The Equestrian Godfathers

Chapters

The Sacred Trust
In the Dark of the Night- The Broken
In the Dark of the Night- The Partisan
Time Unwound
La Lutte Finale
The Sacred Road
In the Heart of the Waste
In the Dark of the Night- The Condemned
Time's Up

The Sacred Trust

The mana-drained wasteland was a punishing crucible, if only because its general feeling was so terribly jarring. For folk born and raised in a mana-saturated world it was completely alien to them. Even the donkey, whose magic content was slightly less than a pony, could feel just how wrong the whole thing was. That just made all the desolation and misery exponentially worse.

The trio trudged their way through the scrub and cracked ground, having long since burned through the energy needed for running. They bore their burdens with all the strength they could muster, keeping pace with the slowest of their number which was, surprisingly, the young pegasus. While his wings looked undamaged he still went on the ground like the rest of them.

Their vague and indistinct journey gained direction when the donkey caught sight of a rising plume of smoke in the distance. The pegasus finally took to the sky, forcing himself up at high as he could before unsteadily making his way back down.

“I can't see much, but I think it's not natural. Too thick, the composition is definitely some kind of fuel. This far in, if it's deliberate it's rebels. They can afford to be open in areas like these as they would notice any approach before it became a danger.”

“This might actually be our lucky day!” The older stallion cried, turning toward the smoke.

“Calmate, it was only a possibility, Viejo...” the donkey said, to the retreating back of the unicorn.

The three ran with a renewed sense of purpose and energy, expending energy they didn't quite have on the promise of help. The closer they got, the more they were aware of the smell. Sickly-sweet to some degree. Cloying. And known to them.

“Muerte, sangre y fuego... such smells can never be forgotten...”

“The bastards would put slain rebels to the torch so we'd have nothing to bury. Now we need to get there faster and stop whatever this is...”

The final approach revealed a scene of horror. It looked as though some kind of steam-driven, possibly thaumatic carriage had suffered a catastrophic failure, the boiler having exploded and exposed the blazing coals. That had been turned into what the griffins would have called an auto-brochette or a rôtissoire, with some of the charred remains of an unfortunate stallion still over the coals. They also encountered a muffled sound, muted shouts and whines, along with a husky, low voice. Those came from what the thing had been hauling, something like a large tent on a wagon frame.

The pegasus led them closer, using hand signs of low complexity to direct a stealthy motion to the back of the tent. On peering inside they caught a strange and terrible sight. A unicorn stallion, with a strange body proportion, colored in a kind of dirty off-peach, with a severely styled almost bowl-cut mane of dark filthy-blond. Given the width of the tent by being on one of the sides they could see he was erect, and looming over a bright cornflower earth pony mare with a light yellow mane, who looked heavily pregnant. Her legs were parted and she appeared to actually be in labor. The stallion looked quite odd, his chest looking raw and ragged, as if his pectorals had been recently burned by fire or acid. There was also blood still sticky and shining around his mouth.

“It's time! I can't wait any more! It's been too long since I did a proper schlongbortion, and this is too perfect! But I need that worthless meat inside you. Your husband wasn't enough. The pink goo will cook up nice you will after that!”

The three wanted to stop the deranged monster but were too late to be fully effective. A bloodstained knife cut into the mare's belly, making her scream into the gag shoved into her muzzle. The pegasus struck first, taking a heavy brass hammer out of one of his packs and cracking down hard on the lower leg of the stallion, crushing that part of the limb, making him scream in fury and shock, turning to see the trio.

“You bastards! No one hurts me and gets away with it! I did too much to get what I want!” The crazed stallion turned and leaped out of the tent, wielding the huge knife. His chest and belly looked raw and scabby, still suffering the effects of the fire or acid that had mutilated him. “I gave up important things to be this free and have all my desires come true! Two old men and some little asshole aren't going to stop me!”

He lunged at the donkey, knife low and slightly to the side, ready to strike. The unicorn's magic jerked it just out of the way of a good strike, allowing the jack to lay a solid punch to the burned, painful chest muscles. That tore out another scream, and the pain seemed to feed the beast, as he turned on the older stallion and only missed because he thoughtlessly stepped on his crushed leg, throwing off his aim. He still managed to hurl his body into the stallion, his awkward dodging steps sending him off-balance and to the ground.

He placed a hand on the older unicorn's throat and sneered down at him. “Valle Lacrimum the reborn master always wins, is never hurt and can never d-” The boast died with him, his head falling with his body and settling just slightly away from it. The pegasus was standing there, panting, holding his steel sickle in both hands, slightly trembling.

“False gods learn their place. Every master thinks he is god over all the flesh he surveys. Brass and steel know no mercy and no fear...” he said, with a slight tremble.

The older unicorn pushed the headless body off of himself, wiping at his face to try and get the blood off of it. “The taste and the smell... I promised myself, I would never be bloodied again...”

“War is bloody, Viejo. Be glad it's not your own. Quickly, we must see to the mother.”

The trio rushed into the tent, finding the mother raggedly breathing, hands over the stab wound, her body trembling with every contraction. The pegasus rushed in first, giving the wound a check and looking around for anything. “I think I still have something in my rebel aid kit. There should be gauze and some emergency sutures!”

“It's too late, Niño... you cannot help, not here, not like this...” the donkey sighed, coming in to observe the birth in progress. “Only one life leaves this place...”

“No! We have to help, we need to help, to give some hope to the future!”

“The child is hope now. I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm so sorry that we cannot do anything else. Princesses... how sorry I am that this ever happened...” The older stallion took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“We thought he was another refugee. He was disguised as a woman...” the mare whispered her words, occasionally screaming or huffing as she tried to keep the delivery going. “My husband made the carriage but that monster sabotaged it... we only... we wanted to go to Gaskinwich.”

The pegasus perked at the name and looked to her face. “Gaskinwich? We heard it was out there. Where is it?”

The mare struggled to point out a bloodied crumple of paper, before her hand fell and she started to shiver. “Please take care... my foal...”

“Sí, señora... nosotros juramos...”

“The baby has to come out, and not at all cleanly. You were right, only one life leaves here,” the unicorn sighed. “Bring me the knife or your sickle, it has to get done.”

“No! I can't! I won't! Not like this! You can't-”

“¡Cállate! If you have no stomach for hard choices you have no business being in the business of them!” The donkey snorted roughly and grabbed the sickle from the pegasus' hand. “Leave now. Or help keep her calm.”

The pegasus took one of her hands, squeezing it tightly but averting his eyes as the donkey brought the diamond tip of the sickle to the mare's belly and began his grim task.

A short while later all three of them emerged, bloody, haunted, and holding a small bundle wrapped in torn clothes. The foal within was oddly quiet, but they had made sure, several times, that she was alive and breathing.

“Blood. Always more blood. An ocean of it and more. It's always blood...” the unicorn mumbled to himself.

“We should have... tried...” the pegasus said, in a breathy, disbelieving tone.

“In a hospital, in the old days, we would have. Not here. Not now. The baby... necesitaba ahorrar. It had to be done.”

“We have a map now, and some idea of what we're doing...” the unicorn sighed, looking at the bloodied paper and then looking out at the distance.

“They had supplies at least, some containers of formula, bottles. It's only a few days. We can manage a baby a few days. ¿Sí, princesa?” The donkey gently tickled the stomach of the pale green earth pony foal, and lightly flicked her cornflower mane. “Sí. Sí...”

“Let's move. If we saw this, those bastards will see it. We can douse the flames but it's hard to say how close behind they might be.”

“No...” the pegasus huffed.

“What? We need to leave, and now!” The unicorn shouted, setting the baby to crying at last.

“¡Cállate la boca tambien, Viejo!” the donkey brayed, softly patting the foal on the back and rocking her to get her to calm down. “If you plan to yell, do it quietly. The baby needs silence.”

“We're not leaving here until we bury them. All of them,” the pegasus insisted, making his way into the tent again, searching for a shovel.

“Fine, you stay and bury them, and we'll keep going. Hope you catch up,” the unicorn snorted, confronted all of a sudden by the donkey.

“Juntos para siempre, Viejo. We're all marked men,” the donkey said, pointing to the rune cut into his forehead. “He has his reasons.”

“The rebellion is not just a physical force. It's a mental thing, a propaganda thing. We must prove ourselves superior to our enemies in every possible sense. We show them real superiority at every possible chance. It's about the future, about hope and how we are remembered. Bloodstained and vicious in the pursuit of duty, but always in service to a better purpose, a brighter day. Help me or don't, but it's getting done.”

The pegasus dug the graves, after the other two had cleared away debris and pulled out any scrubby plants. They were shallow but deep enough that they would rest beneath the surface, if not very far. They buried the partially-eaten stallion in a wide grave with his dead wife. The slain monster was thrown into a hole far removed from the two, his head tossed onto his body.

Rough stones were dragged up to the two graves, the one over the murderer left blank, the other one scratched with the words, Unknown Stallion and Mare. Wedded to the end. Semper Concordia, Salvae Reginae, Delendam Cervae.

The pegasus stood over the grave of the pair, holding a small red book, open to a bookmarked portion. “These words are from the Maquis, the Black-Verreaux who have set themselves at the defenders of the high mountains around Tara, the capital aerie. Altered and translated, for applicability in these matters.” He cleared his throat and read. “This land is for the caring, the working, like these fallen innocents. These parasite aliens, how much of our flesh, blood, hopes and treasure have they eaten? One day these carrion-eaters will vanish, and the sun and moon will shine forevermore.”

The other two nodded slowly to the words, and then looked at the map. “If we keep running, we can make it with our supplies, even with the baby requiring the formula and water we just picked up. This little delay... well, maybe they won't kick up too much fuss for us...” the unicorn started.

“They'll send more than before. Maybe even a few caribou. Brainwashed, true believers, the butchering bastards themselves. All they can. All for us,” the pegasus flatly stated. “Lesson one of the rebellion training. Their egos are tiny, naked, fragile and fake. They take slights with the same calm rationality as someone swatting a fly with a two-handed sword. They'll send more than necessary for the task, because they're cowards and have no real sense of honor. They were already intent on going over the top with our punishments. Now we bloodied their noses and they know it. We're all dead men. They want to take us back for processing, but they'll lay out our burned corpses in the sun if it comes to it because even above making a spectacle of us, is erasing the slight by erasing us from the world. So let's get running. Because with all I just said... what do you think they'll do to the foal that is now in our care?”

A moment of silence passed between them all, before the trio broke into a run, aimed, laser-like, in the direction the map had told them. To Gaskinwich and the hope of freedom.

Author's Note

It's the ultimate question, isn't it? What will racist, sexist, detached- from- the- veil- of- ignorance, immoral and casually disdainfully monstrous fascists do to a female baby of a race they consider inferior? Clop fodder?

In the Dark of the Night- The Broken

The trio and baby made tracks through the remainder of the day, using the map extensively, including a slight detour at a noted water feature. The map was old, made before the cataclysm that was the coming of the caribou, so what had been a river-fed lake had dried out into a smaller pond. It was still fed by a stream, and had avoided being completely stagnant.

It wasn't good for drinking, with the question about its purity, but was at least suitable for washing off the blood of their various encounters. They cleaned off their new charge, and they all sacrificed some pieces of clothing to augment the makeshift carrier they already had to make a more secure one. They washed off their clothing as well, and opted to move on without dressing again, letting their clothing scraps dry on their backs as they moved on with as much speed as they could muster.

They fought their way through their own screaming muscles and rising fatigue, stopping only when the sun dipped low and the child started to cry for a meal.

They scrounged up campground supplies as best they could, a circle of rocks and as hefty a pile of sticks and leaves as they could find. The donkey mixed the formula and fed the child using one of the bottles they had taken from the wagon.

“You know, we should give her a name,” the pegasus noted, waggling his fingers at the calmly eating foal.

“If only they had had their Equestrian ID cards, we could have learned the names of her parents. Then again, we didn't search very hard...” the unicorn noted.

“We didn't really have the time to search all that hard.”

“But you did have the time to bury all of them, including that diseased, scarred-up monster!”

“¡Ay! Callate, both of you!” The donkey grunted, being stern and forceful with a low tone. “I expect the foal to be noisy, not grown stallions.”

The two ponies went silent, chastised by the stern words. They all ate their compressed oat rations in relative silence, before the pegasus said, “Now I like the name Cumulus, it's my aunt's name...”

“She's an earth pony. That doesn't make any sense. Now, my grandmother had a fine name, Glitter. Glitter Aura.”

“That does not sound right for her. No, she should be called Flores. ¿Muy bonita, sí, Fores?”

“Cumulus is a perfectly fine name.”

“Glitter or Aura or Glitter Aura. Beautiful and acceptable for all pony races.”

“Cumulus can be for anyone. No one ever complained about names.”

“It just seemed strange on a non-pegasus. But Glitter...”

“Flores Cumulus Aura,” the donkey grunted. “Practical, proper, settled.”

“I always heard donkeys had a practical streak a mile wide,” the unicorn noted.

“The soldiers under General Blueblood are majority donkey, and they're fearless, powerful and very dedicated to their duties. I'd suggest you join, but the entrance training is brutal.”

“Life has recently been brutal, Niño. I think I can make a good effort at least.”

“You've been calling me that for a while, and I don't even know what it means. I only speak Percheron besides Central Equestrian,” the pegasus admitted.

“It means 'young boy' or 'lad' with some connotation of 'stripling' or 'slightly immature stallion' when said to an adult like yourself by an older person,” the unicorn explained.

“And Viejo means old man, sometimes in a friendly way, sometimes not.”

“I know what it means,” the unicorn said with a snort.

“What else do I call you? We were only prisoners, not those with names,” the donkey said, before placing a hand on his chest. “Pedro Cama, marked for death by the pendejo caribou.”

“Vital Monsoon, eager and willing soldier for the rebellion,” the pegasis said, giving the rebel salute of an upraised left fist and his right arm thrown across his chest.

“Old Timer, and yes, that really is my name, just a tired old stallion, sick to death of all this blood and killing.”

“You say that, but now... we have time to reflect on things. Those bounty hunters, they called you un asesino, a killer. A psycho killer. How true was that?'

“Don't take any caribou-delivered ideas at face value,” Vital said. “They exaggerate and lie so regularly it's hard to believe they even know what truth is.”

“Oh, this you can trust. They were right. I was what they said. A psycho killer. A complete, gibbering madpony, a bloodstained monster that only got away because their self-preservation only just beat out their inflated sense of false pride and need for cheap glory. I've been elbow-deep in caribou guts and torn my way through the brainwashed and believers alike, all with my mind in tatters...”

Pedro hugged Flores tighter against his body, turning her away to present some of his muscular side to Old Timer. Vital looked on with a mix of awe and revulsion. “How... dedicated. The rebellion needs soldiers like you...”

“I'm no soldier, just an old killer who didn't feel guilty about whose blood he spilled, atoning for the things that made that massacre happen,” Old Timer sighed.

“It seems foolish to ask, but can we trust you, Señor Timer?” Pedro asked, still protectively cradling Flores.

“I don't know. At this point, I want to think so... but I just don't know. I pulled my mind together from broken scraps of what was left. I think as long as I'm on this trip, I owe it to you to explain what happened...”

”I started out a fairly ordinary stallion. A clockmaker by trade, I lived a quiet, ordinary, even boring life. And I liked it that way. My name was not that unnatural. I was called an old soul, as I was very focused on my clockwork and my books about making time tick away. That was what I knew, what was important to me. I had my own shop in a little town, nowhere really special.

“A little town called Lindisbarn...”

The little clock shop was ticking pleasantly away, every clock gearing meticulously set to the same rhythm and timing, so that it was as though one monumental clock was ticking down the seconds of the universe. Old Timer was in the back, working on the guts of an antique grandfather clock for a loyal client. The classic piece had needed the replacement of worn gears, the subtle grind of metal on metal over the long years having made the time slip a little as the finer gears were off by minute amounts from the miniscule shavings. Little things meant a lot if they were attached to bigger things.

