Chapter One
Trial by Devils Fire

About Alacorns.- there is no proper name for a winged unicorn but Alicorn or Alacorn sounds the best. Alicorn is the word for a unicorn’s horn while Alacorn is the Latin wing (alae) and horn (cornu). Therefore I will say Alacorn despite the more popular alicorn of MLP lore.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
-- Omar Khayyam

Blarg! I was now throwing up dry hay. I should not have been able to throw up dry hay. I, along with everyone else on this damn ship who couldn’t handle the ocean were midship on the lowest deck trying to hold our guts down. Before we had been on a higher deck in a room with port holes so we could vomit right overboard. However, after we had thrown up almost everything we could (until now) we decided not having to throw up in the first place would work just as well. We were having limited success. Now some ponies, zebras, the greenest looking griffins you will ever see, and myself were in the calmest part of the boat trying to find some relief.
We had been at sea for over a week but when this three day storm kicked up some of us got sea sick and the others were put to work. These griffins, Thrash, Ganker, Mastiff, Mastic, and Cherry, were never going to set talon on a boat again after this poorly made decision to take the boat rather than fly in. I couldn’t remember any of the zebra’s names because, well, zebra names are hard to remember. The only other pony in here was a pegasus mare named Ithica. She hadn’t said much these whole three days and right now sat curled up in the corner looking half dead.
Turns out being sea sick was boring and boring for days on end leads to weird ways to pass time. Yesterday we had held the ill-fated vomiting contest. It wasn’t a question of who won really, more a question of who lost the least. Thrash had us all beat on both distance and spread but in the end we all lost when cleaning it up. We all died a little on the inside after that contest.
I was so dehydrated it wasn’t even funny anymore. My partners were on the upper decks working and I was down here trying and failing to not feel like shit. No fare. At least we get off this boat today I thought to myself as the boat continued to sway. We were supposed to land in Northern Equestria and it would take everything I had to not go straight to a hotel and lay there for a week living off room service and drinking water out of an ice cream pail.
The boat rocked and everyone groaned softly. The fourteen of us were all piled into a section that was reserved for storage but we had commandeered because it was the least sickening room on the craft. Now it smelled of cleaning supplies, vomit, booze (don’t ask), and of course seven sweaty and unwashed zebras, five griffins, a putrid pegasus, and a unicorn. Maybe if you combined the scent of me and Ithica you would get an acrid alacorn? I looked back into the pail and took some deep breaths.
“Holy shit, you really can’t hold anything down can you?” asked Ganker in a mocking tone. “Maybe we should fry up a big mess of scrambled eggs? With extra grease so they slide right down?”
I gagged at the suggestion almost summoning up more vomit while Ganker laughed, but I did take some satisfaction when he gagged at his own suggestion a couple seconds later. I don’t remember being quite this miserable since I had the flue as a colt on school ice cream day. Turning away from the bucket I put my head back on my saddle bags on the floor. I would get up and empty that bucket later but right now I wasn’t moving anywhere.
From far down the hall we could hear hoof steps getting slowly closer. Oh please don’t stop outside this door, don’t make me move. They got louder and louder as they approached then almost in unison stopped right outside the door. Well maybe they were here for someone else. The knob turned and standing there was a pegasus and an earth pony.
The pegasus had a light blue coat and a red mane with yellow stripes in it. He had lightning shooting out of cracks in a bottle for a cutie mark. The earth pony was a deep blue with a shimmering white mane and tale with thin pink stripes running through it and a lobster trap for a cutie mark. Not that I could see either of their marks through their barding, I knew them as Volt Storm and Crabwalk respectively. They were here for me, damn.
Cool air rushed in and I was reminded how sickly hot it was in here. Just as the cool air rushed in the hot pungent air rushed out and made the two ponies standing in the door way recoil at the stench. They looked like they had walked into a wall. However the two of them recovered so fast that you could miss their slip in disposition.
“Which one of you bastards is Carbon?” asked Crabwalk in a menacing voice that made three zebras and a griffin point to me in fear.

Volt sniffed the air and after gagging a little he scowled at us.
“You guys are real jerks you know that? We’ve been working in this storm and you’ve been down here drinking this whole time?” his suggestion was met with a chorus of groans. “Well why does it smell like the bathroom of a high school dance down here then?” he asked skeptically.
“Vomiting contest mishap.” Answered Cherry shuddering a bit.
“Is every Zebra on the ship down here?” Crabwalk, he noticed things like this.
“Ya they’re all down here, every griffin too.” I answered with some difficulty.
“Well we’re leaving in a minute so come on.” Volt turned and addressed the others. “And you lot, on deck in five.” He left no room for protest.
They turned to leave so I got shakily to my hooves and hobbled after them, the world was still spinning and my head was still pounding. Lifting my saddle bags to my back and grabbing my hat I just about lost my concentration and dropped them. For a second I panicked when from the lack of a jingle I realized my dog tags and shell weren’t on the chain around my neck. Then I remembered I had left them in my Raat pack back home.
“Just another body here that nobody knows.” I said under my breath. Wait, where had I heard that? Not a problem right now. I took my hat in my magic and screwed it onto my horn while feeding my ears through the holes. The meagre concentration needed to do something so strenuous as putting my hat on was sending my head spinning. I continued to stagger after them adjusting my hat as I made it through the door.
Hats are one of the only down sides to being a unicorn. You can’t try on a hat before you buy it because you need a custom hole cut. However, we also don’t lose near as many hats as the other races. Earth ponies need only put them on and Pegasi need strings to hold their hats on but for a unicorn once your hat is screwed on your horn it is pretty much locked in. It just took some practice to get your ears lined up with the holes as you twisted it on the last spiral. This particular hat I had purchased just before this trip thinking I made me look more, well, adventury. It was a nice brown flat brimmed cowpony hat that had rifle shells in loops in the hatband. Those were only for display turns out but I would have had to take them out anyway for this trip. I just have to find something else to fill the loops now.
Hobbling after them I fished a small rectangular aluminum box about the size of a 40 match box out of my pocket. It was a wonderful device that held dozens of paper thin sheets of metal covered in a pain killer that evaporated and you inhaled it. This particular one was army issue and so volatile it would start evaporating as soon as the seals were off, other mixes needed to be heated up like the kind in the laced cigars in a humidor in my saddle bag. Good thing Equestrians knew what tobacco was. The pain killer wasn’t addictive itself but you could still develop a dependence on it if you took it too often, that’s why I had chosen to be sick until now when sweet relief was within hoofs reach. You didn’t need to heat this kind but I still did whenever I could. I pulled out my lighter and held the flame underneath it.
