestrian origin, which currently resides under the care of the Council Shipyards?”

I nodded. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Very well, then.” The goyle beckoned to me as she began to walk down the hall.

Closing the door behind me, I followed her past three other doors and down two flights of stairs. The ground floor of the building was a quiet little tavern, with a simple bar and a few tables occupied by unusually somber patrons. We passed through the room and out the door on the other side, coming out in the wide streets of Harvest City.

Where New had a dirty, unstable feel to it, Harvest held an atmosphere of cleanliness and order. Uniformed guards, all wearing the same steel armor with a red stripe painted down the legs, patrolled the streets. Wolves, zebra, and goyle alike walked up and down the avenue, some of them not even displaying a weapon. The streetside stalls common all over New were replaced by proper stores, the merchants calling out from their doorways. A pair of wagons was pulled down the street by chained recusants. Square, carefully planned buildings lined the street, all fitting neatly within the protective walls that rose all around the city. Harvest City was the very picture of organization.

I followed my escort down the street wordlessly. According to Exe, the city was not always like this, and had become so mostly due to the efforts of the Simple Council. The Council consisted of nine of the richest merchants in the city, and therefore in the Outer World, who had risen to power through shrewd investment and patience sixty years ago. They had carried the same gold-driven focus and organization of their business into the management of the city, organizing a stunningly effective system for squeezing every drop of gold out of every visitor and citizen.

I sped up, drawing abreast to my escort. “Where are we going?” I asked.

She barely spared me a glance as we slipped through the crowd. “The Council Shipyards,” she stated. “Your ship requires repairs. Repairs require payment.”

Just as Exe predicted. After spending almost two hours lying exhausted in the wreckage of the Omega, a team of goyles had come out to greet us with wagons full of tools, offering to repair our ship enough for it to fly to the city’s shipyard. Once it arrived, my crew and I had been ushered to the Council-owned inn and given rooms to spend the night. Exe hadn’t come with us, slipping away and muttering something about not needing any more debts. We hadn’t been asked to pay a single penny for the service, and I was getting the creeping feeling that I was about to be charged.

The crowd thinned and the buildings changed as we moved through the city. The mercantile buildings that dominated Harvest were replaced with workshops, and then warehouses. The sun approached its apex in the sky. My stomach grumbled. I knew I should’ve eaten breakfast sooner.

We approached a series of buildings much larger than any I’d seen in the city before, hangars that held airships too damaged to float next to a skydock. Most of them were larger than the Omega, sporting guns and armored plating.

The goyle led me to the hangar that contained the Omega. My heart clenched at the sight of the ship, beaten and shattered as it was. The balloon had been repaired so that it could get to the hangar, but besides that the ship was in pieces. The hull was in tatters. The navigation level had collapsed in on itself. The broken reactor lay quietly in the engine room, visible through the ship’s many wounds. How can anypony ever repair this kind of damage?

I looked to my side, mouth open to ask, but my goyle escort was gone. Huh. The soft sound of hooves and claws approached from deeper in the hangar, and I turned back to see a zebra and wolf approaching me.

The zebra dipped its head. “Greetings. You are Dissero, captain of this ship, which now lies in the hold of the Simple Council?” she asked.

“That’s me,” I said carefully.

The zebra nodded. “Good. You are aware that your ship is not at all in flying condition, and that in most cases any sane investor would scavenge it for parts and toss aside the wreck?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Where are you going with this?”

“Normally, we would not waste a hangar on a wreck such as this,” she began. “However, your crew seems to insist that they can repair it.” She accompanied the statement with a skeptical glance behind her. “As such, we are willing to rent the hangar to you, until it is in suitable condition.”

Here we go. “What does that mean, exactly?”

The wolf spoke up. “It means that the hangar and the workers assigned to it are yours,” he said.

“That is not all,” the zebra interjected. “There will be a fee for the rental.”

I sighed. I can’t lose that ship. “How much?”

“Twenty thousand gold pieces.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Twenty thousand!?” I repeated. They nodded solemnly. “That’s ridiculous! I can’t afford that!” I barely have a hundred!

The wolf grinned, pulling back his lips to reveal a set of sharp fangs. “There is another way,” he said.

I raised a brow. “What is it?”

The zebra pulled out a pocketwatch, eyeing it briefly. “In lieu of gold payment, you may also pay in bodies.” She raised a hoof, cutting off my response before it started. “Not slaves, mind you. You will merely be asked to support the Simple Council in battle.”

I narrowed my eyes. “More specifically?”

The wolf rolled its eyes. “Once your ship is in fighting condition, it’ll be drafted into our fleet until we feel you’ve paid our gold’s worth. Whether you volunteer to crew it or not is up to you, but the ship will become an asset of the Simple Council.”