He peered through a jeweler's loupe, having long ago found the thing especially useful in his line of work. His current one was a United Colonies professional grade job, with attachments for higher magnification and filters to provide contrast and prevent washout when hitting an area with light to bring out more features. His fine tools delicately picked at the gears, which provided movement for the smaller mechanisms. This clock had multiple features, such as a barometer whose expansion moved small scenes to indicate weather, smaller clocks that timed other regions, and a calendar. All of that, needing all the gears to work just right.

There was a festival going on outside, he knew that. There was always something going on and it did delight him to know it. He seldom participated, preferring his springs and gears, but he was at least somewhat a part of his community.

He knew his neighbors to an extent, and he did at least gamely attempt to get into the spirit of the national holidays. He owed the nation that, no question. The nation cared for and about him, and he gave his love to the nation with all he could muster.

He hummed a patriotic song as he worked, recalling old celebrations from his youth, the fairs and carnivals that made life fun, even for an 'old soul' of a foal. He, in his own way, through supporting his community with involvement and paying his taxes, helped to pass forward his fortune, to make sure new foals could savor the state he had savored. The old ways would remain.

Happiness. Peace. Prosperity. The heretics could have strife and chaos. His ordinary life, his normal life, was his and was enriching. It fed his soul, gave him certainty, let him be involved in his cogs and springs. He was safe with the nation, and the nation could rely on him.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought about joining the festival. The clock would remain. The nation would remain too, but he needed to show just how much it warmed and gladdened his heart.

A strange humming sound... not quite a sound... a hum, a buzz, an odd vibration that was and was not a noise came to him. It was like mana itself was making a noise that he could detect, something wholly new and unusual. It was a distraction, and made him lift his head from the work. Thoughts, alien and horrifying came to his mind. He saw his neighbors, his mare neighbors...

The haunting monstrosity of what he saw would have torn a scream from his mouth, but his body was stiff and unresponsive. The alien influence grew stronger, more pressing, making him less controller, and only an observer. His loupe fell from his face and clattered on the floor, as his body moved like a marionette out of his shop.

The town was full of screams, full of other puppet-like stallions, and his mare neighbors, being stripped by bizarre and ugly antlered vermin. He wanted to fight them immediately. But all he could do was live in his own head, watching through eyes that were and were not his, as his body obeyed commands he did not give. And even if he closed his inner eye, he was still trapped in his mind, so he still knew what was happening, and if he touched his own thoughts, he had to experience it.

He had no choice but to know what his husk did.

”I don't need to tell you what happened. You know what the brainwashed do in the service of the vile caribou. At least I wasn't forced into fighting. They recognized I was past that. So I was shunted to menial roles, the precursor to being sent to die in the camps for the old and sexless who were not lucky enough to be elected or be noble and rich. That was my lot.”

Old Timer carried out his duties with loose naturalness, his brainwashed persona having taken over his body completely, leaving the old side completely out of things. The other side had only dim awareness that time had passed or that things were happening. It was disconnected from everything, almost an idea of ideas rather than a conscious portion of the mind.

The right-thinking part did everything but think about what the alien part was thinking, saying or doing. Words he didn't even know he knew passed his lips. He had the idea of an idea that actions were happening that were not in his moral wheelhouse. He wasn't even a spectator in his own life, not really. He was a ghost, desperately avoiding anything but the closest thing to absolute oblivion he could muster.

The emptiness of his personal oubliette was shattered with a jumbled impression of pain, fear, the tang of blood and the feel of a shattering that reached deep into his mind, and which ended the mana buzz that had long before become white noise.

Transporting enchanted crystals taken from a strike against the rebels had been his task. He knew that, somehow. Crystals, weapons, propaganda. He had been hauling the things when... something happened... somehow... the border between nothing and everything was hard to pierce.

Something had made him fall, had struck his head against a crystal that dripped with his blood. The rebels had such things, things that protected them from the brainwashing. Seemingly, it could break it. Because he was broken. Snapped. Shattered. His mind fragmented as the brainwashed alien died in screaming agony and left only one personality. Left him burdened with the broken walls of his private solitary confinement.

Two were one and one was left alone to think on all that had happened. All that thought happened in a flash, a blinding, screaming, horrifying flash. Months upon months of atrocities so horrendous that their creators must have been summoned from Tartarus itself. If mortal beings thought of such things... they were more insane than any other creature that had ever drawn breath.

He couldn't even hear the sounds of those around him admonishing him for his accident. The other brainwashed. The true believers. The accursed caribou. The horned beasts. Antlered barbarians. Savages. Monsters.

Like him.

He saw every weeping face, heard so many screams that it was as if a whole planet was screaming. Screaming because of him. He was the source. He was the cause. Brainwashed or no. He was merely following orders. But his body had done it and he had been there, trying hard to ignore it. He couldn't ignore it anymore.

Two were one. One was alone. Alone with the weight of so much pain that nothing could palliate the suffering. Nothing could staunch the flow of blood, silence the screams, the rasp of horns, erase the nauseating stench of burning flesh. He saw it all, all at once. Smelled it. Tasted the tang of stray blood drops. Heard the insults, the shouts, the sobbing, the lash and the sizzle.

He saw a rebel sword in his tunnel vision, his hand scarcely under proper command as he reached for it. He saw, dimly, one of the caribou beasts coming to him, in his brittle iron armor, with an arrogant look, puffed up and inflamed like an infected wound, almost oozing with the pus of his own pomposity.

His vision went white as he lunged, still haunted by all his senses telling him the horror he had inflicted.

Impressions. He had only impressions. Flashes of vision. Still photographs of his fugue. It was more automatic action, but not under the command of the alien interloper. It was him. Psyche shattered into a thousand pieces, nothing left of his rational mind but the old lesson of Equestria. Though grim, the task was necessary, and so necessary, no matter how grim.

He split the skulls of true believers, letting their poisonous minds out of their rotted heads. He sliced through others just like him, as though offering them a mercy in ultimate forgetfulness. And the caribou... there were several caribou. Their brittle armor shattered as he drove the captured sword through their bodies, and their bull necks meant nothing as he swung with the unleashed rage of a stallion who didn't care if he ripped his muscles entirely out of their anchors.

They couldn't call for reinforcements, not the second time. One had escaped by virtue of cowardice, seeing the slaughter and running with all his cervine fearfulness, likely to hide until it was all over. It was over when the last maimed and dismembered caribou was silenced with a sword to the chest, the bloody blade left standing like a monument. Its slain owner had even had a proper motto etched onto the side. This Tool Kills Fascists.

”Run.”

His legs worked with all the speed his age could muster.

”I remember only one thing with any semblance of clarity. Perfect clarity, after that sea of snapshots, a gallery of violence and rage.

He didn't know where he was running. Directions were meaningless to him. He could have been running into the heart of the caribou territory, to the hands of the accursed king himself. He might have been running into the ocean, to die in the waves. He might have been rushing into the tripartite jaws of Cerberus, to his proper home in Tartarus.

He deserved it. He had betrayed his nation. The things he had done, in the name of alien monsters, thanks to their power and influence, had marked him as a beast. No better than them. He was a fiend of their magnitude. He was running to a fate that he had earned.

He ran, he ran far and fast, knowing he would be pursued. Even if he was as guilty as one of them, they would not forgive him his evil. Because while his monstrous deeds were their delight, his attempt at atonement with the blood of the guilty had stricken at their tiny, trembling souls. Their fake sense of honor, the lies and hypocrisy that rang in his head, repeated to make him believe it, had been besmirched by his attack on their injustice. They would make him pay. They would ensure that he suffered for making them look bad. He would pay for their weakness.

The waste opened its maw and swallowed him whole. He had run to the landscape between caribou and rebel, where their careless anti-magic foolishness and their complete idiocy on matters of ecology had wrought death and desolation.

That was where he belonged. A broken creation of the caribou inside a broken creation of the caribou. He could die in the waste. He could carve out a niche in the wild, live on lean rations and then expire, let nature pull him apart, let the world take its revenge and extract the penalty for his betrayal.

He fell down, exhausted, in the wild. The sun was going down, so he wouldn't die in its glare. But as the moon sullenly rose over him, he thought his bloody form would bring nature's cleaners, to wipe him away.

“They didn't come. Even nature, red in tooth and claw, knew to stay away from me. I was redder than anything waiting in the darkness. They were afraid of me. They were right to be afraid. I was a crazed, unthinking collection of fragmented mental pieces. That jigsaw jumble of thoughts and impressions were all I had of 'me.' It was all I was, just a lot of little shards that needed to be pieced painfully back together.

“Thought-piece by thought-piece, I did it. I stopped vomiting after I had nothing left to throw up, but I still dry-heaved as I was forced to paste disgusting memories back into place, to bring my broken mind back into something like a usable form. I did what I could and the result is what you see here. I hear you rebels unseal the brainwashed as a punishment, and leave them to die. I can respect that, I respect that a lot.”

“It has happened,” Vital said. “For the especially terrible captured in specific raids the Black Knight will do that, and it gets applause. But he can also release them slowly, cutting their heads slice by slice, with care and caution, letting them ease into their return. They are agonized and full of anguish but they had the chance to slowly slide through it. They need help but are at least stable enough to be soldiers. The Released are very dedicated soldiers, though I think they may take on dangerous missions on purpose...”

“I wouldn't doubt it. Suicide is not my idea of how to be punished for my crimes.”

“Crimes done under their control, amigo, remember that.”

“I was just following orders. But that will never satisfy me. I was in there, and I had to remember it all. I have to live with it. I have to live with what I did to my neighbors, to strangers, to those who begged me to stop. I shut my eyes and ears when it was happening. But it all came at me. I saw it. I felt it. I can't forget it. Treason has scarred me forever. Curse the caribou. And curse me as well. We all deserve to die and rot, and someday it will come...”

The three dissolved into silence for a time, the only sounds being the crackling of the fire and the soft coos of Flores as she napped after eating.

Author's Note

One of those names is kind of an Easter Egg. And there's another easter egg hidden in a throwaway reference.

In the Dark of the Night- The Partisan

The silence around the fire went on until Vital looked over at Old Timer and said, “You know, it's very common to etch sayings on weapons. Most swords are recaptured Royal Guard equipment and have what they used to call 'aftermarket' additions put on when captured. That's the kind of distribution for infiltrators and sleepers and partisan groups. Direct main rebels are equipped with the hammer and sickle, purpose-built for each one, with a personal motto.”

“What do you have on yours?” Old Timer asked.

Vital pulled his weapons from his pack, showing them as best as he could in the flickering firelight. “Here on the face of the hammer I put a line that directly comes from the Black-Verreaux Maquis song of war and international cooperation. Soufflons nous-même notre forge, battons le fer quand il est chaud. Let us fan our forge ourselves, strike while the iron is hot. Over on the sickle, I decided to have the motto of the Maquis themselves, the one they adopted when they became the guards of the passes to Tara. On ne passe pas. They shall not pass. It also evokes the battle of The Skein, when Trout slaughtered every last fascist that came to claim it and won freedom through blood.”

“And misery, Niño. I know that heroes are important. Pero los muertos bought that freedom as much or more than the living did,” Pedro noted.

Vital crossed the weapons over his chest, in the standard symbol of the rebellion. “I remember. We all remember. There's a lot of pain and misery involved in this cause. But we go forward no matter what. We have to.”

“Tell us your tale, Niño. Rebels usually die before capture,” Pedro said, dragging a finger across his throat. “Suicidio. They have magic rocks and other such things.”

“Those with high value, or those with particular information about the locations of caches or facilities are required to hold a suicide stone. All others take their chances. Some will cut their own throats with their sickle or make sure they die by attacking so fiercely that deadly force is the only way to make them stop. With their cheap medical capabilities there's no way to pull it back. We don't fear death, we have a healthy fear of a fate worse than death, being in the thrall of these monsters.”

“Do you embrace death, Niño? Is La Muerte your secret partner waiting to give you your warm abrazo while you run to her to get it?”

“I didn't...” Vital confessed. “I lived to live, to bring back life to this shattered land and make happiness and light return to their proper place. Everything I did, it was for the cause of revitalization. But after what happened... if that La Muerte means La Mort then I don't know anymore. When I was with the squad they assigned me to, I was filled with hope and light. With them gone... les chaises sont vide et les tables sont vide. I... I guess I should explain where I came from so you can see how I came here.”

”I was born of a Percheron mother and a Central Equestrian father, but raised largely in Central Equestria. We were very much working class, and we had the funds to travel to see mother's family in Percheron. One thing you don't really know unless you live there or know someone from there, Percheron ponies are very close to Black-Verreaux griffins. They visit the area often, because of the shared language, like how Balds visit Capal often. And we went into the Griffin Kingdom to see Black-Verreaux areas.

“I wasn't even a soldier. No Guard trainee, no Constable or would-be Officer or Nightwatch member. I didn't even fight as a child. I was something else, something you might not expect or predict. I wasn't a fighter. I was an artist.”

Vital looked over the unruly mass of mane with a practiced eye that belied his teen years. Apprenticeship was never promised to be easy but it beat waiting to join a proper full-time trade school after graduation. Doing the scut work was to be expected.

He moved with a swiftness typical of pegasi, squirting on the enriched relaxer, using the coarse brush to get the very tips untangled and working a comb through the lower part of the mane to separate the strands properly. He laid in with the scissors when needed to even out any problem areas and bring the whole tangled, tumbleweed-like mass into a proper shape, a very proper page cut.

A very fey and prim chestnut earth stallion trotted up and nodded his head. “Very good, Mr. Monsoon, and the eyes never lit up even once.” He inspected the plastic head's mane, turning it all around slowly.

“So, when do I get my first customer?” Vital asked, practically beaming with pride.

“When you graduate school and I hire you,” the earth stallion said sternly. He softened his look and motioned to a card of janitorial tools. “I'm a licensed aesthetician, I can sign your CV personally and attest to your skill. I'll test you for your provisional license when you reach the proper age, until then you do the apprentice work and get paid a little scratch for janitorial things. Now, you did your daily practice head, get back to the hair before it piles up and drowns us all.”

Vital chuckled softly and went back to his cart. He had talent, there was no doubt. He could make an honest living out of his skills, like his mother and his father. If he did the work and followed a proper order he could count on the state to welcome him with open arms and support him in his labor.

”I paid my first direct taxes on my own when I got my provisional license. I never felt prouder to be an Equestrian than in that moment. I had become a taxpayer, which meant I was more truly a part of the nation that had been promising me peace and safety. It delivered. It delivered for many years.

“I mentioned we visited the Kingdom now and again, to tourist about in the usual places, though since mother could speak properly with the Black-Verreaux and father and I could get on fairly enough we went to their areas. As a middling clan they had a lot of middling positions. The Kingdom prioritized and considered different professions differently. Artists and creators of all types tended to be middling positions, considered laborers of a sort, much like the ancient Haast did, or like our Hipposians and Equusians did.

“There were a lot of artists in the areas, including other stylists. They obviously had a far different job, having to style feathers, which only sometimes were long enough, and tail tufts, plus fur on the hippogriffs. I got to learn a lot about creativity because they made a lot out of what little they usually had to work with. They also made a lot of wigs to give griffins more options for looks.

“We made connections in the Kingdom, strong ones. I know they were strong. Because when the nation went to Tartarus, they took us in. Before the Fear Doirche and his insurrection, when the refugees were coming in from Stalliongrad there were others coming too.”

“Viens! Viens! Vite! Tout le monde!” The Black-Verreaux soldiers motioned for the dwindling line of pony refugees to follow along a mountain path, most of them speaking in a mix of Stalliongradi and Central Equestrian.

