Twiastasia

There was no harbor waiting for the troupe on the other side of the Hoofreach Heights. The mountain range served as a site marking where native Equestrian civilization had attempted to tame the wild landscape of Echidna, and, for all their effort, were repelled by her unforgiving nature. Harmony would take no permanent footholds on this continent, it seemed. Regardless, it ensured Anon and Gile that the path to Equestria would continue on foot, not oversea. So close to that freezing mountain range, the Eastern coastline of Echidna was chilly and desolate. Few plants grew along it’s sandy shores, besides thin tundra grasses. The waves of the Typhon sea were an impatient sort, haphazardly throwing themselves against the sand and rocks with reckless force. The ocean itself, a hazy dark blue. Small icebergs off that dotted the coast served as the biggest protection the beach could hope for, shaved off some unseen mountain far away, dragged this far by Typhon’s strong currents.

It would be a long trek up the weary coast. The scenery reminded Anon of far off Bowline. He wondered if the monsoons were still raging there. Thankfully, the only clouds off Typhon shores were scant in number, large and low, ice crystals hanging heavy in their wispy wings. Concerned eyes surrounded Anon. The chill of the mountains had lessened here on the oceanside, sure, and the wind was in a rare calm, but the days since departure from Verona had not been kind to the man.

“We should take a break soon, maybe by those cliffs over there. If we stay low on their slopes, we should be protected from the worst of the winds once they pick back up again.” Twilight had been trying to get Anon to rest for over an hour now, but his stubbornness wouldn’t allow it. Gile had been walking at Anon’s side in a weak, though thoughtful, effort to shield his friend from the weather. He puffed up a few feet off the ground in a gentle hover, leaning into Anon’s ear.

“What’s with you man? You’re gonna have a stroke if you don’t take it easy for a while. You’ve been coughing and shaking since our first night in the mountains.”

“T-that’s because it was cold there and it’s cold here, featherbrain.”

“The Anon I know would never pass up an opportunity for rest, especially when it’s for his sake.”

Anon sighed through his whisper. “What do you think? I’m worried about Twilight.”

“Twilight? The mare’s fine man. She’s got her fur to protect her from the win-”

“I’m not worried about the fucking wind. I’m worried about someone coming along with more muscle than us and taking her. We’re still so far from Equestria, and I hate being out in the open like this.” hazy eyes scanned the horizon. “Every second we waste sitting in one place means they’re that much closer behind us.”

The griffon face palmed. “Who’s ‘they?’ We’ve stayed overnight in a few towns, and passed through a few more. If any of those bumpkins knew of the bounty, they’d long since stopped caring about it. If anyone was following us, they would’ve had plenty of time to steal her. Besides, we used a fake name for her whenever a stranger referred to her, so what’s the issue? She would’ve been long gone by the time we had first went to Cabaluus if creatures thought the bounty to be anything more than a pipedream.”

“I’m sure she would’ve gotten swiped up in that city, had she not used fake names herself. We got so fucking lucky that she had to be a thief to get by, man, and that’s not even considering in the fact that we found her at all. I’m certain any luck we had on our side before is no longer with us. I-I even started praying at night, dude. To that God from my old world. I’m not even sure I’m doing it right, but fuck. I can barely sleep these days thinking about how our bag could be stolen from us so easily. It’s terrifying.” Anon’s words were plagued by infrequent coughing fits, mucus apparent in his words.

Gile had to shake his head about to recollect his thoughts. “Damn, dude... You gotta relax. I get being stressed, but we’re ahead of the game. No one else had found Twilight because the creatures here don’t care. Say some schmuck had found her first, yeah? What would he do? Hogtie her and drag her across the continent?”

“... That’s pretty close to what we’ve been doing, Gile.”

“W-we have the means and the will for it. Some poor idiot Caballan doesn’t have our knowhow. Tch, besides, if you’re gonna start repenting now in life, pray to the griffon ones. I bet you never went to church back on your old world, so your old god probably hates you. You can play the poor sinner role way easier with Father Boreas wayyy easier. He loves that stuff. I think.”

Anon shot Gile a deadpan look. “I don’t think any god looks kindly on worshippers playing a role for their grace, featherbrain.”

“But it’s the true! You’re poor and a sinner all the way to Tartarus, haha!”

Twilight looked up from her map, frowning. “Are you two keeping secrets again? I wanna talk too!” She whined.

Gile cocked his head over with a smirk. “Anon’s finally found religion through his constant, crushing celibacy.”

“What’s religion?”

Anon sighed.

