She’d made a terrible mistake. Even Equestria was better than these stupid sky pirates. And Tempest would not eat meat. She would starve first.
Not that she had a choice.
She stared at the slimy hunk of...well, best not to think of where it’d come from. She’d become desensitized to the smell a day ago, and now it was looking almost edible. Almost.
A bell rang. Her ears twitched toward the sound, and her gaze finally left the thing that they’d been trying to feed her for the past few days because they were all idiots and she would die and it would be all their—
Well. She could blame them. But that wouldn’t get her anywhere. She closed her eyes, took a breath. It was time to grow up. Everypony—everybody—might be at fault, but she couldn’t blame them. It was like blaming the sun for being hot, or a needle for being sharp. They went about their lives in a dream, not even thinking about what they were doing. It was just what they did. A farmer didn’t blame the crops for dying—she blamed herself. Because she was the only one who could actually change anything.
Tempest smiled to herself. Smiles were supposed to be happy. They almost always were, in Equestria. But hers was a dark, twisted thing.
The truth hurts.
But she’d opened her eyes. She knew the bleakness of the world.
Too late. Much too late.
She turned away from the dark red thing that she’d been eyeing far too long for simple disgust and brought a hoof to the bars. They were ugly iron things, pitted and dented with use, but not rusted. The stupid sky pirates understood functionality, and wouldn’t let any single object in their possession become unusable. The bars were strong.
Tempest had tested them.
Her hoof fell to the floor, against rough grains of wood she was far too familiar with. No matter where she shifted, there was no such thing as a comfortable resting place. She hadn’t stopped trying to find one. In a futile search for the barest shred of nonexistent comfort, she’d felt every inch of her prison. Each plank of scratchy, lumpy wood that she should be able to burn…
She rubbed her horn. She hadn’t tried using it since that first time. There had been a spark. If she was desperate, she might be able to light…
Nope. Not going through that again.
Besides, a single spark? Laughable. Better to wait for an opportunity.
A shudder ran through the hull. Tempest hunched down, barely keeping her footing. Must’ve reached another port. She tried to catch any voices from above, but it again proved futile. The hull was too thick, and she was too far down.
Maybe a nap will help.
There had been one part of her cell she hadn’t explored. The part with the Other. She didn’t look at the Other. Didn’t think about the Other.
It’s starting to stink.
It was getting harder, though.
She settled down, not looking in the Other’s direction, and closed her eyes. She was still awake when the stupid sky pirates came back.
“O-okay.”
Tempest’s ears perked up. She didn’t recognize that voice.
“In,” another grunted. She knew this one. It was one of the griffons. Tempest opened her eyes the tiniest amount, just enough to see shapes.
Is that a…
They flew open in their entirety. She jumped to her hooves, staring. The griffon was leading a pony.
Tempest drank in the sight. A week—or more, time didn’t move quite the same anymore—since she’d been taken, and she hadn’t seen another pony since. This one looked like she’d been roughed up quite a bit. Part of her head was matted with blood, an eye was bruised, and—Tempest averted her eyes, only getting in a quick glance—one of her wings was twisted at an unnatural angle. Pegasi were durable and healed fast, but that looked like a wound that wasn’t going to magically get better.
Then the new pony was in her cell. The griffon locked it then stomped away to be angry at something else.
The pony straightened up and brushed her long green mane out of her face, revealing bright orange eyes. “Oh, hey! Didn’t see you there. I’m Spring Forward!”
After a moment of consideration, “Tempest Shadow.”
“Nice to meet you, Tempest,” Spring said, stumbling further into the cell. “Um, is there a candle or something here normally? It’s kind of dark…”
Spring’s eyes were large and wandering. Oh. Tempest had almost forgotten the period of adjustment she’d gone through. Now this place seemed...normal. She shuddered.
Spring was silent for a moment while she inspected her surroundings, face inches from the floor. “So! What do you do here? Got any games or something?” She took another step forward.
“Stop.”
Spring froze, gray fur an inch from the disgust.
“There’s...meat. You’re about to step on it.”
“Oh! Ew, ew, ew ew ew...why do they have meat in here? That’s disgusting!” Spring said, wheeling back. She stopped and felt every inch of her coat—except for the wing—for traces.
“Food.”
Spring was silent. The tone of Tempest’s voice must have gotten through.
“Oh…”
Spring sat back, right next to the Other. Tempest considered letting her learn of its presence for herself, but then she’d probably have to answer a million questions about why she didn’t warn her.
“There’s a...thing.”
“A wha—AAAAH!” The pegasus scrambled back, pressing herself against the bars. “Is this Tartarus?”
