“Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be...Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.” - Erich Fromm

It was the fourth day after the convoy had arrived, and (thankfully) the last day that Karl would have to deal with Malgo. Karl had suspended his plans to gain entry to Ironhoof lest Malgo caught wind of his intentions. Perhaps the guy was nothing more than a dick, instead of a devious, conniving kidnapper, but one can never be too careful.

Malgo and his contingent stayed for four days to load up the gems and rest up before resuming their journey. Karl, however, wasn’t simply biding his time while these events transpired: in secret he planned and prepared.

His first action was to glean as much intel as he could about Ironhoof from the locals. Much to his disappointment, Hoovetown possessed fairly little information about Ironhoof and even less about the prison. The only reliable sources his search turned up were some rather vague passages spread across several musty books which he “liberated” from the sparse Hoovetown library.

Karl mumbled assorted frustrated obscenities as he sat on a couch scanning the books for anything helpful. Sun Flight sat by his side, aiding in the largely futile search. The two had set out to find any useful knowledge of the prison, but so far the rate of success was quite low, to phrase it kindly.

“So what have we learnt from four hours of reading?” Karl asked, slightly irked at the disappointing results of his search.

Sunny took some notes and started relating the entirely of what they had found. After she was done, Karl was barely able to resist the urge to let out an exasperated sigh. “So basically, all we found out in four hours is that it is a prison for the toughest and vilest of prisoners and that only four people successfully escaped that place in all the years it’s existed?”

Sunny nodded and Karl stated what they both thought. “Now that’s just discouraging.”

Karl had already made up his mind that deliberate incarceration was his best bet at gaining entry to the prison, but he was as of yet unable to determine any exit strategy. Not a single mission was truly impossible, but Karl started having doubts whether or not breaking out this prison was within his capabilities. It was a big gamble: much to win, but a lot to lose as well, and besides that, his rewards were uncertain.

If the confrontation with the dogs had gone sour, Karl would have had a chance to escape. This was a different story: once they got him in that prison, there might be no chance at all to escape, let alone break out an additional prisoner.

The one certainty was that he would need help from other prisoners to escape. More specifically, ones capable of flight, that were also capable of transporting him and Kalia out of prison. The only creatures he knew of that fit the bill were gryphons and pegasi, and he wasn’t even sure that he would find a pegasus in a pony-run prison.

Suddenly, the door opened and Rover entered.

“Hey Karl! I just wanted to tell you Malgo left and… what in all that’s holy happened here?!” Rover exclaimed as he saw the massive amounts of books, notes and assorted papers lying about the room.

“Me getting bored to death.” Karl mumbled.

“Dear god! Remind me to make sure you don’t get too bored in important places!” Rover commented as he saw the mess that had come to existence seemingly because of a bored Karl.

“Will do! So you said Captain Jackass left, right?”

Rover rolled his eyes at the mention of Karl’s nickname for the douchebag captain.

“Yes, ‘Captain Jackass’ has left and we’ve have started preparing rations for you and Sunny, along with anything else you might need on your trip.”

Sun Flight pushed her head deeper in a pillow as she tried to hide her blush that had formed from the mention of the nickname her new boss had given her. Much to her embarrassment, the dogs had started copying the nickname from Karl. At least the dogs had refrained from using it in public and she had made Karl promise to not call her that in front of her relatives and friends. Unfortunately, in order to get that promise from him, she had been forced to agree to let him use it whenever he preferred in any other situations.

“Excellent! Rover, you are an amazing individual, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise.” Karl exclaimed over-enthusiastically. This earned him a chuckle from Rover.

“And don’t you forget it, human.” He jokingly added.

“So, what’s on the schedule for today?”

“We planned a goodbye party for you two in the town house tonight. We figured it’s the least we can do for the guy who saved our asses, not to mention the fact that you and Sunny are going to try and save the daughter of one of our beloved high alphas.”

“You hear that Sunny? You’re in my service for barely four days and you already get a party in your honour! I bet your former employer didn’t fix you one of those that quickly, huh?