“This is bull shit. What squad got to bring their zebras while Kopis and Shashka had to stay home?” Asked Crabwalk angrily.
“They aren’t soldiers, they are resource management and tradesmen. They are checking the gems, processing some of them and making sure the bits get in the right hooves.” I answered as I pealed the seals off both sides of the inhaler. I held the flame to the intake side and sucked in a deep breath and held it. In about six seconds my stomach settled and by head began to clear. Oh ya.
“So why couldn’t our zebras come with us?” Volt asked.
I was holding my second puff and so couldn’t answer immediately which conveniently gave time to think of a response. I thought back to last week.

I had been walking across the field to the commander’s office. A nice little building with a wraparound porch, it didn’t seem like a command building at all. There were a group of mares with their done up target rifles standing around on it while one was shooting. She fired and I looked for a target. Spotting a cloud of dust I found the targets, bean cans full of dirt. They were shooting at 200 yards from standing.
“Nice shooting ladies! I called as I passed earning a couple of chuckles for my effort.
I recognized one of the mares that was pretending to be embarrassed by the flattery, she was a Hell Mare, the first Hell Mare I had met in fact. We locked eyes for a second before she broke contact and went back to the match.
I noticed two things upon entering the building. One, a radio was playing Make the Choice nearby.
Those with the power set the pace,
Now you can die or you can race.
The choice is yours, I’m not one to tell,
But I’ll see you in Hell.
The second was a prisoner standing smugly in the cell with four guards staring at him. The prisoner was a horse with feathers and three silver medals tied into his mane. His mouth was locked shut with an iron halter. On each leg there was a large weight shackled to slow down his movements but he was lifting them like weights at a gym as if not inconvenienced at all by his predicament. Did I mention he was a horse? Fucking things were huge! I recognized him almost immediately as a Karkayan mercenary.
“What the bucks a Karkayan doing here?” I asked before I remembered to act in control around prisoners.
“Black Wings found him asleep and brought him in.” answered one of the guards ignoring my breach of protocol. “Don’t ask me how.”
“What are you trying to get out of him?” I quietly asked the closest guard in a voice the Karkayan couldn’t hear.
“Where his buddies are and who hired him. The last guy who tried to beat it out of him is still in surgery so we have to wait for a unicorn with a memory spell to get here,” He turned to the cage, “and it is going to hurt a lot!”
The Karkayan only smiled showing off his sharpened teeth.

I know that look upon your face,
It’s your life you chose to race.
The choice you was yours and I wasn’t gunna tell,
But I’m calling from hell,
Our commander was an interesting old buck. He set up a range off his porch because he liked the sound of gunshots and thought they added gravity to what he said. Somehow every conversation with him had exactly the same format and was far more abusive than it had any right to be. If he sold sandwiches the standard interaction with him would go something like this.
“I want a sandwich.”
“What kind of god damned sandwich do you want?”
“Thistles on white, you prick!”
“Here’s your sandwich.”
“Fuck you!”
“Ten buck you gelding!”
“Here’s a 20!”
“Here’s your bucking change!” Clatch clatch “Now get the fuck out before I put a bullet in your ass! Come again!”
Whenever I try to imagine how he got into power all I can picture is a long series of hoof fights until they gave him an army. The curious thing about him was he had the rarest of all the kingdom medals. He had a set of steel fangs. Typically taking the form of a striking cobra head no two medals were the same as they were all custom and hand made. The thing that made them so rare was the fact it was awarded upon making your five hundredth kill. If for some reason you were found faking a Steel Fang medal you would be branded with the mark of shame and put on a sweeper team or made an executioner until you had made 500 kills. It may seem ironic the killing itself was enough punishment to dissuade almost anyone from trying to take what glory the real Steel Fangs have in having done that. They wanted a taste of it then they could damn well kill 500 ponies.
I don’t remember much about the talk with the commander except that he said we were from Equestria, we had Equestrian accents, and we were going to Equestria. When I stomped my hoof and asked why the zebras weren’t coming he asked me how many zebras I remembered from back home. Nothing had changed and ponies were just as xenophobic as they always were so the zebras would blow our cover. You still have the right accent so you’re going in with other Equestrian recruits. Ring in your swearing too, curse like you would to a foal. Also they don’t really wear barding there so get those urges under control fast. You get 5% of the final price of everything you bring in. I remember yelling kingdom to the core and our horse shoes clanged together before I was outside his office looking at the Karkayan again.
“Ponies are scared of them, we need them to not be suspicious of us if we don’t want to bring the whole god damn Lunar guard down on us.”
“Reel in the swearing Carbon.” Said Volt
“Don’t want to bring the,” I paused searching for an appropriate word and came up empty, “Lunar Guard down on us?”
“Better.” Said Crabwalk
While the royal guard always had to stand as a shining symbol of Equestrian royal power and excellence, the Lunar Guard that once served Luna, the princess of darkness, was free to operate in the shadows of the night. Whenever somepony had to be eliminated, arrested, or any of the other unsavoury actions of maintaining power had to be performed the duty fell to the clandestine Lunar Guard. Many Equestrian ghost and monster stories had their roots traceable to scarcely witnessed Lunar Guard operations. They were so good at their jobs that only a select few ponies were even aware that the Lunar Guard continued operating during Nightmare Moon's exile.
While I might laugh at the Royal Guards pretence of being an army the Lunar Guard scares me shitless. I mean the Black Wings, Karkayans, White Tails, and any secret police you care to name might be just as effective as the Lunar Guard but ponies know about them or at least hear rumors. Nopony knew about the Lunar Guard until Nightmare Moon came back. I don’t think even Celestia fully knew what they got up to. They were for the most part unchecked, self-sufficient, fiercely devoted to protecting Equestria, and invisible. If they took orders it was most likely from interpreting Celestia rather than anything she actually said. White Tails may call themselves stealth incarnate but the Lunar Guard didn’t even cast a shadow.
