“Now, let’s see if you can get this one. Hrm... what is the name of the earth pony leader that helped unite the three tribes?”

“Chancellor Puddinghead!”

Robber Baron smiled. “Yes, that’s right.”

He reached out a hoof and rustled the filly’s mane. “Now go along and pack your bags. You have a long journey ahead of you.”

“Yes, sir, Mister Baron!”

The filly nodded enthusiastically and snapped into a mock salute. With a giggle, she twisted around and ran down the hall, disappearing out of sight around a corner. The Baron turned to Pen Knife, who was standing by his side with his ever-present clipboard.

“How much longer until that one’s ready, Pen?” he asked.

“The filly, sir? Another decade, I believe.”

“And what position is she being groomed for? Baltimare?”

“Minister of Commerce for Baltimare, sir.”

“Ah, excellent.” Baron took a moment to mull over his mental notes. “Is the current minister with us?”

“No, sir. Claims to be unbuyable.”

“Well, make sure his assassination is clean.”

“Yes, sir.” Pen Knife made a small scribble on his clipboard.

How the hell does that clipboard of his work? Robber Baron had never once seen him turn to another sheet, and yet somehow he managed to always have a relevant page on it. Boggles the mind.

Baron glanced out the window. “Is the execution ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Give the Inner City a day off. I don’t want a single one of them to miss it.”

Without any real conscious direction, my panicked hooves eventually brought me to the closest thing I had to home: my little apartment in building 12R. I crashed through the still unsecured door and tossed myself into bed.

How could they kill a filly?

I woke up the next morning to the pleasantly surprising sound of laughter out in the hall.

Rolling out of bed, I took a minute to stretch. My body still ached, despite not having to work yesterday. I hate this place.

Poking my head out my room, I glanced up and down the hall. Old Ironhide was in the same position as always, squinting down upon a few mares playing at cards from his chair. Levitating my door back into place, I trotted down the hall.

“Morning,” I said.

The mares looked up briefly, nodded acknowledgement, and returned to their game. Old Ironhide greeted me with a puff of smoke. “Morning, Dissy! Have you heard the news?”

I cocked my head. “No. What’s happened?”

He frowned. “The good Baron has decided to grace us all with a holiday.”

I blinked, taken aback by the foreboding tone. “Well, that’s good... right?”

One of the mares coughed loudly. The other two exchanged condescending looks as Ironhide shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. The good Baron only grants us his ‘holidays’ when he wants us to attend something. And when he wants us to attend something, it’s never something good.” He punctuated the sentence with a meaningful pull on his pipe.

“Oh.” I ran a hoof through my mane, suddenly self-conscious. “Well, thanks for telling me then. I’ll be off.”

None of them offered a farewell, and I left them in silence. I climbed down the stairs to Nix’s floor, found her room, and knocked twice.

“Come in.”

“Hey, Nix. Just thought I’d come and—”

I stopped, halfway in the room. Silver Feather and Nix were there, as I had expected, but so was Stormslider. My mind debated whether or not to slip back out before she noticed, but it was too late anyways. She had me now, eyeing me with that cool, collected look of hers.

“Hello, Dissero.”

Might as well get this over with. I stepped the rest of the way into the room and shut the door behind me. “Hey, Storm. I just wanted to say—”

“Save your apologies and listen,” she interrupted. At this rate I’ll have enough apologies saved to open a small business. I glanced at the clock and mentally noted the time. No doubt she had prepared a debilitating series of accurate, detailed jibes.

“I’m a rational pony. I like to judge ponies by their intentions. I know you had good intentions. You didn’t want this; you’re not evil.” Her brow furrowed with well-controlled anger. “As such, I will forgive you, and instead direct my anger at the bastard that runs this city, and has me cleaning the only sewers in all of Equestria full of disgusting, foreign shit.”

I blinked. I smiled. Perhaps Old Ironhide is right after all. Storm gave me a curt nod and turned to Nix.

“Do you have a towel I can borrow?” she asked. For the first time I noticed the dampness dripping off her mane.

Nix grabbed a neatly folded towel and tossed it to her. “If you have sewer duty, you’ll have to keep it.” She looked to me. “And Dissy, Old Ironhide tells me you have foundry duty. You’ll need this.”

She hoofed me a plain, yellowish-white bandana. I held it up quizzically.