“…and what’s that about ‘try’ to save?”, added Karl, casting a glance back to Rover

Sun Flight just gave him a goofy smile liking the idea of the party partially in her honour, but she did not look forward to organizing a prison break.

“Awesome.” she forced out, but neither Karl nor Rover seemed to notice her laboured enthusiasm, or simply didn’t care.

“Excellent! Sunny and I shall look our finest!” Karl quickly added, seeing Rover open his mouth, most likely to make a remark about Karl’s definition of “finest”.

“Okay, see you two then.” Rover said before walking out of the room again, leaving the two alone once again.

“So Sunny, do you have a dress at home or do you ponies not wear clothes? I still don’t exactly get that.”

Sun Flight just chuckled at Karl’s still decently limited knowledge of pony society, not that she could really blame him. After all, she probably knew as much of her new boss’ race as he did of hers, if not less.

“Don’t worry about me. I have some nice dresses lying around at home for special occasions… and just to clear things up for you, we ponies normally don’t wear clothes except for formal occasions.”

“Hm. I learn something new about pony society everyday… and this time in a less awkward way.” Karl enthusiastically said before charging out of the room, leaving no time for Sun to ask what he meant by that.

She quickly found her answer after she found a Playcolt magazine lying face-down on the floor, open to a certain page. The magazine had seemingly been thrown across the room as she knew for certain that Karl had not been reading anywhere close to where the magazine was lying. The magazine’s existence also raised a few questions, such as “Where and why did he obtain it?” and “Why did he attempt to read it when the subject matter was so prominently displayed on the cover?”

She then looked around to make sure no one was near the room and, with the knowledge that she still had plenty of time before the party started, she decided to read some more interesting material than the one she had been forced to read the last few hours. She surreptitiously turned the magazine over to reveal the open page.

“Jeez! I didn’t even know that could be done!” Sunny said, letting out a whistle from excitement as a telling redness swept across her face.

Whilst Sun Flight was busy examining her newly gained literature, Karl was busy trying to get his good clothes on. This process was still a major pain in the ass due to the size of his right arm and claw, but it was at least manageable, seeing as the clothes had been made with that in mind.

He didn’t like the fact they had pricked him so many times with their needles, but Karl admitted that they had delivered some quality work.

His outfit was like almost any standard tuxedo: black pants, black jacket, white shirt and a very kindly provided red tie, on which he had gotten a discount of 25% because of the needles (they probably thought he would kill them out of frustration after that). Not that he was complaining. A discount is a discount, right?

“Damn, I am a damn good looking mutant! Or I would have been without the burn, although it does give me a nicely villainous look. Not so great for my PR, but you know I’m not here to make pony friends, but to give ponies the biggest kick in the ass that they’ve ever gotten! And if I decide to give ponies belly rubs in between the ass kicking, then that is my decision.” ‘

Karl carried out this discussion with his mirror image out of sheer boredom. He really needed to get a hobby that did not involve killing, destroying and planning devious schemes. You would not believe how difficult it is for a warmonger to have a normal hobby.

“Hobbies, eh? Which hobbies would be interesting? Reading? I guess from time to time, but that won’t help me on the travels.

“Archery? That would be useful and most likely fun so that’s on the list. Annoying Sunny? Oh, who am I fooling? That was on the list from the moment I saw her…

“Now wait just a minute… that would be perfect! He he, why haven’t I thought of that one before?!” Karl said before he ran out of the room to give the dogs orders to fix the necessary equipment for his two new hobbies.

****
Sun Flight was just about done preparing herself for the party. She had decided to put on one of her finest dresses. The dress was mostly yellow with beautiful patterns of orange and red, which quite frankly made the dress look rather firey.

She had selected a set of golden-coloured horseshoes to complement her attire.

She had also made a last-second reservation with the local barber to re-style her mane, on which she had gone all-out. It would be a lie to say she didn’t want to impress her new boss. That said, she didn’t harbour any romantic feelings for him, and even if she did, she had supreme doubts that creatures of his sort would fancy an equine mate. That, however, did not prevent Sun Flight from trying to make his jaw drop as low as she could.