I took another big puff on the inhaler before I started breathing through it like I would breathe normally. I don’t know if there was still medicine in it or not but I felt great. I closed the lighter but still floated it beside me. It was taking forever to get up these stairs. We eventually got to the top and Volt opened the door. I spat the inhaler over the side of the ship and turned my ears to hear the faint yet satisfying splash. That inhaler was clearly not from Equestria so it wasn’t coming with us. It was night and raining, perfect for a stealthy landing. Still, I cringed at the thought of getting wet, I hated rain.
As we trotted to the landing boats I put my lighter back in my pocket. Well, it really wasn’t my lighter, my lighter was in my Raat pack back in the armory. This was actually a Manehatten made lighter that was much bigger than mine and used lamp gas as fuel. Everything had to be Equestrian or appear to be so down to and including the nails in our horse shoes. Our hooves actually needed a trim quite badly but that was all part of the plan.
I just realized you don’t know what a RAAT pack is. Stands for rapid access assault trunk. As the most important parts of soldiers are their weapons we always kept our armour, gear, and guns in military issue steel trunks in our homes. Everything we needed was in there locked up and accessible at a moment’s notice. If we were away from home when they needed us the army knew where our trunks were in our houses and could get our gear to us. If we were planning to go away we could check in our trunks and they would be able to deliver our personalised gear to us wherever we were if we were needed. Quite a slick system really. My machine gun and armour were in there along with other things that I was already missing.
Of course we weren’t going in unarmed. Crabwalk had a target rifle wrapped up on his back and we all had our swords. I also had my trusty bowie knife on my foreleg and my custom coin blades in my saddle bags. Last but not least I had a pair of griffin made Jackal pistols chambered in 50 SS concealed in hidden holsters under my saddle bags. I had brought them despite great protest from the ponies organizing our gear. They were really the only thing I had that couldn’t be passed off as Equestrian. The holsters held them upside down and they were covered with a layer of fabric so you couldn’t even see them when the bags were off me. I chose Griffin pistols because I wanted there to only be a one in three chance that an enemy could even use my own guns against me.
The pistols were chambered in 50ss. The original 50 Straight was a close quarter’s carbine made for slamming ponies really hard up really close. They made a revolver to fire the same cartridge and set the power in the somewhat novel way of making the pistol first then shortening the case until they could hold onto it with two hands. That became the carbine load. Then they downloaded that until they could hold onto it with one hand. that was the pistol loading and the ammo was theoretically interchangable. Not surprisingly the recoil of the pistol proved too much for the average person, (and a tooth loosening mouth cutting bastard at that,) and soon made the 50s for short. The 50s cartridges were better behaved in the pistols but could still be fired from the carbine. Somepony shortened the case farther into the 50ss to make it work in semi automatic handguns. The 50sss was an attempt at a cartridge better aimed at concealability and really just gunning for the 50’s reputation as a pony stopper. Any one of the variants was usable in the carbine. Jackals held 10 rounds, had a hammer, double action trigger, and no safeties. Their moto was pull it out, pull the trigger, pull a body. They weren’t standard issue but they were popular among the Kingdoms soldiers because anyone who ever pulled a trigger with the safety on when they really needed a bang does not want that happening with their combat handgun. Of course in training they taught us to pull your pistol when someone needs to be hurt really bad. If someone needs to be killed use it to signal someone with a rifle. While the pistols weren’t the biggest or the easiest to hide, the Jackals had killed their fair share of wolves.
Yes I am a bit of a gun nut thanks for asking. My shack back home is where I keep my bed and my guns, and pretty much nothing else. Buck I wish I had hands sometimes so that I could feel an automatic dance in my grasp or the solid lock of an action slamming shut… but I suppose a horn is good enough. Ponies ask me sometimes why I need so many guns but really the truth is, in terms you would get, I think of them like candy. The sweetest and loudest of all candy that still won’t make you fat.
I also had 100 loose rounds of ammo and four spare mags. We had been told time and time again not to be violent, not to hurt anypony but I knew it was going to get bloody. We were going into peaceful pacifistic Equestria and expecting to play by Griffin Kingdom rules, ponies were going to die, it was inevitable. Griffins were violent by nature. Even nodding your head at someone the wrong way could get you stabbed if they thought you were mimicking the recoil on a mouth weapon.
We made our way to the boats that would take us to shore. Our boat was already on the ropes to be lowered down into the turbulent waters. As I walked closer I could see they were pulling more landing boats loaded with supplies up from the lower decks and fitting a wire to them so they could pull the empty boats back from the shore. The boats were coming up coated in a thin white powder that was quickly washed away by the rain.
We were all unofficial passengers on a sugar ship. There was a curious race diametrically of what most drug dealers do going on between the major sugar providers. They were seeing who could dope up the sugar the most. Equestrians didn’t know why but they all knew that right now the best sugar came from the Kingdom. Well not exactly, the best comes from Ziembia but that’s the designer sugar as they don’t grow a lot. The Kingdom has close trade with Ziembia so right now we made the best general purpose sugar. Overenthusiastic bakers were often subject to erratic behaviour but that was usually passed off as their personality. Guess no one had caught on judging from the average pupil size and the fact they can’t lay off the sweets.
Walking up to the launch boat we met up with the other member of the group. A grey unicorn with a green hue to his coat, he was named Woodsong.
I guess this is what they had been working on while I was sick, loading the landing boats. We piled in and swung out over the side. Okay, now to lower into the water. Why weren’t we lowering? I looked to the crew members for an explanation but instead saw the captain standing there.
No one told him exactly what we were doing. I’ve heard stories of curious captains holding up missions right in the last leg of the operation until they got answers. He looked at me before holding out his hooves.
“Kingdom to the core.” He said slowly, as if he knew the words were meaningful but didn’t have cause to say them often.
“To the core!” I replied as I smashed my shoes into his.
“Hell Ya!” he shouted and we started our decent as the crew members worked the ropes. The Captain had just given his blessing.
We were lowered slowly toward the water before we splashed in and disconnected from the ropes. Now for the tricky part, we had to hit the shore in the dark. Luckily I knew a night vision spell, that’s why our team was going in first. There was a small torch on the back of our boat with a shield on it so the boats behind us could see the guiding flame but anypony on shore could only see a slight illumination on the water. The four of us grabbed hold of the oars and started for land me occasionally correcting our course. The waves were actually pushing us toward land but the rocking was far from gentle. Half the time the crests of the waves were so tall I couldn’t see the shore even with my spell. We were getting close to the shore so Volt put out the light. The other boats would wait until we had cleared the beach.