“To tie around your muzzle,” she added. “It’ll protect you from the smoke and fire.”

“Ah, of course.” I draped it over my neck experimentally. “I don’t know how to tie one of these.”

“I’ll handle it.” Nix crossed the room and tied the bandana around my neck before I could open my mouth to protest.

“Uh, thanks.”

“No problem. Can you help me with this poultice?”

Clang! Clang! Clang!

My ear’s twitched. I drew the curtains on the nearest hole in the wall aside and glanced down the street. “Nix, what is that?”

“Whatever the Baron called the holiday for is about to happen. We all need to get to the display yard,” she said. She grabbed a fresh roll of bandages and wrapped it around Silver’s bad wing. He mumbled something irritably.

I narrowed my eyes. There was something coming around the corner, down the street. What is that...?

As it rounded the turn and came into full view, I realized what it was. A small airship, slowly working its way down the street. A bell was fixed to the top of it, being rung by a stern-looking unicorn.

As it passed by, Nix put her supplies back into her bag and stood up, stretching. She looked down to Silver. “Get up. You can walk now, as long as you take it easy, and you’re better off not staying here.”

He climbed to his hooves, rolling his shoulders experimentally. “Why not?”

She frowned. “The Baron doesn’t like it when we miss things. Sometimes he raids buildings, and if he finds somepony skipping...”

Silver nodded. “Right, I get the picture.” He flourished a hoof towards the door in mock ceremony. “Shall we go, then?”

The street was crowded. Every pony in the Inner City lived in the same compacted residential district: twenty buildings over five blocks, and they poured out of their residences like trickles meeting a river. The bell ship passed over me, casting my world into a second layer of shadow even deeper than the one cast by the tradeships above. I scanned the crowd, looking for my other crewmembers. In the distance, a team of the Baron’s police broke into a building.

The sun was just starting to set as we arrived at the display yard. It was the only truly open space in the Inner City, which usually made an uncomfortably efficient use of space. The wide, circular yard marked the very middle of Harmony City, gently sloping down from the edges. At the bottom of the yard, where it flattened out, a wooden scaffold had been erected. The hooves of hundreds of enslaved ponies kicked up a thick cloud of dust, making it difficult to see. I coughed. Despite being called a yard, there wasn’t a single blade of grass in sight.

On the opposite side of the yard, surrounded by a clear and cleanly paved courtyard, was the Baron’s Tower. I craned my neck, awed by the sheer height of the behemoth of architecture. The ships were thicker here than anywhere else. The shadows were, too.

I looked over to Nix. She had a rag wrapped around her muzzle. I coughed again and pulled my bandana up, waving the dust away with a hoof. “What are they going to do?” I asked.

She met eyes with me. She looked worried. “It looks like an execution.”

My eyes widened. “An exe—a what?”

“RESIDENTS!”

The crowd quieted. I looked back to the scaffold as the dust settled. A grey pegasus paced the length of the makeshift stage.

“A CRIME HAS BEEN COMMITTED.”

I stretched myself to my full height, straining to see over the ponies in front of me. A bespectacled yellow unicorn was standing in the scaffold’s shadow, horn glowing. He must be amplifying the voice.

“TWO NIGHTS AGO, ONE OF THE BARON’S PERSONAL WAREHOUSES WAS RAIDED BY A GROUP OF THUGS CALLING THEMSELVES ‘REBELS.’ THIS ACT CANNOT GO UNPUNISHED.”

I heard movement behind me, and turned around. Two lines of the Baron’s police were marching through the crowd. I stumbled as the crowd was pushed and shoved to clear a path.

“THESE SO-CALLED ‘REBELS’ MUST LEARN THAT THEIR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. THEY HAVE STOLEN YOUR FOOD AND ENDANGERED YOUR LIFE. THIS CANNOT GO UNPUNISHED.”

The double line emerged from the inner circle of the crowd. Between them was another line of ponies that I hadn’t noticed before. Stallions, mares, and foals. Silver cursed under his breath.

“THESE NINE RESIDENTS, WHO ONCE ATE THE BARON’S FOOD AND SLEPT IN HIS HOMES, WERE CAUGHT WITH THE STOLEN GOODS. THIS CANNOT GO UNPUNISHED.”

I narrowed my eyes. No, that can’t be right... there are foals in there! There were only four adults; two mares and two stallions. The other five were just foals, stumbling as the police pushed them, eyes wide with fear.

