“Okay, so now what?” Silver Feather asked.

I tried to ignore the question. Spread out on the table before me was a standard map of Equestria that we had found on a wall elsewhere in the airship. The shadows of the rest of my crew played across the table along with my own. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nix sitting next to a window, staring out at the Cloudwall behind us.

Stormslider cleared her throat. “I think it would be best if we figured out what is happening now before we decided what to do for the future, if we want to make a good and logical decision.”

Quiet murmurs of agreement passed around the room.

“Well then, if I may,” she began, “we’re hovering above the Great Sea, in an unfamiliar airship stolen from the most powerful crime lord and connected merchant in Equestria, with no known stores of food or water, and almost all under massive hangovers. Can we agree?”

Everypony agreed.

She continued. “So, our top priority right now is survival. The airship will provide shelter, but we still need food and water. We have two choices as to where we can get that. One is Equestria. None of us know what the other is, or how to find it.

“To return to Equestria, we must pass through the Breaks. They are most likely to be heavily guarded by the Baron. To get elsewhere, we must cross the Great Sea without any knowledge of other landmasses or a reliable source of food. So which is it?”

I closed my eyes tight as a heavy silence descended upon the room. We don’t really have a choice. Returning to Equestria means death at the hooves at the Baron. Leaving means a slow death from starvation in the middle of nowhere.

But at least we’d have a chance.

Or a better chance, anyways.

“I say we leave.”

There was no response, at first. Everypony looked away as I raised my eyes from the map. None of us wanted to go. Even if we survived, we’d be going somewhere so distant, so unknown that we couldn’t even begin to imagine what we might come to.

“I agree,” Silver said. We exchanged glances, and I gave him a thankful nod. A wave of relief washed over me. Even to the ends of Equestria, he had my back.

The rest of the crew was quick to follow, nodding assent. I could tell they were glad to have the decision made by someone else. They didn’t want the responsibility. That was mine to take on.

“Okay. First, we need to explore this ship and figure out what it can do,” I said.

Ember narrowed her eyes. “And who made you captain?” she challenged, flicking her tail aggressively.

I looked down, flinching away from her challenge. Why should they let me lead them again? I had already led them into slavery. I hadn’t been the one to break us out. Now we were embarking on a journey to nowhere with no plan, no map, and no food. If I can’t handle one trade stop at Manehattan, how can I lead them into the unknown?

Cleaver stepped up. “We have already forgiven Kaptain,” Cleaver said firmly, raising himself to his full height. Ember wasn’t deterred.

“He’s already led us to slavery! He didn’t even help to get us out. He just lay in the corner and screamed like a filly!” she yelled.

“Ember!” Stormslider snapped. “We all have our jobs. His is to coordinate us, and we’ll need it in this ship. Would you prefer to lead us and leave the ship unrepaired? Or give Silver control and let us crash into the sea? We’ve already been hit by lightning several times. You need to focus on keeping the ship working.”

Phoenix Down rose from her position, sitting along the outside of the room and gazing back at Equestria longingly. “Let him try again,” she said softly.

Ember grimaced, ears back with hostility. “Fine,” she growled. She glared at me. “This is your last chance. If you buck up again, I’ll torch you myself.”

“Well, then.” Silver placed his hooves on the table, offering an easy smile to diffuse the tension. “Now we’ve got that settled, I suppose we should pick a direction, yeah? I’m thinking east,” he suggested. “It’s never done me wrong, and I’ve got a nice feeling about it.”

I cocked a brow. “Any more rational reasons you may wish to grace us with?” I asked.

“No. You got a better idea? I’m the pilot anyways. Trust my intuition.” He winked at me. I was not reassured.

I glanced around the room. Nopony offered any opposition to the direction. I sighed. “Fine. We head east and pray to Celestia we find land. But before we go any further, we need to search this ship for anything of use.”

“And name her, too,” Silver added.

Stormslider eyed him skeptically. “Name it?”

“Well yes,” he asserted. “Can’t fly around in an unnamed ship. What happens if we meet another crew and have to distinguish between our ship and theirs? I don’t see a name anywhere.”

I shrugged, sitting back half-heartedly. “Well, he’s got a point.” This is gonna be our new home anyways... “Any suggestions?”