Washing up on shore shouldn’t have been a surprise but our first hint that we had landed was the sand scraping on the bottom of the boat. Without hesitation me and Woods grabbed the supplies in our telekinesis and jumped overboard. Cold! Shit cold, and wet. Damn didn’t think about that somehow. Without thinking I ran for the shore closing the distance as I splashed through the frigid water. It was a relief when the sand started clinging to my hooves rather than sinking in the mud.
I turned around looking for the rest of the team. Where were they? They were on the same boat I was. Oh, there they were, walking slowly and quietly up on the beach. Oops.
“The hay Carbon? Anypony hear that?” Scolded Volt in a voice much too quiet for his tone.
I hadn’t checked. The four of us put down what we were carrying and split up looking for anyone nearby the beach. I poked my head over the embankment and to my surprise there was a cloaked figure carrying a lantern walking down a nearby path muttering to himself.
“Soaking wet and so thirsty I could drink out of a puddle. This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when you make a weatherpony angry.” He muttered to himself as he made his way slowly along the path. “And I own a store that sells canteens, and umbrellas, and like nothing else!” he yelled to no one.
“Well I guess that’s why we are here. To make sure the coast is clear.” I said as soon as the buck was out of sight. “Woods, relight the torch.”
Woods took out his lighter and relight the torch. It cast its faint light over the water and before long other ponies began walking up on shore. Stealthy. The only thing you could see was the faint glow of telekinesis around what the unicorns were carrying, our horns were covered with hoods so that glow was blocked. The boats were already being pulled back on their wires as the ship continued on its journey.
In silence we began the process of assembling wagons and loading supplies. Unicorns were putting things together while everypony else stuck the pins and bolts in. We had spent untold nights practicing putting wagons together fast in the dark and it showed.
Guards watched for travelers in apprehension as the faint glow of the unicorns threatened to give us away. Some chewed the handles of their knives as they watched. That was actually training, if you think you need a weapon have it in your mouth/hand not caressing it in your holster. The fastest draw showed up with the gun in his hand. Still, it was a clear example of playing by griffin rules. We hadn’t been here for two minutes and they were already prepped to kill any witnesses when we probably could have told them we were just fishing or something and they would have bought it. Ponies were going to get hurt, only a matter of time.
Okay, step one is over, now to get to shelter.
Shelter was an old mansion that a rich prince had commissioned as a summer home by the sea. Somehow it had come into the possession of the current owner’s father as inheritance through a complex chain of relations and no one higher up in the chain wanting it. He turned it into a hotel and made a hefty profit. The current owner was not his father though and this was the down season. At first overjoyed to have a solid booking out of the blue the current owner had been watching this day approach with a growing sense of dread.
The white stallion woke up from a nearby thunder strike and quickly checked his watch. Oh good, he hadn’t slept too long. After all these sleepless nights worrying about this night he dosed off within the hour of their arrival? With a deep sigh he reminded himself not to think too hard about it, they were probably just famous adventures who didn’t want to be interrupted by fans. Oh, there was the familiar clenching in his stomach that showed up whenever he lied to himself.
Donning a white nightgown he crept down the hall to check on his sleeping daughter. She was still sleeping but she stirred at every bolt of thunder. As he watched her his heart rate quickened and he got a foul taste in his mouth. Oh gosh he had a bad feeling about these guests but business was business and Celestia knew he need business.
If it was just the down season or just the illness he could have managed. However, the big attraction now was Beach Wood Lake not the ocean as it had been for so long. In the on season he hadn’t gotten nearly the number of guests he had expected and now in the off season they hadn’t had a guest in nearly a month. That was until a lone mare had shown up two weeks ago with saddle bags heavy with bits and a contract to rent every room in the building at a premium rate in exchange for secrecy.
He hated the secrecy and how he always felt like he was doing something wrong when he thought about this deal. However, his daughter was sick and medicine was not cheap. The combination could lose him the mansion if he didn’t get some money. He already furloughed all the staff and was working two jobs. His wife had also taken up a job selling expensive imported cloth to designers. He hated how this deal felt but it was good money and for his daughter he could put up with it, he would put up with anything for her.
He pulled himself away from his daughter’s door and closed it softly behind him before making his way nearly silently down the stairs. He went to the window to watch for his guests arrival and to his surprise they were already heading up the driveway. He took a second to compose himself and waited. This was actually happening. He was about to find out who his guests were.
He waited until they were close then opened the door, despite being a little out of practice he had timed it perfectly. A black clad pony was standing there with their hoof raised to knock but instead found the door open. After a shocked second they put in down and asked,
“Is this the,”
“You are at the right place.” The white stallion interrupted stepping aside. He was going to pour every ounce of power he had into this, give it right back to them. Not let them know how nervous he was.
A stream of ponies began coming in through the door carrying heavy loads on their backs.
“Let me show you where to put those.”
The inn keep tried to show everyone to their rooms and where to set up large and strange looking machines but gave up and started acting more like a traffic pony telling carts which way to go. He watched as the crowd moved large boxes with military precision yelling hushed orders and running into and out of rooms.
Much like my love of colours resulting from my not having one, I had a particular fondness for floors. I had seen some nice floors before. Griffins of old in particular had made some beautiful floors. Unfortunately when those floors of old had met the steel horseshoes of late the result had been a lot of ruined or covered up floors. Polished concrete, ruff planks, or even painted asphalt were common modern choices.
If I wasn’t so weird I probably would have commented on the art on the walls or the chandeliers or the banister but it was the polished stone floors that caught my eye. The floor in the entrance was magnificent. Made from some sort of marble with green veins running through it. It reminded me of one in a griffin mansion, however I was forbidden to step hoof on it and had to stay on the wooden planks reserved for us hooved folk. Looking closer I realized it was also covered with a half inch layer or something hard, clear, and shiny. The stairs were of the same luxurious marble. However, the floors upstairs, in the halls, and every other room I saw were boards.
I think the inn keeper and I both saw the mud on the floor at the same time and cringed thinking of the potential damage. Two black clad unicorns apparently shared our concerns and trotted up to him.
