We’ll plunder and feast on any pony, any beast.

***

Years. It has been years since I started my isolationist life of a nopony scavenger picking through garbage for valuables. I did what I was told, and I didn’t ask for much. Work was safe so long as I stuck to the places that were cleared by mercenaries and the town guard. For years I contributed and never got into trouble. Things were peaceful.

But I was young. I was naive. As the crew began to panic around me and prepare for a fight we surely wouldn’t win, I thought about how wrong things had been in the past week. All my life I rarely had to worry about what the future held so long as I kept to the path and kept to myself. One fateful day of straying beyond the well-worn path of a scavenger led me to places I wouldn’t even go in power armor.

Who was at my side during today’s myriad of problems? A single fucking unicorn who only wanted to rut his way into the sunset.

“So, I heard we’re all about to die” he spoke with such a playful tone that it made me rethink a lot of my recent life choices. The first being recruiting him.

I responded curtly “No we are not. We don’t know that yet.”

“The crews weighing their odds swimming to shore and running through the bayou. We both know how that’ll end.” Ninety nine percent of outlanders like Onyx only get here by boat. If trekking through the wetlands was a possibility, then maybe Wayward wouldn’t be in such a sorry state to the point its citizens turned raider. Maybe we’d actually get some caravans to visit us.

In times when death was shadowing us, all I can really do is think about how much better things could have been. If only…

“Looks like somepony is losing a little hope there.” That stallion's annoyingly playful demeanor snapped me back to reality before I started to spiral further. “Hope you’re not planning on swimming for it. Are you?”

I spit at his hooves and snarled “Nopony is stopping me from getting to The Moore. Now grab a weapon just in case this gets ugly.” His unfaltering smile didn’t give me any clues as to what he was thinking, but I could tell he had something up his sleeve.

“My dear, what makes you think I don’t have a weapon already?” As unicorns do, his horn lit up with green magic and flashed brightly before dulling back to normal. In his hooves as a cloth wrapped rifle which he removed to reveal a strange weapon I’d never seen before. Yet, when I looked at its design closely, I was less than impressed. To me, it looked like four smooth pipes stuck together to form a crude multi-barreled weapon. It even had four comically large firing hammers, two at the top and two at the bottom. The worst part was how long it was. It was easily a head taller than him.

Onyx went to explain himself, but I cut him off quickly. “What in Luna’s mane is that hunk of junk? Did you weld that shit together from toilet pipes or something? And where were you hiding that?!” It didn’t even have a magazine, or anywhere the bullets went in for that matter.

“I’ll have you know this is a piece of equestrian history. Well, four pieces welded together and modified heavily, but it’s still a beautiful artifact. One I can use to hurt things, but I’m a lover not a fighter, sugar.” I watched as he loaded straight gunpower down each barrel at the same time with his magic before stuffing each barrel with a metal ball and ramming them all down as far as they’d go with a rod he’d take off the side of the weapon.

Dumbfounded as I was watching him, we were still under threat. “Fine. Take your pipe cannon and get ready. Those trappers are here for a reason and it’s probably us.”

“Pipe cannon?!” Onyx huffed in fake annoyance and held his gun high. “It’s called a musket you uncultured sow. Equestria didn’t just invent the bullet overnight you know. Show respect to the jezail.” Onyx wasn’t the first pony I’d seen that named their weapon, but he was definitely the last pony I’d think who would. It wasn’t a mare’s name like I would have expected from a pony like him either.

With Onyx prepared and my own weapon loaded, unlike earlier, I too was prepared for a fight. Only this time mom wasn’t here to rescue me when I got into a fight I couldn’t win. There was no place to run now. “Captain? What’s our situation? Are we good, or not good?”

As I called up to the captain on the upper deck, he peered over at me from above and held his hoof to his lips with an angry ‘shhhhhh’. “Quiet you crazy foal. We’re in the middle of a standoff here if you haven’t noticed.”

“Then answer me. What’s going on back there?”

Longshore looked back with a worried gaze before responding. “Two shadows tailing us. One on each side, probably to flank us or box us in. They looked heavily armed too. Probably hunting parties. Must have hidden in the reeds as we passed by and tailed us from the bayou an hour back.”

How long had they been stalking us? No, the better question was why haven’t they killed us yet?

“Captain, the enemies upon us!” Trappers were moving in, but for what I had no clue. Everypony here was assuming they were following us to hunt us down, but I had this feeling of uncertainty. When we fought that swamplurk in the swamp, a hunting party rushed in for the kill. They wasted no time in responding to gunshots, but these trappers were biding their time. Why?

My answer was about to make itself known soon enough as no less than six dots entered my compass, all blue. I wasn’t going to fall for that though! Trappers had no qualms attacking even if they weren’t hostile at first. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice? Not going to happen. It was just as Longshore said too. The splashing of water as something churned forward with great effort sounded around us as one ship appeared on our right, followed by another on our left. It was then, as I saw the trappers up close, did I realize there were far more than just six. Each hunter was standing so close together their dots merged into one, when in reality there were at least ten in total.

The first boat I spotted had a group of them silently eyeing us down with hungry and hateful looks in equal number. The boat contained a hunting party of radigator skin clad ponies with armor mostly made of studded leather and radigator hide. Standing at the tip of the first ship was a large pony, but beyond that I couldn’t tell anything else. They were covered so thoroughly in radigator skin that I couldn’t tell a single feature other than their chest armor was the preserved upper part of a radigator’s head and their gear was covered in sharp teeth pulled from the maw of the gator that covered them. I assumed he was the leader.

The other boat flanking us was filled with ponies in familiar butchers garb and leather armor, with the unblinking eyes of beaked face masks staring back at me. “Oh shit…”

“Friends of yours, darling? Sure hope they’re not here for you.” How did he…oh screw it and screw Onyx for being so damn playful in a situation like this.

“Fuck off, Black!”

The trapper standing at the front of the radigator themed ship drew a folded weapon from his back. As he did, it extended to its full strength, revealing to be some kind of mechanical lance with a wicked blade standing at its tip. Funny enough, I could see the blade was in the shape of an alligator's head, or maybe I was just dreaming that up.

He called out with a thunderous voice, but not towards us. “This the one you’re after?”

A chorus of cheers and strange cawing noises echoed from the other trapper boat. Was it vengeance they were after? “H-hey, what’s this about, huh? I’m doing everything you ponies told me to do. What else do you want from me?”

“Yeah, that’s the one!” One more familiar thing to add to the list was the voice of a mare I’d only met less than a day ago, but easily stayed in my mind as one of the few unforgettable experiences I’d gone through in my life. The mare who shot me in the chest with some kind of poison bullet, she was back and hunting for me. “Looks to me like the lost pup is well trained. She can even follow orders! How cute!”

With horror I watched as the two boats closed the distance and pulled alongside our ship. They were going to board us. It took only a moment for one of Longshore’s crew, the stallion who originally handed me the leech poker, to lose it and jump overboard into the irradiated river below. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for him the trappers were fast as lighting. He’d only just made it over the side before a beartrap connected to a tether bit into one of his legs and bit down hard enough to reach bone. It stopped him from falling into the water and even pulled him back aboard our ship much to his agony.

