Compliance

Generic electronic music quietly bled through the headphones hung loosely around my neck, adding a pleasant ambiance to my personal little corner of the library.

The walls in my scarcely lit nook were padded with some incredibly ugly looking works of ‘modern art’ on some sort of faux canvas, increasing the privacy further through sound dampening.

The half-century old carpet in this area was still in what I could pretend was a presentable state, and even had the luxury of being cleaned every other year if the volunteer janitor of the hour felt up to it. The music blaring from the headphones wasn’t anything notable nor interesting either, but that was the point. In this little area of this little library, I sat with my laptop perched squarely in my lap.

A tiny gif spun, the only indication the software was even functioning.

I sighed and turned the page of the old book I’d been reading. It was a vaguely interesting encyclopedia-thing that seemed to be based entirely around nineteenth century war technology. Something about the detailed drawings of old weapons sparked my interest. In broken intervals, the program spat out plain text in the monitor window.

[Sniffing…][...]

[…][...]

[Sniffing…][...]

The laptop wasn’t exactly the greatest thing on the market, but it didn’t really need to be. All I needed was a few gigahertz, a good battery, and a screen. Being the cheap peice of shit that it was, the stock battery lasted a good thirty seconds before overheating and pissing itself under any load.

But hey, beggars and choosers and all that nonsense. All I needed to do was plug the damn thing into the wall and toss the battery into the nearest dumpster before it blew up in my lap. Problem solved. Said battery warmed in faux response against the skin under my jeans.

I’d get around to it eventually, honest.

[Sniffing…][...]

[…][...]

[Packet found{!}Packet found{!}Packet found{!}Packet found{!}][...]

[...][...]

[Sniffing…][...]

I ignored the aberration in the pattern and continued to sit and listen. What was I doing in a run-down, only-just-barely functional library with a laptop that was not too much better off, running a mysterious program that had more broken GUI functions and chicken scratch lines of code than the screen had pixels?

Good question.

An old friend of mine had sent me the source code for the program a few months ago, and then just dropped off the face of the world. No ‘breadcrumbs’, no active accounts, and everybody else I knew -all four of them- forgot he even existed within the week.

I’d even considered hiring a private eye to go look for him, then realizing I had no idea how private eyes actually worked. Or where to hire one. Or if they even existed anymore. Or if they were even legal. Probably not. Whatever.

I had nothing much better to do, so I’d followed the sparse readme’s instructions and ran the program on a laptop. My flat was a mess of old computer bits, the couple upstairs were always screaming, fucking each other, or both, and it always smelt like burnt ‘something-horrible’ so I tended to hang around at the old library.

The internet was shit everywhere I went in this town, regardless. Sub-dialup was Fun.

I’d looked through the program’s source code several times in a cheap compiler suite I’d pirated anyway. It was subsequently pretty damn unfortunate I knew next to nothing about whatever coding language language it was in. It looked like some ungodly combination of Javascript and facerolling the keyboard… but to be brutally honest, I didn’t know anything outside basic ‘C-sharp’. So it could have been Python for all I knew.

Because Unity was easier.

[...][...]

[Sniffing…][...]

...shut up.

Blindly, I slid my hand down behind me, and brushed my fingers around on the carpet. I frowned, ‘I know I left that damn thing somewher-...ah.’ I sighed blissfully, pulling the stainless steel flask up to my lips, flicked open the screw-on spout cover with my thumb before taking a long pull from it. Bitter, black, cold coffee pooled in my mouth and I swallowed loudly. Beat the hell out of dollar store booze, and it was cheaper anyway.

Some of the code bothered me, though. Mainly, the references to lines that didn’t exist, but they still seemed to function anyway. Didn’t even seem to register in the debugger. Far I as I could tell, this shit wasn’t running on ‘if, and/or, else,’ logic, but rather something closer to ‘if, fuck it, whatever.’

I leaned back further and drank deeper, shivering as I got my fix of caffeine. My well of elixir abruptly ran dry, and I was left with an empty flask that smelt vaguely of harsh chemicals and corrosion. Licking my lips with a muttered swear, I screwed the lid back on and pushed it into my backpack. I blinked hard and glanced at the on-screen clock.

[...][...]

[Sniffing…][...]

[...][...]

[Packet found{!}Packet found{!}Packet found{!}Signal found{!}][...]