“Where do you keep your mops?” One asked
“Down that hall in the broom closet.” He said turning to point but stopped when he spotted his daughter at the bottom of the stairs rubbing her eyes. He really didn’t want her down here with these strange guests running around. The two unicorns trotted off in the direction he pointed and he took a step toward his daughter. Before he had taken two steps he froze in his tracks as a blue pony with a white and pink mane walked up to his daughter.
“Isn’t it passed your bed time?” He asked in a friendly voice.
“Well, yes but.”
“No buts, little fillies need their sleep if they want to grow up big and strong. Besides, your daddy is a little busy right now but I’m sure he’ll be right up.”
“But I can’t sleep with the thunder.”
“Okay, do you think you could sleep with a bed time story?”
“Yes.” She squeaked happily.
The stallion scooped her up with his head and deposited her on his back as he headed up the stairs.
“Okay then, which is your room? And will this story be from a book or would you like to hear one of mine?”
“You have stories? Like what?”
“I could tell you about the time I worked making food for griffins.”
“What do griffins eat?”
“Big scary monsters! Rawr!”
The filly laughed on his back as they rounded the corner.
Lashing fever, reaper of the poor, she had it pretty bad. Normally only contagious for a brief time after the death of the carrier but it sure was virulent during that time. The name sake symptom was big bleeding and extremely painful soars appearing on your skin and a resulting more or less constant smell of blood. Recovery depended solely on getting enough of the red medicine for a long enough time to purge it from your system. However, it was expensive, rare, and in high demand.
A 5ml shot could set you back easily more than 200 bits and you would need a half ounce or 15ml every day for about two weeks to purge the sickness. One full week of that you would feel fine but it would come back if you stopped. Even if the average family had 9000 bits on hoof to pay for the two week treatment there usually wasn’t any place to buy that much at a time. A real good pharmacy in Equestria could probably get their hoofs on 16 ounces or 500ml a month. The medicine therefore came in small bottles, one half ml, 1ml, 2.5ml, 5ml, 10ml, half ounce and the biggest being the ounce. A doctor might have a three ounce or 80ml bottle. The saving grace and also curse of the red medicine was you only needed about 30ml a month to stay alive. The result was the sickness dragging on with ponies usually only able to get enough to stay alive, bottles being washed out to get every drop. The fever usually bankrupted those unfortunate enough to get it, and far too many did.
I walked up to the innkeeper as he looked back at where his daughter had disappeared from view with worried eyes.
“Don’t worry about Crabwalk, he’s about the nicest stallion you will ever meet. Great with kids and if the monster in the closet was real he could handle it.” I said in my most friendly voice.
“She is sick.” He said flatly “and the monster is in the hallway.” He added cracking a smile.
“He knows she’s sick, even I can tell that. If anypony can recognize Lashing Fever he can, his little sister was sick with it. Trying to make enough money for her recovery was the whole reason he started in this game. Before you ask, yes, she did get better.” I brought my hoof to my chin in thought for a second, had he actually told me that last part or did I just make it up? No matter. “She’s in good hooves for now. Names Carbon by the way, yours?”
“Silver Sheets, my wife is Silk Sheets.”
“Nice to meet you.” We bonked hooves lightly “I love your floor. What’s this stuff on top of it if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Floor polish?”
“Floor polish?” I repeated incredulous “This isn’t over.”
There was an awkward pause that I broke
“Did you say there was a monster in the hallway? Doesn’t that strike you as a bit of a strange place?”
“Old building, has so many creaks and cracks that it can sound like hooves walking. The sickness makes it all the worse, she sees things too.”
“She ever describe it?” I asked as I felt a cold niggling on the back of my neck.
“Yes but you were a colt, we imagined monsters everywhere. She hallucinates from the fever and just gets so scared.”
“Ya, except it turned out that my monsters were actually coyotes living under the house. What does she say she sees?”
“Come on, don’t tell me you’re serious?”
“Indulge me.”
“Okay,” he said as he pointed the zebras to a room. “Looks like a red skinned pony, big teeth like a lion, long tail, glowing red eyes, and big black bat wings. That would be one scary hallucination wouldn’t it be?” he said stressing the word hallucination, he didn’t like discussing this with strangers, come to think of it, why was he?
By now many ponies had stopped what they were doing and a few had even put down their loads to listen to the description. Silver Sheets looked around at them confused and a little angry, he didn’t want everybody knowing about his family problems, he wasn’t sure why he had even told me.
“That would be really scary. Now are you absolutely sure that’s what she said?”
“Yes!”
“What about horns?”
“Actually ya, there are horns.” Silvers expression shifted from annoyance to one of a colt who just remembered something he didn’t really want to. “Wait a minute.”
“Red skin, no hair, big teeth, red eyes, bat wings, horns? That is exactly what she describes?”
“Yes.”
“Hear that boys, she’s seeing monsters. Wow that must be scary.” I paused as the ponies around nodded in agreement. “And that’s what she sees every time?”
“Every time.” Silver said, impatience raising in his voice.
“Positive that is what she described?”
“Yes!” he was past the point of courtesy now.
I tapped my hoof lightly on the floor.
“Absolutely positively,”
“Yes! It’s exactly the same thing every time!” He cut me off. “The smell of its breath, it walks around her room, claws inside her walls, watches her, same gosh darned monster every time.” He yelled with a stomp of his hoof. “You satisfied? Am I certain enough for you?” He turned to the men, “and you keep my business out of this and I won’t ask yours!” His outburst didn’t achieve the desired result as the ponies shuffled a bit but stayed fixed where they were.
“Okay, okay, if you are certain that’s what she said then I have something very important to tell you and I want you to hear it. Lashing Fever as you know makes you smell like blood. The only problem I have is it doesn’t cause hallucinations.” I dragged out the last sentence putting emphasis on every word.
“What?” Silver Sheets deadpanned.
“The thing you are describing is a thing.” Said a rather sick looking griffin as he put down a large box he was carrying.
“What?” he said again this time alarm clear in his voice.
“I really hope she has an imagination to rival that designer Rarity.”
