The wind was strong and the sea was calm. The ship cut though the water without difficulty, barely rocking on its path forward. The sailors had all described it as a smooth sail, and Karon did not believe them for a minute.

He hung over the railing, doing his utmost to keep the breakfast of saltine crackers and dried fruit down. Right next to him hung the unicorn Trixie, her usual sky blue coat had taken on a greenish tone, and like Karon, her breakfast was in grave danger of escaping.

If it were not for the fact that he suffered under the same wretched experience, Karon would have enjoyed seeing the unicorn humbled.

After their arrival on the ship, and subsequent haggling with the captain, Karon had decided to question Trixie a little further. After all, he had been forced to pay an additional twenty bits because of her. Ten because of the third passenger, since she possessed no money to pay for it herself, and ten more, simply because the crew might not be welcome in Trottingham for a while after aiding their escape.

He would have accepted the fact that sometimes, shit happens. However the unicorn hadn’t responded with thanks, instead she had addressed the issue like he had owed it to her, and the only answer she had provided to his questions was that she was so great and powerful, that her very existence was more than his meagre mind could fully handle.

Karon had done a lot of bad things in his life, but after spending ten minutes in conversation with Trixie, he suspected that his karma count most likely had swung back to the plus side. He actually preferred the sound of her vomiting to the sound of her voice.

But he liked her hat.

Karon vomited noisily as the content of his stomach sprayed out through his mouth, and into the open air. It splashed down into the sea and quickly disappeared beneath the waves, and he spat out what was left, leaving him with an acid burning in his mouth. However, since his stomach now felt empty, he thought it safe to go in search of some water.

He groaned in self-pity and stumbled towards the stairs, leading down to the lower deck where most of the crew slept. There were several barrels of fresh water stored there, but all on board had a limited amount of cups they could take from it per day. Karon found it ironic that there was such a thing as water rationing while in the middle of the sea, but then again, he hardly knew anything about sailing.

He descended the stairs groggily, and nearly tripped over one of the ponies sleeping in a hammock, the entire deck cluttered with the cocoon like beds. He continued on until he reached the collection of barrels, and grabbed one of the cups on top of them. The water inside was warm, but it helped wash away the horrid taste of vomit, and decreased his discomfort slightly

Now he just had to try and keep it down.

Walking a little steadier on his legs, Karon went back up to the top deck and took a look around.

There were three masts in total, all of them with full sails catching the winds, driving the ship forward with great speed. There was a weird creature, looking similar to a cat but with a hand on the end of its tail, up in the reeling. It apparently acted as a look out, since it was better suited than the ponies in the crew for climbing.

The captain stood at the front of the ship, the bow Karon thought it was called, right next to Lyra. Together they watched the approaching horizon, coming ever closer with the speed of the wind, while Trixie was still hanging over the railing, sea sickness holding her firm in its tentacle grip.

There were a few more members of the crew standing around the deck, most of them gathered in small groups, talking or gambling with some strange looking cards. Though the possibility of cheating the seafarers out of their money intrigued him, Karon decided it would be too risky. It wasn’t like he could run from them like he had run from the crowd in Trottingham.

“Since when did we think ahead and act responsibly?”

“Since we got to the middle of the ocean with a bunch of sailors whose accents I can barely understand.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It means it would be hard for me to decipher if they are talking about the weather or if they should try and throw me overboard.”

“I see your point.”

Karon walked over to the captain and Lyra instead. At least with her he could have a proper conversation. When he got close to them, the captain noticed and fell silent. Whatever he and Lyra had been discussing was put on hold until he had walked up to them.

“Something the matter?” Karon asked, diverging his gaze between the captain and Lyra.

“Ain’t nothing wrong here matey. We should’a arrive at ‘the island’ in the morrow methinks, if the winds favor us.”

“The island?” Karon asked with some trepidation. He had not heard anything about a stop at any island along the way.

“Aye matey, ‘Starfish Island’ be the name, though every sailor worth his grain of salt knows which island it be when a captain says ‘the island’. Only one in the sea worth mentioning.”

“And why are we stopping at this well-known island?” Karon continued asking.

“Fresh supplies, and the lads here might’a like stopping by so they can visit their mares in harbor.”

“They all have mares in the harbor?” Lyra asked this time, skeptically.

“If they don’t, they could easily buy one for t’night,” the captain told her with a grin.

Lyra rolled her eyes in the universal way a woman does to express her conviction of the hopelessness of the male species, a conviction that was only strengthened when the response Karon gave was a grin off his own.

“I’ll leave ye two to yer own company. Ah need to check the course anyways, can’t trust that damn scallywag first mate of mine.”

The captain left the two alone as promised, heading towards his cabin where Karon assumed he could do his captainy things in peace.

“So what were you talking about before I got here?” he turned to Lyra and asked.

“Nothing special. He was just telling me about the island we're going to and about the zebra town we’ll be arriving in afterwards.”

“And you managed to understand what he said despite how he speaks? Because I’m having difficulty with it.”

Lyra’s face broke out into a smile, and she answered him in an amused voice, “Really? Because to me he sounds perfectly normal.” She gave him an enigmatic look to go with the statement, then turned to observe the sea.

Karon glared at her suspiciously, but received no further response from the unicorn no matter how hard he scowled. Sighing in defeat, he turned to observe the watery expanse as well, standing next to his friend as they traveled further and further from everything familiar.

The journey to ‘the island’, as all the sailors called it, took several days. Several days where the crew quickly learned to avoid the sky blue unicorn with the funny clothes. Because of this, Karon became the sole victim of Trixie’s egocentric rants of self-importance. More than once, Lyra had to remind him that chucking the annoying pony overboard would be a bad thing. Usually, she followed that up with reminding him that it had been he who had decided to save her instead of leaving her in Trottingham.

When Trixie had heard that Karon was a magic user, she had promptly challenged him to a competition of power, where the victor would prove to everyone on board that she (because apparently the outcome was certain) was superior.

Karon had told her to shove it.

And so the days had come and gone, gradually building up Karon’s frustration, and when the lookout finally announced from his perk high above that the island was coming into view, Karon screamed in joy.

“Yes, yes, yes! Finally, as soon as we are close enough to land that she won’t drown, I will take up that devil-spawned unicorn’s challenge and throw her as far I can into the sea.…” Karon hesitated for a second, and turned to the broadly smiling Lyra, amused by his enthusiasm, and asked. “Do sharks exist in this world?”

“What’s a shark?” she questioned back, her smile turning into a curious stare.

“Never mind. I’ll say there’s a fifty-fifty chance they do since you don’t know what a shark is … I can live that. Maybe she can annoy them to death if they do.”

“Karon, don’t do anything that can actually hurt her. You know it’s wrong.”

“You only say that because she made me her only target, and has left you alone for some weird reason.”

“I have a secret weapon,” she announced smugly.

“That you refuse to tell me,” Karon noted in irritation, glancing over his shoulder to see if Trixie was sneaking up on them, prepared with another rant.

“If I told everypony about it, she might begin ignoring it, and then I would be in danger too.”

“Come on, give me a hint,” Karon pleaded to her desperately. He could feel danger creeping up on him, and since he was on a ship in the middle of nowhere, that could only mean Trixie.

“Okay, let’s just say that, I’ve seen Trixie before Trottingham, and I am all too happy to remind her about what happened then if she doesn’t leave me alone.”

“You have to give me more than that,” Karon begged her, his eyes darting from side to side in panic. The feeling of approaching danger was strengthening, to the point he felt his heart rate quickening in dread.

“Well, since we will be rid of her soon anyway. It was back in Ponyville, whe-“

“Ship ahoy!” a voice cried out from high above.

“Shut up!” Karon screamed back at the cat-thing, and glared up towards it. When he turned his gaze down though, Lyra was gone. She had run over to most of the other crew, watching the ship that had been spotted.

“Bucking hell,” Karon muttered to himself, and walked over to the others.

The ship was far off, or at least it seemed that way to Karon. He had learned it was different judging distances on the sea than it was on land. The captain walked over to the rest of them and looked at the ship with squinted eyes, and then he turned to the first mate, a brown unicorn with tattoos covering his entire body.

“What’s her course?” he asked.

The unicorn’s horn flared up in a yellow aura, and a strange fog came over the stallions eyes. Karon relaxed his own eyesight and observed the aura of the pony, seeing that there was some strange activity that went on in his mental sphere, and surmised the unicorn was performing some kind of calculations with a mental map. It must be a valuable talent for a ship captain, and it explained why he kept the first mate around, despite constantly complaining about him.

The unicorn’s eyes returned to normal, and Karon let go off his second sight as well.

“She’s on an intercept course captain,” the unicorn reported with a drawl. The captain hummed, then drew a deep breath and called up at the look-out.

“What kind of flag does she fly!?”

The entire crew waited with baited breath, while Karon turned over and whispered to Lyra.

“Do we even have a flag?”

“Every ship has a flag, even I know that,” she whispered back, and gave him a look meant to shut him up.

“Red, broken clam on black!” the look-out finally called back. The entire crew began murmuring at the news, and looked at the captain expectantly. The captain in turn remained silent, until Karon asked loudly.

“Am I missing something? And where the hell did your accent go?”

The captain gave him half a smile, and then looked back out towards the approaching ship.

“I was just joking with the accent, as for the flag … only pirates fly that flag.”

“Pirates, seriously? I mean … a broken clam; it doesn’t exactly invoke fear,” Karon said dubiously.

“It did for the otters. Starfish Island used to be a colony for the sea otters. Thing is, the other creatures living there didn’t like it that way. So after a while, a lot of zebras, gryphons, ponies and even a minotaur or two banded together and started raiding their ships. Eventually the otters gave up and told them the place was free, but a lot of the ‘freedom fighters’ had gotten a taste for plunder. Now they’re nothing but scum, killing, looting and raping indiscriminately. The island has no official government, and there's a lot of unsavory travellers and sailors there, but there's a kind of recognized agreement between all that you don't go after ships when they get this close to it, bad for business.”

Karon listened to the tale carefully, then turned his eyes towards the approaching ship like the rest of them.

“Can we outrun them?” Lyra asked, her voice betraying that she suspected that answer.

“Don’t think so. We’ll try our best but … If we’re lucky, we're close enough to ‘the island’ for some other ship to spot us, and maybe come to help once they see what’s going on.”

As one, everyone on the deck turned their eyes to the island, far off in the distance, then back at the ship. The ship was growing larger a lot of faster than the island.

“Shit,” Karon said, giving voice to, in essence, what they were all thinking.

They stood in sober silence, watching the ship grow in size the closer it got, almost hypnotized with the approaching doom. That is, until a shrill, almost nasal, voice cut through the silence like a butcher’s knife.

“Trixie demands to see what is going on!  She has spent almost ten minutes looking for a pony to tell her when her next meal will be ready.” Karon groaned out loud, an act that was copied by several of the ponies around him, and looked behind to see the horned plague that was The Great and Powerful Trixie.

But the unicorn’s interruption of their fatalistic meditation had snapped them all back into reality, and the captain bellowed orders to all of them, paying no heed to the irritating unicorn.

“Okay, that’s it. Scum of the sea they may be, but they won’t find us easy pickings! Find whatever weapons you can use and get ready to fight!”

The sailors scurried away at his command, running around in desperate search for anything they could use to defend themselves with. Karon mirrored their behavior, but in a far more controlled way. He headed down to the lower deck, and got his spear, the weight and stability of it making him feel marginally better.

“So … pirates huh?”

“Seems that way.”

“How long has it been since we last practiced using a spear?”

“Uhh … six, seven year’s maybe. No counting that time with the wolves.”

“And we’ll be going up against things that kill other things professionally?”

“That’s a fair description.”

“Hmmm … think anyone will notice if we take the lifeboat and run, I mean row, away?”

“Yes, and our best chance will be with the crew anyway. Besides … if the pirates are as bad as the captain made them out to be, I don’t want to leave anyone to them.”

“Mr. save-the-day appears to be back. Remember the last time we tried that routine?”

“That was different, and I am fairly sure that I am the best chance the crew has of fighting them off.”

