“9:53. THREEHUNDREDTHIRTEEN DEGREES. WATCH THE SKY.”

Red awoke from uneasy dreams upside down in his hammock. He held his head, as if checking if it was still attached. It was in equal parts reassuring and unnerving to hear the voice again – at least that meant he was at the right place after all.

Weeks now he had spent slow speed ahead, chartering the icy coast up and down. Looking at the rocks and ice and ice and rocks as if that wasn’t the most boring thing anypony could think of. And now he is to look into the sky at exactly 9:53. He quit his ruminating, and swung himself onto the cold steel plates of his submarine. Not like he had anything else to do.

It was cold outside, like yesterday and all those days before that. Not that he was cold, no, one would have to produce their own body heat for that. It was simply a neutral sensation registered on his skin beneath the freezing on black fur of his. The boat bobbed slightly in the seaway, and the wind was whistling through the icicles.

‘The boat’, he thought. It had a name, he knew as much. It was written on the hull, there in front. The word ‘NIXE’ adorned the vessel there, in turquoise Changeling-Herzländer script. The 'Nixe', 'nixie', or sometimes just 'mermaid' - the changeling engineer had told him so proudly – was a creature he had lifted from a book on Griffonian fairytales. Apparently, they could turn invisible and even change shape at whim, which was of course the reason he had chosen the name. The only logical one for such a changeling Wunderwaffe. A changeling name for a changeling boat. It was at some point during that following three-hour long sermon on Griffonian mythological creatures that Red realized this changeling must had been specifically chosen by the others to pester him. Red, the only representative of the naval attaché of the Griffonian Empire. To sic the Griffonian history enthusiast onto the helpless Griffonian officer, well, they must have had a good laugh over it. Red was also laughing, since they actually believed him when he, a bat pony, from a landlocked nation of griffons, claimed to represent said country's delegation. In any case, it had not taken long for the ‘Nixie’ to change from the Changeling boat to his (vampony) boat. Maybe he should paint over that name sometime and give it a new one.

He raised his golden pocket watch. 9:52. After a look at the UZO, the torpedo targeting thing the engineer (poorly) explained to him, he knew where to point his snout. There, up in the sky, the clouds creeped around each other. The sight gave Red slight collywobbles. It was just that the heavens here seemed to have an eerie quality to them, they just weren’t quite… right. They were never clear, never unmoving, always flowing, twisting, coiling around themselves. The clouds were grey or black, giving images that were hard to decipher. Red tried anyway, despite the difficulty.

A palace. The palace in Canterlot? Whatever it was, it was burning. The image disappeared in black twirls too soon. They brought another. A mass of ponies. A mass of bat ponies, if the tattered wings were any indication. Red squinted. Some of these wings were like his, but not all. A row, maybe? The scene took on a more feral quality. If they had been rowing before, now they were beating each other. Another writhing of the clouds and it looked like the beating turned to lynching. The blood, if it even was blood, flowed in light grey strings until it spilled out, all across the heavens. Red shut his eyes, tying to keep his vision from spinning.

But they had opened by themselves anew. The last image, beneath the greater one… that was no boulder-shaped cloud, but a-

He spun his head around, and could only watch the shale impact the sea behind his boat with incredible force. The water’s reaction was instant, and Red, beneath his hooves, felt his submarine beginning to ride the mounting, terrible wave. He desperately held onto the railing, until the impact with solid ground threw him away like a ragdoll.

He was airborne, and diving sharply. After not flying for so long it always felt like the first time all over again, and the adrenaline was high and cold in his veins. His wings knew what to do. A soundless flutter, and he was horizontal again. Another, and his hooves settled gently on a raised rock that was beyond the gushing water and ice to reach. Red looked upon the sight, and for a fleeting moment he felt like he was the pony of that famous painting, standing above a sea of fog (only more damp, presumably).

The metal of his underwater cockleshell creaked as it dove deeper into the grey-white amorphous mass of snow, the bridge lopsided and the lettering on the hull now hidden. Red sighed.

“Damn it.”

