Through Desert Sand and Forest Storm

The sun had set by the time we reached the camp. It was at an oasis, the only one I'd seen out here so far. Not that I'd explored very much of the desert, but hey. There were a four or five dozen slaves, with half that many guards around them. In addition to those two groups, there was another group of eight camping a bit farther away from the oasis, identical in composition to the group that had captured me. We were marched to this group instead of the larger one.

“Hello Cloud. How was it?” a white unicorn with a golden mane asked as we approached.

“Fine. Rouge's dead. Goods are back. Found an extra.” The black pegasus replied. He hadn't said anything as we walked, but the others had always glanced towards him before they made a decision, making it seem like he was in charge of the group.

“Oh? Where?” the pegasus stepped aside and nodded at me. “Ooh, sandgator. What're you doing this far west, I wonder. . . how smart is it?”

“Smart enough to piss off Cotton,” the orange pegasus chuckled, “had better comebacks than most ponies I know.” The purple unicorn, Cotton, just glared at him. From the way he acted on the trip, most of his communications were conveyed via glare.

“Really?” he walked over to me. “Well, irritating Cotton isn't that hard. How smart are you really?”

I looked up at him. He was average sized for a pony, near as I could tell, but I still only came up to his shoulder. “Smart enough to not get in range of an irritated 'gator,” I said, and lunged for his neck. I didn't know much about my new anatomy, but any species with the word “gator” in it's name probably had a hell of a bite. I wasn't trying to kill him though, then they'd just kill me. I was going for a hostage, sink my teeth in a bit so he got the message, and use him to get out of here.

Except for the part where I hurt my teeth on his apparently rock hard skin. He just stood there, and I'm pretty sure he was smiling. This certainly posed a problem. Couldn't take a hostage for someone you couldn't hurt. I looked around, and all the ponies I could see had smiles on their faces. I got the sudden feeling he knew exactly what I would do when he walked over to me.

I backed off, sitting on the ground in front of him. “Also smart enough to know when something doesn't work. Any weaknesses I could use here?” I just bit the guy who, at the moment, appeared to be the head of a slaver group. I was terrified, so, giggle at the ghosties. Yeah, I was probably going to die.

“Nah, I'm pretty much invincible.” Well, he hadn't stopped smiling, and the tone of his voice hadn't changed. That meant that he either wasn't mad, which was unlikely, or he was about to go a dozen different kinds of crazy, smiling death on me, which was much more likely.

“Well, in that case,” I said, “I'll just be sitting with the other slaves, praying to whatever gods are listening that you don't kill me for that.”

He just laughed. “Kill you? Nah, gators are money. Speaking of which,” the turned back to the black pegasus, Cloud if I recalled correctly. “What customer's been the most irritating lately?”

“Sky.”

“Ah, Sky Lily. She's in the market for gators, right? Yeah, she's obsessed with them.” He looked back down at me. “You seem smart. Try to make her life a little bit worse, kay? Kay.” He turned and walked away. Huh, I thought he'd do at least something as punishme-

I was thrown to the side, jerking the whole line of slaves with me, as one of the other gator's tails crashed into me. It felt like a I'd been hit by a car, one that hadn't bothered trying to brake.

“No one bites the boss,” he said. I winced as I got to my feet. I'd fractured a rib once, in an accident, and it had felt like this. Just great.

“Cotton,” the white unicorn yelled, “hook 'em up to the rest of the slaves. We head out in the morning.” Cotton nodded, growled something uncomplementary about having to do more work, and started leading us towards the larger group.

The slaves were all dressed in rags, like the slaves I'd been chained too. I'd learned on the walk that the rags were there simply to keep something between the sun and the slaves. I didn't know how if that worked or not, but none of the slaves I was with had died of heat exhaustion yet, so maybe they were on to something. I didn't get any, but I didn't feel any hotter than just pleasantly warm while the guard ponies had been sweating their own oasis, so I supposed I didn't need any.

The guards were wearing white cloth an metal armor, looking similar in design to pictures I'd seen of arabic armor. Made sense, really, considering we were in a desert. Cotton informed them of the departure time while one of the guards connected our chain to the one the rest of the slaves were on. Most of the slaves were already asleep, and my group was settling down as well, trying to get comfortable. With a sigh, I lay down. The sand felt surprisingly good, and it wasn't long before I fell into slumber.