Some kind of variation to that beartrap-hoof weapon we saw days ago in another trapper camp, but this one was more like a fishing rod reeling the poor stallion across the deck as he screamed his way to the opposite end of the ship. One of the beak clad trappers was reeling him back like a freshly caught trophy fish which left a sickening trail of his blood in his wake. Longshore was quick to step in and grab his crew member.

He hollered “That is enough! We have paid every tithe you’d demand of us time and time again. We do not deserve whatever fate you got in store for the filly. Please! Don’t do this!” I don’t blame him for kinda throwing me under the cart here, but none of that seemed to matter as none of his pleas were answered. Like me, he too was ignored.

CRASH

Our ship rocked to one side as something heavy landed on the deck. The leader from the gator theme trappers boarded, mechanical spear in hoof. As he did, two more boarded us from the other trapper boat. The first being the unicorn who shot me along with a creature I’d never seen before. Granted, it was still a pony, but a pony with wings that flapped against the forces of gravity and allowed it to jump farther than anything I’d seen before.

A pegasus. A real life pegasus. For all the bird masks and cawing these psychopaths did, this was the first time their features felt fitting. It didn’t make the pony any less of a psycho though, as the feathered pony’s hooves ended in twin meat hooks each with dried blood smeared all the way to its knees. “CACAAAAW! Everypony on their fucking bellies, now!” The winged pony screamed out to which we responded by obeying.

Damn! I wanted to fight, but what could we possibly hope to do? There were more trappers here than back in that camp we ran into all those days ago. It seemed like no matter where I went, these pony eaters were out in force.

“Oh ho ho ho! Look who came! Look at who actually came, it’s you!” That damn unicorn was so happy to see me again, but I was itching to unsee her. A part of me wondered how many shots I could get off with SATS before the rest of them turned to fill me with holes in kind. “You know, I was preparing all night to come and grab you from your little shanty town kickin n’ screamin’. I even got another group of killers to help. I guess your help weren’t even needed, Riptide you ol’ crocodile.”

“Alligators. We ain’t got ‘diles here, stupid bitch.” The deep and reverberating sound of his voice did not match the appearance of a cold-blooded killer, but who was I to judge? My EFS made sure to properly identify the gator skin covered pony as he finished reeling in the poor crewmate still stuck to the bear trap. His pained screams were silenced with the hard stomp from Riptide’s hoof.

The unicorn removed her mask. Her dilated eyes glared down at me with a sadistic smile growing on her muzzle. “Oooooh baby, the pup has come to find her momma and kin. You’ve taken a lot of work out of today, but also a lot of the fun!” She got right up to my face, something my nose was taking personally. Luna’s mane, she smelled worse than I do and I rarely bathe. Her coat and mane were so dirty there was no telling what she really looked like beyond the matted hair and blackened mud. “Come on, guess as to why I came all this way? The real reason.”

My first response, like any good earth pony, was to headbutt her as hard as my prone figure could allow. I must have hit her right in the nose, because when I looked back up, she was bleeding heavily from both nostrils. “You talk too much, stupid bitch.”

The only reason the trapper mare didn’t immediately try and kill me was the large stallion named Riptide holding her by the tail with a hoof. “I’ll skin you alive!” She hissed and screamed, but the gator clad trapper held her at bay.

A hearty laugh sent my heart skipping a beat as Riptide laughed and chucked his ally across the deck and straight off our ship with a heavy splash of water. “Don’t get in the prey’s reach, stupid bitch. Now then…Teaja, go make sure Nightfall doesn’t drown. I’ll handle this one.”

The pegasus, now named Teaja, giggled and skipped back to her own boat with more than just a bounce to her step. Every movement was aided by the flapping of wings. Those creatures were a strange bunch. “Name’s Muddy. Any reason you and your lot are stopping us from…doing what you ponies told us to do?”

With a curt nod, Riptide picked me up off the ground as if I was a sack of tatos and hoisted me to my hooves. “Had to be sure you’d come. We learned a lot from Plague’s group. Plague being the pony your momma managed to take down. They’re uppity about losing a leader to a lonewolf, but that’s not what got two groups on your tail. What got you here and not stuck on a campfire is we found out your momma is somepony pretty important to the boss. That makes you important, too important to not make a grab for.”

“Ahem, if I may…” Onyx butted in with all the air of a confident stallion could muster. “My partner in crime here meant to say thank you for such kindness and mercy. We owe you our lives…assuming you don’t plan to eat us, that is.” He sauntered up to the comparatively much bigger stallion and stuck out his hoof. “Onyx, Onyx Black at your service.”

As expected, Riptide turned towards the outlander with a painfully slow movement akin to an alligator moving in for the slow, yet steady kill. “I will disembowel you and use your skin to wipe the sweat from my taint the next time you approach me on equal terms, outlander. As far as I’m concerned, the only pony who’s going to die would be you. Outlanders are always in season.” The cold gaze of a hungry trapper bore into Onyx’s soul, but if it affected him, he did not dare show such weakness in front of a predator like Riptide.

“Yes sir. Forgive me, sir. Will never happen again.” With Onyx firmly put in his place, Riptide huffed and turned towards Longshore and his last crewmate.

“You…” Riptide growled towards the aging captain with all the bite of a real alligator. “My boat leaves, your boat follows. Don’t fuck it up. Tithes will continue as normal, understood?” If Longshore had any objections or concerns, they were left unsaid. He could only muster a nod of understanding as the trapper boss kicked his unconscious crew member towards him and left him rolling all the way to Longshore’s hooves. None of them deserved that, but I’d make it up to him. I’d find a way to repay the damages my presence brought. “And you…”

Riptide was pointing a hoof in my direction this time. “Me?”

“Yeah. You. I brought a lot of ponies today ‘cuz the boss wanted you. Do you know why you’re important?” I wasn’t even aware mom was a pony eating trapper until yesterday! Why is somepony I’ve never met doing this to me of all ponies in this shithole?

With a sigh of frustration, I answered “No. I only found out my mom was a cannibal yesterday. This is all brand new to me.”

Riptide walked right up to me just to show the sheer difference between us. He stood a head and a half taller than to the point I was craning my neck to look up at him. Beneath his gator skin hood and face mask were a pair of pale green eyes that were devoid of a ruthless hunger than I’d seen in previous trapper ponies. “Then you’ll find out, as I have. I’ll let the boss tell you. I’m sure he’ll enjoy your shock as he did ours.” So much for not getting too close to the prey, but in reality there was not a damn thing I could have done to harm him.

Slowly the large trapper turned and moved to return to his own boat. His eyes never took their sight off me as he moved to leave. I imagined his pale green orbs rolling in his skull to face me even as he looked completely away from me. His guard wouldn’t lower no matter what, that much he didn’t leave to the imagination.

“Oh! And by the way…” Riptide turned to face me one last time with only a stoic side glance. “I’m leaving Teaja to watch over you. No more delays, not from trappers and not from beasts.” More orders and more unwanted company. Great! Exactly what I needed.

