Lunatic!

14th day of Rising Sun
455 Years after the Defeat of Discord by the Sisters

“Keep running!” Yelled the stallion, urging his mare forwards. He tried to ignore the pain from the crossbow bolt sticking out of his side.

“We’ll never make it!” She gasped, as they pulled a worn and beaten wagon across the dusty road, the dry, gray wood already splitting from having baked for years in the relentless heat.

Behind them, hot on their hooves and screaming for blood, almost a dozen raiders in patchwork armor and warpaint charged after them. They were a mix of griffons and ponies, all of them lean and hungry.

A griffon and pegasus flew up, crossbows at the ready, and fired a barrage of bolts at the two earth ponies. The stallion stumbled as a one skewered his throat, blood splattering on the mare. He collapsed, and the wagon pitched to the side, turning over and spilling its contents over the sand.

“Get the food and water!” Shouted the lead griffon, his eyes shaded with a wide band of purple paint.

The raiders poured over the wagon, spilling out the contents of the few boxes and crates that had remained unopened in the crash.

“Look at all this food!” one of the pegasai held up a long string of pale fish sausages. “This is great!”

“What’d I tell you?” the leader said, smirking. “Earth ponies always have tons of food. They’re the only ones who can grow anything in this dump.”

“Look at this!” one of the raiders held up a heavy bag, bulging and barely staying together. He tore open the bag. golden coins raining down onto the dusty sand.

“Bits?” the leader snorted. “Why? What were they going to do, sleep on them like dragons?” He grabbed a talonful of them and threw them at the prone mare, pinned down by the weight of the wagon. “Maybe we should make her eat them!”

“N-no, please!” The mare gasped, trying to pull herself free.

“We can have some fun with this one,” snorted a griffon. “Maybe we should bring her back to the boss. He’d love a new slave, and she ain’t bad looking.”

“That’s good thinking,” the leader said. “Glad I thought of it. Get her out of there and let’s see what we’ve got!”

The stallion’s corpse was thrown aside, the wagon’s tongue cracking as the raiders ripped open the harness. The mare was dragged free of the wreckage, the bandits leering at her bruised and bloodied form.

“Please, don’t…” she whispered.

“Don’t what?” the leader snorted. “You should be thanking us. Instead of having to work, you’re just going to be the boss’ toy. It’s a lot easier, as long as you don’t have any pride.” He drew a long knife, pressing it lightly against the mare’s neck. “Not that you should have any pride left.”

“Hey, we should test her out before we give her to the boss!” A pegasus shouted, pushing the mare’s head down to the dirt.

“And give him sloppy seconds?” The griffon at his side snorted. “He’d beat the crap out of us for wasting his time with used goods.”

“We can clean her up after we’re done,” the pegasus said, getting behind her. “We need to get the blood off her, anyway.”

“Hmmm…” the leader considered, rubbing his beak with a talon. “We should make sure she’s worth bringing to him.” He shoved the pegasus away. “But you ain’t going first. She needs a proper rutting to learn her place.”

“No! Please don’t! I-if you let me go, I’ll- I’ll-” The mare struggled, trying to get free as the griffon’s talons closed around her shoulders. He was easily twice her size.

“Shut up,” the leader said. “The boss don’t like mouthy chicks. If you keep complaining we’ll have to get rid of that tongue of yours.”

A shadow fell across them as the griffon lined up his hips, his member prodding between the terrified mare’s thighs.

“Who’s that?” the pegasus asked, as he picked himself off the ground, shaking himself to get sand out of his feathers.

Standing at the top of a sand dune, three dark shapes looked down at the assembled group of bandits. Despite the heat of the day, a sudden chill ran through them.

~~~***~~~

“Boss! Boss Eagle!” shouted the scout, as he touched down in the small bandit camp, in the ruined remnants of what had once been a guard tower. “I found the raiding group!”

“And?” Eagle asked, turning to look. “They better have a wind-damned good excuse for why they ain’t back yet, and I don’t want to hear that they got distracted with booze or hens.”

“They’re dead, Boss,” the griffon said, fear evident in his face.

“Dead?” Eagle stood up. “What happened? Imperial Army? I didn’t think the old feather-head cared about what we were doing anymore.”
“It ain’t like that, Boss,” the scout whispered. “I ain’t seen anything like it before.”

“Damn. I should have known those idiots would get in trouble.” Eagle grabbed the chain hanging from the wall behind him, dragging a griffon hen with it like a dog on a leash. “Come on. Let’s go see this shit that scared you so much.”

~~~***~~~

It was almost midnight when the bandits got to where the massacre had happened.

“What happened here?” one of the bandits muttered.

“Is this everyone?” Boss Eagle asked, kicking a body. Part of a body.

“How should we know?” a bandit asked.

“Look at this,” one said, turning a mostly-intact corpse over. “It looks like he exploded from the inside-out. Has to be some kind of magic, right?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Eagle said. “That kind of magic doesn’t exist.”