[Tracking…][...]

Would you just look at the time; it was half past ‘far-too-fucking-late-for-this-shit.’

Blinking hard a few more times, I pushed my hair back behind an ear and leaned back against the wall. The painting creaked slightly, but it looked like the abortion child of a rotting tomato and an earthquake at the mental facility on arts and crafts day, so I didn’t feel too empathetic for it today. Tonight. Tommorow. Whatever. Any time in the past, present, and/or future. That thing was the source of at least one-one hundred thousandth of all evil things in the world.

I tossed the book down, even though the paragraph I was on detailed the specifics of Dreadnought class battleships. Surprising how people didn’t think wrapping a ship in thick metal strips and protecting the freaking engine room with more armor was a good idea before then. Sure it was heavy, and general knowledge said ‘heavy things don’t float, yo,’ but it deflected any projectile smaller and slower than a pitbull traveling at the speed of sound, and contained what would be crippling damage otherwise!

...right, it was getting a little late. I pushed the lid of the laptop closed and tossed it off my lap into my backpack with a satisfying ‘thwack’.

GRRRRRRRRKCCSHSHSHSHSHHHHHHHHHvvt-

My music suddenly cut out with a grinding electronic gurgle that vaguely reminded me of a toaster having sex,very quickly drawing my attention away from the book and down to my headphones.

The wire that was threaded through my hoodie and down my chest didn’t seem to be any more damaged than usual, and it was still plugged in to the headphones, which were also fine. My phone probably ran dry, or shit itself because the pirated music wasn’t playing nice with the bootleg encoder. I was proud of that mess of code that I mostly plagiarized, but it seemed to enjoy dying every now and then. As most abominations do.

It was when I started to smell burning glue and plastic that I got worried.

“God... fu-urgh…” I seethed as I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and glared at the screen. Black screen, and a little bit of smoke coming out of the headphones jack with a faint crackling audible in the silence of the library. That’d probably be the glue holding the capacitors together bubbling after something on the ‘board shorted. Okay, overclocking a sub-two hundred dollar phone with a custom ROM was stupid, but it was a stable overclock! No issues for months!

Months!

Granted, the damn thing was nearly a decade out of date, and with the planned obsolescence of every mobile device made since the late 2000’s, I was impressed it got this far in the first place. Time to finally buy a shiny new one, I guess. Should have probably checked to see if the headphones were still okay, but I could safely assume they were equally as fucked until I could be bothered to actually check properly.

Like Schrödinger’s cat, but for headphones... and retarded. Also not a cat.

        I tossed the bricked device into my backpack and pulled the headphone wire out of my hoodie and tossed the Schrödinger headphones themselves more or less gently next to the laptop. Living off minimum wage with a college degree in information/technology computer systems wasn’t precisely easy, but I could make some cuts to save up for a replacement device. Maybe I could even put the effort in to get a nine-to-five day job as opposed to commision.

Eating healthy is for the weak, and/or healthy.

        Yes, I do like to tell myself that at night so I can sleep, how kind of you to ask.

        Fried hardware taken care of, I pushed myself into a slightly more dignified position and straightened out my pants and brushed away the crumbs of the granola bar I’d devoured earlier. I then popped and rolled out the stiffness my joints, getting a juicy ‘crrunchk’ from my neck a few times, before pushing myself up the face of the painting and finally standing up.

The fan on the laptop started to whine loudly, which wasn’t too abnormal because some dick thought it was a downright fantastic plan to stick the heatsink right next to the battery, but the absurdly bright light from the screen was more than a little concerning. Losing the phone was one thing, since I didn’t ever use it for anything else than a borked music player and a laggy GPS map, but the laptop was a critical part of my entertainment. My phone didn’t play online videos.

Bounding over to it, I flipped open the screen and mashed the power button while forgetting the power cable was the only thing keeping it on, given the borked battery. My amazing luck with the phone seem to hold with the laptop, and it stubbornly refused to power off. The button felt like it was jammed, somehow.

        Suddenly remembering the power cord option, I reached around the back of the laptop and felt around for the wire. By chance, I glanced at the screen.

[THANK YOU FOR FI-

Before I could finish reading it, the screen went black. It took me a moment to realize the power cable had come away in my hand. A few seconds of stunned silence graced the library again, as I gradually realized I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

It was too difficult to keep my eyes open, and I only just managed to break my fall with my arms. It felt like hands were squeezing my neck, wringing around it with glee. The lovely sound of phone-destroying-toaster-sex was the last thing I heard that night.