“What!? I—ugh.” I ran a hoof through my mane. “Can I have some time to think this over? Run it by my crew?”

“I’m afraid not,” the zebra stated. “Time is money, Dissero. Every minute your ship occupies this hangar, the city loses gold. If you do not decide now, we will simply keep it for ourselves.”

“That’s not fair!” I snarled, stomping a hoof in frustration. “It’s my ship! You can’t just take it from me like that!”

The wolf snorted. “Actually, we can. And we will.”

“Fuck!” I glared at them, barely containing the surge of obscene insults swirling around inside me. They had me, and they knew it. The wolf wasn’t even bothering to hide his smug expression. A few moments passed in silence as we stared eachother down. “Fine,” I snapped. “We’ll fight for you. Not like I really have a choice.”

“Excellent,” the zebra said. “The hangar is yours, then. If you require supplies, the quartermaster will attain them. We will calculate your debt once you are done.”

With another glance at his pocketwatch, the zebra trotted away. The wolf turned to follow, pausing only to shoot me one last smug grin. “And don’t worry, we’ll make sure you pay it.”

“You did what?”

“They didn’t give me any choice!”

I was at a table in the tavern beneath our rooms, with my crew seated before me. Their shocked faces covered a variety of emotions, from betrayal to anger to surprise, as I told them about our new debt.

Stormslider, eyes calm, cleared a throat. “Dissero, you realize that you’ve basically sold us back into slavery, right?”

I balked at her, mouth agape. “What—no, I didn’t! They saved our ship and are giving us the tools to repair it. We have no gold to pay them with!”

Nix spoke up, voice shaking. “S-so, you sign us up to f-fight for them?” she asked. “I don’t want to fight anyone.”

“Ugh. I did what I had to do to save the ship! It’s all we have left. Don’t you understand that?” Don’t they see that I had no choice.

Ember shook her head, forelegs crossed before her. “He’s right, you know.”

I blinked. Of all the ponies in my crew, she was the last one I’d expected support from.

“That ship is all we have,” she continued. “We simply cannot afford to lose it.”

“Well, what’re we gonna do when we’re stuck flying it into battle?” Silver asked. “It doesn’t even have any guns on it!”

Cleaver put down his bottle, the glass making a dull thud against the table. “We have no knowledge of that kind of fighting,” he stated.

“We can put guns on it!” Ember asserted. “Think about it, we can make the ship better than it ever was.”

Stormslider nodded. “She’s right. We need the ship, and this is the only way to keep it. Dissero’s choice may not have been ideal, but there was no better option.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, leaning back in my chair. That’s one catastrophe averted. “Well, now that’s settled,” I began, “there’s another matter I need to tell you about.”

Five pairs of eyes turned to face me. Hesitantly, I pulled the map that led to the seer’s home out of my saddlebags and spread it out over the table. “There’s a well-reputed seer that lives in the wilderness around this city. I’d like to go speak with her.”

Five skeptical expressions eyed me over the table. “You want us to risk our lives out in this Celestia-forsaken land to find some seer?” Ember asked.

I raised my hooves defensively. “Look, we’re all out of ideas on getting back to Equestria. We’re in over our heads, here. A little guidance couldn’t hurt.”

Silver frowned, a hoof propped under his chin. “Dissy, the Outer World is dangerous. You should know that better than all of us. Is it really smart to go and try to find this seer without the ship?”

“Look at me.” I bumped a hoof over my chest. “I was out in that wilderness for over a month. I lived with a clan of bandits, one of which was obsessed with cutting my horn off. I survived a griffon raid and crossed the wilderness, alone. With you all by my side, I’m confident that we can find a seer hiding in the woods.”

Stormslider nodded thoughtfully, and Silver gave the shrug I recognized as his way of saying I was right. Cleaver took a ponderous sip of his vodka. Nix’s eyes brightened, and she straightened in her seat.

“Either way, I’m staying with the ship,” Ember stated.

I raised a brow. “What? Why?”

“Would you leave our ship all alone in this city?” she asked. “From what I’ve seen, they’ll milk that repair for every coin, and probably do a half-ass job, too. I’m staying with the ship.”

Stormslider leaned forwards. “I will stay as well.”

Ember shot her a look, mouth open, but Stormslider cut her off before she could retort. “You may care for the ship, Ember, but you don’t know everything. It’d be best to have another, trained specialist on hoof.”

The two mares locked eyes, Ember’s hostility met with Stormslider’s calm certainty. I gulped. Ember looked away with a spiteful grumble.

Silver leapt forwards to fill the silence. “Well! Now that we’ve got that settled, I guess we’d better make some plans for finding this seer.”

“Well, here we are.”