I leaned towards Nix. “I don’t understand. There are foals down there,” I whispered.

She nodded somberly. “They’re just examples. The Baron doesn’t care if they’re truly guilty.”

Silver scratched at the ground angrily. “Guilty?” he spat. “The Baron is the only guilty one here.”

“AS SUCH, THEY HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH, BY THE JUSTICE OF THE BARON.”

The nine were on the scaffold now. Nooses had been placed around their necks. The foals were sobbing uncontrollably. Even from a distance their shaking was visible. The adults stared forwards in silence.

With a wooden rattle, the bottom of the scaffold fell away. One of the foals, a small colt, shrieked as he fell. In an instant the nooses tightened, and he fell silent. In the quiet of the yard, the sound of the nine victims gagging carried far and clear. Not a single pony in the crowd moved a muscle.

Silence fell. The yellow unicorn made a mark on his clipboard.

Time passed. Moon Dream and I grew stronger, hardened by our work in the foundry, and the days began to run together. I woke in the morning, marched to Foundry Two, donned my bandana, and slaved until past sundown.

Dream and I grew close. Our mutual hardships drew us together, and soon I began to see him as a little brother of sorts. On Sundays most of us were given a day off to rest after the week’s toil, and he and I spent hours in the small courtyard behind our building. He drew the airships on whatever rags he could find, using pieces of charcoal and chalk that had been smuggled in or scavenged from factories. He even drew a makeshift map of Equestria on my bandana. I began to wear it more often. It became more of a part of me, like Silver’s goggles and Storm’s necklace.

Ember eventually came around. Storm and Silver managed to convince her that I truly was sorry, that I hadn’t meant for any of this, and that being mad at me would only make things worse and, honestly, it would make more sense to be mad at the Baron. I don’t know if she completely accepted it, but she did fix my door as a token of friendship. It was nice to have a working door.

With the help of Old Ironhide, I made contact with a rebel smuggler and got hold of a bottle of what Cleaver would call “the good Stalliongrad vodka.” I knocked on his door and presented it to him one Sunday, and after sweeping me up into a grateful bear hug, I was forgiven. If only all of my problems were so easily solved.

My life fell into the pattern of an Inner City slave. I worked Monday through Saturday. On Sunday I relaxed. There was a roughly two-hour long period where my crew, Moon Dream, and I were all free at once, and we spent it relaxing in the courtyard. Sometimes Nix joined us, when she wasn’t busy. We spent the day complaining about our jobs and daydreaming about escape. Sometimes it even felt like being free. Still, a passing patrol of the Baron’s police always yanked me back to reality.

“That one’s my favorite,” Moon Dream announced one Sunday. He pointed with his pencil, at a relatively small ship orbiting the Baron’s Tower. It didn’t look familiar, and it wasn’t docking or departing like every other airship was always doing. “It has such nice aesthetics.”

He returned to his pad, a pitiful collection of bound together papers that Stormslider had found in the sewers and saved. Silver peered up into the sky, squinting as a beam of sunlight landed on his face.

“She does look pretty slick,” he said enviously. “Look at those wings. And thrusters, too. Bet she can pull some sick tricks.” His wing had stopped healing after two weeks, but it still wasn’t any good for flight. It never quite closed at the proper angle, and it could only be extended stiffly for some quick, pained gliding. A pang of guilt ran through me as I looked at it.

“Our old ship was nice,” I said. It had been my ship, after all. Sure, we pooled our bits to get it. But my name was the one on the false license.

“Our old ship was worth nineteen bits,” Ember stated. “Trust me, I was there when we scrapped it.” Silver and Cleaver laughed.

Stormslider lowered her magazine. “I wonder what kind of engine it has,” she murmured. She was always reading magazines on Sundays. She found a few in the sewers every now and then.

And then Ember had to return to her room. Her job began at midnight, and she needed to start sleeping early in the day if she didn’t want to risk punishment. Cleaver left soon after, mentioning that he would be expected to pull supply carts for the next day’s work soon. Silver climbed to his hooves, claiming he had an appointment, and trotted away. Stormslider wrapped up her magazine and headed for the street with some words about the night shift. Moon Dream glanced up at the setting sun and decided to go scavenging for supplies. Left alone, I made my way to Nix’s room.