“The electricity thing won’t be good against an entire pirate crew, the spear won’t work either. We can’t take them all on alone, and the sailors aren’t exactly fighter material.”

“It’s our best chance, end of story.”

“Maybe we can trade Trixie for safe passage.”

“Hey that’s not a bad ide-... No, no, they would do terrible things to her.”

“Fine, good luck with the dying. Try not to do so in an embarrassing way.”

Karon marched back up to the deck, spear gripped tightly, and saw that most of the crew had various blunt objects in hoof. Some of them were without, but they looked ready to use their bare hooves if need be, grim faces displaying that they would not die easily.

“Of course, that will most likely change when they come face to face with a band of heavily armed killers.”

“You’re right … they need something to lift their spirits, something that will inspire them to fight.”

“You’re not thinking of…”

“A speech!”

Taken with the sudden idea to rally the sailors for combat, to make their blood boil with fighting spirit, Karon jumped up unto one the nearest crate and spread his arms wide to the side, like a street prophet heralding the end of days.

The crew stood unmoved, their eyes fixed on the pirate ship, now almost close enough for them to make out the one’s on board. They hadn’t noticed Karon, so he cleared his throat loudly in an attempt to gain their attention. It didn’t work.

“Maybe we should just give-“

“Friends! Comrades! Fellow uhh … fellow creatures. Today we stand face to face with battle! Today we will fight for our lives, against an enemy so ruthless that-“

“Shut up! We’re trying to watch the ship come closer,” a single pony shouted, not even bothering to turn around, steadily observing the pirate’s approach without fault, like all of them. With the exception of Lyra and Trixie, no pony had even turned to look at him.

Karon stood with his mouth open, his arms wide, and his spear pointed towards the approaching ship. He slammed his mouth shut in shame, descended from the crate, and walked over to Lyra’s side. Trixie looked at him smugly, and stated with perfect confidence.

“Trixie would have done a much better job at giving a speech.”

“Trixie can go blow herself,” Karon grumbled, and stared down at the deck in disappointment.

Lyra patted him on the back, “I’m sure it would have been a great speech,” she said in conciliation.

Karon patted her head in thanks, and turned his eyes towards the approaching ship like the rest of them. The crew moved jittery, stomping their hooves and breathing heavier by the minute.

When the pirate ship came close enough for them to be heard, the crew began banging their makeshift weapons on the railing. They banged them together, the beat joining with that of their hearts, the beat of war drums echoing over the water. They all glared at the pirate ship and banged in defiance, and when the pirates themselves came into view they fell silent. The calm before a storm, the calm before the bloodcurdling screams of battle would sound across the waves.

The pirates stood at their ship's railing, waiting to board the ‘Sea Swallow’, armed to the teeth, in some cases literally so. The crew stood together, facing the pirates with their crude weapons in hand, ready for battle.

The pirates took one look at them and roared.

“YAAARGH!”

“We surrender!” The captain immediately shouted and dropped his weapon, as did everypony of the crew.

Karon stared in disbelief at the ponies around him, holding up their hooves in surrender. “Oh come on!” he shouted at them, but they said nothing back. They just inched away from Karon, clearly demonstrating that his decision to hold on to his weapons was not supported by the rest of the crew.

Realization about his situation dawning on him, he gulped and looked at the pirates, all of them focused entirely on the strange creature holding a spear.

“How does that lifeboat sound about now?”

“I hate you so much.”

The pirates cheered in victory, and leaped, soared or walked over to the ship on a plank they had put over the gap. They quickly threw a net over the surrendering crew, which worked in Karon’s favor, standing outside of it, though he wasn’t the only one still free.

Trixie screamed when some of the pirates turned their attention to her, and she made a desperate run for the lifeboat Karon had contemplated using himself. The pirates would have none of it, and a gryphon with grey and yellow feathers dashed after her. More by accident than design Karon suspected, she spun around just as he came in, and delivered an uppercut right into his chin. The gryphon barreled into her, but had been knocked out cold, and the unicorn tried her best to scramble out from under him, but quickly got caught by several of the other pirates.

Karon had only a few seconds to observe this before the pirates not busy with the crew or Trixie focused on him, running forward with their weapons held high, screaming in sadistic glee.

Karon jabbed with the spear towards the closest one, a zebra wearing an eye patch and swinging a curved saber. The zebra parried the clumsy jab and came in with a spin on his front hoof, bucking his hind legs straight towards him. Karon managed to stumble backwards and avoided the hooves that would no doubt have broken his ribs, but he could not avoid the swing of the saber the zebra followed through in the spin. The blade cut shallowly on his right arm, but the sudden pain was enough to make Karon drop his hold of the spear. And when the zebra came in and struck his chin with the pummel of the saber, he dropped down on the deck, barely clinging to consciousness as the spear clattered away.

It had taken the single zebra less than five seconds to disarm and defeat him.

“So much for being the ship’s best hope of victory.”

“Well, you did try at least. With pathetic results yes, but I would give it a golden star for effort.”

“You make me feel all fuzzy inside.”

Karon noticed his eyes had teared up from the pain, and there was a very loud ringing in his ears, making it difficult to hear what was going on. He tried to focus his eyes, but they only ended up rolling up inside his head. There was a tangy, distant taste in his mouth, and he realized it was blood. It didn't disturb him in the least. After everything that had happened, the taste of his own blood had become a very familiar one.

Something grabbed his ankle and dragged him across the deck. That should have bothered him though, he knew that, but right then he could only think that it was nice not having to try and stand up and walk. After a short trip over the deck the something let go off his ankle.

Karon blinked his eyes a few times, and through a blurry vision, he saw several figures standing over him, grinning faces staring down at his beaten form.

“Wakey wakey,” one of them said, and emptied a bucket of water over his face. The water splashed down on his face, and into his open mouth, it flowed down his throat, and the shock made him sit up straight and cough up all the water. The pirates around him laughed at the sight, and a few of them began jeering. However they all feel silent when a shadow fell over them, and Karon looked up to see the biggest minotaur he had ever seen, and incidentally, the only one.

And he laughed.

Karon began hysterically laughing at the sight of the huge minotaur, not because he found the insanely large muscles displayed funny, nor because he didn’t find the angry stare he received intimidating. It was because a bright green parrot sat on his shoulder.

“Hahahahah, polly wants a cracker, hahahahahaha!” he went on, his head spinning from the lack of oxygen, or possible a concussion. The Minotaur pointed at him and spoke in a deep, baritone voice.

“He … can walk the plank. The rest will do as merchandise.”

“Aye aye captain,” they all said, and grabbed Karon, hauling him over to their ship.

“Looks like we managed to insult the pirate captain.”

“It’s his fault, wearing a silly parrot on his shoulder.”

His head bounced on the way there, making his head spin even more, and nausea forced itself into the forefront of his muddled mind. Despite the ringing in his ear, the sounds around him were becoming clearer. He could make out individual voices screaming together in concert, an especially shrill voice standing out from the rest of them.

“Let me go! The Great and Powerful Trixie is warning you, unhoof me at once or I will use my most amazing magic to teach you all a lesson!”

“She’s pretty, think we can find a way to make her shut up?” a voice called out, the lecherous tone of it making it plain what the creature had in mind.

“Aye, why not. There are only two females anyway, and the harpies don’t care if they’re a little used up. As long as the meat is tender and fresh, they will buy them happily.”

Even through the painful haze around Karon’s mind, he felt something awfully chilling settle in his stomach, and it had nothing to do with the nausea. Trixie wasn’t the nicest pony around, but he couldn’t let something like that happen to her, and especially not to Lyra either.

“Don’t touch me!” Trixie’s voice screamed loud enough to make Karon wince, quickly followed by a pained roar, and the sound of someone getting hit hard.

“That’s it! This one goes out the plank too, she’s not worth it. We can share the other one once we’re back home.”

“Fine, but I’m keeping her clothes. They might fetch a nice prize with those other crazy unicorns on 'the island'.”

“Rotten hay! I should have thought of it. Hey! That one’s clothes are mine, I get to sell those,” Karon heard one of the voices exclaim, right before sharp claws began tearing at his clothes, tearing them off him within a matter of seconds.

“Aye, these should get me enough for a fine night at the pleasure house on ‘the island’.”

“Who would buy clothes made like that, I’ve never seen a … whatever that thing is before.”

“Does it matter? It’s in pretty colors. Ponies love pretty colors, zebras too.”

“Enough yapping you dung feathered cow-sons. Bind the crew, then we’ll have some fun watching those two walk the plank,” the deep rumbling of the minotaur captain sounded. After a minute of scampering sound, someone slapped him hard with a claw. It stung, and it was not until then he realized he had kept his eyes closed, and now the sun hammered down on him with its painful light.

The gryphon that had slapped him awake forced him up to his feet, and Karon stumbled around in a circle before a sense of balance settled in his mind. Around him the pirate crew roared with laughter at the scene, and several of them were clapping their hands in mock applause.

If not for the fact he knew it would make him fall over, Karon would have taken a bow in an effort to retain some form of dignity or control. Instead, he did the only thing he could to show some level of defiance and opened his mouth and threw up on the deck.

The pirate’s laughter turned to sounds of disgust, and a few of them raised objections, most likely those that would be forced to clean it up.

A half forced, wicked smile made its way to Karon’s mouth. He would have loved to find another way to antagonize the crew, but the gryphon that had somehow been appointed Karon’s keeper flew at him, and dug his talon’s hard into his shoulders, forcing him along as he flew to where Lyra and the captain stood. He failed to see it at first, but after the gryphon withdrew his talons and the glaring pain receded slightly Karon could see that there was a wide plank hemmed into the railing, leading out into the wide ocean.

“The classics never die it seems.”

“Think we can make it to shore? We can see the island from here.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it, and I can’t let them do anything to Lyra.”

“We’ll try our best, and if we fail…Well, I’ve heard drowning should be a peaceful way to die.”

“As long as it isn’t fire.”

A kind of fatalistic calm settled over Karon. The rational thoughts of how to make survival a certainty faded away, as did the tide of emotions such thoughts leave in their wake. What was left were simple truths, needing no additional depth or reasoning than they already had. He would try his best, and if he didn’t, he would die. Either way, if it weren’t for Lyra, he didn’t think he would have cared much at this point. He was tired of getting hurt.

But she was there. Lyra, standing on the other side of the deck with the rest of the pirate’s and the Sea Swallow’s crew, watching as the captain drew a cutlass from his belt.

Trixie stared with disbelieving eyes, and she turned them to Karon, trusting that her savior would come to her rescue somehow again. Instead, he sighed and climbed up to the plank carefully, making sure he wouldn't trip and fall off right away.

It sounded like Trixie was crying. He couldn’t be sure. He was concentrating too hard on staying steady on the plank. He felt the sharp point of the captain’s cutlass jab him lightly in his left leg, and took it as an incentive to walk further out. He placed one foot in front of the other slowly, suppressing the desire to hold his arms out wide for balance. That would have truly taken every last bit of dignity he had left.

He heard the clatter of hooves coming from behind him, and he carefully turned his head and saw that Trixie stood right behind him. The unicorn still looked at him with tear-filled eyes, waiting for him to find a way to save them.

“Don’t worry,” Karon said, the words that came out producing a few bubbles of blood and saliva mixed together. “We are close enough to swim to shore … maybe.”

“But…” Trixie’s voice shook, her lips trembled visibly and his words didn’t seem to have had any reassuring effect at all. In the background, Karon could hear the taunting and laughing of the pirates.

“Walk off within five seconds or I will begin cutting off limbs!” the captain bellowed, his voice so deep Karon could have sworn it made his bones vibrate.

“Wait, I got an idea.”

“Parley!” Karon croaked as loud as he could, eye fixed on the captain.

He wasn’t entirely sure he had pronounced it right, or something else, but the pirate crew fell silent along with the captain and looked upon on another for an explanation.

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he say parsley?”

“Why would he want a vegetable when he’s about to die?”

“Maybe he really likes it, maybe it’s his last wish.”

“Do we have any parsley on board?”

“I SAID PARLEY!”  Karon screamed as loud as he could, leaving his throat feeling raw.

The crew muttered quietly, and the captain looked at Karon with vague annoyance and confusion.

