Well, this is exciting… Not really. I sighed as I walked down the road, alone and in silence. At least it felt like I was alone. Shadow was so far above me it was like she wasn’t even there, and it was frankly a little troubling. For some reason, it kept feeling like she was going to leave me behind, or that she would somehow discover that I had killed Flame then kill me without warning. It would be what I deserve, but it still frightened me.

I let out another sigh, which was responded to by Shadow shushing me. Looking up at her, she was much closer than before, and her ears were swiveling around with her head. She’s obviously on high alert from something nearby, but I had no idea what it was.

“Looks like bandits up ahead, be careful.” Shadow whispered down to me, still looking around. I still couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but might as well take her word for it, she probably had better eyes. Time to keep walking, I guess.

“Hey! You two stop where you are, we’ve got you surrounded!” Came a voice from a nearby hill. Looking over at the source showed what did in fact appear to be a bandit, a female one at that. Lo and behold, there were others in a somewhat large circle around us.

“Let me guess, you all want our stuff, and are willing to fight us for it. Am I right, or am I right?” I say with a sigh, staring the bandits down. That seemed to throw them off a bit, at least.

“Umm… Yeah… Give us all your stuff!” The mare shouted back after a pause. With a sigh and a slight bit of levitation, my sword was next to me in a second.

“Ready, Shadow? Looks like we’ll be fighting our way out, like usual.” I look over to the pegasus, and see she already has an assault rifle out. “Guess so… So then, who wants to go first?”

Of course, they all open fire at relatively the same time. Thankfully, I already had a shield covering the two of us, which held just long enough for me to set up a personal shield, which was much stronger due to less surface area, and charge through the collapsing shield.

I could feel every bullet hitting my magical shield as I charged a bandit, my longsword levitating next to me as I ran. I ducked under his clumsy attempt to hit me with the pistol in his mouth and, with a quick spin, swept his legs out from under him. Can’t stop, gotta keep it moving. Stopping meant wasting time, and the shield wouldn’t hold out forever. Burning his face off with a quick blast of fire dispatches him instantly. On to the next one.

“You guys ruined a perfectly good walk! Why you gotta disturb the peace like this?” I call as I dance around the next bandit and stab my sword through the back of her neck. A surge of flames along the blade makes sure she died. Have to remember not to do that too much, could warp the blade with the heat, not a good idea in the slightest.

Two down, eight to go on this half. The next one I turn to opens up with a smg, which probably would’ve done some damage had I still been standing in his line of fire. As it was, I came out of my teleportation right on top of the pony’s back, and stuffed an active grenade into his bag before launching myself off.

I landed in front of the next bandit, this one a unicorn, just before the grenade goes off and completely destroys the third bandit. This next one was wielding dual flamers on a battle saddle, which would’ve been a problem for any other pony this close up. The shower of blood and gore blinded me momentarily, just long enough to give the unicorn an opening. Wiping off the obscuring agents revealed nothing but a view obscured by fire. Unfortunately for the bandit, I had cast my fireproofing spell on myself as soon as I had seen the flamers. I simply diverted the flames coming out of the weapon, directing them back onto the source and incinerating the bandit with his own flames.

“Don’t you know? If you play with fire, you’re bound to get burned.” I say to the charred corpse before a bullet traveled through my shield and my right hind leg. The adrenaline was doing a good job as a painkiller, and I had no time to treat it in the middle of a fight, so I pressed on despite the pain in my leg.

The offending shot had come from a rifle that obviously used higher caliber bullets, if the barrel was any indication. The bandit seemed surprised that his attack had worked; probably due to the fact my shield had stopped all the other bullets directed at me. In any case, his pause gave me the perfect opportunity to charge him and get much closer to the stallion. He recovered just in time to meet my sword with his face.

“Almost done Shadow, how’s it going on your end?” I call as I turn towards the last one. This one a pegasus mare wielding a sword and with a large rifle on her back.

“Oh dandy. You do realize it’s hard to not hit you by accident when you keep going through my firing zone, right?” Came Shadow’s reply, immediately followed by the firing of her assault rifle. She was a great shot with that thing, hitting her target with practically every shot.

The fact that she was doing this and preforming aerial maneuvers at the same time only made it more impressive.

Can’t focus on that now; have to take out the bandits first. This mare was smarter and quicker than her companions, and she managed to block the swipe I made at her neck. A small smile crept over my face as we stared at each other. She was helpless, her weapon tied up keeping my sword away from her neck, and the fact she couldn’t grab any more, meant that I had the upper hand. I, with nothing really to restrict my movement, I prepared to blast her with a spell. Before I released the energy, she smacked my horn and the spell fizzled out pitifully, and caused me to drop the sword in my levitation. She then grabbed me by my wounded leg and pulled me to the ground before taking to the air.

I had to look up at her across the length of my body as I tried and failed to focus through the pain. We were just getting higher and higher, and soon this would become a problem. Well, a bigger one than it already was. Struggling seemed to slow the upwards progress, but didn’t get me free. Suddenly, there was no more pressure on my leg, and there was a moment of complete silence as her form became smaller.

Shit! I turned around in mid-air only to see the ground rushing up to greet me. This is going to hurt. I managed to roll somehow when I hit the ground… not sure how… which lessened the damage, though I was still out of it for a little while. Lucky for me this mare had horrible aim as she tried to finish me off. Maybe it was because she was flying? Can’t say for sure, but that made sense, right? It was hard to think through the pain in my head. Thankfully, after two more shots, everything became quiet. Well, save for the meaty thunk of the mare’s body hitting the ground, a new hole in her head.