“Pride of Stallions?” Cleaver suggested.

Five incredulous looks were shot his way. He glanced around hopefully, saw he wouldn’t be getting any support, and looked back down to his last bottle of vodka, crestfallen.

“I think Omega would be a rather fitting name,” Stormslider said.

“Is that even a word?” Nix asked.

“It’s the last letter of the ancient pegasus alphabet,” I supplied. “It represents the end, or the last of something.”

Silver grinned, nodding. “Well, here we are at the end of the world, and this ship is the last chance we’ve got. I can’t think of a better name.” The rest of the crew murmured agreeably.

“It’s settled, then. We’ll name it the Omega. Now, can we please get to searching it?”

We divided the ship into sectors, with one pony assigned to each. Silver Feather handled the navigation floor. Ember and Phoenix Down split the cargo bay. Stormslider explored the engine room. Cleaver and I split the main floor.

We didn’t find anything very inspiring at first. There was nothing useful in the engine room, besides the engine, which was beginning to show damage from the lightning. The kitchen lacked any food, despite our hopes to find some. The cargo hold was empty, besides a few beds, construction supplies, and tools Ember was happy to get her hooves on. We all picked one of the unfinished rooms on the main floor, and Ember began building and removing walls to make six larger rooms.

Surprisingly, the navigation floor contained the best find.

I had been half-heartedly sorting through debris from the chase, brooding over our inevitable deaths, when Silver called out from above.

“What is it?” I asked, poking my head into the cockpit. He was standing before a small, narrow hallway that I hadn’t noticed before.

He grinned. “So here I was, looking for shortcuts, just tapping around, and bam!” He pointed to the hallway with a flourish of his hoof. “Secret passageway!”

I raised a brow. “Shortcuts?”

“Well, yes. Airships are mechanical creatures, full of all cogs and chains and stuff. They’re compactly designed, too, so there isn’t much room for all the machinery. A tap in the right place can do the same thing a lever on the other side of the room does, or even something entirely new. Our old airship had a few. I was just looking for this one’s.”

I nodded. It makes a kind of sense. Peering into the tiny opening, I squeezed myself inside. It was only a couple meters long, and just big enough to walk through. It was pitch black with my body blocking all the light from the cockpit.

Lighting my horn, I scraped through it with a burst of claustrophobic energy and came out into an unlit room. Dim shapes surrounded me, lining the edges of my vision. I fumbled around blindly, found a string hanging from above, and pulled it.

With a static buzz and a strained flicker, the bulb above me turned on. The dim light wasn’’t much, but it was bright enough for me to get a better look at the room.

A pair of shelves lining the wall held several rune guns, like the ones I had seen in Harmony City. A crate of rune grenades and boxes of ammunition were stacked up on the far wall. I smiled. A weapons stockpile!

Grabbing one of the guns with my magic, I squeezed myself back into the cockpit where Silver was waiting. “Look, it’s a bunch of rune guns!” I exclaimed. “This ship must have been important enough to have weapons stored here for defense, but nopony reached it in time.” Amazing.

“Sweet!” the pilot said. “Let’s get the others and test it out on the deck.”

“Deck?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s a ladder in here to the top deck, too.” He pointed towards a ladder at the rear of the cockpit. “It’s flat enough for walking, but the railings are kind of short.”

Trotting forwards curiously, I clambered up the ladder. The wind whipped at my mane as I pulled myself up onto the smooth steel of the ship’s deck, carrying the salty scent of ocean sky. Cautiously, I raised myself to my full height and looked around. My jaw dropped.

I blinked, stunned by the sight of the empty, endless horizon. The air was clear, and the clouds sparse. An infinity of water stretched out before me, its size matched only by the equally infinite sky. I turned, my hooves clopping gently against the metal deck. I turned more. The water and sky showed no sign of any end. And then I saw the Cloudwall.

A massive wall of rolling black clouds, stretched up and to each side as far as I could see. Flashes of light and distant rumbles marked the presence of lightning as it arced through the gargantuan storm. If the Cloudwall had seemed big from inside Equestria, it looked absolutely massive from the outside, large enough to compete even with the ocean and sky.