Vital pushed his way through to one of the more imposing soldiers, all clad in mail and with an added vest of riveted squares of steel mostly covered by a narrow tabard with two black griffins on it. His helmet came to a slight point, had a strip protecting the top of his beak and a mail veil protecting the rest of his beak and neck. “Chevalier! Chevalier!”

The big griffin looked down on him and spoke to him in the Black-Verreaux tongue. “You speak my language, young pony?”

“Enough,” Vital replied. “Have you seen other pegasi? My parents, we were separated, I thought they had fallen back.”

“No pegasi in the back, they all went ahead. It's the old and infirm here. Don't worry about-” The tercel's reply was cut off by a shrieking cry of pain cutting through the air.

“Les Caribous!” A voice of the rearguard shouted, followed by the twang of longbows and cries of expiring soldiers.

“Go, young pony! Go! The bastards have less sense than I thought,” the commanding tercel insisted, drawing a sword from his side and picking up a large, triangular shield from beside him. “Pour Le Roi et Royaume!” He dashed past the last of the refugees around a bend in the path, the sounds of battle echoing through the mountains.

Vital couldn't contain his curiosity, slipping along to look around the bend. A small force of caribou soldiers along with brainwashed ponies were clashing with members of the rearguard. Though the brittle iron armor of the caribou was battered well by the steel swords or steel glaives of the griffins their brutish strength put a lot of power into their massy iron maces or brutal two-handed swords, to say nothing of their stun sticks which downed a few griffins and set them up for death.

The commander who had run back to aid them deflected a powerful blow from a mace with his shield, the attack carrying over into the face of a stallion that got too near. His sword ran through the caribou he had deflected, his momentum bulling the huge creature backward into a few of the other stallions, creating enough distraction to allow him to pull his sword back out.

The shield deflected and pushed back the stallions, keeping him safe until one of the glaive-wielding guards stabbed one pony and divided the attention of the others, allowing for them to be more easily taken down. It took some doing but they finally got the mass of them down, with only a small loss of the rearguard.

“They dare to come? We will stop them. Our land will not be their victim. The ponies have given us warning, and now we fight that we might help our friends who gave us this news. We fight. For King and Kingdom!”

The cry was echoed by the others, which made it ring down the mountain passes, past the attentive ears of the awestruck Vital.

”For King and Kingdom. That really meant something. It meant an attachment to their land, a love of the land that loved them. The same idea was in my head while I was there, thanks to them. Pour Les Princesses et La Principaute. It was my home, and I was a citizen of it. I owed it to them.

“I did find my parents, and we were cared for, for a time, until the Fear Doirche thought he could usurp his father's kingdom in exchange for bodies and gold and a tin-plate crown and power that would be yanked away at the slightest notice. Then they started to have a problem. We needed to go back. I was willing, even if it meant dying, as I owed it.

“That was when we learned the government had not fallen. We heard about the Cult-Finder General and Paddock 51, the rebellion and how they seized land and pushed the caribou back, thanks to their foolish overextension. Refugee locations were set up, and they were actively seeking recruits to become proper rebels, to fight the fash and get our land back. Having watched the many clans arming and organizing, especially the Black-Verreaux becoming the Maquis guarding the passes to Tara, I felt like I knew what to do.

“We went back and I said good-bye to my parents. I didn't relish it, but it was necessary. My hooves were still dusty with Griffin Kingdom dirt when I volunteered, and I was sent to train immediately, to learn how to be a rebel and get back what was ours.”

The stern-faced unicorn mare set down a small, red-covered book before each of the recruits in the class, earning a look of confusion from Vital. “Uh, Miss Care, what is this?”

Tender Care opened her own copy and pointed to the title page. “It says right here, The Tome of Harmonious Words and the Rebel Songbook. Words about the Elements of Harmony, so we never forget, and songs created to motivate and strengthen rebel resolve, composed by us or translated from other sources. Lesson one, morale is a force multiplier. If you're dragging and depressed you're all but useless.

“You might notice a lot of propaganda around the tunnels. It's not just for mocking and demoralizing the fash and their supporters. Civilians and rebel soldiers need encouragement too. They must become energized and vitalized, must keep the bright dream of tomorrow ever in their hearts. You'll hear a lot of repeated phrases, a lot of mantras of encouragement and grand announcements. Those are part of how you stay empowered.”

Vital opened the book and looked toward the back, finding a few songs in Percheron, with a translation beside. “C'est la lutte finale, groupons-nous et demain...” He nodded slowly. “I heard the Black-Verreaux soldiers singing this one. It's their call for international cooperation. It's part of what got me so eager to fight.”

“Oh yes? And what else was your inspiration, Mr. Monsoon?”

“Pour Les Princesses et La Principaute. For the Princesses and the Principality. Equestria cared for me all my life, cared for my family. We were merely ordinary ponyfolks, and we had a good life in the beautiful world that used to be. I had a potential job, I paid my taxes, I worked hard to provide for a nation that provided for me. This rebellion promised me that land again. As it is headed by the legitimate government in an unbroken line, I trust it. If it gives me truth, I will give it my blood and breath.”

“You're already rebel material. Learn how to crush caribou skulls with a hammer and hack through their bull necks with a sickle and you'll be ready to face them down, and leave them a mere bloody pile of bits on the ground, ready for burial,” Tender Care said with a smile.

“Burial? Really? We'll bury the worthless fash?” Vital asked, incredulous.

“Lesson two, you are always going to to have to be superior to the enemy, and not just militarily. We are guided by better notions and higher ideals, dedicated to a cause that opposes them at every step. Remember, as it was in the old world, though grim, the task is necessary. It is no less grim for being necessary, but no less necessary for being grim. We took responsibility for our actions and our duties. We performed what had to be done because it was necessary we do so.

“You may think little of burying the bastards but it must be done. Now mostly that's a task for the Gravediggers, which some of you may become if you choose. But out in the waste, you still should bury them. Markless, of course, unlike the innocent dead who get at least a marker and your fellow fallen who should be honored well with their name, no matter how far they are from civilization. Keep such things in mind, and you will truly be a rebel.”

Vital looked through the front of the book at the Harmonious words. He focused on the segment on loyalty. To be Loyal is to be constant. Steadfast. Steady and sure, solid like the mountain stones. The ranges will last the ages, standing tall as testament to the power of remaining still. Their constancy is without pride and arrogance, without interference or harm. Loyalty to a good cause is like fire in a stone ring, useful and mild.

Mild was not what he intended, not for the ones who destroyed the land he loved. But he would be useful. Very useful. Before, that had meant being a proficient stylist, a taxpayer, an upright and law-abiding citizen of a nation that gave him peace and freedom. As a rebel, it would mean bashing in caribou skulls and cutting their throats. The more of them that expired, the fewer there would be to spread their poison to the world. To bring back the old world.

A look through more of the songs showed words that made him even more resolved. We will bring to birth the old world from the ashes of the new.

”I made it through the mental part of the training and the physical part as well. It was an accelerated curriculum to be sure. They had to churn out soldiers at a rate that had never been seen before, at least not in living memory, or even historical memory. We trained with reasonable facsimile weapons of the proper weight and size, until they could trust us with the real thing. Then we were sent to Dog smiths to get our proper weapons.”

The rebels maintained a kind of cubicle system for their forges, keeping them deep below habitation tunnels near magma flow lines. The center held the magma that cycled in and out, opening in multiple places like a glassblower's beehive. Air channels to blast up the temperature as needed were located in each cube, where a Dog smith worked tirelessly to make weapons and armor.

The smith slammed his hammer down on the lump of brass on his forge, shaping the mass into a proper hammer shape, but with a slope-back peen that was turned into an impaling point. “Rebel design is good, make easy break bad armor. Caribou armor shame on craft of smithing. Hope you break many, punish for bad skills,” the smith said, giving a standard rasping Dog laugh.

“I saw their terrible armor when the Black-Verreaux guards stabbed through them with swords and glaives. They were big and terrible but the iron was cheap and cracked when stabbed just right,” Vital said, fanning his wings and wiping at his forehead. “Whew. This heat... are you sure you're fine with this kind of treatment?"

The smith laughed again as his swift and expert strikes rapidly shaped the weapon. “Dogs strong! Strong in fire mana, live beneath earth. All know is hot deep in earth. And forge Dogs raised at paws of mother or father. Forge is home, is place where feel comfort. Is natural. Is like sky for pegasus.”

“I never knew that. I honestly knew more about griffins,” Vital confessed. “I hope I'm not interrupting. I don't want to be a bother. I'm not even sure why I was sent here.”

“Weapon wielder should forge weapon. If can not, must watch being made. Must know all, see all parts, see take shape. Must know weapon, make part of self. And also, need here for words. All rebels want words on weapons. Have letter set, stamp on first, etch deeper later.”

“Oh yes. I know perfectly well what I want on the hammer's face. It's something in Percheron that you might appreciate. Soufflons nous-même notre forge, battons le fer quand il est chaud. It means, let us fan our forge ourselves, strike while the iron is hot.”

The Dog laughed long and loud, pulling on the cord to blow in air and raise the heat of the forge. “Yes! You strike while hot! Will crush caribou with hammer, and words will make mean more!”

”The fellow's name was Citrine. Still is, I guess. A good smith, as you can tell. And he did a good job on the etching once he did the preliminary stamping. I really did pay attention as he made my weapons, made sure I knew every last thing about them. I'm immensely proud of them, and at that time I was eager to initiate them with the death of caribou.

“I got my first assignment not long after. I was the only rookie in a crew of of those who had handled a few assignments before. We were being sent to liberate an ad hoc processing facility, a pop-up location that was used for short-term concentration and breaking. They tended to be small and poorly guarded, a good early assignment. It was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to be an easy first action...”

The small facility was a converted, up-armored farm complex, mostly consisting of berms at the perimeter, wooden defensive walls and internal walls making it an enclosed version of its former self. A bit elaborate for a pop-up facility but nothing too special. It stood out as an aberration even in the soft moonlight. It was clearly a thrown-together pile of junk that failed to meld with the look of the land. A festering wound, like all caribou construction.

Though it had defenses that had been constructed by warriors, they were only basic and very easy to bypass. The berms had been made in such a way that they interrupted line-of-sight from the most probable sentry positions. It was an open question if the brainwashed or caribou actually consistently set sentries and if they retained dedication to the assignment.

The entrance was a simple opening, not even blocked with a gate or door. Inside were only two guards, earth ponies, in ill-fitting caribou-made armor. One was sitting on a battered dining room chair lightly spotted with dried blood, most likely taken from the main house. The other was standing and looking sternly down on the other.

“You'd better not screw this up or you're going to get processed yourself,” the standing stallion threatened.

“I mean... I'm very sleepy... but that's to be expected. Plenty of free cunts, plenty of them, right?” The seated stallion elbowed the other and laughed.

The other chuckled and slowly nodded. “Sure, sure. Just do your assignment and make sure nothing happens.”

It took relatively little time for the stallion to fall asleep once the other had left, leaving the open area silent and still, save for the light snores of the guard. He opened his eyes when the lead rebel grabbed the end of his snout, the unicorn mare holding it in an iron grip, lifting his chin and exposing his throat. The diamond point of her sickle pierced into the side of his neck and she followed through with the motion smoothly. The steel edge cut through his throat and left him spasming and struggling for a brief moment, before she released his lifeless form to slump into his chair.

The other rebels gathered around, a mix of earth ponies and unicorns, with Vital being the only pegasus. “Looks like it was just one. Don't get comfy, though. They might have more. We can't assume anything if we expect to make it out,” the leader said.

Vital drew his weapons and clutched the handles extra tightly, breath starting to quicken. “Let them come. I watched these things come into being and they're ready to get to work.”

“I admire your enthusiasm, but learn to temper your response,” the mare chuckled. “Be mild and useful. This is a grim necessity, treat it as such.”

Vital nodded, loosening his grip on the weapons. “The ways of the old world must be upheld.”

The lead mare motioned to the rest. “Protect the rear, Mr. Monsoon. We'll clear out the main group if it becomes necessary, but the best outcome would be to release everyone silently. We should be in and out quickly.”

They all moved toward the building that had been the main barn, the most likely place to find the captives waiting for processing, which likely would have been done on the grounds or in the silo or main house. As before, the barn was open, at least slightly, and the inside was blocked by an interior wall, which made it even harder to get a good idea about the interior. Another few motions had everyone move their way in, leaving Vital outside, to guard their egress.

The still silence of the night was broken by a sudden, deafening siren, magic lights popping on and the quiet farm buildings lighting up, numerous brainwashed soldiers piling out. In the long run, it wasn't terribly many, but it was severely unbalanced. They were all decked out in iron armor, with a few pieces of steel, along with a similar mixture of weapons.

As a rookie, Vital was in a modest sort of armor. It was largely imported layered gazelle leather, like griffin light armor, with steel squares riveted over the front, very much like the armor the rearguard leader had worn in the evacuation column. He could boast some steel greaves and gauntlets, with a mail girded skirt for relative ease of movement, but that would not help against powerful blows or too many hacks and stabs.

The first attack was almost the only one needed, a stun-stick thrust nearly into his belly by a brainwashed stallion who had come in from the side. He dodged almost as a reflex and threw his left arm out with a cry of surprise. His heavy hammer collided with the unicorn's head, caving in the front of his skull and partially cracking his horn. He stared, amazed, at what he had done. He had always intended it, but the accident made it more of a shock.

He had little time to be lost in the reverie, being quickly swarmed by the collection of unicorns and earth ponies. He knew pegasi were a rare sight in outlying areas, their flight giving them plum positions in moving patrols or in cloud areas and on the griffin border to cut down on their advantage. A small favor that he had only to examine the ground but little comfort with the needlessly large mass starting to hem him in.

The sounds of screams and combat from within the barn came to and end and several, but not all, of the others emerged, bloodied, wounded, but still up. The leader was even still there, and she ran right to the circling mass, cracking her hammer into the face of the first stallion that turned to look and sinking her diamond-tipped sickle through the brittle armor of another's back, hooking upward to wreak havoc on his body.

“Never underthink the bastards!” She shouted, deflecting blows as the main force turned on the smaller company of survivors. “It was an ambush! They finally got around to developing decoys!”

The arrival took some pressure off of Vital, but he still faced more than one soldier. He could only deflect and make attempts at heavy strikes that put him in danger. He was not fully trained with hard fighting using the hammer and sickle. “We can do this! We can cut them down!”

“WE can do this! You need to take those wings and fly! Someone needs to get out of this mess! Go!”

“What? No! I'm a rebel too! I'm here to fight for the nation!”

“Then live and fight! You're no good to the nation dead! You're the only one that can make it out!”

Vital looked at the exit, which was stopped up with troops from outside. They must have been hiding somewhere in earshot of the sirens. The only way out was up. “Ma'am..!”

“GO!” The mare pushed her way into the crowd attempting to get at Vital, hammering them hard and slashing her sickle at anything that looked soft. The others took up the idea and did the same, creating an escape window in danger of collapsing quickly.

Vital needed no more encouragement, leaping into the air and flapping his wings as hard as possible. He chanced a look back, and saw the commander on her knees, cutting her own throat with her sickle as the overpowering number of cowards overwhelmed them. He barely noticed that those from the outside pursued him, but just enough of his mind recognized the need to fly away from any shelters or hideouts. He went for the waste, to protect the others.

It was a mission he could complete, no matter what it cost.

“Shutter, Stony Creek, Aurora, Fancy Scrawl, Plowshare, Open Book, Reed Whistle, Cardstock, Horizon Line, Peanut Picker the old fellow and the leader, Miles Gladius Diamond Shield, who cut her own throat rather than be captured. I'll have to carry their names with me forever, and it's good that I do but...” Vital looked into the fire, past the weapons he held in his hands. “I don't... I don't understand.”

“Understand what, Niño?”