=|==|==|=

I awoke to the sound of triumphant laughter. The rancorous edge made it sound more like the coughing of half dead crack-whore, but there was a definite lucidity that was absent from the common aforementioned entity.

Typical Tuesday, really.

Well, that joke would have worked if it weren't a Thursday. But waking up to crack-whore laughter was never a good sign. Red flag number one, as they say. I coughed, sputtered and groaned my way into full consciousness before pushing myself up and taking a good look around. The first thing I noticed was the lack of proper lighting, then the powerful stench of ozone, which made me think of some sort of new age drug den. That’d be red flag number two.

The third red flag was the brown, small unicorn sitting in the center of the room. I blinked a few times. He was still there, grinning at me. His eyes were dilated, and he seemed to be shaking slightly. ‘Awesome, I got jumped by a drug dealer and force fed some really strong shit,’ I sighed drearily, shook my head and flopped back down on the frigid concrete floor.

Addiction was something I’d been hoping to avoid. The unicorn mercifully seemed to have tired himself out and resigned to merely giggling loudly as opposed to screaming ‘laughter’. I shivered and pulled both legs to my chest as the creeping cold of the room seeped into my hoodie.

This is what I got for not having any physical friends, and shunning close family for years. Nobody would notice me missing until the landlord came looking for rent. I paid off rent two months in advance on credit because I’m insane. ‘I’m dead. I’m very dead. Or I’ll want to be very dead.’

Before I could think too hard about everything I’ve done to deserve this, I realized something that seemed starkly out of place. I wasn’t showing any painfully obvious signs of recent heavy drug use. No coughing, no stomach problems, no insatiable need to rip my skin apart, nothing I could directly feel. So that wrote off the first theory then. Possibly. Hopefully.

“It... actually worked… hehe,” the small brown horse muttered quietly, panting and slowly tracing closer to where I laid. Each one of his hooves clicked and scraped very loudly against the concrete, reminding me vaguely of high heels. I tensed, curling myself tighter. I didn’t want to know what he actually was, provided this was all a very realistic trip, so I held my breath and did my absolute best to blend in with the concrete.

Given I was wearing a grey hoodie and jeans, that probably didn’t work as well as it needed to, but I was far too confused to care.

“Don’t touch me!” I screeched hystericallycompletely reasonably demanded, covering my head with my arms for the inevitable beating, hoping that the movies  were wrong about these sorts of situations.

The… ‘hoof’-steps? Yes, hoofsteps stopped and I could faintly hear him gasp and stumble back a few steps. A few seconds passed silently. Well, he wasn’t coming onto me with a dick, a rusty kitchen knife or an air filled needle, so that was a positive start. Applied to anything, really.

The silence grew... and was promptly cut down and stamped on a bunch, as the fucking door was kicked in.

Splinters flew across the room as I rolled onto my back and pushed myself away on the floor into the nearest corner with a painful ‘smack.’ Why were the walls concrete too? Was this den in a parking garage?

More miniature horses stormed in through the door, shouting something I couldn’t make out. The first galloped and tackled the brown unicorn down to the floor with a healthy sounding crunch. It was wearing what looked like iron armor that was dented all to hell, and didn’t have a horn. His friends seemed to be a part of the brown one’s race, and pointed their horns vaguely in the direction of the brown one.

The non-horned one didn’t seem to have any issues with the brown one, and proceeded to sit on his chest, pin the brown one’s fore-legs with his own rear legs and begin throwing haymakers directly into the brown one’s face. A small armored horse was beating the ever-unloving shit out of another small horse.

I flinched at the hits, each one drawing a newly ragged scream of agony from the brown one. The attacker was wearing heavy, spiked horseshoes. The brown one’s back legs kicked reflexively, but uselessly. They only managed to nick the armored back of the not-horned one a few times.

I was suddenly glad the light was terrible in the room, because I was pretty sure I saw bone before the brown one stopped struggling and fell limp. More horses filed in, a few without armor, but with wings, one more without a horn and heavier armor and another two with horns with saddlebags, all of them surrounding the poor brown one and doing… something.