I became a sort of assistant towards Nix. I helped her care for stable patients, and watched over them when she went out for supplies. The rebels ran a black market in some factory too decrepit for working, where ponies traded whatever they could find. The rebels gave out smuggled goods, speaking about “destabilizing the system.” Useful bits of trash drifted in through the sewers. Sometimes things would fall off the airships. Those were always worth a lot, if they didn’t break.

Nix and I talked about whatever came to mind. We discussed recent events, and plotted escape routes and coups. It wasn’t anything serious, of course. We didn’t have any real hope of getting out alive.

More time passed. I glanced at a calendar and idly noted that almost two months had passed. I looked in a mirror. My coat was getting dull, though it still wasn’t as bad as those who had been here for years. Moon Dream heard rumors about the rebels planning something big. His work was becoming popular; makeshift paintings now adorned the halls and walls of building 12R.

Cleaver hadn’t lost his impeccable ability to find alcohol along with his freedom. Stormslider told me that he had managed to gain access to some kind of underground bar. I wasn’t sure whether or not to be surprised. The Baron didn’t approve of alcohol, or really anything that he didn’t give us, and as such the rebels decided that running bars helped to destabilize the system, and set one up. Cleaver talked his way into discovering it. Apparently he was surprisingly charismatic when booze was at stake. The rest of the crew often went there on Sundays, but I wasn’t much for drinking. Dream was too young, and Nix was too busy.

I was forced to attend a few more executions. Another hanging and two firing squads. Each time foals were involved, and each time the true culprits were replaced with pointless “examples.” The second hanging moved me almost as much as the first.

After that, the effect started to wear off.

It was a Saturday. Besides the approaching relaxation of Sunday, there wasn’t much else to say about it. Nothing out of the ordinary to warn me about what would happen. Perhaps if I had paid more attention, I might have seen something.

I was given the privilege of leaving the foundry early. Boss liked to give us each one day of early leave per month. Normally Moon Dream and I used ours on the same day, but for some reason I used mine that Saturday without telling him early. He was surprised, but since Boss made us tell him our day a week in advance, he couldn’t do anything about it. I think Nix might have needed me for something, or perhaps I’d decided to go drinking with Cleaver.

I left the foundry in high spirits. As high as they get with the constant presence of the airships and the Baron’s police. I looked up to the sun, trying to gauge the time of day, when—

Boom!

I was knocked to the ground with an explosive force. My horn jabbed itself into a rock, causing a jolt of pain to race through my body. My ears rang. I rolled around in a state of semi-consciousness, mind blank, overcome with confusion.

When I finally regathered my thoughts, I looked behind me.

Foundry Two was up in flames.

I sat there for a few moments, staring blankly. Then my mind kicked back into gear. I staggered to my hooves.

“Moon Dream!” I yelled as loud as I could, hoping against hope that he might come stumbling out of the flames.

Clumsily, I ran towards the burning building. “Moon Dream!” I pulled at a piece of rubble with my magic, but it was too heavy. I couldn’t lift it. I couldn’t focus. Another stab of pain ran down my side. I tripped and fell, vision blurring as tears welled. He looked up to me. I was supposed to protect him. He was like a little brother. I pictured him in the courtyard, pointing out an airship he liked as he sketched with his charcoal and scavenged paper.

I noticed the bandana, still covering my muzzle. I tore it off, staring at the map he’d drawn for me. Just like the old map I’d had, in my old airship. Not quite accurate of course, and missing some important features, but...

I was vaguely aware of ponies running frantically around me, screaming, but I ignored them. I don’t know how long I sat there, gazing at the flames. Time slipped away.

“Dissero! Dissero!”

A small sliver of hope awoke within me. I turned around. “Moon Dream?”

Nix ran up and pulled me into a shaky hug. She looked over me, hooves searching for wounds. “I came as soon as I heard! Oh, I was so worried! Are you okay? Where’s Moon Dream?”

I turned back to the fire, slowly. Silently.

She raised a hoof to her mouth. “Oh.”

“Nix, what just happened?” I asked. She didn’t respond. I jumped to my hooves, grabbing her and shaking her to get her attention. “Nix! What just happened?”

“It’s the rebels!” she cried. “They’re trying to cripple the Inner City, or draw attention from the rest of Equestria. They’re blowing up buildings all around the industrial district!”

I gaped. “How do you know about this?”

“Old Ironhide told me as I passed him in the hall. He’s known for weeks, but he hasn’t told anypony.”