As if on cue we heard screaming, smashing, and grunting coming from upstairs and shuffling hooves on the hard wood floor. Muffled growling and hissing joined in with thuds and grunts wafting to us through the halls. Everypony stared as Crabwalk appeared around the corner wrestling a skinned looking pony with a long tail, glowing eyes, black bat wings, blood leaking from its fanged mouth and a large knife shoved in its back. Crabs wrestled it down the hall toward the stairs. He smashed the monsters face into the polished marble banister with audible crunch, pulled his knife out of the creatures back with his teeth, and flung the monstrosity down the stairs. It held out its front hooves to stop itself but its broken right front leg folded and sent it tumbling and banging painfully down the marble stairs leaving a trail of bloody prints on every impact like a grotesque stamp. The creature landed in a writhing, screaming, bloody ball at the bottom of the stairs.
“Jerseys!” Crabwalk screamed from the top of the stairs as the filly ran crying into her parent’s bedroom where her mother must be.
I ripped my own sword out of the sheath and charged over the broken body of the Jersey Devil pausing only long enough to slam a steel shod hoof down brutally hard on its head and receiving a light sprinkling of blood up my legs for the effort.
In seconds I was at the top of the stairs and running the direction Crabs had come from. Somehow I still noted the change in sound between the polished stone and the wood. Let’s see, every door was closed except for the one on the left, that’s probably where they came from. Dashing inside I was struck by the smell of blood, like I had just opened the door to a butcher shop, or some hunter pony’s garage where game was hanging. Lashing fever, and they had it bad for a long time.
I shifted gears to sneaking listening mode. The second thing I noticed was that there was dust on everything. A few toys sat here and there, the farther from the bed they were the more dust was around them. The ones close to the bed had been moved around of late, at least she was she was still able to get up and have some fun, she still had time. The tiny 5ml bottles of the red medicine sat empty and lined up on the dresser against the wall like row upon row of glass soldiers. There was a small bed in the right corner of the room with some stuffed toys and books on it.
Something caught my eyes about the bottles and I looked a little closer at them. Who keeps empty medicine bottles? How long had she been sick? Darn it brain not now, here for a reason. I half expected there to be a jersey right in front of me when I looked up but this wasn’t a cheap horror film and the room was still empty. Had the monster been standing here when Crabwalk walked in with the filly or was he already on his story?
“Behind you the monster is back!” the filly would have said only half believing her eyes.
“What do you mean there is a mons----” Crabs would have said as he turned to see the devil sneaking up on him.

I scanned the room but couldn’t see anything out of place in the dim room.
“Crabs,” I yelled as he came back into view with a procession of hoofs behind him. I could hear more going to the parent’s room. “How many were there?”
“Two that I saw.”
Where was the second one? Something hit me about the wall. “Clawing in her walls.” The stallion had said that hadn’t he? I walked over to the wall slowly and flattened myself against it. Slowly I put my ear against it and listened. Nothing, I closed my eyes and knocked on the wall as I walked along it. Knock, silence, knock, silence, knock, silence, knock, grisssssss.
My eyes shot open in alarm as I heard the hissy growl not an inch from my ear through the wall. Jumping away and screaming I slammed my sword through the wall and left a cut about two feet long. I heard a snap.
“Carbon what did you just do?” asked Crabs
“It was right beside my head!” I said trying to keep the absolute panic out of my voice. “Right beside it!”
“Did you kill it?” Volt asked
I gathered myself and telekinetically pulled the sword out of the wall. Oh buck, the blade came back covered in blood, but a good nine inches was snapped off.
“Nice Carbon I’m amazed your cutie mark wasn’t a broken sword!” said one of the zebras in anger at me breaking yet another good sword.
There was flapping against the inside of the wall.
“Its either dead or hurt really bad. Let’s crack open the wall and check.” I said felling more than a little self satisfaction creep in between the it was right there panic.
“Not doing that Carbon. It had to get in there somehow already so let’s find that hole before we start knocking down the nice ponies walls.” Said one of the zebras, Xyphis I think his name was.
“What? You saying killing his jerseys isn’t enough to clear us to knock down his wall?”
“No, now find the hole and let’s get it out before it rots in there. The rest of you still have a job to do so get to it.” Said Xyphis.
I climbed off the floor and sheathed the remains of my sword. Now what was I looking at before? Oh right the bottles! Looking back to the bottles I quickly counted them and ran some numbers. The filly looked like she was about two and a half so divide that by the number of bottles that were there and how sick she was. With that number of bottles and a minimum dosage she could have been kept alive for four years. That couldn’t be right. I then did the easy thing and read the label on the oldest looking bottle. A year and half she had been sick, what a miserable foalhood.
“Carbon you coming?” Asked Volt snapping me out of my reverie.
I straightened up and trotted out of the room after him. We went into the adjacent room and to my surprise the end of the sword was sticking out of the wall. We walked around the room pushing on panels, looked in the closet, and moving furniture.
“What are those?” I heard Silver Sheets ask at the bottom of the stairs.
“You mean to tell me that ya never heard of Jersey Devils before? They always come for the blood but never eat the sick people. Usually starve for a while then eat everpony else in the house. This whole place is one big death trap.” I heard Woods explain in disbelief. “The doctor really never warned you about that?”
“He told me they were hallucinations.” Silver Sheets responded in shock. That’s all I heard before I went into another room.
“You know the hole that leads into that wall is probably in the attic and around a corner. We’re gunna have to knock down that wall.” I said matter of factly.
“Carbon we have to at least make an effort to find it before you knock down the wall in a mansion. And besides, they have to have a hole that lets them get between the attic and this floor.”
“Fine.”
And so we went checking from room to room, closet to closet looking anywhere there could be a devil hole. Those slippery sons of geldings can squeeze through a badger hole if they are keen to. They have a real reputation back home for coming down chimneys and eating foals. You might not realize it but there are a lot of places where you can hide a badger sized hole in a building where it can go unnoticed for a really long time.
“You find anything yet?”
“Yes Carbon, I found a whole nest of the darn things and figured I wouldn’t say anything and just let you keep looking.” Volt replied sardonically.
“Fine.” I said as I got up and walked across the hall into another room. After a second I saw Volt follow me into the room. Well if he wanted to work in silence I would let him. I trotted over to the closet and looked at the ceiling. Nope, no hole in here either. Volt walked up behind me staying annoyingly in my blind spot. “You think it takes two of us to not see a hole in the ceiling?” Wait a minute, I thought as I turned to look at the fire place, there were fire places in every one of these rooms. “Volt, I figured it out!” I yelled just as a nearby bolt of lightning cut the power. “Volt, you got a flashlight?” I sighed.