The compass needle jittered, as if it were freezing out here in the icy void. It had fulfilled its duty… for the first few kilometers. Now it was spinning around at considerable speed. Either this meant Red reached the north pole, or something else he couldn’t wrap his head around. Something to do with magic, surely. He sat down and looked at his travel pack. Speaking of magic…

The canteen was easily freed from the deep confines of the mess in his pack. He was thirsty, and it was as if the thing relished that. Almost like it wanted to come to his lips by itself. Was it still good? He took a sniff. Iron. Bloody air, rich and sweet and lovely. It had been too long… so the neck went to his mouth. He only wanted to drink, TO DRINK. The corners of his mouth curled into a smile on their own as Red drank. The more flowed down his throat the more he wanted, the more he drank, the more it became harder to think, to move. He pulled his mouth away, almost panting. It was only four thirsting, desperate gulps but for Red it might as well have been a gallon. The thing went back to where it belonged (as far away from his mouth as physically possible). The canteen looked so sad in there, so lonely. The unfeeling metal looked up at the stallion, whispering “drinkmedrinkmedrinkme” - Red pulled the cord tight and felt relieved.

He had to press on. That was easier, now with that comfortable tingle in his limbs. Before, the terrain had been relatively flat and boring. Now it was hilly, rocky, and boring. Jet-black slate towered above him in steep wedges, silently spectating his trek. There was something important on the horizon, despite him not seeing what. He just knew it. The vampony swilled the last taste of red in his mouth and swallowed, placing one hoof in front of the other.

Red used to think the life of a resistance fighter exciting. It was tautological, no? ‘Fighter’ was almost self-explanatory. A fighter, a warrior, a Griffonian knight. Every young colt dreamt up this career (if you could call it that) for themselves at some point in their lives. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Conquest and glory and all that… it couldn’t get more testosterone and endorphin laden than this, right? Add to that the ‘resistance’ descriptor and you have a match made in heaven. Not only could you make war and pillage at your leisure – you also were always right when doing it! Red learned as much from the half-read book on political theory he stole. No wonder they had elected him as the interim leader, then. Or perhaps they just all agreed that they liked his way of thinking.

But all that rationalization didn’t matter because it was all wrong, of course. Red knew that in actuality being a resistance fighter was boring. ‘Walk there, sneak here. Climb this, wait so and so long. Pull the trigger four times, rinse and repeat.’ It got numbing. Sure, one could argue it was because of the inexplicably convenient, seemingly prescient voice in the young vamponies head. Something that whispered a ruse, a method for him to get his way, every time, without fail. A phrase to say to somepony, a stick of dynamite placed here or there, a speech to hold that came to him wholly in a dream. The moonpriest said it was the goddess’s gift, but who knows really. The real work always fell on to him any case, he sighed.

The field kit was rattling, slightly audible under the howling winds. The air whistled through the pillars and when Red focused on it, it was almost rhythmic. Melodic. He couldn’t place the sounds, but then it came to him all at once – he heard it before, back in the south of Equus. There was a place, hidden in the jungles somewhere where no Equestrians ever dared, where one could sit in the shade of a mangrove and hear the ground whistle, sing. A fellow bat told him once it was the air that sucked through the caves there, like a giant underground flute. A giant organ made from the earth, the pipes of the goddess, they called it. She played upon it only the most otherworldy tunes. A part of him wished he was still there, chewing on mangos and listening to them. Those were the days…

It took another hour for Red to find anything noteworthy. Well, noteworthy was subjective. To Red it was noteworthy. It was a column of smoke, no thicker than half a hoof on the horizon. It definitely was no cloud, that would have been twisted into something grotesque by now surely. It had to be the real deal. Was something burning? Red took up his binoculars. Yes, yes that was definitely smoke. Slightly grey, slightly black. Did something explode? He looked at the foot of the column and-

“What in Tartarus…”

Red was blinded. He grasped his eyes in pain, and fished for the dropped binoculars. He found them broken, the lenses busted like windows of thestral orphanages.

“Fucking shit,” he dropped the useless utensil and picked up his rifle. Her metal seemed almost pleased at this, but Red didn’t care, he already peered through the sight and finally saw what the lightning spell was aimed at. Not at him, as he initially postulated, but at that thing emerging from the bed of snow.

“What in the goddess’s name…,” slipped out involuntarily.