“Probably.” Tempest folded her legs underneath herself, going back to a resting position that made the least amount of contact with the shredder that made up the floors.
Spring’s energy finally abandoned her, and she slumped to the floor in a mirror of Tempest’s own pose. “Floors are hard,” she mumbled.
Tempest let out a soft chuckle. In all the time she’d been here, no one had made any mention of the floors. Not even her. Not that she’d talked much. At first it had been the shock, and then it was the hopelessness, and then it was because she was Waiting For An Opportunity.
Spring stirred at the noise, then looked at Tempest and let out a soft gasp. “You…”
What? Tempest felt confusion at first, then realized the pegasus was talking about her horn. She laughed again, this time in a mixture of shame and relief that a part of the very belatedly expected was happening. Everybody on this ship seemed to have some disability or another, whether it was a fake leg, missing eye, old head wound, or just being stupid. With all that, no one had ventured even a passing remark about the source of her own shame. Now, though, she had somepony to make the dreaded comments.
“What happened to you?”
“Are you still a unicorn, or more of an earth pony now?”
“I’ve heard broken horns can leak dangerous magic…”
“Maybe it’d be best if you moved on…”
She waited.
“Guess we’re two of a kind, huh?” The unexpected words were full of bitterness, so different from Spring’s otherwise cheerful behavior. How she’d maintained that smile in the face of being captured, beat up, and shoved into a dingy prison, with meat, the Other, and...herself, Tempest didn’t know.
Tempest raised her head in a sudden movement, then took a second look at Spring’s wing.
Oh. Yeah.
It didn’t look any less broken. The pegasus caught the glance.
“So...you wanted to get...you know, away, too?”
Tempest could only nod.
“Huh.”
Then Spring got up and padded forward, toward the Other.
“What are you…”
“She deserves a proper burial.”
Tempest was silent as the pegasus moved, performing what were probably the pegasus burial rites. Each race’s rites were secrets jealously guarded from others, but Tempest couldn’t bring herself to feel particularly scandalized.
Spring intoned a short passage from an unfamiliar text in a dead language, then...danced. Her eyesight must have adjusted, because her movements were too graceful for somepony half-blind to perform. She moved around the Other, chanting more words as she spun, flowing about the cell like a liquid. For a moment, Tempest could almost imagine she was at one of their ceremonies, could almost imagine the candles, the crowd of mourners solemnly repeating the passages as they looked on…
Then Spring ended the dance, panting, and raised her wings. A wing. And stopped. The magic of the ritual was gone, leaving a crippled pegasus, confused and adrift in a callous world.
“Um...usually we’d burn the body, but since my wing is, well…”
Pegasi relied on their wings to do their magic. A pegasus with a crippled wing was like…
Like a unicorn without a horn.
Tempest stood and walked toward the body in silence. Spring trailed off and backed away, eyes darting between Tempest and the bars.
“I might be able to provide a spark,” Tempest said.
Why am I doing this? a voice inside of her asked.
She couldn’t answer.
She bent her head toward the Other—the corpse. And she Channeled.
The pain hit with the force of an earth pony’s buck and the speed of a racing pegasus. She gritted her teeth, angry tears being eagerly absorbed by the hungry planks below.
It built, increasing every second until she was blind with the pain, drunk with it, built so high it almost crossed the line into numbness.
Then it got worse.
“...so sorry! I didn’t realize…”
Sound faded in and out as she woke, a dark silence in a shouting match with the shrill ringing, ending and starting every other second.
“I’m fine,” Tempest growled, pushing herself to her hooves. She finally looked at the Other.
It was gone, burned to crisps. So they did have fireproofing spells.
“...but the fire got near you and I had to stamp it out before you…”
Or maybe not. The wood where the body had been did look a bit darker than the rest of the floor, though it was quite dark to begin with. She slowly turned her head, facing the pegasus straight in the eyes.
“There was a fire.”
The chatter stopped, then a single word dripped from the other pony’s muzzle. “Yes.”
“And you stamped it out.”
“I had to! You were going to…”
The rest of the sentence became fuzzy and worthless before Tempest could hear it.
“We could have escaped!” she yelled. The other pony stopped her prattling and looked at her with wide eyes. “We had a hole! A way to get out!” She advanced, step by step. Sentence by sentence.
“And now your stupidity ruined it! We’re stuck here, unable to...what was that?” she said, narrowing her eyes as she spat out the last three words.
The cowering pegasus mumbled again, this time loud enough for Tempest to catch. “But...we’re not at a port.”
Tempest’s rage departed. She slumped to the floor.