I was struck with a terrible sense of loneliness, even as Silver’s shadow came into view at the edge of my vision. In the course of a single day, my world had been both massively expanded and frighteningly contracted all at once. Now I only had my crew, myself, and my ship, in an endlessly empty world.

“Hey, you alright?” Silver’s hoof laid itself firmly on my shoulder.

I shook my head, managed to close my mouth, and swallowed. “It’s just... so much.”

“Yeah,” Silver said. Even though he was behind me, I could easily hear the adventurous grin on his face. “Great, isn’t it?”

I turned, meeting eyes with him. “You’re crazy, Silver.”

His wild grin only stretched wider. “What tipped you off?” He glanced back to the ladder. “Anyways, what do you think about showing the others those guns?”

I gathered the crew, handing out guns and a few bullets to each as they arrived on the deck. Soon the six of us stood in a rough circle, manes and tails flapping in the breeze, and only occasionally turning to get another glance at our new world.

Now that I held one of the guns before me, I could examine it more closely. A bolt on the side could be pulled to open a slot to stick another bullet into the gun, and it had a simple scope on top. It wasn’t a very large or long weapon, being mostly barrel, and had a firm, smooth stock.

“So, does anypony know how to shoot one?” Ember asked sarcastically.

“Oh, well that’s easy,” Silver said. “You just uh… just… hrm.” He pulled the bolt on his gun a few times, only managing to eject an unspent round uselessly.

Cleaver held his gun up to the sky, squinting at it suspiciously. “I see no trigger.”

I waggled the scope with a bit of magic experimentally, to no avail. “Have any of us actually shot a gun before?” I asked.

“Many times,” Cleaver said. “But this gun lacks trigger.”

Nix spoke up, standing a little ways away from the rest of the crew. “I think… I think it’s voice activated. You use a trigger word to turn on the magic in the runes. I’ve heard the rebels using it when they practice.”

“Well, what is it?” Stormslider asked.

“I think the word is… ignus.”

With a sudden burst of dim light, the gun in her hooves began to hum. She let out a startled squeak, dropping it and backing away. The gun rattled loudly as it vibrated on the metal surface, the humming and glowing steadily growing more intense until, with a surprisingly quiet woosh, a bullet shot out.

The bullet ricocheted off the deck, zooming away and bouncing off the railing.

Ember leaped out of her shocked crouch, advancing on Nix angrily. “Are you crazy? You could’ve killed us!” she hissed.

I rushed forwards, pushing her back. “Hey, calm down! Nopony was hurt, and now we know how to activate them! No harm done.” I glanced around in search of some way to change the subject. My eyes alighted on the clouds floating past us. “Why don’t we try some target practice?”

“On what?” Cleaver asked?

Silver scoffed, using his wings to balance on his hind legs. “The clouds, of course.” Wobbling slightly in the heavy wind, he balanced his gun on a foreleg, took aim, and spoke the trigger word.

A glowing purple round shot out of the barrel, streaking through the sky far wide of every cloud in the sky.

Stormslider laughed as the other pegasus fell back, dropping the gun in alarm as he lost his balance. “Some shot you are,” she said, raising her own rifle.

A single spoken word later, a bullet punched straight through the center of a nearby cloud, leaving only a gentle purple haze and a whiff of vapor to mark its path.

“Wow,” Silver said, climbing to his hooves. “She’s pretty good at that.”

And so the days stretched on, and the Cloudwall gradually drifted out of view.

As we traveled, the constant need for food, water, and maintenance drove us into a strict schedule. Stormslider flew circles around the ship all day, gathering the sparse clouds that hovered above the waves, stopping only to trudge down to the engine room for a few minutes. Silver Feather spent long hours in the map room, squeezing every cloud dry until he was dripping just as much as the clouds themselves. Cleaver spent his time finding food with a makeshift spear, made from a sharpened piece of deck railing and tied to a rope we found, throwing it into the ocean from the bottom of the low-flying ship and heaving anything he caught back up. Phoenix Down spent her days helping whoever needed aid with their various duties, and Ember trekked up and down the length of the ship, taking pieces from the sturdier areas to reinforce the increasingly severe structural wounds that had been inflicted upon the ship during the chase.