The unicorn, seemingly out of ideas, began to cast a spell Red could only call ‘running away real fast’, the creature in hot pursuit. Only now it began to register what Red was seeing there through his scope. Was that … a giant crab? No, too many legs. And the body was all wrong, too long, spindly, with … pincers… a… Crablobsterpede? Yes, that seemed like it was descriptive enough. Body of a crab, legs and behind of a centipede, armed with the shears of a lobster. Crablobsterpede.

The Crablobsterpede was about as tall as a building, and probably very irate from the flashing lights. The unicorn threw itself away from the piercing thrust of a claw, dashing wildly in a different direction to not get turned into meat on a stick. This happened to be Red’s direction. The earth shook under the blow, the slate and ice jittering all around. Red’s catatonia ended upon hearing the bone-chilling screech of the chitinous horror.

Safety off. Exhale. The bang reverberated from the cliffs, painfully loud. It bore into the beast’s shoulder with a splash of viscera. It screeched anew, but did not fall. He squeezed the trigger again - and again, nothing but screeching. The unicorn was now halfway there, his or her pursuer still behind them. After the third bullet, Red was increasingly frustrated with the situation. Some things didn’t know when to die, did they? The blue haired unicorn, a stallion, now galloped past Red and gave him a glance that was clearly questioning Red’s sanity, seeing that he didn’t budge in the slightest. Red had no intention to, either.

He instead began to count the steps the beast took, and that wasn’t an easy thing considering the number of spindly legs plowing through the snow. It was like an approaching train, with a cone of pulverized snow instead of a plume of smoke. And like a train, it roared again, so loud this time that Red saw the icicles above jitter. The grey claw shot up into the air, aiming like a Griffonian knight leading his sword before the blow. 45…46…47… and…

His wings were faster than his thoughts. Red shot up into the air, and he saw the stalk eyes slowly perk up to follow him, but he already was where he wanted to be. Up above the monster’s back, he swiveled his weight around to point the heavy rifle downward like a counterweight. Four, five, and the recoil knocked him further into the air. The rifle chimed and the clip expelled itself. Finally, the creature below shrieked and finally collapsed. He circled around, listening to the thunderous boom of the impact until landing on the tail. Red rewarded the rifle with a fresh clip, and the bolt clicked approvingly in response.

It didn’t take long for Red to hear mortal huffing and puffing.

“Oh, oh stars, did – did you break the shell?”

“Did… did I what now?”

“The shell, did you break it? Nevermind, nevermind, I’ll check.”

Red could only watch the unicorn scale the mountain of a crustacean. Up there, panting on the main body of the carcass he threw back the hood of his brown robe. He ruffled his blue hair, maybe trying to get all the dirt and snow out of it, before giving up on trying. His eyes traced lines along the dead beast.

“I think you broke the shell,” he hummed softly.

“Tends to happen with armor piercing rounds. What sort of thing did I kill, exactly?”

“We,” he added neutrally.

“What?”

“We killed something that’s worthless now, without the shell. Stars above, this was supposed to be this month’s rent…” he gives, resigned, “Still, doesn’t hurt to have a look.”

Red bit his tongue to try and quell that endless stream of questions forming. The unicorn was gathering his tools from a bag around his flank, pirouetting them idly through the air in thought.

“I already forgot what that book said about this part… I suppose this should do.”

“What exactly-“

Red ducked to dodge the spray of viscera. It reeked of death. When a clamp peeled the dead flesh of the opening back, Red had to suppress the bile from rising. The scalpel moved swiftly, seemingly used to this.

“Hmm. Seems fresh enough... maybe the shell lies deeper with this one?”

“Okay? So?” called Red, still trying to wipe his hoof.

“So, step back if you please.”

He did, but the spray still hit his hooves again, goddess damn it. The outer, grey shell floated away gently, lifted by a bluish hue. With a disgusting squelch, the unicorn’s magic removed more tissue to reveal a copper-colored heart-like organ (between the other slimy ones).

“Is that-“

“Yes. The shell. Intact, despite all odds. Goodie, goodie. Now to gently…”

A splitting axe floated from the pack, lifted high into the air and gently tapped against the shell. It burst, catapulting out a million of wriggling yellow centipedes.