“And what does parley mean?” he asked, his voice silencing the rest of the pirates.

“Uhh … you know, it’s a negotiation between enemies, part of the pirate code. If an enemy invokes parley it means all hostilities must cease until the end, so we can come to an arrangement that will benefit both parties,” Karon explained, his eyes betraying a fear that he somehow had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

The pirates looked even more confused after he spoke, and the captain turned to the other pirates, waiting to see if they had anything to say that would explain what Karon had just said.

“We have a code?” one of the pirates asked the others.

“None I’ve ever heard about.”

“Why would we need a code? We’re pirates.”

“Sounds like something somepony has made up to make us far easier to connect to and accept for a wider audience reading or hearing a story of some kind. Completely disregarding the fact that we are a bunch of no-good, murderers, rapists, slave-dealers and thieves without a shred of conscience,” the pirate captain mused out loud, then shook his head.

“NOW WALK THE PLANK OR I WILL GUT YOU LIKE A PAIR OF FISH!”

“That could have gone better.”

“Trixie … we have to try and swim,” Karon offered weakly, and tried to smile encouragingly.

She stared up at him, fearful as ever, and squeaked, “I can’t swim.”

Karon’s eye went wide and disbelieving. No one could be so unfortunate, then the captain raised his cutlass like he was about to made good on his threats, so Karon grabbed Trixie’s horn and pulled her with him as he jumped out into the air. The swooshing sound of the cutlass narrowly missing Trixie giving him some small satisfaction he had made the right call.

And then he hit the water, and his wounds exploded with pure, burning pain. The salt water dug into them like tiny barb wires. His eyes overflowed with tears instantly, which had no effect whatsoever while underneath the ocean surface. He looked up with squinted eyes and saw a blurry light shining from the left. It looked like such a distant thing, so far away, the waves making it flicker about in a beautiful dance.

If it weren’t for the agonizing pain, Karon would have thought it peaceful, but then again after everything he had gone through, pain was more like an annoying neighbor whose presence you’ve simply come to accept than an enemy you bitterly do everything to avoid.

The light was growing more distant, and a pressure was building within his ears, adding yet another variant of pain to the mixture. He felt a disturbance in the water. Sounds echoed with muted tones, and he more felt than heard it, the water carrying the waves of motion with it.

Trixie was sinking down too. He could see her now, but unlike Karon she refused to stay still. Instead, was she flailing her limbs around in a parody of swimming. She was stricken by panic – not that he could blame her. It must feel really horrible slowly descending into a dark depth without being able to do anything about it.

He should help her, but doing that would be so heavy, so tiresome. He said they would try and swim, but that was before he knew she couldn’t even do that on her own. There was no way he could carry them both all the way to the island. He probably wouldn’t have been able to even if he was in top condition, and now he was battered and hurt in more ways than he wanted to consider in detail.

“After all the hits we’ve taken to the head, it’s a miracle we haven’t sustained brain damage yet.”

“Is it even worth trying? We’d just add cramps to the list of unpleasant sensations before drowning.”

“Lyra is still with the pirates, and you know what they’ll do to her. And no matter how annoying Trixie may be, she doesn’t deserve to die in like this, maybe from a painless and random lightning strike from the sky, but not like this.”

“My options have dwindled down to different ways to die, not much I can do.”

“You can try. It’s all we can ever do, really.”

“Inspiring words. It makes all my attempts at bettering myself and ultimately failing feel so rewarding.”

“Please, leave the sarcasm to the professional. Now get going, like it or not, you have friends that are depending on you right now, and Feather didn’t die just so you could sink to the bottom of the ocean without a fight. Besides … those pirates really deserve to die.”

“They sure do…and Trixie doesn't.”

“So go get her.”

He pushed his mind out of the dream-like state he had been in, and forced his arms and legs to start moving. Every single twist of his muscles sent searing pain up to his brain, and his already dizzy head was growing ever more scrambled from the lack of oxygen. His head throbbed with each beat of his heart. He felt the blood pounding hard in his veins, leaking out into the sea from the wounds the pirate’s had left him with.

Trixie was still struggling. There was no sense to her movements at all, and sheer, animal panic had taken over. Karon felt annoyed at the sight. He had gone through a lot of pain and decided to try and save her, and now he was risking getting knocked out by a flailing hoof because she didn’t have the sense to keep still.

It wasn’t the proper way to do it, but Karon grabbed the closest of her limbs, her left backhoof, and began swimming up, using his legs to propel them while his free arm almost clawed its way through the water.

Trixie was still trashing around mindlessly, probably not even aware he was trying to save her, and Karon nearly lost his grip on her several times. Above him, the sun’s light was growing larger and larger, and with a hard push of his legs he felt his hand breach the surface and fresh, cool air caressed his skin.

He turned his head down to Trixie and realized he couldn’t get her up all the way holding her like that. So, risking the possibility of being killed by a lucky shot, he quickly sank down to her and slipped an arm under her shoulders and around her chest. The unicorn was smaller than a human, so he could hold her relatively tight and avoid her trashing hooves as he pushed both of them up the last bit.

He broke the surface with a loud gasp, and as soon as air flowed down his lungs he began coughing. The water that had made its way into him was expelled painfully, and his lungs burned with the exertion.

Trixie was coughing too and still splashing around like she had no sense at all. If it wasn’t for the fact that she would sink if he dropped her, Karon would have slapped her.

“Trixie calm down! You’re gonna kill us both. We’re safe, now hold still or I’m gonna let go of you and swim away alone.”

Some part of her brain must have gotten a kick-start by the flow of oxygen because she gradually calmed down until she was completely still. Her only movement was her entire body shaking from the adrenaline and fear.

“Ple- … please don’t,” she whispered, barely daring to move her lips.

“I won’t if you at least try and keep calm … if you relax as much as you can you’ll float, okay? Because there’s no chance I will be able to take us both to shore if you are tensed like this, it makes you heavier and I’m already tired.”

The nausea was back, and the insistent rolling of the ocean waves didn’t make it easier for him to suppress the desire to vomit, not that he had anything left to expel.

  “I ... I c- ... an’t,” she forced out, all signs of her previous attitude lost.

“Then we die,” Karon stated simply, having neither the patience nor the time for easing her into it.

She whimpered when he said it, but he felt how she, very slowly, made her limbs softer. The underlying tension was still there, however it was a fair improvement to how heavy she had been before.

Maybe they did have a chance after all.

“Unless a shark eats us,” Karon said out loud, accidentally voicing his usually private thoughts.

“Eat us!? There are things that eat ponies in the sea!?” Trixie shouted, fear blowing some life back into her.

“Big fish with sharp teeth, but I don’t know if they exist … around here.”

“Plea- … please hurry. I don’t want to be eaten.”

“Never met anyone that does,” Karon commented dryly, and began taking backstrokes, shifting his head every now and then to direct his course.

The island looked to be such a close thing, looming in the empty ocean, big and obvious. But no matter how many strokes Karon did, it could have been a thousand, it could have been three, it still looked just as far away as when he started.

He was craning his neck hard, trying to see if the island grew bigger by even the tiniest degree as he swam, when Trixie spoke.

“Karon … how does a shark look?”

“As I said, really big fish with sharp teeth,” he puffed. The damn island refused to get any closer. His muscles burned with exhaustion, and he probably had lost a lot of blood by now from his wounds. Most likely he had left a trail of it all the way from where they began.

“Wait…”

“Trixie, why are you asking?” he questioned her, not daring to turn his head for fear of what he might see.

“So it’s not like a thing that sticks up from the water.”

He gulped, and felt terror induced resignation set in.

“You mean like a fin?”

“Is that what they're called? What are they?” Trixie asked.

“Things that stick up out of the water from the back of a shark,” he said, turning his head back into its rightful position, where he was given full view of a triangular fin sticking up out of the water, slowly circling them.

He could feel Trixie tense up from his words, and he really couldn’t fault her for it this time.

“I could have died a cozy death drowning. Now I’m going to get torn to pieces and eaten by a shark. Anything snarky you wish to add?”

“To be honest … I really don’t have much to say this time.”

“Trixie….”

“Y-yes?”

“Since we will most likely die, there’s something I want you to know.”

“What?” she asked, her head slowly turning as she tracked the fin.

“You’re a really annoying twit.”

She didn’t respond, either because fear had robbed her of her voice or because as far as last words go, Karon had given her something there wasn’t really a good response to, besides possible, ‘no u!’

The fin disappeared beneath the waves, and Karon knew enough to know what was coming next. The shark would go under them then attack straight up, most likely ripping Karon in half and swallowing Trixie whole, depending on its size.

He breathed in deeply, and for a second, thought about grabbing Trixie’s ass and squeezing, just for the hell of it. Then time stretched out before them, a single heartbeat expanded into a million tiny moments, slowly moving through each other like a rusty arrow on a clock.

Then a head popped out of the sea right next to them, and a broadly smiling face belonging to a dolphin asked. “Hey! Need a lift?”

The image took a while to reach Karon’s brain, and said brain needed a lot of time to properly go through the proper channels and confirm that, indeed, it seemed like he wasn’t about to die a horrible death. Even better, it seemed like he was saved by the friendliest ocean mammal in all known existence.

Apparently Trixie came to the same conclusion, for when she spoke again, she spoke in her usual shrill tone, and stated quite loudly.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie thinks that YOU are the annoying twit.” And then threw her arms around the dolphin, looking back at Karon from her new rescuer with a glare.

Karon didn’t respond. He was too busy laughing hysterically for the second time that day.

                                   *******************************************************

The talking dolphin, named Tin-lin, was kind enough to take them both all the way to ‘the island’s’ shore. There he left them with a happy wave, right after Trixie had assured him that he was a far better rescuer than Karon had been. And after said human had spent a few minutes entertaining day-dreams of strangling Trixie, he took in his surroundings.

It looked like the most standard tropical island imaginable. Golden sand framed the shoreline, and lush jungle grew thick as soon as it ended. The island didn’t look all too big, not from where he was standing and how it had looked from a distance. Tin-lin had told them they could reach the settlement if they walked through the jungle, since he couldn’t take them all the way because of some cryptic statement about his kind not being welcomed there by the other sea creatures.

Of course, a sea-dwelling creature doesn’t really have an understanding of just how difficult trekking through a jungle is.

“Trixie, do you have any magic that could help us navigate through the jungle?” Karon asked, sneering at the thick cluster of vegetation blocking his path.

“Trixie possess more magic than you could possibly imagine! However … she is very tired from today’s events, and must rest. Ask her again tomorrow, but it would be much better if you did whatever you want yourself, Trixie might not feel like helping after what you said to her.”

Karon didn’t look back, but he knew she must have lifted her muzzle in resentment, and stared at him from whatever high pedestal she imagined her hooves stood upon.

“Okay then, you’re on your own,” he said simply, and pushed his way into the thicket before him.

“What!? Come back here immediately! Trixie demands that you remain here and help her!”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie can go suck it!” Karon’s voice called back from within the jungle, and soon the sound of him trashing around faded.

Trixie stood in stunned silence, that her rescuer would abandon her like this had never occurred to her. She was the Great and Powerful Trixie, she deserved to be rescued. Uncertainty and fear wrapped itself around her heart, and she bolted into the jungle after Karon, from whom she would demand an explanation.

She ran fast through the thick bush, and even she had no trouble following Karon’s trail, since he had left a clear path of broken twigs, scattered leaves and otherwise appeared to have lashed out at everything in his path.

When she spotted him, he was covered in leaves and torn off remains from the bigger plants. The greenery was sticking firmly to his naked skin, glued in place by the sweat seeping out of his pores.

“Trixie demands you wait for her!” the unicorn called out, stomping her right hoof into the ground hard. Karon completely ignored her.

Trixie stared in open shock at his back. No one had ever managed to ignore her before. She always received everypony’s attention sooner or later.

“Trixe … I … wait!” she stuttered and ran after him, the loud curses the human swore guiding her as much as the path he had cleared.

“You can’t just leave me here! I’ll … I’ll….”

“Most likely starve to death, or perhaps get eaten by a predator of some kind,” Karon told her happily, his tone almost cheerful as he said it.

“But … but … you can’t.”