As for me, I was left with a guilty few tasks. I couldn’t help the pegasi with the water, I didn’t know enough about mechanics to maintain the ship, and I couldn’t really cook. All I had to contribute was my horn, and I put it to work levitating whatever needed levitating. I held pieces for Ember, helped Cleaver with his makeshift harpoon, and supplied Silver with a steady flow of buckets.

By the end of each day, when we gathered in the lounge and collapsed exhausted on our sparse collection of furniture to eat and drink what we’d managed to collect, we barely had the energy to speak to eachother. My hunger was so ravenous that I devoured my ration of fish within minutes, both relishing and hating the food at the same time. I could barely swallow it, disgusted as I was at the concept of eating meat, but I was so hungry that I couldn’t stop.

For the first week or two, my dreams were plagued by darkness, fire, and ash. I relived Moon Dream’s death, the discovery of Ironhide’s corpse, the harrowed escape from Harmony City, and all the other atrocities I’d witnessed firsthoof over and over, countless times. Eventually though, the constant exhaustion of the days built up to the point where I was too tired to dream, and I would collapse into a blissful unconsciousness every night, given a few moments of rest before rising to begin again.

The concept of time began to fade. There was nothing to mark it except for the sun and moon, and trivial thoughts like the day of the week simply disappeared. There was nothing to discern one day from the next; everything ran together. I began to ground myself not in the passage of time, but in the worsening state of my crew. We grew lean, with only a few fish to split amongst ourselves. Heavy bags formed under our eyes. Our coats became ragged and dull. Despite being free, I still felt like a tired slave under the Baron’s control.

Only one day managed to stand out from the others. I had been trudging up the central stairwell, exhausted as usual, the feeble glow of my magic surrounding a collection of recently emptied water buckets, when I heard a low roar from the back of the ship.

My ears twitched. I paused, raising my head from its half-asleep position near the floor, and was suddenly knocked off my hooves as a great force pushed me down. The stairs shifted around me, and my stomach knotted as I was caught in a brief moment of freefall before my back slammed into the hard steel landing behind me, four steps down.

I groaned, raising my hooves to protect myself from the onslaught of dropped buckets raining upon me. A few moments passed as I lay there, being pushed down by the mysterious force, until my mind finally clicked into gear and I realized what was happening: we were ascending, and fast.

I clambered to my hooves, leaving the buckets behind, and raced as fast as my tired body would let me up the stairs.

A minute later, I burst into the cockpit, gasping. Silver was there, gazing downwards at something underneath us from the swept forwards glass screen at the front of the room.

“What was that?” I asked, walking up to his side.

“Look,” he said.

I looked down, following his gaze.

“Sweet Celestia...”

Far beneath us, half-submerged in ocean spray, a behemoth fish was rising out of the water. It’s massive jaws were wide open, revealing rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth, each one the source of its own waterfall of dripping saliva and saltwater. The teeth slammed together as the beast’s ascent slowed to a stop, and it began to fall back into the water.

I watched wide-eyed as its body rolled to the side, showing dozens of aged scars from battles past and a ridge of sharp barbs along its spine. A pair of small, sinister eyes rolled into view, full of hatred and intelligence. It wasn’t the look of a predator stalking prey, it was the look of a killer, a murderer that had failed to entrap his target.

A shiver ran down my spine as it splashed back into the water heavily, disappearing underneath the waves.

Silver stepped back from the glass and flicked his goggles off. He let out a heavy sigh of relief and gazed up at the roof.

“We won’t be flying low anymore,” he said.

More time passed, more water passed, and more hope of finding land passed away. I knew that continents usually had some distance between them, but airships were fast movers, and it felt like we’d already traveled the distance of a dozen Equestrias already.

Ember finished with the renovation of the quarters, giving us six decent-size rooms for us to call our own, even if there wasn’t anything to put in them. Now she spent most of her time on the increasingly flimsy balloon, trying to hold it together. We began to travel slower and slower as Silver was forced to divert forwards propulsion to upwards propulsion. Worse still, after the appearance of the sea monster, it was too dangerous to fish. Luckily we had a few days of fish stockpiled.

I just hoped we found something before we ran out.

We did.