After a few moments of blind shuffling and fussing, they stepped back silently. The brown one had his mangled face stuffed into a bag, with his front hooves locked to his back hooves with sturdy looking iron shackles and an iron collar firmly latched around his neck.

I kept very still and quiet in my corner, almost holding out hope that they just didn’t see me when they came in while pressing my head into the corner. That hope was swiftly crushed when one of the horned ones seemed to concentrate for a moment, and sprouted a ball of light from its horn. It was bright blue and cast harsh shadows, but that was all the other horses needed to see me clear as day.

‘Shit,’ I froze, not breathing as the flashlight-horned one looked around. He almost missed me, but took a double-take and locked eyes with me. I squeaked mutely, and pulled tighter against the wall. Maybe this room was really really off limits, and the brown one was beaten because he came in here, dragging me along for the ride.

The lighthouse-horn horse tapped one of his friends on the shoulder and gestured towards me with his muzzle, drawing the attention of yet more until they were all looking at me. The ones with wings tensed and stepped back towards the door, wings flaring like a startled bird, while the ones with no horn stepped in front of the group in a defensive formation. The one with all of the blood spattered over his armor was the closest.

        I stayed precisely where I was, doing my absolute best not to piss myself in fear. I only failed a little. We held the staring contest until one of them seemed to realize something and tilted its head in confusion before turning towards one of the horses with a horn.

        “Seems she isn’t aggressive, Captain, I don’t think she’s a Proxy. Not even a guard-man,” she observed evenly with a clearly female tone, shaking her head. The horned horse she turned to seemed to consider it for a few moments before shrugging and turning away towards the door.

‘Guard-man? Did she mean human guards?’ I pitifully begged the universe pondered hopefully, still silent. Maybe there was some people I could talk to!

        “Ex~cellent,” he began with a faint drawl, “see if you can get her to the nearest vet for a checkup, then get her to the Citadel. The Institute screw heads might be able to lift some traces off ‘er,” the ‘Captain’ of the group ordered brightly, yanking on the chain of the brown one. The brown one meekly tried to stand after being coaxed by a swift kick to the stomach, but lost his balance directly onto his face with the ‘crunch’ of what I assume was what was left of his face. He made no further attempt to move.

‘Wait, what does ‘lift traces’ mean?’

Dozens of possibilities generated in my thoughts, each one equallyfucking terrifying.

The ‘Captain’ sighed as if he just spilled a glass of water, focused for a moment and glared at the brown one. Another bright light appeared around his horn, but this time it seemed to be a lot more… fluid. Also bright white instead of blue, which I assumed meant something. A copy of it materialized around the brown one’s body, and he began to float above the concrete floor.

Another tug was met with no resistance from gravity, or any of the other laws of physics I thought were facts, and merely floated behind the ‘Captain.’ The winged horses filed out of the room first, sending one last wary glance my way before they vanished from sight, with the ‘Captain’ following close behind with his captive.

The one who spoke in my favor stayed behind with the remaining horned ones, while the other non-horned horse followed after the winged ones and the Captain. In the bright blue light, I could just barely make out the features of their faces, but they seemed incredibly expressive. Something about their eyes.

For example; every single one but the female who spoke up was glaring at me, while the latter seemed content to just look happy with herself. They stood still for a moment before one of the more confident horned ones turned to the unhorned one that spoke up for me with a scowl.

“Well you’re the one who suggested we let her live, and you’re the only one with training, Wrought Shod, she’s your problem now,” he chided before turning to leave. The other horned horses seemed to agree with that line of logic, and followed after him.

The female sputtered and called for the retreating horned ones, but was largely ignored.

So, I was left with a female armored horse in a concrete room that had a broken door behind her. She was going to block the exit if I tried to run, and I knew for a fact she’d outpace me. Because four legs beat two shaking noodles in the shape of legs. I didn’t know what to think, but I hoped decided I wasn’t creative enough to have come up with all of this while tripping out.

‘What were female horses called again? Started with an ‘m’…,’ I dimly considered while the female took stock. She very carefully took a slow step forward, lowering her stance down to bring her eyes a little lower than mine, like she was dealing with a frightened dog.

“Hey hey, easy…” she soothed, slowly reaching forward with a forehoof to one of my legs. Even in the dim light, I could see the spiked, heavy horseshoe and my eyes immediately darted over to the puddle of the brown one’s blood and back to her. I shrunk back further. Regardless of what she was doing, I wanted as little as physically fucking possible to do with those shoes.