“You know I don’t need a foalsitter! You fucking…” A hoof found its place on my shoulder and started to pull me back.

The hoof belonged to my charismatic companion, Onyx. “Now now, Ms. Waters. Let’s not say something everpony aboard this ship will regret.” For once his little sing-song voice was starting to crack. Yeah, maybe he was right. Riptide must have left an impression on the ‘not fighter’.

All that was left for us was to continue forward as the trapper boat began to ride away in the path we needed to travel. He leads, we follow. Not that we had much of a choice, but as time went on I was beginning to understand choice was a rare commodity. A luxury few ponies in the armpit of Equestria could afford. Maybe I already came to that conclusion in the past, but it was something I was going to be reminded of at every possible opportunity.

***

The splash of water brought a sense of peace, one I found myself missing every time the noise ended. It reminded me of the waking hours back home. The waves crashing against the bulwark beneath our town were something you’d get used to, even look forward to after a while. I always wondered why that is until today, as I stood at the front of the ship alongside Onyx and the new crewmember, Teaja.

Teaja was a strange one. We weren’t exactly sure when she boarded our boat again, but once the second trapper boat left to follow behind us Teaja just kind of appeared.

A trapper with light leather armor draped in leather and hides like some kind of ratty skirt to keep her safe. Her purple body was visible, with light pink splotches across her hooves and neck where she’d clearly been injured in the past. A dirty gray mane covered only half her head. The other half was scarred with two jagged lines shooting down the side of her head. Of course, the cherry on top was she was a pegasus, something I’d ever only heard stories of.

To me, this mare was as alien as she was crazy.

“Teaja oh Teaja oh TeaJA!”

The sound of the water against the bow of the ship did little to cover her sporadic singing, which was almost exclusively her name most of the time. I think it put off the rest of the crew, who gave the trapper mare a wide berth. Even Onyx, who I was sure would try to woo her with his charms, kept a reasonable distance.

I looked over to him with a shit eating grin as Teaja stood beside me. She’d taken over the leech duty, but instead of knocking them away she was stabbing them clean through with ease. I couldn’t even break the skin on those things, yet she was making kebabs out of them and eating them when she managed to pull them apart with her meat hooks. “Hey, Onyx. What’s the matter, not feeling the itch no more? I haven’t even heard a single compliment or flirt from ya.”

For a split second I could have sworn I saw a flash of annoyance on him before he quickly rebuilt his usual poker face. “Sorry, doll. I’d sooner try my luck with a hellhound again before I stoop to bedding raiders. Been there, done that, doesn’t end well. Besides, she seems a little…” He looked to Teaja who was cooking three leeches over the fire barrel we were using to heat the poker. “...feral for my tastes.”

“Ehe, Teaja likes your words, silly stallion. Maybe Teaja strip your cutie mark and turn it into rag. Make fine trophy for Teaja.” Feral, maybe…but Teaja was well aware of what we were talking about. She was smarter than she looked. And smelled. I’d have to be cautious around her, otherwise the next bit of skin she tears could be mine. For now, this was the second most peaceful encounter with trappers I’d had. It would be a learning experience for everypony on board, that much was certain.

“Kid. Kid get up here.” Longshore stared down at me from the top deck.

“Alright. On my way, just gimme a second.” I had a hunch Longshore wasn’t going to be very pleased knowing he’d gotten himself in deep with a situation that he’d rather avoid altogether. At least the unconscious stallion that’d taken a beating earlier was going to be okay and not lose a leg.

When I got to the top, Longshore met me at the stairs. It was just us at the top. “Kid, I gotta ask…do you know just how bad things would get, could get, when you decided to take this journey? Do you truly know the consequences of what you’ve chosen to do?”

I scoffed. “Of course I do. That's why I’m here.” I wasn’t going to repeat myself to him. He knows why I’m going out of my way to step into danger like this.

Or perhaps, I didn’t. As Longshore turned to me with tired eyes, he sighed heavily. “You know what's coming for you and your family, I get that…but do you know what the consequences are for everypony else?”

That was something I didn’t know. Maybe I didn’t care to, but I’d be blind if I couldn’t see the effects recent events were having on the old stallion. “Something tells me you do. Care to share?”

He sighed again but nodded. “This isn’t my first crew. I’ve had several over the years, but many were taken too soon from this world. If not from monsters, it was from trappers. You gotta understand there's a difference between being evil and doing wrong. The problem is you never know which a trapper might fall under…until you find out far too late. I’ll pass this advice to you since you’re young and haven’t made such mistakes, yet. If you expect the worst, you’ll never be disappointed in a trapper’s company.”

“I…I understand.” What was I supposed to say? Mom was a trapper, but that wasn’t something you could leave behind evidently. She chomped those Jelly Bean clones just fine even though she’s been a mother for almost two decades. That being said, mom wasn’t evil. She just…did some bad things. Right?

“Good” Longshore knocked me out of my stupor before I could go any further into it. For that, I was silently grateful. “Now get ready, we’re almost there. Don’t expect a ride home after all this is over. And you can bet your ass I’ll be collecting on your payment in the near future too.”

That’s perfectly reasonable, I concluded. At least he wasn’t raising the price.

As the next half hour passed, the fog had begun to roll in. The lead trapper boat was gone from our sight in short order, same as the boat tailing us. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was the perfect opportunity to escape. Fortunately, I did know better. Those pony eaters would have our heads on stakes before noon if we even tried. Not to mention Teaja who was still aboard eagerly snacking on cooked leeches.

Longshore had some Rad-X for us to take, but I refused. The risk of developing cancer was always there if you had rads in you, but I knew a little secret the other ponies took for granted. Brahmin milk would purge that crap out of my system one way or another, hopefully. Didn’t mean I didn’t pocket the one he did give me, however.

“Hey, captain. We’re not gonna crash and die, are we?” Onyx was coming up the stairs with his usual swaying self and half smile. “I’d hate to deprive the world of such wonderful ponies such as myself and yours truly over there.” Oh, now he was pointing to me after saying that. I was about to smash him back down the stairs when Longshore snorted and stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Kids these days. No faith I tell ya. I’ve sailed these waters my entire life. I could navigate this river on my sleep walks. Besides…” He pointed a hoof up at the sky with a slight chuckle. “It’s not hard to tell where we need to go when you can see the damn thing.”

Longshore told no lies. Just above the fog I could see a massive bridge spanning the river in its entirety. It stood so tall I thought I was going to get sick just imagining the view from up there. That must be it, the Moore.

“Say, Longshore. Why do they call it The Moore? What's that supposed to mean?” I figured it was something symbolic, or in another language the trappers made up.

He just looked at me as if I was dumb and explained “You grew up in Wayward, right? Mooring is just a way of saying you’re tying a boat to a dock.” Well now I feel dumb. As we got closer, more of the bridge came into view little by little as the fog lifted in pieces. “Oh, some folk got thick accents out here. The way they say the name makes it sound like they’re saying ‘The Maw’.” I was about to ask, but before I got the chance, Teaja yelled from the front of the ship.