“Hey, Pyro, get up.” Shadow said, poking me with a hoof. Groaning was a good response, let’s do that. I groaned in response, and she simply rolled her eyes before trotting off. At least, I assumed she rolled her eyes, I wasn’t actually looking at her. “Wimp.”

Well, that wasn’t very nice. Cracking an eye open, I grabbed her forelegs in my magic and made her trip. Smiling, I shakily got to my hooves and walked/limped over to Shadow, who was righting herself from her previous position of her butt in the air and her face on the ground.

“Have a nice trip?” I asked, trying to sound innocent of any wrong. That’s a hard thing to pull off with guilt eating away at you from the inside.

“Real mature.” She said simply before trotting off again. She didn’t sound like she had approved, but I swear I saw a smile on her face when she turned away. Ah well, more mystery fuel for the enigma that was Shadow Streak. With a smirk, I followed, sheathing my sword as we left the dead bandits behind us. They had sealed their fate the moment they attacked us.

It didn’t take long for me to catch back up to Shadow, despite my wounded leg, as she wasn’t moving all that fast. Once I caught up though, she increased her speed so that we were moving along at a good pace. It still wasn’t all that fast, but all things considered, it was pretty good.

Aside from various wildlife, some of which were burned to a crisp after trying to attack us, the trip was devoid of contact with any living creatures. Fine by me though, a quiet walk is rare in the wasteland. Soon enough, a town came into view on the horizon, which served to spur the two of us on so that we could reach the town that much quicker. It was getting dark, and sleeping inside the relative safety of a town sounded like a much better option than doing so out in the wastes where there was a much higher chance of attack.

Shadow seemed to agree, as she flew off ahead, to talk to the guards, if I were to guess. Last time I checked, she had been a guard for our home town, so she probably knew what she was doing.

By the time I got up to the gate, it was already open and Shadow was already inside, waiting for me. Giving a nod to the guards as I passed them, they simply watched me pass warily, as if I were about to gut them at any moment. Well, that was a little confusing, but whatever.

Just keep going, it’s probably nothing.

We walked together in silence again as we made our way towards where we would be staying overnight. Shadow seemed upset by something, but I couldn’t really tell what it was that had her fur in a bunch.

Apparently we would be sleeping in a separate shack from all the others. It was a bit of a walk from the gate, but still within the wall, so I couldn’t really complain about it too much. As soon as we were inside, Shadow practically bucked the door off its hinges from kicking it closed behind her.

“What is the Cult of the Phoenix? “ She asked grumpily before I had a chance to say anything. Cult of the what now? I had never heard of anything like this before, and I was failing to come up with any sort of response to her question.

“Ugh, come on Pyro, tell me! Those guards out there said you were a part of the cult, and they seemed afraid of you simply because of this, so tell me what it is!” She yelled in my face when I didn’t respond.

Now I was even more confused. Why would they think I was part of this cult if they didn’t even know me? This didn’t make much sense at all, really.

“I… I don’t know… I’ve never heard of them before…” I said, staring her down in the process in hopes that she would let me go. I could fight my way off, but I didn’t really want to fight her.

With a huff, she withdrew, letting me stand up as she watched me. I got the distinct feeling that she didn’t believe me, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about that.

“You better not be lying to me, Pyro.” She warned, her eyes narrowed at me.

“Nope, no lying going on here.” I replied, holding my forehooves up defensively, as if that would convince her. All it really did was remind me of my wounded leg as it buckled under the pressure, making me fall to the side in pain.

“Stupid bullets. Why do they have to hurt so much?” I asked rhetorically, looking down at the hole in my leg.

“They’re just mean like that.”

Wait… Who’s voice was that? Looking over at the source revealed a unicorn stallion that looked like he was a doctor. When had he gotten here? I opened my mouth, but was cut off as he grabbed my injured leg in his magic so he could look at it, causing me to yelp instead of actually ask anything.

“Hmm… Clean through… How long ago was this?”

“Oh, miles back. He wasn’t complaining about it, so I figured it was fine.”

“You walked miles on that leg? Impressive, but stupid. Don’t you two have any healing potions you could’ve used?”

“Umm… No, not currently…” I finally spoke up, wincing as my leg shifted in the doctor’s grasp. Then he began pouring a healing potion into the wound before giving me the rest to drink. It didn’t taste that good, but medicine wasn’t made for its taste.

“There, you should be better soon. Just don’t strain yourself until the wound closes. We’ll see about your payment once you’ve healed up.” He said, standing up again and trotting back outside, shutting the door behind him.

“Well, I suppose we should get some shut-eye…” Shadow said after a bit of awkward silence. Nodding in response, I simply used my magic to get my bed ready before dragging myself over to it, climbing in and falling asleep soon after.

Author's Note

Well, I finally finished this chapter. Sorry it took forever, I had writer's block for a really long time, and then I had to find time to actually write once I got an idea of what to do. Speaking of which, I feel like I've got too many long-term ideas and no idea what to do in the meantime.

Hopefully this is fine, just keep in mind I'm not much of a writer. At least, I don't see myself as one.

Once again, I wish to thank Kkat for creating this wonderful world.