“Yep.” Came a response from across the hall. Wait, who was in the room with me?
I turned and found myself face to fang with a third devil. I ripped my cut off sword out of my sheath and slashed at the monster which deftly dodged out of the way. The gained floor space gave me room to take up a fighting stance. I swung the snapped off sword like a mad pony while the devil deftly dodged every attack. It lunged in with its gapping mouth open and I threw one of my steel shod hooves at it. This too he effortlessly dodged before moving out of range of my next slice.
The two of us stood there for a second staring, neither one knew what exactly to do. This devil was definitely bigger than the one Crabs had thrown down the stairs. How had Crabs pulled this off? Its face was pale white like bone. Muscle bulged under its leathery hide. Darn thing was built like a gray hound! With a snort it flared its wings and stomped one of its cloven hooves in annoyance. What were my options? No one was running to help, typical. It clearly had great night vision and dodging my glowing weapons was no problem for it. Why couldn’t my magic be black? Or blue? Yellow was such a bad colour for this! Its hairless skin would cut fairly easily unlike hair which was more or less like cutting sand paper, you know, if I could get a blade to it.
Ha ha! I had a trick for just this situation. I could straight throw my knife along a path about a foot and a half from my sword and keep my magical grip on the sword. When the monster dodged the sword it would jump straight into the knife with no glow field to give it away! Then I could grab hold of the knife already in it and finish the job!
I tore my knife out of the sheath and threw it as per my plan. It worked perfectly and the creature dodged out of the path of the sword. On the wrong side. Did not think of that. The knife stuck into the far wall with a thud. Opps, back to square one. The devil eyed me and crouched ready to jump on my next move. Or maybe it was getting ready to pounce! Without a point to catch it on that could go really bad for me. This would be so much easier with a gun!
A gun? I had two guns. Oh boy was I ever going to catch flack for this. Dropping the sword to the ground I drew the Jackal off my right hip and lined up the sights. Sooooo glad I sprung for the glowing red sights. I folded my ears. Jakump! I put a round between the devils front legs half way up. I did not expect it to uncoil like a spring and start spinning like that. I was pretty good at this, it was only like six feet from me and I’m a pretty good shot. I put the bead on the red blur and pulled the trigger again. Jakump!
In the light of my night vision I could tell I had gut shot the monster. It stopped dead spin and swung its head around to the other side of its body and grabbed a mouthful of its own guts. Yup, didn’t know what bit it but never seen those things before. Coyotes do it all the time. Luckily after thrashing its mouthful of guts for a second it paused and I put the sights on its head. Jakump! Devil dropped like a sack of wet horse apples.
Somepony ran into the room with a lamp in his mouth. Volt, it was Volt.
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeewhateeetheeeeeehayeeeeeCarbon?eeeeeeee” He asked in what I assumed was a critical tone. I had brought two pistols, six magazines, one hundred rounds, and forgot silencers.
“They will think it’s the thunder!” I yelled. Ok, it was only three shots from a pistol indoors, and I had folded my ears so my hearing should be fine.
Volt held up his hoof to say something but apparently he was without criticism for once. He put his hoof back down.
“Nice shooting Carbon.” He said. See? My hearing was okay. Plus my hearing restoration spell probably played a hand. Wait a second, I know a silencing spell! Flippin griffins were so bad at training you to use spells in fast shooting scenarios!
Of course the stripes who were apparently in charge weren’t so easily appeased. After getting wrung out for shooting on day one, and how could we be expected to handle things out there if we couldn’t handle a couple lousy devils without gunfire, we were given some final instructions.
“Put them out back, see what comes to eat them.”
After we dragged the bodies out into a pile in the back yard two poor bucks were given the exhilarating task of hiding all night to see if anything would come out of the house to eat the bodies. I suspected it was only a breeding pair and a challenging male but better safe than sorry with flesh eating monsters. If we didn’t wake up to gun shots I was probably right.
Oh, and we did have to knock down that wall. I did the honors.
Just out of curiosity we cut open the devil Crabs threw down the stairs. It was pregnant with a litter of devils, that’s probably why Crabs could catch it.
I then had to ask the same zebra who had wrung me out for a new sword which he begrudgingly handed over.
“Didn’t they say they would issue an enchanted sword of not breaking or something last time you broke a sword?”
“Well they said that, but I really hate how enchantments glow, I mean my glow is enough by itself. Plus those swords cost as much as three swords.”
“Do they cost as much as six swords?”
“No.”
“Well Carbon, unicorns break swords. You however happen to be so particularly good at it that word of your having brock five swords got around. That’s number six. You have to start paying for these if you keep breaking them.”
“What? That’s not fare! It’s not my fault those were all made from trash can steel!”
“Get out of here Carbon! I have real stuff to do!” With that I was pushed back into the hall. This sword was more of a saber type and had a thicker blade than the last one. With a satisfied sigh I started off for bed.

I was awoken by a very impatient Volt Storm very early in the morning.
“Darn it Carbon get up! The zebras want to talk to us and then were getting out.”
“What?” I asked trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes. “Aren’t we supposed to go last?”
“Ya, but whoever goes first gets their pick of the locations first. Figured you would be all over that.”
I was up, and strapping my knife to my leg, getting my barding on, sheathing my sword, and out the door in ten seconds flat. As I ran down the stairs I remembered that I should get somepony to look into exactly what this coating was. Also, what was that?
On the floor was something white and shiny. Picking it up in my magic I realised it was a tooth, a fang in fact. There was still a bit of dried flesh on it and some bone around the base. Crabs really had slammed that devils mouth into the banister pretty hard hadn’t he? Nanny my liters those things had solid teeth if they were still intact after being slammed out of a jaw! I looked around quickly then slipped the fang into one of the loops on my hat band. After a moment I stuck a small vile of impossibly white fluid into the band beside it.
Pony bones don’t really heal like those of a griffin or any one of most animals. We need potions just to heal broken bones. Luckily we have gotten really good at making those potions. Call them bone shots now, they are small and heal you in a day or less.
We continued into the zebras office.