I was sitting with Silver in the navigation room, trying not to get too wet as he filled buckets from a fresh harvest of clouds.

“I don’t understand this ship,” he said. “I thought we would’ve crashed into the sea a week ago, but somehow it manages to stay up.”

I yawned. “I thought you were keeping us up by directing our engines to push upwards?”

He shook his head, brow furrowed. “Yes, but we shouldn’t have enough power to keep the ship up like that. The balloon is practically empty and our engines are faltering, yet somehow we still float. It’s like the thing is made of air.”

I shrugged, climbing to my hooves. “The important thing is that we survive. I’m gonna go get some fresh air.”

Fresh air.

For the tenth time that day, I climbed up onto the deck to get another glimpse of the sky. Nothing had changed since last time, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The Omega was a small ship, and being stuck inside it for so long was driving me crazy. I stepped up to the railing and peered down into the ocean. How much longer until it all ends?

Sighing, I turned around and began to walk slowly back to the ladder. I paused. What was that?

I returned my gaze to the sky, squinting. There was a shape out there. A silhouette in the sky that was distinctly un-cloudlike. It had wings, but it was too small to be a pegasus. Surely Stormslider isn’t out that far...?

My eyes widened as I came to the sudden realization. My heart soared. I twisted around, practically fell down the ladder in my haste, and bowled Silver over. Water buckets went flying, spilling their contents all over.

“What are you doing?”he growled. He tried to wriggle out of my grip, splashing more water from his soaked mane, but to no avail. I grinned at him stupidly.

“Bird.”

He cocked a brow. “What? Have you finally—” he paused, locking eyes with me as if he had heard me for the first time. I stepped back and allowed him to rise into a sitting position. We stared at eachother.

“Bird?” he asked.

I nodded. “Bird.”

“Bird!”

“Birds!”

Silver leapt to his hooves, flapping his good wing excitedly as he let out a cry of elation that could be heard all throughout the ship.

“We’ve reached land!”

Land was close at hoof, and we began to hope again.

The birds were a beautiful gift. Not only did they herald land, but they also gave us a new source of food. On the day of the discovery we had only had two fish left in our stockpile, and they were the least savory specimens I had ever seen, even with my limited experience with meat. The birds were still meat, of course, and they didn’t taste anywhere near good, but they were food.

We would survive. We had survived the journey, though it had been hard. Sitting in the lounge the day after the discovery, forcing myself to nibble at some bird as I looked over my crew, I could still scarcely believe it. We were all exhausted. With the arrival of the birds, the stress of the journey was finally lifted. Our manes and coats were disheveled and dirty, but we were alive. We’d made it.

“Hey, why don’t we do something fun?” Silver suggested. He was lying on the end of one of the old, broken-in couches that had been in the lounge when we stole the ship.

Nix perked up from her spot leaning against the wall. “Like what?”

He shrugged. “We could try some target practice with the rune guns.”

She relaxed back against the wall, apparently uninterested in the idea, but the rest of the crew all nodded their agreement.

We spent the rest of the day on the deck with the guns and some bullets, able to work on something besides survival for the first time in weeks. Stormslider was a pretty good shot. She hit her target cloud more than anypony else, and even managed to hit a nearby bird. The bullets had some heavy punch to them, and the bird went flying away from the force of the impact. She kept looking at her gun as she fired, as if trying to figure out how it worked, and later went into her room with it and a clip of ammunition to tinker.

I was, of course, a terrible shot. I couldn’t hit the long side of a cumulonimbus.

As the sun began its descent, we came upon what I took to be the mainland. For the first time in what felt like forever, something besides blue occupied the horizon.

Our shadow came ashore on some kind of wasteland. I scanned the land beneath us from a window, but deep fog made it difficult to pick out much detail. A gust of wind blew a hole in the mist, and I glimpsed grey, lifeless earth. A mountain range ran parallel to the coastline in the distance, and the faint silhouette of some sort of city lay far up the coast.

“What do you think lives out here?”

I jumped, looking behind me. Nix stepped up to my side, eyeing the window anxiously. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Something has to be living here,” she said. “I doubt they’re ponies.”