“I don't understand why they told me to go, sent me away when I was just as much a rebel as them. Maybe not as experienced but I could have kept fighting. It would have cost me my life, as it did theirs, I hope, but I would have gladly given my blood for the nation, for the hope of a tomorrow better than the nightmare of today. Why did they make me go?”

“Do you really not know? Can you honestly ask that? It's so obvious why they made you do that, why they stayed to fight and sent you off to live and fight another day,” Old Timer said with some force.

“Why? Why would they do that? One more dead body wouldn't hurt anything, one more pair of arms with weapons would have helped. It was my duty, a duty I took on, to which I intended to be loyal, to the end. Why did they send me away?”

“Your Diamond Shield said it herself. You had to live and fight. You, more than anyone else in that group. You said you were the youngest and least experienced. They were fighting for you, for everyone like you. The young, the strong, the hopeful. You are what the future is built on. A young symbol of a hopeful future, full of passion and drive. They wanted you free, to keep fighting elsewhere, in better circumstances, because the future must belong to the young.”

Vital looked at his weapons again, gripping them tight, trembling with the strength of his hold. “The future will be brought in by those who dare, sculpted by those who can. And belong to everyone. They gave me my future, and I owe an endless debt to them. I'll shape the future they died for. I'll live long enough to make a difference to it.”

The group again fell to silence, as Vital contemplated his weapons in the flickering firelight.

Time Unwound

The next day the quartet of figures ate early, fed Flores, and made their way in the vague direction of Gaskinwich as they had been the other day. They started off in the relative cool of the early morning, to get as much mileages as they could out of a comfortable period. Pedro carried Flores as well as the bulk of the supplies, with Vital and Old Timer carrying their personal packs and a portion of the essential items.

No conversation passed between them for a long while, the only sounds being the cries or coos that Flores gave when she was hungry, in need of a change or delighted by the close presence of Pedro. They didn't run any longer, letting their bodies properly recover from the furious actions of the prior day. The easier pace still took a toll, just far less of one.

“When we get to Gaskinwich, the first thing I'm doing is getting to a rebel contact area and delivering my information about the ambush and how the decoy setup works,” Vital said.

“Really? That's your first priority? I'm going to get myself a glass of water with ice in it, in a glass that doesn't taste like metal or plastic. Then something leafy, or maybe baked and fluffy, anything but a rock-hard ration bar,” Old Timer said.

“I'm going to a doctor, to see if our princesa is truly healthy. She must be well, nos prometíamos. After that, I can worry about rebel reports and my own belly,” Pedro huffed.

“I know she's precious, and she's the source of hope. But the report needs to be done, to protect other rebels, to spare lives. You told me about hard choices, about being willing to make them. The information must pass in a timely manner, and they can also have a rebel doctor see to her,” Vital said.

“I'll admit to some selfishness. But that's because I'm going to spend the rest of the war and beyond in an asylum, probably sedated out of my mind until there's a therapist for me. After coming through... all of this... I think I deserve a little good treatment. You do, too, Pedro. They'll take her to a doctor; they're true Equestrians after all. We can have a cool drink and a proper meal together and still keep our promise to her. It's possible to do both. We don't have artificial pressure to choose between the two.”

Pedro considered the statement, while looking down at Flores. “But if you had to..?”

“I was a studious stallion but I was never interested in high-minded philosophy. I left that to more esoteric unicorns in other places. I had a technical job with technical matters to think about,” Old Timer said with a snort. A short while later he added, “But... I would... see to her safety first.” He huffed. “I always assumed that donkeys were mostly immune to high-minded sophistry.”

“Hardy practicality does not leave out the possibility of being un filósofo,” Pedro said, tapping the side of his head. “Being the spare foal left me much time to think.”

“So I can see,” Old Timer said. “I have nothing against the idea of thought experiments, there are some very important ones, but matters of practicality take precedence in dire and emergency situations, which, you will agree, this certainly is.”

“I actually fall slightly on Pedro's side in this. He has a point about needing to make choices like this as though you absolutely had to pick, if I'm reading him correctly,” Vital said.

“Sí, exacto, Niño. Choose as if you must and you will make smarter choices, that are better for your goals. Práctico. Just as los burros always think.”

“Goals can conflict, and in that... now you've got me doing it. I swear I'm not a philosopher. But still, yes, we made a promise to her, made a very sacred promise to keep her safe. And in a way we're already putting our bodies on the line and suffering through things. A little more once we get into town couldn't possibly hurt, since we're going to get what we want anyhow. Instant gratification as a lifestyle rather than consequence is a fairly foul way to get by.”

Vital snorted sharply and shook his head. “Childish instant gratification is how the caribou and their minions live and breathe. Wanting some cold water and pastry after this mess is natural. Wanting mares thrown at you for the accident of being born a stallion is nonsensical. And might be insane, I'm still not sure.”

“I've been insane, I might still be. It's not my kind of insanity but I can tell you, a perspective that shattered and skewed is as insane as you could want. Leave the fine details to the doctors, but they're plenty crazy as far as this crazy stallion is concerned,” Old Timer said.

“Estamos locos, camaradas. They are evil,” Pedro flatly stated. “There's no shame in being crazy, not when the world has pushed you there. They do what they do by will, and that makes them wicked.”

They continued on, mostly silent, commenting only when Flores happened to make a sound or moved too much in the sling Pedro carried. All of them seemed transported in thought as they trudged through the desolation. The anti-magic expanse stretched farther than they had really contemplated.

By all they could tell, given the map, they were moving through what had once been a fairly expansive lea, though near some hardy scrubland, both of them probably fed by magic and maintained by ponies. The caribou had clearly done something cataclysmic, as standard nullification, even the potent dust of the Mountains of Madness, couldn't have had such wide-ranging effects with such seeming permanence. They had stripped the land of magic and taken away its tenders, to leave only desolation behind. That seemed the caribou way.

The ground was lined with long cracks, the ground dried hard after the grass died and split from the blazing sun unmitigated by the work of pegasi moving covering clouds. Hardy tufts of grass split the earth in a different way, forcing their way up, struggling to live, to survive in defiance of caribou will. They must have been drawing from a deep water source, drawing what it could from where it could. The blades stretched long and thin, capturing the sun without drying out, achieving a balance after all the other variants had died. Cruel. Harsh. Ultimately effective.

The distance wavered, from the heat, the horizon stretching seemingly forever. The quiver from the heat distortion made that far touch of ground and sky look almost unreal, an illusion teasing them. As the flat scenery never changed it was easy to imagine an infinite expanse, a cruel hoax played on them to keep them walking until they died.

Even though all of them silently arrived at that feeling at once, they walked on, having only that and nothing else.

That night they made a smaller fire, having less material from scrounging, huddling closer as the temperature dropped sharply when the sun sank behind the eternal horizon. Flores was held tight to Pedro's chest, softly drinking down partially warmed formula.

“Discúlpeme, princessa... 'ta frio... como el mundo, el mundo de los caribú,” Pedro whispered, leaning down to softly kiss her head.
“She's going to have a good head start on languages. C'est vrai, princesse?”

“Three languages for a start, yes. That sounds like a very decent beginning. Caballito and Percheron, with Central Equestrian, maybe build on that with Cavalino, Capal and Equusian. That sounds like an excellent path to make a proper polyglot.”

“She will speak all the languages, va a estar muy bonita, muy inteligente. The smartest, prettiest mare in the reborn world. She'll know everything,” Pedro cooed.

“That should anger the caribou... if we leave any,” Vital said, ending with a dark mutter.

“I should complain, but I won't. I know what they think and force others to think. I certainly won't raise a fuss if they leave under an endless rain of arrows and fire,” Old Timer said with a curt nod.

“Send them away, and take Master Bliss. Todos los monstruos, out with the caribou.”

“Prince Blueblood is not at all shy about embracing his grim duty, due to his personal pain. I've heard that when someone asked him how many caribou he would kill if they kept coming after him without end, he asked them back, 'How many are there?' Now that's what makes him a respectable fellow. I hope I can meet him when I get back, join him in his endeavors.”

“Yo también. To be part of el Príncipe Azul's venganza, that would be beautiful. No matter what I must do to join him, I will. How many are there? We will find out.”

They passed the rest of the night in silence, huddled close around the tiny fire, trying to share all their warmth with Flores.

The next day, they were still silent, not as well rested as they would have liked but still set on the trudging march toward the endless horizon. Their sacred duty drew them on, unhesitating, bound by their word and genuine honor. However much it hurt, they moved along, desperate for Gaskinwich, and desperate to keep ahead of the killers behind them.

The dwindling hope of keeping ahead of the murderous pursuers ended when Vital took a look back, as he often did, and saw a rising plume of dust in the distance. “We had some hope, the journey wasn't that long, but now it's over. They're coming.”

“¡Mierda! Disculpame, princessa, but...” Pedro hugged Flores tighter. “Nunca más... she is days old, she must live! No more foals dead because of those pinche pendejos!”

“How far do you think?” Old Timer asked.

Vital carefully gauged the width of the plume and eyeballed how much he could see. “I'm a little lost at the edge. They might be inside a dust plume and thus invisible to me but best guess, just at or past the horizon line. About three miles back, which means they did send a heavy force.”

“We're going to lose more or less ground but won't ever escape them,” Old Timer said. “Average speed of walking would put them at that distance in an hour, but they're probably marching and have forced paces. We could run but you're the only one with stamina. They're going to close the distance sooner rather than later.”

“Running would only make us tired when they caught us,” Vital sighed. “You're right, I could run or fly but we made a promise. Protect her together. We know they're back there, we have to press on. If the map is right and if we're still going the right way we could make it. Let's just run, we have the stamina right now.”

The three broke into as much of a run as they could muster, limbs only just responding to their demand for speed and stamina. They gave their all, charging ahead for their lives. For the life of Flores who began to cry, attempts at comforting and coddling doing no good as they ran. It made the dash more desperate, but also more tragic. It frightened her, upset her, maybe pained her. But they had to persist. For her.

The rigors of keeping ahead of the pursuers took their toll on them all, but Old Timer was the first one to falter. He staggered a bit and his pace slowed, prompting the other two to come to his aid.

“No... no, you keep running. We have to, we have to go on,” he insisted.

“Juntos, Viejo, siempre,” Pedro insisted, offering a helping hand.

“We can't split up. If we want to have a chance at dodging that mess we need to stay ahead of their pace. Keep the distance the same and they can't catch us. We just have to beat a marching speed long enough to make walking viable.”

Old Timer started walking again, but looked contemplative. “What if they stopped?”

“We'd gain a lot of ground but I know those bastards, they won't stop,” Vital replied.

“I was one of those bastards, I can remember how it was when I was one of their pawns. They'll do anything to recover their fake honor, soothe their childish minds,” Old Timer said, stopping and turning.

“Viejo?”

“Keep going. Take her, take my pack and keep going...” He dug around in his pack, until he pulled out something he hadn't shown before. A stun-stick. “I only need to take this.”

“What? No! You can't do this! You need weapons, you need help...” Vital insisted.

“No. I kept this in my fugue, had it on me in the waste. Those bastards gave it to me. It's only right I give it back,” Old Timer said, touching one of the tips. A little spot of blood appeared at the end of his finger. “I made a few changes. They said this thing can't kill. But it certainly can now. I ground the tips sharp as needles. Stab near the heart and hit the juice. That should stop at least a few.”

“No, please...” Pedro pleaded.

“They wanted all stallions to become monsters,” Old Timer snorted. “I just hope they like the one that I became.”

Vital grabbed Old Timer's arm and shook him sharply. “No! We all stand together. Or I'll stand with you. I have weapons, I can fight, I've been trained!”

Old Timer shrugged off the grab and shook his head. “Remember your commander, remember how they all died for you. I have to do this. Young ponies died in wars, so they say, and died against natural monsters. But they shouldn't here. Here, the right thing is for the young to live and thrive, and make a grand new world. Bad, old ponies atone by making sure that world comes to be.” He started walking in the direction of the dust cloud. “So go! Go make it! Make it for me! For all of us!” He turned his head to look at Flores, who had gone oddly silent. “...for her...” He turned again and started to run, in the opposite direction of the others.

“Old Timer...” Vital whispered, tears at the corners of his eyes.

“Lloras luego, corremos ahora,” Pedro insisted, tugging Vital until he turned and started running. “We honor his sacrifice by doing what he wanted, taking her far away from them. If they stop, he has given us a gift.”

“An expensive gift,” Vital lamented. “She's worth it but.. seeing the price paid...”

While the others ran to the promise of Gaskinwich, Old Timer ran to the those charged with getting them. His legs screamed and his chest burned with effort, but he kept on. “Hold together you insane, old wreck! You promised her! Keep at least one promise in your accursed life! Keep this one because it means the most!”

The line of marching troops were large but not professionals in the main. Cloth-armored and unarmed slavecatchers marched at the front, backed by earth pony and unicorn soldiers with thicker cloth armor with mail or plates of metal, both Caribou iron and pony or Dog steel. Behind them were a few iron-armored caribou, and behind them all an actual caribou Blood-Rune Mage. He was clad only in a loincloth, body deeply dyed with his accursed runes, his belt hung with the dried gourd bottles containing the blood he used in his magic. Old Timer knew that that blood came from mares, the ones that failed to please and could be quietly snuck away.

They lied to their own minions. They made sure the full extent of the ugliness was unknown. That just made him more angry.

They saw him as he rushed up, stun-stick held high, letting them know he had it. One of the caribou behind the slavecatchers and soldiers called out, “Surrender! You bear one of the pitiless majesty's weapons, you were once one of us! Surrender and submit and take your punishment!”

He had no intention of surrender. He had no desire to pay a debt he didn't owe. His deeds were terrible, but his conscience was clean. He killed those around him for the crimes they had committed, for what they had forced him to commit. He would give them the Tartarus they deserved. He would give them all they had earned.

Author's Note

The short next chapter was assembled from what amounted to scribbling. It's not my best but if you want to see Old Timer's sacrifice, then go ahead and read it.

La Lutte Finale

Their muscles screamed, their lungs burned, and their eyes blurred as Pedro and Vital ran on, taking advantage of Old Timer's sacrifice. A halt in the pursuers, almost a miracle as far as they were concerned. It meant they put extra distance between them and bought more time, potentially enough time to get them to Gaskinwich before the distance was erased.

“This future had better be the greatest that ever was!” Vital cried, panting heavily as he screamed.

“Nos princessa will be in it! It must be!' Pedro answered.

“I want to wonder how much time he bought us and how much relief his attack gave, but I... I don't know if I really want to know what his life ended up as.”

“He ended as un héroe, that's how his life ended up! We will always remember, like tus camaradas. Siempre. We must use all this time, every last second, every last step.”

Huffing, grunting, they pushed their bodies to the limit, pegasus stamina meeting donkey hardiness. They kept pace with some capacity, running when they could and taking long-striding walking steps when they needed to recover some measure of their energy.

“Do you... do you think we made good enough time to actually be near Gaskinwich?” Vital asked. “That we're not another day out, or that we misread the map or the angle?”

“Hold hope, Niño, necesitamos creer. We can't give in. Los carniceros... no pueden demostrar merced. No tienen almas. They spared none in the camp, they enslave without pity. We must hope, o no tenemos nada...”

Vital didn't say anything for a time but then nodded. “I just understand. Those evil bastards can't be allowed to get her. We need that hope. I believe it. We'll see Gaskinwich. We will.”

They kept running, adding more and more space between the pursuing soldiers and themselves, not sure just how much of a delay Old Timer had bought them, how many soldiers he had felled. They had to squeeze out every last stride they could, put Gaskinwich that much closer to them. If they could get it in sight, attract border guards or similar, they could ease off the pace and let them take care of the threat.

Their waning stamina lasted only a little longer, sending them from running to jogging. “Nos piernas... estan como Tartarus. I wish... quiero... I was a machine. Her papá had the right idea. Un genio...”