“Okay, so my name as Xyphis and I am the zebra who is going to be telling you what you brought back and how much money you get for it.” The Zebra walked over to a desk and returned with a large jingling bag. “There are 200 bits each in here for expenses and five grand in hundred bit bank notes. Any questions?”
“Yes, asked Volt Shower “what’s a bit note?”
“Are you serious?” Xyphis asked as the other six zebras rolled their eyes. “How did you think ponies paid for big orders of stuff?”
“In bits?” Volts asked hesitantly.
“Ya, thanks for the ship full of steel bars and sugar. Let me just count out two and a quarter mil of these bits. One, two, three. You’re a bucking idiot. These banknotes have a number on them you can redeem at a bank. You give it to them and they wire it in then issue the bits.”
“Wire? As in?” asked Woods.
“Telegraph. That or a dragon scribe. They still haven’t figured out caned balefire.” Zyphis said as he hit a button on a large grey can on his deck which emitted a jet of green flame. “So where do you want to go?”
“Where do we want to go? You mean there aren’t any places already scoped out?”
“Nope, you’re the ponies figuring that part out.” He waited for a second as he met our blank expressions then sighed. “I assume you want the closest town?”
“Sounds good.” We said in unison.
“I have a map for you here too. Also, stay out of this town, no one operates here and brings the suspicion of the lunar guard.”
The zebra brought a map over to us and handed it to me.
“Hey Xyphis, what do you know about floor polish?” I asked in a hushed voice as he handed me the map. I mean really, if I was going to put my brilliant plan into action I would need someone who knew the basics of getting a box onto a ship and picking it up on the other end. Plus I sure wasn’t going to ask the quartermaster.
“Way ahead of you. Already waiting on a letter to a friend back home and I’m going to ship him a bunch. I’d cut you in but you don’t have any money.”
Darn, he found the one kink in my plan to get rich quick on an untapped market. We turned and started heading out the door when I noticed some boxes piled by the door.
“What’s in the boxes? I remember carrying those in and they felt way too light.” Asked Woods.
“The new Dragon Express.” He replied showing us a picture of a winged machine with two rotors on the front. It was little more than a frame, wings, and a small cargo compartment. It looked like it had way too much horsepower for that tiny frame.
I had seen flying machines back home. They were single engine contraptions that used repelling enchantments to spin rotors that cut the wind and levitation spells in addition to science and wing design. The repulsion enchantment wasn’t that much different than a magnet if it only had one pole and was much stronger. Precision, uniformity, and strength were crucial. There wasn’t an airshow that was complete nowadays without the flying machines. There were the sprinters and the acrobats and the payload contestants. For the most part they had one single engine that was regulated by moving the control rod closer or farther from the repulsion gems. The piolets were usually young griffins or pegasi so they could fly away if things went downhill.
“Why do we have this?” I asked.
“This is faster than a dragon or pegasus on the sprint and better in the long hauls plus you don’t have to feed it.”
“Faster than a Pegasus? Is that even possible?”
“Ya, but they don’t even come close on maneuverability. If you tried to fight with these they would fall out of the sky.”
“So why is it here?” Volts repeated.
The zebra sighed. “We’re going to have a lot of high value gems that we are going to have to get back home fast so we bought this thing.”
“Which griffin is flying it?” I asked.
“Griffin? That’s the best part! Any pony can fly it. Were even thinking of calling it the Pony Express.” Xyphis explained excitedly.
“I don’t think it will catch on.” I said while trying to wrap my head around how precise the two engines would have to be to work in tandem.
“Anyway, this baby is built for speed and endurance. Most sprinters are made out of stupidly light stuff, you have to replace parts after every flight. This is made like a sprinter crossed with some better gliding and heavier parts. Fly as long as you can.” He walked over to his desk. “Anyway, I got work to do, get out of here.”
We left out the door and started down the hall toward the entrance.
“Hey, why do they call it balefire anyway?” Asked Crabwalk receiving a knock on the back of the head from Woods.
“Don’t ever ask Carbon a question!” He shouted.
“Why not?” Crabs asked rubbing his head.
“He will answer it!” Woods tried desperately to explain.
“So?” Asked Crabs still rubbing his head.
“He won’t stop answering it!” Woods shouted.
“Stop one of my wonderful history lessons? That would be blasphemy!” I smiled and settled in for the explanation as Woods cringed. “Well back when cities were just starting to get big they ran into the problem of how to get bodies out of town. They were often rotting, they had to be moved by cart, and disease was a constant fear. To top it off the streets were crowded with ponies making moving them even harder and grave yards were filling up. Burning them was the obvious answer. The first idea was to get dragons to teleport the bodies out of town and burn them there then bring the ashes back. That lasted for probably about a week before they decided to just burn them in town with the dragon.
The old way of cremating someone was on a bale of straw. However, that smoked a lot and was inefficient. The city demanded the cheapest, cleanest, hottest fire around and that fire was dragon fire so dragons were employed once again in the body business. Of course keeping dragons is hard given the cost in meat, room, and their constant laziness. On top of that there was a growing suspicion that dragons were eating the bodies and just giving any ashes back. Seeing a chance to make money some smart ponies synthesised dragons fire and put it in cans. They called it balefire once again in honour of its predecessor. After that they found ways to synthesis all manner of magical dragon’s fire.” I paused for questions. None came. “Of course with all cool things comes a weaponized side. The first use of balefire as a weapon was by the Black Wings. They stole a bunch from a crematorium and killed some guys with them. Burned the guys to ashes but only knocked the dust out of the tapestries they were looking at. Ever since that Black Wings and balefire have been together like Karkayans and machineguns. They even put more enchantments on it. Any questions?”
“See? Warned you.” Said Woods. Smugly.
“Balefire is an old word for pyre.” I harrumphed “But isn’t it better my way?”
“Got to side with Carbon on this one.” Crabwalk said resigned. “He tells it better.”
“Thanks Crabs.”
We walked through the front door and into the early morning sunlight. For a minute we all stood there phased by the beauty of the land. Oh ya, this was really happening.

Author's Note

You know what I like? I like you guys! That's why I cut the length of chapter one in half and made it into two chapters. Because I want these chapters to be digestible. Next chapter will probably be a short one. Oh and one last thing. The morning after I posted this story I logged on to see if it was approved yet and to my surprise it had been approved and had two likes and eight views already. thanks guys! Please comment.