“There she is! Hunt and cull in the name of The Moore!” There, I saw why some ponies might think this place was called The Maw. All along the underside of the bridge were the dried carcasses of giant creatures and monsters hanging by thick iron chains in regular intervals. They hung low and evenly spaced out, giving the bridge the appearance of a fang filled jaw.

I spotted swamplurk queens, sea serpents, giant hermit crabs, large shrimp-like creatures that I assumed were the local bog crawlers, and one large turtle looking monster caked in dried mud. Every so often there wouldn’t be a giant monster hanging from the bridge, but the desiccated bow of a destroyed ship with each still bearing the name of the ship it once belonged to. Trapper kills on the water I assumed. Had things gone differently, it might have been the bow of Longshore’s ship being hoisted into the air as a testament to a glorious kill alongside the wetland’s many beasts.

Of course the view wouldn’t be complete without a swarm of vultures and seagulls flying over the bridge eager to snag whatever they could from the trapper settlement that lay upon the ancient bridge. The smell of cooking meat and death filled the air as our ship pulled alongside a dock located just short of the bridge itself. Fog rolled off the water all around us, casting us in a dread filled aura.

“H-holy shit…the smell…” The constant stench of death and gore assaulted me with relentless persistence. It reminded me of the fight in Stable ninety-eight with all the clones dead in horrid piles of meat on the stable floors.

Teaja laughed with a wicked glee and wrapped her hooves around me. “Smells like home cookin’. Maybe Teaja will let you have some if there is leftovers. I warn you, we got a good haul on pony meat just yesterdaaaay.” More insane giggling from the trapper mare. By Celestia I had a sick feeling in my gut about just who that pony meat might belong to.

Finally, we landed next to a dock with good enough supports not eaten away by barnacles and still semi-intact bollards to tie down the Devil Fish. My Pipbuck was kind enough to inform me that the dock was called Rainbow Docks and that the massive bridge standing above us was called the Rainbow Bridge, although I hadn’t technically discovered it yet. From my own experience and by looking at the map, it would have taken days traveling by hoof and that's assuming we got here with all four hooves still attached. By river the trip was only a matter of hours.

Of course we weren’t the only ones landing. I have no idea where Riptide’s boat went, but the boat behind us was still here and eager to see whatever this was all the way to the end. I watched as their boat got as close to the shore as their dolphins could manage without beaching themselves further away from the dock.

“Well kid, this is where we part ways.” Longshore coughed into his hoof with an expecting look. I just rolled my eyes at him. “If you survive this foolish endeavor you’re putting your life on the line for, meet me back in Wayward. I’ll take my payment in rum, spiced and unopened.”

That went about as well as I could have expected in all honesty. “And if I don’t survive?” He just shrugged at that without offering any actual answer. It made me think he wasn’t truly invested in payment. Maybe he was just helping out in the end.

Whether or not he was helping me to my salvation or my doom remained to be seen.

“Now get going kid. This is trapper territory and they’ll eat your friend there alive given the chance. I’m getting out of here before they charge me five hundred caps a head just being here. Or worse.” He gave me a hearty salute and I returned it in kind. “Good luck, Muddy Waters.”

“Thank you kindly, oh captain my captain.”

***

It was only mid-day. We were making great time and all that stood between us and a kingdom of cannibals was a path leading from the docks to the bridge above. If we moved fast we could beat those mask loving trappers to The Moore. Also I was just eager to outrun them considering they had a score to settle with me. Nightfall’s last words to me before being tossed into the river were something about skinning me alive.

“So…” Onyx broke the peaceful silence as he’s prone to do. “I know that you know that I’m not going to be able to fulfill my end of the bargain we made.”

That almost made me trip on my own hooves. “W-what’s that supposed to mean? I promised you sanctuary and you promised me to help get my family back!” He didn’t sound like he was backing out of the deal voluntarily, but if he did I wouldn’t be too upset at the thought of having the stable all to myselves.

I did not have faith in my abilities to handle things going forward without him though. He’s the only reason Longshore took us this far. “Listen. Your raider buddy back there was about to gut me on the poopdeck just for being friendly. I’m all for making new friends, especially ones with benefits, but good looks and a pleasant smile aren’t going anywhere with this lot. I’m not sure how much help an ‘outlander’ is going to be, doll.” Gone was his usual smirk and haughty demeanor he liked to wear. He wasn’t just feeding me a load of crap, he truly believed that.

That left me in the one place I couldn’t be. In charge.

“You think I can just talk my way out of this? I got nothing on you. I need you for this. I…” When Onyx stopped me in my tracks, I tried to push past. I didn’t get very far with him stomping my tail just like Rough did. One of these days this body part is going to fall off.

He laughed at me and smiled. “Confidence is all you need. Don’t let any other emotions or doubt inside that little heart of yours. Trust me, you wear your emotions on your sleeve, friend. Don’t think about anything other than completing your goal today, otherwise you’ll slip.”

I’d have to follow his advice, but that was easier said than done. I was about to yank my tail out from under his hooves, but the moment of silence we shared gave us something else to think about. The faintest sounds of pained grunts and cries could be heard just ahead of us. No matter how long we waited with your ears perked up, the cries never stopped or faltered. Just the continuous sounds of anguish echoed around the overgrown trees and broken concrete buildings covered in moss.

I moved forward and Onyx obliged by releasing me. Together, we raced towards the sound of somepony in dire need of help.

As we rounded a particularly massive tree a single blue dot appeared on the compass. I didn’t need the compass hovering in the top of my vision to know there was only one pony still alive here. Along the path in front of us was a straight road. Along the road were old lamp posts that held gruesome looking cages hanging from the tops that only looked big enough to squeeze a single pony inside as long as the pony stood at their hind legs. Each cage held a corpse being picked apart by crows and vultures alike. Most of them were already long past being dead with the acrid stench of corpse bile covering the area like a toxic cloud.

All but one. For within a long cage at the very beginning of the line of cages stood a stallion squeezed into the metal to the point of being unable to sit down. Not that he could if he was able. As me and Onyx got closer to see if we could help, we realized the torture this stallion was going through. A metal slab, sharp as a razor blade, was tucked between his legs. Just another part of the cage it seemed. If the strength in his legs gave out he could kiss his guts goodbye. Judging by the blood dripping steadily from his legs, I think he’s come to the same realization through a painful lesson.

“Oh…oh Luna, please. Please you gotta get me out of here.” When our eyes met, I instantly knew who this stallion was. The son of a bitch who was going to murder and rob us with his gang of bastards yesterday. “No….no no no, not you.” Now I know where Teaja and the trappers were getting the pony meat. I had a hunch, but I was just happy it wasn’t mom or Murky.

“We seem to be running into a lot of ponies who know you. What a social butterfly you turned out to be. Shame that most of them don’t like you.” Onyx laughed as he waltzed up to the cage and began to inspect it, looking for some way to open it. Me? I had no intention of opening it.

I called out “Don’t bother, Black. This one earned what’s coming to him. We’re leaving.” Walking away was my first desire. Onyx didn’t budge though, and when I realized he wasn’t following I turned back. “The hell are you doing standing around? Let’s go!”