Rage. Anger coursed through me. That old pegasus killed Moon Dream. He’s killed hundreds with his silence. “Let’s go,” I barked. “We’re going home. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.” Or my hoof.

Nix followed close behind as I led the way to building 12R. Other fires raged across the city, contrasting against the sky of the setting sun. It seemed the rebels had planted bombs everywhere. I heard battle in the distance. Ponies screaming, pegasi crashing into the ground, and rune grenades detonating. Night came, but the sky was still red. I coughed as a gust of ash blew into my face. The ever-present airships began to evacuate, running for the safety of the countryside. One of the huge, towering skydocks that so defined the city toppled over, groaning, and crashed into the ground. The rebels must have killed hundreds of innocents with the bombs alone.

The route was longer than usual. We were forced to detour around streets blocked by battles, rubble, and paranoid police. It took us two hours to reach building 12R, eerily unchanged by the day’s events. If it wasn’t for the sound of fires burning and ponies screaming in the background I could have almost forgotten about it all.

I bucked the door off its hinges and stormed up the stairs. Nix trailed behind.

I burst into the hallway. The silhouette of Old Ironhide sat in front of a window at the end of the hallway, framed by a fire in the building on the opposite side of the courtyard. I charged forwards, shouting my grief.

As I drew closer, I picked out detail. The silhouette picked up color, and I found the old pegasus dead in his chair, a rusty old wingblade attached to a feather. Blood ran down his neck, puddling around his pipe on the floor.

Coward!

My vision went red. I began to tear the hallway apart, smashing my hooves through the weak drywall and magically tearing doors of their hinges. I focused in on the corpse, raising my hooves, ready to beat it into a pulp.

Nix jumped in front of me. “Stop it!” she shrieked.

I caught myself. Calm down. I fell into a sitting position, breathing heavily, hooves still raised. This isn’t solving anything. I had lost control.

Moon Dream...

“Nix!” I grabbed her, pulling her close. “We can use this as a diversion! To escape!” I need to distract myself. I can’t think about it right now.

“I... I don’t know...” Her eyes strayed to the body before us.

I was trying to think of words to convince her when Stormslider came flying up from downstairs. “Cap—Captain!” she stuttered, landing heavily. She squinted at me. “C’mere... we got shomthing for you!” she slurred.

What? Is she drunk? Then I remembered. Cleaver had arranged for the rest of the crew to drink with him today. Cautiously, I followed Storm as she stumbled down the stairs, Nix close behind me.

“You... you are gonna like thish!” Storm bragged. She tripped on the last step as we reached the ground floor.

We stepped outside, and my jaw dropped.

Hovering in the street, quietly and somewhat leaning to one side, was Moon Dream’s favorite airship. It was even more gorgeous from up close. And hanging out of a hatch near the bottom, looking down the street, was Cleaver.

“Kaptain! We have found you a ride!” he exclaimed. He reached out and swept me off my hooves like a foal, pulling me into the ship.

“Wait!” I shouted. He dropped me, and turned back to the outside. “Nix! C’mon, we can escape!”

She hesitated, looking back at the building that she had spent almost her whole life within, at the city she had come to call home despite its hardships, at the sky full of fire and airships full of armed ponies, shooting down at the rebels below.

Stormslider pushed her drunkenly from behind. “Lesh go, Mish!”

Nix jumped, startled out of the daze. Wordlessly, she galloped up to the hatch and leapt inside. I smiled at her, and she returned it nervously. Storm tumbled into the ship as Cleaver shut the hatch.

A door to the side led to what looked like a cargo hold. Cleaver led us up the stairs, past a recognizable engine room, and out the door at the top.

We passed through a short hallway into what looked like a building still under construction. Some thin walls, more for separation then structure, were placed about half-heartedly as if to outline rooms. We walked past them into an open lounge startlingly similar to my old ship in arrangement. At the far side of the lounge, against the front of the ship and behind a bar, was a kitchen area.

We went up one more story, using a thinner and shorter staircase between the half-done rooms and the lounge, and came out onto what I assumed to be the navigation level. A long, wide table filled the middle of the room. At the end of the room, past a short hallway, was the cockpit. It was much larger than the one in my old ship, with enough room for my whole crew to stand in it. And they were.