“B-boss…” gasped a weak voice. Heads turned to look. One of the bodies had started moving again, a talon reaching for the sky. Eagle reared up, jumping over to the raider. The griffon was pinned under the wagon, like it had been put there just to keep him from getting away. The bandits pushed it over to free him.

“Who did this?” Eagle demanded, picking him up by the shoulders. “The army? Another gang?”

“M-monsters…” the raider gasped. Blood started to trickle from the corners of his eyes. Before Eagle could do anything, the raider exploded as something erupted from his chest, something dark and twisted, like a tree made of shadows. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared, dissolving like smoke.

“We gotta get out of here!” a bandit shouted. “It’s some kinda curse!”

“We ain’t running,” Eagle said. “We’re gonna find the ones who did this and teach them a lesson!”

~~~***~~~

Darkly armored forms walked quietly down the ruined, cracked street.

“This place looks deserted,” Pallas said, looking around. Buildings with broken windows and yawning doors loomed around them, sand pooled around their foundations where it had blown in from the wasteland.

“I don’t understand,” Bianca whispered, as if afraid to break the silence of the empty city. “What happened here?”

“This is a port town,” Shadow noted. “There should be some kind of trade.”

“Not just the town,” Bianca frowned. “This land itself is ruined. Don’t the griffons take care of it?”

“You saw how those griffons were acting,” Pallas spat. “They’re just beasts.”

“There were ponies there, too,” Fluttering Moth said, hovering just over the ground with her wings barely moving, her magic forcing air around them without her having to even move. It was unnerving and almost silent.

“The drought…” the mare trailing them whispered. She had barely talked since they’d buried her husband. “...it’s been this way for a long time.”

“I didn’t think droughts got this bad,” Pallas said, kicking at a pile of sand.

“They do when the weather is overworked,” Moth noted, looking up at the empty sky. “I’ve never felt anything like it. The sky is as dead as the land.”

“I guess,” Pallas shrugged. “You know I’m worse with weather magic than I am with poetry.”

“I thought your love poems were cute!” Bianca smiled.

“That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to read them out loud to everypony,” Pallas mumbled, blushing hard enough that it showed even in the shadows of her open visor.

“Something’s wrong,” Shadow said, stopping. The sand around them suddenly shifted, revealing a net hidden under a thin layer of soil. It closed up around them, jerked into the air like prey in a hunter’s trap.

“We got ‘em!” someone shouted. Pallas struggled to turn, flopping like a fish. A griffon, no more than ten years old, looked out of a broken window, excited. More villagers appeared, a mix of ponies and griffons, emerging from hiding places and coming out to see the excitement.

“Junebug’s with them!” a hippogriff yelled. It looked like a hen, with heavy eyeshadow in blue around piercing green eyes.

“Is Bat with her too, Lakshmi?” asked the little griffon, running over. She was a soft yellow, a griffon who seemed covered in down despite being almost old enough to have a cutie mark.

“There are a couple of bats, but not Bat,” the hippogriff mumbled, poking at Bianca’s wing.

“Leave her alone!” Pallas growled.

“Junebug, what happened?” the chick asked, ignoring Pallas and looking up at the earth pony mare that they’d saved.

“There were raiders,” Junebug said, her voice shaky. “They- they killed Bat!”

“We killed the raiders and saved this mare,” Shadow said calmly, lot looking perturbed despite being almost completely inverted.

“Lock them in the spare storehouse until we get this sorted out,” Lakshmi said. “Lil Ducky, get Junebug something to eat and drink. The poor thing looks like she’s about to faint.”

“I’m not going anywhere with-” Pallas started, her wings pushing against the net.

“Hold on,” Bianca said, softly. “They’re not soldiers. We can’t just…” She trailed off. “Please?”

Pallas groaned and folded her wings again. “Fine.”

~~~***~~~

“This is so stupid,” Pallas grumbled, slumped in the shadows and keeping away from the window and the harsh light from outside. The storehouse was like an oven already, the bricks baking in the desert heat.

“I think it was wise,” Shadow said. “We’re not here to kill indiscriminately, after all. We’re here because it will keep Equestria safe and we can free this land from the Emperor. We’re liberators, not conquerors.”

“How’d that work out up north?” Pallas snorted.

“Poorly,” Resplendent Shadow admitted. “But it would have been worse if the Princesses had tried to take over. It was Sombra that caused the disaster, not them.”

“Besides, these seem like nice people,” Bianca said. “We saved that mare, and she led us here because she knew it was safe.”

“Yeah, but there are griffons here…” Pallas mumbled, looking away.

“Of course there are,” Moth sighed, from where she hovered at the window. “This is their homeland! Probably a lot of them are decent ponies. Wait, not ponies. Birds? Is calling them birds offensive?”