I turned back to the horizon thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I know dragons and griffons are from outside Equestria. Maybe there’ll be some of those.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. She looked at me and smiled. “As long as you’re with us, I think we’ll be safe.”

I furrowed my brow, confused. How can she say that? I’ve never led my crew anywhere but slavery and exile.

The wasteland passed below us. Sparse clumps of trees and bushes surrounded shallow pools of water, but I saw no animals. I found my mind drifting. Thoughts of Moon Dream, the rebels, and the fate of Harmony City passed through my head as I looked down upon the unknown world.

Suddenly, Silver Feather came bounding down the stairs. “Hey, Dissy. Get everypony upstairs. We may have trouble.”

“What is it?”

We were all assembled around Silver in the cockpit. He pointed upwards, towards another, smaller ship that I hadn’t noticed before circling above us.

“There’s another ship there,” he said. “They’ve positioned themselves above us. I don’t like it.”

Cleaver squinted up at the ship. “Those markings, what are they?” he asked.

Three distant, distinct booms sounded. A second passed. With a loud crunch, a massive bullet impacted the cockpit glass and ricocheted away.

Ember shouted an expletive, and Cleaver almost dropped his bottle in surprise. The crew crouched instinctively as two more bullets whizzed past us.

“Evasive maneuvers!” I shouted.

“Oh really, you think so, genius?” Silver replied. He leapt for a group of four large wheels, turning them two at a time. “Hey Diss, turn that slider all the way up!” He pointed with his good wing.

I ran to obey, shoving the slider forwards with both hooves. The ship shot forwards like it had been fired from a cannon, and we began losing altitude fast. I heard our attackers fire another salvo.

Silver shoved me aside, goggles down. “Thanks! Step aside now, please!” He lunged for a chain hanging from the ceiling and pulled it with all his weight. Our downwards motion slowed dramatically as three more bullets flew underneath us. He turned two of the large wheels, and we began to rise.

“I’m gonna put us into that mountain range,” Silver said, indicating a group of mountains ahead of us.

“Don’t we have any guns on this thing?” Ember asked. “What kind of crimelord makes a ship with no guns?”

“Storm, the engines!” I said. The blue pegasus nodded and sprinted down the stairs to the lounge. Shortly afterwards we picked up speed, gliding smoothly between two mountains into a narrow valley. More bullets flew past, bouncing off of mountaintops.

“Ideas, anypony?” Silver tugged on the chain again, and a bullet flew right past our noses..

“I dunno, ram them or something.” Ember suggested. The pilot found the time to turn and glare at her.

Luckily, our pursuers weren’t very good shots. Another bullet flew wide, hitting a mountainside ahead of us and spawning an avalanche.

The sound of tearing metal announced the arrival of a heavy metal ball as it slammed through our hull and into the navigation room. It ricocheted off two more walls, broke the table, and rolled to a stop, hissing quietly.

Ember’s eyes widened. “It’s a bomb!” Nix slid under the wreckage of the table, shaky hooves over her head. Cleaver dashed for the explosive, twisted on his forehooves, and bucked it cleanly back out the hole it had made. Half a second later, I heard a loud boom. The ship rocked to the side slightly.

“They are shooting explosive bullets,” Cleaver explained.

“Hey, thanks for telling us Sherlock,” Silver muttered.

C’mon, think think think. An idea came to my mind. “Get the rune guns and head for the deck,” I ordered.

“First good idea you’ve had in awhile,” Ember quipped. She squeezed into the hidden armory, and guns and bullets began to float out.

With weapons in hoof, Cleaver, Ember, Nix, and I climbed out onto the deck. Silver stayed in the cockpit. “I promise not to throw you off!”he called.

Our attackers had a much smaller, more makeshift ship than ours. It looked like somepony had taken a sea vessel, welded an engine to each side, and tied it to a balloon. The Omega was four stories tall and around 200 feet long; the hull of our pursuer’s ship could probably fit in the lounge, minus its engines and balloon. I spied several shapes moving around on its open top, including a griffon, idly spinning a grappling hook.

They fired another volley. The Omega dipped slightly, and I almost lost my balance as the cannon balls flew a few feet over my head.