“Yes I can! I’ve done enough for you, I don’t owe you crap. If it weren’t for the fact that the mere sight of you revolts me, I would think you owed me a few nights in the bed after all I’ve gone through to help you.”

“Trixie would never stoop to-“

“I don’t care about Trix- I don’t care about you! I’m done! Now I’m going to save Lyra because she’s a friend. If you want saving, try one of yours. That is on the off-chance you actually have any.”

“Trixie has plenty of friends!” she shrieked loudly in an offended voice, yet Karon caught the hurt undertone in it.

“Does anyone of them exist outside off a mirror? I would doubt it. Now go away and attract some starved tiger or something.”

“Isn’t it wrong to leave her here after having gone through all the trouble to save her?”

“She’s on a tiny island, full of lush life, which happens to be inhabited. She’ll find her way around sooner or later, I doubt there are any real predators on such an isolated scrap of land like this.”

“How do you know YOU won’t be the one to attract the … taikers!”

Karon snorted. “Because you’re an herbivorous herd animal. Everything about you scream ‘delicious prey’.”

“Maybe they think you would taste better.”

“Perhaps, but unlike you, I can climb a tree,” he finished with a grin.

Trixie drew a deep breath, and Karon could feel the rant coming, so before she had the chance to begin he turned around and grabbed her muzzle, forcing her mouth close.

“Shhh, I just saw something.”

Trixie’s eyes widened, no doubt thinking it was one of the dangerous ‘taikers’. Karon held up a finger before his mouth, then turned away and walked slowly towards one of the trees and looked up.

A chatter answered him when he got close, and a small monkey jumped down to one of the low hanging branches, curiously observing the otherworldly cousin that stood below him.

Trixie let out the breath she had held in, and gave both Karon and the monkey an irritated glare.

“Are you going to ask it for directions?” she asked sarcastically.

“Something like it yeah,” Karon responded in a calm voice.

“You speak monkey,” she asked, continuing her sarcasm streak.

“No … and animals don’t have the intelligence for complicated linguistics anyway, but basic thoughts, emotions and instincts they have, and monkeys like to steal food. I bet this one knows where the best spots are, where there is a lot of creatures and food stores and cooked, easy pickings.”

“Trixie hardly sees how that matters, if you can’t ask it.”

Karon didn’t respond, instead he stretched out his mind and connected to the little creature sitting above him. He sent a simple impulse into it, making the monkey feel relaxed, like Karon was no threat whatsoever. The monkey’s caution of meeting the new creature disappeared, leaving just the curiosity, and so it jumped down and placed itself on Karon’s shoulder, and began playfully pulling his hair.

Karon winced when the monkey put pressure on his injured shoulder. The gryphon’s talons had dug deep, and the veil of crusted blood cracked a little from the strain. But Karon held the connection to the monkey’s mind firm, and he implanted the desire to eat, to go to a place where lots of food.

A few scattered impressions flickered through the creature's tiny brain, and the strongest impression won out, that of strong smells, lots of noise, and creatures that lived close to one another, but weren’t dangerous unless you were slow.

The monkey jumped down from Karon’s shoulder and skipped forward, then stopped and looked back at his new friend, tilting its head in question.

“I think we found a guide,” Karon stated smugly, and followed after the monkey. Trixie had a lot of feelings on the subject she would have liked to express, but fear of being left behind forced her mouth shut, and she followed in silence.

The monkey led them through the jungle without difficulty, not stopping once to gain its bearings. And after less than an hour’s walk, they came out into the outskirts of a town. The houses stood low, and were made of wood, straw or merely cloth. Clamoring voices and all other sounds associated with civilization formed a din around the town, marking it as an outpost where food, shelter and company could be found.

It would be a dangerous place. If ‘the island’ was truly the ‘only island in the sea worth mentioning’ as the captain of the ‘Sea Swallow’ had said, then the pirates most likely docked there, which meant it was plain that the place would be crawling with criminals as well as honest sailors.

“So…want to see if we would make a good criminal?”

“As long as it isn’t towards someone relatively innocent.”

“In a place like this, I think you’d have to look hard to find one.”

Karon’s new furry friend was jumping up and down, waiting for Karon to follow to the food. His stomach growled in response to the thought, and he had to agree with its demand, he needed food. And clothes, and some information. After that…

He had pirates to kill, and ponies to save.

He straightened his back and twisted his face into the most terror inducing scowl he could think of, how it looked he had no idea, but the zebras, ponies and otters that saw him walking down the street stopped to stare, then quickly scurried away when he got close.

The monkey led the way to a big house of wood, a sign of some kind hung weathered from a nail on the door. Judging from the smell, laughter and general feel of the place, it had to be an inn or bar of some kind. The monkey was jumping up and down outside, and Karon grabbed the little thing and put him on his shoulder, the pain bringing clarity to his tired mind. Then he slammed open the door and headed inside, Trixie following behind carefully.

The atmosphere inside the place was one of revelry and abandonment. The smell of sour drink, sweat and desperation wafted into Karon’s nostrils like oily smoke. It was dark, a few scattered candles provided light, but otherwise the only source to be found was the windows, windows so filthy they might as well just have put dried mud there instead.

At first nothing inside changed, then the patrons closest to the entrance started to pay attention at the strange figure standing there, quiet and unmoving. Slowly, the rest of those within did the same and soon everything was quiet, an eager silence charged with anticipation of what could happen next.

Karon strode through the crowded tavern, and up to the bartender, an old zebra with a filthy apron and a scar under his mouth. Karon stopped before him, and reached up and placed the monkey on the bar.

“Food for my friend,” he said and pointed to the monkey. “And me, and also a bottle of the strongest stuff you have,” he continued in a patient tone.

The bartender took a long look at the naked, wounded, sweaty, leaf covered Karon, then shrugged his shoulder and gathered a bowl of soup of some kind and placed it before the monkey. Then he got the same thing for Karon, and placed a brown bottle next to it.

“Hope for your sake you can pay for it,” the zebra said in a gruff voice.

Karon didn’t answer, he took the bowl and tipped it into his mouth, the hot liquid poured down his throat and into his empty stomach, which growled in satisfaction. He drank the whole thing without stopping, tasting sweet beryl of some kind, and pulp of an unknown fruit.

When he finished, he almost felt like he was alive again, but the increase in sensation brought with it a fresh wave of pain. However, it was distant, dull. After a certain amount of time, pain just becomes this annoying thing in the back of the skull.

With that in mind, he clenched his teeth and opened the bottle, took a mouthful of the liquid, then held it over his head and poured it over himself. His knees went weak from the pain, and he had to grasp the bar with his free hand to keep them from giving way under him. He clenched his teeth hard, and squeezed his eyes shut even harder.

The alcohol poured into the wounds, setting them on fire, but with the trickling streams flowing down his naked skin also came the grim, leaves and sweat that had gathered during the course of the day. Karon forced himself to carefully clean every part of himself, even under his feet, where plenty of small cuts had opened from walking barefoot.

It wouldn’t do much to disinfect the wounds, but it was better than nothing, and walking through a jungle naked, with open wounds and several layers of dirt would attract so many diseases that they would trip over each other in their haste to infect him.

When the bottle ran dry he had to consider himself as ready as can be, so he raised his head and opened his eyes, looking around the crowd inside.

“If there are any innocent, law-abiding, honest or just generally none-despicable creatures inside here, get out before it’s too late. I’ll give you twenty seconds,” he finished with a growl, and in response to his statement several customers hurried out through the door. After silently counting to twenty, Karon took a careful look around, there was no sign of further movement inside, and those that remained all looked to be the not-so friendly types, all of them looking back at him with a challenge in their eyes.

They had taken the ‘despicable creatures’ comment personally by the looks of it.

“Okay then,” Karon said to himself and nodded.

“You better have a good reason for scaring away customers and causing trouble, because if you don’t, you’ll not walk out of here in one piece.”

“I have a good reason,” Karon told the bartender with a smile, then smashed the bottle as hard as he could on his head, and the bottle shattered in a rain of glass.

The zebra’s eyes glazed over, then tumbled to the side, unconscious before he hit the floor. Karon threw away the broken bottle head, and turned to address the crowd, now standing up and tensed, moving like a pack of predators ready for a fight.

“A very good reason actually,” Karon continued, like nothing had happened. “You see, the ship I was traveling with ran into this pirate who boarded us, big, gray and black minotaur, wears a brown belt with a cutlass … ring any bells? Anyway, he took the crew, and more importantly, my friend, then threw me overboard to die. I want to know where this piece of shit is, and I want to know where my friend is. One of you must know who I’m talking about … I will give you one chance to tell me exactly what I want to know, after that, I’ll start hurting you.”

Karon did his best to sound menacing, and honestly, after the day he’d been having, it came easily to him. The crowd looked around to each other, not sure if the single, naked and obviously wounded stranger was serious. Then a large earth pony, yellow coat and mane with purple eyes, stepped forward.

“Are you serious? Do you realize you don’t stand a chance against all of us?”

Karon held out his hands to his sides, like he was demonstrating just how naked and wounded he was. And the crowd inside didn't notice the slight sparkling of an electric charge in his palms.

“Do I look to have anything of value left to lose?” he asked the crowd loudly.

A few throaty laughs of anticipation rung in the air, the tension inside escalated greatly, they all felt that the action was about to begin.

“Nothing besides our life maybe.”

“As I said….”

Karon smiled grimly, but the pain and terror he had felt during the course of a single day converged, and shaped itself into resolve. He had come a little too far to back down now, and he refused to let Lyra disappear. Subtlety would take too long, he needed the information, and he needed it now.

“…nothing of value.”

And then he threw himself into combat.

                       ********************************************

The attack was sudden. Karon had given no warning that it was coming, and the earth pony that had spoken paid the price. Electricity discharged from the palms of both his hands. The energy poured into it was so highly charged that two single lines weren’t enough. Instead, lightning erupted from his palms in a branching pattern, spreading out to leap into inanimate objects as well as several of the patrons. The earth pony took the heaviest hit, and he was flung to the ground violently, shaking with spasms from the shock.

“He’s got magic!” someone screamed, and cacophony broke out inside the tavern. Shouts rang out as some of the more cowardly patrons fled outside, having no interest in the fight anymore since the victim wasn’t as helpless as he had appeared.

However, they were many left inside, and now it was their turn to act. Karon was readying to unleash another discharge of electricity against anyone within his range, when a small gryphon took to the air and shot towards him.

Its claws spread wide as it came, and though the thing was small and had little mass to make use of, it was fast. A blur of white and blue feathers swooped in, and before Karon could unleash the gathered energy, it dug both its claws into his shoulder, continuing its momentum forward and carrying Karon with him.

He shrieked loudly as he released his grip on Karon, and spun hard to avoid colliding with the bar and the many bottles stacked around it. But Karon had no such luck, and the force carried him through the air and right into one of the shelves. Glass shattered around him, and he banged his head hard against the wall as the impact drove the air from his lungs. He dropped down to the floor hard, and felt the broken glass cut into his hands as he used them to break his fall.

They started shaking uncontrollably, and Karon had to muster every shred of his willpower to brush them against his legs, the pieces of glass still stuck in his palms came off and dropped to the floor, bloody.

He was certain his back must have been injured too, but didn’t have time to check it before the gryphon came at him from the air again. It soared over the bar and twisted its body hard, so he came towards Karon with all four of the gleaming edges of its talons extended.

It was a simple tactic. First daze the victim with a quick and brutal attack, then swoop in for the kill before he recovers. Lucky for Karon, the shock of being attacked and in pain only lasts if it’s rare. If you, on the other hand, experience such things nearly on a daily basis, it just becomes another day at work.

Karon grabbed a handful of the broken glass in his right hand, and flung it towards the incoming gryphon’s eyes, then threw himself to the right, managing to get away from where the gryphon's sharp claws tore into the wall half a second later. But the gryphon's body clipped his legs, and turned his controlled jump into a stumbling tumble. However, Karon still ended up landing right next to the downed bartender, and an idea came to him. He tore off the apron from the zebra’s chest and ripped it in half, the blood pouring out from his palms making it slick.