Silver, Nix, Cleaver, Exe, and I stood before the northern gate of Harvest City. It wasn’t quite as large as the east or south gates, which were avenues for heavy trade, but to an Equestrian like myself it was just as impressive. Spiked steel points hung above us, ready to drop at a moment’s notice should invaders appear. The heavy shadow of one of the Deck Guns rested on the wooden drawbridge that led out to the wild, warning of just how much power this city could bring to bear.

I looked around. “Is everyone ready?” My crew nodded, the heavy saddlebags at their sides bouncing with the movement. Exe gave a quiet grunt of confirmation, his axe gleaming with careful polish on his back.

With a deep breath, I took a step forwards.

“Hello, there!”

My ears twitched. After a brief search for the source of the greeting, I caught sight of a zebra poking his head out of a small building to the side. He slipped out into the street, trotting towards us with a wide smile.

“Uh, hey,” I said. The zebra looked like almost every other zebra I’d ever met, with the black and white stripes running down his side interrupted only by the tribal symbol painted on his flank. He stopped before my crew and offered a deep bow.

“Are you travelers?” he asked eagerly. “Where might you be headed?”

I cocked my head thoughtfully. No harm in telling him. “We’re searching for a seer.”

His eyes brightened. “Ah! Is it the Earth Seer you seek?” He began to trot back to the building. “Wait just a moment, I will be right out!”

The strange zebra disappeared behind the door. I looked to Exe. “Do you know what’s going on here?”

“I think he is hoping to guide us,” the bear mused. “No doubt he would seek payment.”

Nix frowned. “But we don’t have any gold.”

The zebra chose that moment to return, equipped with a worn outfit of thick cloth, a sheathed sword hanging from one side, and a single saddlebag bouncing off the other. “Very well, then. I am ready to go.”

I scuffed at the ground with a hoof, looking away. “Uhm, we don’t have any gold to pay you with. We can’t hire you.”

The zebra scoffed, waving a hoof as if to push the denial aside. “Pay? Hah! The Earth Seer has told me of you. She will pay.”

“Oh.” I looked to my crew, and they nodded for me to accept. “Well, okay then. Who are you?”

A wide, confident grin spread across the zebra’s face. “I am Jabari, the finest guide of the north gate! I know this land as I know my stripes, from the walls of Harvest to the mountains of the Claw!” He bowed again. “You shall travel true, with me at your service.”

I nodded, offering a small smile. Jabari’s energy was infectious. “Well, welcome to the party, Jabari. I’m Dissero. This is my crew.” I turned, introducing each of my crewmembers by name. For the sake of convenience, I didn’t mention how Exe wasn’t actually part of the crew.

Jabari bowed to each of them in turn. Silver bowed back playfully, and Nix gave the zebra a sincere smile.

“Very well, then,” Jabari said. “Shall we depart?”

Amongst the flame and ash of a burning city, three recusants galloped.

Slick led the way, sliding into an alley so fast that his hooves skidded. He glanced back anxiously, peering through the dust.

Trick and Pick sprinted out of the shadows, the flickering light of a burning building illuminating the fear on their faces. Heavy saddlebags bounced off their sides as they slipped into the alley after their brother, panting.

Slick nodded. “Okay, we gotta get out of the city. You two ready?” He ignored the sound of their old hideout collapsing in on itself. If we hadn’t left in time...

“Yeah, we’re good,” Trick said. Pick grunted his agreement.

“Okay, follow me.”

Slick took off down the alleys, turning left and right without hesitation. He knew these alleys like the feathers in his wing. Nothing could catch him in here.

With an ear-splitting groan, a building collapsed, dropping a flaming pile of wood into his path. He cursed. They’d have to risk the rooftops.

He flared his wings, flying up onto the roof of the building. Fires burned across the city, the heat buffeting him from every direction. Glancing upwards, he caught sight of another airship, moments before it crashed into the ground. He stumbled as the shockwave of the explosion pushed him back, the flames reaching up into the night sky.

Slick glanced upwards nervously. Two of the five distinctive towers of New were covered in fire, the piers breaking off one by one to slam into the city below. The Jackal’s tower was nowhere to be seen, having collapsed almost as soon as the attack began. Above him, heavily-armed warships circled around the Baron’s tower, bombarding the city and shooting every other ship out of the sky. The city was almost done. The last defending airships clustered under the green flag of the one tower that wasn’t yet in flames.

But it wouldn’t last long. Slick knew that the Baron’s troops would win. And when they did, he and his family had to be out of the city.

With a quick look to see that his siblings were behind him, Slick started across the rooftops, leaping over alleys and avoiding the rapidly growing infernos raging across the city. The heat buffeted at his coat as he galloped, pushing him onwards. A shadow of a memory flashed through his head.