Screaming started outside. Pallas’ one and a half ears perked up at the sound, and Fluttering Moth turned back to the window.

“What’s going on?” Bianca asked, flying up and latching onto Moth’s back, crawling up to look over her shoulder, the pegasus somehow remaining steady in the air as if fixed in place.

“I don’t know,” Moth said. “I can’t see anything from here.”

“We’re leaving,” Pallas said, standing. “I’m not going to sit here and listen. Shadow was right. We’re not here to conquer them. We’re here to save them. Even if we’re saving them from themselves.”

~~~***~~~

“Just bring out all your food and water or else I’m gonna snap her neck!” Boss Eagle yelled, holding Lil Ducky above his head in his talons. “If any of you even tries to put up a fight, she dies first!”

Lakshmi growled but kept her distance, the hippogriff pawing at the ground anxiously with a talon while the the townsfolk cleared a wide berth from the bandits to avoid antagonizing them. Spears were dropped to the ground as they slowly started to give up even the pretense of resistance.

“That’s right,” Eagle snorted. “Now get your supplies together. I know you’ve got plenty of food and water here.”

“We can’t give them our crops, Lakshmi,” hissed the pony standing next to the hippogriff. “We barely have enough to get through the season.”

The hippogriff looked up at the griffon chick, hesitating.

“It’s too bad for her, but we’ll all starve to death if we just give up!”

“Get ready,” Lakshmi said. “If we attack when they’re distracted, maybe we can save Ducky, too.”

Boss Eagle squeezed his talon, the tip of a claw pressing into Ducky hard enough to draw blood, the trickle of red staining her soft yellow feathers. There was an crack of thunder as the door to the storehouse exploded out into splinters, and a large, dark shape stalked out.

“What the…” Boss Eagle blinked as Pallas walked confidently towards him. Three of the bandits, two griffons and a pegasus, flew up to land in front of Pallas.

“What’s your problem?” one growled. “Get back with the others!”

“Get lost,” Pallas said, raising her wings up slightly.

“Who the feather do you think you are?” One of the bandits shouted, raising a crude sword in his talon. Pallas’ visor snapped shut, and her wings spread wide as she pivoted, wingblades ringing like bells as they slashed through the bandits, their bodies flying apart with enough force to send their limbs into the crowd of watching villagers.

In the same motion, Pallas took to the air, landing heavily on all four hooves in front of Boss Eagle.

“Let her go,” Pallas demanded, glaring up at him, her eyes invisible behind the glowing lenses of her helm.

“What in Tartarus-” before Boss Eagle could continue, the bandits to his right fell apart as bloodless cuts appeared across their bodies. To his left, the few remaining thieves exploded from inside as their shadows erupted free of their bodies. “You’re the ones who killed my raiding party!”

Pallas turned and bucked, back legs slamming into Eagle’s chest. He coughed and dropped Ducky, Pallas catching her on her back.

Pallas’ metal hoof stuck for a moment until she twisted it, the blade having snapped out and impaled the griffon.

“What did you-” Eagle gasped, coughing up blood as he stumbled and fell.

“A monster like you doesn’t deserve to live,” Pallas said, as she tapped her hoof, the blade sliding back into place.

~~~***~~~

“So you’re all from Equestria?” Lakshmi asked, as she sat with them in one of the better-maintained buildings, the clay walls providing some protection from the harsh sunlight and dry air.

“Yeah,” Bianca said. “We got shipwrecked in the storm yesterday.”

“We saw the storm from here,” Lakshmi said, pouring tea into chipped cups for the assembled group.”We were hoping it would come inland to give our crops some early rain, but… no such luck.” She smiled weakly.

“Why is the weather like this?” Moth asked. “I thought this place was supposed to be a grassland, not a desert.”

“It’s been this way for as long as I can remember,” Lakshmi said. “It started in the south first. The rumors say it was a Zebrican curse for invading their land, if you can believe that. We managed at first by making clouds ourselves, then we started increasing imports once they stopped holding together. But now…”

“So then the decision was made to invade?” Bianca asked.

“I don’t know,” Lakshmi admitted. “Regular news stopped coming years ago. We’re lucky here because we had a large earth pony population and, even though we’re near the sea, the water table is fresh and our wells haven’t dried up. Junebug and Bat were going to the next town over to trade food and water for other supplies we can’t make ourselves.”

“Doesn’t your government do anything about these bandits?” Pallas asked.

“How?!” Lakshmi demanded. “Your people annihilated our army! The government is barely holding together!”

“That doesn’t fit at all with the intelligence I saw,” Shadow muttered, from where she was sitting upright in the corner.

“Luna must have already known,” Bianca said, looking at the others. “That’s why she was willing to bring civilians along. She must have some kind of plan that she never told us about.”

“Some kind of reconstruction effort?” Shadow guessed.

“No,” Pallas said. “She left because she didn’t feel welcome in Equestria. She’s here to stay.”