He twirled his hands around sharply in the air, and the cloth went in circles around his palms, until he grasped the last shred and clenched his hands into fists. As far as bandages goes, it wasn’t ideal, but it would keep his hands from getting torn to shreds completely.

Hopefully…

He scanned the tavern for other threats, and unfortunately, found them in abundance. Several of them remained in the murky background, keeping to the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to strike while the more brawl-friendly of the lot went straight at him.

Three of them, one zebra and two otters, marched forward with their jaws locked and upper lip peeled back to reveal their teeth. They moved in unison, the zebra moving directly towards Karon, while the two otters moved to flank him on both sides.

Not waiting for them to make the first move, Karon grabbed one of the many chairs scattered about in the previous panic, and threw it towards the otters flanking his left, right in front of the bar. The little creature moved like liquid, and easily avoided the flying chair, but it had distracted him for a moment, and Karon darted in fast to try and press him up against the bar, limiting his maneuverability.

The zebra moved too fast, and barreled into Karon before he could even come close to the otter. Its  head struck like a cannon ball, but luckily Karon didn’t feel the stinging sensation of breaking ribs. Instead he just felt the impact as the both flew into one of the round tables.

The wood was obviously old, or the humidity had taken its toll on it. Either way, the result was that the table broke apart into splinters of wood and scattered into every possible direction as they crashed into it. The zebra's head was still firmly pushed into Karon’s chest, and before the equine could get back up on her feet, he snaked his right arm around her throat and constricted it.

The zebra started flaying her limbs around in panic, but her kind was not built to move on her back, and Karon twisted around so she lay on top of him, her hooves not capable of bending in a way for her to reach him.

But she didn’t need to, her two otter friends were more than happy to come to her aid, one of them armed with a small knife. Shrieking loudly, the thing came slithering forward with the knife gleaming. Karon reacted on instinct, and pulled his legs up to his chest and placed his feet against the zebra’s back, when the otter was clear of any obstructions, he pushed with his legs as hard as he could, sending the zebra flying with a sputtering scream right into the armed creature.

Karon scrambled up to his feet, and was about to run forward and finish them both of before they got a chance to recover. But he forgot the second otter accomplice, and was completely taken by surprise when the little furry thing jumped up on his back, and bit down hard on his neck. Karon screamed in pain, and threw himself to the floor and began rolling around, trying his best to shake the thing off him. He felt he nearly had succeeded, when from out of nowhere, an earth pony with bright green coat ran towards him, and while moving, got up on her hind legs and jumped, halfway through the air she turned her body, and delivered a jumping kick Karon would have sworn only a Pegasus would have been able to perform.

But his marvel at the acrobatic improbability was cut short when the kick landed squarely on his chest, sending him crashing into the wall. Unfortunately for the otter, he was still firmly attached to Karon’s back and cushioned the impact, but a crack so loud it sounded like a tree breaking in half resounded through the tavern. The otter's back had broken entirely, and the thing's grip on Karon relaxed instantly.

Karon's chest was heaving. His heart was pumping furiously and he saw actual stars blink in and out before his eyes. His chest felt wrong. He couldn’t get enough air down into his lungs, and the strain was threatening to make him pass out.

Instead, he forced himself to his feet and charged blindly forward, roaring so loud it felt like his throat would burst.

At its core, fighting is mentality. It’s about dominating and controlling the opponent. If one can shatter the other through sheer force of will, then the battle is mostly decided. But when someone completely disregards every shred of self-preservation, when one truly goes berserk and mauls the opponent with an open display of terrifying savagery, then there is no dominating the opponent. To the criminals and shady clientele that favored seedy taverns like the present one, the ability not to win a fight through bullying and intimidation is unthinkable. When the opponent is so feral that the violence and hate they bring to bear is nothing in comparison … it gives one pause.

So when Karon rushed forward in a display of animal fury, the earth pony nearly broke and ran at the sight. Karon was in the grip of a rage that occurs when someone has nothing to lose and there is nothing left but complete focus to destroy or die. It was a rage born from a person that had just had one of the few things left in his life taken from away, and he would not give up until he had her back.

Karon barreled into the stunned pony and slammed his knee into the pony's side, and they both fell down on the floor together, tangled in each others limbs. Before the pony could react, Karon raised his left foot and stomped horizontally into the same place he had just kneed the pony, and the mare wailed in pain and contorted her body into something resembling  the fetal position.

Karon dragged himself on top of the pony and began hammering strikes down on her, screaming with each pounding of his bloody fists.

“Where is she! Where is she! Tell me where she is!” He went on, the mare's coat of bright green slowly turning to a shade of scarlet red.

Karon would have turned the pony into nothing but a mass of broken bones and flesh had he been allowed to continue, instead something hit the back of his head hard, and Karon actually heard the thud of the impact, before the soothing darkness of unconsciousness dragged him down.

                            ******************************************************

“Come on … are you going to wake up soon!?”

“What? Where…?”

Karon rubbed his neck gingerly and sat up, he was wearing his clothes again, though they were different. He couldn’t place it, they were just there, he was clothed, and that was enough for the time being.

He tried to take a better look around, but all he could see was blackness.

“Am I in the void?” he asked out loud.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you would have ceased to exist by now had that been the case.”

“So where am I?”

“In the direct stream of your unconscious, and it’s actually quite disconcerting. Cognitive modules aren’t supposed to connect quite this close. We already function pretty well together, why jeopardize something that works? That’s my opinion anyway.”

“So why can’t I see anything?”

“Well, you seem to have gotten stuck somewhere in a limbo, you’re here but you’re really not, since I’m the part of us that’s supposed to be here. The connection is all messed up, maybe we did take one too many hits to the head and we’ve gone brain dead?”

“Why does it feel like that was a question?”

“Well you’re the decision maker, I only provide info and insight from my end, well … one end. There’s a lot of us.”

“Yeah yeah, I get it. Now get to the point, I was kinda busy in the outside world if you don’t remember.”

“I noticed, you went a little berserk there on us huh. Maybe it would have gone better if you’d had the presence of mind to watch your back.”

“You can provide me with your, oh so indispensable advice and critique after we’ve saved Lyra.”

“How? Seriously we’re so close to death we could sneeze and drop dead, you wouldn’t believe the feedback I’ve received from our body systems. You’ve fucked up our new ride! Loki made a new one less than a year ago, and you’ve already turned it into a piece of crap you couldn’t even give away to a second-hand store for spirits shopping for bodies.”

“You extended that analogy a little too long. Now get me out of here, time is wasting.”

“Don’t get your knickers twisted, we’re communicating at the speed of thought, the temporal flow of the outside world is vastly different than the one in here.”

“Fine, so we got time for tea and biscuits, now would you please get to the point.”

“What point? You’re not supposed to be here. This isn’t some b-movie introspection quest to find yourself … well okay, we seem to be on one of those in general at the moment, but I meant this specific case.”

“You really do like the sound of your voice don’t you?”

“We’re the same dung-brain, if I do, so do you.”

“Doesn’t that mean you just insulted yourself by calling me dung-brain?”

“…Well look who suddenly decided to be clever.”

Karon sighed out loud, and for a second he wondered if other people found him as irritating as he found himself to be at the moment.

“So let me hear what you got to say then, you must have some theories for why I’m here.”

“Well a few, the most promising is simply that we got knocked to the head one too many times and our mind shielded itself by taking you out of the fight.”

“I wasn't in that bad a condition, sure some superficial wounds and such but-“

“You have no idea what you’re talking about; to you it might have felt like it wasn’t that bad. However, that might be because for the last ten minutes your mind has been running on adrenaline, exhaustion, that mouthful of alcohol, a severe concussion and pure rage … not the healthiest of cocktails. Trust me, when you wake up and the good ones wear off, you’ll feel how close our body is to closing up shop for good.”

Karon considered that for a moment, then came to the conclusion there might be some value to his words.

“So we’re in trouble, what else is new?”

“How are you planning on saving Lyra from the pirates, of which a single crew member kicked our ass in a matter of seconds, when you’re nearly dead from a bar fight?”

“I don’t know, I just know I have to try.”

“Don’t throw platitudes at me, let’s be serious for a moment. You totally lost your head, yeah I admit the whole Lou Ferrigno deal against the sleazebags in that inn was pretty badass, but all in all we’re nearly dead and lost despite of that. You probably could have taken the rest of them, especially after the mind-numbing display of your disinterest in our personal safety. But you lost your head and got clobbered. You forgot who and what we are.”

“I had good reason to.”

“There is never a good reason for forgetting who we are. We are a trickster, it’s our nature, by all means, go Rambo on future sleazebags all you want, it was awesome, but at least try and focus it. We’re not a berserker, we will inevitably lose if we try and act like one. Play to our strengths.”

“Sound advice, but what use do I have of it from in here.”

“I think you should be able to wake up, our body ought to be over the shock now that you’ve stopped flaring our brain up with so many impulses it nearly gave me an epileptic seizure. Just take it easier, use your head for something other than just a blunt object to smash into things, and we just might save the day and get the girl.”

“I have no interest in Lyra like that.”

“I know, but you could have. I mean, life is short, and it’s not like the thought hasn’t struck you.”

“That was a while ago.”

“Trixie then?”

“You must be joking.”

“Hey, it was your brain that went through 37 different sexual scenarios where you ended up banging her like crazy during the first three seconds when you saw her for the first time.”

“Really? 37 different scenarios? In three seconds?”

“Well, it kinda ran in the background. Of course, that particular part of our brain does that kind of thing to any reasonably attractive female we come across. Seriously dude, STD’s are a bitch, look out.”

“Good to know. Now, can I get going?”

“Why the hell are you asking me?”

“Because you’re the one that acts like you have all the answers.”

“I already told you, you’re the decision maker. If you want to wake up…just do it.”

“Okay then......here we…”

                                 **************************************************

“…go.”

The first sensation that struck him was of something sharp about to make its way down his throat, and Karon had to bring all of whatever small measure of willpower he had to keep himself from spitting the thing out and alerting whoever was still around that he had regained consciousness.

Something was digging into his neck, holding him up over the floor, and as the numbness of unconsciousness slowly wore off, he realized he was really, really tired. The burning rage was extinguished, and the adrenaline had run its course. The only thing his body was interested in telling him was that that he needed to lie down and rest.

A week or two should do it.

He carefully moved his tongue, easing the small object away, because no matter what it was, he didn’t want to swallow it. It was after he felt the shape of the object, and tasted the steady trickle of blood from within his mouth, that he realized it was a tooth.

“They knocked out one of my damn teeth!”

“Calm down, we can get it fixed later, now assess the situation.”

Anger stirred gently in his chest, a small tinder that only needed the slightest provocation to turn into the raging fire it had been just a few minutes ago. Karon gently breathed in, he needed to get it under control, asshole he may be, but his subconscious was right.

He opened a tiny crack between his eyelids, and noticed something was wrong with his left eye, it wouldn’t open properly. At this point, he just went with it, he could deal with whatever damage he had sustained after he had saved Lyra, before they dragged her off to whatever hellhole they had planned for her.

Looking through the crack, Karon could hardly make out anything but a blur, so he gradually eased his eyelid open until he could make out the pool of blood beneath it. There was a trickle of it coming out of the corner of his mouth, and he guessed that by the size of it he couldn’t have been hanging like this for long.

Then he heard a loud sound, like someone shoved a table away, and continued to play unconscious, listening closely to what was going on around him.

“So?” a voice spoke right above Karon, most likely the one holding him by the neck.

“I found one of his crew in the lusty lizard maid’s place. He said they raided some small merchant ship and took most of them prisoners, plans to sell ‘em off to the harpies.”

“What else? Did he tell you what they’ll pay for this one. He has it out for them and knows how to cause trouble.”

Karon heard someone spit, the sound came from his far left, which meant he knew where two of the remaining patrons where. The question was if there were more of them?

“They wouldn’t pay anything. When I told him we roughed the thing up a bit, he said they would have no problem taking him, said if scumsuckers like us could hurt him then anyone could.”

“Pah! If that’s how they want it, that means this thing is worthless, and I have a few things I want to do to him, there’s still glass in my eyes!”

So the one holding Karon was the gryphon from earlier, the one that had flung him into the bar.