Silver was at the helm, goggles on, trotting about in a distressingly drunk fashion as he piloted a ship which, as far as I knew, he had never entered before. Ember was slouched in a corner, squinting at her surroundings and mumbling to herself, trying to light her lighter but lacking the sober focus needed to cast her spell. Storm leaned against the wall in the hallway behind us, smiling lazily. Cleaver stood straight, like he always did, as if he had not just taken part in a series of drinking that had left the rest of my crew nigh incapacitated, and Nix planted herself outside the cockpit, so out of her element that she could hardly move.

In the time that we had taken to climb the stairs up to this level, Silver had guided the ship up to a flying altitude. I gazed down on the city through the cockpit’s bubble of glass. Sparse pockets of fire and fighting were spread throughout the city, leaving the space in between largely undisturbed.

I looked to Cleaver. “How did you get this ship?”

He gave me a knowing smile. “Kaptain, let it simply be said that the good Stalliongrad vodka gives a pony great heart and courage. But for record, it was Ember’s idea.” Silver and Storm nodded, murmuring drunken agreement.

“Did you steal this ship?” Nix asked incredulously.

“Well, yes. Did I not make this plain?” Cleaver replied. He sounded offended.

“Are we being chased?” I asked. Please say no, please say no, please say—

“Yesh!” Silver exclaimed. “Look, there’sh a few ships closing in behind ush now!”

My heart dropped. “How can we escape? The rebels have got the whole place up in arms. There’s no way we’ll be able to get out to Equestria.”

“That’sh just it,” Silver said deviously, a wicked grin stretching across his face. “I’ll take ush through the Cloudwall! It’sh our last chance to get out of thish hellhole!”

I leapt forwards and grabbed him forcibly. “You can’t be serious!? You realize that hundreds of ponies have died trying to cross that, sober and extremely well-prepared?”

“Yesh, but they weren’t me,” he bragged. I began to feel very much like a pony who, after the conductor of the train he was riding in fell asleep, was watching a very, very hard and fatal wall approach at an alarmingly fast speed.

Nix poked her head into the room bravely. “He’s right, it’s our only way out.”

I turned on her. “Don’t you be supporting this! I thought you wanted me alive!” Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic!

“Don’t worry,” she reassured me, “I’ve heard that pegasi inside the Breaks simply know what to do. Luckily, we have a pegasus pilot. But he should really wear a blindfold, or his eyes will get in the way.”

Celestia help me. My heart was jumping out of my chest. “You want a drunk pegasus to fly an airship he has no experience with through the most dangerous path in Equestria, with a blindfold on?”

“Pegasi are the only things that can navigate the Breaks, and Storm is too drunk to even stand up straight. The Baron’s ponies go through here all the time, we can too!” she argued.

Stormslider rose from her position to put in a comforting statement. “It’sh all good. Back at the Academy, boozsh hash only made him a more recklessh flyer.”

“That doesn’t make me feel anything close to better!”

“But, you shee,” she added, “although he flied more recklesshy, he shtill didn’t crash, so he wash actually kind’ve a better pilot.”

“What is wrong with you, Stormslider!? You’re supposed to be the voice of reason!”

“Wait, guysh... I don’t have a blindfold,” Silver piped in.

Apparently roused by an instinctive desire to bother me, Ember suddenly mustered the magic needed to untie my bandana and wrap it around Silver’s goggles. Satisfied, she smiled and promptly passed out.

A few cannon balls flew past us, shot from behind. I weighed my options. Death at the hooves of the Baron, or the Breaks? Certain death, or near certain? Looking ahead, the maze of thunderstorms and tornados swirling around eachother in a seemingly random dance of death didn’t seem very inviting.

My stomach lurched. We were moving forwards. Silver was smirking dangerously under his blindfold. The Breaks approached.

Silver raised a hoof in excitement and pushed a slider forwards. “Here we gooooo!”

The first thing that I noticed was the constant roar of thunder. The lightning struck out from the black clouds surrounding us so frequently that the thunder made a constant, rolling boom.

The second was the shaking. The entire ship shook so violently that I was worried it would fall apart. Stormslider was much too drunk to support herself amongst the vibrations. Nix and I both staggered about trying to keep our balance. Cleaver was impeccably still. Silver danced about, pulling levers and slapping switches, unbothered.

The third thing I noticed was the massive storm cloud that suddenly appeared in front of us, ready to send us down to our doom amongst all the failed travelers of ages past.