“Run.”

There, the border of the city. Slick leapt down to the street, slowing his fall with a flap of his wings, and sprinted for the exit. Just a bit further...

A high-pitched whining filled the air. Suddenly, he was lifted off his hooves and pushed forwards, landing hard on the hot surface of the stone. He jumped to his hooves, frantically scanning the street for his siblings. “Is everyone okay?” he called.

A cry of agony pierced the darkness “Slick!”

“Oh, no. No no no no.” Slick ran to the source of the scream, practically throwing himself to the ground next to his little brother.

Pick looked up at him, face screwed up in pain as he cradled the bleeding stump of his foreleg. “Hurts,” he moaned.

Slick nodded. “Right. Don’t worry, I’ll fix you up in no time! And then we’ll be out of here, safe, and we’ll go live with our cousins in Southshore, and...” He trailed off. He was rambling. Calm down. Don’t break down now. Your family needs you.

He shook his saddlebags off, searching through them for the medical supplies. No, that’s not right. Trick had all the first aid stuff. She was the best at healing. Trick. His eyes widened. Where’s Trick...?

Raising his head, Slick caught sight of his sister. She wasn’t moving. “Fuck. Fuck!” He turned back to Pick. “I’ll be right back. Right back!”

Slick scrambled over to his sister, breathing fast. As he grew closer, he saw his fears come to harsh reality before him. Trick’s blood stained the street, pouring out of her headless corpse. A deep, bloody gouge marked her back. Her head was nowhere to be seen.

He fell over next to the body, sobbing as he frantically ripped her saddlebags away. No time for grief. Got to stay together. For Pick.

He returned to his brother with her saddlebags in hoof, dumping their contents on the ground. Picking a dressing out of the pile of supplies, he did his best to hide his tears as he began to work.

Pick hissed, tensing as the wound was treated. “Where’s... where’s Sis?” he asked. When Slick didn’t respond, he tried again, his voice high with fear. “Slick, where’s Sis?”

Slick wrapped a bandage tight around the wound, ignoring the question as he swept the supplies back into their bloodied container with a wing. He slipped into them shakily, leaving his own saddlebags, full to the brim with as many Equestrian gemstones as he could fit, lying on the street.

Pick reached out with his remaining hoof, grabbing his brother roughly. “Where is Sis!?” he demanded.

“Do you remember what Mother told us?” Slick asked. He locked eyes with Pick, doing his best to keep his voice from trembling. “What’d she tell us?”

Pick hesitated, face blank. “She told us to run.”

Slick nodded, hoping his brother couldn’t see the tears running down his cheeks. “Yeah, that’s right,” he murmured. “And that hasn’t changed. Now c’mon! Get up!” With a grunt, he pulled Pick back to his hooves, allowing his brother to lean on his left side for support.

They stumbled a few feet further down the street. Slick kept his eyes focused dead ahead, on the darkness beyond the holocaust that was the city. His ears twitched at the sound of another explosion behind him.

A cannonball fell from above, lodging itself into the ground. To his left.

Slick’s eyes widened. His heart clenched.

With a flash of purple, the ball of iron detonated, sending deadly sharp shards out in every direction. Slick shut his eyes tight, cringing at the wet smacking of metal cutting flesh. He felt no pain.

His heart felt about to burst at the idea of what that might mean.

He opened his eyes. His brother was dead weight upon him, his body having shielded Slick from the murderous fragments. Slick backed away, shaking as his brother’s shredded corpse fell to the ground.

Anger welled up within him. Anger and rage and great, overwhelming grief. He glared up at the warships above and screamed his fury.

“Why the fuck are you doing this!? Why must you take everything from me!?” he screamed. His wings flared, daggers unsheathed. He would show them. He would kill them all for what they had done to him.

“Run.”

Slick blinked, shaking his head to dislodge the memory of Mother’s death. A fresh layer of grief rose up as he remembered that day, four years ago, when griffons had raided his clan. When he and his siblings had first come to the city. Mother had told them to run.

He galloped out of the city. He didn't dare look back.

With an ear-splitting metallic groan, the green-flagged tower toppled over. A yellow unicorn made a mark on his clipboard.

Author's Notes:

So today me and my co-author finally... uh, finalized the plot for the first installment of Omega. And yeah, first. Out of three. I'm predicting this one will wrap up around chapter... 30? 34ish? With the other two being roughly the same length, and keeping chapters around 5 words... we're looking at probably a 495k word fic, here...
It's gonna be a doozy.

You guys remember, back in Ch. 10, when the Baron mentioned Order 94? Huh? Huh? Foreshadowing!

In other news, the Omega can't seem to go anywhere without being torn to pieces.