“Shoot the engines!” I commanded. We all raised our guns, and the soft hum of rune magic and trigger words filled the air. The wooden hull of our pursuer’s stood no chance against the heavy rune slugs, which ripped through it easily. The ship listed to the left, and was then thrown into a wild spin as the failed engine suddenly exploded. The propeller flew upwards, cutting their balloon in half.

Bereft of propulsion and with no means to keep it in the air, the little wooden ship plummeted out of the sky. It crashed into a mountainside, rolled briefly, and burst into flame as the second engine followed the lead of the first.

I rocked on my hooves as the Omega slowed to a stop.

Cleaver leaned on his gun like a cane. “Perhaps we are lucky, and all ships here will be made of wood, yes?”

Silver’s hoofsteps sounded behind us. “Nice shooting, guys! Who needs ship-to-ship cannons when you have these babies, right?”

“Don’t get too cocky, I think some of them survived.” Ember pointed at the five winged shapes flying towards us from the wreckage.

“Oh, great. They fly. I’mma go get my own gun.” Silver turned and rushed back down the ladder.

As they approached I began to pick out detail. The closest two I recognized immediately as griffons, but the other three were completely foreign to me. They looked like the gargoyles I’d seen in paintings of the time before the Princesses, with sharp claws and wide wingspans. As Silver returned to the deck, brandishing his own rune gun, the five attackers flew up into the sun and dove down at us.

They slammed into the deck, weapons ready. Nix and I were separated from the rest of the crew, who had gathered into a rough line. They managed to fire off a quick volley of shots, killing two, before another two fell upon them.

The remaining griffon turned to me. He approached slowly, with a wicked grin painted on his beak. His wings flared, revealing the array of deadly blades fastened to them.

Nix dropped her gun and fell over in fear. I raised my weapon, finding myself at a sudden loss as to how to fire it. I desperately searched for some kind of trigger as the griffon charged forwards.

The griffon was only a few feet away when I remembered. “Ignus!” I screamed. The gun began to charge, but the griffon knocked it aside before it finished, and the bullet sped into the sky harmlessly as he continued to tackle me, driving me back.

“Stop! Please stop! I don’t want to fight you!” I beat his back with my forehooves as I fought to get a grip on the floor. The wind was knocked out of me as he pinned me down at the edge of the deck.

“But I do,” he hissed. He raised a wingblade for the killing blow. I struggled vainly to break free.

A bullet suddenly exploded out of his neck, splashing blood all over my face. His body went slack as the force of the round propelled it through the railing.

The griffon tumbled off the deck, and the claw stuck in my shoulder dragged me with him. I screamed as the weight pulled me over the edge.

I slid down the side of the ship, flapping my good leg wildly in search of something to grab.

My body spun sideways.

My right hoof slipped off the edge of the ship.

I scrabbled for a hold with my left.

The ship fell out of reach.

The griffon’s claw ripped free of its host.

My heart stopped. I found myself in the sickeningly empty, screaming abyss of freefall.

I thought I heard someone calling my name, but the wind carried it away. The ship dwindled rapidly above me. Silver’s head poked over the edge of the ship.

Don’t you jump. You can’t catch me with that bad wing.

And then a cloud blocked my view of the Omega, and there was nothing left but me and the wind. I fell past the clouds, surprisingly calm, tumbling head over hooves. I closed my eyes...

They shot back open. No! No giving up!

I twisted my neck, somehow turning my body to face the swiftly approaching ground. There was a lake beneath me. I felt my horn leaking magic as adrenaline surged through me. Time seemed to slow down.

I focused all my magic onto my body, but I couldn’t slow myself. It was impossible to overcome the mental barrier that stopped all unicorns from levitating themselves. On a frantic whim, I tried an alternate technique.

I reached out with my magic and grabbed the air, pushing it under me. The air resisted, escaping my magical grasp through every little hole it found. Nonetheless, I felt myself slowing down.

The lake was almost on me. I waited. I only had one chance, and the timing had to be perfect.

I put all my magic into one massive upwards push, from the lake up to me. The surface of the lake rose up underneath me like a fountain, slowing my fall.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to stop me completely.

And then the hard surface of the water hit me, and my world went dark.

Author's Notes:

And I'm
FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... Freee- Fallllin'