“Oh... oh princesses... you should know, it's just a... a carefully cultivated stereotype... that pegasi have no stamina limit... we brag but... we have one... oh and right now I feel it...”

The jogging turned into stiff-legged fast walking, the two mostly spent. Walking at all was looking to become more than their last resort. It was looking like they wouldn't have any chance at all. Every part of their legs hurt, everything was aching and stiff. Rest was the only cure, the one thing they couldn't afford.

Behind them, the plume that had been banished by their speed and Old Timer's sacrifice grew again, more furiously than before. He had angered them anew, insulted their petty egos and childish petulance. Those he had left alive would push their own muscles to the limit, to avenge themselves. They were not drilled well, nor disciplined properly. But they were motivated by base urges unleashed or imposed, and made to be afraid of their bloody king, obeying like dogs whipped into servile fawning.

They were fresher, better supplied, and had made most of the journey with slave transports and possibly a limited-range unstable airship. They had probably marched more hours, camped for fewer hours and kept a stronger pace. The regular, crushing beat translated into a pace that closed the distance they had lost, horrid step by horrid step.

They devoured the distance between the escapees, pounding the blasted landscape, sending up their plume of dust with a fury, thick and high. They were not subtle nor were they careful, they were angry, haughty and eager for revenge. They wanted their quarry captured, to face the fate worse than death that they had been condemned to, and thus erase their shame and humiliation.

“Walking can't give us the strength we need,” Vital huffed. “We can say the pace is more gentle but we're making no progress. I can see them approach, they have a better pace and can close the gap, even if we run.”

“We must... nececitamos...” Pedro hugged Flores more securely against his chest, struggling under the weight of the extra packs he had chosen to take with him. “We must...”

“There's still one thing I've got,” Vital said, flaring his wings and giving them a flap. “Some of my muscles aren't still screaming. I can fly, at least a little. I can expand the horizon, get some idea how close we are, if we're even close... if Gaskinwich even exists and isn't just just a misprint or some other town with the same name wiped off the face of this planet by the butchers behind us.”

“It must exists! They were going! With a child on the way!” Pedro looked down at Flores, who was fussing again thanks to all the jostling.

“Los supieron... it must be there. We must reach it, or else Viejo sacrificed himself for nothing.”

“Let me get a better perspective then. Keep moving...” Vital pumped his wings and launched himself into the air, trembling as his body burned up energy it just didn't have. Even well fed, or at least filled, with the ration bars and water, he had been making demands on his body he had no way of keeping up with. Though his wings hadn't been in use, they were still weak because they were attached to him. His takeoff was shaky and his height wasn't going to be impressive.

His shaky flight was accompanied by grunts and groans, hands clawing and arms stiff as he focused on just moving his wings, feeling what little personal wind-biased mana he could still draw from inside. The blasted waste had almost nothing to give him, the taint so complete that he couldn't draw on it like the old days.

The freedom of flight should have filled him with elation, made him remember the days of soaring the skies of Equestria or cutting around the foggy peaks of the Griffin Kingdom, racing other tourists of local griffins with a chip on their shoulders and some shillings to wager. He seldom had to spend his own money to pay for trinkets and meals.

He felt none of that, the memories at best a dull throb, pulses of images, wan and blurred photographs inside his mind. He almost resisted making them vivid, creating a connection with the happiness that came from slipping from the ground and feeling nothing around him but air. It was a freedom that the slaves would have envied, and savoring it seemed... incredibly inappropriate, especially since captive pegasi were permanently denied that delight, which had once been their natural and inalienable birthright.

It was just like Pedro had said. The memories had been tainted. Those monsters, by making the world into a hideous machine of abuse, had made it impossible to feel joy without also feeling guilt indulging in joy would make him like the libertines. It would make him like them. Instant gratification. Immediate ego-stroking. His desires over all others. That.... that couldn't have been right. But he still felt that twinge deep down, all because of their all-corruptive grasp. Their tendrils were corrosive poison, eating away everything they touched.

Focusing back on the task at hand, Vital turned as carefully as he could, while rising to what height he could muster. The landscape slowly spread out before him in all directions, the wavering eternal horizon growing as he got as high in the air as he could possibly get, given the tenuous state of his energy. The plume of dust covered some of the approaching forces but they were nearer. They had passed the horizon on the ground, and the most rough of mental calculations showed their brutal quick-march pace would not allow for mere walking or painful forced jogging to keep the buffer zone stable.

Out on the horizon's edge, in the direction they had been walking, he could see the tended fields and regular shapes that had to be civilization. Whether it was Gaskinwich or a slave processing facility or some random town with leashes and collars in the streets, it was a town. That fact alone was enough reason to go toward it. It was more than just civilization, it was hope.

He slowly wound his way back down, unsteadily touching the ground and dropping almost to one knee for a moment before rising agin. “I saw them...”

Pedro nodded, with a grim expression, immediately setting off walking faster with determination despite the obvious pain the steps brought. “We walk, Niño. Caminamos hasta que morir. We swore a promise, and we keep it until death.”

“But I also saw... something. Maybe Gaskinwich, maybe a slave facility. It wasn't just the endless waste. There was construction. There was structure. I saw something.”

“Bueno!” Pedro brayed, clutching Flores tighter to his chest and moving at a painful, slightly quicker pace. “¡Rápido, Niño! You saw it! It must be Gaskinwich!”

“It could be...” Vital hedged. “But I saw the army quick-marching. They're past the standard horizon, obscured by dust. They ate into Old Timer's delay, and they're chewing up the distance. They're going to close the gap and I don't think we'll stay ahead long enough to reach potential border guard visual range.”

“Give me your weapons,” Pedro grunted. “They will stop. Abrazome, Dulce Muerte, if you bring them with us.”

“They fit my hands. Perfectly,” Vital said. “They're weapons of war, for a soldier. You're not a soldier, you're a civilian. You need to embrace that. Forget about making war for as long as you're able.”

“Niño... no... Viejo's sacrifice...”

“He was right. Young, strong ponies died in wars long ago, because it was required. Even in our day, young and healthy ponies had to fight dangerous animals, and dangerous thinking creatures when they were in the gaze of the Cult-Finder General. I wasn't a fighter, I was an artist. I was...”

Pedro didn't halt his steps, still hearing Vital scraping along behind him. “Sí, an artist. Be an artist, in Gaskinwich. Cut manes and be happy.”

“The Dogs of Trout were fishers and farmers and miners. But they took weapons and cut the fash into bloody hunks of meat. You do what you have to. I'm younger, and stronger... the ideal tool for this job...”

“¿Como? No eres una herramienta, Niño. You're a pony.”

“That sword Old Timer found, the tool that kills fascists. That could be the sword or the bearer. I get the feeling that folks denigrate the idea of comparing a pony to a tool. Tools built society. They're the only reason we have one. A hammer and a sickle is the difference between civilization and squalor. I accepted my position as a tool to beat the fash. Let me be useful,” Vital said, steps halting.

Pedro didn't turn around, he didn't stop, he just shut his eyes and brayed deeply. “No... no... digame por qué... why does this have to happen?”

“Tell them about the ambush. Tell them how it worked, tell them the whole story... tell them who died,” Vital said, dropping his pack, minus his weapons. “Tell them.”

“Shutter, Stony Creek, Aurora, Fancy Scrawl, Plowshare, Open Book, Reed Whistle, Cardstock, Horizon Line, Peanut Picker, Miles Gladius Diamond Shield... Old Timer... Vital... Monsoon...” Pedro recited, voice growing thick as he heard the hoofbeats retreating.

“If I must die for my country, I'll make sure they die for it too. I'll sit here and get my strength back. You go fast as possible. You have a lot on your shoulders.”

“Sí. Tres vidas...” Pedro whispered, dropping the packs from his back, certain nothing would be needed in the final, desperate race for safety.

Vital had lowered himself down, resting on his hands and knees, with his weapons on the ground in front of him in the standard rebel sign. He contemplated it, let the bright brass and gleaming steel fill his vision, fill his mind. They were his tools. He was a tool of civilization. It all scaled upward, orderly and proper. No insane destruction, no chaos of random election and the break between slaves and everyone else.

The tool built, the one wielding it enjoyed the building and many builders made a society that became, by their will, a thing that took care of them. The tools like spoken language and writing helped ensure that growth could be continual, added to over time by the ones who came after. The caribou sought to poison growth, destroy progress, break the tools of civilization.

Vital was one tool he could promise they would not break.

The marching soldiers were hardly subtle, and gave Vital plenty of notice. Likely they had seen him from afar, down, still, looking helpless. They would probably aim right at him, focus on him and him alone. He took up the weapons, really feeling the weight of their import for the first time, as they meant everything in that moment. He softly whispered, “C'est la lutte finale...”

The small army, reduced by Old Timer's deadly charge, watched Vital with some wariness, march slowing, weapons at the ready. The slavecatchers moved forward, in advance of the rest of them, twirling their ropes and spreading their nets. “Surrender! We want the inferior for his just and proper punishment. You can be purified to regain his pitiless majesty's favor!”

Vital looked at the cowards, holding back, their stances shrunk down and back, trying to cover themselves with the ropes and nets. “Cowards! Traitors! The Equestrian government lives and condemns you! You threw in with the fash, you share their fate! This nation condemns you, and so do I!”

“The government fell! Your leader is a liar!” One of the armored knights shouted out from behind the buffering slavecatchers. “You will die here for his majesty's glory!”

Vital let a huge, pleased smile spread across his face, hammer held up high and to the back, sickle up by his throat, the gleaming back curve settled beside his throat. “Try. Even if you succeed, see how much it costs.”

The slavecatchers all rushed forward, being more coordinated than before, thanks to the shame of being passed by Old Timer. They tossed ropes and nets, easily getting them over Vital's body. But the way he held his arms let him pull them in and drop, mostly getting clear of the constriction. That translated into a lashing out, his hammer smashing the shin of one of the unarmored stallions, the others showing their true colors by stumbling back.

Bereft of countermeasures, the slavecatchers could only hang back and watch their screaming compatriot, and watch their quarry disentangle himself from the nets and ropes. His sickle flashed and tore through the throat of the downed one, the bloody weapon held up to the rest of the pursuers. He screamed out as he charged into their ranks. “Pour Les Princesses et La Principaute! Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons! In her name...”

The Sacred Road

He had nothing left. Everything in him was drained down to the dregs. Pedro was alone in the world, save for the crying Flores, helpless and probably hungry. He had fed her earlier but babies needed to eat quite often. He had abandoned the packs back when he last heard Vital. The delay he provided must have been significant. They hadn't appeared on the horizon so far as he could tell.

They had become all there was in the universe. The cracked ground, the endless horizon, the scrub, and the two of them. No army behind, no town ahead. Every step was agony, every breath was a burning surge. He had saved most of his water rations to feed Flores, and hadn't even bothered with a last sip before abandoning it all. His parched tongue reflexively licked over his dry lips, while his eyes blinked through blurriness and what wasn't there.

”A nice, cold glass of water, with ice. No plastic, no metal. A glass, with ice. Hey, we can imagine anything. Lemonade. Ice cold,” Old Timer said.

Pedro coughed, and laughed at the same moment, painfully nodding his head. “Sí, Viejo... me acuerdo... agua fría, con hielo...” He licked his lips again, imagining how delicious that ice water would taste. Water, tasting good. With his dry tongue and burning throat, it certainly would taste like something. Like the sweetest nectar. A mouthful of water would be finer than the oldest wine, greater than champagne or any other thing considered great. In that moment, that ice cold water would be more precious than anything.

There was more to life than that, though. There were real things to consider. Pedro looked into Flores' face and softly stroked her head, to calm her as best he could. “Lo siento. Disculpa me, princesa. No puede alimentarte...” She was the only thing that really mattered. She... she and all those that had come before. All those dead, they mattered too. Her parents needed remembering, Old Timer needed remembering. Vital... the others...”

”I'll just make a quick report and the memories of the fallen will live forever, and we'll save future lives too. Pour les princesses et principute, oui, camarade?”

Pedro gave a light bray and nodded his aching head, almost throwing himself off balance. “Sí tambien, Niño. Camarada. La rebelión me necesita, necesita saber a las emboscadas...”

He was the only one who remained that remembered everything. He remembered the story, he recalled the names of the fallen and how they fell. He could save countless lives in the future by recalling the details he had been entrusted with. He was the sole archive of many lives that had been lost. In his mind rested the hopes and needs of the dead. Success was far from optional, it was the whole point of his life.

His entire existence had become a necessary thing because, like his fallen friend, he had become a tool... a vessel, in fact. He had transcended his simple identity as an aching donkey. He was something more important than a single life. He carried history, he carried warnings. He carried everything on his broad shoulders, and the burden weighed more than the packs he had abandoned.

His aching arms reminded him of his sacred burden. Flores had stopped crying as much as she had been. She was the heaviest thing of all. She carried the full weight of the future in her tiny body. In her was the hope of a new, sweet world. In her was the promise of brighter days to come. She represented something to be striven for, a new tomorrow. And thanks to sacrifices made in her name, he alone was left to carry the most important thing in the world.

The onus pulled down his arms but lifted up his thudding, racing heart. He had been chosen, by fate or by fortune, to carry the future, to use every last ounce of his strength, to give his entire life, to get her to safety. Her parents had tried to give her a better life, but a monster had cut their hope short. Three strangers had been there when she entered the world, and two had gone to their deaths ensuring she survived. He had to make it. He was the last keeper of this hope.

Step by plodding step drew him on, carried him through the blasted land toward the glimpse that Vital had given. He had delivered hope that there was an end. It was enough to know it was there. But not... not what was there. He only thought he knew. The old map and his own hope told him it was Gaskinwich over the horizon.

It could have been a slave processing facility, a maturation camp, an abandoned, corpse-strewn ruin... another donkey camp... it could be anything. He had no real reason to believe they had held the right heading all that time, that they had followed the map correctly. One small angle change could have sent them to any number of horrible places.

“No... 'ta Gaskinwich...” He asserted, closing his eyes to let them rest, the wavering forms of the environment meaning nothing to him anyhow. He walked on, only occasionally cracking his eyes open to see he was still going straight and true. He watched his way, and the shadows trudging beside him, sharing the heavy burden of the sacred calling.

”We're gonna have a feast, just like the old days,” Old Timer said with a smile. “Just like the old celebrations. Cakes and pies, cookies, all manner of soups and salads, maybe a roast gourd, maybe more than one. We'll sit down to pizza and ice cream, and endless flowing bottles of water and cider.”

“They'll celebrate what we did! We're heroes!” Vital cheered. “We made it out of their clutches, with important data. We're useful. Being of any good use is special. We're tools of the finest kind, the kind of tools that build civilizations. We're survivors that stand tall and do something of some substance. That's what makes us something to remember, something to celebrate. We can be proud of being useful.”

“Fuimos útil... éramos útil... somos útil. Somos... camaradas para siempre... no van a morir. Nunca, nunca, nunca...” Pedro panted out his words as he pictured the grand celebration waiting for them in Gaskinwich. All of them. They would surely reserve two places for them, given equal honor, given respect that heroes deserve.

He had to think of such things, had to hold out for such wonderful things. The caribou had stolen everything from all of them. Their homes, their futures, their memories, the very ability to even feel joy. They had been divested of everything that mattered in the world. All that was best and most normal in life, burned away by the hateful insanity and childish ugliness of the caribou and all their supporters.

The hateful Stag King had done something he couldn't fathom, done something no war leader was meant to do. He had stripped an entire population of everything. It was said cornered animals would fear no death and fight to escape. More thoughtful creatures would fight as hard when offered no hope of an escape from a final battle. If their way home was gone and the way forward left only death, they would have no fear of death. They were already dead, it was only a matter of taking the enemy into their graves.