Sun Flight was not, nor had she ever been, a pushover or an icy secretary. Oh, no: she had a sharp tongue and a prankster side as well, which had gotten her into trouble quite a few times when dealing with the local nobles in the past, most of which acted as if they had a steel rod inserted up a certain part of their anatomy.

She probably would enjoy spending time with Karl a lot more if his current objective didn’t centre around breaching one of the top-notch prisons of Equestria (which technically made her his accomplice), although somehow she doubted he would deliberately put her at risk. He just had some kind of unexplainable aura around him that radiated trustworthiness.

She grabbed her lipstick and did her lips before walking to the door, but right before she reached it, she heard a knock.

“That’s odd: I wasn’t expecting any visitors.” She thought to herself.

Crime was something quite rare, but Sun was a mare who rather took the certainty of the uncertain to heart, so she looked out of the window to see who it was.

There, before her door, stood a very familiar biped. She could not really get a good look at his clothing from the angle at which she was looking, so she decided to open the door.
Karl was patiently awaiting the moment that the door of the house would open whilst praying that this time he had the correct house. Why did getting directions from these ponies have to be so damn difficult? He had stopped at two houses to ask directions and both times had they slammed the door in his face, and only after a little while of negotiating (which may or may not have included threats to break down their doors) did they tell him what he wanted to know.

Probably more bad PR, but he could live with that. He was shaken out of his train of thought as the door opened and he saw Sunny standing there wearing a beautiful dress. He wasn’t really into ponies (even though some people probably would be, but that was their own business, and what they did in their private life was not for him to judge and, and…

“Shut the hell up, subconscious: it’s like you’re falling down the stairs. Stay on track.” Karl thought to himself.

Equines weren’t really his thing, but Karl possessed that instinctive ability to recognise beauty despite any sort of difference in subject matter. (It was kind of like hearing a song in a foreign language, but still recognising its quality despite the gap in understanding.) He knew for a fact if a human woman was wearing that dress he would be picking his jaw up from the ground. To be fair, his jaw actually had slackened a bit upon seeing Sunny, and from the smug look on her face, he knew she had noticed it.

“Like what you see?” She asked with playful seductiveness.

Karl regained his composure and decided to play along.

“Oh Sunny! You look absolutely gorgeous! I never knew I meant so much for you, and you’ve only worked for me for a couple days! I wonder what else you have planned for me… if you know what I mean…”

His words had the desired effects as Sun’s cheeks again flared crimson red, whilst he kindly returned the smug look.

“I-It isn’t L-like…”

“Haha, don’t worry about it Sunny. I know you didn’t mean anything. I’m just screwing with you… crap, that could have been phrased better.” Karl awkwardly reassured her as he gave her a pat on the shoulders.

Just as quick as Sunny had changed into a stuttering mess she returned back to normal returning the smug look.

“Ha. You really fell for that one didn’t you?”

Karl was too surprised by the complete 180° mood change to react intelligently, so he went for the second best thing:

“Uuuuuuuhhhhhh...”

This earned him some adorable giggles from Sun, who had in the meantime closed and locked the door of her house.

“Shall we go to the party?”

“Yes, let’s get going. That was some nice acting you had there!” Karl said as he started walking next to Sun.

“Thank you! It was kind of a necessity when dealing with the local snobs.”

This earned her a small chuckle from Karl.

“I can imagine that’s true, if you want to be able to keep a smiling face while dealing with those guys!”

“Too true! You know, I wish more employers would be a little bit like you.”

Sun had quickly decided to throw in the “little bit” as she honestly did not want to imagine a world with all employers exactly like Karl. She enjoyed being in his presence, or at least a lot more than one should be after the guy had successfully let Diamond dogs take control over your birth town, but that didn’t dilute the sinister feeling he seemed to exude. Karl was truly an unbridled force, an individual whose actions could not be predicted until it was too late. Whilst she did not have any proof of this, she however did have a small assumption that Karl was, even in the eyes of the Diamond Dogs, an uneasy ally despite his utility.