~o0O0o~

We set out just after sunrise the next morning. My side still hurt, but I've felt worse, especially recently. Walking didn't hurt it, so I figured it wasn't going to get any worse.

We set a decent pace through the desert. Faster than a walk, but not quite a jog, and we stopped to rest and drink surprisingly often. From the looks of all the ponies, it was more because the slaves needed it than the guards. I wondered about that for a while before I realized why. We were money. Any slave that died on the road was a profit loss.

It was an odd feeling, realizing that all of us chained together weren't people anymore, just profits. I quickly shook that thought out of my head, however. I was still a person, and so was everyone else on this chain. We all had our own identities, our own hopes and dreams.

The next time we stopped, I asked one of the guards near me, “Is there any way to legally stop being a slave?”

He looked at me for a second before responding. “If your master releases you, you're free. But Sky Lily doesn't release anypony, especially not the ones she likes.”

“I see,” I responded.

“That said,” he continued, “if an escaped slave isn't recovered in six months, they're considered 'lost,' and no longer the property of the owner. After that, anyone who just happens to find them can claim them as their own slave. And since not everyone can afford the upkeep of a slave, well, they just have to let them go. Shame, really.”

I gave him a sideways look. “Not exactly the sort of thing a slaver should be telling a slave,” I commented.

“Well, if you get away, she'll just have to buy another. And guess who her number one supplier is.” he grinned.

“So your bosses want you to convince slaves to escape?” I asked..

“Yup. It's called job security.”

I thought back to the white unicorn I'd try to bite. Suddenly, him not lashing out at me made a bit more sense. Not only was I profitable now, but by proving I was smart, I was also making myself a potential future profit.

“And no one gets suspicious when all slaves they buy from you run away?”

“Most slaves don't try, fewer still make it. In fact, only one's ever managed to get away from Sky Lily.” he shrugged, “it's not a big help to our business, but every little bit helps.”

“I see.” I thought about it for a second, then realized something. “Wouldn't the original owner put out a reward for the slave though? Or couldn't whoever found them just sell them back to the owner?”

He gave me an odd look. “Damn, you are pretty smart for a 'gator.” So, escaping was only an option if I could find someone who would release me instead of just selling me back to this Sky Lily.

Clearly he didn't actually want me to escape. I don't know what he'd gain from it, unless this group also captured escaped slaves, which made more and more sense the more I thought about it. Get slaves to escape, capture them, then either turn them in for a reward if there was one, or hide them for six months and sell them back to their owners.

Except that second one didn't make nearly as much sense, because they'd have to feed the slave while they were keeping it, and I doubted a slave would sell for enough to cover six months of food, let alone that much and a profit.

I didn't know what these guys did with escaped slaves, but I knew enough to cross them off of the list of places I could go for help once I escaped. They seemed to respect my intelligence, but they respected money more.

I sighed as we started moving again. In books and movies, they always skipped the long travel scenes and got right to the action. Books and movies. . . I'd probably find books to read here, but I'd never finish the ones I hadn't got around to back on Earth. Dammit, Jim Butcher, I want to know what happens to Dresden next!

I sighed again. There wasn't a lot of things I missed about Earth, but I missed them pretty damn hard. My home, my computer, my brother. . .

I'd jumped at the chance to go to Equestria mostly because I didn't think it through. I should've asked questions, looked at the fine print. I wondered if anyone was taking care of my brother's gravestone, and I hoped whoever did was finding it as therapeutic as I had. It wasn't much, an act of kindness for a person no longer there to receive it, but it made me feel better.

I knew my parents wouldn't, the lazy assholes. I'd never gotten along with them, although I'd never hated them as much as my sister had. I at least waited till I was legal and had an apartment waiting for me to run away, instead of just hopping on the bus one night. I wondered where she was, although I figured I'd never actually find out now.

Needless to say, I was pretty good at dealing with loss, and change. People came and went out of my life seemingly at random. I certainly had no control over it.

But I needed to find something less depressing to focus on. I looked down at my snout, which contained an extra organ that I wanted to know a lot more about. The twitch life sense thing, that had let me know earlier when the small band of slavers was approaching. It still worked, letting me know the location, relevant to me, of every living creature in an area around me half a mile wide. I wondered what kind of magic it used to work, if I could somehow train it so it'd have a wider range, if it worked on plants as well as animals, and, most importantly, if there was any way to hide from it.