…

“Pick up your pace, boozewhore. Two more hours and you can sleep.” A whip cracked in the air, punctuating the mare's words. Fizzy flinched at the noise and forced her limbs to move an iota faster. Cabaluus had been a bust. Zara and her goons had scoured up and down the slums to no avail. The mare hadn’t been planning on buying those two strangers time, truly. She had just wanted The Black Stripe out of her bar. Fizzy never thought they’d actually drag her along with them, let alone torture her. It was to be expected though: These scum had no morals. It was all about money to them.

Fizzy’s thoughts often fell back onto those two thieves she had met that night in the tavern. If she knew what would be in store for her, she would’ve closed up shop and fled Tamar by sunrise. But the thinking kept her alive, when dumb muscle stallions had to rest and she had to pull the cart. The cart that carried her slavers and their supplies. She would wonder if the griffon and the human had ever even found that Twilight mare. Maybe they were slicker than they appeared, and had already deposited her back wherever she was meant to be.

Maybe they were just another couple of useless idiot thieves, another gross pockmark carving their ugly paths along this desolate continent. The latter seemed more believable. If they did ever find those two, what would she do? Would she sound the alarm and alert her captors? Would they free her if she did? Truly, at this point, she didn’t care for the wellbeing of two thieves, but…

Nopony should have to suffer through what The Black Stripe do. Fizzy knew of Zara, and of her exploits. She was a zebra, hailing from some far off land lost at sea. Apparently, she had served in her home’s legions, but she was no soldier. She was a barbarian. The zebra had been removed from her position in the Zeabrican army and banished from her home for her cruelty. Somehow, she had made her way to Tamar, and created The Black Stripe gang.

There, she found the diamonds in the rough. Once lowly thieves, trained and elevated to fellow warriors in all but name. Each had their own skillset, something they brought to the table. Fizzy eyed the griffon who flew overhead, her eagle eyes always on the lookout. Gwen was the muscle and currently, the de facto scout. Granted, she wasn’t much of a quiet griffon, but her eyesight was better than any equine. In the caravan, snoozing up with that bulky stallion, was Silver Tongue. Just another whore of Tamar, though she had the eloquence to back up her name. Smoothtalker and, more recently, head loanshark of Tamar. Why Zara had brought her moneylender outside of the city, Fizzy did not know.

Another warning crack of the whip kept Fizzy on her hooves, and her focus directed at the stony-faced mare above her, sitting upon the stop of the caravan beside Zara herself. It was the zebra’s right-hoof mare: Pale Parma.

She was scary.

Her dull blue eyes and bored look betrayed her so ragged body. The faded scars that covered her body were medals from more battles won than lost. Like her name, her coat was a pale white, and her discolored greying scars seemed to stripe her almost similarly to Zara’s. If the zebra were ever to die, It’d be Parma who’d take control of The Black Stripe. She, like her leader, was a true renaissance pony in the arts of combat and and control, be it control of a battle, or control of a city. Where Zara preferred a more ranged approach with her small crossbow, Parma favored her hooves, and damn whatever wounds she may incur. The unicorn’s nimble body was not typical of such an approach to fight, and perhaps that aided her. Thieves of their sort oh so loved the unconventional, anything to tip the scales in their favor.

But those two were no thieves. Gwen was a brute, and Silver Tongue a charlatan, but they were still just thieves at the end of the day. Zara and Parma were monsters.

“- but Caballan’s are idiots, from the rich to the poor. Our moles are no different. They say they saw one thing, heard another. ‘Oh, they’re on their way to’- Hey!” The whip lashed across Fizzy’s back, adding another bloody mark to the many. “Enough daydreaming whore! Keep MOVING! We head east!”

Fizzy nearly fell to her knees, shivering under the pain and weight. She felt fresh blood trickle down her side, and gritted her teeth. Hopeless rage billowed from her flaring nostrils, now looking like steam with the dropping temperatures. Just another two hours, then she could rest with that old idiot stallion the gang had taken along with her.

‘I hope we find those bandits, and I hope they hang Parma by her throat.’

…

The small fire groaned in appreciation with the dead sticks Gile dropped into it. He sighed, and looked to Anon. His companion sat hunched against a boulder, draped in their blankets and dirt. His breaths were ragged and hard. Twilight had at first expressed alarm at Gile’s efforts, thinking he was digging Anon’s early grave, but it was no such case. Any protection from the cold would be good for him. After learning of the trick, Twilight had rolled about in the dirt, before nestling in on top of Anon’s body, breathing her hot breath on his face every so often. It was a cute, if a bit misguided, sight to see. If Gile hadn’t felt so concerned, he would’ve joked about how compromising the picture looked.

