Brigant camp, early morning, date unknown

The sun was shining over the abandoned camp, bright and motionless just like it ever is, it was looking from the clean sky over seemingly endless desert. Dunes, colored in a bleak mix of grey and faint yellow sand, stood in their rightful place, rarely disturbed by an occasional gust of wind.

It has been seventeen days since Stas found himself stranded in Equestria. Today, after completely recovering after his encounter with bandits, he was finally ready to move onto the next stage of his adventure. Those two weeks went without any serious accidents and were dull and boring, but productive to him. He was able to get a good hang on crossbow aiming and practice with his magic.

Elemental treatise of occult science, in spite of it's ominous name, was nothing more than a book on understanding of magic which contain the basics he needed to cast spells more successfully without burning half of his mana on the most basic of magics. Even more, after discovering that, in contradiction to what Solomon stated, he needs almost no reagents for the majority of spells, he was trying to cast few of the simple spells the books provided him with.

He did not tried to make a golem or summon a spirit, deciding that it was too early for trying something like that, but he was able to enchant his books and a map to protect them from the elements and physical damage. He also was fairly confident with his ability to throw fireball-spell he looted, even if he was afraid to try and change the flow or amount of mana in it. Not to mention, he was able to discover on his own how unicorn in the show used the magic ray and made himself an improvised magic missile spell on it's basis (which, he was pretty confident, probably was a magical equivalent of welding together a pipe shotgun in his garage).

While magic ray and missile may seem redundant compared to a fireball, they had few abilities fireball lacked - ability to shoot them with high speed and precision, together with ability to safely control the flow and amount of mana, making it possible for him to make them strong enough to pierce through a wooden palisade or weaken the spell to turn it into something like a rubber-bullet.

Shamefully, he was unable to make it into a stunning spell, he had an idea of turning the missile's condensed mana into the electric charge, but he decided not to do it because of the same reason he did not tinker with fireball - risk of frying himself alive in his own shell. He was in a bad situation, but he had more than enough common sense not to mess with electricity or explosives.

As of his aggressive-racism problem, he had to work on disguising himself. He still had no idea how to transform, so he had to improvise, he took apart the spare clothing and saddle bags left by bandits and, using his mediocre army-grade tailoring skills and sewing supplies, made himself a custom-fit robe with two pairs of crude "boots" covering his entire body, he painted it in faint green using some random vegetation and a spare barrel to make sure that his cloths wont look like beggar's rags made from differently colored cloth scraps. He was also able to use some spare leather armor left by bandits as a material, hiding a crudely made soft-leather bracers, helmet and breastplate with leggings under the layers of cloth. The robe looked far from pretty, even in spite of that fact that he spend several days trying to make it look normal and sturdy, but he hoped that ponies would think he just cant find something better or was a nomad.

The much bigger problems were his eyes. They were completely colourless, milky white eyes which belonged on a blind man or a corpse, and literally no one is going to believe that he is an adventurer or a trader when he looks blind. At first, he thought about using his eyes natural protection to his advantage to paint the irises and pupils on them, but he quickly realised it was a dumb idea and he might end up actually blinding himself. He head no glasses or anything transparent that could be made into them, so his only choice was to make himself a turban which will leave a small slit for his eyes while hiding them. It was not ideal, but what else he could do? Try to make sun-glasses from the shards of a wine bottle?

Stas finished packing his belongings, already dressed in his creation with a back-up dagger hidden in his boot, he filled a large pair of cargo saddle bags with all the loot he could carry - two bottles of wine, water, food and energy biscuits (even some of the hardtack-hay), medical supplies, crossbow with thirty bolts, flint and steel, both silken robes, five crushed empty aluminium cans*, his pot with a bowl, small bag of salt, a hyena pelt to use as bedding, even entirety of the money he found and hashish. He also took a small tent, just in case.

Spell books and scrolls, together with two normal books and a map, went into his shoulder-bag, it was a high quality bag and a memento of his home, so he did not replaced it. His scabbard with scramasax went on the belt he wrapped around the shoulder of his left front leg, where it will be hidden by a cloak, while he still will be able to unsheathe it quickly.

It was a lot of weight, but he used to be an infantry-man back in the army and walking with forty to fifty kilograms of cargo was nothing new to him, it was even easier now, since he had a stable four leg stance instead of needing to balance himself on just two, also, there was no officer to make sure he wont stop to take a break when he needs it.

He had to leave the medical bag behind, considering that he was no herbalist and testing unlabeled potions and unknown herbs on himself sounds like a great way to kill himself. An only things he took from there were some herbal spices he recognized after he remembered seeing them in his mom's kitchen many years ago.

Today, he leaves this camp behind for good, the road he seen on the map should lead him to the nearby settlement - a small village, a day or two away, if he understood the map correctly. While it gave him a much needed shelter and time to learn, this place was extremely boring and literally nothing happened in the last two weeks. An only notable event during his stay was that time when he embarrassed himself in front of Nightmare Moon.