The filthy caribou had stolen everything in the world. They had taken it all away with their invasion, consuming it all until those who did not fall in with them were left with ashes. Dust and ashes made from the scraps of beauty. Pedro blinked, and shook his head, the eternal horizon looming, approaching, swallowing the world in nothingness.

The sky became meaningless, turning into everything, into nothing. It consumed the ground, left him staggering on air. His compatriots, his comrades, vanished. Their shades had been celebrating, cheering the coming victory when the emptiness that was the caribou swallowed them whole.

He was feeling numb, empty. He was a hollowed-out shell, the uncaring eternity around him gobbling him down from the inside out, hollowing him, leaving a mere crust that would drop down dead. A nothing. An empty nothing.

An echoing wail rang in his ears, and the thick cotton batting that was wrapped around his senses pulled away. The cry grew louder, pushed back the emptiness. He blinked his eyes, and looked down at the wailing Flores. She was there. She was real. The all-consuming horizon couldn't take her away. And he wouldn't let the caribou take her away either, render her into nothing. She was too real, too present. Nothing could make him deny she existed. And because she existed, all the rest of the world must have existed. The world had to exist if Flores was there to prove he wasn't alone.

She was the hope that tomorrow existed. She was the hope of a brighter day to come. By merely being, by having no taint of the ugly world inside of her, she was what made the emptiness flee. So long as he carried her, he carried her hope. He was a vessel, to deliver her hope to a safe place, where she could be safe, where the fallen could be remembered. It all rested on him to do the task, to carry on for those not able to do it on their own. As in the old world, mutual reinforcement, helping others to make all better.

Having the world build back up one piece at a time almost seemed to give strength to him limbs and relief to his body. No mere second wind, it was the third or fourth at least, more than could be claimed by most. It was an illusion, he knew it well enough. He was destroying his body, but to a greater purpose. It didn't matter if he ground his aching form down to powder. So long as what was left of him reached town with Flores, that was all that mattered.

He had been looking down at her for so long he hadn't been aware of any change. Looking back, he saw the dust cloud rising. They were coming, hard and angry. Two prior attempts had crashed against them, reducing their force but not turning them back. One more. They had to know he was the last. Their over-sized force had absorbed the losses inflicted and could still go on, and would, until he died.

Looking forward, he thought his eyes were finally failing, one more shade to color his view. But blinking didn't make the vision go away. Buildings, the tops of buildings rising up, signs of civilization, of the end. The final goal. He was within view of the thing he had once, in the darkest hour, feared was only a story and a dated mark on a map. He had no real confirmation but he knew in his heart of hearts it was what he thought. Gaskinwich. Freedom.

“Temprano, princesa...” Pedro rasped out, stroking Flores' head softly as he staggered onward. He knew the end was near, but which end was still a mystery. Even if he didn't deign, or have the wherewithal, to look behind, he knew they were there. An implacable force of faceless, murderous monsters rushed at him. Reduced, stung and harried by his fallen friends, but ever approaching, forever coming at him.

They probably didn't even know he had Flores. They had no concern for her. The mark on his head meant he was their property, and he had defied them by exercising his will and escaping the place they intended as his grave. Knowing he was being chased just for his crime was bad enough. Knowing they didn't even possess the feeble and almost-worthless kludged-together equipment to keep a newborn foal safe until they could be taken to a maturation camp meant they might just regard her as a liability. She was a filly. One or two might even be...

“¡Monstruos!” He shouted suddenly, making Flores cry again. “Disculpa me otra vez... pero...” He hugged her tighter to his chest and lumbered along, ears held high to catch the coming rumble of the pursuers, to let him know when they were truly closing in, and ready to destroy his hope for the future which had just been rekindled.

His eyes played tricks on him, and his ears did too. He saw his friends, heard them urge him on. They didn't lay blame or lament the passing, they were proud of what they had done. They did it of their own will, after all. They had earned the right to be called heroes. Having them travel with him was truly humbling. Their shades, even if only made by his mind, were the finest compatriots he could think of.

Knowing there were unreal figures joining him made it that much harder to accept that a real voice was speaking to him, a very real, female voice. His burning eyes looked on the face of a pegasus mare. She was so green. Verdant green. Lush, leafy green, the opposite of the desolate waste he had just crossed, a sign to him that she might not have been real. But blinking and thinking didn't make her go away.

She wore clothes, unlike the mares the caribou held. Simple clothes, cloth trousers and a tank top. She looked like a laborer, but one who collected a wage. Her voice was distant, it echoed, either through disbelief or because he had to pull himself out of fading away. The words finally reached him. “I said, hello there. I'm guessing you need a lot of help, if that cloud behind you is any indication.”

“M-monstruos...” he rasped out, the words a wheezing huff. “Estan... monstruos. Malvado... asesinos... mis compadres, mis camaradas...”

“Oh sir... I wish I spoke Caballito, just Percheron and a little Cavalino. I see by your forehead where you came from. And you have a baby that... well, no matter where she came from better she cries in your arms but... is any of this making sense?”

A long, slow blink followed. His not-a-figment spoke standard Equestrian, like his comrades. He owed it to the vision to do the same. “Yes... I understand. The killers, they want this filly. Our princesa. My comrades, they slowed them down, they died but... they do not stop...”

The pegasus nodded slowly, reaching out toward Pedro. “Give her here and I'll take her back to Gaskinwich for you...”

“No!” Pedro brayed, hugging Flores protectively. “No, it was our sacred duty. We swore to her mother, we swore on her blood and our honor to take her to safety. Us. Viejo, Niño, they gave their lives so I could take her. She must not be caught by those butchers.”

“I admire the dedication but you can barely stand. Donkeys can do a lot but you need help. I'll hold you up if needed, just... lean on me,” the mare said, putting a strong shoulder up under one of Pedro's, supporting him as he walked on.

“Gracias, spirit. You will make my final moments peaceful. When I fail, I will not fail my princesa alone. Those monsters, those evil monsters...”

The mare waved off the comment. “Oh don't think like that. Those idiots aren't a problem. They're already dead, they just have no idea yet. Forget about them and focus on reaching town. Those bastards should realize that you don't approach a rebel town armed and arrogant, because we know how to deal with the Stag King's stooges.”

The marching army caught sight of the two walking away from them, the last living slavecatcher drawing his rope tight, fingers squeezing as he imagined wrapping the rope tight around the fleeing donkey. He'd reel in that filthy creature. He'd make him pay. Sure, he had dived out of the way to let others die, but he had to live to capture him. That would save him from punishment. Dragging the filthy donkey back, braying and bleeding, for his due punishment.

His thoughts of revenge and evaded punishment ended when the world opened up and swallowed him whole, pulling him shrieking into a choking, dusty darkness that engulfed him and silenced his cries with a wet crunch.

The marching army halted, weapons at the ready, eyes casting about. “Show yourself! You cannot oppose the army of his pitiless majesty! We are invincible! Surrender to him or suffer worse torments than death when we subdue you! Come out of your cowardly, bitchish hiding!” The lead armor-bedecked caribou held up his brittle iron greatsword, solidly set in an attack stance.

Silence reigned on the dusty, magic-sapped plain. The warm wind whipped along, casting up dust eddies that forced the prepared ponies and caribou to blink, nervously looking to see if anyone had caught them dropping preparation. Barely a sound passed them, scratching and muffled grinding, the ground very faintly rumbling. They felt it slightly, as the trace of a distant army on the march.

The heavy tension snapped when the ground all but exploded. Massive paws crashed through the cracked and blighted earth, grabbing legs with a savage strength, claws digging into the flesh. Several of the soldiers were dragged into the ground, crying in sudden terror and pain. Before any counter attack could be mounted diamond-tipped spears rushed up from the ground, impaling other soldiers through the abdomen, chest or directly from crotch to out the mouth or head.

The caribou remained, steadfast and resolute. His recapture squad had been whittled down by the futile efforts of the pony rebels crashing against them, but they had pushed on, more force that necessary as a show of manly power. They had been triumphing, until they found craft, hiddenness, surprise and misdirection. “Come out! Don't hide from the truly masculine and dominating! Come and be killed or surrender! Come! Face me!”

The ground exploded once more, releasing the bulky, intimidating form of a huge Dig Dog clad in heavy golden-toned metal armor. His helmet covered his head but exposed his jowly, stern face, mouth drawn back and teeth exposed. He held up a huge steel-shafted spear tipped with a glowing diamond.

The Dog had his arm drawn back and cast the spear with a hard bark. The twist of the toss slid past a desperate, sudden block, the diamond tip punching mercilessly through the caribou's cheap armor, slicing through his body like hot butter and straight out the back, to ram resolutely into the ground.

The Dog hit the ground with the clatter of metal, watching the anger turn to agony on the caribou's face, the sword trembling in his hands and falling, clattering in the bloody dust. The cervid slumped but didn't fall, locked legs holding him against the spear impaling him. With a tremendous bark of triumph the Dog shouted out to the dying caribou, “Faced!”

While the perimeter defenders mopped up the pursuers, Pedro and the mare haltingly conversed, the delays owing to Pedro's exhaustion, mitigated somewhat by the power of hope. “What do I call you?”

“I'm Sprouting Grain. I used to be a journeymare plow-maker and repairer of all classes of farming implements. You can guess that I'm not quite in that profession anymore. The rebellion has me turning plows into swords and spears. A noble effort, very needed. And I can still do it in reverse once we hack those antlered assholes into buzzard food,” Sprouting said with a delighted lilt.

Pedro laughed breathlessly and nodded slowly. “You are a rebel, just like Niño. So proud to fight for the country. I am Pedro. Pedro Cama. And this is our princesa, Flores Cumulus Aura. We all named her. All of us...”

“Such a great name. She has a lot to live up to,” Sprouting said, gently tickling Flores on the belly. “You mention your friends often. Who were they? Did you happen to escape somewhere together? I mean... were they donkeys too?”

“Oh no. Niño is... was a pegasus. Vital Monsoon, rebel, proud rebel. Viejo was a unicorn. Old Timer. He had broken free of the caribou. All of us were marked men, dead men caught to be sent back. We escaped and found our princesa. Her father had been killed, and eaten by a monster stallion. Her mother was wounded by the beast, but Niño killed him. We... had no choice. Only one could leave there. Flores... we buried them all, as the rebels demand. We tried to come to Gaskinwich. Tried to come together. It was so important we come, with her. To keep her safe.”

“You really have a lot of things invested in you...” Sprouting whispered, stroking Flores slowly. “You three deserve medals. More than medals. If it was still the old world you'd be made knights, lords. Taking this little one through so much... I only hope the town is enough for you.”

“It is safe. She is safe. It is enough,” Pedro rasped with a smile.

Together they walked on to the town of Gaskinwich. No future was certain, but there was, at last, hope.

In the Heart of the Waste

Beyond the reach of rebel control and pony grip on the land, and past the rigidly structured and heartlessly directed caribou population clusters stood the trackless waste. Stripped of earth mana by the mindless policies of the caribou barbarians and given over to the creatures red in tooth and claw, the imbalance had had a ripple effect far greater than could have been predicted.

Nature could be resilient, but met shocks primarily with mass death and desolation. After centuries of careful management and intelligent balance and reshaping by ponykind, the almost-instantaneous erasure of all of that sent chaos to reign through all the land abandoned by both sides. It would recover on its own terms, but only by starting with a clean slate. The wild waste was ruled by creatures that could prove their strength but also persist in the radically altered environment. All plants made every effort to survive, with the magically inclined ones losing out by and large, save in natural mana wells where they could thrive within sharp borders. The hardiest mundane plants held where they could, seas of brassica and wild poaceae with others holding forth, including succulents in places where the weather permitted.

Magical prey and mundane prey were scarcely seen, aside from insects that could live on what was provided. Abandoned corpses only lasted so long, driving another boom-bust mini-cycle, which again fluctuated and stabilized into herbivorous insects eaten by insectivores, and everyone eagerly snatched by those few carnivores that could maintain themselves. Magical megafauna were confined to regions where magic still held sway and they were of use, such as in the pits of the caribou who could dispose of unwanted bodies into the maws of small ursas and mantcores.

What few structures existed in that wild place were in worse condition than even the hovels and ruins of the conquerors, suitable only as nuisance posts for those that had fallen out of favor or were deemed worthless. They served as waystations and rough staging grounds for strikes against rebel softpoints. After the disastrous battle at Trout and the expurgated three sieges of Cherrywood Acres no rebel hardpoint would ever be considered a military target. They cost blood and profited nothing.

At one nameless post on an ordinary day there came an inordinate amount of activity. Three separate collections of low-ranked collaborators brought in three figures, bound for the pits or processors in Canterlot. Each one had a bounty in slaves and status, not much in the end, but enough to justify their hunt and capture.

One was an older unicorn, surely not much below sixty, if not at the threshold already. Though looking mild and defeated he was chained up securely, in a manner typically reserved for enormous Diamond Dogs, including with a formerly police-issue iron horn-cap. He did seem very strong for a unicorn, one of the bulkier sorts with feathered fetlocks and obvious muscle moving under his dun coat. His mane, mustache and tail were both tousled messes of wan gray, speaking of some wild encounter, that seemed to go along with the huge scar across his forehead, abutting the horn, but seemed at odds with the plodding figure whose gray eyes were hollow and staring. His clothing was near nonexistent, scraps of a well- tailored green vest and some semblance of black trousers, the rips showing his Cutie Mark to be a clock face set in a tower.

The second was a younger stallion, of perhaps late twenty-something, thrashing and struggling against the heavy chains binding him. He was orange of coat, with a mane and tail red as a rose. He threw himself in every direction he thought would earn him freedom, screaming incoherent hatred at all the brainwashed ones he could see. He was a captive rebel, easily seen by the yellow and gray stitching on his torn-up padded shirt, the attempted obliteration of a bicolor hexagon, a common motif seen in dedicated rebel warriors on the padding under their armor. His padded cloth trousers were also decorated in a rebel style, his Cutie Mark dyed onto them, seen to be a bluish gust of wind with golden shine around it.

The last one was an uncommon sight, one that everyone seemed hesitant to notice. He was a large, muscular Andalusian jack, his coat pale, but lightly dappled with soft gray along his face and back. He walked tall, almost daring the brainwashed ones to look at him in his chains. He had no trace of a shirt and only the ripped remains of rough white pants, splattered in mud and blood. Everyone ignored where the donkeys had gone. Even those under powerful brainwashing tried every moment to forget what was happening. They especially ignored the Odal rune carved into his forehead and given prominence with dark charcoal rubbed into the scar that formed.

The three groups threw their charges into a cage just big enough for the three and locked with a weathered bolt, before setting to conversing.

“We're taking all of them in. We had to fight hardest to get that cowardly rebel! We had to net him on a swoop after he ran out of rocks and he still tried to beat the shit out of us!”

“Don't you know what the old stallion did? We were lucky to get out of this alive! We just managed to catch him napping, and got enough chains on him to keep him from doing to us what he did to all those caribou. He's a King-accursed psycho-killer and his bounty is the highest."

“No the... donkey... is the most valuable. We get extra pay for him and he nearly killed us with a rockslide ambush. It was just luck we caught him and we get to claim his bounty. We can all share the magnificent rewards.”

“Our bounty is higher and our work was harder!” The leader of the rebel-catcher group cried.

“We had far more danger! We were allowed to bring him in dead, but for far less reward. But he had to come in for all his murders,” the leader of the group that caught the old man countered.

“I just told you he tried to kill us. The caribou pay well to bring back the lesser creatures. We pony folk are better than the lesser beings, the caribou have allowed us to be their enforcers and soldiers, so what they do is unimportant. They pay us well for it, so obedience to the demand to capture them is right.”

“You caught a lesser being, that's not anything of import,” the rebel-catcher leader snorted. “We caught a pony, one with blood on his hands and allegiance to the degenerate rebels. He was still engaged in active assault on the representatives of the invincible Stag King.”