But Silver was already moving to avoid it, even before it was there. “Thish ish an excellent shhhip!” he shouted over the thunderous roar as he flew, informing us on the pros of the ship as if we were just walking through it as it sat in the dealership. “It’sh ash much a thought to fly ash I dreamed it woul’ be!”

I was shaking. Not because of the wild vibrations, but because I was so scared shitless that we were all about to die in some fiery lightning explosion. Luna save me, not fire. I hate fire. I noticed Nix clinging to the floor, eyes squeezed shut.

“Don’t worry, he’s a very good pilot!” I told her, raising my voice to be heard over the local weather. I wasn’t sure if she noticed, so I turned back to face the front, closed my eyes, and repeated that sentence to myself over and over.

I heard Silver let out another whoop and begin to hum a tune which I recognized as Flight of the Valkyries. All of a sudden my stomach was falling behind. I peeked open an eye to find that we were literally falling, the storm clouds racing past us as we rapidly approached the ground.

“Ach!” Silver exclaimed in a surprisingly good Germane accent. “Even her falling isht grasheful!”

I heard an explosion behind us that didn’t sound like thunder. “It seems one of our followers has hit a storm cloud!” Cleaver cackled in an entirely unhealthy way. Hay, this whole thing is unhealthy. Oh, Princess, by the Elements of Harmony help me!

A large tornado descended to the ground, not in front of us, but actually around us. For a few brief moments, we hovered in the eye, moving along with the walls of the tornado as it tore across the landscape.

How did I get into this? Have I written my will yet? I haven’t spoken to my parents in years! Why, why, why!? I just want all of this to be over!

To the side, I saw another of the ships that was chasing us come crashing through into the eye, decorated as a big burning ball of flaming wreckage.

Silver let out an alarmingly happy shout that made my heart skip three beats. The ship bolted for the wall of the tornado. I braced myself for impact, but as we were about to collide with the barrier of wind, the tornado dissipated around us.

“Look Dishy!” Silver cackled maniacally, “no eyesh!”

“Silver! Stop toying with my instinct for self-preservation!” I swear if we get through this alive I’m going to wring his neck and break his other wing!

Storm clouds closed in on each side, over and over again. But each time, Silver was already moving the ship to avoid them. Tornadoes and storms appeared and dissipated at incredibly distressing speeds, moving to intercept us and then simply blowing apart after they missed. And all the while, the thick walls of the Breaks were visible on each side, marking the point where the Cloudwall once again turned into the impenetrable net of thick electrical death.

I yelled as loudly as I could, for what it’s worth.

I felt the ship lurch forwards as if struck. Silver let loose an evil laugh, reassuring me by saying, “Don’t worry! Mosht airshipsh can handle a shingle lightning shtrike!”

“Were we just hit by lightning!?” I shrieked like a little filly. I noticed that Nix had passed out from terror. Stormslider was lying on the floor, laughing her flank off like there was something terribly funny about imminent death. Cleaver was sitting in a corner, discreetly humming what sounded to me like a funeral dirge.

“It’sh okay! It wash jusht one!” Silver called. As if to disprove him, the nearby clouds unleashed another wave of lightning bolts, and I felt the ship shake violently as it was struck several more times.

“We’re loshing altitude!” He cheered as if that was just the best thing in the world, and was so unspeakably, delightfully happy to experience it that there was no way he could ever properly express it.

We’re going to die. I just know we’re going to die. We’re all, going to die. Die die die! All of us! Dead! Aaaaaaaaagh! We’re all gonna die!

Silver’s maneuvers were slowing down. Without a fully sealed balloon to sustain the ship, he had to divert the maneuvering thrusters to keep us up, and couldn’t turn, rise, or fall as fast. It seemed like everything was over when, finally, we broke out of the clouds and into clear, precious sunlight.

I looked up into the glorious sun of Princess Celestia, cherishing its rays. I hadn’t gotten a clear view of it for so long. Hadn’t been able to really feel its light. But I was free now!

Free at last! We were free! I began to pass out right there. The last thing I felt was my joy at being free. Free!

Author's Notes:

And out of Equestria we are!
What did you think of that execution? Intense? I liked it. Writing it. I'm not into killing foals. DON'T JUDGE ME.

I considered putting an actual link to Flight of the Valkyries in here, but meh. Look it up yourself if you wanna listen to it.