Logically, I understood she was ordered by a superior to bring me to a vet, which probably meant that didn’t involve me getting the shit kicked out of me... immediately, but those horseshoes were vicious. Pretty sure I saw bits of the brown one’s cheek and lips flying with some of the blood. Oh, nevermind, there they are. On the ceiling.

A particularly meaty chunk peeled off and hit the floor with a ‘splot.’

I was also pretty sure that ‘lift traces’ meant something along the lines of ‘vivisection’.

She seemed baffled for a moment before tracking where I looked, noticed the puddle, what she was wearing on her hooves, then put two-and-two together. Her ears flopped down backwards, and she backed up while lowering her head a little further. Everything about her stance was as non-hostile as possible. If it wasn’t a small armored horse standing in front of me, I’d have immediately hugged it.

“Sorry! Sorry… uh…” she muttered, sitting back on her haunches and pawing at the back of her left fore hoof’s shoe with the right. After a few whispered swears, something clicked loudly and the shoe fell off, clanging onto the floor. She winced at the volume, casting a wayward glance in my directly while she messed with the left shoe. It too came off, and she was left bare-hooved like the original brown one.

She gathered both, and slid them into what looked vaguely like a leather pouch riveted into the side of her armour before turning back to me. Carefully as she could manage, she presented the now weaponless hooves to me. I didn’t flinch this time, which she seemed to take as a positive result.

With a series of surprisingly gentle shifts and movements, she shuffled her way up to just outside my personal space, then reached out with a hoof again, touching the leg I had pulled up to my chest. When I didn’t react for a few seconds, she slid the hoof down my leg and wrapped it around the back of my ankle. It was cold, even through the jeans.  I tensed.

“It’s okay~,” she reassured while slowly pulling my leg out by the ankle. Hoping for the best, I relaxed the limb and let her manipulate it. She twisted it slightly, forcing me to shift my posture to lean higher against the wall to follow the movement. She seemed pleased, cooing softly while reaching forward with both forelegs, slipping the tips of her hooves underneath my arms and pushing up against my armpits. I got the message and pushed myself up the wall, leaning against it as the blood rushed from my head. The adrenaline pooled.

She waited for a moment, smiling softly as I got my bearings and took a few steps towards the door. While I could have just sprinted as fast as I could, I had no idea what was outside that door, and I’d likely be cornered instantly. Cooperation with the small, armored, sentient female horse was the only smart option I could think of.

My sweater suddenly seemed just a little too small around my lungs.

Unfortunate that I’m not the smartest thing to ever grace the universe, else I would have thought my next few actions through.

The instant I was positive I was just out of her reach, I leaned forward and kicked off into a dead sprint. Passing the frame of the ruined door, I could just vaguely make out her shouting something to the effect of ‘wait!’, but it wasn’t like I was suddenly going to start listening to something as stupid as reason.

Especially if said reason came from a damned sentient, armored small horse. So very much was wrong with this situation, and I wanted out. Out out out!

The hallway I ran into had an oddly low ceiling -only a foot above my head- but I paid little mind and focused entirely on running as fast as possible. My heart pounding in my ears as the rush of adrenaline swelled into my chest. There was no sign of the horned ones that had left the room earlier, so I charged on. I could hear the armored mare run through the doorway after me, so I pushed harder.

The hallway was even more poorly lit than the room I’d come from, but a few balls of glowing light hung in the air to some dim effect over doorways that had also been kicked open. Some of the rooms I passed was pitch black, others held similar gore-stained scenes. I saw a door at the end of the hallway that seemed to have been left slightly open. I grinned and pushed a little more, pulling ahead of the horse behind me. She continued shouting at me, and I continued ignoring her.

By the time I reached the door, I was beginning to feel an aching burn seep into my legs. ‘Faster faster faster!’

Knowing full well I’d be caught if I stopped to open the door, I made the snap decision to try that thing that always seemed to work in the movies, and slammed my right shoulder into it. The door was apparently poorly made and rotted, as it essentially exploded. Too much force having been put into the hit, I lost balance. Summoning more athletic skill than I had ever used in my entire life, I rolled with the momentum and sprang back to my feet, aiming myself headlong for the nearest exit.