My companion didn’t move. “We can’t just leave him here. No creature deserves to get tortured like this. What did he do that gets him this kind of end?”

Rage. I can’t say I’ve ever felt so angered that my vision began to shake uncontrollably. Today though…today I felt rage. I turned on my hooves, stuck a hoof into Onyx’s chest and get right in his face with all the hate my heart could muster. “That garbage scum was going to kill my family yesterday for a bag of water and some empty guns. He was one of us, a resident of Wayward! We could have been neighbors for all I know, but he was going to kill us and the only reason we didn’t die is because everypony got caught in a trapper ambush yesterday!!!”

“I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry, but please I didn’t mean anything by it. We were just desperate, yeah! I got kids to feed. Come on, please don’t leave me like this…I’ve…I’ve been up here since the attack. Please, just let me loose and you’ll never see me again. Honest!” Judging by the stink and the growing pool of a foul liquid and Luna knows what else growing beneath his cage, I bet he’s been up here for almost a day once the sun starts to set.

Maybe I would show a little mercy. Because after all I’ve gone through, I needed a way to truly vent this growing anger in me. “You know what, fine. Fine! I’ll let you loose. I don’t think the trappers will be very happy about it, but I hope they can forgive me like I’m forgiving you.”

“T-thank you! Thank you so so much. Just…just crank that wheel on the side down there and it’ll lower the cage. Please, hurry…” Like he said, he was hoisted in the air like a flag with a crank holding the chains in place. I wasn’t going to be the kind of mare who would let a pony in need suffer.

So, as I inspected the crank something else came to mind. A more fitting punishment for a raider looking to get by at the expense of others. All it took was a good kick to break the crank and watch as the entire length of chain was let go in an instant. The cage came tumbling down like a cinder block and smashed into the ground with a roaring clang of metal.

A blue dot no longer appeared on the compass.

“Muddy…” If Onyx disapproved, I did not care. It had to be done. It was mercy compared to what trappers would have done to him. Given the fact he was already bloodied, and by the looks of it he also had a crossbow bolt in his stomach, he was better off with this fitting end. “I don’t enjoy killing when it ain’t necessary, but…”

“He was a raider and a murderer. Besides, we don’t have jails back in Wayward. Barely enough space to house everypony. He’d hang for what he did anyway…everypony gets what they deserve.” I spit on his corpse. The blade that threatened to carve his taint like wet paper now thoroughly split the stallion’s lower half down the middle, the pain too much to bear. This wasn’t a clone either, but a true pony. A thinking creature at one point.

And now my first true kill. I didn’t even know his name.

My companion walked alongside me with a snort. “Well you got the confidence now. You just gotta use that unwavering determination to get through this. The very same ya used to murder that guy.”

I almost laughed and I think Onyx saw that, but he kept quiet as he waited for me to lead on. I remember when I first awoke in the stable and had to kill that clone of Jelly Bean. I remember seeing the state my sister was in when she killed her first clone. We genuinely thought we killed a pony then, but dismissed it after justifying the whole ordeal as just putting down a creature not much different than a feral ghoul. We stood by that decision and never looked back on what we did later to the rest of them. Just animals, we said.

This pony in the cage wasn’t an animal, he was a pony. Yet, my reaction was stone cold. No panic, no crying or sick feeling in my stomach. Nothing. I couldn’t muster anything as I looked at the fresh corpse. “Let's just go. It might not be the last one for today.”

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

Maybe I was feeling a bit more than nothing after all. Suddenly my heart was racing and my revolver was firmly between my teeth in an instant. Two trappers were behind us, Nightfall and Teaja along with the rest of their beak mask allies. “Ah ah ah, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here I was going to make you pay for that stunt back on the Devil Fish, but maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you ain’t prey after all.” Nightfall just kept her mocking claps going. I can only guess that she and the rest of the hunting party she brought watched what I had done.

I figured they’d be angry at what I’d done. Maybe they’d be angrier if I freed him after all. That was something I’d never know, but I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to free my family and finally go home.

Teaja was back too, much to Onyx’s discomfort. Without anypony telling her, she took her place at my side again as if the order to keep watch of me still applied. She didn’t say a word either, just kept giving me glances that reminded me of the way my sisters looked at me.

“Well let’s get going. Moore awaits, meat.” The trapper Nightfall brushed past us down the cage filled path. I expected a fight, or at least some threats, but what we got was something else. All that was left for me and a confused Onyx to do was follow behind the group of cannibals and hope none of them get peckish along the way.

The road leading to the bridge was behind us along with the various meat effigies they’d made out of some poor, unlucky ponies. In front of us was a brand new sight to behold, albeit equally scary. A wall unlike any other I’ve seen stood before us covered from top to bottom in the shells of various creatures from around the wasteland. “Oh shit, they got it covered in swamplurk and mirelurk carapace. Now that’s a fort if I've ever seen one.”

That got a confused look from Onyx, who turned to me in a hushed voice. “Uh, what’s the difference between a swamplurk and a mirelurk. They’re the same thing aren’t they?” He may have not been hushed enough, because several trappers including Teaja and myself all turned to him with disapproving stares. I could hear more than a few of them whisper things like ‘fucking outlanders’ and other such crude remarks towards the outlander named Onyx.

“Poor poor outlander. Teaja will put you out of misery, no need to suffer such small brain.” At first I didn't notice her still beside me, which made me jump though I’d never admit to it. She was even taller than me, yet she just kind of faded away into every background whenever you took your eyes off her. The other thing I noticed as we walked up to the massive steel slabs that made the doors of the wall was that Teaja no longer had her meat hook claws equipped. For a time I genuinely thought she had the lower parts of her hooves replaced with them given how she was walking on them earlier. “Teaja will make fine meat pie from your flesh. Finer fertilizer from your guts! Ehehe.”

“Teaja my dear, let's save the pleasantries for another time. Maybe next year. Or maybe we can do your idea when you learn to talk.”

Oh, snarky Onyx was fun to listen to.

Upon the wall sat a lone intercom that Nightfall began to speak into. With a press of a button she began. “Hey, open the fucking gates. Thought I told you pricks to hold it for me.”

“Broadsides said no, and that it was a stupid idea. You probably should have seen this coming Night” The unknown voice said through the intercom. The more the pony on the other side spoke the angrier Nightfall got, but before she could scream at the pony through the box the doors jolted and began to lower like some kind of drawbridge.

The feeling of a lump in my throat grew as the trappers began to move past the threshold and into a place I was honestly scared of entering. Beyond the door could lie anything. My salvation, my doom, maybe even something worse.

“Come on, gorgeous. Don’t get cold hooves now when we’re so close.” Onyx teased and pushed me forward not once, but twice.

“I’m going, I’m going! Lay off the flanks, hotshot.” Gee if anyone ever heard that without context it might sound like something Onyx would be into. Without wasting more time I was on my hooves and walking into cannibal central with only an outlander and a feral pony supporting me. That second one was a little debatable.