“Blood on his hands? Ha! He's a coward and a young nothing. How many battles could such a weak flier have been in? I told you, the old stallion is a psycho-killer. He slaughtered caribou! Never mind anything else, he spilled caribou blood and that makes him more dangerous.”

While the three posses were arguing, the three prisoners had a chance to size each other up, changing their expressions based on the statements of the leaders. The three were almost a smooth height gradient, the donkey the tallest while the pegasus was the shortest, with the unicorn in between.

“So, all to the block if we're lucky. Maybe they'll kill us in the middle of the trip back,” the donkey rasped, voice soft and low.

“Rebels are taken alive if they can be, and delivered alive for conversion,” the pegasus sighed.

“I'm due for the block, public spectacle. Conversion, but no brainwashing. They need me aware and well-informed of my own impending doom before they give me the blood eagle in front of the King himself. They'll make sure that no one ever strikes at them. A futile endeavor, to be sure,” the old stallion muttered with a matter-of-fact tone.

“Viniendo muerte... at least you're allowed to know when it's going to happen. All we get is disdain and a vague idea,” the donkey huffed. “Even the children know that once they reach the proper age they begin their meaningless life in Tartarus.”

“It's Tartarus but not meaningless as long as we fight. The world can recover,” the pegasus insisted.

“It's meaningless now, Niño. Don't talk to me about the future, I'm not sure there is one,” the donkey grunted. “There certainly isn't one from here.”

“You'll live until you die. They're not killing you today. I know what they plan to do but they haven't yet,” the older stallion said. “If you give up, then ram your head into the bars and be done with it.”

“Don't you tell me what to do, Viejo, I won't die on your timeline any more than I'll die at the command of that pendejo King of theirs,” the jack huffed.

“You certainly should appreciate that, rebel, he actually wants to go on,” the older stallion grunted.

“You're not a rebel too? But, but they said...”

“Idiots like those say lots of things. I thought you rebels were smart enough not to buy their chatter. Doesn't your Phantom's sly wit actually filter down to the rest of you?” The old stallion snapped.

“He taught us plenty, and we know enough to hope for a future and fight hard for the promise!” The pegasus snarled, voice rising loud enough to carry.

“Hey! Quiet back there! We don't need all of you alive go get a good reward!” One of the posse members screamed.“What do you mean 'we'? We've didn't agree to that!” Another one yelled, setting off a new round of arguments.

“So, what now?” The younger stallion asked.

“Chains... están ineficaz... they look super macho, and these idiots can't think past the ends of their own pajaritos, so of course they use them. Ropes bind tight and they have them, but refuse to use them. Chains are like a puzzle, move the right way and...” the jack twisted and worked his bulky body around, the chains shifting and softly clattering. He worked his arms out of the hastily-wound twists of chain. At last, he slowly let the chain down to the floor, watching the door into the main part of the prison.

“Take off this horn cap. I'm honestly surprised these idiots had these and used it, they're usually more arrogant than that when they're brainwashed,” the old one said.

“Propaganda derides them to keep the refugees feeling secure; a wise rebel never underthinks them. Give them enough credit and you're prepared for any eventuality just in case you get one of the dwindling few competent ones,” the pegasus stated, keeping watch for the two.

With his horn freed, the unicorn began the laborious process of working his own chains off, the magic largely used to keep all the action silent. “Chains are easier than ropes or straps, true, but it still takes preparation. You must have kept yourself flexed and as expanded as possible, trusting they were unwilling to look at you too closely.”

The jack chuckled deeply and slowly nodded his head.”Pajarraco... you see more than I would have thought. It does help a great deal. But it's still true the chains are less useful.”

The pegasus had started working the chains off himself, moving himself with some sinuousness but making slightly more noise than the others. “It's not standard training, but we all chose to learn how to get out of bindings. For active agents it was considered entirely appropriate. Get out of the bindings, take out the captors, reach a rebel hardpoint. I don't think that's going to be possible.”

“At this point, I don't think any of us care about where we go, do we? We could vanish into the waste, forage for food and just run until we hit a coast, a border or a town. Since we're going away from where they want to take us it's likely to be a rebel town,” the unicorn said.

“'Lo mismo. I die no matter what. Better on my hooves than in their pits.”

“I need to have some chance to get back to the rebels. I have a report to make and some information to pass along, and any chance is better than a certain doom.”

“But, the escape...” The jack mentioned, pointing out at the other room. “Viejo, can you open this bolt quietly?”

“High impurity iron... I only think I can move the bolt, but I can muffle the sound no problem. Getting out is just the first step. What about them?”

“They're standard believers and brainwashed ones, highly fractious and covetous, very self-interested and not inclined to introspection and consideration,” the pegasus said. “Just open it up and let me out there. I think I can do something to give us a chance to get out. We just need to take back our things from there. They've got food and water, plus other necessary items.”

“I know you were trained by someone that can kill from the shadows or out of thin air or something like that but there must be a limit,” the unicorn said, magic wrapping around the bolt, which slowly wriggled and ground, moving in tiny motions.

“I know what some of the more cynical types think of the Black Knight, but he is highly effective,” the pegasus whispered. “A proper rebel does not squander his strength. Fight slyer, not more berserk. Yes, lay them out as a bloody tribute to the fallen and make the Heartless Hind write his debts in blood, but only when it's safe to do so. Otherwise, disrupt and confuse.”

“I like you, Niño, you make a lot of sense,” the jack said with a smile. “I wish I could do the same.”

“All are welcome in the rebellion. You could be one of the Blue Bloods.”

“One step at a time, Niño. Paso a paso.”

“Step one, complete...” the unicorn mumbled, the bolt passing the loop holding it closed, the magical muffling aura surrounding the hinges, allowing the door to open just wide enough to let out the lithe pegasus.

The younger stallion slipped smoothly out through the narrow opening, creeping low to the ground, right up to the edge of the door frame into the other room. He cupped his hands around the end of his snout, concentrated for a moment while waiting for a lull and called out, in an imitation of one of the posse members, the sound seemingly coming from the group. “Fuck you all! We're taking them all and getting the bounty!”

“Like Tartarus you are! We're not giving up our share! Who said that?”

“Yeah, come out coward!” the pegasus shouted, in a different voice. “Try and take our reward and I'll beat the shit out of you!”

“Not if I get you first!” One of the stallions swung and cracked the nearest one in the face, winding up for another when he was clocked across the face by a member of the posse of the one he had hit. Members of the various factions began to hammer each other, punching and kicking at each other.

“Stop that! Get a hold of yourselves!” The pegasus called out, waiting a moment before slinking back to the others. “If I say it the others won't have to. They'll be too lazy and disconnected. They can keep their anger and fight on, without having to interrupt themselves by being reasonable.”

“Maybe now I see some validity in this Phantom of yours...” the unicorn said.

“We beat them into unconsciousness and tie them down, then grab the things and make an escape once they're too weak and incapacitated.”

“Bueno. It sounds like one side is winning,” the jack said, striding to the frame and looking out, where the fight had dwindled into a lot of clutching and struggling.

“In a battle, the winner isn't always secure. They put effort into winning and are weakened by the fight unless they were overwhelming, which is why the cowards throw so many expendable troops at small problems. Once they almost stop, we move.”

A short wait followed, the winning posse standing, if barely, over the others. One of them was down, looking half-conscious, with the other four holding swollen jaws and sore stomachs. That sent the trio out, crashing into the standing figures and throwing heavy punches.

Though all of the catchers were injured, most were not unconscious. But they could not easily help, clasping at legs and taking kicks to the arms or face. They fought with all the fury they could muster, the older stallion using his magic to pick up scrap wood to use as a weapon.

They ended up winning the battle, but not completely. One of the standing stallions that had not been swept up in the initial crush fled from the ruin, running as fast as his legs could carry him. They couldn't bother with trying to catch him, having to take their time with securing the ones they had taken care of.

Besides the items taken from the trio, the supplies of the three groups offered up a supply of water and some rations that did not need to be thrown out for being made with the bizarre and disgusting ingredients the Northmen scum pushed on their collaborators.

“Load up, amigos! One roach means hundreds are coming,” the jack cried, tossing two consolidated packs worth of things over his shoulders.

The pegasus took an extra pack along with the one that had been taken from him, after making sure he had all of his things inside. “Now that we shamed them, they'll send far more force than is necessary. They'll probably even add caribou commanders. We might even have a blood-rune mage on our flanks.”

“Knowing where their blood comes from, I hope not. I don't think I'll be able to hold back violent reprisal. And I'd guess there's a rebel adage about that too,” the old stallion said, taking three of the packs, with some effort. The donkey took one of them with a silent nod.

“If you mean a sensible military idea that applies to real-life situations, then yes. We all feel rage, justified rage. But we can't give in. We have to keep an eye on effect and understand that there are objectives to meet.”

“¡Silencio! If we're going to fight, do it in safety. Now is not the time,” the donkey snorted, hefting the packs and rushing for the door.

“Right behind you!” The pegasus cried, hot on the donkey's heels.

“Mind my age! I can only run so far and so fast,” the older unicorn shouted, moving as fast as he could.

The three burst out of the ruin and aimed themselves in the opposite direction of where the tracks for the escapee led, using the drops of blood to orient themselves away.

They didn't think, they didn't hesitate, they just ran. They left that tiny, ruined pocket of civilization and made their escape. They ran away and let the waste swallow them.

In the Dark of the Night- The Condemned

Vital continually looked over at Pedro, while the big, powerful donkey gently patted and cooed at Flores. More particularly, he looked at the rune carved and scarred into his head. The two missed looking at each other, until one look caught Pedro's eye and the donkey gave a huge, almost-mocking, smile. “Do you like my gift from the caribou, Niño? They were so generous, they gave me something that would last my whole life. They may as well have given me a mayfly.”

“I... I had only heard. I wasn't a rebel that long. Only General Blueblood dared to go after... those places. I never lost my nerve and never dampened my spirit but when I heard about that I... well, I got more angry, but in a kind of hopeless way. It was an ugly evil of such magnitude I could hardly believe it. It was a cap on a litany of outrages that made it all feel almost too big, too horrifying. But I kept on, dedicated and loyal.”

“It's everything and worse, Niño. Everything and worse...” Pedro rubbed the rune on his forehead, fingering the straight lines scarred over and stained with soot. “They tell me it meant property, possession, that which they can inherit. Un esclavo. Pero mucho mas malo. They didn't just intend us to work to death like the old. They held contempt for the old. But they had hate for us. They believed their superiority over us, had disdain for us, thought us as completely worthless and unworthy of rights. That was how they did what they did.”

Old Timer looked on the rune with an askance glance, fingers twitching lightly the longer he held the look. “Please excuse my staring. But it's hard to believe it's real. I did horrendous things under their control. But even still... that seems so far beyond anything I could imagine.”

“'Ta verdadero, Viejo. The camps exist. The treatment exists. Trabajo de escalvo. Our toil is the least of our worries. Starvation, constant beatings, humiliation and degradation at every turn. They even perform... experiments. Not for the benefit of science. The camps are where they shove the elect who offend their sensibilities but still need to be kept happy, and away from mares. Just like they push the foal-defilers into maturation camps, they send monsters like that one we killed into the donkey camps.”

Vital and Old Timer shuddered simultaneously, recalling the insane and scarred beast the three had buried. “I can't believe it. Ponies are ponies, they can't do things like this. They must be normal, they lived in society and were just like others. The caribou perverted them, promised them things, put the ideas for them to take up,” Vital insisted.

“There is a certain poison in a certain percentage,” Old Timer said. “They don't act because society would punish them, and that keeps them caged and tamed, thinking dark thoughts and safely never expressing them, except in odd moments or with heavy implications of humor. If asked, they never take the Veil of Ignorance seriously and argue against laws that guard because it makes their pleasure impossible.”

“Some of the other rebels used to tell me that that was something they had found. The true believers followed along because they had been horrible ponies, some kind of hidden aberration walking around in a kind of disguise before this. Then when they were given the chance to express their monstrosity, they went in head-first and aimed for the deepest end of the sewer.”

“Take away consequence, take away fear of punishment or judgment, then ask them to describe their paradise. They would invent this world, because they're empty creatures, with nothing inside to stop them. They feel no guilt, no shame, no love, no real sense of honor. They get on with the fascists because the fake honor they hold up as an idol is the same kind. They have common ground. And make one a member of the random elect, they become the monsters they always wanted to be. To make them even more monstrous, give them victims they are assured are unworthy of rights.”

“Darles los burros,” Pedro rumbled, gritting his flat teeth. He looked down on Flores and smiled, his fury seeming to calm instantly. “Give them donkeys. Not everypony was as noble as Prince Blueblood. El Principe Azul verdad.”

“If you're marked, you came from a camp. Were you liberated? Did you get lost from the group of the freed? I sincerely apologize if the rebels couldn't help you to escape clean. Sometimes the pursuit is hard and civilians cannot be properly protected. The cowards target the weak and the helpless, especially after a place has been liberated,” Vital said.

“No, no, Niño. I wasn't freed by the rebels. They would have done a proper job. They would have truly helped my kind. All I did was get out. I got out, at a cost so high... I should have stayed there, to die with the rest. It was a condemnation. I knew I was going to die. Now, I only wish for death. La Muerte, vamos a abrazar, cielo.”

“You're alive. That's the important thing. If you really wanted death you'd be dead already. You would have let them drag you back to the camp. Your pain is understandable. I know pain, I know sorrow. But don't tell me you have the need to die unless you mean it. I could say the same but I don't because living and breathing takes on a whole new meaning when you've passed through Tartarus and come out broken but alive. You're alive, be alive,” Old Timer insisted.

“It's a strange thing. I live, I move, I act to stay alive. But my past haunts me, my mind betrays me. I want to embrace death but my body will not let me do it. From what you both say, you understand this, both of you.”

“I understand. But I live for the dead. I live because they need me to live. I must bring to birth the old world, nothing will do except that. Hope must be nurtured, the future must come to be. There has to be a reason I live, and my belief in what that reason is drives me,” Vital said.

“You know I get it. But again, I live because if I really didn't want to live, I wouldn't. I would have ended myself in the waste, would have let the bounty hunters take me to a fate worse than death. I'm not going to say you're wrong to think the way you do, but it's not a sensible thing,” Old Timer said.

“Sensibilidad, sensatez, sacrilegio. I don't care about sense anymore. I live in a prison outside those walls. It's an insane world now, and only more insane to me because of what I experienced. I won't live and die on anyone else's schedule. But I know... I'll die on my own time. Just not yet.”

“It's not about dying for the nation. In essence, it's about killing to keep it safe. Grim but necessary, necessary though grim. That's something they put in your head and hammered in hard. You can't die yet. There are caribou to batter into a bloody pulp. They're still out there. So you feel you need to get them,” Vital said.

“Tienes razón, Niño,” Pedro said with a stroke of his chin. “I can't die yet. If nothing else, I need to crush the caribou that oversaw the camp and came by now and then. The ponies inside... some of them got their reward for failure. But there are more. There always seem to be more.”

“They make more of themselves, they brainwash and destroy,” Old Timer sighed.

“And taking them out of the picture is like wiping out ants with a toothpick. You can get them and be sure of it, but they're a swarm. They just pour out of the hill, and nothing seems to stop it.”

Everyone went silent for a time, the heavy silence seeming to make them uncomfortable, as they fidgeted and twitched. “Niño, you say your parents were trabajadores, sí?”

“Ouvriers nonpareil. Mother worked at the Cloudsdale weather factory, father delivered and assembled cloud formations and structures. Why?”