If his looks and personality weren’t enough to inspire fear, there was the fact that a single touch by him made her wings go limp. It was almost as if he could block magic completely by just touching somepony, yet there was more to it: for a creature who could seemingly neutralize magic, he sure as hell didn’t like it anywhere near him.

She had heard him make more than enough threats to unicorns, saying that if they dared to use magic in his presence, he would have no problem breaking off their horns, making her wonder whether or not her new boss had, for lack of better terminology, a magic allergy. This, of course, was completely ridiculous, seeing as the air was filled with magic and he would have died long ago if that was the case. No, she was probably overthinking the entire thing. She had heard some rumours that he came out of the Everfree, so perhaps he just found magic a strange concept. Yes; that sounded logical. she would leave it at that for the time being.

Even setting all of this aside, there was a question which had burned at Sun since the day she met Karl.

“Why do you actually do what you do?”
She saw him raise his right eyebrow (the only one he had left) in confusion not understanding what she meant with her question.

“What’s your real reason for wanting to help the Diamond dogs?”

“Why are you interested to my motives?

“It’s just so strange. You help the dogs to a decisive victory, yet you don’t act like most victors would. You don’t brag about it, you don’t actually seem to even care about the fact you won twice against the Equestrian military!”

“Why? Is beating them supposed to be difficult?”

“Nopony has ever won such decisive victories against the Equestrian military in recorded history! So I would say it’s a big deal.”

Karl just scoffed and replied “Then I probably escaped the pleasure of fighting the troops actually capable of combat.”

Here it was again that uncaring attitude, like he didn’t even see the Equestrian military, which was the biggest and most well trained army in the world like anything more than an insect, which he could just crush under his feet. Didn’t the battle in the Hoovetown hills make him at least wary of what the Equestrians could offer? Or perhaps he did, but he deliberately hid it from her.

She was half-correct at least. The Equestrians had left a mark on him and the unicorns scared him, but from what he had seen from the combat capability of their troops, they weren’t much of a significant hindrance. Besides unicorns and perhaps pegasi, the ponies, in his eyes, were little more than a road block on his path to vengeance.

Karl had read that Earth ponies possessed more physical strength which against a normal human would have been useful, but what hope did they possess against someone as physically enhanced as he?

Pegasi, whilst being a nuisance in the air, possessed perhaps the weakest body structure of all four races. Their build allowed for great speed and manoeuvrability, but this advantage came with the loss of resilience against damage.

Unicorns on the other hand were truly lethal, or at least they were to him, seeing as his Diamond Dog companions did not seem to suffer from any kind of side effects while in their presence. This led to the conclusion that either the Diamond dog race was one race that was truly impermeable to magic or his physical aversion to magic was something extremely rare. Perhaps he was the only one on this world that suffered from it. He did not like the last option, seeing as treatment for ailments decreased in availability as their rarity increased.

The last race was by far the most dangerous, as they possessed the combined characteristics of all the other races, including the pesky magic of the unicorns. Karl only knew of two I’m existence: the same two that had turned him into what he was now. He had yet to obtain the name of their species, but the dogs had told him that the white one went by Celestia and the dark blue one by Luna. (At least he didn’t need to call them Blue Bitch and White Bitch anymore.) Those two seemingly ruled Equestria in peace and harmony for the entirety of recorded history.

It was, coincidentally, this “recorded history” part that actually bugged Karl the most: in his quest for information on Ironhoof, Karl had needed to sift through a great deal of history texts. In none of them did he find even a passing reference to humans, and yet both Celestia and Luna acted as if they knew he would pose a threat. Perhaps this could be attributed to xenophobia, but still didn’t explain how they seemed to know that he was a human without him revealing the fact. Either way, there was no way that Karl would put it past the two of them to revise history in their favour. Even when he asked other ponies, none of them had the faintest idea what a human was. Karl simply couldn’t help but think the whole case had a sour smell to it.

The two reached the party mostly in silence although not an uncomfortable one. Once there, they made periodic small talk with each other.