She couldn’t blame other ponies. She was the only one she could depend on to change things. But this wasn’t her fault like being taken was her fault. She couldn’t blame anyone else at all, even as tools or mindless beasts following ingrained behavior.
This was her fault. Her fault entirely. She’d gotten caught up on sentiment, ignored the practicalities, the pain, the fact that they weren’t at a port…
“Hey. It’s okay.”
Spring Forward. The mare was confusing. She was from Equestria—she’d said so herself. But even after being uprooted from the comfy, inclusive place she’d had among everypony else, she could still bring herself to be nice. Happy.
Forgiving.
Except Equestria wasn’t inclusive. Not really. Not to those like Tempest. Or Spring.
“So...any idea what they’re going to do with us?” Spring eventually said, breaking the silence.
“They’re slavers,” Tempest said.
“Slavers...is that like a type of trader?”
How was this mare still alive? Tempest had known what slavers were even in Equestria, since she’d lived in a village close to the edge. Either Spring had been very sheltered, or she’d lived extremely close to Canterlot. Either of those options made the mare’s current situation even more bleak.
Well, she deserved to know, at least.
“Of a sort.”
“So…”
“They’re going to trade us.”
Spring looked away. “That’s not funny,” she said. There was a shiver in her voice.
“Whoever buys us gets to keep us. Do whatever they want with us.”
“Stop that,” she said, almost looking angry for the first time since Tempest had seen her.
“They have ways of forcing cooperation, for new slaves, or those who try to rebel,” Tempest said.
“Stop!” Spring shouted.
Tempest looked at her, amused. The truth hurt, yes, but this was a pretty tame one, one ponies faced even in Equestria. “Why?”
“Because...because it’s not right. Nopony should be able to say it so...so casually. It’s horrible. You can’t just pass it off like that. Like it’s normal. It’s not normal,” Spring said with a stomp that caused a dull thump in the wood below.
“It’s pretty normal outside of Equestria,” Tempest said.
“It shouldn’t be!”
Tempest shrugged. The stain on the wood the Other had left behind drew her eyes. It was gone now.
“We need to escape,” Spring said suddenly.
“Obviously.”
“We—oh. Um, you have a plan, then?”
Tempest walked back to the bars. Spring stepped out of her way as she approached.
“They throw some meat in every two or three days. We pretend to be weak the next time they do it, until the ship reaches a port. Then, the next time someone comes with meat, we jump them.”
It was a miserable five days before they reached the next port. Most of it was spent talking over stupid things like the weather, or pie, or trying and failing to sleep, or not smelling the meat. Thankfully, their captors seemed to have figured out ponies weren’t being rebellious and just couldn't eat it, and had dumped a small pile of grains inside the cell.
Tempest sniffed at one of the more rotten ones. It had fallen close to the scorched planks that were all that remained of the Other. But it was food. Edible food. She opened her mouth, stretched down toward it—
Then the cell door opened.
Spring Forward jumped up and stuck a hoof between the door, while Tempest darted forward and tackled the griffon, knocking him to the ground. Spring bucked him in the head, hard. Tempest repeated the blow, knocking him out.
“You sure you remember the way?” Tempest whispered. She didn’t.
“It’s easy. End of the hallway, then straight up,” Spring returned in the same tone of voice.
They fell back into silence, sneaking through the ship. Crates were piled up everywhere, some unmarked, some labeled with simple words like Corn and Wood. Then they reached the exit.
It was a trapdoor, with a ladder leading up to it. Ponies were terrible climbers.
I’d forgotten about this.
“Heh. Uh, I’m kind of used to being able to fly...and also being around ponies who can do the same. I didn’t really think…”
Tempest brought her forehooves up to her temples. “Right. Right, that’s fine. We’ll think of something. Perhaps if we stack some of the crates—”
Heavy footsteps came from above. Both ponies froze in their tracks, ears straining.
“A unicorn. And a pegasus. In there. With wood. How?”
“It’s fine.”
“But how?”
“Dunno. They didn’t burn anything. It’s fine”
Tempest edged behind a particularly high stack of crates. She caught herself on a box’s edge and let out a muffled curse, which alerted Spring, who jumped behind her own set of boxes right before the trapdoor crashed open.
Tempest froze, not even letting herself breathe as figures climbed down. A griffon led the way, carefully lowering herself with small flaps of her wings.
Maybe looking isn’t the best idea…
No. It was fine. Their eyes would have to adjust.
Then the other two figures came down. One was a mole. The other was a Diamond Dog. A Diamond Dog. If they found out Tempest and Spring had escaped, they’d be able to track them down with no problem.