“That’s one, who’s the other?”

“He made me kill Salaa, threw her right on my knife while I was trying to help her.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make him pay for that too. Salaa would have liked it.”

“Salaa can rot inTartarus for all I care. This thing saved me the trouble of giving back the thirty bits I owed her.”

Both of the voices laughed, and Karon had a mind to join in. He now had both the remaining patron's identities, the gryphon and the otter with the knife. However, there was still a chance that someone else was left in the bar, keeping silent.

But time was running away from him fast, the news that one of the pirate crew member was in town had made him close his eye in relief for a moment, and in rage’s place, hope instead asserted itself. Karon could feel his legs behind him, scraping the floor the way a doll does when he child drags it across the floor. His arms hung loose, his hands just reaching the floor, and he could feel something beneath them.

He opened his eyes a little further and saw it was the pieces from a broken chair, splintered wood that had scattered during the battle earlier. It wasn’t the highest quality, but the wood had been sturdy enough to allow the customers preferring such things to sit down. It would do nicely as an improvised weapon.

Of course, he could just try and launch a bit of lightning into the two criminals, but he would have to build up a charge first, and the few seconds it would take for him to do that might give him away.

No, straightforward but sneaky, that would work.

His heart hammered against his chest as he spread his fingers and slide them around the wood. It had once been a chair leg from the looks of it, and when Karon’s fingers had gone all the way around it without being noticed, he couldn’t suppress the wicked smile that touched his lips.

Then he opened his eyes completely and turned his head left, the gryphon held him in its right claw, and its head was turned away from him, facing the otter.

The otter saw him as Karon turned his head and smile at him, but before he could warn the gryphon, Karon pulled his right leg forward and placed it before him. He shifted his entire body weight onto it and did a pirouette while his left leg spun to his right, and the table leg followed with the turning momentum and smashed into back right kneecap of the gyphon that held him.

They could all hear the crack when the wood slammed into the knee, and broke it entirely. The gryphon howled out loud in pain, and lashed out towards Karon with his left claw, letting go off him with his right.

The claw came fast, but it wasn’t aimed. It was a blind punch, and it barely scraped Karon’s shoulder. He ducked under it, and before the gryphon could draw back the arm, Karon grabbed it and jumped backwards.

The gryphon’s balanced was ruined, and when Karon pulled him with his jump, he fell forward as his knee buckled under him and landed on the floor face first. Still gripping his arm, Karon raised the wooden leg high over his head, then brought it down on the gryphon’s arm.

It carried right through, breaking the arms into an unnatural angle, and the gryphon shrieked like a wounded bird of prey.

The element of surprise was over, and since the gryphon was immobilized, maybe forever, Karon spun to where the otter should have been standing, instead it was halfway out the door.

It must have wizened up after seeing Karon get back on his feet, and decided to flee rather than fight.

Karon couldn’t let him. The otter had talked to one of the pirates, and he might know where they made their home and where their ship was anchored.

He might know where Lyra was….

“Stop right there criminal scum!” Karon shouted in the most authoritative tone possible, though it might have been ruined by the spray of blood that came out of his mouth with the words, and all in all, it sounded more like an angry gurgling.

The otter paid absolutely no attention to him and disappeared out through the door quick as lightning while Karon tried to limp after him. However, his legs only carried him a couple of steps before he started to wobble, and wooziness set in. The door began shifting and turning, moving around the room without reason or logic. Then Karon understood it wasn’t, it was just his head spinning, and his legs gave out entirely under him.

Before he fell, something caught him and steadied him. He looked to his right to find Trixie straining to keep him standing. Her left hoof was snaked around his waist, and he could see her legs shaking under her from the weight he put on her.

“Guess the … whatever she does, doesn’t involve a lot of manual labor.”

She huffed while she walked forward, Karon doing his best to put one foot before the other, but the part of his face that wasn’t swollen and battered showed the despair he felt. There was no way he could catch up to the otter like this.

They both stumbled out the door, and Karon’s good eye widened in disbelief at what he saw before him. The otter sat outside, squirming as best he could in an attempt to escape from the rope neatly tied around him.

“What the … who…?”

Trixie helped put Karon down next to the wall, and he stared at her, stunned by the only conclusion he could draw.

“You … you did that?”

“Yes, I’m pretty good with a rope actually,” she said without a trace of her usual bragging demeanor.

“Thank you,” he said, and put a hand on her cheek.

She gently lowered it down and cleared her throat.

“Well, the Great and Powerful Trixie is used to having to save the day, and for the moment she has nowhere else to go.” She spoke in her usual way, in her usual tone of voice, but Karon could see her heart wasn’t really in it.

“I’m glad for that. I could use the Great and Powerful Trixie right now, especially if she happens to know any healing magic,” he told her with a crooked smile, then spat out the blood that was gathering in his mouth.

Trixie looked away, uncertain, then turned her face back to him.

“Trixie’s magic is … meant for greater things than that, so she didn’t learn any way to heal ponies that hurt themselves.”

“Too bad, I could use some of that un-great magic right now,” Karon commented dryly, and turned his attention to the otter.

“You … start talking,” he growled to it.

“Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you!” it quickly squealed.

“That was easy,” Karon snorted, and leaned forwards a little, his still working eye burrowing its gaze into the otter’s. “Tell me where the pirates usually keep their prisoners, and then tell me if there is a healer around here who can use magic to heal wounds fast.”

”I can't tell that!”

”You just said you'll tell me everything.”

”Not that, they will take me away and sell me to the harpies!”

”They are planning to do that with my friend, and if you don't tell me where I can find her, I will do far worse to you. I promise.”

The otter flopped around like a dying fish in panic, but it quickly became obvious it wouldn't be going anywhere, no matter how hard he tried. It squeaked something and muttered to itself, then spoke in a fearful voice.

“I don't know where they keep their prisoners. On their ship I think, but I don't know, you'll have to ask one of them. If you want a healer, there is Utole, he's a zebra most go to. He can fix wounds and sickness and that stuff. Please don't hurt me!”

“Where is the pirate's ship?” Karon asked, struggling with a pressing desire to close his eye and sleep.

“I don't know, but if they're here in town then it must be somewhere in the harbor. I swear I don't know!”

“Fine, then show me where the healer is,” Karon struggled to say, his breath blowing out hard between his teeth.

“I will, I will! If you just untie me first,” The otter said quickly, too quickly.

“Trixie could you untie his legs? And if he tries to run, bind him up again and throw him in the sea.”

The otter stopped squirming, and watched them with terrified eyes, but held still for Trixie when she approached and tipped her horn down to him, making the rope unravel a little bit, freeing his legs. He scrambled up to a standing position, and held still for a heartbeat. It was plain it was considering the possibility of escape.

Trixie's horn glowed threateningly, and she pointed it towards him with a clear message. The otter swallowed and made a chirping sound Karon guessed was some kind of otter thing, but it nodded and spoke in a steadier tone than earlier.

“Utole is that way. He lives in a tent that's yellow, and there is a lot of stuff painted on it, letters and such stuff.”

“Lead the way,” Karon told him, then signaled for Trixie to come over and help him walk.

“By the way,” Karon asked with a slight smile towards Trixie, “you think the healer can fix a tooth?” he spat out his tooth to the ground in demonstration, but Trixie only shuddered in response.

The otter couldn't walk very fast, its small legs barely free at all, which was fortunate for Karon and Trixie, the former struggling with controlling his movement, and the later simply struggling with the human's weight.

The otter led them along the street, little more than a road of dirt, and the creatures they met along the way made a point to keep out of their way and pretend they hadn't seen anything, something Karon suspected were how things normally worked in the town.

Trixie's breath became more labored with every minute of walking, and Karon wasn't as aware of what was going on around him as he should have been. The muted depths of sleep dragged him in and out again and again, and his body moved mostly on its on, guided by Trixie.

He thought he was still walking, until he was slapped hard on the cheek and his eye sprang open in surprise. He was inside somewhere. He could feel the warmth of a fire next to him, and the light it gave off illuminated what looked to be a canvas. Shaking his head in an effort to bring clarity into his mind, Karon saw he was sitting in a tent, leaning against a large chest of some kind.

Trixie stood inside, the otter was nowhere to be seen, but instead another stranger was watching him, an aged zebra with tattoos spread around his body, and a necklace made out of colored beads and bones.

“Hmmmph, not dead yet is he, but hard work healing him will be. To bring him back from the brink of death, to life and strength give into his breath, a costly endeavor it will be, so a promise you must make to me. If I shall grant you your wish of healing, you must do what I please, no matter your feeling,” the zebra said, the lilt of his voice reminding Karon of Zecora.

“What ... do you want?” Trixie asked him, her eyes brimmed with concern as she looked at Karon.

“The pirates the otter mentioned you seek, with them alive, the island's future looks bleak. They steal, murder and enslave without thought, these madmilia, to an end must be brought. 'The island', a sanctuary must be, or the end of trade and life this town will see. I will heal and direct your way as best I can, and their end I shall help you plan. If to this, you agree, from pain, I shall set your friend free.”

Trixie looked uncertain. She licked her lips and stared at Karon. His was face swollen and discolored, and his naked body was once again covered in sweat and blood, but now with the added smell of alcohol. All the wounds he had sustained during the day had re-opened, the strain of the fight more than they could handle.

“Do ... it,” Karon wheezed through cracked lips, and the zebra looked at him with fire in his old eyes.

“A bargain not entered lightly into. If you agree, to the end you will follow through.”

“I agree ... now ... get me going.”

The zebra smiled, and walked over to Karon. He opened the chest Karon was leaning against, and then brought forth a bottle with a blue liquid.

“Open wide, and cast your doubts aside,” the zebra said quietly, then poured the content of the bottle down Karon's throat. He forced his muscles to relax and readily drank of the thing. It tasted sweet, almost sickeningly so, but after he had ingested the whole thing, a cool numbness spread throughout his body.

Karon's mind cleared, like morning fog dispersing as the sun rose and brought light to the world. It was a pleasant feeling, one you can only feel when you just were released from more pain than you were even aware of.

Next came a red bottle, the content of it looked so congealed it could hardly be called a liquid, more like flowing mud. However, when the zebra put it towards his lips and tipped it, Karon drank as readily as before, and instantly regretted it. Even through the muted sensations of his body, it screamed in pain louder than ever before, every cell in his body was suddenly aflame with the fire of a star, and it would not end.

Had Karon been given the red bottle first, he suspected he would have gone mad from the pain. His entire body shook and the zebra was forced to hold him down, still pouring the liquid down his throat.

The pain faded as quickly as it had started, leaving only a faint, distant tingling at the tip of his nerve endings. His chest heaved with the deep breaths he took, and his eyes darted around the tent with no clear purpose of what he was looking for. Then he noticed both his eyes were working again.

He raised his hand, and it rose without hesitation or shivering, and slowly, he unfurled the improvised bandages, and saw that underneath them his palms were healed. Not completely of course, there still remained several angry red cuts with dried blood over them, but they were wounds one might expect from an accident more than a week ago, not just an hour.

Expectantly, he brought his right thumb into his mouth and ran them over every tooth, and to his great satisfaction, found them all whole.

“No wonder it hurt, the energy release for the increased regeneration could have powered an entire neighborhood for a month.”

“Question is where it came from? I have difficulty believing so much energy can be stored in that bottle, no matter the chemical composition.....”

“Maybe we just drank some kind of liquid uranium?”

“Don't be silly.”

“How about you just ask him?”

Still reeling a little from the amazing recovery he had just gone through, Karon dragged his fingers along his unwounded feet while staring at the zebra.

“Where did the energy come from?”

The zebra raised the zebra version of an eyebrow and looked pleased with his question.

“Ah, no more brute of fighting and killing, but a student of the magic, how very thrilling. The power came not from the drink, instead, a part of your life-force it did shrink. The liquid was merely the ignition, a gift so that you can now accomplish our mission.”

“Yes ... save Lyra,” Karon looked over at Trixie. The unicorn was ogling Karon's now almost completely healed body with an impressed look on her face. It would not surprise the human in the least if she were to try and take up the healing she had scorned before.