***

The Moore was unlike anything I would have expected from pony eating raiders. From the look of things it wasn’t much different from Wayward. Although every building was actually just a hut made from thick leather and carapace from the creatures that were native to this region of the land once known as Equestria. The smell wasn’t of fish like it was back home, but of fresh meat and an endless stream of smells you’d normally only experience in a kitchen.

Well that is if the smell of burning hair was also in the mix, but considering where we were it probably was for them.

The other thing I noticed was everypony here was clad in leather, but it wasn’t the armor I’d come to know when seeing one of their hunters in the wild. Just…normal clothes for once. The only ponies here though were the young, the old and the injured. There were dozens of foals playing in the street which was much wider than home’s. A group of colts and fillies were chasing a giant rat through the tents and hunts in an attempt to catch it. Probably for food if I had to imagine.

“Say, nice place ya got here. Not nearly as many skulls and bones as I would have imagined. And no body parts and carcasses strung up for decorations either. Color me impressed, Teaja. I’ve clearly underestimated you.”

I made absolutely sure Onyx could see the weird look I was giving him before stopping in the middle of the street. “Did you not see all the corpses in those hanging cages back there, or are you just blocking out the memory somehow?”

Onyx had the nerve to laugh at me as we continued forward. It took him a few seconds to cease his annoying laughter which I was almost certain was meant to make fun of me. “Muddy, those weren’t decorations. Those were warning signs. It’s all very nuanced. You’ll understand when you see a raider camp.” The words Onyx told me before came to mind about being confident. Was he just confidently spouting bullshit, or was he speaking from experience?

Wait, maybe he was showing me something. An example of how I could go about meeting this Broadsides pony.

“Enough talk! We are wasting time. Broadsides is waiting for us further in. He is not a pony you want to keep waiting, so move it!” Nightfall calmly reminded us we had a date with the trapper’s all powerful leader. Or at least as calmly as her crazed self could manage, which only attracted a few stares from the surrounding locals.

Even some of the foals who were chasing the rat stopped to stare at the newcomers who were walking into their home without being brought in like a fresh kill. Their eyes held a sense of wonder and curiosity at seeing me and Onyx. I’m sure we were the first non trappers they’d seen alive. Many were no older than Bobby back home. “R-right. Right…”

Past the plethora of huts and tents was the largest structure of all. If the front looked like a fortress wall to me, this was the castle it guarded. A massive structure fit for a king made of driftwood, scrap metal and the bones of the slain. This was the only place I’d seen so far that had actual able-bodied ponies too. The guards standing watch over the structure were outfitted in the heaviest armor I’d seen a trapper wear. Thick metal armor and helmets backed with various hanging leathers and studs covered them completely, blocking out the ponies within. Bones and the faces of broken skulls adorned their armor too, giving them a savage, tribal appearance. They too were armored with those mechanical folding spears.

I also noticed my pipbuck labeling them as ‘Trapper Bonebreakers’ as our group got close to the castle, if something so ugly could be called that.

The inside was much the same with the only light being the light flowing in through the cracks and the roaring fire from a hanging chandelier made of bones. I guess it was some kind of dining hall like they used to have in the pre-war days, but I don’t think dining halls had the hollowed corpse of a bog crawler hanging from the ceiling. Well, there's the hanging decorations Onyx mentioned. At least there weren’t any pony corpses that I could see.

Within the walls was an equally long table covered in meat and fruits with dozens of well armed and even better armored ponies. One of them was Riptide who I recognized from his radigator skin armor. I needed no introduction to who Broadsides was. He was the widest pony I’d ever seen and he sat at the far end of the table. As we entered the room, every trapper there grew quiet. The music I hadn’t noticed at first died down to cast a sudden silence over the hall. That’s when Broadsides stood tall, then proceeded to stand even taller with the assistance of sentry bot legs that carried his massive blubbery hide.

Broadsides was an enormous creature with layers of fat rolling down his body that ended with two stubs where his hind legs should have been. There was no mane atop his head, nor tail as far as I could see. His bluish gray body dotted with scars and burns had a white streak leading from his lower belly all the way to his lower jaw, making him look like a shark. That comparison was validated even more when his toothy grin made itself known. His entire mouth was filled with shiny metal teeth, each sharpened to fine, skin ripping points. “AHOY! And so it was that the daughter would come for her mother. A fine bait, a finer trap. Truly a catch I can be proud of, ah ha hA HA HAAA!”

The waves of fat rolled like the tides as he laughed his head off at his own words. None of the other trappers laughed with him, but kept their eyes on me and me alone. This was it, this was the lion's den.

“I came as demanded. I’ve done everything you ponies asked. So tell me, fat ass…where’s my mom and sister?!” Retaliation is what I expected, maybe a slap or a beating, but what I got was silence. Not a single reaction from anypony except for Broadsides who chuckled gleefully.

“I like this one! Ah ha ha, I like this one a lot! But let’s see if your bark is as good as your bite. Cuz I got what you’re after…” With a mighty clap of his hooves, a great covered platter was brought out that was being carried by at least three trappers. As it was set on the table in front of Broadsides he lifted the cover with his hooves. Mom and Murky were both tied down together with that strange swamp fruit stuffed into their mouths. Fruit that Broadsides promptly scooped out of their mouths and ate himself without even chewing. “You must be the Muddy Waters I’ve been told so much about. That right?”

“Muddy, wait. I…” Mom tried to say something, but I cut her off.

“Yeah, I’m Muddy Waters. And you’re the one who had my family kidnapped. The so-called leader, Broadsides. Am I wrong?” I pushed past the gathering trappers and forced my way to the opposite end of the table to get a good look at the trapper the rest felt fit to rule. Our eyes met with unwavering determination to not break concentration on one another. The words of the past came back with stern reminders not to back down and stay strong. If I failed, he’d know. I could not let that happen.

We sat there in a room filled with silence, staring each other down, unblinking. As my eyes started to water, Broadsides made the first move and blinked. “Yes. I. Am! And let me tell you, let me tell all of you that ain't been here on the first go around, the prodigal daughter has returned to me.” He pointed to mom. No, no wait… “And she has kept our traditions even while away from our table as trapper doctrine dictates from the ancient hunters. The circle of life continues!” Now he was pointing to me. His mad grin and wild eyes blazing with excitement that burned with the fire light.

“W-woah, hold on one second. What do you mean?” I didn’t get a response, only the hooves of trappers lifting me up from behind and into the air as Onyx screamed my name before being shoved to the ground. Was I failing already? What did that fat bastard mean?

He laughed again with his gut bouncing with renewed vigor. That's when the music began, and the trappers shouted their praises to their obese overlord. “And she has spawned me grandchildren. More meat for the hunt, more dominance over the land. Let the beasts and ponies fight, die, and feed with celebration at the return of the daughters. Show ‘em what it means to be a trapper, my ponies!”

Not like this! I did not want to die like this. I didn’t care that the dots were all still blue, I know trappers were capable of being hostile despite that. Before they could properly restrain me, my revolver was already whipped out and back into my teeth. SATS went active immediately with every activation targeted for Broadside’s face. Then I released the spell…

…and nothing happened.