Five days ago, late evening

"Как-же заебало...*" Stas was sitting in front of his tent and cooking himself something which could only be described as a culinary disappointment - an empty porridge*. He was fairly sick of eating dry fruit, sweet porridge with dry fruit and hay, so he sat there thinking on how he could possibly enrich his ration. He was already willing to go back to oasis and hunt for the scorpion meat or catch a snake for a BBQ, just so he wont have to eat any more sweet fruits.

Suddenly, he remembered something. On his first day he picked some salt off the adventurer's body, but even so, just salt wont cut it. After contemplating what he should add to it, he decided to once again take a look through the herb bag in hopes of finding something he recognized as a spice. To his surprise, he was able to find some caraway, badly-grinded pepper and some coriander. It's not that good of a spice mix, but it will be good for someone who had none for almost two weeks.

Stas added some of the spices - pepper, coriander and some salt. Thinking of it, salt is supposed to be good and healthy for an equine, something about helping with balance of nutrients? He added some more, just in case his new body needed it more than he realised.

Finally, after letting it simmer for some time, he ate his extra salty wheat porridge. It was so-so, even with spices, but he was more than happy about the change.

Stas was cleaning his pot in front of the food storage when he felt a strangely familiar warmth in his chest. That feeling made him faintly giggle, strange familiarity and joy he didn't felt in a quite some time. Now that he thought of that, what was the last time he let himself cut loose? Always so tense and serious, all work and no fun!

Stas went inside the tent, with a faint giggling. "Pfft, gigg-ling, he-he..." The dumb joke, while pretty unfunny on it's own, seemed really funny to him right about now. He reached the duo of barrels he seen on the end of the tent and opened one of them, willing to finally let loose and test how resistant the changeling liver is.

One hour later

It was already night when Stas stumbled out of the tent, drunk both on salt and alcohol, he held an almost empty bottle of rum. He walked with an unsteady gait, almost tripping over his own leg. Stas was happy for the first time ever since he seen that damned smoke over the oasis. A necromancer shit-face drunk on rum, that entire situation reminded him of something and he was singing.

"Aha-ah, the blood runs co-old,
We take our loot but don't get o-old!
*Hick* Yo, yo ho
Yo-o, yo ho
All ha-ail, the mighty
He's arising from the de-ep
*Hick* With tattered sails
and incredible tales
we're caught in endless se-eas!*"

He finally fell flat on his face, caring more about singing the lyrics correctly then placing his legs on steady ground. Slowly, with a speed of an uprooted tree, Stas turned on his side and looked up in the sky.

"Oh! Hi-i Moonie.." Nightmare looked back with a mix of surprise and disappointment, clearly not expecting to see him in such condition for multiple reasons and rather unhappy about him giving her a nickname.

"Y-you know Moonie... I alwaaays l-liked you more then Celestia!" Now Moon was pleased, looking down from her prison with amusement and a hint of curiosity.

"Yea-ah, she is a fa-a-at co-ward and h-her rainbow mane looks... *HICK* ... looks like a.. like a jester's wig!" For a meer moment, Stas could swear he heard a booming joyous laughter of a Moon. She liked what he said, She was especially amused about Celestia's mane.

"A-and you... You are better, you k-know! Yo-ur braaave and even mel.. mil... mil-le-nia on the moon d-did not bro-ke you!" Stas told Her, clearly loosing a fight to unconsciousness. Nightmare was pleased, after being regarded as a foal-eating monster by her former sister's subjects and treated as a flawless deity by her own still-loyal subjects and Cults-of-Nightmare, hearing a honest praise from somepony was refreshing, even if that somepony was actually a drunk out of his gourd changeling necromancer.

Her soon-to-be warlock lost consciousness in the middle of the camp's path, he was sleeping in the sand, overpowered by the mix of salt and alcohol. She watched him from above, already planning to show him this memory in his dreams once he is sober.

"Oh well, at least my liver is working well..." His cheeks burned with embarrassment as he recalled this memory, hidden by the green cloth of his turban look-alike. To think that he actually had the gall to talk to a Nightmare when completely shit-faced. It was a good thing that he blacked out, after all, who knows what could have happened if he did something really stupid, like if he tried to hit on Her.

Still, embarrassing yourself before the literal Goddess aside, he had to get moving, it is going to be a long road to the closest village and he cant stay in this camp forever.

Author's Note

1) Stas is a history nerd, he knows that aluminium in pre-industrial era (before galvanization became a wide-spread thing) was VERY expensive and he hopes he could sell it.

2) "Как-же заебало" - I'am so fucking sick of it.

3)Empty porridge (or empty soup) - it's when you use just one or two ingredients to make it, excluding water, that is.

4)The shanti is "Tattered sails" from "Warhammer Total War 2. Curse of Vampire Coast."

P.S. In the next chapter, Stas will finally meet with actually friendly villagers