“It seems cliché, but donkeys are known for hard labor, more than even earth ponies. I was what we call a spare foal. Most every donkey family has many foals, and one of them, not oldest or youngest always, were leftover. They never said to do it, they never picked one. But it happened naturally. No se casan. No se muevan de la casa de sus padres. They remain, they work, and soon enough, they take care of their parents, when they are old. It is the Equestrian way, en manera de los burros.”

“I've seen that in many Equestrian places, though usually never so formally,” Old Timer Said

“Most of the griffin clans have a daughter or a few daughters to tend to their father and his hens. The Booted don't, but that's because it could be a hen or tercel that does the caring,” Vital noted.

“It is not too special, but it is expected. Proper. I was that jack. I helped mis sobrinas, Tío Perico. Happy, fun Tío Perico. I always had spare bits, I always let them do most of what they wanted, it was... exactly what Equestria was all about.”

“Tell us about it. We all shared. It helps,” Old Timer encouraged.

“No, Viejo... you know what it was like. Maybe I have a strange mind. To remember it now pains me. But you know what they have done. I saw things... they poisoned the memories. They killed the memories. If the old world comes back, that will be wonderful. But I don't know where I will fit.”

“You'll fit in with me, in therapy, or an asylum, something. What do you plan to do with the likes of us?” Old Timer asked.

“Right now we do what we can. There are a few therapists in the civilian areas. One of the steps in the multi-step post-recovery plan is the training of doctors and therapists. We'll be treating a lot of psychological issues, and we'll do our best to help everyone,” Vital replied.

“I don't think they will help me think back before the camp. Before the hate. Before they made life Tartarus,” Pedro sighed.

”They separated us out because their magic doesn't seem to work on things besides ponies. Burros were immune, and in the population. We fought, so we had to be punished. So they rounded us all up and threw us into pens, just pens, como puercos. We had to be held before they had camps. Converted pueblos.”

Pedro gathered his family around him, that family that he had managed to keep with him. His face was a battered collection of blood and lumps, the reward for his attempts at protecting his nieces and nephews from being taken away to places unknown. They had claimed it was to maturation cams, but for all he knew they were going to be killed and eaten. They were literal monsters. It was a proper concern.

It was his job to protect his family in any manner he could. He was the spare foal. He was there to be the flexible wild card. In a way, he felt that he had already failed. Besides his young charges he had lost the ones whose care and safety had been his ultimate concern. His parents had been spirited away, stolen to be the victims of the caribou's deadly maw. Sent to die, broken, suffering and starving in the work camps.

All he had left were his brothers and sisters, and those children old enough to be considered fair game, which inspired drooling and assault from the caribou and ponies. They were showered with abusive words and declarations of their inferiority and status as mud-beings. The other donkeys in with them had suffered similarly, and were all marked with the indications of abuse and disdain.

They had been packed en masse into what amounted to an upgraded pigpen, the enclosing fence given height with clapboard and wire mesh, along with rusty metal and sharpened stakes to keep the donkeys away from the walls. There were many of them dotting the conquered pig farm, all packed to uncomfortable levels with wailing and braying donkeys.

Pedro had a stoic cast to his features, surveying it all with a detached seeming. He needed to be strong for the sake of his remaining family. He turned his ears to try and hear the ponies and caribou around them, barely catching little pieces of the speech.

“No way to get around it, gotta... to the west, there's some old towns... walls and some dirty water, it's all the braying knob... die. No big loss if we run out.”

“... at least we can beat them when we fuck them, I heard... put them somewhere. Donkeys aren't real equines so they can... pretty creepy, but they were chosen... okay with this.”

“The glorious and invincible Stag King cares nothing... more worthless than ponies, more filthy... good for death, and nothing else... keep them in line, and break... them to death.”

“What are they going to do, hermano?” His sister Celestina Mimosa asked with a shaky voice.

“We're going to die,” his brother Rubio huffed.

“¡Callate, cabrón! Tonto... the caribou know what they will do and the ponies are brainwashed to believe in what they do. We're going to be sent somewhere. Probably to slave for them. We can refuse and die, or work and keep them going, so they can kill us with beating and starving. Lo mismo.”

“Such joy, hermano,” Rubio grunted.

“Lies don't help, hermano. We're not going to do much, maybe die, maybe wish we were dead,” Pedro sighed.

Celestina Mimosa buried her face in her hands and brayed out sadly. “Princessas... princessas... ¡Celestia y Luna, ayúdanos!”

”The didn't help us. They needed our help, being free from brainwashing and willing to fight. But we could not help. We were strong, dedicated ciudadanos, soldados, willing to fight. That was why they beat us, caged us and sent us to die far away.

“They didn't bother to separate us into genders. Once the small towns had been converted into appropriate camps we were marched, in chains, to the camps, to be marked with their rune. I... failed again. Mis hermanos... they split up the families as best they could. They made a point of it. They wanted as much division and as few chances for happiness as possible. They whipped us, screamed at us, took away food and water at any chance. No les importaban.

“It didn't matter if we survived. They didn't want to bother with us, they could treat us like dirt, because they had been freed from the need to worry about how others would see them. It was okay to hate us. We had no value, no rights. Fuimos animales. Carne. Objectos. Nada.

“If we wanted to eat, they made sure we had to steal. We lived in the mud, under the ruins of the houses they had destroyed in their estúpido raids. All they can do. Destruyen. It was all misery; miseria y tortura. You've heard of the camps. I saw it. I lived it.

“I saw who they put there...”

The donkeys huddled in their filthy shelter, conserving their energy as they were starved another day. They seldom spoke, they moved only when commanded, and did their utmost to make their guards forget them. They did occasionally perform slave labor, but even the inept fools made to guard them figured out the routine abuse and starvation made them mostly useless at forced labor.

Among the helpless crowd was a jenny who had unknowingly come into the place pregnant. She tried her best to hide behind the rest, to keep herself out of sight of the others. It was a useless endeavor. As they got scrawnier, she stood out. They had shared their starvation rations with her, but that had only helped to make her more notable.

The pony came. The terror of the camp. He smiled an odd smile at all moments, carried himself with a light sense of eternal privilege. He was a strange pinkish-peach pegasus, with a lusterless golden mop of a mane and a habit for walking around in bloodstained clothes. The pieces were always different but they always had blood spotting them.

He had burly guards with him, to force away protectors and bring the sobbing, pregnant jenny forward. They had little trouble. Pedro fought back against them, his muscles still solid. But even with preternatural strength given the treatment, he was one jack, and was beaten back. The poor, pregnant jenny was delivered to the smiling stallion, who smiled wider when she got to him.

“I'm Master Bliss, and you are perfect for my laboratory. Beat them if they try to come out. Now, come with me.”

Pedro was beaten again, when he tried to reach the struggling, braying jenny as she was dragged away from the structure.
She wasn't returned until after dark, face frozen in a rictus of horror. Her eyes stared out, seeing nothing, milk white and marked with oozing cuts and sear marks. Her teeth were mostly gone and her tongue was attached to those remaining with wire. Worst was her body, marked with round rings of burned flesh, from both fire and chemicals. The largest number were concentrated on her belly, burned so deeply and badly it had almost eaten through into the womb, the flesh just visible in the deepest wounds.

Pedro couldn't keep quiet, leaping up even in the face of the guards. “¿Por qué? What is the purpose of this? What science is this for?”

Master Bliss laughed heartlessly as Pedro was punched in the face and kicked in the side. “Purpose? Science? You donkeys are stupid sub-equine mud creatures after all. The purpose is pleasure. Esoteric pleasure, disconnected from the base and common ideas of sex that you inferior filth know. I am a god among gods, that's why I was sent here. My reward for loyalty. They saw what I did to mares and they sent me here to live without restrictions. Mares have value as flesh. You're things.”

All the ponies walked out of the structure, leaving the frightened donkeys surrounding the abused jenny, with Pedro stroking her cheek and squeezing her hand when she voiced her pain.

”He took her one last time. No volvió. The child did, until a guard thought he didn't deserve rations. I won't say what became of him. I will carry that around in my heart until I die. One reason I sometimes wish death would embrace me swiftly. La Muerte. Cielito linda.
“I think that was why I did it. I did a foolish thing. The worst possible thing.

“It wasn't that I tried to escape. But that I did. Porque, no estuve solo.”

Some of the others, like Pedro, were still strong enough to do more than blandly slave away or sit around weeping. They had the strength needed to plan and execute an escape. It wasn't theoretically that hard. Being a caribou project the whole thing was slapped together, limited resources tightened even more as they were being used for creatures they considered unworthy of investment.

The ruined town was surrounded by two layers of fence, an inner one made of wood and some metal, and an outer one that was more of a glorified earthworks barrier. Gaps abounded in the fence, to some extent, and the earthen bulwark was just to slow escape so archers could pick off the escapees. If a concentrated effort were made at one time, when the guards were most distracted, they could clear the mound and be away, hopefully to a better location.

The ones who had chosen to undertake the attempt used every legitimate method possible to get close to the inner fence and examine it, sometimes even daring to loosen and replace certain parts, creating more than one viable egress. They had to take their time with it, make sure it was all ready. They had one chance, and only one chance.

The guards had grown lazy, burning off their bile and hate during the day and leaving themselves too tired to care about patrols. They figured no one would dare, plus the archers supposedly had a night shift. But they, too, had grown complacent and indolent. Half the time the night shift slept as well. That was what the escapees were banking on.

They chose the most likely exit, a section of wood that had detached from the surrounding metal and detritus. The hole was just large enough for the figures to slip through, doing their best to make as little noise as possible as they scaled the bulwark, which was harder than they anticipated given the slippery mud that covered the surface.

One of the last ones through rattled the clattering collection of junk that was the inner fence and sent much of it nosily crashing to the ground. That alerted the archers who were not actively sleeping. They needed little encouragement to send arrows flying, downing the ones inside the fence and just outside. They even shot one still trying to weakly scale the earthworks, pinning him to the muddy rise.

The other guards exited the camp to hunt down the escapees that had not been picked off. A few archers came, but it was mostly sword-wielding guards, rushing after the slower, more fatigued donkeys. They had a head start, but weakness and fear made that gap close with great speed. The archers took moving shots, using numbers to cover for the lack of precise aim.

Pedro was out ahead, still capable of some speed, along with a jack named Thomas, who moved a bit more slowly but could still match pace. Most of the guards had split off to bear by the wounded to the camp, but an archer that was still running let loose an arrow that sunk deep into Thomas' right thigh, sending him screaming to the ground.

They were not far from a scrubby expanse, a place with just enough cover to hide in and be lost. Pedro looked on it, then down at Thomas. “¡Ven acá!¡Rápido, amigo! ¡Van a venir dentro de poco!”

“No... ¡No puedo continuar!” Thomas tried to rise again but fell down with a bray of pain.

Pedro tried to drag Thomas with him, but another arrow hit dangerously close to him, and that sent him stumbling back. He looked on the fallen jack for a short moment before turning and running for the scrubland.

He tried, with all his might, to ignore the screaming of his name which was silenced by a sickening sound of metal stabbing flesh.

Pedro was quiet after his story, for a long while. He just toyed with Flores' little curl of a mane and tried to ignore the others. “I'm a spare foal. Cuido de mis padres... mi familia. Ya no tengo una famila más... I couldn't even save a stranger that needed me to save him. Estoy un fracasado. I am nothing.”

Vital spoke, rather faster than he seemed to intend. “You're alive. We established that. That's more important than anything else. But more than that, you're still a citizen. The nation never truly fell, and it never stopped caring about you. Do you still care for it?”

“Por supuesto. Siemre,” Pedro answered, with a soft huff.

“A living citizen is not a nothing, they're more vitally important than anything. The nation is made of citizens, you're the flesh of the body politic. Every minute you stay alive, you make up that nation. And you can peel away some of the flesh of the other nation that's feasting on our body. Les corbeaux et vautours. Surely you want to rip that Bliss fellow out of the caribou's political corpse and crush him like a grape.”

“He would make excellent sangria,” Pedro darkly muttered.

Old Timer reached out and softly patted Pedro on the arm. “We're all not right here, at varying levels. I went crazy. You hover there. And the kid, well... he's gonna keep us grounded.”

Vital softly placed his hand on Flores' body, and motioned to her. “She's our concern, our only concern. The future. A youth with a chance for a brighter tomorrow if we just stand together and get her there. Get her to the rebels, they can care for her, keep her away from the Blisses and Valles of this polluted world. They will raise her like an Equestrian, like she could have been raised if the caribou had stayed in their accursed homeland and let the cataclysm kill them.”

Pedro looked down on Flores, into her sleeping face, and he smiled. “Familia... for her, I would fight the pendejo rey venado. It is my duty, to her parents, to her. She must live.”

“It's our duty,” Old Timer said. “We all have a duty to make sure she lives. However broken and ruined we all are, if there's one thing in the wreck of our lives that matters, it's her.”

Vital dug in his pack and pulled out his book, flipping it to a page he had bookmarked. “We've used a lot of griffin things, because their steely defense against a traitorous insurgency makes them worthy of emulation. The Black-Verreaux war march, calling for partisan citizen-soldiers is a particular favorite of mine. Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons. Let an impure blood water our fields. I was very eager to water Equestria with the enemy's blood. I'm sure you understand.”

“Better than almost anyone...” Old Timer sighed.

“Aux armes, citoyens. To arms, citizens. Let's water our land with the flood from their deaths,” Vital said. He placed his hand on Fores and looked on her with adoration. “For her. Aux armes, citoyens. Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.”

Old Timer joined the motion. “For her. To arms, citizens. Let polluted blood flood our fields.”

Pedro looked on her sleeping, innocent face, and thought back on the foal that had lived a day, and no more. He gingerly placed his hand on top of the others and nodded. “For her. A las armas, ciudadanos. Que una sangre impura inunde nuestros surcos.”

Author's Note

If you dehumanization a population to the point that they have no claim on human rights, do they become actually unreal, meaning they don't count when it comes to fantasy fetishes? Thought experiment for all the Master Bliss people out there.

Time's Up

The front line meant nothing to him. He was looking on the mage. The source of that blood sent a rage burning through him, pushing him back near to that state, when he shattered his mind and lost everything but his anger. He flatly ignored the ropes and nets of the front line, busting through them without concern for what the action did to his body.

The mage at the back of the line poured out some of the blood on his hand and smeared a series of runes onto the ground, sending the earth rippling and warping, blocks of ground shooting upward, cracking and crumbling after the initial thrust. The unstable nature of the blood magic was inaccurate, striking some of the troops just a bit, while Old Timer manage to dodge or deflect them with surges of his own magic.

The mage poured out more blood, desperately scribing his runes while the soldiers ringed him. They didn't even bother sending others to keep pursuing the other escapees. As had been predicted, they had to respond to any attack by doubling down and stopping the one that threatened their egoistic sense of superiority.

The blood magic sent out more blocks of earth and created powerful gales, whipping sand and large clods from the disintegrating pillars of earth that still failed to hit Old Timer. He stabbed them in the throats or in exposed areas with the needle-sharp tines of his stun-stick, even as their swords slashed at his flesh. The cutting grit and shaking earth vitiated their capabilities, leaving just enough space between the ones he hadn't downed to shove through.

Blood splashed all around, runes ground into the blood-moistened earth, the caribou practically clawing the runes into being. The air warped, roiled and then flashed, bursting into a huge wall of flame between the mage and the crazed stallion, catching a couple of the fathest, armored soldiers unawares. He smiled cruelly as the waving wall of magical fire licked across the Old Timer's body, blistering his skin and searing off his fur.

The smile fell when Old Timer actually pushed through the wall, barely alive but still surging forward to the mage. His desperate scrabbling of more runes halted when the flame-licked stun-stick rammed into his chest, over his heart. The sharpened gem tines pierced his painted flesh and stopped at his ribs. Old Timer's sightless eyes locked with the mage's pained gaze.

Just as he hit the activator to send a fatal jolt across his desperately beating heart, the dying Old Timer grunted out, “In her name.”