Sky Lily was supposedly obsessed with sandgators such as myself. If that was true, she probably had some free ones as guards, or at least some more loyal slaves. Except, I mused, they wouldn't be able to tell a slave from a guard, unless you could train the life sense to a more accurate reading. And from what I've heard, most gators weren't exactly the sharpest crayons in the box, considering most everypony was surprised at my intelligence, and I wasn't even very smart.

My nose gave a little twitch, and something flickered in and out of my senses. I looked in the direction of the flicker, noticing the other gators doing the same. I didn't see anything, and it didn't look like any of the other gators had either.

The white unicorn, whose name I had learned was Sunny, trotted over to one of the gators. “What'd you sense?” he asked.

“Something?” the gator replied, “Nothing, maybe?”

Sunny arched an eyebrow at the gator. “Something, but maybe nothing. Explain, if you don't mind.”

“It was a little twitch, and then it was gone.”

“So something just barely crossed your range?” the unicorn asked for clarification.

“No. It was close. Just beyond these dunes?” the gators spoke very oddly, with long pauses between sentences and short words, like they were trying to say things quickly and hop to the next period so they could plan their next sentence.

But he was also right. The flicker couldn't have been more than two hundred yards away. Far enough away that we couldn't see them around the dunes, which were incredibly large in this part of the desert, but still pretty damn close.

I caught another flicker, closer this time. “It happened again,” the gator next to Sunny reported.

Golden eyes narrowed as Sunny stared in the direction of the flickers, as if he could see through the dunes straight into whatever secrets they were hiding. After a second, his eyes widened. “Raiders!” he yelled.

All around me guards were pulling out weapons as the raiders, their covers blown, began screaming war cries. Cold war cries, that chilled you to the bone and froze you to the earth as you waited for icy death to strike down at. . . wait, what?

I shook my head. What was that? Some kind of spell? Everyone around me was still immobile, frozen by the spell, except for Cloud and Sunny. Sunny's horn was glowing, and there was a faint glow around his ears as well. Cloud just looked like he hadn't even heard it.

The raiders, still screaming, came into view. All hundred of them. We had barely fifty guards, most of which were still stunned, and barely that many slaves, all of whom were still stunned and chained together.

To put it in simple terms, we were bucked up the arse with a zap apple pie.

As the raiders came at us, I got an idea. The scream was clearly a sound based spell, maybe a loud noise could wake a pony up from it. With no other options and horrible death galloping strait at me, I sucked in a breath, and roared back as loud as I could.

Fact: sandgators have a nice pair of lungs.

It wasn't as loud as the raider's warcry, but it was still damn loud, and I was right in the middle of the guards. The spells hold was broken, and although we were still outnumbered, not counting the slaves of course, now we at least stood half of a chance.

One of the unicorn guards, a red mare, cast a spell on the slaves chains, separating them into groups of five. Except me; because I was on the end, I ended up with only two slaves chained to me.

Chaos exploded around me as the raiders met the front line of guardponies. The raiders had numbers on their side, but our guards had better equipment and training. Some of the raiders, however, didn't stop to fight the guards. Vaulting over the fighting, they began running through the slaves, killing whoever got in range. I was stunned by it. I'd been around death before, but I'd never seen anyone die, and to see life ended in such an sudden manner stunned me better than the warcry had.

Until one of them ran by my group, killing one of the slaves with me and giving the other a deep slice through her leg.

It was like flipping a switch, from cold to hot. I was no longer terrified, I was furious. I was no longer stunned, I was active. I was no longer prey, I was the predator. My body moved on it's own accord, spinning around and bringing my tail towards the raider. I caught his back legs, knocking them from under him mid-gallop. My foreclaws clenched in to the ground, somehow finding a sure grip in the sand, and my hindlegs pushed, throwing my body into a hand-handstand. Muscles I didn't even know I had clenched in my abdomen and chest, bringing my body back down to the ground with tremendous force. My tail crashed into the fallen raider's pelvis, shattering his bones. He screamed in agony, a sound curiously akin to the warcry, but I was beyond hearing it. My eyes scanned the battlefield, looking for an enemy I still couldn't sense.