“Save your friend will be an ending, but the pirates are the problem that needs attending. Find and stop them we will, and if need be, the pirates we shall kill.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Karon growled, flexing his fingers in eager anticipation.

“Uhmm, I'm not sure I would go so far as ... killing them. Could we perhaps just teach them a lesson?” Trixie asked, her face showing her disconcert with the bloodthirstiness Karon was displaying.

“We must do what needs to be done to stop them, even if them, to death, we will condemn, but if a lighter solution presents itself, feel free to stop yourself,” the zebra said to Karon specifically, making it clear he considered death to be an extreme.

“We'll see what happens,” Karon said darkly and rose up from his position. He stretched his legs awkwardly, and thought he perhaps should find some clothes, but he put the thought aside. There were more immediate matters to tend to. He could worry about showing his goods off to the good people of Equus later.

“Then off we go, to find and defeat out foe,” the zebra agreed, and walked out of the tent, taking the lead.

Karon and Trixie followed the zebra down the street, tents and huts flanked it by the side, and in the distance, buildings made entirely out of wood rose above the rest.

Utole stopped a few times and talked to by passers, asking them questions in a voice to low for Karon or Trixie to hear. The responses he got looked to be vague and unwilling, but the zebra led them on without looking concerned, or giving any signs he didn't know where they were going. Karon's worry for Lyra increased every time they stopped and Utole spoke with a random stranger, and a slight tension settled over the trio.

The zebra had been been obvious in that he considered Lyra to be of secondary importance, and perhaps he couldn't be blamed. He was trying to look after his community, no matter how fraught with greed and crime it may be. But Karon wasn't interested in saving the community that accepted slavers and murderers, especially not when the victims included ponies he cared about.

“Utole, where are we going?!” Karon finally spat out, growling towards the latest stranger the zebra had stopped, until said stranger ran away in fright.

The zebra sighed and turned around, giving Karon an irritated glance.

“Preparations are done and information collected, so that we no danger neglected. The location of their ship I already know, now seed of danger in crew we must sow, to gather them all in one place, so that at once they may be brought to disgrace.”

“So what, you're spreading rumors or something? Telling all these creatures to tell the pirate crew they should run back to their ship or something?”

“My plan exactly that is, it seems the obvious you do not miss.”

“Are you insane!? What if they run back to their ship and flee!” Karon roared, almost throwing himself at the zebra where he stood.

“A direct challenge has been made, to battle all of them now must wade, or cowards will forever be their name, always walking in utmost shame.”

Karon calmed down when he heard what the zebra had in mind, and his eyes darted left and right as thought shifted and stirred within his mind.

“What kind of challenge?” he finally asked, a suspicion forming in the center of the maelstrom of thoughts.

“A duel of course, between two enemies meeting one another full force, to death or surrender it will be, and the victor must not be the scourge of the sea,” The zebra said with iron determination.

“Just ... great....”

“So you want me to fight that huge minotaur captain one-on-one ... naked?”

“I think fair it will be, if both using weapons agree.”

Karon shook his head in disbelief, the minotaur had been a huge mountain of muscle, and he had swung his cutlass like he knew how to use it. If Karon got to use his spear he might win. The length might be enough to balance against the captain's superior reach, and a diamond edge would be sharper than anything the minotaur had ever faced before.

He might pull it off.

“Fine, let's get going. Enough rumor mongering, lead me to their ship. I want to make sure they haven't .. .done anything to Lyra. If they have ... I swear I shall rip out their minds and trap them in a steel box and throw into the deepest part of the ocean.”

Even the zebra looked a little queasy at the threat, but he nodded in confirmation and led them straight towards the harbor, and the waiting pirate ship.

                                 *************************************************************

Lyra woke up in a cramped cell, every member of the 'Sea Swallow's” crew had been forced into it. There was a small patch of rotten hay on the floor, placed there a very, very long ago as a sleeping mat for the prisoners.

Whoever had built the cell had not meant for it to hold more than a few prisoners at the most, and now it held almost thirty of them. Lyra stood in the far back, surrounded by fearful ponies, and that one cat-like thing with a hand on its tail, all of them whispering to each other in unsteady voices.

“Where are we?” she asked one of them, her memory felt fuzzy with the details, she could remember seeing Karon and Trixie being forced to walk the plank, after that it got uncertain.

“We're in the pirate's ship,” a blue and green earth pony replied to her. His eyes scanned the room outside the cell, like he was expecting them to jump out of thin air and come after him.

“How long was I gone?” she continued to ask, rubbing a bump she felt on the back of her head.

“A long time, we've been stuck down here ever since they took us. How long exactly no one knows, but I think we're docked on 'the island'. One of the pirates mentioning selling some clothes then....” The stallion trailed off, and refused to meet Lyra's eyes, which only angered her.

“What!?” she asked him with more force than earlier, and the stallion flinched and stared down at the floor.

“...he said he would be coming back for you.”

Lyra remembered how the pirates had looked at her, and despair clawed its way forward to grip her heart. She forced it down, reminded herself that she wasn't some helpless mare in distress, she wasn't some no-name lyre player living a quiet life in Ponyville anymore. She wasn't just another background pony, whose only real claim to greatness was living in the same town as the elements of harmony.

She was not a victim.

“Do you have any idea when he'll be back?” Lyra asked the stallion, however the answer came on its own when all of the prisoners heard the sound of hooves descending the stairs leading to the deck.

The crowd stirred, and as like a collective mind, tried to move away from the bars and press up towards the wall as they could. The exception was Lyra, she walked to the bars and pressed her face against them, angling her face so she could look out into the dimly lit hold, waiting for the pirate to come into sight.

The sound of their approaching captor became louder until he came into plain view from the stairs, and Lyra could see who it was that had decided to come for her first. It was a pony, a pegasus, dirty white coat, black mane and what looked to be blue eyes, the light of the lone candle made it difficult to say, but she could see his wretched smile without problem, and his eyes roamed the cage, looking for her.

His eyes had not adjusted to the dark yet, and Lyra tried to came up with a plan to use it to her advantage. The pirate stood uncertain for a few moments, but then his eyes could penetrate enough of the gloom to see Lyra pressing up against the bars, almost like she was waiting for him.

“Eager for me are ya?” he asked, a heavy accent marking him as someone born far from the civilized parts of Equestria.

“Just ... let's get it over with,” Lyra replied, trying her best to make it look like she had given in.

The pegasus' smile broadened, and he walked towards the cage, grabbing a set of keys hanging from the wall on the way. Lyra's eyes widened, unseen in the dark, and she knew if she could get those keys, they could all escape.

“Get back with ya lot! Or I'll start gutting each and every one of you!” The pegasus growled before opening the cramped cell, waving a knife held in his hooves for show. And the crew obeyed, moving away as far as they could, but their was anger in their eyes as well as fear. Lyra just prayed to Celestia they wouldn't be cowards like before, when the time came.

The pegasus opened the door, and stabbed his knife in the air towards the prisoners, making sure they wouldn't get any ideas, then he leered at Lyra, and waved her towards him. Repressing a shudder, and the increasing desire to faint, Lyra pressed her legs forward and walked over to him, brushing by him when she walked out the cell.

The stallion licked his lips hungrily, and slammed the door shut, locking it in one swift move before turning to face Lyra. He eyed her with burning desire written on his face, and strode towards her with purposeful steps.

When he got close enough Lyra turned around and bucked him as hard as she could in the chest, doing her best to imitate the way she had seen Applejack do it.

The stallion stumbled backwards and dropped the keys, but he recover quickly and growled against Lyra, spit flying out his mouth with his words.

“I'm gonna make you beg until you can't speak any more.”

Lyra's horn flashed for a brief second, but no retaliation to the pegasus for his words became apparent, and with a grin he rushed her. She couldn't help yelping when he pusher her down to the floor and held her down, revulsion ran through her entire body and she couldn't suppress shuddering.

“I want you to know, its okay if you scream, I like it that way,” the stallion said, his breath stank of booze and whatever questionable content he had decided to eat, and it made Lyra's stomach churn. She felt close to giving up hope, that her improvised plan somehow had failed, when she hard the clank of the cell door opening.

“What the...?” the stallion questioned and turned his head, the sight of all prisoners casually walking out of their cell greeting him.

Before the pirate could recover his senses and flee, the crew had already surrounded him. Lyra was the first to punch him, crawling out from beneath him after, but she was not the last, and the pirate was soon transformed into a whimpering pile of bruises and broken bones.

The crew was frenzied, and had Lyra not been there, they would most likely have killed their captor and would be slave master. However she was, and she ordered all of them to throw him into the cell they had stayed in a guests instead of killing him. The fact that she was the one that had freed them enough to make her the impromptu leader of their escape.

They threw the broken pirate into the cell, cheering when they slammed the cell shut and put the key in the ... waste bucket. Even so, they all calmed down when the realized where they were, and whose attention their cheering might attract, hushing each other, they all turned to looked at Lyra, waiting for her to speak.

“Uhm, yeah?” she asked them, a little uncomfortable about being the focus of thirty ponies, staring at her like she was Celestia herself.

“So what now?” the captain asked her, as always, choosing to be the voice for his crew.

“I think it would be a good idea to get off the ship. If we are docked on 'the island' you should know how it looks, and where we could hide, right?”

“Yes,” the captain said and nodded.

“Okay then,” she said, her chest puffing up a little more in pride, she had just saved them after all.  Well, halfway saved them in any case. But when none of the other ponies, or the cat-creature, made any moves, Lyra realized they were waiting for her.

She had a mind to facehoof, but thought maybe that would be bad for morale or something, so she settled for taking a calming breath then slowly walking up the stairs with the others following close behind.

She came out onto a second deck, several bed and hammocks were scattered around next to personal belongings and what looked like loot. She had the feeling it was stolen because Karon's clothes were placed on top of one of the beds, and after closer inspection she found a huge pile where his spear was placed too.

She didn't have time to investigate further. There were additional stairs leading up from the deck, and the door they led up to must have been locked, guessing by the sounds of impact that came from it. Somepony must have forgotten the keys, and now they were trying to break it down instead, the frame was cracking with each impact, rattling the items nearby.

With no other idea of what to do, Lyra turned around and waved all of the others up to her, and the hurried to comply, lining up beside her.

“When the door breaks, just run as fast as you can and push whoever is outside away,” she told them, tensing her muscles in preparation.

The door shook a final time, then with the sound of breaking wood, came crashing in, banging up hard against the wall. Lyra and the other began screaming and rushed forward, ascending the stairs in leaping bounds, hardly paying any attention at all to what they were doing.

Which was why Lyra only noticed it was a naked Karon standing in the door frame, staring at the approaching horde of freedom tasting ponies with wide eyes.

Lyra didn't have time to slow down, and even if she had she couldn't have stopped the momentum of the ponies behind her. Just before she barreled through the opening and into Karon, she thought she heard him say.

“Naaw crap.”

         **********************************************************************

Utole had kept his word, and led them right to where the pirate's ship was docked. Only one lone sentry was left on board to guard the vessel, and Utole had been kind enough to use some kind of powder to knock the zebra pirate out completely.

To Karon's great delight, it turned out to be the same eye-patched zebra that had knocked him out when the pirate's boarded their ship. And when Trixie and Utole wasn't locking, he gave him a discreet kick in the ribs, feeling like the day might get a little better after that.

Proving once again that the universe has a nasty sense of humor.

Utole motioned him over, and pointed towards a door that that looked to either lead down into the hull, or into the captain's cabin.

“There you see my friend, to your captives I do you send. Now we should make haste and help them disappear, for the pirates will soon furiously come here.”

Karon walked over to the door and tried to open it, only to find it locked. He huffed in annoyance, then took a step backwards and drove his heel into the door with a kick.

“Aouch, aouch, aouch, aouch,” He repeated after, jumping around one his other leg.

“Yeah...when we practiced that kick we wore shoes.”

“Well, I don't have access to any shoes of any kind right now, so I'll have to try and suck it up.”

Bracing himself, Karon kicked the door again, then again. He felt the door shudder under the impact. Each time he kicked it cracked a little louder, until with a final thump the door broke in, leaving Karon standing in the door frame, letting out a long breath with relief.