I looked to my right. Riptide was there, his pale green eyes looking directly into mine as his hoof wrapped around my gun with blinding speed. A gator claw was wrapped around the frame of my revolver and jamming itself between it and the hammer, preventing it from firing. Although something told me his claw wasn’t a part of a dead gator as it wiggled and moved under the impact of a striking hammer. Panic set in as I watched his once normal irises turn slitted beneath his hood.

“What are you?” I asked knowing he wasn’t about to tell me. Riptide didn’t say a damn word as the rest of the trappers began to sing and bring out great pots almost the size of broadside himself. The gator theme trapper reset the hammer of my gun before ripping it from my teeth, his eyes never leaving mine as he did so.

“NO VOICE IN OUR EARS BUT THE MOORE’S.” Broadsides roared as the music kicked up its pace and the rest of the trappers began to hum alongside it.

“We baste to the boon of a harpoon. We’ll plunder and FEAST, any pony any BEAST.”

The whole room was abuzz with the thrill of singing the song of trappers. Each trapper joined in as the chorus of them sang together.

“Doesn’t matter, we’ll snack to the bone!”

“The stragglers we eat and consume. Each one of our bellies a tomb!”

“They scream and they run, but they’ll spoil their meat. They’ll spoil the fun!”

“CUZ THE TRAPPERS ARE COMIN’ TO GET YAAAA!!!”

For a brief moment the music and singing stopped. Then it returned with three times the fervor with every trapper now singing in unison. Unfortunately for me and now Onyx, both of us were being tossed into the air and caught by the crowd of trappers filling into the dining hall.

“YO. HO. Outlanders keep trudging to our midst, feeding our guts. Our bottomless pits!”

“Tear! And chew as we kill for The Moore! For power and blood is what we’re doing this for!”

Broadsides landed two of his four wheeled sentry legs onto the table and lifted the platter carrying my sister and mom on it straight into the air with a single hoof.

“Crunching and biting we KILL FOR THE MOORE! For the power in the blood is what we’re doing it foooooooor!!!”

With a thunderous howl and clang of the platter, Broadsides dropped both mom and murky onto his stomach before bouncing them off and on to the table with a crash. The whole room filled with the cheers and howls of dozens of trappers all raising their blades and spears into the air with a zeal I’ve never seen before. They were unified, proud, and eager to let us know just what it was they were for.

Me? I was just a pony being tossed onto the same table alongside my family. Wooden plates scattered as my body rolled across the table like a foal's ball until I landed next to Murky. “It’s a pleasure to meet you kids. Shame I couldn’t get to see the rest.” Broadsides was even larger up close. The heat and stench emanating from him could knock out a manticore, I was certain of it. At least he wasn’t as bad as Nightfall, but still.

As I looked up at him, he looked down with a grin full of metal teeth. “You’re…are you saying you’re my grandpa? There is no fucking way. Come on, this is a joke! You’re fucking with me!”

“Well, adopted really. No blood between us, but your dear ol’ momma was the only one I ever got to call…family. Let me tell you…” He paused for a moment before rubbing his wide stomach and burping so strongly I thought I could see the stink coming from his jaws. “No…wait, let me let your momma tell you. Seeing as my lads have informed me of my absence from your family's stories. Must be strange finding out you’re kin to cannibals, eh heh heh.”

Mom just looked away, ashamed. Eventually she opened her mouth to speak, but her words came out with barely held together emotions. “It’s…not a story I like to tell. My parents were pony eaters and so was I…but they died during one of the wild hunts, a ritual event to cull the monsters of the swamps once their numbers got too swollen. My mother was pregnant with me when…she…was killed in the fighting. My father died trying to save her. I’m only alive because of Broadsides…but he wasn’t a trapper king back then before I left. You were just another pony then.” Her eyes full of unspent tears looked up at the monstrous pony that she called father, awaiting his response.

One he gave without his usually jolly tone. “It was a bad year then. We all remember it so many decades ago. Swamplurks got out of control under our watch, we went in to put them down.” The stumps that used to be his hind legs wiggled in place, useless and scarred. “We all lost something to the beast’s queen that year. Some of us couldn’t get those pieces back, even with the miracle drug they call hydra. I was one of few who survived the onslaught, missing my legs and eye, half my skin melted off from the albino queen’s acid. We lost a lot of good hunters then.” I didn’t notice he was missing an eye, but when he smacked the back of his own head and a single glass eye plopped into his outstretched hoof I understood my mistake. There was no way I could meet his face with a gaping hole where his left eye should be.

Broasides slumped in his sentry bot chair, no longer sitting upon the legs that assisted him like a king, but a stallion remembering a darker time.

“I crawled through the mud and the acid and I knew there was one of our number with a child. When I found her dead, I ripped your mother from the corpse’s belly and waited through the night to keep her safe. Used the healing potions I had to keep her alive even as ‘lurk spawn nibbled at me nubs. When I was rescued, hydra did me no good. ‘Lurk acid fucked things up inside deeper than magic or sciences could fix. Didn’t stop me none! I raised your momma good and propa, till she ran away that is.”

“So that's it then…” I stood up and jabbed a hoof into Broadsides belly with a cold hate filling me. “Your goons shoot me in the chest with some poisoned bullet. Force me to meet you just so you could…what exactly? Tell me you’re my grandpa? I’ve been through so much shit lately and it was all for this?! I…” A hoof pulled me away from the trapper right before I jabbed him again.

With fearful eyes that I’d see quite often lately, and yet not often enough, Murky pulled me back and into a hug. “Sis…please shut up. Just go with it. For now.” Her voice was so shaky that my hate melted and turned to concern for my clone. I looked at her body to find it bandaged and cared for, but her face was pale and her eyes red. She looked starved but determined to keep me in line. Her bonds were also gone. At some point some trapper must have cut her and mom loose.

Pretending she was still a clone of me wasn’t something I could do anymore. We didn’t agree on things at the moment, but she’d lived a vastly different life than me in the last twenty-four hours. She was her own mare, but still a sister I cared for. “Okay…okay, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be!” Broadsides chimed in as he scooped us both into a hug. His body felt like gelatinous quicksand that I might sink into and never emerge. “I had my best hunters make sure you got here. Shame they couldn’t bring you the first go around, but ya did help kill one of us. Not a lot of ponies left to carry you both through the muck and sludge out there. Speaking of which! I’d say it's about time I told you the reason I made sure you came out all this way.”

With another clap of his hooves, two trappers disappeared into some back rooms out of sight. The rest of the horde of hunters took their seats again with the extra guards taking up positions along the walls. I was shocked at the level of control one pony could have over a band of above average raiders. “I heard rumors from some pretty smart ponies on my way here. You’re not too happy with mom running away I bet. Does all this have something to do with that?”