“Fucking tartarus,” Red avoided a particularly vicious insect that was trying to suck his brains out surely. The mass was writhing on the corpse. Were those… baby crablobsterpedes? The unicorn seemed happy enough, catching large and unruly mounds of insect in a brown sack. Eww.

“This is how you pay your rent? Damn, that’s rough.”

“Eh. By the stars it could be worse. I could be one of the poor saps that have to eat one of these, yuck. Magehold’s job market ain’t what it used to be.”

“So… there is people living here?” Red tried not to let his newly summoned hope shine through.

“Well, not here, no. Quite a few ways off. I thought you vamponies liked to flex your superior navigation skills?”

“You… vamponies?”

“Uhh… yeah? You’re a vampire, right? From the coven?”

The two looked at each other with a weird expression for a moment, the swarm of nymphs still bustling about on the carcass. Suddenly the unicorn’s expression turned into an awkward frown, then into laughing.

“Oh, oh stars, you’re – you’re really – oh heavens, the look on your face,” he has to pause to catch his breath between the wheezing, “you’re not from here, are you?”

“Yes,” Red said with a long face. The unicorn stallion finally pulled himself together, tears standing in his eyes and huffing like a train again. He bagged the last of the insect brood, and placed them into his pack (which seemed to be larger on the inside). Sliding down to meet Red standing at the many legs of their felled kill, he seemed almost sorry for laughing.

“Look. Sorry about that,” He scratched his blue mane, “I could take you to Magehold if you want. I guess I owe you that.”

Red thought the same thing.

“No, no, you’re joking.”

The unicorn was laughing again, and by now Red feared his eyes might fall out from all the rolling.

“For the last time, here. Look at it,” he threw over a hoof-sized round of ammo. An ethereal blue claw grabbed it midair to show to the unicorn. He inspected the golden, pointy object while walking along.

“No, no, I don’t think mortal hoofs could produce this. Out of the question. There has to be a few enchantments involved at the very least.”

“If you only knew what else those hooves can make,” he put the round back into its magazine and reloaded it into his rifle. His rifle. That terrible, wonderful thing. Her frame was bigger than him, and so heavy that no mere mortal creature could use her without being an immobile piece of target practice on the ground. Good thing that he wasn’t mortal, that made sure her potential wasn’t wasted. Such a beautiful weapon deserved to see every aspect of combat, no? Not just lying in the dirt to shoot at armored vehicles at a range of up to two kilometers. Anyway, Red had to agree with the unicorn somewhat. It was hard to believe mortal hooves produced such beauty, but it was true. And what was worse that it wasn’t just mortal hooves - it was mortal, communist hooves.

Red pointed at the sky, where the smoke still hadn’t dissipated.

“Any idea what that could be?”

“Huh? Oh, uhh…,” the unicorn seemed to get a little flustered, “…that did not go according to plan.”

“What?”

“See, I’ll show you.”

He retrieved a small pebble from the mass of snow. It flew high into the air until his horn began to buzz. Red jumped at the explosion. The rock had disintegrated in a bluish fireball. The unicorn looked satisfied at that.

“Not bad, huh?”

“Wow, you can make things explode. I can do that too.”

“Mhh, not things. Rocks. Just rocks.”

“…Rocks?”

“Well, yes, yes I know what you mean. 'Rock' is not exactly a narrow definition. To put it precisely, I can bring certain silicates to combustion by a specific combination of spells.”

“Uh-huh. And what happened there,” he pointed to the clouds again.

“Oh, yeah. Well, it appeared there were some…crystal deposits left inside the sediment. It caused a bit of a … chain reaction.”

“Well, that chain reaction almost sunk my boat.”

“Really, what makes you think that?”

“A giant rock flew into the sea. The wave beached my boat.”

“Can’t you… push it back in?”

“No.”

The unicorn wiped the frost from his nose, and the instruments in his pack tinkled every other step. Reaching a new plateau during their ascent, Red saw a wide-open valley where peaks of rock sprouted from the white earth in an uneasy, spiky arrangement. In the distance the landscape grew into a mountain range that was unmatched in Red’s memory. He felt insignificant at the sight. The unicorn looked back.

“Something wrong?”

“I didn’t think to ask… what’s your name?”