And then he heard a sound reminding him of a stampede of angry buffaloes, and his eyes widened to double their usual size when he saw Lyra, heading a horde of ponies up the stairs towards him. It was just at the last second she glanced up and saw him standing there, and her eyes widened with surprise as well. But it was too late to stop, and before she hit him, Karon managed to summarize his entire day in one sentence.

“Naaw crap.”

Then Lyra barreled straight into him, sending him flying over the deck while Trixie and Utole quickly got out of the way of the panicking horde of ponies. It was luck alone that kept Karon from being run over by the stamping hooves, and when all of the ponies finally had made it up to the deck and realized there was no present danger, he dared to rise up from the fetal position he had crawled into.

“What the hell do you think you're doing! You all nearly killed me you ungrateful pieces of-” Karon went on for quite a while, telling all of them exactly what he thought about them, their mothers, and what they could do with the oars to the lifeboat.

Halfway through his rant he was interrupted by a very loud roar, and he fell silent immediately. All of those standing on the deck turned to watch as the furious pirate captain came walking on board with heavy steps, his cutlass already drawn.

Behind him his pirate crew came on board, all of them giving Karon and the others savage, gleeful smiles. Thought there came others that didn't look to belong with the pirates, and Karon guessed they were citizens of the town who were there to observe the duel that had been announced through the rumor mill.

“You!” the minotaur bellowed, his voice so resonate it sent the hairs on Karon's arm standing.

Before Karon could add anything, Utole stepped between him and the minotaur, ready to begin acting as a mediator of some kind.

“Before all gathered here today, these combatants will fight I say, with rage or hope they are empowered, and if one of them backs out, he shall be named a coward.”

“I am no coward!” the minotaur roared, and looked ready to charge at Karon without wait. Yet, Utole help up a hoof to stop him, and continued.

“With weapons you shall fight, no magic just raw might, and since this creature is not yet armed, you can not yet bring him any harm.”

“Uh, right, does anyone have any idea where my spear is?” Karon asked out loud, not daring to take his eyes off the enraged minotaur.

“It's down below the deck,” Lyra piped in, but before she could go get it the minotaur objected.

“That's not fair! A spear will have much wider reach than my cutlass, if there is to be any duel then it must be fought with similar weapons!”

“What!” Karon questioned, stunned by the double standards. “So what, its okay to fight with weapons that won't work against your physical superiority? What, do you like fairness only when it favors you and discard it otherwise?”

The pirates all looked at one another, then nodded their heads or voiced their affirmative, that yes indeed, that was the case. And then one of the pirates drew a cutlass, similar to the pirate captain's, and threw it over to Karon.

“There ya go, now get on with t'fight!” the otter that had thrown it hollered.

All the gathered pirates, as well as some of the spectators, shouted in approval and began stomping their hooves. Karon grasped the hilt of the cutlass at his feet and brought it up to his chest, he gave it a couple of try swings, and found it extremely lacking in just about everything one could want in a sword, including that it'd be sharp.

He gulped, then stretched out his mind to the audience until he found Lyra's, and quickly sent a message to it.

“Lyra...sneak down the stairs and get my spear, when I tell you to, throw it to me, you will need to time and aim the throw perfectly if it's to work.”

He hadn't bridged a link between them, and couldn't hear if she gave any response, he only hoped she would manage to do as he had asked in time, before the minotaur turned him into mush.

Karon waited for Utole to give some sort of sign to begin, and instead he nearly got crushed as the minotaur barreled forward with a roar, waving his cutlass in front of himself.

Karon yelped and flung himself to the right, narrowly avoiding the massive bulk of the pirate captain, and the sharp looking cutlass he was swinging without even bothered to aim. The move surprised Karon, he would have thought the captain would have done one or the other, either tried to crush him with his size, or cut him up with his blade.

A suspicion formed in the back of his mind.

But before the suspicion had time to form into a functioning plan, the minotaur turned with his cutlass held high above, and rushed forward just like before. Though this time, he was ready for Karon's dodge, and when the human tried to evade his attack, he hit him midair with a kick right into the abdomen. And Karon lost the grip on his own weapon.

“I HATE HOOVES GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!”

Karon was sent flying over the deck, and crashed into one of the spectators, the pudgy zebra dampening his fall, but Karon was still left wheezing on top of the unconscious stallion, the kick winding him.

His opponent laughed to himself at the sight, and took his time walking over to Karon. Air entered into his lung in huge gasps, the searing pain in his chest only increased with each breath, but it became of secondary concern when the pirate captain placed a hoof on his chest and tipped him over. Karon's eyes bulged when the weight of the minotaur was put on him, even if it was only a fraction, and in pure reflex he lashed out at the leg in an attempt to get the weight off.

He was lucky, his palm smashed into the side of the minotaur's knee, and it buckled under him instantly. He landed on the deck heavily, and before he could regain his footing, Karon jumped on top of him and began raining punches on his face.

The minotaur fell into a rage, obviously not accustomed to being attacked in turn. He flailed his arms around, and Karon had to roll away from him just to avoid the flurry of chops the minotaur made with his cutlass.

He spun around and looked for where his cutlass had landed, and spotted it next to one of the crewponies from the 'Sea Swallow', the pony noticed where he was looking and kicked the sword in Karon's direction. Karon bent down and grasped the weapon, just in time to spin around and swipe at the minotaur rushing towards him.

The cut took the captain on his stomach, but his muscles had been too hard to make it cut very deeply, even so, the minotaur stumbled backwards and roared like Karon had cut off an arm. And Karon's suspicion deepened.

The captain was big and scary, but Karon guessed he wasn't used to anyone challenging him, or even daring to put up a fight. It might have been many years since he had even participated in a real fight with an actual danger involved.  With that in mind, Karon went on the offensive, and began hammering away at the minotaur with various, cuts, chops and swipes.

The captain parried as best he could, but inevitably, some of it got through, and it wasn't long before several wounds had opened on his forearms and chest. Karon could see the growing fear in his eyes, and he knew he had him, that was, until the badly tempered steel of Karon's cutlass gave out when the captain paired on of his blows, and broke in half.

“This has been a really bad day for us.”

The broken top of the cutlass clattered away over the deck, and left Karon standing with a hilt in his hand, and a blade extending little more than a foot before ending abruptly. The minotaur stood dumbfounded like Karon for a second, and then he smiled and chuckled evilly when he realized what had just happened.

“Uhh...” Karon said, not quite sure if they would accept a do-over. He looked around the deck for any other objects he could use as a weapon, or perhaps he would have to resort to magic. He had no qualms about breaking the rules and use his magical abilities, but after the tremendous amount of energy Utole's potion had drawn from him, drawing and shaping energy so soon might cause considerable damage. Damage to the body is one thing, but to the spirit is an entire other level.

He scanned the crowd and caught sight of two turquoise colored hooves waving far back over the crowd, Lyra must have found the spear and was waiting for him to notice her or give the signal. And if there was ever a time for it, it would be now. He just needed to distract the minotaur for a second.

“Hey, do you happen to know what a trickster is?” Karon asked the minotaur, slowly backing away from him.

“No, is that what your kind is called?” the minotaur asked back, giving no sign he thought he was doing anything else but humoring Karon before killing him.

“Too bad, if you had, you would have known we like to cheat. Lyra!” he screamed and threw his broken cutlass at the minotaur's face.

The captain didn't expect the move, and it struck him in the nose with the hilt, and instinctively he closed his eyes and brought his hands up to it while roaring in pain and anger. Karon turned to where Lyra had been standing, and saw his spear flying towards him like a black arrow, and he caught it in mid-flight, spinning it around and bringing the tip forward.

The pirate captain didn't have time to see what had happened, before Karon rushed forward and stabbed the spear into his belly, the strong muscle gave no more resistance to the diamond edge than water would have. It cut through his entire body and exited through his back, the captain made a confused grunt, and dropped the cutlass. Karon ripped the spear out from the minotaur and stepped back, the spear pointed towards the captain's throat and ready to strike.

He didn't need to, the captain began stumbling backwards with a  confused expression on his face while he clutched the wound, like he was trying to figure out what it was. The crowed behind him scattered when he stumbled towards them, and the minotaur continued on his path all the way to the railing, until he fell over and landed in the water with a loud splash.

It must have been enough to bring him out of his shock, because everyone on board rushed to the railing and looked down to the captain, doing his best to stay over the surface, splashing around with his arms and legs while his blood flowed out of his wounds.

Either the captain couldn't swim, or his wound kept him from thinking straight and he was just panicking. Either way, Karon wasn't sure what he should do next.

The question answered itself, when the blood and splashing of the captain attracted those sea creatures not quite as inclined to help a bleeding stranger as the dolphin had been. A triangular fin cut through the water quickly, and the captain had time to turn his head and see it before he was abruptly pulled under the water with a scream.

“Huh ... so sharks do exist in this world.”

“Lucky for us that we got a dolphin instead.”

“Right ... this day has just been full of luck.”

He turned around with weariness setting in in full. The adrenaline of the combat abated and left Karon feeling like a towel that had been dried one too many times. The spectators were talking amonst themselves, and the crew of the 'Sea Swallow' were cheering, the pirates though, they remained silent. Some of them still staring at the water and the captain-turned-dinner, as if expecting him to pop up and take charge of them once more.

Karon gave Utole a glance, the zebra was watching him expectantly and waiting for the human to take the next step. Karon sighed, but he wanted to be done with all of this so he could be allowed a little rest. He walked over to the center of the deck, and leaned on his spear heavily, a line of blood was trickling down from the top onto his hand.

He could order them all to attack the pirates. They were in a cheerful enough mood to think they could pull it off, but the pirates would undoubtedly not go down without slaughtering at least a few of them, and Karon didn't have the strength, nor the inclination, for any more fighting.

He had had his fill for the day.

“Peaceful solution it is then.”

“That has to be a first for us.”

Karon snorted, then began laughing loudly at the thought, grabbing the spear with both his hands to keep from falling over. All of those on board the deck turned to stare at him, the naked, blood stained killer of the minotaur some had believed was invincible.

Karon waited until his laughter had died down, then raised his head and looked at the pirates.

“Okay, hehe ... this is how it's gonna be. You will never again sail under the pirate flag, or for that matter, do anything else but work honest trades for the rest of your lives. You know why? Because I am going to inform Princess Celestia about what has happened here, you know her right? The immortal, alicorn ruler of Equestria. Yeah that's right, I know her. And I dare say, she owes me a favor. I am going to leave this place, and Utole or anypony else living here is gonna keep an eye on all of you, and if you ever try to take up unlawful work again, either I or the princess will hear about it, and we will come for you. You could perhaps run from me, but you can be sure you cannot run from her. Do you all understand?”

Karon forced his weight back to his legs and distributed it evenly, his right hand gripped the spear tight in preparation for the pirate's refusal, and the ensuing slaughter it would lead to. However, it didn't come, instead the pirates listened to his words carefully, and then looked towards one another doubtfully.

Until one of them stepped forward, an otter with a dagger stuck in a belt, and a white shirt over his chest. He looked back to the others, then shook his head and looked at Karon, speaking in a bitter voice.

“Fine, I agree, as long as you promise you won't hurt me, or tell anyone else to hurt me if I don't do anything ... unlawful.”

“I agree. Honest living and you'll be left alone.”

The otter shook his head and muttered something, then he gave Karon a quick nod, and walked off the ship. The other pirates quickly fell in line after that. One after the other they agreed to Karon's deal, and Utole gave promises to all of them that he would be watching.

When it was all done, Lyra, Trixie and the crew of the 'Sea Swallow' walked over to him.

“So ... is it all done now?” Karon asked them, putting more and more weight on the spear he leaned on.

“Yes, I can't think of anything more that needs doing,” Lyra said and gave him a grin, and a few of the crew chuckled.

“Good, then how about we go celebrate?” he asked them, and the suggestion was meet with cheers.

“You think ... that ... they have any ... rum?” he managed to ask sleepily, right before he fell down on the deck and collapsed, finally reaching his limit and drifting off into a dreamless sleep.

Next Chapter: Chapter 34: Foreign hospitality Estimated time remaining: 8 Hours, 48 Minutes