Karl mostly asked a bit about Sun’s life in Hoovetown and Sun asked a bit about the Everfree forest. Whilst she did a good job at hiding it, Karl could clearly see that the Everfree made her uncomfortable, a reaction that was not undue, considering that she was probably nothing more than prey for the various predators that called the forest home.

One time she asked about how he got his burn, and seeing that in the ponies’ eyes the princesses were gods who could do no wrong, Karl decided to lie. He told her that he had been caught up in a forest fire.

The party itself was nothing too fancy, but the dogs clearly had given their full effort to this party. There was music (if a bit bizarre for Karl’s taste), plenty of beverages and a decent enough ambiance.

The party lasted for about three hours or so before guests began trickling out. Karl escorted Sun Flight back home, both out of courtesy and simply because he enjoyed talking with her. After that he returned to his own home where he promptly passed out on the bed.

The next day, everything went rather quickly. He ate breakfast, Rover showed him what had been packed for him and Sunny, and after saying their goodbyes the two left. They had been provided with a profusion of survival material (rope, foodstuffs, knives, flint, canvas tent, etc.) along with a medium-sized bag filled with bits.

The landscape was beautiful, but all things can grow monotonous with time. This monotony was broken by a thick bank of dark clouds rolling in off the north.

“Looks like we’ve got a storm headed our way.” Karl commented, stating the obvious.

“Damn weather control. They usually announce when they have a storm planned.” Sun muttered.

“You could say tha…. Wait, did you say ‘planned’?”

“Yeah, why?”

In that moment Karl struggled to force back the words “Besides the fact they govern the weather, nothing at all!” Instead, he just shook his head no. This world possessed unicorns, magical poisoning, alicorns that tried to change him into a pony, wooden wolves, big talking dogs and assorted additional insanity, so weather control was honestly not as surprising as it otherwise would have been. It was at least remotely scientifically explainable in comparison to magic.

“It looks like there’s a small ridge over there.” Noted Sunny while gesturing to the wall of a small, grassy valley. ‘If the storm isn’t too bad we could probably wait it out there.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Karl replied as he started heading to the ridge.

A few minutes later, both of them sat huddled near a small campfire that Karl had using the flint and knife to set fire to some dry branches obtained from a dead tree overlooking the ridge.

The rain started falling about ten minutes later or so. It was a relatively small storm and it couldn’t have lasted more than half an hour, but the sun was already beginning to set. The ridge made a good dry place to rest for the coming night.

“Hey Karl, how does our travel route look from here?”

“We just follow this route until we get to some place called Noonvale. From there we take a boat to Sunfield. I bet you will feel at home there, Sunny.” Karl said as he chuckled at his own joke and Sun Flight playfully hit his shoulder.

“Regardless, from there we just follow the road to Ironhoof. In other words, you’re stuck with me for a fairly large distance”

“Oh, what noble stallion shall save me from such a cruel fate?” Sun exclaimed, striking a dramatic pose before breaking down in laughter, Karl soon joining in.

“Oh, nobody shall come to save you! After all if they take you, I would lose my only travel companion, and let’s face it: annoying you is probably going to be the thing keeping me sane all this time.”

Sun stopped laughing and gave him a smug look. “Oh, really now? Well, don’t expect any trolling to go unpunished!” This earned her some chuckles from Karl.

“I don’t expect anything less Sunny. After all, where would be the fun in trolling if there weren’t any counter-trolling?” Sunny gave him a warm smile before cuddling up against him.

Karl pulled a blanket over both of them before drifting off to sleep.

Author's Note

I know this chapter has come up later than planned, but my editor had some private business to take care off. I think everyone knows how private life can be a 'pain in the butt' so to speak.

Regardless I cannot express how grateful, I am for all the support this story is getting. This is the first time ever that a story of mine is anywhere near a hundred favorites.

Thank you! Thank you and once again thank you all. Please continue showing support for the story and I will keep on writing.

I also have an announcement to make, you may or may not have noticed that chapter one and two have been edited as well.

Finally I have one more question for you guys. Did anyone notice a Redwall reference?

Author: TheShadowOfZama
Editor: Vlasislas32