One of the raiders, spying his broken brother, rushed over to us, a blade in his mouth. I ducked under his head and jumped up, catching his neck between my jaws and slamming them shut. I jerked my head to the side, messily decapitating him. I grabbed his body and hurled it towards another raider. I looked down at the slave next to me, and saw her staring at me, fear in her eyes.

~o0O0o~

I would be lying if I said I couldn't remember the rest of the battle. That particular fight would be forever ingrained in my memory. That said, there are some things that I don't want to talk about, and that you don't need to hear. That fight was one of them.

Her fear had done nothing to stop me, only even registering after the battle was over. We'd won, but we'd lost a few guards and a few more slaves. I'd been hurt pretty bad when a raider with a spear snuck up on me and stabbed it into my side. Still managed to kill him, and his buddy.

None of the raiders survived. Apparently, there was a bounty for dead raiders. Not as much as a slave would go for, but this group didn't sell ex-raiders. The guards were all collecting manes from the raiders, all of whom, it appeared, were zebras. As was the slave that had formerly been chained to me. As it turns out, her previous owner had been a doctor, and she had learned more than a little bit about medicine. Enough for the guards to ask for her help dealing with hurt slaves. They didn't let her near guards though.

As for me, I was on the other side of a dune from the rest of the group. When the battle was finished, there was a pile of almost two dozen corpses around me. Including bodies I had thrown back at the enemy, I had killed just over a quarter of the raider troops.

The slaves were more scared of me than they were the raiders.

Sunny and the slave girl had done what they could for my wound and rib, seeing as both injuries were on the same side, and left me there with Cotton and the orange pegasus, whose name I still hadn't learned. Their orders were “if he kills you, make sure you get a scream out so I can get over here.” The duo stood just out of tail range, one on either side of me.

“So. . .” the pegasus began, “first time in a big fight like that?” I didn't answer, I just kept staring at the sand. It was all I'd done for the last hour.

“Yeah, first fight, I can tell,” he continued. “Don't worry, it gets better. Pretty soon, you'll be able to kill and not feel anything, and then you'll be a goddamned killing machi-”

“Rise, shut the fuck up before I stab you,” Cotton said. First time I was grateful that the jerk was there. I found it interesting though that Rise said God-damned instead of Celestia or Luna-damned. Maybe they didn't know of the goddesses here?

“Don't stab Rise, he's a very rare and special kind of stupid, so he'd be hard to replace.” Sunny was walking towards us from around the dune. Cotton just grumbled some more.

The white unicorn looked down at me. “You saved lives, you know,” he said after a moment, “you didn't choose to kill, you chose to protect. That mare chained to you? She asked me to thank you. She's still scared of you, but she realizes you saved her life.”

I looked up at him. “Death is death, justified or not.”

He sighed. “I can't argue with that, but death is just as necessary as life. And those raiders chose death. They chose to kill, and be killed. You did the right thing, even if it feels like a wrong thing.”

I looked away. He followed my gaze, both our eyes staring into nowhere. “Well, if nothing else, just think about the mare.”

“The mare who's now terrified of me.”

He chuckled. “She'll get over being scared. Very few people get over being dead. But that's not the only reason I came over here. I have an offer for you.” I looked over at him. “We don't have to sell you. If you wanted, we could always use another hoof, er, paw in the group.”

Cotton and Rise gave each other worried looks, and I got the feeling that this wasn't an offer that got made very often. That said, I already knew what my answer would be.

“I'm sorry,” I said, “but I can't.”

He just shook his head. “I figured. Well, if you ever get away from Sky Lily, there's a place called the reverse tower. I don't know where it is myself, but it's a haven for escaped slaves.” He stood up, and started to walk away, then paused. “What's your name?” he asked.

I paused. I hadn't given a name any thought. My human one wouldn't fit anymore, but I had no idea what sort of names sandgators used. “I don't have a name,” I said slowly.

He gave me an odd look. Then smiled, a rather predatory grin. “In that case, mind if I name you Stormjaw?”

Cotton and Rise both freaked out after hearing that name. Rise's jaw hit the floor, while Cotton mumbled a stream of straight obscenities, his shocked face staring at Sunny. Well, with a response like that, there was really only one answer I could give, now wasn't there?

“Stormjaw it is.”