The room was full of the bastards doing things. Horned, non-horned, winged, armored, unarmored, and some of them were colored in incredibly bright shades of pink, blue or green. Every single one of them watched me run by in near silence, a few conversations lagging as they processed what I was doing. ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck-’

The room was also much brighter, allowing me to dodge around the odd obstacle or horse standing in the way while I sprinted for the next door. The armored mare from before was almost on my heels, and it seemed like she was breathlessly shouting commands to stop ‘that running human.’ Fuck that.

One of the horses standing by made a grab for me, missing me by inches. I stumbled for a moment, throat clamping shut in panic. I regained my footing and continued the sprint, taking a look towards the one that tried to catch me. A person, another human stood there. Staring at me impassively. I didn’t have the time to make chit-chat, so I filed that for later.

I poured everything I had into the run, gaining speed and passing through the next door into what looked like some sort of entrance lobby. A room that had actual windows lining the outer wall, with a heavy oak door left open in the dead center of it. Sunlight filtered into the room through the filthy windows, illuminating the dust hanging numbly in the air.

The group that had entered the first room room seemed to be loitering near the door, with the ‘Captain’ leaning against the door frame, talking with one of his subordinates. In the light, I finally managed to see he had bright green eyes and a pure white coat.

He was moving by the time I was a few feet into the room, already in a pouncing stance by the time I closed the distance by half. There was no way in hell he’d miss with the way he was coiled.

I swore and changed course at the last possible second as the group began to react to my sudden entrance, aiming for the next best thing to any door; the large store-front windows. The armored female had managed to get to the last door I’d passed through by the time I was half way through the room. I knew it was going to hurt a lot, but I knew that vivisections probably hurt more.

Crossing my arms in front my head protectively, I waited until just the right moment and jumped. I heard panicked shouting, then hit the glass. It shattered under the force and I flew through it into the street beyond. Hitting the concrete on my knees was a bitch, drawing a pained cry out of me as I bounced and rolled with the shards.

“Fuck!”

I groaned, coming to a stop. Writhing on the cobblestone for another precious set of seconds, I rolled myself onto my hands and knees after a few half-baked attempts. Something like a truck slammed into my side, dazing me long enough for a solid weight to settle on my chest and hands. When I blinked away the stars, I noticed the female armored pony had pinned me down by my wrists above my head. She was glaring at me, panting and gasping for air after the chase. Ears were at full attention and her dilated blue eyes seemed to glow in the low light.

She was glaring at me.

“I’m sorry! Okay?!” I wailed, turning my head away and squeezing my eyes shut. I couldn’t move my hands at all, and my legs kicked uselessly. Just like the brown one. I was going to get the shit kicked out of me and then I was going to be cut open.

“I won’t…-Pleee~ase d-don’t-ah-” I babbled diplomatically reasoned, flinching as she suddenly shifted her weight on my chest. She wasn’t light, and I wasn’t wearing a padded bra. Ow ow ow.

Some time passed before I opened my eyes again, blinking away tears. The female looked at me in a way I could only describe as utterly stupefied, blinking rapidly. Eventually furrowing her brow, she looked over her shoulder. I squirmed uncomfortably under her.

“Uh… Captaain~?” The mare called, leaning back off my lungs and wrists. I breathed deeply and kept quiet, trying to look around the armored pony at the group. Maybe they’d let me go if I just explained why I was in that room?

I’d even say sorry, to show how serious I was.

   A few seconds of silence wore away at my confidence until I heard hoof steps clopping around her and behind me. I craned my head up to find the Captain standing over me, looking intrigued. His eyes narrowed, horn sparkled to life brightly. He then brought his entire head down towards mine slowly.

I made a snap decision again. Because that’s always worked out.

My hands whipped up to the mares head and suddenly wrenched her forehead hard into the ‘Captain’s face. I pretended the crunch wasn’t that bad, and he’d be perfectly okay once he got that checked out by a doctor… stitches looked pretty cool when they got around the healing phase, so he’d be okay. The hit was mercifully enough to daze the mare and I pushed her the rest of the way off of me onto the ground.

Just as I was getting to the whole ‘running away’ part of my plan, I realized the critical error in my analysis of the situation. The large mixed group of small armored horses who really liked their Captain, which were currently glaring at me. I backed away with what I hoped was something close to an apologetic grin. Right.

One of them twitched and the whole damn herd broke formation.

=|==|==|=