They needed to get out fast.
Tempest waited for them to pass, resisting the urge to move, to flee. Finally, they moved to the back of the ship, far enough that Tempest couldn’t hear the mole’s grumbles anymore. She took a deep breath, the first since they’d come down the ladder.
Tempest slunk to the other side of the boxes and found Spring cowering beside her own hiding place, curled up into a ball. Tempest frowned. No matter how much Spring tried to hide it, these slavers had affected her. Badly. But that was something to contemplate when they were free.
“Think you can climb that?” Tempest whispered. Maybe pegasi were good at climbing…
Spring shook her head.
Tempest started pacing. Quietly. They needed to get out, and stacking boxes or anything similar would take too long and be too loud.
The boxes…
“Spring, come out. We need to go,” Tempest said, nudging the pegasus’s shoulder. Spring slowly unfolded herself and crept behind Tempest without a word.
“They have to unload this stuff somehow,” Tempest continued whispering. Spring made no response. That was fine. The simple act of talking aloud helped Tempest think. “So they can’t use the trapdoor for everything. There’s got to be another way out, and a big one. We just have to find it.”
It’ll probably be closed and locked.
They’d deal with each problem as they met it. For now… “Okay, here’s the plan. We find the edge of the ship and feel around for anything odd.”
Tempest glanced behind herself, catching Spring’s nod. “Right. This way.”
They moved deeper into the ship, into areas lit by dim lanterns. Lanterns that used fire. Tempest grabbed one off its hook and handed it to Spring, then got another for herself.
“Wha’s for?” Spring said, voice slightly muffled by the lantern in her mouth.
“Fire.”
Spring was silent again.
Then they reached the exit. A huge winch connected to a large section of separate planks meant to swing outward. Four of the dim lanterns lit up the area, combining to form a pool of light that looked almost bright.
Tempest placed her lantern down beside the winch and motioned for Spring to join her. She took hold of the winch and pulled.
It was heavy and not meant to be opened by just two ponies. But they were managing it. With a series of heavy clangs, it started sliding open.
Tempest winced. The crew would hear that. They’d be coming.
They needed to be fast.
The door was halfway open when a heavy body tackled her to the floor. She grunted in pain, swatting weakly at her attacker. Its smell was worse than the meat, an overpowering odor that would have made her throw up in any other circumstance. But now was no time to be queasy.
“Spring. Knock...lanterns,” Tempest choked out before a hairy paw crushed against her throat. She gurgled, flailing against the Diamond Dog’s grip. The crew wanted them alive. Why was…
She caught a bright yellow light out of the corner of her eye and caught the crackling of fire. Then she fell unconscious, a smile on her face.
It was my fault.
In part, the facts agreed.
I should have…
Yes, you should have. But speculating is useless.
And so she’d stopped.
She was alone. They wouldn’t tell her what happened to Spring, but Tempest knew. There was a new Other in her cell, burnt beyond recognition. And yet Tempest still recognized it. Her.
Tempest’s horn sparked. A spike of agony drove its way into her brain. She didn’t wince. Her thoughts were cold. Precise. Facts were ordered inside her head, emotions locked away inside a safe, to be examined later under the cold hard light of truth.
The ship was at a port. She might not have another chance to escape.
Another spark flung itself from her horn, leaving behind another ember of hurt. She deserved it. She received each hurt with a grim joy. She might not be able to bring Spring back, but she could take revenge on the ones responsible for her death. The sky pirates…
And herself.
A fountain of blue lights spattered against the wall in a rush, tearing themselves from Tempest in a wave that should have knocked her unconscious.
She had never before felt farther away from sleep.
Tempest smiled. It was the twisted smile, the one without joy.
She kept smiling as the ship burned around her.
Step. Step. Step.
She’d galloped away, and hadn’t stopped. Hadn’t stopped. Desert was warm. Hot. Bad.
Step. Step. Step.
There was a path. She’d followed it. Was still following it.
Step. Step. Step.
Her horn sparked. She bore it. Relished in it. The pain was hers. She owned it.
Step. Step. Step.
Oh hello. City. Nice city. And guards. Coming to greet her. Hi guards.
Step. Step. Step.
They were in front of her.
Step—
“Make way for the Storm King,” one of them growled.
Step.
He raised his pike.
“Ooh, what’s this? A pony? Let me see!” This one was wearing a black crown.
Tempest raised her head. Step.
“Interesting…” He snapped his fingers. “Bring our guest something to eat. We might have something to discuss.”
Step.
“Don’t we?”
Tempest stopped. Thought. “Maybe.”