“Well, I didn’t ask you either,” the unicorn shrugged, “Ardent Blaze. ‘Dent’ is just fine though.”

Red took up the offer, and shook hooves. He could tell from Dent’s face that his cold hoof hurt his tender, mortal one, but did not bother commenting on it. No need to salt the wound, the fact he was mortal was bad enough.

“Red. Red Fang. Just ‘Red’ is enough.”

“Well then, Red. If you don’t mind, I’m freezing my flanks off. Let’s get to Magehold before the rest of me does too, yeah?”

“Sure thing.”

Dent was gasping and wheezing again in the thin air, seemingly always a moment before collapsing, swaying as if he was drunk. Since Red was chipper, he thought he could at least carry the poor unicorn’s stuff, but no, Dent was too paranoid or prideful for that.

“We-*cough* we’re almost, oh stars, we’re – almost there. Can - *pant* can you see them yet, Red?”

“Uhh, them?”

“The fangs, can you see them?”

He looked up, peering above the forest of frozen spikes. Behind a peculiar patch of stone needles, he thought he saw something. His wings carried him onto a boulder to see more. The sight took away his breath.

“Wow.”

Two black horns – Red took them to be towers at first – were in fact only the peaks of an even larger… what was it even? Too big and tall for a fortress or castle, too fortified for a palace, too opulent for a citadel. What Red could tell that it was made from chiseled volcanic rock, black as the night, stacked high unto the sky. The top parted into two pieces. That must be what Dent called the Fangs. The twins leaned against each other, and pierced the heavens together. Red couldn’t decide whether the building was from the far future, or the ancient past.

To the giant’s feet huddled a great many buildings. Some small like shacks, some like a noblemare’s mansion, glistening golden in the winter sun. Marble pillars stood next to wooden boards here, though they all seemed to suffer from the ravages of time in equal measure. Red’s eyes got lost in the sprawl. Golden rays shone through the gap between the Fangs, and to Red the illuminated rooftops looked like grains of sand.

“Not bad, hm?”

“Huh? Oh, uhh, sure. Pretty,” he whistled.

“Yeah, well, prettier if we kept moving. I’ll go hypothermic if we don’t hurry.”

“That sounds like a you problem,” Red remarked snarkily, but followed him anyway. He caught the magically tossed snowball in the air.

“You vampires are horrible, you know that?”

“Really?”

Dent huffed in annoyance, or resignation.

Dent owned a simple, Equestrian style house on the outskirts of Magehold, one that could be found in every old, decrepit town nopony went to anymore. Red couldn’t complain though, probably due to the fact that he never owned property himself (or knew anypony that did for that matter).

“Make yourself at home,” tossed Dent over his shoulder. He hung the sack presumably filled to the brim with those disgusting centipedes on a hook by the fireplace. Red took it all in. There were so many books here. Every surface had at least one, and the bookcases seemed close to collapse from all the weight of knowledge. Red couldn’t tell if the scrolls on the table were pieces of art, or some arcane language. Then again who was he to judge, his chicken scratch wasn’t much better. Red's gaze wandered upwards to the twinkling, shiny stuff hanging above. Metallic tokens, or something that looked like voodoo fetishes. They were all glimmering, quietly humming and twisting around themselves, casting shadows and colors onto the messy tabletop.

“If, if you don’t mind – by the stars”, he yawned, “Oh, excuse me. I’m going to bed. Try not to break anything, please.”

Red nodded and saw Dent vanish in a smallish side room. The house was quiet, and Red felt unease for the first time in a while. During their trek here, the city was so unnaturally silent it did not feel right to call it a city at all. The more city something was the less quiet it became, usually. This felt more like a ghost town. Red sat down on the floorboards and dropped his gear to his side. Looking up at the wooden beams above hanging with trinkets, they almost seemed like a foal’s mobile. His muzzle curled into a big yawn, likely inspired by the unicorn’s, and that caused him to bear his fangs. Something that felt good after such a long time of them being just a nuisance in his mouth. Maybe he should take a nap. Another yawn came over him. Just a short one, he thought.

Author's Note

wow you actually read all this? well, in any case, feel free to dress me down in the comments about anything I did wrong (stylistically, grammatically, morally, etc)

Anything longer than two sentences strung together is still difficult for me lol.