But this was no time for such things. As the griffon added the last sticks to the fire, he too took to Anon’s side, nestling up to him. “... We hate the cold, if you couldn’t tell.”

“... Does this sort of thing happen every winter?” Twilight’s voice was low, heavy with concern.

“Usually, we’d hide out in an inn when it got cold. Anon’s body type is strange, even very experienced tailors with minotaur clients wouldn’t serve Anon, and we never stayed around towns too long to gain favors, so those clothes of his are really all he has. He even had to learn to sew at one point, just to fix up some of the rips.” Gile laughed grimly. “You know, I’d been telling him to just sew on thicker sleeves for years now, but he would always bitch about how ‘no cloths we’d scrounge up were the right color,’ and that ‘it’d make him look stupid.’ Fuckin’ idiot is stupid…”

“Gile…”

The griffon spat to the side, feeling a shiver run through his own body. The winds had certainly picked up now, in the dreary hours of night. “Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t bully him when he can’t fight back. I just hate seein’ him like this. Always…” His voice tittered off.

“A-always what?”

“... Always makes me worry. Anon’s the only friend and family I ever had in this world, and I his… Back in the orphanage-”

“You two were in an orphanage!?”

“You know what that is?”

Twilight looked away. “I… came across a few in Cabaluus. I thought at first that it was just a big family, or a place for fillies and colts to spend time together, but… Then I talked to the Mother, and she thought I was making fun of her. She gave me an earful, but I was able to piece together what it was meant for through her yelling… I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool. Anyway, he’d always save some of his food for me. Our ‘Mother’ didn’t know what to feed him, so she just gave him a little bit of everything each different race would get. The other kids at the time thought it was favoritism, so he got beat up a lot. I… didn’t care, at first, but since we shared bunk beds, we became friends. Soon enough, the kids in there hated me too, because I was friends with the ‘favorite.’ But we had each other’s backs. In time, that orphanage was ours, and none of those little scamps could boss us around. They’d still try, but they knew the risks of fucking with us.”

Gile couldn’t help smiling at Twilight’s slowly frowning face. Sure, maybe it didn’t help their image of being good heroes, but those little shits had it coming.

“I regret nothing.”

“W-why didn’t you two try explaining? You could’ve all been friends. They were going through the same things you two were.”

“Kids aren’t one to listen to reason, Twilight. Kids also aren’t one to hand out reason. We just thought that was how life was supposed to be. Be strong enough to take, or you’ll have everything taken. Really, it’s not a bad thing to live by, thinking about it now. We still do.”

Oops.

“By being adventurers…?”

“Y-yes, in a manner of speaking. The orphanage taught us to be strong, and to never give up. Sometimes, we’d come across, um, dangers that maybe we couldn’t beat. How does one go from there? You either run, or try harder.” His eyes fell onto Anon’s fitful face. “We prefer to try harder.”

“So… I take it neither of you ever got adopted…?”

Gile guffawed. “Hah! The griffon who didn’t go two days without at least one black eye and the alien who looks like a diseased minotaur!? No, haha, we never got adopted. No creature really ever got adopted in Drachen.”

“Drachen… I’ve seen that on my map. Is that where you two came from?”

“Well, Anon came from some other world apparently, but where we met? Me as a hatchling and he as a… him? Yeah, Drachen’s our home.”

The purple pony looked back to Anon, her eyes thankfully holding less concern. “So… You really think he came from another world?”

“Honestly? Yeah, I do. Anon’s never lied to me, and he had no reason to lie about that. Maybe if he said it so I’d find him interesting and be his friend at first, but years later, he would’ve told me the truth and laughed at how stupid I was for believing him. Plus, in all our years of traveling together, we never came across any creature that even resembled him. He doesn’t have the horns or snout or legs of a minotaur. He’s just… Well, a human.” There was a brief period of quiet before Gile continued, his voice a little lower, as if he didn’t want the sleeping human to know he was saying it. “There was a time when he wanted to travel the world though. He said it was to find riches, but… I think he was holding onto the hope that he had been wrong about his past, and that there were humans somewhere in this world… I don’t think he ever stopped hoping.”

The only sound for a long while was the wind, before Twilight would break the silence. “You think… If he ever found his ponies, or someway back to his homeworld… He’d go?”

Gile looked off into the darkness. “... I don’t know.”

Unconsciously, the griffon scooted a little closer to his friend.