The large trapper crossed his hooves as best he could and huffed. “I’m more upset over the lack of letting me know if you were even alive.” He glared down at mom with a gaze I’d felt from dad on more than a few occasions. “If I really wanted vengeance, or a return to the fold, I wouldn’t have brung her spawn along too. No, what I want isn’t your momma coming back…” A pair of wooden doors crashed open from behind Broadsides as the two trappers who left had returned bringing in a massive, covered platter like the one mom and murky were brought in on. The aroma clashed so heavily with the stench from the rest of the trappers that I thought I was hallucinating it. The scent of fresh steak with the oh so delicious tang of seasonings and spices filled the air along with steam from a dish served hot and ready. That’s when Broadsides made his intentions known. “It's you two I want in our family now.”

The dish wasn’t the cooked steak from some animal. As the platter was set down and the cover removed, I saw not the body of a hunted animal, but of a hunted pony. The head was gone and fresh swamp fruit stuffed into its exposed neck hole. The body was cooked thoroughly with no skin left, but if I had to guess it belonged to one of the ponies who attacked us yesterday. Every trapper in attendance was eagerly awaiting what would happen next as Broadsides laughed from the bottom of his heart as our horrified expressions.

I knew what was coming. The writing was on the wall. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it, nor did I want to acknowledge the fact Murky was staring at the corpse with a hunger in her eyes she couldn’t keep hidden. That same look must be in mine as well.

Neither of us had eaten since before the fight with the clones. It’s been well over a day since we’d had anything to eat.

“Muddy, please. Don’t.” Mom begged us not to partake in the obvious, but Broadsides shushed her immediately with a hoof to cover her mouth.

“You are daughters of Wayward, but after today you will be daughters of the hunt! Return to your blood roots, join us. Because if you will not return to the fold, your mother will.” He made it clear what he wanted from us as he pushed the platters towards us. I wanted to vomit at the sight, but there was nothing in me to throw up. I was starved, beaten, and exhausted from the lack of rest. All of this combined made the orange flesh seasoned and glazed with carefully crafted sauces so…so tantalizing.

But I would not become a trapper. Never. “I…I can’t accept this. We can’t accept this bullshit. I’m sorry, but we’ve already set out to become homesteaders. We don’t belong to Wayward anymore, we belong to ourselves. We belong to the Sisters.”

Seeing Broadsides nearly choke on his own spit was hilarious to me, but I couldn’t show it. Not after telling such a bold-faced lie. Even Murky was giving me a confused look, but I let her know it was going to be okay with a wink.

“What?! You? A homesteader? Little filly you look like you can’t even take on a molerat by yourself, let alone the crap lying in wait in the brush of the swamps. You think I’m gonna let you spoon feed me that bullshit?” Both of his hooves slammed on the table that nearly sent me and Murky into the air.

Confidence. Don’t be a pussy now, Muddy. You can’t feel fear, only confidence. “Me and my sister tore our way through a horde of ferals underground along with the rest of our homesteader sisters. We stuck together out there through a bloodbath. Then we beat down one of your best hunters! And to top it all off, I knocked the crap out of a Red Eye slaver in combat armor back in Wayward with nothing but my own two hooves! Don’t think for a second I won’t rise to the challenge. Even if it means climbing over a mountain like you!” Those weren’t exactly lies, just half truths. But if I believed them, then maybe I could convince him to believe it too.

Which I think he actually bought. His hoof carefully rubbed his chin in thought as the trappers in the room looked on, waiting for his decision. After careful deliberation, Broadsides spoke. “You got fire only a trapper in these parts could have. My ponies also told me what you did to that stallion on the road leading here. I gotta say, I’m impressed. So…tell ya what. If you become a trapper here, I’ll let you go be a homesteader out there. Prove to me you have what it takes, that you got the strength, to survive against all odds.” He held a fork in his hoof and stabbed the utensil into the back of the cooked pony. “I’ll make you a new deal. Partake in the forbidden meat, take our pilgrimage to the lands to the far north and reach the H.M.S Luna. If you can do all of that, I will be satisfied with your families cutting ties to us.”

I may have succeeded in not being forced to join, but I wasn’t able to back out of having to eat a fellow pony. Even as the idea repulsed me, my body was far more eager than my mind. My tongue was watering and it took a quick gulp to avoid drooling. Hunger and exhaustion were a horrid combination, but anything was tasty if you were hungry enough. Maybe that's what creates trappers in the first place.

Me and Murky looked at each other with sunken expressions of dread, but we knew what we had to do. Taking the fork, I ripped a large chunk of meat from the hind leg and slowly placed it beneath my teeth to chew. Oh I cried when I ate that pony, I cried and cried…but not from the trauma I was experiencing.

I cried because of how delicious, how savory this pony tasted. When it was Murky’s turn, she wept alongside me and mom, though I expected mom was crying for very different reasons. Before I realized what was happening, I was going back for seconds. Then thirds. I was just…just so hungry. I was starving! By the time we were done, the trappers and Broadsides cheered with weapons raised high. We’d eaten the entire leg of this poor pony. Satisfaction soon turned to disgust, then nausea once the hunger finally dissipated. It felt like hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a few, repulsive minutes gorging on one of our own species.

“Uh uh uh! If you vomit, I’ll make you eat it again. Not a single calorie goes to waste out here, none!” I figured as much. Vomiting would be too easy for us to get out of this mess.

“S-shut up. I just…I just…” The crackle of my Pipbuck echoed in my head as words appeared in my vision. Into the Maw was now labeled as complete with the objectives having been reached. I don’t know what or who was updating this thing on my wrist, but I was happy for the pleasant distraction. A job well done. Mom and Murky were both safe and not trapper food. For that I was infinitely grateful. “Thank you.” I begrudgingly said to Broadsides who’s smile grew like his gut when he inhaled.

“Welcome. Most ponies would have broken down there. Their resolve wouldn’t have lasted like yours. For that you’ve earned my respect.” He held his hoof out for me to bump which I returned shakily. The mechanical whirring of the sentry bot's legs kicked up as Broadsides began to roll away and leave the dining hall. Before he left, he had one last thing to say to us.

His head turned just enough to give us a glance as he said “A sisterhood, eh? Well then, show me what you lot got in store for the wasteland. It’s sink or swim in the wetlands. Don’t disappoint.”

The rest of the trappers gave me various praises and positivity, but their words I tuned out. I tried tuning out a lot for the next hour as me and Murky contemplated what had happened. Even when I tried to not think about it, or justify it in my head, the thought of what horrid act I’d done wasn’t going away. There would be no ignoring this problem, but the taste in my mouth was still there telling me it had been worth it. Damn the trappers, damn them all. What was worse was how mom was taking it. She didn’t need to say it for us to understand why she was hugging us so hard and crying into our manes with soft whimpers.

This wasn’t the life she had wanted for her children, but it's one we were a part of now. Whether we liked it or not.

***

Level up: level 6

Perk added: Cannibal

-You’ve partaken in the forbidden flesh and found it succulent. You gain health and action point regeneration when you consume the flesh of your fellow ponies including ghouls, alicorns and zebras.

Companion Perk added: Soul Bonded

-There are many like this one, but this one is mine. As long as Murky Waters is in your party you gain +1 to all S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats. When Murky is not in your party, you gain -1 to all stats instead.

Author's Note

This one I was very late on releasing, but it was bigger than the usual chapter. Also I wasted 2 weeks of the month. Huge oof on my part.